Rafe cursed and stood on the brakes. The tires fought for purchase; the big car shimmied from side to side. It took all his skill to bring it to a stop. When he did, the hood was inches from the yawning space that overhung the valley.
He sat absolutely still. His hands, clutching the steering wheel, were trembling. He could hear the faint tick-tick of the cooling engine, the thud of his own heart.
Gradually the ticking of the engine faded. His heartbeat slowed. He dragged air into his lungs. Okay. The thing to do was back up, very carefully…
Something banged against his door. Rafe turned toward the half-open window. There was a guy outside the car and he was obviously dressed for an early Halloween. Black shirt. Black trousers. Black boots.
And an ancient, long-barreled black pistol, pointed straight at Rafe’s head.
He’d heard stories of road bandits in Sicily and laughed them off, but only a jackass would laugh at this.
The guy made some kind of jerking motion with the pistol. What did it mean? Get out of the car? Hell, no. Rafe wasn’t about to do that. The pistol waved again. Or was it shaking? Was the guy shaking? Yeah. He was, and that was not good. A nervous thief with a gun…
A nervous thief with white, wispy hair and rheumy eyes. And liver spots on the hand that held the pistol.
Wonderful. He was going to be robbed and killed by somebody’s grandfather.
Rafe cleared his throat. “Easy, Grandpa,” he said, even though the odds were good the old boy couldn’t understand a word of English. He held up his hands, showed that they were empty, then slowly opened the door. The bandit stepped to the side and Rafe got out, carefully skirting the edge of the road and the void beyond it. “Do you speak English?” Nothing. He searched his memory. “Voi, ah, voi parlate inglese?” Still nothing. “Okay, look, I’m going to take my wallet from my pocket and give it to you. Then I’m gonna get back in the car and—”
The pistol arced through the air. He tried not to wince as it wobbled past his face.
“Watch yourself, Gramps, or that thing’s liable to go off. Okay. Here comes my wallet—”
“No!”
The old man’s voice shook. Shaking voice. Shaking hand. This was getting better and better. It would make an even better story than the one he’d already figured on telling his brothers, assuming he lived to tell it.
“Hugoahway!”
Hugoahway? What did that mean? The old guy’s name, maybe, but it didn’t sound Italian or Sicilian.
The old man poked the end of the pistol into Rafe’s flat belly. Rafe narrowed his eyes.
Another poke. Another gruff “Hugoahway” and, damn it, enough was enough. Rafe grabbed the barrel of the pistol, yanked it from the bandit’s shaking fingers and tossed it over the cliff.
“Okay,” he said, reaching for the old man, “okay, that’s— Oof!”
Something hit him, hard, from the rear. It was a second thief, wrapping his arms around Rafe’s neck as he climbed on his back. Rafe grabbed his assailant’s arms and wrenched the guy off him. The thief grunted, struggled, but he was a lightweight, and Rafe swung him around, worked his hands down to the guy’s wrists…
Hell, this one was only a kid. Not just lightweight but flyweight. The kid, too, was dressed all in black, this time including a deep-brimmed, old-fashioned fedora that obscured his face.
A flyweight, but a fighter.
The kid was all over him, kicking, trying to claw him, damn it, trying to bite him! Rafe hoisted the boy to his toes.
“Stop it,” he shouted.
The kid snarled something unintelligible in return, lifted a knee and took aim. Rafe twisted away.
“Are you deaf, boy? I said, stop!”
Evidently, stop didn’t translate well because the kid didn’t. He came at Rafe and the old guy joined the fracas, pummeling him with what looked like a small tree branch.
“Hey,” Rafe said indignantly. This was not how things were supposed to go. He was the tough guy here; tough guys didn’t get beaten up by boys and old men. He knew damned well he could stop the attack, just a couple of good punches would do it, but the thought of hitting Methuselah and a teenage delinquent was unappealing.
“Look,” he said reasonably, “let’s sort this out. Gramps, put down that stick. And you, boy, I’m gonna let go of you and—”
Bad move. The kid aimed his knee again. This time, he caught Rafe where he lived with devastating accuracy. Rafe grunted with pain, drew back his fist and managed a right cross to the kid’s jaw.
It must have been a good one because the boy went down in a heap.
Still struggling for air, Rafe started to turn toward the old man. “Listen to me,” he gasped….
The tree limb whacked him in the back of his head.
And Rafe went down beside the kid.
He came around slowly.
Ah, God, his head hurt. Methuselah had crowned him, the kid had kneed him. He had been totally and completely humiliated.
Could the day get any worse?
The old guy was sitting in the road, holding the kid in his arms, rocking him, talking to him in rapid and seemingly anguished Sicilian. He didn’t even look up as Rafe rose painfully to his feet.
“Okay,” he said gruffly, “okay, old man. Stand up. You hear me? Let go of the kid and get up.” The old man ignored him. Rafe reached down and grabbed a spindly arm. “I said, stand up!”
“Hugoahway!” the old guy shouted, and suddenly the words made sense. What he was saying was, You go away. Well, hell, he’d definitely oblige, but first he had to make sure the boy was okay. Stopping this unlikely duo from robbing him was one thing; killing them was another.
Rafe shoved the bandit aside, reached for the unconscious boy, lifted him into the crook of his arm. The kid moaned, his hat fell off, and.
And the boy wasn’t a boy at all.
He was—she was a girl. No. Not a girl. A woman with a pale oval face and a silky mass of long, dark hair. He’d KO’d a woman. So much for wondering if the day could get any worse.
Carefully he scooped her up, ignored the old guy pulling at his sleeve and carried her to the side of the road that abutted the sloping mountain. Her head lolled back. He could see the pulse beating hard in the delicate hollow of her throat. The angle of her body made her breasts thrust against the rough wool of her jacket.
He set her down against the grassy rise. She was still unconscious.
She was also incredibly beautiful.
Only an SOB would notice such a thing at a moment like
