by Marie Harte
“A stud?” Thais frowned.
Hinto flushed. “Dammit, Kitty. I’m not a horse.”
Thais’s confusion cleared and she chuckled. “Ah, a stud. Yes. I must thank you for your sage advice. He was more than helpful on this journey.”
A journey that damned Dozie had almost convinced Thais would end at Butch’s ranch. He’d near to strangled the old woman when they’d returned home a few weeks ago.
“Hell, Thais. I ain’t never said when your journey would end. I just said it would. I saw you tied to Hinto even before I had that vision. Ease up, girl. Everyone’s got to die someday,” Dozie had said before bursting into a fit of laughter.
“See? I knew he’d be the one to help you overcome any issues of a more personal nature.” Kitty paused to study her, and Hinto knew what she saw. A beautiful woman in men’s clothes with glowing eyes and the healthy frame of a body on the mend.
Thank God. Thais was one hell of an ugly patient.
“No way I can talk you into serving as one of my girls? Offer’s still open. We’d make a killin’.” She guffawed at Hinto and poked him in the chest. “Easy, Hinto. I’m just funnin’ your gal. Besides, DeeDee’s beside herself now that you’re no longer gonna come callin’. Hell, I think all the whorehouses in Four Corners will lose a fortune.”
Hinto didn’t like the look Thais sent him. “Honey, it was before I knew you. I’m a man, I have needs.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Kitty grinned. “Like I told you, Dee isn’t quitting the business. She’s one of my best girls, and now that she’s a free agent, she’s making more than she was before.”
“As long as she makes her gold from other customers.” Thais didn’t smile, but he could tell she wanted to. His Amazon didn’t have to worry when it came to his loyalty. Any woman that could wield a knife the way she did had earned his devotion, even if she didn’t already own his heart.
They chatted for a bit, sharing some tea with Kitty as she regaled them with tales from some new customers. Then talk turned to what she’d learned about Bartel and Pilar.
“Now how about I settle my portion of the debt. You gave me what I wanted.” She nodded at Gregor McKenzie’s head floating in a glass jar filled with slowburn. Dozie’s answer to his father’s hidden stash of liquor. “Your woman with the flower is playing footsie with the railroad, but I haven’t heard much about her in a while.”
“Was playing footsie,” Thais corrected, her voice solemn.
“Oh? Well then.” Kitty cleared her throat.
Hinto shared a glance with Thais. From everything he’d heard that night, he understood Thais’s ambivalence in dealing Pilar the death she’d craved. Sure, the woman was a bitch. She’d thrown in with some bad people and had gotten her tribe all but killed. But when she lost her son, she lost her very future. In a world where tomorrow meant everything, Pilar had sacrificed her child and lost it all in the end. Her life, her love, her family.
He glanced at Thais’s belly, wondering when she’d grow round with his young. He loved the idea of her teaching their child to fight and remain strong in the face of adversity. They hadn’t talked about it much, but she still encouraged him to spend inside her every time they made love. He couldn’t wait to get her alone again.
“…so though the name Bartel isn’t netting me much, the names Amery Nore and David Fergusson are striking chords,” Kitty was saying. “They both meet the description of a stout man with pale blue eyes and dirty hair that’s sometimes yellow, sometimes brown. Mean tempered, arrogant, and real unpleasant.”
Thais nodded. “I knew of Amery Nore. David Fergusson is a new one. Thanks. What about last seen locations? The Lost Territory, I’d heard.”
“Yeah, one sighting there. A few in Big Sky and Four Corners. Hell, even one in Cali a few months ago. I swear, the man’s everywhere at once. Then again, it might not be him at all.”
Thais sighed.
“Something else. Rumor has it this man has a son, a young man about your age. Just as mean as his daddy.”
Terrific, another monster in the world. They thanked Kitty and stood.
“So what’s next for you two?” the madam asked as she walked them outside.
Hinto shared a smile with Thais. “We’re going home to Shine. I’m done hunting, Kitty.”
“About time. Sorry to say, Hinto, but you keep that up, you’re gonna get yourself killed. Lotta folks not real happy with you bringing friends of theirs to justice.”
“Well said,” Thais agreed. “Once Hinto and I find the man I’m after, we’re going to live in Shine with his family.”
Kitty beamed. “Good on ya. Make sure to visit, now and again. I can’t wait to see the child you two bring into the world. Be the prettiest thing in the territory.”
Thais and Hinto left with a final wave. As they walked down the street to where they’d left Beast and Ainippe, Hinto asked, “Did you mean it? You’ll stay with me after we find Bartel and the crown?”
“Your father was right. It’s time for me to stop living in the past. Once we find that crown, and we will, you and I will make sure it gets back to the Amazon, where it belongs. Then we have plans to make.”
He kissed her in the middle of the crowded street, ignoring the wolf-whistles and catcalls around them.
She licked her lips, a pretty flush on her cheeks. “Was that necessary?” She glared at several men leering at her.
Hinto laughed, snagged his arm around her shoulders, and steered her toward their mounts. “Just staking a claim. Now tell me about these plans of yours.”
“You’re very attentive,” she grumbled.
“And?”
“And at the rate you’re going, you’ll be giving me a baby soon. We’ll need to make training tools so our child will be prepared.”
“Prepared?” His heart raced at thoughts of a baby with the woman he loved.
“To train as an Amazon. I’m even willing to make an exception if he’s a boy.” She smiled at him, her eyes vibrant with joy. “I’ll never give him away, Hinto. Not when he’ll come into this world as a result of the love between us.”
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “That’s good to know, honey.”
“Another thing. I’d like my sisters to be welcome at the ranch.” She frowned. “I’ve been thinking that they might not want to live in the place where so much was lost. If they need a home, I’d like to share ours.”
Ours. He loved the sound of that. “Well, if you think they can live with us and not kill my brothers, I’m all for it.”
She laughed. “Good. Besides, I think Yara might be a real help for your father. She’s a healer. She’ll know things to try for him that I don’t.”
“Then let’s hope they find more information about Bartel than we have. We need to get him out of the way so you and I can practice.”
“Practice what?” she asked as they reached Beast.
He whispered in her ear what he intended to start practicing just as soon as they bunked down for the night.
“Hinto. Can we really do that?” She sounded excited and awed.
“Hell, yes.”
When they settled in for the night, he proceeded to show her.
***
Four Corners Territory, the city of Rainbow
“Son of a bitch.” Chase Chatrell rattled the cage into which he’d been thrown. “You gotta be kiddin’ me, Sanchez! No way in hell I touched that woman, and everyone at the bar knows it.”
Sanchez downed a large mug of gut-rot. “Harley says different.” He belched and wiped his grimy fingers over a stained vest barely containing his belly.
“Harley’s a piece of shit.” Chase swore again, ignoring the drunk snoring on the lone cot in the rat-hole of a cell. Rainbow was about as colorful a town as the name implied. A perfect place to lay low among a bevy of citizens with secrets to sell. Petty thieves, murderers, cutthroats and pirates walked alongside politicians, bankers, merchants and common folk. One of the most in
teresting places he’d ever been, and one he’d planned to stay in for a while. The coastal aspect of the community provided an alternate escape route should he need to disappear in a hurry.
In an effort to catch his breath after a week of nonstop running, he’d contented himself with a few drinks and the prospect of a good whore. Instead he’d found the wrong end of a card game, a gambler’s flirty protectorate wife, and her three husbands bent on taking back what he’d rightfully won.
He fucking hated respectable women.
The door to the marshal’s office burst open and a man garbed in head-to-toe black, from his boots to his hat, and covered in trail dust, entered.
Sanchez glared at the intruder. “Shit. Didn’t I tell you to forget about—”
A round-house kick knocked Sanchez back, but the subsequent blow to his face laid him out cold.
As he fell, he lost his grip on the key ring, which landed close enough for Chase to grab. Not wasting any time, Chase opened the cell and hurried to shut the front door. He could only hope the sun’s glare and the bars on the window hampered a view of their actions from anyone happening by.
To his shock, the intruder had lost the hat shielding her features. A woman dressed in man’s clothing?
“Fuck me,” he whispered, unable to look away from narrowed gray eyes, a trim nose, and full lips pursed in annoyance.
She glanced at him and the braid of her golden brown hair swung past her hip. “Fuck you?” She snorted. “Not in your dreams.” Her voice was smoky and rich, not what he would have expected coming out of a young woman with the face of an angel. Her accent wasn’t one he could place either, which said something considering how much of the Territories he’d covered in his twenty-nine years.
Her attitude left a lot to be desired, but she had kicked the crap out of Sanchez.
“Mind if I ask what you’re lookin’ for?”
A snore interrupted them, and the woman smiled with ill intent.
“There you are.” She stormed into the cell, hauled the drunk off the cot, and dropped him.
Chase flinched as the man’s thick head struck the stone floor. The drunk landed hard but didn’t wake. She bent over to dig into his pockets, and the fit of her trousers reminded him of how long he’d been without a woman.
Too damn long.
He grimaced and tried to adjust himself as he turned away to stare out the window. Not the best time to get a hard-on, he told himself.
In control of his libido once more, he turned back and saw her take something from the drunk’s pocket that she stuck in her own.
“Thanks for punching Sanchez.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“Whatever. Lady, you’re one scary piece of work.” And a waste of a fine piece of ass. He shrugged and headed for the back door when it opened and two marshals entered dragging Wilder Jones between them.
One of them pulled a gun. “Don’t move, either of you.”
Chase and the woman froze. The drunk in the cell moaned.
The marshal with Wilder hurried to check on Sanchez. “Alive but unconscious.” He glared at them and stood, again taking Wilder by the arm.
“Wilder, what the hell?” A friend of his, the con artist had no limits when it came to bilking the rich and devious out of their currency.
Wilder grinned. His glassy eyes and the stench of liquor on his breath indicated that he, at least, had drunk himself stupid. Chase hadn’t even managed that.
His friend raised his hands, showing wrists cuffed together, and waved. “Chase. Man, how you doin’?” Wilder tried to wink and ended up blinking when he stumbled out of the marshal’s hold. He nearly knocked into the woman, who shoved him back. He leered at her. “Sexy, and such a pretty face. Damn, Chase, you sure can pick ‘em.”
She sneered, showing her teeth.
“Chatrell, you and your partner are in for a world of hurt.” The marshal with the gun tossed a set of irons at him. “Molesting a good woman of Rainbow? What the hell’s wrong with you? You get randy, use your whore.”
“I’m no whore.” The woman dressed in men’s clothing scowled. “And I’m not his partner.”
“Sure looks to me like you freed him.” This from the marshal holding Wilder.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said with disgust.
“Me neither,” Chase agreed, not if he planned to stay one step ahead of Colter. The UT after him was harder to shake than a damned tick.
“Put them on.” The marshal waved his gun at the irons and Chatrell moved to comply. “No, one on you, the other on her. Be a mite more difficult to escape that way.”
Chase swore again. On his own he’d take off without a problem. But tied to a woman? One who ate angry for breakfast?
“One, two…”
Chase cursed and snapped the iron over his left wrist, leaving his right hand free. He turned to her and snarled when she attempted to back away. “Not my choice. Gimme your goddamn arm before he shoots me.”
“Fine with me.”
He yanked her to him and snapped the cuff over her right wrist. “I like my skin. Now shut up and let me think of a way out of this.”
“Okay, you two. Into the cell with Wilder.”
“No.” The woman refused to budge. “I’m not a whore. I’m not his partner. And I won’t be treated this way.”
To Chase’s horror, big, fat tears leaked down her cheeks, startling a curious melting sensation in the vicinity of his heart. Such hurt in those big gray eyes of hers, innocence tarnished because of something he’d done…
The marshal immediately lowered his gun while the one holding Wilder shoved him toward the cell, ordered him not to move, and rejoined them. “Mike, let her go.”
“But Jack, she’s with him. I know it.” But Mike didn’t sound so sure.
The minute Mike got within a hand span of the woman, her tears dried up and she nailed him in the throat with the edge of her hand. He fell gasping to the ground.
Chase followed her lead. He punched hard enough to knock Jack out. “Wilder, move out, now.”
Wilder wobbled out of the way as Chase, with the woman’s help, dragged first one marshal, then the other, into the cell. They needed Wilder’s assistance to lump Sanchez in with the others.
That done, Chase searched one marshal, then the other, but couldn’t find the goddamn key to the shackles.
“Shit.”
“What?” the woman asked, her eyes narrowed.
“Nothing to do about it now.” They were running out of time. He left the cell with her, locked the door, and pocketed the key.
“Kinda small for them, huh?” Wilder said with a dopey grin and passed out.
Chase wanted to help him but couldn’t afford to get caught, not with Colter on his ass. It wouldn’t take long before the marshals regained their bearing and called for help.
He glanced at his shackled “partner.” She had helped him without him having to say a word. He sensed intelligence and strength in her character. An intriguing combination in a female.
She glared at him and yanked their shackled wrists up to his face.
He added fury to his assessment. The woman had anger issues.
“Now how do we get out of these?” she snapped.
Noise outside drew his attention. “Dammit.” He dragged her to the barred window to see a major fight in the street in broad daylight. When no one left the marshal’s office to help, someone would definitely come looking.
“Come on, Blondie. We have to get outta here.”
She didn’t argue as they left the office by way of the back door, until he tried to hold her hand.
“Let go,” she growled.
They rounded the alley and joined the throng of people strolling down the wayfare, the city on one side, the ocean on the other.
He whispered harshly into her pretty little ear, “Look, unless you want everyone to see us fleeing justice, pretend to hold my hand like we’re sweethearts. And try to smile without it brea
king your face.”
Her smile in no way reached her eyes. “My name’s not Blondie. It’s Luiza.”
Her accent, her clothes, and her demeanor told him she wasn’t from Rainbow. The town catered to oddballs, but this woman took strange to a whole new level. More attention he didn’t need or want.
“Look, the sooner we find someone to take off these cuffs, the sooner we can part.”
“Goddess, yes,” she muttered.
They walked toward the docks, and he saw a familiar face.
“Shit.” Without giving her a chance to argue, he pulled her toward the alley between the mercantile and the apothecary and sandwiched her against the wall of the building. A glance over his shoulder showed United Territorial Jonathon Colter looking around…for him.
There was no help for it. They’d have to leave town. He couldn’t trust anyone here not to give him up for the hefty reward. And if by some reason loyalty kept them quiet, Colter’s lethal presence would put the fear of the UTO into them. They’d spill for sure.
“What are you doing?” Luiza’s voice rose.
“Shh. Whatever you do, don’t draw attention to us.”
To his disgust, his dick spiked, caught in arousal for the female and amped by a rush of challenge in avoiding Colter.
She tensed under him. “Get. Off. Me.”
When he looked into her eyes, he saw what looked like fear.
He didn’t like it one bit. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want anything from you but to get these cuffs off and avoid the law, in particular—that man to your right.”
She didn’t have to ask which one. Colter possessed an aura of danger that had the people in the streets parting for him as he moved.
“The killer with the black hair. A dangerous man,” she said in a wary tone.
“That’s the one.” He eased back, giving her space. “I know someone who can help us get rid of our restraints. But it’s a five day journey to get to him. And that’s on horseback.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Which way?”
“Toward Cali, I think.”
“You think?”
“Toward Cali.” He nodded. Sam had planned to settle somewhere, and if Chase recalled correctly, he had family in the Cali Territory, near the town of Shawnee. Sam was big on family and loyalty. He’d help Chase because he owed him. And no one, not even Jonathan Colter, could scare Sam.