a hand for balance.
The other man stood before her now, breathing fire. His chest was heaving and his dark eyes were slitted until she could see nothing but black pupils. For a moment, he simply glowered at her, wordlessly accusing her. She felt an absurd contrition, as though he’d caught her cheating on him.
He turned to look at the man sprawled on the floor.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Rafe sneered at his mortal enemy.
At the man who had killed his brother.
Chapter 3
Ernesto stared up at him, his flushed face a mask of angry confusion. “Who the hell are you?” He raked Rafe’s simple clothes with an experienced eye. “You were not invited to this party.”
“No.” Ernesto began to rise, but Rafe put a foot on his chest.
Olivia noted he was wearing black running shoes—of distinctly American origin.
He slid his foot toward Ernesto’s throat. “An oversight, I’m sure,” he added casually. “My partner and I attend most of your parties, after all.”
Ernesto’s eyes went blank in bafflement, then slowly narrowed as he caught Rafe’s meaning. “So you are the infamous Rafael,” he said between his teeth.
“You know my name,” Rafe said mockingly. “Very good for three months’ work, hefe.”
Ernesto spared Olivia a quick glance. “You will pay for what you have done, cabrón.”
“What I have done tonight? Or what I have been doing for months, without you having the slightest idea how to stop me?” Rafael laughed acidly. “I best you at every turn, señor.” Rafe removed his foot, stepped back and readied himself for the attack he was eager to meet. “It seems to me that you pay, Cervantes. Not I.”
Predictably, Ernesto launched himself at him, and Rafe caught Ernesto’s head full in his gut.
Olivia heard the air rush from Rafael, heard Ernesto grunt at the impact, but other than that, they made little noise.
It was instantly, horribly ferocious.
Olivia could scarcely comprehend the violence that erupted, as if by some mad sorcery, from both of them. It seemed unfathomable that Ernesto would so hate the man before him. Wasn’t he just another criminal, just another smuggler?
And the man Ernesto had called Rafael? What possible motivation could he have for the enmity flashing like deadly daggers in his dark eyes?
Whatever the explanation, Olivia knew instinctively that this was no ordinary fistfight between a lawman and a lawbreaker. This was something much uglier—and one of them would die at the end of it if she didn’t do something to stop them.
Rafael was younger, faster, tougher, but Ernesto outweighed him by fifty pounds and used his weight mercilessly, keeping his head lowered and battering at Rafael like a bull. Rafael efficiently countered by raining swift, brutal blows to Ernesto’s handsome face whenever the opportunity arose. It was a nearly silent, intentionally deadly bloodbath, and Olivia had never before seen anything like it. Had never imagined there could be anything like it.
Ernesto thumped heavily to the ground, catching Rafael around the knees as he fell. Rafael’s black shirt came untucked from his black jeans, and Olivia gasped when she saw the small, shiny gun Rafael had shoved into his waistband. She prayed, for Ernesto’s sake, for the sake of everyone in the hacienda, that the man would not remember it was there.
She watched in horror as Rafael brought his arm back and slugged Ernesto square in the face. Blood spurted gruesomely over his fist as he drew back for another blow.
No, he wouldn’t remember the gun, Olivia thought. He seemed determined to kill Ernesto with his bare hands. She bit back a scream. Rousing assistance at this point would be fatal to at least one person in the room. Olivia calculated the odds that it would be her or Ernesto, and decided not to take the chance.
Cervantes ducked the fist coming at his face, used the momentum of Rafael’s body to slide himself out from under the younger man’s straddle. In a blur, they both whipped to their feet—Ernesto’s nose gushing blood; Rafael’s jaw clenched, his breath coming in short puffs from the body blows he’d received.
Each holding a gun in his hand.
Olivia did scream then, in shock and dread, the short sound rising unexpectedly from her throat. Neither man looked in her direction.
Rafael grinned at Cervantes, though the pain in his chest was excruciating. “I’ve wanted your blood on my hands for a while now, Cervantes,” he said hoarsely.
“I will soon have yours on mine,” Ernesto retorted thickly, his voice sounding as though he had the worst kind of cold. “No man steals from me.”
Rafael smiled. “I’m surprised. It’s very easy to do.”
Ernesto swiped at the blood on his chin, smearing it grotesquely across his swelling jawline.
Olivia heard footsteps pounding down the hall. Two hundred people, law-abiding friends of the local sheriff, would be upon them at any moment. They would kill Rafael where he stood—and all three of them knew it. Ernesto began to smile, blood showing in the spaces between his perfect, white teeth.
Olivia would excuse her rash behavior later by telling herself she acted without thinking. But she did think. As clearly as she ever had in her long and thoughtful life. In the split second she knew she had before Ernesto’s men came through the door and put at least fifteen bullet holes in the man who’d kissed her, she decided to save his life.
Not because she understood what he did to make his way in the world, not because she liked him, excused him, had hope for him. But simply because she could not allow another human being to die in front of her eyes if she had any way of stopping it. She hadn’t known that about herself, exactly, but in that instant she saw it with perfect clarity.
Olivia knew Ernesto no longer remembered she was in the room, and suspected the smuggler had forgotten her presence, as well. She threw herself in front of Rafael just as the door burst open, grabbing his free hand and bringing it to rest at her throat. She heard his loud grunt of pain as she gripped his hand there and began, imprudently, shrieking like a lunatic.
The men barreling through the doorway stopped dead, staring first at Ernesto, then at her and Rafael, then back again. But the momentum of two hundred curious dinner guests propelled them into the room, along with the dozen people behind them. A minute later, there were more than twenty citizens of Aldea Viejo in Ernesto’s lavish bedroom, gaping at the bloody, dramatic, noisy tableau the three of them made. Olivia closed her eyes, still wailing theatrically, and thanked God.
Rafe saw stars. When the woman had wrenched his arm up, he was sure a rib had gone straight through his lung. But he was still breathing, still standing, and though he could barely do either, it was enough to convince him he was still alive.
It took him just a moment to divine the doctor’s foolhardy plan, and he tightened his hold on her fractionally. “Stop screaming,” he hissed in her ear. “They get it.”
She quieted instantly, nearly sighed with relief. So, he understood the plan. Excellent.
