It was also possible that whoever sat by that campfire hadn’t sought shelter at the house because he had known he wouldn’t be welcome. And so, before Sloan got much closer, she stopped to check that the twin Patterson Colts in her saddle holsters were loaded and angled her horse around so she approached the camp from behind.

Sloan could hardly believe her eyes when she saw the rotund figure sitting on a rock before the campfire. The Englishman! He must have planned a rendezvous with Cruz.

She had already turned her horse to flee when someone grabbed the reins and pulled her down out of the saddle. Her scream was cut off by a rough, hard hand across her mouth.

“The effort is wasted, chiquita,” Alejandro said. “There is no one to hear you but me.”

Cruz stared unseeing into the scattered coals in the fireplace. He had finally given Luke permission to court Tomasita, but not before he had vented his anger at the Ranger. Luke had left a few moments ago to sit at Tomasita’s bedside. It was nearly dawn and long past time he joined his wife in bed.

Moments later, Cruz frowned as he stared at a bed that hadn’t been slept in. He turned and walked down the hall to Tomasita’s room, knocked, and when Luke answered the door, asked, “Is Sloan in there?”

“No. Isn’t she in bed?”

“No.”

“Did you check the other bedrooms?”

“Not yet.” Cruz checked what had been Cricket’s bedroom and found Cisco sleeping soundly. He walked down the hall and hesitated before knocking on Rip’s door. When there was no answer, he carefully opened the door and found Rip asleep-and alone.

Cruz hurried back downstairs. Sloan wouldn’t be in the downstairs bedroom with Angelique, but he quickly checked the other rooms without finding any sign of her.

He left the house and headed for the barn. There, August gave him news that made his heart skip a beat.

“She come to get her horse ’fore daybreak. Said she’d be back by mornin’.”

Cruz heard a robin singing cheerfully outside the barn as he saddled his bayo. The storm had spent its fury overnight, and the sun was shining brightly. He and Sloan should be starting the new day together. Where was she? Why wasn’t she back yet?

Her trail was easy to follow, and he felt a cold chill when he saw which way she had headed. His stomach was knotted by the time he reached the campfire, where the Englishman waited for him.

“Where is she?” Cruz demanded.

“Where is who?”

Cruz was off his horse and had the Englishman by his fancy neckcloth in two seconds flat. “My wife!”

“Easy, man, easy,” Sir Giles soothed. “She’s being well taken care of.”

“Where is she?”

“Alejandro has her,” Sir Giles gasped through a half-crushed windpipe. “You’re choking me.”

Cruz released his hold enough so that Sir Giles could talk. “Where is Alejandro?”

“He’s gone to his hideout. I don’t know where it is.”

Cruz tightened his hold again, nearly cutting off the Englishman’s air.

“I’m telling the truth. I don’t know where he is,” Sir Giles croaked.

Cruz let go of his hold on the man, and the Englishman dropped into an untidy heap on the ground.

“You had better pray that I find her soon, and that I find her untouched. Because if I do not, I will be back for you. I suggest you get out of Texas. It is not a healthy place for you anymore.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Sir Giles said as Cruz remounted his bayo.

“Oh?”

“What about the evidence I have against your wife?”

“Do whatever you want with it. It was never any good anyway.” With that enigmatic statement, Cruz spurred his stallion in the direction of the tracks that led away from the Englishman’s camp.

As soon as Cruz was gone, Sir Giles Chapman picked himself up, scowling at the irreparable damage done by the mud that now stained his bright yellow trousers.

Things were not working out exactly as he had figured. He didn’t trust Alejandro, and he believed Cruz’s threat. He had better get to Alejandro’s hideout as quickly as possible and make sure that nothing happened to that crazy Spaniard’s wife.

Sloan was frightened. She was tied hand and foot, and that sense of helplessness alone was enough to curdle her blood. To make things worse, ever since they had arrived, Alejandro had been drinking steadily.

The small adobe house to which Alejandro had brought her was the same one in which he had murdered Tonio. Four years later, the door still hung on one leather hinge, the open windows lay bare, and flies buzzed around them. She sat on the dirt floor in a corner of the room and watched as Alejandro leaned back in a rickety chair and stuck his feet up on the wind-and-weather-scarred table. He tipped a bottle of beer up and drained another swallow. He smiled beneath his bushy moustache and his eyes narrowed as his cheeks rounded.

Sloan shivered at the gruesomeness of his drunken features.

From the lascivious glances being thrown her way, it was plain he was thinking about fulfilling the promise he had made in the stinking San Antonio jail cell so many months before. She reminded herself she was Rip’s daughter. She was brave; she was strong; she was no coward. But that didn’t stop her stomach from churning.

“Tell me, puta, does your blood run hot every time Tonio’s brother touches you?”

She heard the chair legs hit the floor and Alejandro’s spurs scrape off the table. A moment later, he stuck a dirty hand under her chin and shoved her head upward. His breath smelled of sour chili and Mexican beer.

Her dark brown eyes flashed with hate and contempt. “Pendejo!”

He hit her with his fist and knocked her into a sideways sprawl. Then he grabbed the front of her shirt with both hands and yanked, sending buttons popping in all directions as he tore the shredded garment off her shoulders.

His hands grabbed her breasts through her chemise and kneaded them roughly as his weight came down on top of her. He tried to shove her legs apart with his knee and realized, through his drunken stupor, that her ankles were tied together.

“Chingada!” He rolled off her clumsily and onto his knees. He pulled a knife from the sheath at his waist and slipped it through the knots that held her feet.

The instant she was free, Sloan kicked Alejandro in the groin as hard as she could.

He hissed in breathless agony and pitched over in a heap on the floor.

She had trouble getting to her feet because she had been tied up for so long, but she knew that she didn’t have much time before the bandido recovered. She grabbed the knife from the floor and cut her hands free. When she finally managed to stand up, she slipped the knife into her belt, feeling hope rise in her breast that she would actually escape.

She spared one more glance at Alejandro, then turned to the door-only to find her way to freedom blocked.

“Going somewhere?” Sir Giles waved Sloan backward from the door with the pistol in his hand.

He looked from the growing bruise on Sloan’s cheekbone to the Mexican bandido writhing on the floor and said, “I told you to leave the woman alone. Now, get up off the floor. Don Cruz has already come looking for her. I want her kept in a safe place where he won’t be able to find her.”

“It is too late for that.” Cruz snaked an arm around Sir Giles’s throat and put his Colt revolver to the Englishman’s temple.

“Cruz!” Sloan cried in relief.

“Move over here, Sloan.”

Sloan had started toward Cruz when Alejandro reached out and tripped her. As she fell, he caught her in front of him and rolled so there was no way Cruz could shoot at him without taking the chance of hitting Sloan.

Alejandro made it to his feet in a surprisingly agile move, rising with Sloan as a shield, her arms bound by his grasp around her waist. He had grabbed his pistol and held it at Sloan’s temple in a mirror image of Cruz’s hold on the Englishman.