Chapter Six
I let the comment pass. Maybe he was trying to scare me. Maybe he wasn’t. Didn’t matter.
I followed Murphy into the hall. “I hear you’re called Cowboy.”
He flinched, shoulders drawing in, backpack shifting. “Nicknames like that get people killed.”
“Not John Wayne,” I muttered. “He never died. In his movies anyway.”
“Sure he did. The Cowboys. How’s that for irony? I think he died in one of his war movies, too. Green Berets maybe. Or Sands of Iwo Jima.”
“You’re a John Wayne fan?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“I thought John Wayne was an American icon. Don’t the Europeans consider him a sad commentary on our cowboy nation?”
Now I was fishing—trying to get Murphy to admit where he was from. He merely shrugged, and I was forced to try harder.
“Why do they call you Cowboy?”
“They call me Koboy.” He gave the name a Creole twist.
“Whatever,” I snapped. “Why?”
“They call all Americans that.”
Aha! I thought. What I said was: “Not me.”
Murphy let his gaze wander from the tips of my brand-new hiking boots to the top of my bare head. I’d have to dig out my hat before too long or risk sunstroke. See, I knew a few things about the tropics.
“You don’t look like a Cowboy,” he said.
I eyed him down and up, the way he’d eyed me. With the feathers in his long hair and the earring in his ear, he looked more like an Indian—even if he was nearly blond. He’d taken off his arm bracelets, but not his silver thumb ring. After the bartender’s comments about fighting, I wondered if that was more a brass knuckle than an adornment.
“So you’re American?” I pressed.
He gave me a cocky smile. “You’re thinkin’ so?”
The brogue was back, thicker than ever. God, he was annoying.
Without waiting for my answer, Murphy started downstairs. I followed, bumping into his backpack when he paused only a few steps down.
“What—?” I began.
He lifted a hand, silencing me. His head tilted as he listened to something, or someone, below. From the tension in his body I knew enough to shut up.
“Upstairs,” the bartender said. “But he is with a woman.”
I made a face, which Murphy, when he whirled and practically shoved me onto the landing, ignored.
“Let’s go.”
He pushed past me, grabbing my hand as he went, then dragged me after him down the back stairs, which were narrow, creaky, and dangerous. We burst out of the tavern and into the alley where a battered Jeep waited.
Murphy let go of me and jumped into the driver’s seat. I scooted around the hood and barely managed to dive in before he floored it, scraping the passenger door against the chain-link fence.
We spilled onto the street. He flicked a glance into the rearview mirror. “Duck,” he said, the tone so casual I could only stare at him dumbly.
He reached over and shoved my head into his lap, dipping his own just as gunfire erupted. He didn’t stop, didn’t flinch, just kept driving, and in a moment we’d left our pursuers behind.
His thigh pressed against my cheek; his zipper scraped the back of my head. We’d jumped into the car still wearing our backpacks and mine was twisted awkwardly between my shoulders and the seat. His had to be shoving him practically into the steering wheel.
I sat up; he let me. I removed the pack and tossed it backward, then helped him do the same. Silence settled between us, a silence I couldn’t let stand. “Friends of yours?”
“They didn’t seem very friendly.”
“What did they want?”
“Me dead, I think.”
“I can understand the sentiment, but what did you do?”
He gave a short bark of laughter and cast me a speculative glance. “You want me dead, sweet thing?”
Southern accent this time.
“Maybe not dead,” I allowed.
He was, after all, the only one willing, or perhaps able, to take me to the bokor.
“If not dead, then what?” he asked.
“Truthful.”
Did he really know how to find the bokor? Or was he taking me into the mountains with nefarious designs, if not on my person, then on my money or my life?
My fingers crept to the knife at my waist. I really wished I could trust him, but I didn’t.
“The instant you’re truthful with me, sugar, I’ll be truthful with you.”
I scowled. He had a point; however, I wasn’t going to tell him what I was really after until we were too far away from Port-au-Prince for him to take me back and dump me at the nearest insane asylum.
“The way you switch accents gives me a damn headache,” I muttered.
“A damn headache?” Southern. “Well, we cannot have that.” English. “Which accent should I use?”
American.
I didn’t answer. I wanted to slug him.
“I’ll pick one,” he said. “American seems to get me the farthest around here. Can’t imagine why, since you people invaded the place not too long ago.”
Over ten years ago, but who was counting? Probably the Haitians.
“We do that,” I said drily. “Invade. But we’re only trying to help.”
Murphy snorted.
His words— you p eop le—made me rethink his nationality. I wasn’t sure what he was all over again.
He stared into the rearview mirror and frowned. I turned around so fast my neck crackled, but the road behind us was empty.
“I didn’t know them,” he murmured.
“Then why did we run?”
“I owe some money. I planned to pay as soon as we got back.”
“Sure you did.”
“Stiffing people is not healthy in these parts.”
I thought of my drug-dealing husband and the enforcers he’d employed. “It’s not healthy in any parts.”
He cast me a quick glance. Oops. Must have let too much emotion shine through. A mistake I rarely made anymore. I schooled my face into the polite mask I’d perfected since I’d become Priestess Cassandra. But I doubted the expression fooled Murphy.
“Anyone who comes to Chwal Lanme asking for me is usually someone I owe.”
“Until I showed up.”
“Which was a refreshing change of pace.”
“I bet. Let’s get back to the goons with guns. Who were they if not the people you owe or their minions?”