Bed of Roses (7 page)

“Again you try to be as dishonest as a carpet. You talked to Maclovio only four days ago, and after that you spoke our name. You are only grabbing at hay because you do not want to be killed. You know we are the Quintana Gang. Because you know, you must die.”

“Who?”

“The Quintana Gang!”

He searched his memory for some clue as to who the Quintana Gang was, but continued to feel more confused by the second. “I don’t know any Quintana Gang.”

Zafiro didn’t reply; she merely looked at him. Her gaze traced the chiseled planes of his face: his high cheekbones, long, straight nose, and sharply defined jawline.

Tia had washed his hair earlier, and now, as it lay spread over the mattress and his massive shoulders, it shone like antique gold. Zafiro longed to touch it. To feel how thick it was and to see how it looked sliding through her dark fingers.

He blinked, his action drawing her attention to his eyes. She’d never seen eyes such as his—golden, flecked with warm brown.

Instinct told her that those eyes could coerce a woman into doing anything. Anything at all.

The thought quickened her breath and loosened her thoughts. “You are the handsomest, youngest man I have seen in ten years,” she said softly. “I…part of me wishes I did not have to kill you. But…but life, it is not roses to sleep on, and I cannot keep my cake if it is in my belly.”

He stared at her so hard that his eyes stung. “I’m trying to pull the wool over your eyes, someone let the cat out of the bag, I lie like a rug, I’m grasping at straws, life is no bed of roses, and you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”

She stared straight back at him. “That is what I—”

“No, it’s not what you—”

“You will be a dead man in only minutes, and you would waste the last of your life arguing with me, Sawyer Donovan? You have more nuts than a fruitcake!”

“You’re
the one who’s nuttier than a fruitcake, woman! God Almighty—”

“It is good that you are saying your prayers. Make your peace with God Almighty, pick your death, and I will make the necessary preparations to kill you.”

He heard her voice tremble and knew then that the notion of killing him was truly abhorrent to her. There might just be a way out of his predicament yet, he mused.

“Please,” he said, reaching out to hold her hand, “don’t kill me.”

She felt like curling her fingers between his. But, of course, she didn’t, because one didn’t caress one’s murder victim. “You are making this harder for me.” She yanked her hand from his grasp.

“Harder for
you?
What about me?”

“It is supposed to be hard on you. You are the one who is going to be killed.”

If he didn’t still feel slightly nervous, he’d have found her explanation amusing. But he remained wary because his would-be killer was definitely daft, and daft people were unpredictable.

He tried to think of another way to dissuade her from murdering him. “I want to be drawn and quartered.”

“Drawn and quartered?” She wrinkled up her nose as she pondered his wish. “Will that kill you?”

“After being drawn and quartered I’ll be as dead as a doornail.”

“What is a doornail?”

He decided not to explain a cliché she’d turn around and mangle anyway. “Never mind. Just draw and quarter me.”

She gave a slow nod. “All right. But first tell me what it is.”

“Four horses pull and tear off my two arms and two legs.”

Zafiro couldn’t suppress a violent shudder. “We only have Coraje and Rayo, our horse and burro. Coraje, he will not allow as much as a gnat to get near him, and Rayo suffers a bruised foot. Besides, to be drawn and quartered, it sounds very painful. I do not want you to feel any pain. I only want you to die.”

Her explanation was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. Glancing down at her weapons again, he spied the gun. “The sound of gunfire’s so loud. Deafening, actually.”

Zafiro looked at the gun she’d had Sister Carmelita borrow from Rudolfo again. This time the pistol was fully loaded. “You will not realize that you have gone deaf because you will be dead. Besides, you will only hear the gunfire for half a second.”

“Too long. I refuse to be shot, and that’s it.”

She nudged the pistol away with her foot and made a mental note to return it to Sister Carmelita as soon as possible.

Sawyer looked down at the various killing instruments again. “I’ve never liked the feel of something tight around my neck. I can’t even button the top button on my shirts.”

“But you were wearing a bandana.”

“It wasn’t tied tight though. It was so loose I barely felt it.”

Zafiro kicked the rope across the room.

“I’m already slashed to ribbons. Do you think I’d enjoy being cut into again?”

She laid the dagger on the table under the window.

“Feathers make me sneeze. I can never sleep with my nose too near the pillow.”

She booted the pillow under the bed. “There is only the water left. Please put your head in this bucket and drown.”

She might as well have asked him to please pass the salt, so nonchalantly did she give his death order. He tried to sit up, wincing when bolts of pain shot through his injuries.

Carefully, he lay back down. “Starve me to death.”

She shook her head. “I have been hungry many times, and I can tell you that an empty stomach is painful. You must drown.”

“I deserve one last meal.” While she went to get his food he’d escape, he decided. Even if he had to drag himself out of the house on his hands and knees, he’d escape. “A really big meal. Eight courses, plus dessert.”

“First you want to starve to death, and now you want to eat?”

“Yes.”

Zafiro sighed every bit of air from her lungs. “If you keep stalling you will die of old age before I have the chance to kill you.”

“Do you expect me to hurry along my own execution? Bring me some…some lobster.” He smiled inwardly, daring her to find a lobster in the middle of the Sierras. “Yes, lobster to start. Once I’ve finished that I’ll tell you what else I want.”

“Lobster?”

“You do know what lobster is, don’t you?”

Zafiro remembered eating lobster whenever she and the gang journeyed through small towns near the gulf. “Where do you think I will get lobster in these mountains?”

Nowhere,
he answered silently. “I’m not going to die until I get some lobster.”

Zafiro glared at him, her patience so sorely tried that she no longer remembered to feel sorry over having to kill him. “Do you know what I am going to do? I am going to shoot, stab, drown, hang, and suffocate you all at the same time!”

“Fine, but I want my lobster first.”

“Fish!
That is the closest I can come to lobster! You will eat it, and then you will die!” With that, Zafiro turned on her heel and marched out.

Sawyer waited until the sound of her boot heels faded, then pulled off his covers and slowly, painfully, sat up and placed his feet on the floor. Looking around the room, he wondered where his clothes were.

He’d have to escape naked. His legs shook as he began to stand, and it took every bit of strength he had to fight off waves of dizziness.

Familiar sounds hit his ears just as he took his first step away from the bed. A growl and a snarl. His body completely rigid, he strained to hear the noises again.

A mountain lion slunk into the room. Stopping a few yards from the bed, she crouched, her gold eyes narrowing, her hindquarters moving from side to side as she prepared to spring forward.

Sawyer felt every drop of blood drain from his face. Words whispered through his mind.

You will be a dead man in only minutes…

The girl with the long black hair had apparently decided to allow the cougar to finish him off.

He had no time to think. To shout. To prepare himself for his gruesome death.

He fell back into the bed.

And the great cat flew toward him.

C
arrying a tray that held
a steaming bowl of fish stew, a freshly baked loaf of bread, a big red apple, and a glass of milk, Zafiro walked down the hall toward Sawyer’s room. During the time it had taken her to catch the fish and prepare the meal, her temper had cooled.

Now, as she smelled the aroma of the fish stew, she wished she’d been able to accommodate Sawyer and give him his lobster. After all, who could blame him for wanting the taste of his favorite food in his mouth while he took his dying breath?

His dying breath.

“God,” she prayed, “please give me the strength to commit this horrible sin.”

A sigh escaped her when she realized the content of her prayer. Asking the Lord for the courage to execute a murder was probably a sin all by itself.

Arriving at Sawyer’s door, she entered the room…and almost dropped the tray of food.

There lay Sawyer, on the bed, right where she’d left him. Only he wasn’t alone. Indeed, he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his company: Mariposa.

The sleek cougar lay stretched out beside him, her eyes closed in contentment, her long tail leisurely beating the mattress as Sawyer scratched her ears.

“Nice kitty,” Sawyer said, smoothing his hand down from her ears and across her back. “Nice little kitty.”

In response Mariposa leaned her head back onto his shoulder and licked his chin with her long, rough tongue.

Watching, Zafiro realized she’d never known the cat to take to a stranger so quickly. The cougar was even wary around the nuns, all of whom she’d known for three years.

Bewildered by her pet’s abnormal behavior, she set the tray on top of a small bureau and crossed to the bed. “What did you do to her?”

Sawyer noted the disbelief in her gorgeous blue eyes. “I didn’t do anything to her. She came in right after you left. I thought you’d sent her in to kill me, but all she did was jump on the bed with me. When I realized she wasn’t going to have me for lunch, I held out my hand, she licked it, laid down, went to sleep, and that was that. I went to sleep too, and she woke me up only a few minutes ago by rubbing her head on my arm.”

Zafiro wanted to believe he was lying, but the truth—in the form of a very content cougar—lay stretched out right before her very eyes. Mariposa liked Sawyer. And maybe, in her own mountain lion way, she was trying to apologize for attacking him.

Animals possessed an instinct that told them who was friend and who was foe. Mariposa, apparently, had belatedly decided Sawyer was a friend.

Zafiro folded her arms in front of her waist and deliberated. Who was
she
to contradict the instincts of a wild animal? Yes, her own instincts had been warning her of a coming danger, but wasn’t it possible that Sawyer was not that danger?

Mariposa obviously thought so. The cat was purring and had now maneuvered her body over Sawyer’s stomach.

And not only had Mariposa decided to like Sawyer, but Sawyer had chosen to pardon the cougar for attacking him. Wasn’t a man who could forgive an attempt on his life a man who could be trusted?

Yes.

So if the peril she anticipated was not Sawyer Donovan…

It had to be Luis.

Zafiro closed her eyes and pressed her shaking fingers against her temples, trying in vain to subdue the horrible premonition of danger. But it built steadily inside her, warning her in no uncertain manner that evil was soon going to find her.

“Did you hear what I said?”

Sawyer’s voice broke through her grim preoccupation. Opening her eyes, she looked at him blankly. “What?”

“I asked you if this cougar is your pet,” Sawyer repeated, rubbing his fingers up and down the cat’s soft belly. “And the chicken too.” He pointed to the ginger-colored hen who nested between the vee of his legs. “She’s laid another egg, I think.”

Nodding, Zafiro took a deep breath, and then another and another. Slowly, her feelings of fear faded and she was once again able to concentrate on Sawyer. “The chicken, she is Jengibre. Her name means ‘ginger,’ because that is what color she is. She will not lay her eggs in the coop with the other chickens. I think she believes she is a person, so I allow her to go where she pleases, and she has never run away. Mariposa, she is my pet too. She was an orphaned cub when I found her three years ago. Her name means ‘butterfly’ because she is very gentle, like a butterfly.”

Sawyer thought of his extensive injuries, wounds that were going to take quite some time to heal fully. If Mariposa’s attack had been gentle he hated to think what she could do when in a violent mood. “She’s your guard cat?”

Nodding, Zafiro reached out and tenderly pinched Mariposa’s nose. “And sometimes she brings fresh meat to us. We become tired of eggs and fish, so we are always glad when she shares her catch with us. I cannot kill Pancha or Blanca, Rosa—”

“Who?”

“Pancha is my cow and we need her milk. Blanca and Rosa, they are some of my other chickens. We also have Rayo, our burro. He is in the barn with Pancha.”

Sawyer listened to her tone of voice and studied her actions. She seemed calm, relaxed, as if she were truly enjoying the conversation.

He decided to keep her talking before she remembered she was supposed to kill him. Then, if and when she recalled her murder plans, he’d… Well, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but for now he’d just keep her talking. “Why don’t you eat your chickens?”

“When there were many, we did. But now I have only eight. One cooked chicken will make only one meal. But a live chicken will continue to provide eggs.”

“How do you keep Mariposa out of the chicken coop?”

Zafiro shook her head, remembering the day Pedro shot the chicken house apart. She’d tried to rebuild the fowl house, but the flimsy thing she’d made wasn’t going to hold the chickens for long. “When I first found Mariposa I poured vinegar all over the hens and then let her smell them. She did not like the smell at all, and she has never gone near them since.”

Sawyer silently congratulated her on her ingenuity. “So you get meat when Mariposa brings some. Why can’t you hunt for yourselves?”

Zafiro sighed. “I do not have a gun that will work. The one I was going to shoot you with is not mine. I have tried to fashion traps to catch the rabbits who eat my garden, but they take one look at my traps and laugh. It is very irritating.”