by Bec McMaster
McClain looked up sharply, then his face softened. "I'll ride with you until we get those girls back."
"This is not your fight."
"If I don't go you'll only get yourself killed," he replied, slowly though, as if he were editing his words carefully. "You and Jake. I can't live with that."
"If the reivers make it to Rust City, then we're walking into a trap," she replied. "The odds of us getting in and out of there alive aren't great."
McClain's lashes lowered. He always looked like he was the calm at the center of any storm. And it settled her nerves even now, as it always did. "One problem at a time, Mia. Besides," he glanced around. "We can't take Rust City with force. The reiver I questioned said there're over two hundred reivers there, and we don't have the manpower, not even if everyone here was fighting fit and experienced in a gunfight. In a way, this might work out better for us. A smaller group can slip into a crowd and blend."
"Blend?" she blurted.
"None of us look like reivers," he pointed out, "but there are enough bounty hunters out there who get tired of riding long hours for minimal coin. Sometimes they take up a darker trade. That's our way in."
Mia chewed it over. Her stomach twisted at the thought of what she was about to do. If this failed, she'd be the one wearing a slave collar. But he was right. It was their only chance to save Sage and the others. "Okay."
"We have to make a move and soon," McClain said, reaching out and using his sleeve to lift the pot off the hot stone it rested on as soon as it started boiling. "The reivers who took your sister might be at least fifteen hours ahead of us."
Fifteen. Her stomach sank.
"Maybe less," he continued, "depending on whether they stopped to rest."
"We should have gone last night," Mia whispered.
"In the dark? Mia, we're tired, we're injured, and we're distinctly lacking in resources. I don't work off knee-jerk impulses. At best we might have gotten ourselves killed in the dark. We don't know what's out there. I've only ever been south once, and that was years ago. If we do this, then we need to plan and we need to think." His voice softened when he noticed the look on her face. McClain rested his hand on her knee, squeezing gently. "We'll get her back."
"You shouldn't make promises you can't keep."
His thumb rubbed the inside of her thigh. "I don't make promises I can't keep. If I say we can do this, then it's because I know we can. I wouldn't let you go in there if I didn't think there was a chance I could keep you safe. No matter how much your sister means to you."
"If you think you could stop me...."
He smiled a little. "Yeah. Then there's that."
Mia curled her hand over his. She didn't know what she'd do without him right now. McClain was a rock. And she couldn’t help believing in him. "Okay. We do this."
"Who've we got?"
"Jake," she replied promptly.
"Jenny?"
Mia glanced at her aunt. Jenny rested in a chair now, her eyes glazed with pain and exhaustion. "She's hurt and she needs medical attention, even if she won't admit it."
McClain examined Jenny too. "She'd be handy, but you're right. We'd only end up nursing her, and we don't need that complication."
Footsteps echoed behind her. McClain jerked his hand off her knee and moved to pour them both a cup of coffee.
"Someone say my name?" Jake asked, squatting down beside the pair of them. His bloodshot eyes revealed just how much sleep he'd gotten last night.
Mia managed to snatch a few hours, but it only felt like it exacerbated how tired she truly was. A constant ache drove into the back of her left eye. "We need to head after Rykker and the girls they took. McClain thinks we should go in small and infiltrate the place. Pretend to be bounty hunters turned wannabe slavers."
Jake scratched his jaw. "It's dangerous."
"It's the only way you're going to get your wife back," McClain countered.
Jake sighed. "Yeah. I know. Who else we got?"
Pointed silence.
"Fuck me," Jake said.
"Sideways," Mia added.
McClain slowly pulled a slave collar from his bag, and handed Mia her coffee. He turned the collar over. "Got this off that reiver. If we do this, we need a slave."
Mia's stomach jerked sideways. The entire thing was repulsive, and her blood ran cold.
"I'll do it," a voice from behind said.
All three of them spun around.
Ellie Thwaites stood there, her fingers curled in fists and her face pale but determined. Her frizzy blonde hair knotted behind her, making her mass of freckles and red-rimmed eyes stand out. "I can't fight," she said, "but they took my friends. I can pretend to be your slave to help you guys get in."
Hell, no. That idea was going to go down like a sinking ship. Mia found Ethan Thwaites in the crowd. He moved slowly, looking a million years old right now. "Ellie, we might not be coming back."
"I know." Ellie knelt on McClain's sleeping blankets. "I know that," she said fiercely. "But I grew up with Thea, Sonya, and the others. How do I slot back into life at Salvation Creek knowing what might be happening to them? How do I look at myself in the mirror every day when they're wearing collars out there somewhere and I didn't do a damned thing to stop it? Do I just let my mom die for nothing?"
"She didn't die for nothing," Mia countered. "She died to keep you and your sister safe."
"If we have a fourth person along with us," McClain interrupted, "then that leaves three of us to act as bounty hunters. I know you can shoot, Mia. It gives us a few more options, otherwise Jake and I will have to do all of the legwork."
Mia shot him a look. She didn't want Ellie along. It was hard enough taking McClain with her, when this wasn't his fight and there was a chance that he might not come back. Sending one more soul straight to hell.
Jake obviously felt the same. "What about your dad?"
Ellie quieted. "He's injured and he just lost mom. He won't be any use to you. And Alice.... She's not coping very well."
"Precisely why she needs her sister there with her," Mia said.
"Maybe that's true." Ellie tipped her chin up. She wasn't going to back down. "But Thea Haynes is my best friend in the world. And she doesn't have a sister. Or a dad. Right now, all she's got is me. Alice's safe now. But Thea's not."
There were no arguments to that.
"I get why you don't want to bring me along, Mia. I know I'm only nineteen. You think I'm throwing away everything, especially after the trick hand of luck I was just dealt. But you were nineteen once too. How would you feel?"
As if she'd move heaven and hell to get her friends back. Mia sighed. Ethan Thwaites was going to be a problem. "There's no way your dad will allow this."
"I can handle Dad," Ellie said. "Those bastards killed my mother and they took my friends. I want to make them pay. Dad will respect that."
Personally, Mia thought that was one argument that wasn't going to go headstrong Ellie's way. But as she looked around, she could see that even Jake was nodding now.
They needed all the help they could get, and even though Ellie knew next to nothing about fighting, she was one more set of eyes.
"Good luck with that," she told Ellie as the young blonde got up to go tell her father her plans.
MIA WAS WRONG.
Apparently Ellie Thwaites knew exactly how to get her way, because the argument with Ethan only lasted ten minutes before his shoulders slumped and he started to cry. Ellie hugged him for another five minutes, before wiping her eyes and making her way over to where Mia checked over the supplies they'd need.
"What did you tell him?" Mia muttered, as she stripped the vest and weapons off a female reiver someone had killed last night. She paused with her hand on a set of goggles. Might be useful to protect her eyes from the stinging desert winds, but she was definitely going to drop them in a pot of boiling water first. Same with the neck scarf. Mia brushed a fleck of dried blood off it.
Ellie's face paled, making her
freckles stand out even more as she stared at the body. "The truth. That Thea's not just my friend."
Mia looked up in surprise. She'd never noticed. Ellie knelt down to undo the dead reiver's belt. Neither of them had much in common, except for the fact they both had sisters. Clearly she'd never bothered to pay much attention to Ellie's goings-on.
"Then we'll do our best to get her back," she said, squeezing the other girl's hand.
"Thanks," Ellie muttered, and removed the reiver’s belt. "This feels so wrong."
"She doesn't need them anymore." Mia collected the belongings she planned to take. Two days ago she'd probably have blanched at the thought as much as Ellie did. Amazing how much could change in such a short period of time.
She felt vaguely numb to it all. Shock, perhaps.
All she could do was focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
Sage, Thea, and the other girls. Poor Sara, Sonya, Bethany, and little Tommy Hannaway, who was probably not so little anymore.
They were the only things that mattered.
"Let's go," Mia said, and headed off to sterilize the goggles.
A subdued air hung over the camp as the four of them prepared to leave. Guilt, perhaps. These people had their families and friends back, and they wouldn't risk anymore. Maybe it was unfair to blame them for that.
Mia made her way from person to person, accepting hugs and good wishes.
"I promise I'll look after her," she told Ethan when she finally stopped in front of him.
The big man nodded gruffly. He'd never been a man short of words, but apparently Ellie's decision cost him.
"You're a good girl, Mia." Thwaites hugged her awkwardly, his other arm knotted in some sort of sleeve sling. "Good luck with your sister. I wish I could do more than I am."
"You've done enough," she whispered, then hugged him back.
Jenny waited patiently beside him. Mia clasped her hands. "You look after that leg."
Jenny snorted. "Are you telling me what to do, girl?"
"Mom always said I might as well try and hold back the tide."
Jenny caught her at the back of her neck, an almost affectionate pat, then turned to the matter at hand. She started unbuckling her belt. "You'll need this. It's all the ammo I've got, plus I'm giving you my Remington. The bolt action's a little stiff these days, but it's the best I've got." She flipped a heavy hunting knife from its sheath. The handle bore a gorgeous hunting hawk pattern etched into the polished wood. "This too."
Mia's chest felt several sizes too small. "Jen, I can't take this. This is Hawk's." The last thing Jenny's man ever gave to her before they parted.
"It's a knife, Mia, which is exactly what you need." Another snort. "I've got another back at home."
But this one was special. Nobody had ever been allowed to touch it, and sometimes Mia caught her aunt rubbing oil into the steel lovingly, long after it needed it. "Thank you."
It meant so much to know that Jenny—who'd never been the sort to give hugs or take much interest in the day-to-day things—was surrendering her most precious object into Mia's keeping.
"You watch your back, and you get those girls home," Jenny said. Her gaze slid sideways, and Mia's followed it.
McClain strapped his bedroll onto his bike, next to where Jake was helping Ellie into the jeep he'd commandeered. Those strong hands jerked hard at the strap, McClain’s shirt clinging to the muscle in his broad back. Last night sprang sharply into her mind. A desperate kiss that she could remember every detail of. Mia jerked her eyes off him before she betrayed her thoughts. Jenny always could see straight through her.
"One thing else you ought to consider," Jenny said. "This is a hard world. And I don't regret a single second of my life. I know you think I gave up too much when I left Hawk to come home and look after you girls. Maybe I did. But he understood. He knew that the years we rode together were the best moments of our lives, and that they were never going to last forever. Love hard, ride fast, and don't know regret. He taught me that. You've got to cherish every moment, Mia. I know you locked your heart up nice and tight after Jake screwed you over..."
Mia opened her mouth to protest—she'd never told anyone that.
But Jenny rolled right over her. "And no point denying it. I got eyes. But you're riding straight into hell. And you're riding there with a man who's got you knotted all up in a way I've never seen you before. Maybe you ought to take some of those moments and enjoy them a little. Let yourself love him, even if it's only for a few days. Or nights." Jenny squeezed her shoulder. "Because you don't know if you're coming back."
The words echoed within her, like a truth burned into her skin. Mia clapped Jenny on the shoulder one more time, then turned to go. “I’ll think about it. Thanks, Jen. For everything.”
"Ready?" McClain called.
"Ready," she replied, slinging her leg over the back of the bike and nestling her thighs around his.
McClain revved the throttle to warm the bike up. It buzzed beneath them, as if it were as full of nervous energy as she was.
Time to go rescue her sister.
TWELVE
THERE WAS SOMETHING wrong.
Mia nibbled on the quick of her thumb as she watched McClain and Ellie refill the water canteens from a stream he'd managed to locate in the middle of a winding canyon. She couldn't stop thinking about Jenny's words. The last thing she needed was to deal with the temptation McClain presented for her. Don’t pin your hope on a man. She'd put those rules in place for a reason. But Jenny spoke truth. What happened if she got shot? Would she be satisfied with her life if she looked back on it? That answer was a definite no.
Love fast, ride hard, and don't know regret.
Damn Jenny for planting that seed in her head. At least it kept her mind off darker matters, like her sister.
However, she might be the only one dwelling on that kiss and what it represented.
All morning McClain had been distant and focused, and there was definitely something going on between the two men. Jake looked like a dog watching another dog enter its territory. He tolerated McClain's presence, but he sure as shit wasn't welcoming him here, and he looked like he was just waiting for that other dog to attack.
What the hell happened last night?
The last time she'd seen him, McClain had given her that honey-slow smile of his that warmed his entire face. Now he was purely professional.
And the Jake that had been glued to McClain's side ever since they left Salvation Creek was long gone.
"What did you say to him?" she hissed in Jake's ear, the second she thought McClain and Ellie were far enough away not to hear. "What's going on?"
Jake shot her a look from beneath heavy lids. "I'm just watching out for you, Mia."
"You've got no right. Whatever's going on between McClain and me is none of your damned business."
"I know it isn't," he shot back. "But that doesn't mean I'm just going to leave you out here for the vultures."
Mia drew back with a frown. McClain wasn't a vulture. But something had gone down between the two of them, and from the way they were both acting, it seemed an agreement had been reached.
"Focus on Sage," Jake told her, still looking grim. "He'll ride away after all this is done and not look back. I don't want to see you get your heart broken. I know you need something to hold on to right now, but he's not the one to do that for you. And I wish he were, Mia. I really do."
"And who else have I got?"
"You've got people who love you," he replied firmly. "Your sister, Jenny... me." Jake's lips pursed. "I wish... I wish I could say more, but keep in mind that I'm only looking out for your best interests. This has nothing to do with what happened between you and me. I promise you that. Can you trust me on this one?"
Swallowing down that little knot of anger in her chest, she patted him on the back. "Just stay out of my love life, Jake."
And then she headed toward McClain.
"LET'S TALK," McClain said. "Abou
t how to get into Rust City safely."
Mia looked up from the sleeping kit she was rolling. She, Ellie, and Jake had snatched a couple of hours sleep that afternoon. It had been a long day of travel, with barely any of them speaking to each other. She ached to get going again, now that they were so close to Rust City, but McClain insisted. Tired minds made mistakes, and Rust City twinkled in the desert below like a junkyard out in the sun. They all needed to be at their best. "What's the plan? We're three bounty hunters looking for a way to get rich quick...."
"With one slave," Ellie said, looking like she faced down a firing squad.
"You're not going to like it, Ellie." McClain knelt down at Mia’s side on the small ledge overlooking the plains below. Tired lines fanned around his eyes, and his cheeks bore evidence of several hard days’ ride. Funny how the scruff along his jaw was several shades darker than that on his head. In the sun she could almost see strands of gold in his short-cropped hair.
Ellie bit her lip, zipping her duffel shut. "I don't have to like it, McClain. If it gets me closer to Thea...."
There wasn't a great deal that any of them wouldn't do.
McClain sighed, then reached inside his coat and dragged out a leather circlet. When he shook it out, Mia realized it was the slave collar with silver links fastened into the leather so that a chain could be clipped there.
Women were commodities in the slave towns, unless they'd managed to earn their reputations, and some of those particular women were just as dangerous as the men.
Reaching out, Mia brushed her quivering fingertips against the leather. It made her feel sick just to touch it.
McClain wouldn't look either of them in the eyes. "Think you can do this, Mia? You’re going to have to play the part. Look them in the eye, spit on their boots and keep your hand on your gun at all times. The women in these towns don’t take shit. They can’t afford to."
She'd killed one of them back in Vegas. It all happened so quickly, but afterward she’d gone back and examined the body. The woman had shaved both sides of her head, and her hair was ruthlessly braided down the center of her skull. Tattoos scrawled up her gaunt cheeks, and she'd been missing several teeth, but the thing that made her stand out in Mia's memories was the absolute lack of humanity in the woman's eyes, that she’d glimpsed before she pulled the trigger.