More than anything. For the frisson of hopeless hope, for watching dispassionately and uninvolved. For engaging her emotions, intruding on her thoughts, and stripping away her one refuge.
She hated him most for destroying the last precious moments of sanctuary before the wolves tearing at her fortress destroyed her.
The slap of a palm against the windshield should have torn her from her bitter thoughts, instead she discovered newfound hate brought with it newfound strength. She was done with hiding. Tearing her gaze from the shadowy apparition, she stared coldly at Beauty’s assailant, her eyes seething with anger.
“Hot damn!” a new heckler crowed. “There’s life here, Blue Doggie. She may be dumb, but she ain’t deaf or blind. She moves, she hears, she sees. If looks were lethal, I’d be road kill.”
Wearied by his prancing and crowing, Patience turned away, her attention drawn again to the source of her strength.
As the moon chased across the sky, beneath its canted light the desert came alive, shifting, hiding, revealing, leaving nothing ever the same in the eye of the beholder. Only he hadn’t changed. Only he was as before, sitting astride his bike, legs bent, feet braced in dust. His hands lay lazily across chrome handlebars, his shoulders were back, his head up. Eyes hidden in shadow were turned to her. Watching.
“Hey.”
Patience didn’t react to Blue Doggie’s return.
“Hey! Look at me,” he demanded.
She didn’t turn.
“I said look, damn you!” Spreading his feet and bracing his hands on the top of the door, he rocked the car as he spoke. “You look at Hogan, you look at me.”
Which was Hogan? Was he the dwarf? The silent one with the scarred throat? She didn’t know, she didn’t care as she clung to the steering wheel to keep her balance.
Abruptly Blue Doggie stepped back, hands raised in an air of surrender. Startled by the conciliatory gesture and mistrusting peripheral vision, she turned to him in time to see his face contort into a rictus of rage. That slight turn saved her eyes, her face, perhaps her life, as a chain crashed down on the damaged windshield.
Glass cracked, breaking free at the point of impact, sending great deadly shards flying into the car. Before the chain whipped down again she scooped the derringer from the console, palming it with cool-headed expertise.
Curbing his swing, Blue Doggie deflected the path of the chain, letting it fall in a clatter over Beauty’s hood. He peered through the gaping hole. First he scowled, then he laughed. “The lady’s packing. A two-shot peashooter, no less.”
“Back off!” Patience warned, ignoring his mockery. As threat became true peril, fear gave way to unshakable resolve. The derringer was steady in her hand and aimed precisely at the center of the hole in the glass and the point between Blue Doggie’s eyes. “You’ve had your fun. Now it’s time to crawl back on your hogs, or whatever you call them, and disappear.”
“Now, why would we go away and leave a pretty young thing like you alone in the desert?”
“Maybe because it’s the wiser thing, Blue.” The answer was low, the masculine voice composed. A voice of reason drifting out of the night.
“Wise?” Blue Doggie wheeled around, speaking to the darkness. “What’s wise about leaving now?”
“Because the lady asked.” A reasonable argument, a reasonable tone, lacking the indifference Patience would’ve expected. “Because even you would lose an argument with a derringer.”
“Hell, Indian.” Blue Doggie gestured impatiently, the chain dangling from a leather band at his wrist glinted in the headlights of the circled cycles. “She won’t shoot.”
Muttered agreement and more catcalls rose from the others, urging Blue Doggie on.
“If you believe that, you’re bigger fools than I thought.” In a cultured tone so unlike the others, he might’ve been dressing down a troop of Boy Scouts, not a band of cutthroats with wolf heads tattooed on their arms.
Shocked by the calm ridicule, Patience turned instinctively toward him, probing beyond the lighted circle, seeking to know what manner of man waited and watched in the dark.
“That’s what you think, huh? That I’m a fool?” Blue Doggie snarled. “Then we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
She recognized the threat too late. A murderous backhanded swing brought the chain down over the glass again, an instant before she turned and fired. The bullet went wide, creasing the top of her attacker’s ear, fueling his rage rather than ending it forever. The glass imploded, shattered splinters became minute daggers. Patience only had time to shield her eyes and face. The derringer slipped from her grasp and tumbled to the floor. Even as her hands were stinging from minute cuts, she whirled, reaching between the bucket seats, groping for the rifle case.
Another second and she would’ve had it, but there wasn’t another second. A fist buried in her hair, lifting her through the open door of the car. Through a haze of pain she watched as Blue Doggie smiled down at her. He shook his head as if he were dislodging a worrisome fly, a halo of blood arced from his torn ear. His fingers closed tighter, drawing her neck to an impossible angle. “You’ll pay. Before I’m through, you’ll wish your aim had been true.”
Grabbing his wrists, her hands slick with her own blood, she clawed at him, trying to break his hold. One nail broke, then a second; his grip tightened. “Let go, you cretin,” she demanded, too wild with pain and anger to fear retribution. “Let me go, I say.”
“Whooee!” Blue Doggie shook her like a terrier might shake a kitten. “The Wolves has got theirselves a redheaded wildcat, and I got a nicked ear and claw marks to prove it. She marked me,” he said with no little satisfaction. “That makes her mine.”
His claim sent up another rumble of protest. The loudest among them, Custer, Snake and Patience.
Catching Blue Doggie in an inattentive moment, she hacked his wrist with the side of her hand and pulled free of him. But her freedom was short-lived.
A second pair of hands seized her shoulders. Beer-laden breath was hot against her skin, a moist kiss missed her mouth as she was jerked away. She spun in the dust. Hands clutched, fingers clawed. Like starving creatures quarreling over a bone, bikers pushed and shoved. Each staking claim. Each challenged by the next.
Patience was fondled and kissed, pinched and bruised, and tugged from the grasp of one by the next. On and on, in a circle, still spinning, still turning until she was disoriented.
Snake, the youngest, pulled her from the crowd, drawing her hard against him. His body molded hers, leaving no room for question of her effect. “You’re beautiful, Red. Play your cards right and I’ll spend some time with you.”
“Play my cards?” Patience wedged an arm between them to gain breathing space. “You have to be—”
“Kidding.” Custer finished for her as he snatched her from Snake to repeat an embrace that threatened her ribs. “He’s kidding himself. Snake always kids himself.” Custer buried his face in her neck, biting the tender flesh, ignoring her flinch of agony. “You’re mine, I found you first.”
“You
