An Outlaw in Wonderland

by Lori Austin

  “Doubtful.” He shoved her off the horse; she landed hard, but she scrambled up when he followed. “You didn’t come back . . .” He stepped in close; she had to grit her teeth to keep from stepping away. “And I got worried.”

  Annabeth’s skin prickled. Lass didn’t worry about anyone but himself.

  “Started thinkin’ what kind of town could it be where people went in and never came back out?” He tugged on her shortened hair. “Like they fell down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.”

  Right now, Annabeth wished that she had.

  His fascination with that book was almost childlike—a trait that should have made Lass endearing but instead made him more frightening. Because his favorite character was the Queen of Hearts, and there’d been several times she’d heard him murmur in his sleep, “Off with her head.” Personally, Annabeth thought he was more of a Mad Hatter—minus the hat.

  “Freedom isn’t like Wonderland,” Annabeth said. “Nothing worth seeing there.”

  Lass’s full lips lifted, causing another chill to trickle over her despite the steadily climbing heat of the awakening sun. The only times Annabeth had seen Lassiter Morant smile had been right before, or sometimes after, he killed someone.

  “Not even your husband?”

  • • •

  Despite having learned well the futility of hope, Ethan listened all day for his wife’s footsteps, her voice, someone—anyone—calling her name.

  Sadie left, but Ethan wasn’t alone for long. The marshal returned with questions. There had been a murder.

  “Why would Mrs. Lewis be in your bedroom?”

  Ethan, who couldn’t keep his gaze from hopping between one citizen and another as they filed past the front window—none of them were his wife—spread his hands. “We had a relationship.”

  “Which ended when your wife returned.”

  Not a question, but Ethan answered anyway. “Yes.”

  “Then why would she be here?”

  “To talk to me. Seduce me. Kill me. Or maybe my wife.”

  “She didn’t have a weapon.”

  “Unless you count the one in her chest.”

  The marshal frowned. “Was it hers?”

  “I never saw it. But I never saw the rifle either.”

  “You think she took her own life?”

  If Ethan hadn’t heard Annabeth cough after saying she’d never seen that knife before, he would have considered it. That would be just like Cora to dramatically end her own life in his bedroom.

  Except he had heard that cough.

  “No,” Ethan said. “I don’t.”

  The marshal sighed. “Me either. Could I speak to your wife?”

  “She’s resting.”

  Eversleigh eyed the mattress leaning against the wall. He didn’t ask the obvious question: Upon what was she resting? Instead he frowned, pulled on his hat brim, and left.

  For that, Ethan was almost pathetically grateful. But then he was pathetic. He’d believed last night had meant something. A promise. A vow. A new beginning, not another goddamn end.

  Ethan opened the medicine cabinet and reached for a blessed blue bottle, but there were none. He would make more.

  He found several empties, washed them inside and out, set them in a row. After retrieving the glazed crock he used only for making laudanum, he set it on the stove. Steeling himself, he climbed the steps. In his bedroom, he averted his eyes from the bloodstain that had seeped into the wood. That mark would never go away.

  “Out damned spot,” he muttered, then yanked open his nightstand drawer.

  Inside rested a basket of dried poppies along with the needle he used to pierce the heads before he set them in the heated crock. He turned with the basket in one hand, the needle clutched between two fingers of the other, and the downstairs door opened.

  “Doc?”

  The marshal had returned. Ethan placed the items on the dresser and strode to the head of the stairs. The lawman stood at the bottom, Annabeth’s gun in his hand. “Figgered yer wife might want this back.”

  Ethan stared at the Colt and frowned.

  “Doc?” Eversleigh lifted the weapon along with his brow.

  “Thank you. Just put it . . .” Ethan waved his hand at the desk.

  The marshal set it down and departed, but Ethan continued to frown. Annabeth would not have left without a weapon. She wasn’t that foolish. Had she taken his?

  He opened the armoire, stood blinking at the sight of his weapons right where he’d left them. A prickle raced the length of his spine. He forgot all about the poppies as he hurried down the stairs and out of the house to the stable.

  “Sure ’nuff.” The stable boy ran his hand over the nose of a lovely roan. “This is yer wife’s horse righchere.”

  “She didn’t take another?”

  The kid’s face scrunched. “Why would she do that?”

  For many reasons, none of which Ethan planned to explain. He tried a different tactic. “Are any horses missing?”

  “’Course not! What kind of job would I be doin’ if folks come for their mount and it ain’t here?”

  “When was the last time anyone took a horse and went anywhere?”

  “That’d be you, Doc. But yer back and so’s . . .” He pointed to Ethan’s gelding, which hung its head over the stall and snuffled for attention. Ethan absently scratched between the animal’s eyes as he considered.

  Annabeth was gone, but she’d left behind her gun and her horse. Certainly she could have walked away, but without food, water, or a weapon, that was suicide.

  Had she been taken? By whom? For what reason?

  At a loss, Ethan returned home. He was no tracker—that was Mikey’s talent. Unfortunately, he had no idea where his brother had gone after he’d left here last month. Other than with Fedya—a man who disappeared quicker than free whiskey on a Saturday night.

  Ethan remained inside as the day waned. A few folks needed doctoring—cut hand, broken finger, loose bowels—nothing serious.

  Night descended, and Ethan let the mattress fall to the floor. Dust puffed at the impact. He barely noticed. Instead he lay down and stared at the ceiling.

  What if he contacted the army? Maybe they had an idea where their best sniper had gone. One never knew when he might be needed.

  Ethan snorted. Fedya had spent the past five years wandering. He’d changed his name. His appearance. His occupation. Even if someone had known at one time where he was, he doubted they would any longer. Fedya would have made certain of it.

  Panic pulsed at the base of Ethan’s throat. The more he thought about it, the less he believed that his wife had left on her own. Which left two possibilities.

  Moses Farquhar or Lassiter Morant.

  Ethan didn’t much care for either one.

  • • •

  Lass backhanded Annabeth. She landed on her ass in the dust. She figured the bruise on her rump would be almost as colorful as the one that would bloom on her face.

  He climbed onto his horse. The ten men around the fire no longer pretended to sleep. They sat up and watched the show. If Lass’s eyes were dead, most of theirs were dying.

  “How is it that you never mentioned your husband, the doctor?”

  Annabeth didn’t like the way Lass glared at her from on high. She particularly didn’t like the way his hands clenched on the reins, causing his mount to prance far too close. She got to her feet again. Being trampled to death in the dust was too damn humiliating.

  “Why would I? I left him before; I just left him again.” Lass tilted his head, and Annabeth pressed the advantage. “I didn’t go there to scout the bank. I filed for divorce. I wanted to end it forever.” She stopped talking before she said something that would give her the urge to cough. So far everything out of her mouth had been the truth.

  Lass breathed in as if he could smell her fear. She could have sworn he fed on it. Like with the damnable Eat Me cake in his book, his chest would expand and he would grow so tall, his head would br
ush the sky. She wished she could pour the potion from the Drink Me bottle down his throat, watch him shrink, then step on him like a bug.

  “Ain’t there more you should tell me?”

  Annabeth breathed in herself, striving for calm. “I can’t think what.”

  “Oh, maybe that your husband was a spy. Just like you are now.”

  Annabeth froze; the other men shifted and murmured. Annabeth managed to keep herself from glancing around for an escape route. There wasn’t one. And she knew better than to take her eyes off a wild animal ready to strike.

  “You aren’t going to deny it?” he asked.

  “Would it help?”

  He lifted his face to the speck of bright blue sky visible at the top of the rabbit hole. The rock face above them narrowed so sharply, it was impossible to enter unseen and equally difficult to get a good shot from the top at any inhabitants on the bottom.

  “When you didn’t come back, I had some of the boys ride to the nearby towns. In Freedom, everyone was talkin’ about the doctor and his back-from-the-dead, redheaded wife. Made me angry.” Lass’s fingers clenched on the reins again. Again, Annabeth took a step back. The horse followed. “You’re mine.”

  She didn’t answer. She wasn’t his, never would be or could be. Because she was forever Ethan’s.

  “I went to the doc’s place, found you . . .” His voice lowered, and the next words were the growl of the animal within. “In his bed.”

  If Lass had discovered her in Ethan’s bed, she’d be dead. Annabeth considered what might have happened. A dark house, a darker room, a woman asleep. Lass had mistaken Cora for Annabeth and stabbed her. Although, if that were the case, the blood would have been on the bed and not the floor. That it was on the floor changed everything. Cora Lewis—five foot nothing when standing—could never be confused with Annabeth.

  “Why did you kill her?” Annabeth asked.

  “What did you expect me to do? Let her scream and bring down the law?”

  “You could have tied her up, gagged her . . .” Oh, what Annabeth wouldn’t have given to see the woman gagged. “You’d have been gone before anyone found her.”

  He shrugged and waved away the seamstress’s life as if he’d done nothing but swat a fly. “She told me everything she knew. About the doc, about you.” His lip curled. “Bein’ married.”

  “I won’t be for long. I filed for divorce so I could . . .” Annabeth cleared her throat. “Come back to you. Free and clear.”

  “I know what you were. What you are. Spy. Liar. Detective.”

  Obviously Ethan had told Cora about his past. A relationship based on lies was no relationship at all. At least he’d learned that much. Still, she wished he’d kept her secrets out of it.

  “Miz Lewis was a sneaky bitch,” Lass continued. “Can’t say I blame her, considering. She crept around, listened at keyholes. Told me everything she heard.”

  So Ethan hadn’t shared her secrets, hadn’t talked about her or betrayed her to Cora Lewis. Why that made Annabeth so happy, she couldn’t say.

  “You’re a traitor, Anna.”

  She’d been called that before, but it had never held quite the same ring. In Lassiter’s words, she heard a death knell.

  He lowered his voice so only she could hear his whisper. “If I let a traitor live, you know what’ll happen.”

  “Chaos,” she muttered.

  “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

  He was right. If he let her live now that it was known who she was, what she’d done, it would be only a matter of time until one of his own men killed him in his sleep and took over. Outlaws were like that.

  She was glad she’d seen Ethan again, helped him, held him. She hoped her promising to stay and then sneaking out in the night, combined with the divorce papers her lawyer would deliver, would make him angry enough to move on.

  Annabeth stood in the bright sun and waited for the bullet that would kill her. She’d forgotten whom she was dealing with.

  “Tie her,” Lassiter Morant ordered.

  Annabeth released an annoyed huff as his thugs grabbed her. “Can’t you just shoot me?”

  Lass smiled. “What do you think?”

  CHAPTER 29

  A man-shaped shadow emerged from the rear of the house and crept toward the stairs. As Ethan hadn’t heard the door open, a floorboard creak, the scuff of a boot, or a single breath, he didn’t think the intruder was a patient. He cocked the gun in his hand, and the shadow froze.

  “Turn around,” Ethan ordered. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  The figure complied. Silver moon shadows flickered over his face, but Ethan didn’t recognize the fellow. Of course he wouldn’t know Lassiter or Moses from Adam.

  “Farquhar?” Ethan asked, then uncocked the weapon without waiting for an answer. He doubted Lassiter Morant would have turned without going for his gun. “I planned to wire the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the morning and have them contact you.”

  “They wouldn’t even admit that they know me.”

  “Do they know you?”

  Had the man invented his affiliation? Hoodwinked Annabeth? Gotten her involved in something dangerous for . . . what reason?

  “Would your superior have admitted that he’d ever heard of you?” Ethan thought about John Law and laughed. “That’s what I thought. Now, where’s Annabeth?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you.”

  “Why do you need me?”

  Ethan hesitated. “Why are you here?”

  It was too much of a coincidence that Ethan had been prepared to search out a man who suddenly appeared.

  “There was a murder. The two of you went missing.” The dark figure shrugged. “I’ve been stopping by every few days to see if . . .”

  “They’d hung us?”

  “Glad they didn’t.”

  “Me too,” Ethan muttered.

  Ethan hadn’t wanted Annabeth to be with Farquhar. The way she said the man’s name, the way he’d said “Annie Beth Lou,” their long history, and all she had done for him, made Ethan think they were much more than they let on, but the alternative to her disappearing with Farquhar was much worse.

  “Where can I find Lassiter Morant?”

  It was Farquhar’s turn to laugh. “I’ll assume that Annabeth told you her mission or you wouldn’t even know his name.”

  Ethan didn’t comment.

  “So you understand that if I had any idea where he was, I’d be there arresting him and not here talking to you.”

  Ethan stared out the front window at the silent, deserted streets. “If she isn’t with me and she isn’t with you—”

  “Doesn’t mean she’s with him.”

  “She left without her Colt. Hell, she left without a horse.”

  Farquhar shifted. “You’d better tell me what happened. From the beginning.”

  “Which beginning?” There’d been almost as many of those as there’d been endings.

  “She came back,” Farquhar murmured. “And she swore she never would. She stayed, even though staying was too damn dangerous. Why?”

  Ethan sighed and began to speak. He told Farquhar a lot, but he didn’t tell him everything. Some things were Ethan’s and Annabeth’s alone. However, when he got to the part about the knife, the man cursed.

  “Carved handle?” Ethan nodded. “Flowers? Roses, daisies, larkspurs, and such?”

  Ethan had no idea what a larkspur looked like, but he had seen the others. “How did you know that?”

  “Morant owns one book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

  As Ethan had never heard of it, he shrugged.

  “Written by an Englishman. Some fellow who calls himself Lewis Caroll. A girl falls down a rabbit hole into another land. Cakes that grow her large, drinks that make her small. Talking rabbits and cats. Flowers, too, apparently.”

  “Sounds like a lot of nonsense.”

  “It’s a story for children. But Morant loves it. Calls
his hideout Wonderland. According to Annabeth, he carved the flowers from the novel into his knife handle.”

  “She knew the knife was his.” Hence her cough.

  “Which explains why she’s gone.”

  Ethan rubbed his scar. Beneath it, his head had begun to throb. “Explain it to me.”

  “The knife was a threat. Come back or else.”

  Ethan dropped his hand. “Or else what?”

  “Nothing good,” Moses said.

  “We have to find her.”

  “If she’s with Lassiter Morant, she’s in Wonderland.”

  “His hideout,” Ethan said.

  “No one can find it.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

  • • •

  They tied Annabeth to the nearest tree. Hell, the only tree. This was still Kansas, after all. Just because Lass called the hideout Wonderland didn’t mean it had suddenly sprouted greenery and talking flowers.

  Once they had her secured, the men gathered around Lass and began to whisper. The leering glances thrown Annabeth’s way gave her no doubt about what her fate would be. Until now, no one had looked at her with anything other than respect. She was Lass’s woman, and no one touched her but him.

  Those days were done.

  Her gaze flicked from outlaw to outlaw, cataloging their weapons. All she needed was for one of them to get close and get careless; then she’d put an end to their fun.

  “Me first,” Lass announced. “When I’ve had enough, y’all can draw straws.”

  “Aw, Lass, there won’t be nothin’ left to draw straws fer once you’ve had enough.”

  Lass’s eyes met Annabeth’s, and he smiled. Annabeth hoped he was the one who got careless. Unfortunately, he’d never been anything but careful so far.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you, boys. I’ll make sure you each get a chance. But first . . .” He reached for his belt. “I’m gonna show you how it’s done.”

  As he released his buckle, the sound of a horse being ridden hard down the narrow trail had every man drawing his pistol. Annabeth’s gaze fixed on the entrance, hoping the rider was rescue; then again—considering the guns—hoping it wasn’t. She should have known better. If anyone but Lass and his men knew the location of Wonderland, she wouldn’t be here at all.