on her princess lips, when no smile existed in her eyes.
He’d found just a little too much pleasure in watching her fight to keep her finely boned face from revealing her anger. And he had far too much interest in speculating what her do-as-I-tell-you mouth might feel like beneath his.
Daggert had to give her credit. She’d ridden for eight hours straight without a single complaint—except about his silence. She’d left her comfortable ranch, following a complete stranger, a man who many called crazy and worse, to look for a runaway boy who’d been only recently deposited at the ranch.
Leeza could have stayed put and called in a host of law enforcement types—Lord knew that with one of her ranch partners married to a federal marshal, she could have had her pick of half a dozen agencies. She could have simply waited with the others at Rancho Milagro, trusting fate to deliver the little boy back home safely. She could have directed the ranch hands to scour the land, searching for the boy who had undoubtedly already run away from a dozen different foster homes.
But Leeza Nelson hadn’t done any of those things. She’d sent the ranch hands searching in the predawn hours. She’d directed law enforcement to check bus stations and highways. And she’d decided she needed to find the boy herself, with the aid of one half-breed Apache, a notorious tracker named Daggert. That she’d taken the trouble to find the best told him a lot about her.
And the set look on her lovely face as she’d refused to back down when he’d announced he worked alone had told him something, as well.
“Not this time,” she’d said coolly. And any man in his right mind would have shivered and asked for a parka right about then.
She hadn’t pleaded, or cajoled him into agreeing; she’d just ordered a horse saddled and a pack prepared. She’d given orders like a general on a campaign and had only shot him that one furious glare at his countermanding her saddle choice.
He’d made it clear he wasn’t going to slow down for her, that if she was determined to force herself on him, he wasn’t going to nursemaid her. If he was going to find this little boy, he couldn’t afford to stop and smell flowers along the way.
And damned if she hadn’t matched him step for grueling step all day.
And despite her overt weariness, she’d still summoned enough spunk to slap him down when he’d slipped his hand beneath her blouse.
With his back to her, he smiled. The lady had grit, he’d give her that, even if she didn’t have the faintest notion of what was what. His smile faded. She was under the impression that she’d hired him to find her missing runaway. That was true, in a way, but there was far more to it than that.
He’d have done it for free, as half the people of Carlsbad would have told her if she’d asked. He was the person everyone called when someone was missing. Not because he was lucky, but because he was relentless. And because he had another agenda.
He loosened her saddle and slid it from the mare’s back. He did the same for Stone, setting all the packs to the south side of the sandy arroyo he’d chosen for the night’s camp, a place safe for that evening, as no storms threatened. It was September and even in drought years rain always fell in that month, the transition from summer into autumn. They’d had rain the night before the boy ran away and they would again in the next four days. Knowing that wasn’t magic on Daggert’s part; it was courtesy of the National Weather Service.
“Hello?”
He turned in her direction.
She was on her cell phone. She’d spent the better part of the first stage of their journey with the little black instrument pressed against her ear, jabbering into it as if it and not people might conjure up the missing boy.
Daggert went back to setting up the camp as she leaned forward, apparently seeking better reception. She’d better have a great conversation tonight, for the Guadalupe Mountains were renowned for interrupting cell phone service. Unless on cliff sides or in high mountain meadows, wireless communication was almost nil in the Guadalupes, and there wasn’t any other kind shy of smoke signals.
“No, not a sign of him,” he heard her say.
Daggert didn’t even bother to shake his head. There had been plenty of signs of Enrique’s progress; he just hadn’t pointed them out to the lady from back east. A piece of a tortilla covered with ants. A chewing gum wrapper. Hoofprints from the boy’s horse—noted because Rancho Milagro used the same farrier that most of the county did, and this particular blacksmith liked to bend one horseshoe nail backward, leaving his distinct signature every time a horse stepped on anything but pure asphalt.
Daggert and the woman were still quite a way behind their prey, but narrowing the gap considerably. The boy hadn’t been able to push his horse very swiftly in the dark the night before. With luck they might catch up with him by noon the following day.
“Okay, you know my number. Call me if you hear anything,” she said, and hung up without a farewell. A no-frills woman. A woman used to running things her way. And probably getting them her way, as well.
Daggert thought that, given a couple of millennia, they might actually find they had a few things in common.
“Are we really stopping for the night?” she asked him with more than a hint of accusation in her tone. “Shouldn’t we just take a rest and keep looking?”
He shook his head and continued setting up camp. Again he felt a reluctant stab of admiration. Grit? The woman had more than mere grit. She had class. She couldn’t have ridden another step, but here she was, ready to get back out there.
Better than she did, Daggert understood the need to continue the search, no matter the hour, no matter the lack of light. The ice princess only believed Enrique Dominguez had run away from Rancho Milagro.
Daggert knew she didn’t have a clue what dangers lurked out there. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she didn’t know she had come in contact with lions, tigers and bears. She had no way of knowing that no one, especially little Enrique, was safe from the dangers lurking in the Guadalupes.
She didn’t have the foggiest notion of what might have befallen the boy just a few yards outside the fence surrounding the massive headquarters of the children’s home—not from rattlesnakes and other animals, though those were prevalent enough. Worse things than nature and nature’s creatures lurked among grasses, stunted trees and thorny shrubs.
But Daggert wasn’t about to tell her what really scared him. He didn’t want to have a hysterical woman on his hands. Not that Leeza Nelson seemed the type for histrionics. But she was still laboring under the idea that the boy she followed was simply running away from a foster care situation, if not—if the ranch hands were to believed—from Leeza Nelson personally.
Daggert knew that accepting such an easy explanation for the boy’s continued absence was almost like selecting his gravestone. Daggert should know, he’d lost his own son that way.
Having finished taking care of Stone, he tended Leeza’s mare. He hummed a little as he worked and, between the brushing and the tuneless susurration, both horses relaxed their bunched muscles and gently whickered their thanks.
He decided he couldn’t call the mare by her given name; Lulubelle was a ridiculous handle. Noble creatures demanded dignified names. He ran his hand down her withers and on down her legs, feeling the powerful muscles ripple beneath his palm. No sign of her being winded,
