Gray, Ginna (24 page)

She brushed his hair away from his face, and blinked back tears.
"Damn you, Sam Rawlins. Don't you dare die on me now. Not after all we've
been through. You hear me!"

Sam rolled his head from side to side on the pillow.
"Lau-ren," he croaked.

"Yes, I'm here. What is it, Sam?"

"Love...y-you."

Lauren sucked in a sharp breath and jerked back, her eyes
widening. Her heart squeezed painfully. She wanted so much to believe him, and
for an instant hope swelled inside her but she quickly battled it down. Don't
be an idiot, she ordered. The man has a raging fever. He's delirious. He has no
idea what he's saying.

Sam thrashed around and let out a loud groan, and Lauren gave
herself a shake. For heaven's sake, quit acting like a lovesick teenager. He
needs your help, she silently scolded. This was no time to indulge in hopeless
daydreams.

As with almost everything else, Lauren had no nursing experience,
but she'd picked up enough information to know that she had to get Sam's fever
down. Fast.

She whirled around, ripped the top sheet off the other bed and
took it into the bathroom. After soaking it in cold water under the bathtub
spigot, she hurried back and wrapped the wet cloth around him.

Within minutes the sheet was warm. She had to resoak it a half
dozen times before there was any discernible break in his fever. No sooner had
that happened than he was seized with chills and began to shake uncontrollably.
Lauren stripped off the clammy sheets and briskly toweled him dry, coaxed
aspirin down his throat, covered him with the blankets from both beds and
turned up the heat, but still he shivered. Finally she crawled into bed beside
him and held him close.

After a while Sam quieted and dropped into a deep slumber—at least
Lauren hoped that was what it was. Exhausted, she fell asleep snuggled against
his side.

A couple of hours later, Sam's fever spiked again, and she hauled
herself out of bed and repeated the entire procedure.

Throughout the remainder of the night and all the next day the
pattern repeated itself over and over— Sam's fever yo-yoed up and down and, in
between, chills racked his body so hard Lauren could almost hear his bones
rattling.

The following morning, when the motel maid knocked on the door,
Lauren told the woman her husband wasn't feeling well and took the clean sheets
and towels from her and hung out the Do Not Disturb sign. By late afternoon,
though she was too tired to be hungry, she was shaky from fatigue and lack of
food, and she knew Sam needed nourishment as well. During one of his docile
periods, she screwed up her courage and risked a trip to a restaurant and
brought back a takeout order.

Coaxing the warm soup down Sam, a teaspoon at a time, was
difficult and frustrating, and when she was done she barely had the energy to
eat half the sandwich she'd gotten for herself.

Day turned into evening and Lauren grew more concerned. As the
cycle of high fever and racking chills went on, Sam grew weaker, and she had no
idea what else to do. Almost twenty-four hours after checking into the motel,
holding him close as the latest bout of chills subsided, Lauren stared at the
ceiling, sick with worry.

"N-number..."

She jerked her head back and stared at Sam's flushed face. She put
her hand against his forehead and realized that his fever was rising again.
"Sam? Are you awake? Did you say something?"

His eyelids fluttered.

"Oh, Sam! Sam, you
are
awake!" she cried.
"Thank God!"

He frowned and tried to talk, but he couldn't manage more than a
raspy whisper.

Lauren put her ear close to his mouth. "What?"

"In my...wa-wallet. My cousin La...Larry's... number. C-call...him."

She drew back, frowning. "Oh, Sam, are you sure? Can we trust
him? Sam?" she prodded, but he had already slipped back into
unconsciousness.

Lauren found his wallet in the inside zipper pocket of his parka.
In it was a folded piece of paper, on which was a typed list of perhaps fifteen
names and telephone numbers. The only Larry was a Larry Zah.

Lauren paced back and forth across the room with the list in her
hand, agonizing over whether or not to make the call. Did Sam really trust this
man? Enough to risk their lives? Or was he merely desperate? He could even have
been delirious when he made the request.

She stopped and looked from the list to the telephone, and chewed
on her thumbnail. Then her worried gaze went to Sam. He was beginning to flail
around again. Lauren sighed. She had no choice. He needed more help than she
could give him. She had to chance it.

The telephone rang five times before it was picked up and a sleepy
voice mumbled, "Hello."

"Is this Larry Zah?"

"Yeah. Who is this?"

"I...you are Sam Rawlins's cousin, right?"

There was a short pause, and when the man spoke again his voice
had changed from drowsy to alert. "That's right. What about it?"

"Sam is with me, and he, uh...he needs your help. He's been
shot."

"Shot?"

"Yes, and he's in bad shape."

He did not hesitate. "Tell me where you are, and I'll come
get you."

Uneasily Lauren told him their location and the name of the motel
and the room number.

"I'll be right there."

During the hour and ten minutes it took for Sam's cousin to arrive,
Lauren swung back and forth, sure one minute that she'd done the right thing
and just as sure the next that she had made a grave error.

When she heard the pickup pull up outside the room she stood in
the dark by the window, waiting, Sam's service automatic in her hand. If this
Larry person had led Carlo Giovessi's assassins to them, she wouldn't be a lamb
to the slaughter.

She twitched the curtain open a crack and saw a big,
barrel-chested man get out of the battered pickup. He wore jeans, a plaid
shirt, a leather, sheep-skin lined jacket and a domed-crown felt hat with a
silver hatband. His straight black hair hung to his waist like an ebony
waterfall. Lauren's gaze scanned the parking area. There appeared to be no one
else around.

He tapped on the door.

"Who is it?" Lauren called in a low-pitched voice.
"Larry."

Holding the gun behind her back, she unlatched the chain and let
him in. He barely spared Lauren a glance. Once at the bed, he picked up Sam's
parka and put it on him, then scooped his cousin up in his arms. Sam was a big
man, but Larry Zah carried him as though he weighed no more than a child.
"Get your things. We're getting outta here."

While waiting for him, Lauren had put a fresh bandage and shirt on
Sam and returned their belonging to the duffle bag. Surreptitiously she dropped
the gun into her purse, grabbed the duffle bag, Sam's moccasins and the
first-aid kit and scurried after him.

"That yours?" he said, nodding toward the pickup.

"No. We borrowed it from Sam's father."

"We'll leave it here. I'll call Augustus tomorrow and tell
him where to pick it up."

The man was so terse, if it hadn't been for his appearance, Lauren
would have thought he was a Rawlins instead of one of Sam's Navajo relatives.

Within seconds they were out of the parking lot and speeding
south. Sam lay slumped against Lauren, and she held him tight.

"My name is Lauren Brownley, by the way," she said into
the silence.

"I figured." Larry Zah sent her an unreadable look.
"We get TV on the reservation, too, you know."

"I...I see," Lauren said uneasily. She slipped her hand
inside her purse and closed it around the gun. "Then you've heard the news
reports."

"Yeah."

"They're not true."

"I figured. Sam's a straight-arrow."

She released the gun and put her arm back around Sam. "Where
are you taking us?" she asked after another long stretch of silence.

"To the reservation. We have a doctor there."

"Oh, but—"

"Relax. He's Navajo, and we'll be on Navajo land. He won't
report this."

Lauren closed her eyes and sagged with relief. "Thank you."

Larry grunted, but he seemed disinclined to talk, so Lauren
settled Sam and herself into a more comfortable position and leaned her head
back.

An hour later she was jostled awake and found they were creeping
down a sharp incline on the roughest dirt road she'd ever seen. For miles the
road wound through massive sandstone formations as tall as multistoried
buildings, standing like eerie sentinels in the moonlight.

"This must be Monument Valley," Lauren said in an awed
voice.

"Um. But not the part the tourists see. That's only a few
acres. The rest of the reservation is for Navajos only."

Lauren started to ask, "What about me? I'm not Navajo,"
but she thought better of it.

They drove for miles across vast expanses, deep into the interior
of the reservation. Dotted here and there were modest houses, all with
dome-shaped hogans out back. Sam grew restless, and moaned at the constant
jostling. Lauren felt his forehead, discovered that his fever was rising again.

Finally they arrived at a small cluster of dwellings, a small
frame house and two mobile homes about a hundred feet apart. "This is my
place," Larry said, pulling up in front of one of the mobile homes.

The door was opened by a Native American woman in her mid-thirties
wearing a robe and slippers. Lauren assumed she was Larry's wife, though he
didn't bother with introductions. As he carried Sam inside the woman clucked
and fussed, her attention riveted on him to the exclusion of everything else.
When she happened to notice Lauren, shock flashed across her face. She looked
as though she was about to object, but her husband cut her off.

"Is a bed ready?"

"Yes. I thought it would be better if we put him in the boys'
room, so I moved them out here," she replied, motioning toward the two
teenage boys sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room. She bustled ahead of
her husband, leading the way down a narrow hallway. Lauren followed at Larry's
heels.

The small bedroom contained twin beds. Larry gently placed his
cousin on the one closest to the door. An agonized sound came from Sam, and
Lauren hurried to his side and placed her hand on his forehead. "His fever
is worse," she said to Larry over her shoulder.

"I'll go call the doc."

The woman followed him, and though she tried to keep her voice
low, Lauren heard her. "Larry, that woman cannot stay here," she
insisted. "She is not one of us."

"She will be our guest."

"But others will not like having a white woman here. It is
not allo—"

"Hush, Zeta. She is Sam's woman. She stays."

Sam's woman? A thrill shimmered through Lauren at the thought. She
sat down on the side of the bed beside him and took his hand. If only that were
true.

To Sam, she was an assignment. Oh sure, he desired her. He may
even have developed a mild affection for her in the past few days, but no matter
how she might wish otherwise, she was hardly "his woman."

Lauren knew full well that if they got out of this mess alive and
she testified against Carlo, then she and Sam would part. He would return to
his job, or perhaps to his father's ranch, and she would be given a new
identity, a new life.

And she'd never see Sam again.

Tears threatened, and Lauren gave herself a shake. In the
meantime, though, if his Native American relatives wanted to believe that she
was his woman, she wasn't about to tell them otherwise.

The Zahs returned a short while later with a slender Navajo man in
his thirties carrying a doctor's bag. With him was one of the loveliest young
women Lauren had ever seen. In her early twenties, she had delicate features,
magnificent big brown eyes and the shy demeanor of a wild doe.

The instant the girl spotted Sam she rushed to his side, opposite
Lauren, and began to stroke the back of his neck. She gazed at him adoringly,
oblivious to everyone else in the room. "Oh, Sam," she whispered.
"Dearest Sam. What has happened to you?"

Lauren's heart sank. This beautiful Native American girl was in
love with Sam!

Stunned and heartsick, she stepped back from the bed to give the
doctor room. As he began removing Sam's shirt and bandage he spared her a glance.
"You must be Lauren Brownley. I'm Dr. Sard, and this is my sister,
Willow."

Lauren acknowledged the introduction with a nod. She didn't have
to ask how the doctor knew who she was.

"How long ago did this happen?"

"About...twenty-seven hours ago," she told him after
glancing at the bedside clock. "I did what I could, but the bullet is
still inside him."

"Mmm. It would have been better if I could have treated him
immediately. However, you did an excellent job. The wound doesn't look
infected.