Page 10 of Vaquero
“Only reaching for my sat phone, ma’am,” he answered, dodging the kid’s attempt to kick him. “Press one,” he said as he held the phone out to her. “Talk to Senator Sullivan yourself. Ask anything you need to confirm that I’m Special Agent Julio Juarez, that I’m here to help.”
Something he said got her attention. “I heard. Let Pepe go,” she snapped instead of taking the phone.
Julio obeyed. He would’ve spoken to the boy, but the woman interrupted with, “Pepe, thanks for coming to my rescue, but I’m okay. Really. Go tell the others not to worry. This won’t take long.”
Why not?Julio thought.Are you going to kill me? Here? In front of your children?
“Who’s Maria?” Julio asked.
Cords flexed in the woman’s neck as she swallowed hard. She was a tiny, but fierce thing. Creamy complexion and exotically beautiful, but nearly bald. He could tell by the way that bandana slipped over her skull when she’d straightened it back into place. No stray tendrils snaked out from under it, either. Anywhere.
She wore grimy jeans that looked like they’d been slept in beneath that gray and black sarape. But she was overheated, and sarapes were made for cooler weather, not for traipsing around in jungles. Was she sick?
Oh, damn.“Cancer?” he asked softly. That would explain her hair loss and the sarape.
Her perfect brows clashed together like twin crimson streaks of lightning. What was most likely a very lovely face when she wasn’t pissed off, scrunched into absolute insolence. Her head cocked nearly onto her shoulder like she thought he was stupid. “What did you say?”
He let his gaze wander to the top of her head, answering with his eyes.
She answered back with her chin and two, lush, mauve lips that pursed tight with disdain. “Lice, you moron. Or are you blind and stupid, too? Didn’t you notice Pepe’s as bald as I am? That none of us have much hair?!”
See? Fierce. But Julio couldn’t answer, because she was right. He hadn’t noticed Pepe’s or the children’s lack of locks. Only hers. Maybe because she still had two weapons pointed at him?
She sent him another evil eye that, oddly, he was beginning to enjoy. “We all had to shave our heads. You ever had lice? If not, then shut the hell up.”
“That explains it,” he offered lamely, his hands raised again until she decided to either call Sullivan or step back and maybe return his pistol. That’d be a nice gesture.
She seemed undecided. Breathing hard, her nostrils flared with every puff. She blinked like she was afraid, though. Shooting a man was not something she did lightly, and that helped Julio decide to trust her. Ever so slowly, he lowered his left hand, watching her closely while she tracked the descent of his hand to the weapon still sitting loose and ready in his right holster cup.
“Do you want this pistol, too? You might as well take it. I can’t help you and your children if you won’t let me.”
Her lips thinned and her nostrils flared again. “Why should I?”
With his second weapon still holstered under his arm, he played his ace in the hole. “Because I’m here to end Orlando Zapata, and I need your help to do it.”
The Beretta in her hand dropped to her side like she’d lowered her toll gate. “Honest? You’re going after Oz?” she asked breathlessly, handing his piece back without further hesitation.
Lowering his arms, he took it gingerly by the grip and snugged both weapons back where they belonged. “I never lie,” he stated unequivocally. “How can I help?”
Her lips pinched inward then, turning her into a sight for sore eyes. Whoever she was, she had the prettiest, thickest lashes. Burnished red, but not scarlet. More like the color of Monarch butterfly wings in November, they curled soft and lush against the apple of her cheeks, both burned either by the sun or embarrassment. He couldn’t tell if her natural hair color was brownish-red or deep, rich mahogany. Not that he cared either way. But the combination of colors warming the creamy palette of her skin declared an innate beauty to the woman wearing that stark, black bandana.
It was a rare thing to admit, but Julio liked looking at her. She radiated something—he wasn’t sure what—that had been missing in his life until now. She had guts to be out here alone with a bunch of kids. Maybe that was it. Her courage.
“Really? You’re here to help us?” she whispered, her take-command tone gone soft and faint, like she didn’t dare believe him.
“Yes, ma’am, but precisely who is us? How many children are with you? Are there others?”
The strange compulsion to gather her into his arms stormed Julio’s good sense like a rogue wave out on the wild, capricious Pacific. The kind that came out of nowhere, and heralded tsunamis at the end of the world. It struck him so hard and so furiously, he stiffened his spine before he did something stupid, like act on that urge. He hadn’t come here to comfort strangers. Not that this woman was undeserving of comfort. More because she was quite a good-looking woman, even wearing a sarape that disguised her figure.
They said beauty was in the eye of the beholder, but the great, wise, unknowntheywere wrong. Beauty lay within the subject’s eyes, not the person looking at her. This woman’s eyes were two deep, green wells of camouflaged secrets he wished he had time to dive into. Because she was definitely hiding something. He could tell by the way she kept cocking her head at him, as if she couldn’t believe anything he said. The left side of her mouth seemed perpetually twisted with disgust. Or maybe disdain. He couldn’t decide. Did she think he was lying?
Now it was his turn to swallow hard. He’d come a long way with no sleep since the flight out of Houston two mornings ago. Six thousand miles of jetlag made a man dizzy and unbalanced. He was tired and dirty; his mind was foggy. Yet there he stood, flummoxed, a warrior ready to drop to his knees in front of the most unlikely angel he’d ever met. And he’d met a few. Only most of them were already married. Or dead. Which didn’t give this chance meeting much hope, did it?
“I’ve got six beautiful, amazing kids with me, Special Agent,” she answered tightly. “They’re the ones Oz kidnapped. That’s where I’ve been, at his stinking mine. I had to get them back before I lost them forever. Are you really here to help?”
Her question irked Julio. Why did she find that so hard to believe? He was here, wasn’t he? But… “You went into Oz’s mine? You kidnapped these children back from him? All by yourself?” Inconceivable. The nerve of this woman.
“Well, yeah, of course. He hadn’t chained them together or dragged them into one of his tunnels yet. Most of them were still in cages. What was I supposed to do? Leave them because I was too scared?” She shot that accusation like a spear, with plenty of swagger, and Julio was pretty sure lightning had just stabbed the ground between his feet. Hot, green lightning. “For your information, bucko. I don’t ever leave anyone behind! Now tell me again, Juarez.” Again with that sarcastic, cocky dare in her tone. “Are you going to help me save these kids or not?”
