“Ha,” he said flatly. “On the contrary, you’re quite good at it.”
She shot him a sharp look. Was he serious? No—there was a glint of amusement in his eye.
“Don’t believe me? Go on, see how easy it is to say something cruel to me,” he goaded. “I can take it.”
He was being serious. Well, serious about teasing her into a game. You used to be defiant. That had pierced her like the spines of the nopal they cut that afternoon. Some spines lingered under the pads of her fingertips, a constant irritation. So, too, had his words.
She paused, searching for words. “I don’t like you.”
“Awful,” he declared. A playful smile drew across his face, sharp as a knife. “Try again.”
“I think . . .” Nena averted her eyes to the fire. “I think you’re ugly.”
“I know for a fact you don’t believe that.” She could hear in Néstor’s voice that his smile had curled into a smirk.
Nena’s mouth dropped open, her cheeks catching flame like kindling. How dare he? She glared at him brazenly.
“Fuck you.” The words came easier than she expected.
Néstor winked at her. Touched an imaginary brim of the hat. “A sus órdenes, se?orita.”
The pitch of his voice sent a sensation down her sternum like the gentle tap of fingertips. Like footsteps aimed, sure and true toward a doorway.
“Stop being like that,” she hissed.
“Like what?”
He mimed ignorance, but his voice was smug—he knew exactly what he was doing. He should. Hadn’t he weaseled his way into the beds of rancheros’ wives and widows? Hadn’t he weaseled his way under her own skin? She wanted to smack the self-satisfied look off his face.
“Like . . . don’t flirt with me,” she said hotly. “I don’t want it.”
Néstor groaned theatrically, a hand flying to his heart as if he had been shot. His eyes fluttered shut as he mimed pain. “Madre Santa, that one hurts!”
“I’m serious,” she snapped. She didn’t want the flirtation that won him favors among strangers. No winks or sharp smiles would suffice. She swore it to herself there and then: his whole soul was her price.
“??rale! Now we’re getting somewhere,” Néstor said, leaning forward eagerly. His eyes crackled as merrily as the fire. He held his hands loosely before his chest, as if ready for a fist fight. “Hit me again.”
What was the cruelest thing she could say to Néstor?
If life had taught her anything, it was that nothing could wound as swiftly as the truth.
She turned her face to the fire. “Don Feliciano Serrano would sooner shoot a man than allow a vaquero to woo his daughter.”
The silence that fell on the jacal was so complete, so thick, that she swore if she had dropped a needle, it would hover before touching the floor.
“Why would you say that?” he asked, voice soft.
“You said to hit you,” Nena said flatly. “I did. I thought you could take it. It’s your game, after all.”
The shift of leather. The sound of heeled boots crossing the wooden floor of the jacal behind her. When Nena looked up from the fire, Néstor was in the doorway. He leaned there, facing the night, his back turned to her.
“This isn’t a game, Nena.” The words were directed out into the dark. “You and me.”
Except there was no you and me. She felt the flush of anger like a ringing in her ears. There hadn’t been a you and me since the day he left.
“I spoke the truth,” she said. “You don’t like it? Then leave again. There’s nothing stopping you.”
Néstor turned to face her, expression creased with hurt. What was he thinking? “Maybe I will.”
The words were delivered slowly, deliberately, without an ounce of anger or venom.
That made them hurt so much more.
“I knew you wouldn’t stay,” she snapped. “Not a steadfast bone in your body. Go and be grateful that you’re a man. Not all of us have the freedom to get up and leave everyone who loves us whenever we please.”
“That’s not fair,” Néstor said, his voice low, rough like cart wheels over gravel.
“It’s true,” Nena challenged.
“You have that freedom too,” Néstor said, his voice rising. “Look at you now!” He pointed at her trousers, her boots. “Boots, horse, open road. You could leave if you wanted, anytime you wanted. You are your own master. You just lack the spine to say no to anything your father asks.”
She was on her feet, alight with the need to brawl. “Don’t you dare say anything about my father,” she said, pointing a finger at him.
“I’ll say whatever I want,” Néstor said. “He’s an asshole who treats men like dogs.”
“How dare you,” she cried. Her hands balled into fists so tight her knuckles ached. Heat flushed her neck, prickling like a rash. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be responsible for a community. Papá does. I do. You don’t understand responsibility at all. You only care about yourself.”
“That’s not true,” Néstor said hotly.
Nena squinted, her night eyesight hobbled by the brightness of the fire. A shadow rose behind Néstor; he kept speaking, entirely unaware of how it coalesced, of how it drew close to his turned back.
Someone was there.
Every sinew of her body told her it meant harm.
“Get back,” she snapped. “Get back.”
Néstor must have seen the panic in her eyes; he stopped talking and whirled to face whatever was behind him. He backed up a step, holding one hand out to signify stop.
Now that Néstor was out of the doorway, Nena saw that the shadow was a man.
A Yanqui.
Worse—a Rinche.
He seemed vaguely familiar—was this one of the men who had attacked the healers during the battle? One of the ones that Néstor shot during their harrowing flight? Firelight played off his bloodstained uniform; there was a bullet wound on one side of his chest, the blood from it black and dried with time.
Néstor began speaking English, his tone carefully neutral, even concerned, as he gestured at the wound on the man’s chest. With each word, he shifted slightly to the right, slowly positioning himself between the door and Nena. With no hat under which to hide her braids, it was abundantly clear she was a woman.
Her mouth was bone-dry. With the man in the doorway, there was no other way out of the jacal. They were trapped. Néstor’s gun was still at her hip; she slowly moved one hand over it, heart pounding in her throat. Rinches never rode alone, Félix had once said. The question was how many were at this man’s back, waiting in the dark.
The man did not respond to anything Néstor was saying. His face was strangely neutral, even blank—something in his eyes kept them from focusing. They swept over Néstor, slipping over his features, sliding over the bare, dark walls of the jacal.
To Nena by the fire.
There they stayed. Fixed, intent.
Something in his eyes froze her blood. There was something wrong behind them. Something unholy, something that gleamed akin to light on dark water.
Néstor was trying to get the man to back up, it seemed; he wouldn’t move. He was fixed on Nena like a cat on a bird, unmoving, utterly unblinking.
“Something’s wrong,” Nena whispered. She barely got the words out. Her heart was in her throat, choking her as it hammered soft flesh with an insistent command: run, run, run. The man took a step forward.
A click; a shout of warning.
Another step.
A gunshot.
Nena’s hands flew to her ears. Her pulse throbbed in the silence.
Néstor’s gun was in his hand, barrel smoking. Nena’s eyes and nose burned with gunpowder.
He had shot the man at point-blank range. Directly in the chest. Right next to the other bullet wound. Right through the heart.
The man did not fall.