“Think you can use it if you have to? This will be a lot different than shooting at tree branches and tin cans, Ginny.”

“Do you think it will come to that? I mean, I can’t see the senator engaged in a gunfight, Steve.”

“It wasn’t the senator who picked up your aunt and the children in Galveston. He had someone else do that for him. Hired guns, maybe.”

Her eyes widened slightly, dark pupils soaking up light from the wall lamp until they glittered. “I hadn’t thought of that. Oh, Steve, the children must be terrified!”

“I’d prefer doing this without gunplay, but I want to be ready for anything. And Ginny, I can’t protect you and be certain the children are shielded as well.”

Silence fell in the small, shabby room. A muggy gust of air drifted in through the open window, rife with the sound of drunken laughter. Tension vibrated between them, and he knew Ginny had just realized how dangerous it was for all of them.

“If a choice must be made, Steve, you know what I want you to do.”

“I know.”

It didn’t really need to be said. Laura and Franco came before anyone else.

Neither of them slept that night, but lay awake in each other’s arms, the closeness their only comfort.

The early morning sun was veiled by pale, cloudy shreds of mist. The air was cool, night shadows lurking at the base of the hills and in crevices and ravines. Laredo was behind them, an indistinct blur visible in the distance. Hooves kicked up dust, clattering on the sun-baked road that was little more than well-worn ruts snaking across the plains.

Steve kept the pace slow and casual, watching the horizon. They couldn’t be that far ahead, and wouldn’t be expecting him. If not for the cable he’d sent London, he wouldn’t ever have discovered that his children were in America.

All his instincts returned sharply to guide him, the old tricks he’d learned when he was still a youth riding with the Comanche enabling him to cut sign of riders that had veered off the main track. Paco had seen the faint marks of hooves in the hard soil, too.

“You figure they’re up in the hills, amigo?”

“Makes sense. He’d be close here, able to ride back across the border if pursued.” Steve shifted in his saddle, frowned slightly as something glittered in the rising sun.

He dismounted, bent to pick it up, turned it over in his hand. His mouth tightened. It was a two penny coin. An English coin. As he stood up, he saw another one a few yards up into the rocks, glinting dully. He turned to Paco.

“Isn’t there an old ruin up in these hills?”

Paco scratched his jaw. “Yeah, in a stand of cottonwood trees down in an arroyo. I holed up there once in a storm.”