Part 1 (1/2)

Daisy.

Leigh Greenwood.

Prologue.

Frank Storach was tired, cold, and mad as h.e.l.l when he shoved his way into the small, crumbling adobe. He didn't take off his coat because the temperature inside was barely above freezing, but it was a welcome refuge from the blizzard raging outside. Two men looked up as he slammed the door behind him. One, a grizzled older man, stood watching the coffee pot on the stove. The second, a slim young man with a beardless face, dark blond hair, and cruel eyes, lounged on a bunk.

”What did you find?” the older man asked. His tone was nervous, anxious to please.

”I told you there was no need to go back.” The younger man's manner was callous, almost challenging. ”Can't nothing go wrong.”

”The h.e.l.l it couldn't!” Frank cursed, fury and exhaustion in his slate-grey eyes. ”I found the old man buried neatly in a grave. The girl was gone.”

”What!” the older man exclaimed. ”How could that be?”

The young man rolled up on his elbow, his eyes widening in surprise.

Frank grabbed the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. ”Two men got her.”

”If they didn't bury her with the old man, that means she's still alive,” the older man said.

”You're real clever, Uncle Ed,” Frank sneered. ”That's what I figured, too, so I followed them.”

”Did you finish her off?” the young man asked.

Frank swallowed his coffee and poured himself some more. ”Some b.a.s.t.a.r.d started shooting at me just as I was about to plug her. I got a bullet into the other guy, though.”

”Where did they go?” the young man asked. He sat up, faint interest flaring in his eyes.

”I don't know, Toby, but they're somewhere in those mountains. I tried to follow, but I lost them in the snow.”

”I say we forget them,” Ed said. His uneasiness had increased. ”She didn't see you kill n.o.body.”

”Somehow I think she'll be able to connect the old man's death and the bullet in her head to me,” Frank replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

”The boss ain't going to like it,” Ed said, nervously running his hand over his balding head.

”Then he shudda made sure she was away while we did the job. He didn't, and now we're in the soup.”

”I ain't in nothing with n.o.body,” Toby said. His cold eyes reminded Frank of a snake. The boy had no nerves. He would kill anybody. That's why Frank had hired him. But looking at him now, coiled, ready to strike, Frank wondered if being his cousin was enough to protect him from the boy's urge to kill.

”I was thinking about going into Bernalillo,” Toby said. ”I got a senorita over that way pining for me to come back.”

”n.o.body's going no place until that female is dead.”

Chapter One.

Tyler Randolph entered the cabin in a swirl of snow and bl.u.s.tery cold wind. He kicked the door closed behind him and dropped the armload of wood in a box against the wall. After hanging up his coat, he checked the fire in the stove. It was burning well. Wisps of steam had begun to curl on the surface of the water in a pot atop the stove. The cabin would soon be warm.

He walked over to the bed and stared down at the woman lying there. She couldn't have been more than twenty. Her dark brown hair was badly scorched on one side of her head, soaked with blood on the other. Her skin had lost its color making the freckles that dotted her cheeks all the more prominent. Her expression was blank, her jaw slack.

She moaned softly, but didn't wake. She had been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours.

She was the tallest woman he'd ever seen, fully six feet tall, but that appealed to him. He had never been fond of pet.i.te, fragile women. He liked a woman to be an armful. Yet despite her height, there was something childlike about her. No, she had a look of innocence about her that was childlike and fresh. He found it appealing. He supposed that accounted, at least in part, for his decision to bring her back to his cabin. He couldn't give himself a satisfactory reason for that decision except that a gut instinct told him she wouldn't be safe in Albuquerque. Three men had twice tried to kill her. He was certain they would try again.

Turning away from the bed, Tyler brought a table over to the bed. Then a chair. Next he poured some water into a basin, set it on the table, and got some strips of cloth and a tin of ointment from the shelf. Seating himself in the chair next to the bed, he began to clean her wounds.

She moaned again, louder this time, and rolled her head from side to side. He was afraid she might injure herself, so he held her head still. She fought him, her mouth trying to form half syllables.

Tyler wiped some of the blood from the side of her face. It had dried hard. He cleaned her face and forehead. There was something compelling about this woman, something more than her size and innocence. Maybe it was the way she had lain lifeless under his touch, vulnerable and helpless. Maybe it was the fact he knew if he didn't take care of her, she could die.

She stopped trying to move her head. She kept trying to form words, but no sound came out of her mouth.

He soaked the blood from her hair until he was able to see where the bullet had grazed her skull leaving a wound at least five inches long. It had burrowed under the skin and followed the curve of the skull before exiting. She would have a scar for the rest of her life, but she would live.

Her eyelids quivered. She seemed to be trying to form a word beginning with a ”W”. Wh . . . Wh . . . Her eyelids moved, opened then closed again.

”Everything's all right,” Tyler said in a soothing voice. ”You're safe. You can go back to sleep.”

He covered the raw gash with a liberal coating of a whitish salve then began wrapping the strips of cloth around her head.

She said Daddy. At least that's what it sounded like.

”Lie still. Don't try to talk,” Tyler said. ”Nothing is going to harm you now.”

She tried to say something else, but he couldn't understand what it was. She seemed to tire. Her jaw grew slack. Her eyes opened wide and unseeing, then floated shut again.

She lay still.

Tyler finished bandaging her head and got to his feet. He couldn't help but wonder if he'd made a big mistake bringing her here. He didn't have time to nurse a female with a broken head, even if the snow was too deep for prospecting. He reached for his coat. He'd better cut some more wood. Once she regained consciousness, he wouldn't be able to leave her alone.

He paused. She would probably wake soon. He wouldn't tell her about her father just yet. He didn't think she was strong enough to withstand that kind of shock.

Daisy opened her eyes. She sensed she had been unconscious for a long time, yet her vision was startlingly clear. An oil lamp, the wick turned low, provided the only light in the cabin, but she could make out her surroundings with absolute certainty.

She didn't recognize anything around her. She was in a strange cabin. She had no idea where she was or how she had gotten here.

Somewhere deep in her subconscious she thought she remembered a rocking motion. She supposed that must have been a horseback ride. She couldn't explain as easily the feeling of safety that kept panic at bay. Lying in a strange cabin, brought here by someone she didn't know, whose purpose she could only guess, she should have been frightened almost out of her mind.

She tried to remember where had she been, what had happened, how she got here, who brought her and when, but her mind was blank.

The last thing she remembered was returning home. She couldn't remember where she had been, but she did know she was going home. She could see the house and all the familiar surroundings -- it was cold, it was going to snow soon -- but she couldn't remember anything else except a painful explosion. Something terrible must have happened, or she wouldn't be here.