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Refugio’s chiseled features froze. Taking a handkerchief from his jacket, he wiped his face. “Cuff the bitch and throw her in the back,” he snarled in Spanish. “Let’s get the hell out of—”
A crash of splintering wood and the echoing sound of a gunshot shattered the night. The two men holding Rose’s arms let go and went for their weapons. In a lightning move, Rose whipped out the switchblade and drove it into Refugio’s body. The tip of the blade barely penetrated his black silk shirt. Too late, she realized that he was wearing a Kevlar vest underneath.
“Rose! Get down!” Hearing Tanner’s voice, she understood that he was afraid of hitting her. Still gripping the knife, she dropped and rolled under the vehicle. “They’re wearing body armor!” she shouted to warn him.
Frustrated by her helpless position, she lay in the darkness, listening to the deafening whang of the 9mm Glocks the cartel men carried and the blast of Tanner’s .38. She could hear air escaping from a tire. That must have been where Tanner’s first shot had struck.
A leg—clad in black pants, not Tanner’s jeans—came into view below the vehicle’s metal frame. Rose hacked at it from behind with her razor-sharp knife. Gasping with effort, she cut deeper and felt the hamstring separate with a snap. She was rewarded with a scream. The man had fallen a few feet away, crying and holding his maimed, useless leg. She could tell it wasn’t Refugio. Too bad, she thought. But if she could get the man’s gun, she could help Tanner.
Hugging the barn’s earthen floor, she came in low behind the wounded man, wrenched the loosely held 9mm Glock from his hand, and aimed. A single, deafening shot to the back of the head ended his worthless life.
As the sound cleared her ears, she realized that the gunfire had stopped.
Scarcely daring to breathe, she lay still. A flashlight came on, its beam moving over the carnage in the barn. The man Rose had killed lay nearby. The other Cabrera cousin, also dead, sprawled a dozen feet away. And Tanner . . .
Rose’s heart contracted. Tanner lay facedown at Refugio’s feet, a crimson flood spreading over the back of his shirt.
Refugio let the light linger on him. “He is still alive, Rose. Toss that gun over here. The knife, too, or I will finish him right now.”
Rose did as she was told. “Let me help him,” she said. “Please.”
“All right. Do it. Any tricks and I’ll kill you both.”
Rose moved to cover Tanner’s prone body with hers. She could feel his heart beating, but he was badly hit, losing a lot of blood. She tried to stop the bleeding with pressure from her hands. It was useless. “He needs a doctor,” she said.
“Come with me, and I will leave him alive. Maybe Bull Tyler will come back and find him.”
Maybe, Rose thought. But there was no guarantee that Bull would come back at all, and Tanner didn’t have much time. If she left him, he would die alone.
“No.” She clung to Tanner’s unconscious body, covering as much of him as she could. Tanner’s words came back to her, and she knew they were true for her as well. She would rather die with him than live without him. “I’m not leaving him,” she said. “If it matters that much, you’ll have to kill us both.”
Refugio cursed in Spanish. Rose tried to imagine what he was thinking. His men were dead, and the police would have the roads blocked, watching for his vehicle. He might be able to slip away alone and on foot, disguised as a common migrant worker, but with Rose as his prisoner, that kind of escape would be impossible. And for him, mercy was out of the question. Kill her now. Kill them both.
With the flashlight still in one hand, he raised his pistol and cocked it.
Rose glimpsed a tall silhouette in the open doorway of the barn. In the same instant, the deafening roar of a 12-gauge shotgun, firing on both barrels, shattered the air. The close-range blast could have dropped a thousand-pound steer. Even in a Kevlar vest, Refugio didn’t stand a chance.
Bull steadied his balance, lowered the weapon, and rubbed his shoulder. “Damn, but that old gun’s got a kick,” he said. “How’s Tanner?”
Rose found her voice. “Alive, but barely. He’s losing a lot of blood. We’ve got to get him to a hospital.”
Bull stripped off his shirt to use as a temporary dressing. “Better not to move him without help. Let’s put a patch on him, and you stay here with him. The patrol cars are out. First one we pass, I’ll have them call an ambulance . . .”
Eighteen hours later
Tanner opened his eyes. As his murky vision cleared, he saw that Rose was bending over his hospital bed, red-eyed, disheveled, and so stunningly beautiful that all he wanted to do was look at her.
“Hello,” she whispered.
“Hello,” he said. “You look like an angel. Am I in heaven?”
“You were knocking on the gate,” Rose said. “But the doctors brought you back. You needed three pints of blood. Even so, you were lucky. The bullet didn’t hit anything vital.”
“What about Cabrera and his pals?”
“They’re shaking hands with the devil.”
“All I remember is a lot of shooting. Then I got hit and everything went dark.”
