Outlaw Hearts(66)

“Like when I shot you that day in the store,” Miranda said quietly.

He finally looked at her, and a trace of a smile passed across his lips. “Yeah. Kind of like that.” Miranda saw the pain in his eyes, and she knew the moment was delicate. She looked back at the fire, waiting for him to continue. He walked away for a few minutes, returning with a smoke. He poured himself another cup of coffee. “This stuff isn’t much better than mud, but I hated to throw it out yesterday. Bad coffee is better than none at all.”

He swallowed some and made a face, then puffed on his cheroot for a few quiet seconds. The wind began to pick up, and it blew his dark hair around his face. “Over the years after my mother died, there were lots of other women, mostly all young Mexican girls my pa bought off banditos who stole them from nice families. Many nights I had to try to sleep while I heard young girls crying and begging my father not to rape them, heard the blows when he would beat them. Sometimes I even threw up, wishing I could stop him. When I was fifteen, I befriended this homeless Mexican girl…Santana. She was only twelve, but she looked sixteen. There was nothing physical between us, but I knew that someday there would be. I never let Pa know about her. I used to take food to her, steal money and clothes for her. She lived in an abandoned shack in a worthless little town full of poor Mexicans just south of San Antonio, where Pa and I lived. He had moved up there after killing my mother and brother.”

He drank a little more coffee, walking a little farther away again and watching the horizon. “Somehow Pa found out about Santana. I don’t know how. I only know I came home one day and there she was, in our house, him standing there holding her wrist so tight I could tell it hurt. She was naked, her face all bruised and wet with tears. I could even see blood…on her thighs.” His voice nearly broke with the words. “Pa just grinned at me, told me I was learning to pick them good, just like him. ‘She’s tight, boy,’ he said, sneering. ‘I couldn’t hardly get into her, but I did.’”

Miranda felt sick, and she put her head in her hands.

“I loved her.” Jake nearly groaned the words. “As much as a fifteen-year-old boy who’s been kicked around all his life knows how to love anyway. He took her, took what belonged to me, what I was going to take someday in a nice way. I was going to make her my wife, show her it didn’t have to be ugly and painful. I felt crazy knowing what he’d done to her. He dragged her back into that bedroom and started having at it with her again while I was standing right there in the house. I just…I don’t know. It was like that was the last of it. I had taken all I could take. I went in there and started beating on him, screaming at him to stop. I was a lot bigger by then, but still not as big and strong as he was. He landed me a good one, sent me flying against the wall, and almost knocked me out. Then he got on top of her again.”

He tossed his cup out in front of him in anger, and what coffee was left in it splattered against sand and rock. “I knew there was only one way to stop him. All reason left me. I told myself he was hurting Santana; but it wasn’t just for her. It was for my mother, my little brother, all the young girls he had hurt; mostly maybe it was for me. I don’t know. I only know I went and got his pistols. He had two of them, and I wanted to be sure I did the job right, because I knew what he’d do to me if I missed. I brought the guns back into that room and I shot him in the back with one of them. He fell away from Santana onto the floor. I walked around the bed to where he lay, and I put the second pistol to his forehead and I shot him again. I’ll always remember standing there looking at him with that hole in his head and not feeling a damn thing.”

His voice broke on the last words, and Miranda’s heart ached for him. She wanted to go to him, but she waited, sensing he did not want her pity, did not want to be touched. Not yet. He turned to face her, and the agony in his eyes tore at her insides. “It wasn’t until I turned to Santana that I realized the first shot had gone through his neck, not his back, right through him and into Santana’s throat.”

Miranda’s eyes widened in horror. She saw the tears in Jake’s eyes before he turned away again. “She just lay there staring at me, unable to speak. I went to her, held her. There was blood…everywhere. I told her how sorry I was, and I could tell by her eyes she understood it was an accident. Within a minute or two she was dead too.”

He stopped and cleared his throat and wiped at his eyes. “At first I was too scared even to cry. Hell, I had killed my own father, killed Santana. I just grabbed a few things and ran, took Pa’s guns and horse and rode north. It wasn’t long before Texas Rangers were after me. I rode into a camp of banditos my father had done business with, and they protected me. They shot it out with the Rangers, and I helped, killed a couple of them myself.”