Three Wishes (32 page)

CHAPTER 1

Javier laughed and shook his head as we reached the top of the sand dune, Centinela loping in a wide circle around us. “I do not know if I can court a girl from the future
and
have a pet that is a wolf. That is a lot to ask of one man.”

I gave him a half-smile, not yet ready to admit it—that I might be his girlfriend, that I might be here to stay, even if I knew it was totally, unavoidably true.

He reached for the reins of his hobbled gelding and peered toward the setting sun, barely visible behind a dark, gray cloud bank. “We need to hurry if we’re to get to the harbor before that rain lets loose.”

Javier reached down to help lift me to the back of his horse. “What is it about Captain Craig, Javier?” I asked in Spanish. “What must I know about him?”

He looked back at me, suddenly wary.

“If I am to remain here, be a part of life at Rancho Ventura, doesn’t it make sense for me to understand what concerns you and your mother about him? What your secret is?”

“He is a nationalist,” Javier said, mounting ahead of me. “A lobbyist, bent on making Alta California the newest of the United States. And he does not fear a potential war with Mexico in order to accomplish what he wishes.”

“I gathered that much from your mother’s clear distaste.”

“Refusing to receive him…” Javier began over his shoulder, as I wrapped my arms around him. His big, broad hand covered my own as he seemed to forget what he was about to say and turned to look at me. “Zara, the feel of your arms around me…Coming here this day, I feared I’d never experience that again.”

I gave him a gentle smile. “But God had other plans.”

He released my arm to lift a fist and his chin to the sky. “May He be forever praised!” he shouted.

I grinned and laughed under my breath. “You were saying…Refusing to receive him…”

“Craig could set up a barrier, keeping ships from entering Bonita Harbor. Convince others not to trade with us. Upset all we have built. As a ranchero, I must keep good relations with both sides of this political wall, regardless of what my mother wants. You’ve seen that the soldiers of the presidio do little to intervene, other than collect what they deem due. And yet I trade with Spanish and Mexican ships too. So if they learned that I’d become a traitor—regardless of the disarray of our mother country in the hands of General Santa Anna—we could be swiftly cut off by either side. So I continue to gamble, playing my cards on both tables.”

“And what do you want, Javier? For Alta California?”

“I think it is only a matter of time, before the United States turns her eyes upon this beautiful land. And Mexico has all but abandoned us, lost in constant uprisings and poorly managed wars. Her treasury is empty, so they gladly take our taxes, but do they send patrols to help keep cattle rustlers in check? Do they sail our coast, keeping alert to those—like Captain Craig—who might block our trade, holding us captive? No,” he said bitterly. “They think they can occupy this territory, but at no cost. They do not realize that the power is slipping from their grasp.”

He pulled up on the reins suddenly, and turned toward me again, his face aglow. “But you…you know what transpires here. You know!” he cried, his face splitting into a beatific grin, his eyebrows arcing in wonder. He squeezed my arm. “Tell me, Zara. In your time, is it Mexican or American rule? Or perhaps Russian? They have some northern holdings and are most interested in pelts…”

I stared at him. Was I supposed to tell him such things? Would it interrupt the space-time continuum or something? Might I…change the future?

“I…I need to think about that, Javier. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you what happens. Maybe what is meant to happen will unfold because you make wise decisions.”

He gazed at me, his brow lowering. “But you will tell me, if I choose wrongly?” he asked. “Would you do that much for me?”

I studied his handsome, earnest face. “I don’t know, Javier. Let me think about it, please?”

Centinela whined then, her ears pricking forward as she raised her head. I thought her action spooked Javier’s horse, making her shy and whinny.

Javier yanked the gelding’s reins back and stroked her neck. “Whoa, whoa,” he said.

But a second later, we heard what had upset both animals. A low boom reached our ears, and then another, identical to the first.

“What was
that
?” I asked.

Javier was already mounting ahead of me. “Cannon fire,” he said grimly. “And from the sounds of it, coming from Bonita Harbor. Hold on.”

I clung to Javier all the way to the harbor, about a mile-and-a-half distant from Tainter Cove. By the time we reached it, my arms and legs were trembling from the effort to hold on, even with Javier’s firm grip on my hands in a knot at his sternum. I’d forced him to wait so that I could switch to riding astride, at least—not caring how it might chafe or how it might look, only wishing to stay seated.

We reached the harbor and saw a newly arrived three-masted ship, right beside Captain Craig’s damaged, listing
Heron
. Her deck was crowded with men, all in hand-to-hand combat with their attackers. We could see smoke rising from a fire below decks and a second massive hole in her deck, visible even from the beach.

“Who is that?” I cried.

“Pirates,” Javier grit out. He was off the horse before we’d completely reached a stop and quickly handed me the reins. “Get in the saddle, quickly!”

I did what he asked without thinking, trying to shove my boots in the stirrups. But they were too long for me.

“You go!” he demanded. “Ride to the villa! You will be safest there!”

“No, Javier, I—”

With a quick touch behind her shoulder, Javier turned the mare’s head in the direction of the villa and then slapped her on the rump, sending her skittering ahead. Uncertain after such rash action from her master, she surged into a mad gallop. I rode up and over several hills before I pulled up on the reins in horror.

Because there I found Mateo’s mount and two villa guards lying dead on the ground. I swallowed hard and looked to Craig’s burning ship again, only her mast visible from this angle.

“No, no,
no
…” Mateo had clearly been taken captive. I glanced toward the rancho, thinking that others must have heard the cannon fire, as we had. How long until reinforcements arrived?

I circled around, understanding what I must do.

If Javier de la Ventura was wading into that fight, a fight that might save his brother’s life, I was determined to be by his side.

CHAPTER 2

I left Javier’s mare on the landward side of the dunes, hobbling her just out of sight from the shore. I grabbed his long, curved knife from the saddlebag. Then I crouched over and scurried to the edge to peer down at the warehouse. There were no guards in sight, no sounds of bullets fired or men fighting. I could only hear the crash of waves, swollen by the approaching storm.

Pirates were launching one rowboat after another, loaded with crates and barrels and bundles, systematically removing every bit of the rancho’s treasured exports that had been stored here. Stacks and stacks of hides—which I’d heard sailors call “California dollars”—two freshly butchered sides of beef, coils of tanned leather and rope, barrels full of tallow, giant spools of wool, and crates of oranges. In addition I glimpsed bolts of cotton fabric in several patterns, casks of wine, an elegant mahogany rocking chair, rounds of cheese, and other barrels labeled
SUGAR
and
SALT
, all of these presumably just obtained in trade from Captain Craig.

So they were not only pillaging Craig’s ship; they were also raiding our stores.

Fury washed through my veins. I thought of how hard the people of the rancho worked for all of those products…how they depended on the rest arriving on a timely basis to supply the villa and feed her people. And they had killed some of the kind guards who had protected Mateo—
please, God, let their lives have at least protected Mateo
—and perhaps others.

I gathered up my skirts and hurried over the dune and to the wall of the storehouse. I was standing with my back against it, holding Javier’s dagger, when I saw Mateo lifted from one of the first boats to reach the pirate ship. He struggled against his bonds as he was picked up and bodily hauled aboard like nothing more than a wriggling sack of grain. “No,” I whispered. “No!”

Did Javier know they had him? Was he already finding his way out there?

I peeked around the corner and saw four men struggling to lift a massive, heavy crate, one of the last things in the storehouse. Judging by the girth and heft of it, it was another safe. I saw two more dead guards on the ground, with more blood spilled than I had ever seen in my life. I whipped my head back, swallowing the bile that rose in my throat, and took several breaths, fighting my tunneling vision. Because I’d also seen two other Ventura guards, sitting, bound and gagged, backs against a pillar. If I could free them, could we, together, overtake the four pirates that remained and use that last boat to come to Mateo’s aid—or Javier’s?

The men were counting together—in Portuguese?—and heaved the crate upward on
tres
. With grunts and straining sounds, they began to move together, out from under the rooftop and down through the soft sands to the last rowboat. When they were twenty paces away, fully focused on their task and appearing to be gaining momentum, I rounded the corner and went to the two young Indian guards, where I used my knife to cut away their bonds.

The first rose and reached for me, looking anxiously about. “You must be away from here, Miss!” he whispered frantically. The other rose more slowly, and I saw that he had blood trickling down the other side of his head.

“No,” I whispered back. “They have Mateo! We must go after them!”

The first man reached for the nearest dead man, rolled him over, and grabbed the sword from his still-clenched hand. “We will go. You go to the villa!”

“I can help,” I said, frowning as they both stared at me with wide eyes. Too late, I realized they weren’t looking at me—

“Oh, that you can, miss,” said a low voice behind me, in tandem with the cocking of a pistol. I felt the smooth, round circle of the gun at the base of my skull. “You will most certainly be a
great
deal of help in future negotiations with Don Javier, if you are who I think you are. Now drop that dagger!” he barked.

I looked down the beach and wanted to cry. The four men had set down their heavy load and were returning to us, all drawing weapons. I dropped my knife.

“You should have stayed where we had left you,” said one of the pirates to the Ventura guard. And then he drew his sword, whirled, and practically cut the man’s head from his body.

I gasped as a spray of blood splattered across my face and chest, warm at first, then chilled by the wind. I turned and vomited, and as I vomited, I heard them murder the second Ventura guard. I threw up again, not daring to look.

My stomach empty, I rose and looked at my captor for the first time. He was a stranger, with long, straight black hair and creamy skin the color of
café au lait
, not as dark as the rest of his Portuguese crew. He pointed the gun at my chest, lackadaisically looking me over from head to toe and back again, a slow, leering smile lifting the corners of his mouth. I supposed he was handsome, in a way, nearly as big as Javier and with sculpted cheeks, a long, straight nose, and full lips. There was a dimple in the cleft of his chin.

But I thought I’d never seen anyone uglier in my life. “You…
murderer
,” I seethed, hands clenched. I was aware of the others, moving in on me from all sides, just waiting for their boss’s order to come after me.

“Believe me, miss, I’ve been called worse,” he said in perfect Spanish, not Portuguese. “And I tried to leave a couple behind alive, to show—”

I used his momentary distraction to shove upward, grabbing hold of the gun with one hand and ramming my fist into his throat with the other, hard enough to make him let go. The gun went off, and the other men hesitated, as if stunned that a girl could do such a thing. But, as the pirate captain staggered backward, clutching his throat and gasping for breath, I swung my body, lifted my skirts and roundhouse-kicked the nearest man, my boot connecting with his jaw and sending him reeling. I cocked the heavy gun again—one bullet left—and fired at the man barreling toward me.