She shook her head and answered him. “I don’t believe so, either. Jake was—is—a good man.”
They stared at each other a moment, settling into their renewed truce.
“So, you want to tell me why you are out here?” Leo said.
Cilla sighed. “I thought you’d already figured that out for yourself.”
Leo continued to stare at her. Fine. Time was ticking along and Cilla had precious little to spare. Maybe if she told him what he wanted to know, he’d go away and let her do her job.
She pointed to the men by the fire. “A jeweled dagger was taken from our client, supposedly to be turned into the sheriff’s office. Jackson and Jed, Frank’s goons, claimed it was used against them without provocation. More like one of them saw it and wanted it. When my client went to Frank to complain, he claimed he’d never seen it and the man who took it had been with him at the time everything supposedly happened.
“Frank even let our client search the premises, but he didn’t find anything. So he hired us to get it back for him. We got word that a rancher by the name of Ted Lurkett, an associate of Frank’s, was in possession of said dagger.”
“Really. And who did you get this information from? Frank?”
“No,” Cilla snapped. “Bobby Green at the general store keeps his ears open for us. He saw the dagger on Lurkett the other day when Lurkett went into the store for supplies.”
“And why is Bobby so keen on helping you? Maybe he works for Frank and is just setting you up. You ever thought about that?”
“Yeah, I have. But Bobby has given us reliable information before. And besides, he’s sweet on Lucy,” Cilla said, gesturing at her sister. They both ignored Lucy’s embarrassed protest.
“Bobby found out where Lurkett was headed. And Blood Blade rides again.”
“Priscilla…you can’t keep…”
“I can’t keep what?” she said, anger extinguishing the butterflies that had been running rampant just moments before. If he pulled some king-of-the-cattle-ranch horse shit about how it was too dangerous for the little woman to be out running raids, she’d skewer him through the gullet. She’d probably been out pulling jobs before he’d learned to shave. She didn’t need him telling her what to do.
Leo reached out and wrapped his hands around her arms, pulling her to him. He leaned in. Close. Too close for Cilla’s comfort. Though she couldn’t quite muster the strength to push him away.
“What if something happens to you?” he whispered. “What would happen to your sisters then? Brynne would be alone with her child. Lucy is little more than a child herself. If you keep putting yourself in danger…”
He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to. It was something Cilla had thought about a hundred times. A million times. And it was something she couldn’t afford to think of now. She needed her head firmly on her shoulders, not lost in a terrifying cloud of what-ifs.
Leo held her gaze. She became more aware of her surroundings, and the fact that she was still pressed against Leo’s chest. The warmth melting into her bones was transforming into sharp tingles. She pushed away from him. “If you’ll excuse us, we have work to do.”
Leo tightened his grip before she could turn away. “Wait.”
“What? I haven’t got all night.”
He took a deep breath, his eyes burning into hers. Then he gave a little nod, as if he had decided on something. “I’ll help you.”
She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean there are three men down there and there are only two of you. And you are…”
Cilla waited for him to spew some nonsense about how she was a weak little woman who needed a man to do everything for her.
He gave her a small smile. “…Outnumbered and exhausted. You’ve hardly slept for more than a few hours in the last…well, since I’ve met you. Let me help. It’ll be safer for Lucy.”
“What’dya mean, safer for me? I don’t need any babysitting,” Lucy piped up from her corner.
Cilla gazed at her baby sister. Leo had used the one argument that was guaranteed to sway her. For Lucy, she’d accept his help. But she didn’t have to like it. She turned back to Leo. “Fine. Just follow me and don’t get in my way.”
Leo nodded, though he still didn’t look like he was happy with the situation. Tough. He was lucky she was letting him go along at all.
Together, they crept toward the campsite. When they got closer, they spread out, staying within the cover of the trees. Cilla tried to ignore the nausea building in her gut. Lucy thought their raids were adventurous and exciting. But Cilla hated every minute. There was too much at stake if they were caught. But so much to gain when they succeeded.
Lucy circled around to the opposite side of the campfire, her movements mirroring Cilla’s. Cilla caught Leo’s gaze and nodded at the third man. Leo frowned but took up his position.
One of the men groaned and they froze, still invisible in the tree line. The man grunted, scratched himself, and rolled over. Cilla inched toward the man who was sleeping on his saddlebag, the leather clutched in his fists. He looked like someone with something to protect.
Cilla looked up at Lucy, who nodded as she unwound a length of rope from around her waist. Cilla grabbed some rope out of the bag at her side and flung it to Leo, pointing at the man nearest him. She unwound the rope from her own waist and went to the man with the saddlebag.
Cilla hated to admit it, but it was handy having Leo there. She was relatively sure she and Lucy could have incapacitated Lurkett’s buddies before he awoke, but it was a relief not to have to risk it. Her knot in her stomach eased slightly and she raised her hand.
At her signal, Lucy bent and hogtied the man at her feet. After a split-second delay, Leo did the same. The two men were bound and gagged before the man at Cilla’s feet had even woken up.
As an extra precaution, blindfolds were tied around the men’s eyes. Cilla’s man still slept, his deep breathing broken only by his loud snores. She pulled her gun, adjusted her bandana to be sure it covered her face, and nudged the man awake.
He sat up, sputtering, his eyes still hazy from drink and sleep. The moment his situation became clear to him, his hand shot to his holster, but Cilla was faster. The cold metal of her gun glowed with the dying embers of the fire. She motioned him away from his bag. He sputtered in protest. The man in front of Leo blindly lunged forward. Leo grabbed a handful of shirt and yanked him back.
“I think you oughta stay put now, unless you want your mama cryin’ at your funeral tomorrow,” Leo said, adding a drawl to his voice that Cilla had never heard from him before. Leo gave the man’s shirt a final twist and cocked his gun.
Lucy kept her gun on the man in front of her and cocked it. Both men froze. Cilla went through Lurkett’s saddlebag with one hand, keeping her eyes and gun fixed on the man in front of her.
At the bottom of the satchel, wrapped in some material, she felt the dagger. She pulled it out and discarded the dirty sock it was wrapped in. Smiling beneath her bandana, she slipped the knife inside her shirt. She stood, kicked the bag as though she hadn’t found anything and went to stand by Leo. She handed him the rope and he went to work, tying and gagging Lurkett.
Once Lurkett’s eyes were covered, Cilla sent Lucy off toward the crop of rocks and her horse. They’d meet back up at the ranch, but it was safer to split up for the moment. She waved Leo off after Lucy. He hesitated only a second, but when he saw her going for the men’s horses, he gave her an approving nod and took off after Lucy. Cilla untied the men’s horses and gave them a good smack on the rump to make them run. She never took any chances. The last thing she needed was the men getting themselves free and making chase.
Cilla headed toward their lookout but stopped cold at a sudden shout from the clearing. She turned to see a fourth man stumbling from the trees. He must have gone to relieve himself and passed out for a while, escaping their notice. But Cilla certainly noticed him now. Especially the gun in his hand, whi
ch was pointed unsteadily at her.
“Stop, you!” he shouted. A shot rang out and Cilla ran.
It was a dark night and Cilla knew she could outrun him. But a drunk firing bullets into the dark was still a huge danger. A second shot rang out and Cilla ran faster, praying Leo and Lucy were well ahead.
The man’s shouts were getting more distant, more muffled. She’d almost made it to the crop of rocks, and she could just make out the outline of Leo standing nearby holding her horse’s reins when a third shot rang out.
An invisible force knocked Cilla off her feet, searing fire through her left arm. Leo’s shout of “No!” was quickly cut off. Cilla pulled herself to her knees just as Leo reached her. He hauled her to her feet, half-dragging, half-carrying her to her horse. Maynard swiveled his head toward Cilla, blowing distressed bursts of air through his nose.
“I’m okay, boy,” Cilla said, reaching out to rub her horse’s nose before gripping the pommel of her saddle. Leo tossed her onto Maynard’s back before she could haul herself up.
“I’m fine,” she whispered. “We can go faster singly.”
Leo wasted no time arguing but quickly mounted behind her, leading his horse by the reins behind them. He gave the horses their head and raced off.
Cilla found herself begrudgingly grateful that Leo hadn’t listened to her. Her left arm was completely useless, in turns both numb and burning with agonizing fire. She was pretty sure she’d only been grazed, but for the love of all that was good and holy, it hurt.
Leo rode off in the opposite direction of the ranch, hoping the men would follow them instead of Lucy. She had a good head start, but Leo didn’t want to take any chances.
“How bad is it?” Leo asked, his mouth hovering near her ear.
“Not sure. It hurts like the devil, but I don’t think it’s bleeding much.”
She sucked in her breath when Leo’s fingers gingerly probed her arm. “I don’t think it’s too bad,” he told her. They rode for a while longer until they were certain they weren’t being followed. Leo stopped just long enough to rip Cilla’s sleeve from her shirt. The extent of the damage was impossible to see, but Leo was apparently determined to do what he could to cleanse the wound anyway. He rifled through his saddlebag and removed a flask. Before Cilla could protest, he’d dumped the contents over her arm, pouring a river of fire into her wound. She clamped her lips together but couldn’t prevent a whimper from escaping.
“Sorry,” Leo murmured as he tied the remnants of her sleeve around the wound. He looped the reins of his horse around the pommel of Cilla’s saddle and circled their horses back around. Then he wrapped his arms back around her waist, pulling her securely into the shelter of his body.
They rode for what felt like hours, stopping once to switch to Leo’s horse when Cilla’s grew tired. Cilla allowed her eyes to close, for once feeling safe and secure, even with the pain that burned so hotly in her arm that her entire body throbbed with it. Leo’s arms stayed locked around her and she let herself burrow into their strength. It felt good to let someone else take the lead for a minute. Though she’d never tell him that.
After what seemed like an eternity, they came to the mine. “Stay,” Leo commanded. It was a measure of how bad she felt that she didn’t even consider disobeying him.
Leo jumped down and tied their horses to a post hidden within the trees and then came back and gently eased Cilla from the horse. He bent to swing her into his arms, but Cilla protested.
“Good grief, I can walk. He shot my arm, not my leg.”
Leo didn’t look pleased. He also didn’t release her entirely, but contented himself with wrapping his arm about her waist.
Lucy met them at the mouth of the mine.
“Cilla! What happened?”
“I’m fine,” she said, brushing off her sister’s concern.
“We need to get her inside so I can look at her arm,” Leo said.
Lucy nodded and led the way with her lantern. When they reached the cavern, Leo helped Cilla sit. She leaned against the wall and retrieved the dagger from her shirt. She handed it to Lucy, who immediately went to the ledge and disappeared over the top.
Leo dropped to his knees and worked on her arm in silence. He’d found a canteen and clean bandages in one of the saddlebags. Cilla was nothing if not prepared. He washed out the wound and Cilla sighed in relief when the cold water hit her skin.
The relief was short-lived, however. Leo hit her with another dose of whiskey before she could protest and was in the process of rebandaging the wound before any curses could erupt from her. Before too many could, in any case. The man deserved a few choice words, considering the pain he was putting her through.
“Oh, hush,” he chided, though his lips twitched at her colorful language. “It’s just a scratch.”
Cilla couldn’t do much more than snarl at him. It might just be a scratch, but it was a deep, painful, burning scratch. Still, preferable to a gaping hole.
Leo finished cleaning her up and then he leaned against the wall with a tired sigh.
Cilla chewed her lip for a second before speaking. “Thank you.”
Leo nodded. Cilla squirmed under his gaze, her skin feeling as though a thousand tiny feet marched across it.
Finally he spoke. “How often do you girls do this?”
Cilla looked at him in the soft light of the oil lamp. It softened his features and she wondered how she looked to him. The scar tissue over her eye felt tight and she turned her face slightly into the shadows. She ignored his question. The less he knew, the better.
“I think you owe me an explanation,” he insisted.
The slight tenderness running through her hardened. She stood, brushing him away when he jumped up to help her. “I already told you everything you need to know. I don’t owe you anything.”
“I think you do.”
Her fingers stroked the leather of the holster strapped to her hip. “Look, I appreciate your help with Frank, but I have no delusions about why you did it. You wanted to find your brother. We were the last ones to see him alive. You thought we might know something we haven’t told you and you wanted to stick around and see what you can find out. End of story. Which means we’re scratching your back just as hard as you’re scratching ours. So don’t try and tell me that I owe you.”
“I helped you tonight. And the night you made your deliveries, and I’ve been doing everything I can to help keep your ranch running. Without me, Frank would already be setting up camp in your front yard and you’d be out on your rears. You might have agreed to help me find my brother, but at the moment, I’m certainly scratching your back more than you are mine. I think that deserves something. And after everything we’ve already been through together…”
Cilla stared up at him for a second, her childish urge to kick him in the shins dampened by her sense of fairness. And her memories of all those nights wrapped in his arms as he had shielded her from the cold.
Damn it all, he was right. Though that didn’t mean she had to like it. She exhaled and slapped her hand against her thigh.
“How often do you do this?” he asked again.
Cilla hesitated a second longer, then shrugged, grimacing at the pull in her injured arm.
“Only when someone comes to us for help. And only when we are certain we can help and can get whatever they are looking for back relatively safely.”
Leo’s short laugh sounded anything but amused.
“‘Safely’? You call going up against three, make that four, armed men safe? Lucy’s only a child, for hell’s sake, and you aren’t much older.”
Cilla clenched her fists to keep from striking him, so angry now she relished the burning sensation the movement caused. “I’m no child. I’ve been doing this for quite a while now and have never gotten close to being caught.”
“You have been extraordinarily lucky so far and one of these days you will get caught. Like you almost were tonight. Or worse, killed while trying to steal some foolish fam
ily treasure. What good does it do anyway? If these items suddenly turn back up in the possession of the people they were taken from, both you and they could be exposed. And doesn’t Frank wonder where you are getting your money, your goods?”
“I’m not an idiot, Leo! We have a system in place to process the items we’ve managed to retrieve. We are careful with our property, and the money…we only spend a little at a time. Just enough to get by and not nearly enough that anyone would be suspicious.”
“Obviously someone is suspicious or Frank wouldn’t be harassing you night and day.”
Cilla opened her mouth to fire back an answer but couldn’t. She knew he was right. But still…
“And that’s why he wants your ranch so badly, isn’t it? He knows you’ve got everything stashed on the property somewhere and if the ranch is his, he’d be free to search it and keep anything he found. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Cilla glared at him, anger burning its way through every cell of her body. She actually didn’t know if he was right or not. It had never occurred to her that Frank might think there were stolen goods hidden on the property.
Lucy dropped down from the ledge and tiptoed to the tunnel. “I’ll just wait at the entrance for you,” she mumbled in their direction before fleeing from the explosion that was coming.
Cilla’s chest heaved with the effort to keep from screaming at him. She blinked against the tears building in her eyes. And finally it was too much. All of it. Their father, Jake, Frank, Brynne, the robberies, the danger, the fear. Leo.
The anger washed out of her with the first tear that fell. She released a long, shaky breath.
“What choice do we have, Leo?” Her shoulders slumped, curling around the empty hole that had held her anger for so long.
She looked at him through a sheen of tears.
“What else can we do? After my father died, Frank emptied the bank accounts. All the ranch hands quit or were run off. Either way, they are just as gone. Miguel and Carmen are the only ones who refused to be scared off and thank God for them because we’d be lost without them. Things were okay for a while when Jake was here. But then he left, too.
Blood Blade Sisters Series (Entangled Scandalous) Page 9