Devil's Way Out

by Nika Dixon

  She couldn’t let it happen.

  She wouldn’t be the reason anyone else died.

  She pulled on Daisy’s reins the way Hank had showed her, tugging the horse to a stop. “We have to go back.”

  Marshall had a hand on the bridle before she could figure out how to turn around.

  “Emma, stop.”

  “You’re a fool if you think bringing me out here is going to do anything but make him angrier. It will be safer for you, for all of you, if you give me back to him.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  Fine. If she couldn’t take the horse, she would walk back. She kicked her feet free of the stirrups and swung her leg up, prepared to jump down to the ground.

  Marshall plucked her up, pulled her sideways off Daisy, and deposited her into his lap.

  “Let me go,” she demanded, wriggling against his firm hold.

  “Not until you calm down.”

  “I am calm!”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going back until it’s safe.”

  “Safe for who? Victor won’t care Danny is the sheriff—he’ll kill him as easily as he would a nobody, then Alan will pay whoever he needs to pay to make it go away. You need to take me back. You need to let Victor have me.”

  As the words left her lips, the horror of what she was begging for made her shudder.

  Of all the ones to send after her, Victor was the worst of the nightmares. He was the biggest monster of them all—and the one without any scrap of conscience to be found in his heartless body. Her other watcher, Vincent, was a brutish dog, but even he had a limit he wouldn’t cross. Vincent would return her safely, unharmed and well cared for. Heck, any of Alan’s men would ensure she was treated like a princess. Still a prisoner, but one with anything she needed as they dragged her back to the city.

  Not Victor.

  A whimper of fear crawled up out of her throat.

  She couldn’t ever go back.

  But she couldn’t stay here, either.

  With the slightest of movements, Marshall’s hold on her changed from one of prevention to protection. His arms climbed higher, encircling her and holding her close against him.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist before she could question her reaction. Burying her face in his collar, she inhaled the faded spice of his cologne and the scent of mountain air that lived on his jacket. She prayed for time to stop and freeze her exactly as she was so she could exist in his circle of safety and warmth forever.

  “He’s not going to touch you, Em.”

  Her heart ached. This amazing man, this stranger, was willing to put himself between her and the monsters. She lifted her head, a dozen questions trapped on her tongue. She wanted to thank him, to curse him, to call him on the dangerous promise he was making, but her words died the second he touched his lips to hers.

  She was so surprised, her brain froze. Then her hands decided to work all on their own, reaching up to cup his face. His mouth moved against hers, soft and steady, a slow pressure that shifted from her bottom lip to her top. His arms wrapped tightly around her, holding her securely. Warmth filled her, drawing sharply down through her abdomen.

  He broke first, inching back, but not releasing her—not that she wanted him to. If the world ended right now, this would be exactly where she would want time to freeze. Then he slowly withdrew, lowering his arms. The loss of contact left a hole filled with awkward embarrassment to be sitting with such familiarity in his lap.

  “We’d better keep moving,” he said gruffly. He urged Castor forward, bringing the horse closer to Daisy. He helped her back onto her own saddle, and they started forward as though nothing had happened.

  As though he hadn’t kissed her.

  As though she hadn’t kissed him back.

  But he had. And she did. And there was absolutely no way she was ever going to forget it.

  Chapter Forty

  He shouldn’t have kissed her.

  Hell. Marshall had no idea why he’d done it. One minute he was catching her before she fell off Daisy, and the next she was sitting in his lap. Then, instead of putting her right back where she belonged, he had to go and do something that could never be undone. One look at the terror in her eyes, and he had lost his mind.

  Kissing her had been pure reaction…and pure stupidity.

  Damn him if he didn’t want to do it again.

  He shoved his desire away. No matter how incredibly right she felt in his arms, or how the innocence of her touch was as warm as the sun on cool spring day, he needed to keep his mind on the matter at hand—keeping her safe.

  When they finally reached the homestead, he dismounted and walked around to Daisy. He helped Emma down, fully intending to release her the moment her feet touched the ground, but his good intentions were distracted by how natural it felt to have her in his arms.

  Her hands slid from his shoulders to the middle of his chest. She clutched a handful of his jacket, her attention on the ground at their feet. “Thank you,” she said, her voice cracking.

  With a gentle pressure he lifted her chin, bringing her eyes up. “I promised you safety, Em. Don’t think for a moment Styles being here is going to change that.”

  Her shoulders twitched. “This is all my fault.”

  “None of this is your fault.” He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “You did exactly what you needed to do. You survived. No one here will ever tell you different.”

  “I don’t want Victor to hurt Danny.”

  “Danny’s a big boy. He can handle himself.”

  “He doesn’t know Victor,” she said softly, her voice muffled against his chest. “He loves the pain he causes people. He knows what bones he can break to cause the most agony. He’ll beat someone near to death but leave them enough life that they can tell him what he wants to know.”

  It took Marshall a moment to gather the courage to ask his next question, even though the answer might near kill him. “He touch you?”

  She rocked her head back and forth. “Not…like that, no.”

  It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no, either. Which meant Victor had touched her.

  He tried to keep his anger out of his hands, but his arms tensed, prompting her to grab a handful of the back of his jacket and cling tightly. He tugged her closer, drawing her as near to him as she could physically get.

  He swore a promise to God and the devil that so long as he was breathing, no one would ever hurt her again.

  …

  While waiting for Marshall to settle the horses in the small barn out back, Emma strangled the silver handle of a flashlight and tried not to let the ghosts of her present circumstance take over her mind. Even though Drift had already run through the place without a single bark, she didn’t want to move from her spot at the edge of the door.

  She scanned the corners and recesses of the cabin with the flashlight. Every shadow, every unknown shape, every piece of furniture made her heart beat a little bit faster. When something moved behind her, she jumped so far forward she nearly fell in her haste to spin around.

  Marshall stood at the doorway with an apologetic smile. He set their bags on the floor and closed the door. Then he pulled his hat off his head and used it to shield his eyes from the flashlight beam she was blasting into his face.

  “Just me.”

  She jerked the light toward the floor.

  He moved to the stone fireplace, and in minutes, the snap and crackle of a growing fire illuminated the room. She turned a slow circle, examining the large living space. A cabin on the side of a mountain usually translated as a dusty wooden shack with holes in the roof and no comforts. She should have known the Boyer clan would do things differently. This place was as comfortable as any house. There were pictures on the walls, knickknacks on the shelves, and blankets and throws neatly folded over the backs of the sturdy furniture.

  Marshall lifted the flashlight from her hand and switched it off. “Come on. Let me give you the grand tour.�
�

  She followed him through the living area to the open-concept kitchen. The level of modern living in such a remote location surprised her. In addition to the fridge and stove, the kitchen counter was home to a microwave and a coffeemaker.

  She stared at the electric appliances.

  “There’s a generator out back,” he said with a wink. “We usually kick it in at mealtime, or if we’re up here for the weekend.”

  He pulled a lantern out from beneath the sink and flipped it on. He led her through the back of the kitchen and into a short hallway dividing the bedrooms. The room on the left was small and narrow, with most of the available space occupied by two sets of bunk beds on opposite walls. The room on the right was larger, with a double bed flanked by a pair of mismatched dressers. A third bedroom held both a single bed and a bunk. Every bed was stripped bare, with pillows and blankets stacked in neat piles by the headboard.

  The air in the bedrooms was cold and stale, but as she moved about, a hint of lemon-scented polish drifted to her.

  The hallway ended at a small, three-piece bathroom, where the toilet and sink were greatly overpowered by a massive, claw-footed bathtub.

  “How on earth did they get that all the way up here?”

  “To hear Grandpa Glen tell it, he carried it on his back. Grandma usually just rolled her eyes and reminded him his back also had four horses and a wagon.”

  Emma slid her fingertips across the cold porcelain. Fragments of the gold-seeking prospector with Marshall’s blue eyes returned to her mind. She could hear the old man’s laughter and his gruff tone as he lovingly joked about the giant tub being the only thing of his that his wife couldn’t throw out when he wasn’t looking.

  Marshall’s hand on her arm broke the image, and it faded away.

  She took a deep breath and sighed, wishing she could have hung on a tiny bit longer. The Boyer ancestor had such great character—a love for life that sparked his eyes with passion and fire. She could try to find him again by drawing his portrait, but without another glimpse into his world, she wouldn’t be able to do it justice.

  Marshall set the lantern onto the shelf above the sink, illuminating the entire bathroom in its yellowy glow. “Where’d you go just now?”

  She bent to the heavy weight of her curse.

  Alan always said no one would understand her gift as he did. When she was younger, he scared her into believing the world treated those who were different like outcasts. When she grew out of that tale, the warnings changed to threats.

  Tell no one.

  She’d already tried to show them, and it hadn’t worked.

  If Alan found out…

  “Em, look at me.”

  She hesitated for moment before complying, shifting her gaze to his.

  “Talk to me. Don’t shut me out. Help me understand.”

  She took a step back, needing space from the warm distraction of his touch. She crossed her arms, uncrossed them, then jammed her hands into the pockets of her hoodie. She focused on a knot in the wood paneling by the sink while she argued with herself over the merits of trying to explain what she didn’t even understand herself.

  “When you were talking about your grandfather,” she said, “an image popped into my head. An older man with gray hair and a beard. He had such a sparkle in his eyes. He looked like you. Well, his eyes, mostly. And he has—had—Danny’s smile. He was laughing and saying how he was glad the tub weighed so much because his wife could never get rid of it when he wasn’t looking.”

  Marshall nodded his head thoughtfully. “Huh.”

  Huh?

  She just confessed she had a vision of his dead grandfather and all he could say was, Huh?

  He took her hand and led her back to the fireplace. He picked up a framed photo from the mantel and gave it to her.

  Three older gentlemen stood on the front porch of the cabin. Two of the men were smiling politely for the camera while the third was laughing at someone or something off to the right.

  The man from her vision. “That’s him.”

  “Grandpa Glen. Every time someone would comment on the size of the bathtub, he would go on about it being the only thing Grandma couldn’t get rid of on account of it being so damn heavy. Funny thing was, Grandma loved to soak in the tub almost as much as she loved to tease him about it.”

  As Emma gazed at the photo, the image shifted and moved as though it was a black-and-white video playing in slow motion. The sound of Grandpa Glen’s laughter whispered through her mind. She smiled along with the infectious sound as he threw his head back and guffawed.

  “He had such an amazing laugh,” she said, noting the resemblance to Danny’s catching grin when the picture returned to its stationary state. “But his jokes were terrible.”

  She handed Marshall the photo, but his confused expression made her reevaluate her words. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Nothing wrong with what you said. I just don’t understand how you could know. I’d like to think you were making a guess, but something tells me you really do know he told the world’s worst jokes.” Marshall set the picture back onto the mantel. “Tell you what. Why don’t we unpack the food, then while you’re distracted by Dad’s dry-as-dust sandwiches, you can tell me more.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Emma cupped a mug of hot chocolate between her hands, pretending there was something exciting in the half-gone contents. Marshall added another log to the fire, then stepped over Drift on his way back to the couch. She wondered how the silly dog’s fur wasn’t melting, he was flopped so close to the heat, but he seemed more than content with his position.

  Marshall sat down beside her and kicked his feet up onto the edge of the coffee table.

  Even though he wasn’t physically touching her, he was close enough that her entire left side was a prickle of energy. She debated switching to a different spot than a couch that was apparently not a three-seater, but moving now would just seem childish.

  She watched the flicker and sway of the fire, searching the flames for a clue of how to begin. He hadn’t asked yet, but his previous question of wanting her to tell him how her mind worked still hung in the air.

  “You know, no one’s ever asked me that before,” she admitted softly.

  He shifted positions and the soft couch cushions tilted her toward him. “Not even Alexander?”

  She masked her attempt to avoid body contact by leaning forward to set her hot chocolate onto the table. “He doesn’t care how, just as long as I do it.”

  “What, these things just pop into your head? Like what you said about Grandpa Glen?”

  “Yes. No. It’s…it’s hard to describe.”

  “Try me.”

  After a moment, she turned sideways, propping her back against the arm of the couch and drawing her legs up to her chest. She dropped her gaze to where her bare toes rubbed against his thigh. She twitched her big toe, scratching it against the denim while she struggled with how to play show-and-tell with something she wasn’t ever supposed to share with anyone.

  She’d lost her dream of ever finding anyone who would understand what she could do years ago. Not even Alan’s people knew. Not because they never noticed or suspected, but because anyone who did find out died.

  She’d shown Danny out of fear, but with Marshall, the urge to make him not just see, but understand, hit her hard.

  He lightly covered her bare toes with his hand. He rubbed his thumb over the top of her foot, making her shiver with the teasing tickle. The gentle touch pulled at her heart. There was no pressure to talk. No demand for answers. Just genuine interest.

  The words tumbled free before she could scare herself with the consequences. “When you remember something…a memory…can you see it? Like a picture in your mind, faces of people who were there, what they said, what the weather was like? Things you could tell someone if you had to?”

  “Sometimes,” he answered thoughtfully. “I guess. Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s k
ind of like that.” She rested her chin on her knees. “I remember things, but the memories are not mine.”

  “Not yours?”

  She nodded. “Tell me the most vivid memory you have of your grandpa Glen.”

  “The most vivid, huh.” Without moving his hand from her foot, he settled himself farther into the couch cushions. “Well, that would have to be time he was trying to teach Danny and me how to fish from a canoe.”

  “A canoe?”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled as he grinned. “Let’s just say it ended with no fish being caught, and Danny and me having to swim back to shore dragging an upside-down canoe.”

  “Do you remember what the weather was like that day?”

  “Hot and sunny,” he answered without hesitation. “Once we got the canoe back to shore, Danny and I went right back into the water.”

  “Clouds? Or clear sky?”

  His eyes narrowed. “You know, I’m not sure.”

  “Clear.” She smiled at the images as they came, the addictive laughter of the two young boys making her smile. Danny with his shock of blond hair and disarming grin, and Marshall, the taller of the two, with his dark hair and serious eyes. The two were dragging a faded red canoe up onto shore while their grandpa gave them instructions. “It was at the pond you showed me. Grandpa Glen made you go back out and find the fishing rods that had fallen out of the canoe when you—no, Danny had tipped it over…after you dared him to.”

  Marshall’s smile wavered for a brief second, then he laughed. “Damn it. I did. So, you’re, what, some kind of psychic? A mind reader? Crystal balls and tarot cards?”

  She was shocked by his reaction. She’d told him something she couldn’t have possibly known, but instead of accusing her of trickery, he was…laughing? How could he be so casual about it—as though they were talking about the weather, not the strange and dangerous way her mind worked?

  His smile faltered. “Em, if it’s too hard to explain—”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just…”