by Lynda J. Cox
Jon let a mirthless smile cross his face. “I thought you said you couldn’t shoot.”
“I said I couldn’t shoot a rifle.” The doctor directed his weapon in the general direction Jon had the carbine aimed. “I don’t need both hands to hold a revolver steady enough to fire it.”
Once they were in the open, Jon let his guard down, and Knight tucked the revolver away. Jon reined his horse to a stop. “If Miss Lavender asks, it was a cougar kill. Victoria needs to hear the truth.”
“No.” Knight brought his horse to a stop next to him. “People need to know the truth. The more people know, the sooner we can catch whoever is doing this.”
Jon studied the frayed stitching on the top of the saddle horn. “You’re right. What makes a person do that?”
“I don’t know.” Knight’s shoulders rose with the deep breath he sucked in. “I thought, during that war, I’d seen the lowest depths of barbarity.”
Jon shut his eyes. He’d been involved in some of the fiercest fighting in that war, been engaged in hand to hand combat when his life depended on his willingness to look a man in the eye while killing him, saw the effect of what exploding cannon balls and grape shot did to men and horses, but nothing had prepared him for the sight of those little dogs.
“Jonathan, I don’t want Lavender to be more upset than she is, but this could have just as easily been a child. It could have been Abe or Ethan.” The doctor’s voice broke on his son’s name. “They play in that creek and in those woods.”
A chill rippled over Jon. “You think if it had been a couple of little kids instead of those dogs, whoever did this would have done that to them?”
“I hope not.” The uncertainty in Knight’s voice forced Jon’s eyes open. “I’m not going to take a chance, though. That’s why the town needs to know, so they can keep their kids close.”
Without another word, Jon put his heels into his horse, starting the animal forward. Every dull thud of the animal’s hooves into the ground sounded as final as a judge’s gavel meting out a death sentence. He couldn’t dislodge the huge lump in his throat threatening to choke him, and he couldn’t shake the chill that settled deep in his bones. He had fallen asleep in the saddle last night on his way home from the Brokken Arrow. Only when the pounding of his mount’s hooves on the west bridge jolted him to awareness did he realize he had directed the horse out of town.
Could a man be so sound asleep that he didn’t remember deviating from a routine path home? Jon shook his head. He couldn’t have harmed those pets of Miss Lavender’s. He just couldn’t have. That kind of sheer, vicious, brutality went against everything he believed in.
VICTORIA COULDN’T STIFLE the sigh of relief that broke from her when Jon walked into the jail, carbine in hand. He glanced at her and Isaac, then dropped his gaze to the floor and without a word, fit the rifle into position in the rack.
Isaac met Victoria’s gaze over the desk, his shaggy brows lifting in a silent query.
Jon poured himself a cup of coffee, and without lightening or sweetening it, gulped the cold brew down. He kept his back to her and the Brokken Arrow foreman.
Something happened while he was with Mathew. She had no idea what, but something had affected him deeply.
“I’ve got about fifteen head of cattle to move over to Shreveport,” Isaac said. “When you come out to the ranch in the morning, have a bedroll with you.”
Jon’s head dropped. “I’m not going this time, Mr. Iverson. I don’t think now is a good time to leave town.”
If Isaac’s brows had lifted before, they were almost buried in his hairline with Jon’s announcement. “You quitting the Brokken Arrow?”
“Only if you’re firing me for this.” Jon finally pivoted to Victoria. The depths of his eyes were haunted, his expression taut and drawn. “You may as well hear this now, while I tell Vic.”
Whatever he was about to say couldn’t be good. A cold knot of dread filled her stomach and spread into her limbs.
“Someone...” Jon audibly swallowed and directed his next words to the floor. “Someone killed Miss Lavender’s little dogs.”
Victoria’s lungs seized. Every instinct she had shouted for her to get up, go to Jon, and try to offer comfort. She just couldn’t force herself to move, couldn’t even force another breath. “Like Landry’s dog the other day?”
Jon didn’t or couldn’t look at her as he nodded. The room spun around Victoria, a roaring filled her ears, and the bile rose into the back of her throat. The worst crimes she had ever dealt with committed by a citizen of Brokken had been drunk and disorderly. An ugly whisper of suspicion slithered through her. Until Jon’s arrival, that was...
“Dear Lord,” Isaac murmured, silencing her suspicion. “Perhaps some misguided youth is doing this?”
Jon’s head snapped up. The haunted shading to his eyes vanished, replaced with a granite hardness. “You really think any kid in this town could be capable of this? Because I sure don’t.”
“The youth becomes the man,” Isaac said quietly. “An adult, then?”
“Possibly...” Jon turned to fully face Isaac, a frown marring his features. “It takes a special kind of depravity to butcher a helpless animal in that manner.”
“Rather like it takes a special depravity to own another man?” Isaac’s voice was level, his eyes watchful.
Jon’s jaw clenched even as he pulled back. Victoria shot out of her chair, stepping between the two men. “Jon...athan, I don’t think Isaac meant to infer someone in Brokken....” She trailed off. She had to keep up the charade of Jonathan’s support of slavery but didn’t quite know how. Even if Isaac believed Jonathan had changed, no man could change that much. Victoria placed her hand, palm flat on Jon’s chest, silencing him. She kept her hand pressed into his chest and twisted her head over her shoulder to Isaac. “There’s no need to refight the same war.”
A strained tableau filled the small jailhouse as both men glared at the other. Jon’s act, if that was what it was, almost convinced her of his dislike of Isaac. His rigid posture eased, and he said, “Slavery and all the evils attached to it was a barbaric practice.”
“I wasn’t thinking any child or even anyone in Brokken could be responsible for what’s happening.” Isaac added, “I don’t even think old man Fenton’s son is capable of doing what you said happened to Miss Lavender’s dogs.”
“Thank you,” Victoria said, on little more than a breath. She pulled her hand from Jon, missing the warmth that radiated from her palm all the way in her chest as soon as she did. “We cannot fight amongst ourselves. Word of this is going to cause a panic. People are going to be demanding answers. Isaac, I need Jonathan here.”
Panic was a mild word for what she expected the response to be. No one, as far as she knew and for as long as she could remember, locked their doors in Brokken. If there was some deranged madman lurking in their midst, locked doors would only be the beginning of the alarm.
Isaac walked over to the coffee pot and poured a cup of coffee. He took a sip and grimaced. “How did you manage to stomach this, English?” Before Jon answered, Isaac continued. “If you’re not riding with me to Shreveport and your wife says she needs you here, are you going to pin that badge on again?”
“No.” Jon made his way to the windows at the front of the jailhouse. “I don’t want it.”
Victoria startled to hear Isaac repeat what he said to her the other day.
“That you don’t want it is all the more reason you need to pin it on.” Isaac took a step closer to Jon. “English, folks are going to be scared, wondering if the next killing will be worse than two pampered, overweight dogs. They’re going to want a strong, calm presence behind that badge.” He tilted his head toward Victoria. “Not that we don’t already have that. However, with the two of you working together, I feel you’d make a stronger team.”
Jon didn’t take his gaze from whatever held his attention out the window. Victoria doubted there was anything he truly looked at.
“Then, allow her to continue. You don’t need to be here.” Isaac shot a demanding glance at Victoria. “We’ll be gone at the most three days. It’s a small herd I need to move to Shreveport. Mr. Hale doesn’t do well in crowded places.”
Almost in an undertone, without anything she could even term derision, Jon said, “I’ll bet he doesn’t.” His head pulled back, his shoulders tensed, and his spine grew rigid. “Doc must have told someone else. There’s four people heading this way, and they look pretty determined.”
“Isaac, I want Jonathan here.” Victoria joined Jon at the window. Sophia, Molly and her husband Thomas, and the blacksmith Peter advanced on the jail.
“I’ll make this simple, Sheriff. If your husband doesn’t show up at the Brokken Arrow tomorrow morning at first light with a bedroll tied behind his saddle, I’ll no longer be needing his services.” Isaac’s voice took on an unaccustomed edge, a forcefulness. “I can’t have a wrangler on the payroll who doesn’t want to work. Are you going to do the job I hired you to do, English, or are you going to do the job God intended for you to do?”
Jon met Victoria’s gaze, and she gulped. A blue norther howling across the skies was warmer than the ice filling Jon’s eyes or brimming in his voice as he said, “I don’t think God has a thing to do with this, Mr. Iverson.”
“Being someone you aren’t is a tough business, and you’ll soon be found out. Be at the Brokken Arrow at first light or pin that badge on.”
Victoria sucked in a breath, holding it. Jon clenched his jaw and turned to look out the window at the approaching foursome, and then asked, “Is that some sort of threat?”
She spared a quick glance out the window. Peter reached the boardwalk first, still a distance away.
Isaac said, his words soft, “All three of us in this building know you aren’t Jonathan English.”
“Two of us are willing to swear I am Jonathan English.” The tension in Jon’s posture radiated into Victoria, tightening in her chest and knotting her stomach. Jon slowly craned his head over his shoulder to Isaac. “All I have to do is point out your claims otherwise are just another difficult trick taught to a well-trained dog to convince folks I am Jonathan English.”
Victoria flinched as Jon spat the words Jonathan had once used regarding Isaac. The challenge hung in the air.
Isaac’s half-smile held neither anger nor disappointment. However, his eyes saddened. “Perhaps leave a few bruises on your wife for good measure? No, I don’t believe you are capable of that type of behavior. You are not Jonathan English, and anyone with eyes to see will know that, if they don’t already.”
Victoria was stricken. Isaac had known of Jonathan’s abuse, perhaps had confronted her husband. It was not merely the man’s blackness that Jonathan had hated but perhaps his perceptive eyes. And Isaac could do nothing as long as Jonathan had remained sheriff.
The Brokken Arrow foreman threw her a glance, his eyes radiating warmth, and gave her a gentle smile as he walked to the door. Before it closed, Isaac’s greeting to the foursome drifted back into the jail.
Jon’s whole frame slumped. “Trying to think like him, and how he’d use words as weapons makes me ill. I can’t do this, Vic.”
Only moments remained before the entourage reached the jail. Victoria ran her hand down his arm. “We don’t have a choice. I...Jon, I...I—”
“Tell everyone I fooled even you.” The bitterness in his voice burned as caustic as acid.
Victoria pushed her way between him and the window, forcing Jon to meet her gaze again. “I don’t care what anyone will say about me. I care what will happen to you.”
“Why, Vic?”
She raised her hand to his face, drawing her palm along his cheek. “Because I’ve fallen in love with you, Jon Andrews.”
“No, you haven’t.” He pushed away from her, backing away, as if he couldn’t bear her touch. “You’ve fallen in love with a romanticized ideal of what you wanted your husband to be.”
Chapter Thirteen
Victoria slowly lowered her hand, her heart aching. Anger rushed in to fill the ache. “Don’t you dare tell me what I’m feeling. You have no idea what he was like and how very different you are from him.”
“Don’t I?” Jon waved an expansive hand. “He terrified you. He intimidated you and most of the people in this town. But, at one time, he hid that side enough that you married him. Now, I’m here and I look enough like him you can have the husband everyone thought you had without the pain he caused.”
Before she could frame a response, the door to the jail opened and Peter and the other three marched into the small building. Thomas Reed spoke first. “Sheriff, is what Dr. Knight said true?”
Victoria huffed out a short breath and forced herself to a calm she didn’t feel. “What did Mathew say?”
She followed Jon’s measured tread to the small stove and watched as he poured another cup of the cold brew.
“Someone killed Lavender’s little dogs and we should be more watchful with our children,” Molly said, the words tight with concern.
Victoria dipped her head to the floor, struggling to keep a frustrated scream contained. What she wanted to do was tell them to stop expecting her to protect the whole town—she was only one person—and to get out so she could salvage what might be left of her heart. She sucked in a deep, steadying breath. “Someone is killing dogs and yes, you should be more watchful of your children. I’d suggest that you not allow them to play along Blueberry Creek until we find whoever is doing this.”
Sophia broke the pained silence. She pointed a trembling finger at Jon. “Nothing like this has ever happened here until he came back.”
Jon didn’t turn to face the accusation. With extreme deliberation, he drank whatever was left of his coffee, and then placed the ceramic cup on the small shelf next to the stove. “Why would I hurt Miss Lavender’s dogs?”
Sophia’s bravado vanished with Jon’s question. Victoria pulled the door of the jail open. “Accusing our friends and neighbors of this won’t solve anything. When Lavender’s dogs died, Jonathan was with me. All of you, go home.”
Peter shook his head, refusing to leave. “Victoria, we need answers. Where did he—”
“I have none.” Victoria met the blacksmith’s demanding stare. “No more than I had for you the night he came back. I promised everyone in this town that I would use my best judgement as long as I was the sheriff. If that isn’t good enough for you anymore, maybe you should find someone else to be your sheriff.”
The blacksmith’s gaze shifted briefly to Jon’s back before he returned his sight to Victoria. “Are you sure your judgement isn’t clouded?”
A new anger filled Victoria. In sparse movements, she unpinned the badge from her blouse and extended the silver star to Peter. “If you think it is, you wear this.”
Thomas took a step closer to her and the unyielding blacksmith. “Peter, you knew Jonathan before the war. Even you said he’s changed.”
Movement at the stove caught in the corner of Victoria’s eye. Jon stood with his head bowed, shoulders slumped. Molly’s husband continued, “You knew Victoria then, too. You tell us if you really think her judgement is clouded.”
Peter’s rigid posture eased as he slowly shook his head. He glanced at the star Victoria still held out to him. “I don’t want that. I don’t want that responsibility.”
“I never wanted it, to be completely honest,” Victoria said and pulled her hand into herself, her fingers closing around the badge. “But, as long as I have the responsibility to protect this town, I take it seriously. I’m not going to start making accusations based on coincidental events. Now, go home. All of you.”
When the small group filed out of the jail, Victoria eased the door closed behind them, and then threw the lock into place. She squared her shoulders before she
turned away from the locked door. Jon remained with his back to her, his attention seeming to be held by the depths of the cell closest to him.
The sound of the badge dropping onto her desk didn’t evoke any response from him. She stared at the small tin star, recounting all the mornings she had reluctantly pinned it to her blouse, and later, how hard she fought to retain the right to wear it.
The silence grew, until it felt as if it was a living entity standing between her and Jon. Not even the normal sounds of a busy morning intruded. Victoria felt for certain her heart shattered when he finally moved away from the small stove and walked closer to the open cell. He gripped the bars to either side of the door, as if he fought against being pushed into the enclosure.
“Why didn’t you tell them the truth?” he asked.
“What truth is that?” She swallowed the searing lump in her throat. “The truth that I never loved Jonathan English as I—”
“Just stop, Victoria.” He gripped the bars so fiercely his knuckles grew white. He lowered his head. “This ruse is going to fall apart. Iverson already suspects...he knows I’m not your husband.”
She couldn’t bring herself to deny what Isaac suspected. Neither could she deny what her heart saw—not Jonathan, but a man who looked enough like Jonathan it was uncanny and a man as unlike Jonathan as the dawn was from midnight; a man being crushed by the burden of being someone he wasn’t. “As long as you’re not Jon Andrews, you’re free.”
His posture stiffened, and he slowly relinquished his grip on the metal bars. He pivoted in a deliberate manner to her. Her breath caught in the back of her throat with the pain ravaging his features. “As long as I’m Jonathan English, I’m held as much a prisoner as if I was still at Watonga.”
“If we tell people who you really are, I may as well start planning your funeral.” Victoria took one step closer to him. “I can’t do that. No more than I could bring myself to pray he was alive when he went missing after Tullahoma. I wanted to love him. I truly did.”