Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (19 page)

Heedless of the man’s warning, Angel clung to a rock for support and lifted to her knees. Like the others, she scanned the river, waiting, tense and breathless, for Rane’s dark head to appear on the surface of the water.

Please, God! Oh, please, please, God! Let him get away.

Suddenly, she saw him, his face low in the water, gasping for air. He’d drifted closer to the bank.

“There he is!”

Three ropes whipped through the air.

Rane upended and dived for it once more. One of the loops snagged his foot as it sliced out of the water. The rope snapped taut and a wild thrashing ensued.

“I got him!” The roper braced himself in the rocks and hauled hand over hand.

Rane’s head broke the surface. He grabbed for the rope.

“Don’t give him no slack!” her captor shouted.

More ropes were cast. One of them landed over Rane’s head and jerked tight around his throat. Instantly, he was yanked back and stretched between the two opposing forces.

Angel clutched at the rock with fear vibrating through every nerve in her body. They were killing him. If by some miracle they didn’t break his neck, then they’d surely choke him to death.

All the men converged on the two who held the ropes and the gorge filled with laugher and shouts of encouragement, as if they were trying to land a great fish.

Frozen with horror, Angel watched them pull him ever closer to the riverbank. His hands were no longer in sight, no longer clinging desperately to the rope around his neck.

“They’re killing him!” she sobbed.

“They’re just givin’ him a Mexican hangin’. So what!” her captor growled. “You’re the only one Lundy wants brought back alive.”

Through a tearful blur, Angel saw Rane’s hand lift from the water. Sunlight flashed from the wicked blade in his hand. He raised it overhead and sliced through the rope shutting off the air from his body. The abrupt release of tension snapped the rope high into the air. Using the impetus of release, he angled forward and severed the snare about his ankle.

The men panicked when their big fish spit out the hook. They scrambled down to the water’s edge. A handful of them leaped right into the river.

“Don’t let him get away!”

But Rane had already disappeared beneath the surface.

The men drew their guns and fired blindly into the river.

Angel’s little paint mare, rolled on its side and caught in a tangle of driftwood, floated past. The bastards had killed her. Farther downstream, Pago still swam southward, the only sign of life remaining in the river. The sight of the magnificent stallion, still alive, wrenched a sob from Angel’s aching throat.

Still, she stared at the water, watching for any sign of a dark head to appear. Her eyes grew blurry and unfocused, until she saw nothing at all through the dimness of streaming tears. How long could a man hold his breath and still live?

Silence settled into the canyon, broken only by the rushing torrent below. Angel looked up, surprised to find the sun still shining. She scrubbed at her face with the heels of her hands. The curious faces of strange, rough-looking men crowded the edges of her vision.

Two of them stepped in and wrapped their hands around her arms, lifting her. Once on her feet, she jerked from their grasps and nearly fell. She turned, glaring at them and, as one, they stepped back.

If she looked like a madwoman, so much the better. She snarled. “I hope you all burn in hell for this day’s work!”

Chapter Twelve

The back of Rane’s nostrils burned as though fiery brands had been thrust into them. The sensation clawed into his brain, distorting his vision. The unstoppable current took him, disoriented him, until he no longer knew which way was up. The raw flames in his chest, filling his lungs, commanded him to cough. He fought his body’s own instincts. If he gave in, the river would rush in completely and defeat him. He didn’t want to die like this, at the bottom of a river that rarely flooded.

His boots scraped bottom. Above, light streamed through the flow of silt. Daylight. If only he could reach for it. He tried, but his arms and legs had turned to leaden weights commanded by the force of the river.

An image of Angel, pale with fear, flickered through the white-hot agony tearing through him. Lundy had her. The bastard had won.

Angel. Rane had promised to deliver her safely home to her father. Now, he’d failed.

The thought goaded him, pricked the one thing within him that still thrived. His pride.

Gathering his last shreds of strength and willpower, he planted his boots against the river bottom and shoved. The motion propelled him toward the surface.

Radiance struck his blurry eyes. Sun-warmed air washed over his face. He gasped a lifesaving breath deep into his agonized lungs, and they seized with the cough he’d held off, trying to expel the noxious river water he’d ingested.

The gorge had narrowed and the cliffs blurred on either side of him, the river pushing him downstream faster than ever. Working against the numbness of fatigue and cold, Rane righted himself. His labored heart clutched onto a new thread of hope when he saw what was in front of him.

Pago.

The black stallion still swam with unflagging strokes. His sleek, wet hide gleamed like a beacon under the noonday sun. Resembling dead, blackened seaweed, the horse’s long tail undulated in and out among the muddy, swollen rills.

A lifeline.

Rane reached for it. His breath heaved harder. After several attempts, he caught a handful of the illusive strands.
Victory!
Quickly, he wrapped his hand, winding the coarse fibers more securely. Then he hung on.

He tried to say, “Take us home, boy,” but his voice failed him. Without words to guide him, strength gone, he could only trust the instinct of the faithful horse to carry them both to safety.

****

Hushed voices whispered inside Rane’s head. The sounds woke him from fitful dreams of dead horses, hundreds of them. No matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find one still alive to carry him from the carnage.

He opened his eyes a mere crack. Nearby, low orange, blue-tipped flames danced against a background of darkness. The warmth against his face and the smell of wood smoke were familiar comforts.

Dim figures, speaking in low tones, moved around the fire. Rane tried to sit up. His muscles resisted, sore and stiff, as if he’d been beaten. He opened his mouth to speak, but forced nothing more than an alien sounding croak from his throat. The effort cost him. Pain, raw and burning, tore through his throat. Sweat broke out over his body and his breath heaved harder.

“Don’t try to speak,
hermano
.”

Wolf’s face loomed above him. The big half-breed squatted on his heels and dropped down to his knees.

Tears of relief gathered behind Rane’s eyes. They lay there, never to be shed, their salty sting adding to his discomfort. Despite the throbbing ache in his shoulder, he lifted a hand to his throat, his eyes on Wolf’s face, questioning.

Wolf nodded, understanding. “When I found you, you were wearing a rope. From the looks of your neck, I gather the bastards tried to hang you. You’re damn lucky they didn’t crush your windpipe.”

Rane forced himself to relax against the blankets beneath him. Lucky. Wolf didn’t know the half of it.

“I made a poultice to help the swelling,” Wolf said. He lifted a strip of cloth containing the remedy and applied it with a gentle touch.

A cool weight settled around Rane’s neck. Immediately, the smells of wild onions and animal tallow filled his head. He wrinkled his nose and grimaced.

“Rest now,” Wolf commanded. “Heal and grow strong to fight another day.”

Another day. But when? In capturing Angel, Lundy now had his bargaining chip. If Roy Clayton gave in to his demands, the bastard would disappear before Rane had the chance to exact the justice he’d planned for so many years. He closed his eyes and prayed to the Holy Virgin to grant him a miracle.

****

Angel clenched her arms beneath her breasts and paced the confines of her elegantly furnished prison. Three days had passed in an agony of waiting since she’d been pulled from the river and taken to the Hacienda. Three days of hellish uncertainty and self-torment. The worst of it stemmed from her inability to go look for Rane. She’d never felt so helpless. By all accounts, he’d perished in the river, but she refused to accept his death. Not without proof.

Oh, Rane.

She ached each time she remembered her last sight of him, disappearing beneath the cold river. That was the last anyone had seen of him. But he couldn’t be dead. If he were, she would have known it somehow. Her heart would have felt the loss. But she didn’t feel that emptiness. Instinct told her he was still very much alive, and he was out there somewhere.

But in what condition?

After her horrific ride down the flooded river, Angel had discovered an array of bruises ranging over her body. Nothing serious. Meanwhile, Rane had been roped and nearly throttled. Lundy’s men had shot at him. Then, he’d stayed underwater longer than seemed humanly possible. She knew he was injured. Not knowing the severity of his injuries held her in a perpetual state of torment.

As yet, she hadn’t seen Horace Lundy. He hadn’t even bothered to put in an appearance when his minions delivered her to the Hacienda that first day. Was he ashamed to face her? Well, he should be!

Upon her arrival, she’d been handed off to an imposing ape of a man who’d locked her in a bedroom. The only person she’d spoken to since then was the Mexican woman who showed up twice a day to bring her food and tidy the room. A guard, whose face changed with each four-hour shift, was posted outside the bedroom’s solitary window.

The first day, Angel had asked the servant to deliver a message. She wanted to speak to Horace Lundy. Nothing had happened. Since then, she’d demanded an audience with Horace at every opportunity. She had finally concluded the servant was either too frightened, or too uncaring, to deliver her plea.

Angel expelled a short breath and turned, kicking aside the cumbersome, too-long hem of the dress she wore. The servant had brought her clothes. Dresses, and undergarments, and even a nightgown. Although fine, the garments smelled of old must, as if they’d been packed away for a long time. They were too long, too big in all respects. She suspected they’d once belonged to Horace’s deceased wife, Francine. Given a choice, Angel would rather not wear them. But since her ruined shirt and breeches had disappeared on the occasion of her one and only bath, she didn’t have the luxury of refusing.

As day three stretched interminably before her, Angel decided she’d played the docile prisoner long enough. It was time to make some noise and get someone’s attention.

She stopped pacing and snatched up a tapestry covered footstool. Driven by anger and frustration, she flung it against the massive wooden door. The stool bounced off and dropped to the floor, splintering one leg. Not enough noise, although destroying Horace’s property
did
give her some small measure of release.

She scanned the room for more missiles and backtracked when her gaze raked over an expensive, imported Italian lamp with an etched glass shade that dripped crystal teardrops. Now that just might make some noise. She picked it up with both hands and let it fly at a full-length cheval mirror. The resultant crash of shattering glass startled her and sent her leaping back to dodge the flying shards of debris.

The guard posted outside the window pressed his face against the pane, his eyes rounded with surprise. He lifted a hand and rapped so hard the entire casement rattled. “What the hell you doin’?”

Still primed for violence, Angel snatched up the first thing at hand and flung it at his face. The chamber pot crashed right through the window glass and sent the guard reeling backward to avoid the shower of broken glass.

The bedroom door swung inward with a creak of strained hinges, and she whirled to face it. With a slow sweeping gaze, Lundy’s big underling surveyed the damage she’d wrought, and then he lifted his eyes and glared at her.

She tossed back her hair with a defiant flip, planted her hands against her hips and aimed a scowl right back at him.

Without a word, he stalked into the room and picked her up bodily, though she flailed and kicked at him with all her might. He flung her down on the bed with such force, she bounced several times.

She cowered against the bed when he leaned over her, his sour breath blasting in furious gusts against her face.

He lifted a skillet-sized hand and jabbed a condemning finger toward the end of her nose. “Don’t move! And don’t break nothin’ else, or I’ll come back and tie you up so’s you can’t!”

Angel attempted to swallow and found her mouth had suddenly gone dry. Somehow, she forced out, “I demand to see Horace Lundy this instant!”

The guard straightened and stood looking down at her from the side of the bed with his ham-fisted, ape-like arms hanging straight down at his sides. His heavy black caterpillar brows collided over his nose that was flattened and crooked. The incorrectly healed breaks forced him to breathe through his open mouth, which made him look like a slack-jawed dimwit. “I’ll pass it on,” he said. He turned and walked out the door. Seconds later, the heavy bolt on the outside of the door jammed into locked position with a loud click.