“He’ll take care of you… never doubted that. Good man to have as a friend… bad man for an enemy.”
Carly said nothing, just gripped her uncle’s white-knuckled hand. “I wish this hadn’t happened. I’d give anything if—”
“Just the way life is, honey. Lots of things… I wish I hadn’t done. Things I wish I could… change.”
A sob welled up, but only a soft sound escaped.
“Where’s Rita?” he asked.
“I am here, Senor Fletcher.” She hurried forward, her face ashen, tears flowing freely down her cheeks.
Fletcher sucked in a wheezing breath of air. “I’ll miss you, woman. Never said that before, either.”
Rita began to speak to him in Spanish, intoning him not to leave her, but already he was slipping away. Carly could almost feel his life-force dimming in front of her eyes.
“Caralee?” he whispered.
“Yes, Uncle Fletcher?”
“Be happy,” he said on a final breath of air and then he was gone.
Rita bent over him, sobbing unashamedly against his thick chest, but Carly slipped quietly out of the room. Walking numbly, hardly aware of the pain in her ankle, she moved past the low-burning lamps in the hall and made her way into the darkened living room. Sitting down in front of the embers thathad burned to ashes in the huge rock hearth, she leaned wearily against the back of the horsehair sofa.
In one night her whole life had changed. Ramon was gravely injured and her uncle was dead. The sheriff still prowled the hills for Pedro Sanchez and the rest of the men.
They all still searched for El Dragón.
She bent her head, laced her fingers together, and said a quiet prayer for her uncle. When she finished, she said one for Ramon and the rest of his men. A shuffling noise intruded, then voices sounded in the hall.
Cleve Sanders paused beside three of his men. “At least we got the filthy bastard who done it.”
Carly stiffened on the sofa. “What—what did you say?”
“Sorry, Miss McConnell, I didn’t know you were in there.”
“That’s all right. What were you saying?”
“I was just telling the boys we got the man who murdered your uncle. Riley Wilkins killed the Spanish Dragon.”
Were they talking about Ramon? Had something happened at Las Almas after she had left there? Carly’s heart constricted. Dear God, it couldn’t be true! “Wh-what happened?”
“We were following them up a trail north of the river. The outlaws split up and we lost them in the hills, but the leader circled back. He climbed up in the rocks and ambushed your uncle.”
“How did you know it was El Dragón?” she asked carefully.
“I seen him that day we took Llano Mirada. We were with Sheriff Layton when they carted him off to jail.”
“And that was the same man who killed Uncle Fletcher?”
“That’s right. Riley Wilkins shot him deader’n a slaughtered steer.”
Carly said nothing more. Just got shakily up from her seat in front of the empty hearth and made her way unsteadily down the hallway toward her room. She wished she could go to Ramon,tell him her uncle was dead and so was his cousin, but now was not the time. She couldn’t take the chance of leading them to Ramon. If they discovered he was wounded, they would know he’d been with the men at the jail that night.
She would have to send Jose to find out how he was. She was certain now that she could trust him. Tomorrow afternoon, perhaps she’d be able to go to him herself. Now that her uncle was dead, people wouldn’t be surprised when she returned to the care of her husband.
Numb clear to her bones, more frightened and alone than she had felt since her mother died, Carly went inside and slowly closed the door to her room.
***
