Tracker’s Sin Read Free Page A

back.”
    Tracker nodded. “As wel as you watch yours.”
    “That wil be damn good.”
    “Understood.”
    Shadow wheeled his horse to the west and nudged him into a canter. As one, man and horse blended seamlessly into an easy rhythm.
    Tracker watched until his brother grew smal in the distance before turning Buster south and urging him into his own ground-eating lope. His destiny
    waited.
    His destiny rested in a little run-down adobe house about a mile out of the town of Esperanza. Evidence of past prosperity was al around
    the property. A barn big enough to house several horses stood just off to the right. Several corrals surrounding the structure were in various states of
    col apse. Only the fences near the house were maintained. The home itself clearly had been built for a family, and remnants of happier times remained in
    the faded red paint on the shutters. However, the only people Tracker had seen coming and going from the house since he’d arrived last night were a
    stooped, elderly Hispanic man, a smal elderly woman, presumably his wife, and a blond woman Tracker had seen only from the back, through the
    window. By the lack of hoofprints around the exterior, he was pretty sure those were al the residents.
    He trained his spyglass on the window again, hoping for a better look at the blond woman. Al he saw was the back of a wooden chair, a
    cup on a table and the edge of a black iron stove. Impatience, a foreign emotion, gnawed at his calm. He wanted—no, needed—to see the young woman
    who lived there. His gut said it was Ari. He needed it to be Ari. He was sick of the dreams, sick of the apprehension, sick of the fairy tales his imagination
    wove around her. The woman had lost her family to murderers, her virginity to Comancheros, and probably her sanity to God knew what else. Whatever
    he found, Ari wouldn’t be a woman who tiptoed into his dreams at the end of nightmares, held out her hand in invitation and looked at him with softness.
    He’d be lucky if she stil had a thread of sanity.
    He shifted his position slightly. There wasn’t much cover around the house, which was good from a defense standpoint, but was hel on
    his knees, as it forced him to crouch. There was only so much cover sagebrush could provide a man his size. And only so much strain his twice-busted
    legs could take without screaming a protest. He forced the growing discomfort from his mind and resumed his surveil ance. He needed to know if the
    woman was a guest or a prisoner. It wasn’t uncommon for women to be sold as slaves this far from the law. And it wouldn’t be a surprise, based on what
    she’d been through, if Ari saw that as a step up.
    Movement to the left caught his eye. He turned the spyglass on the back door. The old man stepped down into the yard, steadying himself
    on the doorjamb a few seconds before straightening his spine and heading toward the barn, where the milk cow was housed. An aged hound strode
    alongside. It was clear to Tracker that the old man was il , but didn’t want the other residents of the house to know. Tracker made a note of the routine and
    added it to his mental list. From what he could see, it wasn’t a violent household. He’d crept close enough to the house last night to hear some
    conversation. He’d caught only a bit, revolving around the care of the rosebush out front, before the hound had caught his scent and growled a warning.
    That fragment of conversation had been enough to give Tracker a hint of her voice. Soft and sweet, with Eastern overtones. It was hard to tel through the
    wal s, but he thought there was a strong similarity to Desi’s voice.
    He shook his head and pul ed his hat lower against the morning sun. If he were hunting any other woman, the information he had now
    would have been enough for him to act. But this was too important, too personal for reasons he couldn’t begin to define. For this identification, he needed
    absolute certainty.
    Movement in the window drew