An Outlaw in Wonderland

by Lori Austin

  The doctor had healed Mikhail, but whenever he looked at the man, all he remembered was pain. So he stopped glancing the doctor’s way.

  Over the past few years, there had been hard times, sad times, bloody times. With Alexi, there always were. But they were together, and they had Miss Cathy—Alexi called her Catey now, but Mikhail could never remember that—and a baby on the way.

  Alexi said Mikhail would be the baby’s uncle and that was an important job. Mikhail would protect the child, even though Miss Cathy was nearly as dangerous as Alexi. Still, three was always better than one or even two. They were a family, and there weren’t nothin’ stronger than that. Which was why he didn’t mind searchin’ for the doctor’s wife.

  Even though the doctor himself gave Mikhail the worst kind of headache.

  • • •

  Farquhar hadn’t spent the last two days staring at blue bottles as Ethan had. Instead he’d been preparing to leave as soon as their scout arrived. Water, food, weapons, bedrolls awaited them at the stable.

  They rode out of Freedom within an hour of Fedya’s and Mikey’s riding in. Ethan could almost like the man for that.

  Almost, but not quite. He couldn’t forget Farquhar’s having recruited Annabeth as a spy. Twice. What kind of man did that?

  One who had no scruples, no kindness, no charity. One who couldn’t be trusted. Ethan made sure Farquhar rode in front of him so he could watch the detective every second. It wasn’t until they’d been riding for several hours that he caught Fedya doing the same thing.

  A sense of camaraderie that he hadn’t experienced since the war came over him. Ethan didn’t miss the blood and the death and the artillery, but he had missed that.

  Mikey followed the route of one horse carrying two riders. According to him, every other trace that led out of Freedom belonged to one horse and one rider.

  Ethan had never understood how his brother saw such things. To Ethan, a trail was a trail. But for Mikey, each one told a story that only he could read. Oddly, the ability had not been lost with the loss of himself but rather enhanced.

  The four men rode across the prairie, stopping every so often so Mikey could climb from his horse and scowl at the marks on the ground.

  “How does he do that?” Farquhar asked, gaze on the swaying knee-high grasses that appeared exactly the same all the way to the horizon.

  “No one knows,” Fedya answered. “Him least of all.”

  “From the moment he could walk,” Ethan said, “he followed me. I’d try to hide.” He shrugged. “Little brothers, who needs them? But he found me every time. Once”—Ethan paused as Mikey again stopped, dismounted, scowled—“a child disappeared. Her parents feared the Shawnee had taken her. The law refused to look.”

  The Shawnee Indians had relocated from South Carolina to Pennsylvania to Ohio and then on to Kansas and eventually Indian Territory. When Ethan and Mikey had been children in Pennsylvania, there had still been a few bands that refused to move.

  “Where was she?” Farquhar asked as Mikey got back on his horse and continued on; the three of them did the same.

  “With the Shawnee,” Ethan said. “But the Indians were so impressed that Mikey found them, they gave her back.” Fedya and the detective appeared dubious, and Ethan lifted one hand. “I swear.”

  They rode through the excruciating heat of midday. Farquhar stayed close to Mikey, which gave Fedya and Ethan the opportunity to talk. Ethan had not thought he would ever speak to the man again, but suddenly he wanted to.

  “How is he?” Ethan asked.

  “The same.”

  “He’s remembered nothing from his life . . . before?”

  “He remembers everything, Ethan. An entire life that he and I lived.”

  “A life that never happened.”

  Fedya shrugged. “For him it did.”

  The two of them remained silent for several moments; then Fedya continued. “Wouldn’t you rather forget the war? Castle Thunder? Everything that happened then and there?”

  Ethan had thought so. But if he forgot that, he would forget Annabeth. Once he’d believed that would be for the best, but he believed that no longer. Perhaps because he’d tried every way that he knew to forget her, yet still she remained. In his mind, his dreams, his heart.

  “No,” Ethan answered. “I would not.”

  Fedya’s glance said he understood. His sending Annabeth to Ethan proved it. While Ethan had first wanted to strangle him for interfering, the urge had passed.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Fedya’s brow lifted. Ethan waited for him to say something sarcastic—in any language—but he didn’t.

  “You need not worry about Mikhail. Catey loves him as I do. She’s never known him any other way than the way he is now.”

  “I just wish . . .” Ethan began, and Fedya finished. “Me too.”

  “There might be a way to cure him.”

  “Cure?” Fedya said, as if the word were as foreign as some of his own.

  Quickly Ethan shared what had happened to him—the injury, his memory loss, its return.

  “You think if we re-create the situation that caused Mikey to lose his memory, he might regain it?”

  “I don’t know.” Fedya opened his mouth, shut it again, sighed. “Ask,” Ethan urged.

  Fedya slid his gaze to Ethan’s face, then set it back between his horse’s ears. “You will not kill me?”

  “I told you that I wouldn’t. Besides, that threat was entirely too optimistic on my part.”

  “Not really,” Fedya muttered.

  “To think I could kill the Union’s greatest sniper, who happens to have a very large, vicious bodyguard? Definitely overreaching.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Something in Fedya’s voice made Ethan frown. “What are you talking about?”

  The man hesitated, then shook his head. “We are discussing you and the reason you threatened the ‘Union’s once-greatest sniper.’”

  “Courage, courtesy of a bottle.”

  “Oui,” Fedya murmured. “You don’t seem in thrall to the bottle any longer.”

  “She cured me.”

  “Saved you.”

  “Yes.”

  Again Fedya turned his gaze forward, though he seemed to see all the way back home. “They do that.”

  As the sun tumbled toward the western horizon, Farquhar drew even with them. “I’ve been this way before. There’s nothing but washouts and scrub.”

  “Which might be why you’ve never found your outlaw,” Fedya said. “Looks deceive.”

  If anyone knew the truth of that, it was Fedya.

  Less than an hour later, Mikey dismounted, but he didn’t kneel and contemplate dirt. Instead, he stared into a snarl of scrub and thorns. The three men joined him.

  “Lose them?” Farquhar asked.

  Mikey cast him a glare. Farquhar swallowed and lifted a hand to his bruised throat. His brother’s gaze passed over Ethan as if he weren’t there, honing in on Fedya. “Horse went in here. Then a bunch came out and went . . .” He pointed to the east.

  “That can’t be right,” Farquhar murmured. “No horse can get through there. A bunch certainly couldn’t.”

  Fedya pointed to the ground where dozens of hoofprints headed in the direction Mikey had indicated. They seemed to appear right at the edge of the scrub.

  “But how—”

  Mikey pulled back what seemed to be a solid nest of thorns. The thicket swung away like a door, revealing a narrow path coiling downward.

  “Rabbit hole,” Farquhar muttered.

  “Sure ’nough.” Mikey moved forward.

  Ethan put a hand on his brother’s arm. “No.”

  Mikey jerked away; Fedya stepped between them, setting his own hand on the same arm. Mikey quieted instantly.

  Fedya turned to Ethan. “What do you think?”

  “Outlaw gang.” Ethan held up one finger. “Many horses going that way.” He pointed where Mikey had. “Stage rob
bed yesterday near Ellsworth.”

  “Which happens to be that way,” Farquhar murmured.

  “They haven’t come back?” Ethan asked.

  “No,” Mikey answered, and the ache in Ethan’s chest eased a bit at the first word his brother had said to him since he’d become someone else’s brother. It was a start.

  “Didn’t we come to get the man’s wife, Alexi?”

  “We did,” Fedya answered.

  “Then why don’t we get ’er?”

  Ethan blinked. “She’s . . . ?”

  Mikey lifted his chin, indicating the entrance to the rabbit hole. “In there.”

  Fedya shouted something behind him that Ethan couldn’t hear. He was already halfway down the spiraling path.

  • • •

  “Shit,” Annabeth muttered.

  Someone was coming.

  She’d been chewing at the ropes that bound her wrists. Her mouth was sore and her jaw ached. The rope looked exactly the same as it had when she’d started.

  She’d have to return to her original plan. Hope that one of the men was so eager to rape her that he barely removed his pants, let alone his weapons, and that this particular fool was either the first to draw the short straw for her favors or that she survived until a big enough fool did.

  Not the best plan, but the only one she had.

  Annabeth squinted at the opening through which whoever was arriving should appear. She didn’t see enough dust to indicate the entire gang. The arrival sounded like a single person. Had all but one of Lassiter’s gang been killed in their robbery attempt?

  She couldn’t be that lucky. Except . . .

  A skitter and thud was followed by the rattle of rocks rolling down the trail. Then a man stepped out.

  Annabeth closed her eyes. Opened them again. She had been in the sun for days. Her water was nearly gone. She hadn’t eaten. That still didn’t explain what Ethan was doing here.

  Unless he wasn’t.

  “Beth,” he whispered, and ran to her.

  His hands felt real when they cradled her face, his lips the same when they brushed hers. But she knew better. Not only was Wonderland impossible to find, but why would Ethan come after her this time when he hadn’t the last?

  “You’re not real,” she said.

  “Now you sound like me.” He kissed her forehead, then tugged at the knots on her wrists. “What the hell did you do to these?”

  She opened her mouth, and he lifted a hand to her lips. A sweet gesture—she nearly puckered up—then he plucked a rope fiber from between her teeth. “You’d have chewed through them eventually.” He frowned at her black eye. “Someone’s gonna pay for that.”

  “Now you sound like me,” she said.

  He tugged a knife from his pocket, slicing through the rope at her wrists, her ankles, and her waist. Then he hauled her to her feet. As she hadn’t stood on them for two days, she swayed. Ethan lifted her into his arms. Annabeth started to think that maybe, just maybe, this was real.

  When she saw Lassiter Morant blocking the exit, she knew that it was.

  CHAPTER 31

  A man stood at the foot of the rabbit hole alone, no horse, which was how he’d approached without them hearing. He scowled as if he’d like to kill them both. Considering the gun in his hand, he probably would.

  “Let me go,” Annabeth murmured.

  Ethan released her legs. Her feet hit the earth with a dull thud. He kept his arm around her waist, afraid she’d sink into the dirt. Maybe she should. According to Fedya, those nearer the ground made the smallest targets.

  “Get down,” he whispered.

  She wavered, but she didn’t fall. “No.”

  “What the fuck?” the man muttered, coming toward them.

  Ethan stepped around his wife, wishing he hadn’t foolishly left his own pistols with his horse. Although what good they would have done him now, he had no idea. The man had the drop on them.

  Not that Ethan was exceptionally fast on the draw. He could shoot. Sometimes he might even hit something. But his best weapon had always been his brain.

  “Lassiter Morant?” Ethan extended his hand. Maybe the fellow would holster his gun long enough to shake. Stranger things had happened.

  Instead, Morant wrinkled his nose at Ethan’s palm as if he’d smelled something foul and kept the gun pointed at Ethan’s chest. “How did you find this place? It’s . . . it’s . . . impossible.”

  “Not really.” Ethan lowered his hand to his side.

  “Oh,” Annabeth whispered, as understanding dawned.

  Only Mikey could find the impossible. Which meant Mikey was here and, therefore, so was Fedya. Ethan expected a bullet to pierce Morant’s brain momentarily. Both Ethan and Annabeth stepped to the side, out of the line of fire.

  The gun shifted, following them, along with the outlaw’s confused expression. Ethan was equally confused. What in hell was Fedya waiting for? Except . . . if the trio Ethan had arrived with had remained at the entrance to the rabbit hole, the outlaw would not be here. Where were they?

  “How did that stage robbery work out for you?” Annabeth asked. “You seem short a few men. All of them, in fact.”

  “I rode ahead. Wanted to get back to”—Morant smirked—“you.”

  “Let him go,” Annabeth blurted. “I’ll do anything you want. You can . . . do anything you want.”

  “Oh, I plan to.” The smirk widened. “He can watch.”

  Risking a glance upward, Ethan saw nothing, no one. He wasn’t surprised. Neither Mikey nor Fedya had survived this long by allowing themselves to be seen by the enemy.

  “You said if I was breathing when you returned, you wouldn’t hurt him.”

  “And you believed me? Oh, Anna, you fool.”

  Ethan disliked the man’s calling her a fool almost as much as he disliked Morant’s shortened version of her name. At least the bastard wasn’t calling her Beth.

  Annabeth shrugged. “Worth a try.”

  “You think I’d leave you?” Ethan murmured. “You are a fool.”

  Her lips tightened. “I left you. I went to him, chose him. You’re the fool.”

  Ethan just rolled his eyes and returned his gaze to the man with the gun.

  “She did come willingly,” Lassiter said. “She’s part of my gang. She’s stolen, cheated, lied, and a whole lot more.”

  “Me too,” Ethan said. “You both must think I’m an imbecile. My wife just said you threatened my life. Of course she went with you.”

  “I didn’t threaten you until we got here.”

  “Bullshit,” Ethan returned. “That knife was a threat louder than words.”

  “How did you—?” Annabeth began, then muttered, “Ass.”

  Ethan hoped she was referring to Farquhar and not to him.

  “You wanted her back,” Ethan continued. “I understand that. Who wouldn’t?”

  “I didn’t want her back; I wanted her dead.”

  Ethan shifted again. What in hell was taking Fedya so long to shoot this guy?

  “If you’d wanted her dead, why didn’t you kill her before now?”

  “She doesn’t get to die fast and easy. She betrayed me.”

  “She was my wife first.”

  “She’ll be my whore last.”

  “Watch what you say,” Ethan murmured.

  “Or what?” Morant asked. “You think I let her in my gang because she could ride a horse? I let her in because she rode me.”

  Morant stepped so close, the barrel of the gun brushed Ethan’s shirt. Huge mistake. Ethan had been taught to disarm fools like this by a master.

  He grabbed the barrel with one hand, pushed it away, and twisted. The gun went off; the bullet plowed harmlessly into the dirt. Ethan used his other hand to break Lassiter Morant’s nose.

  The outlaw fell backward, blood spurting. Ethan handed the weapon to his wife and followed. He wanted to hit him again and again, but Lassiter’s nose wasn’t the only thing Ethan had broken. Ethan cradled his
screaming hand.

  “Are you crazy?” Annabeth asked, pointing Morant’s gun at Morant’s head. “He could have shot you.”

  Oddly, things had moved too fast for Ethan to even consider that. He’d wanted to stop the outlaw’s words with his fist, so he had. Luckily, Morant had been stupid enough to get close, and Ethan had spent time in prison with Fedya, a man who knew just what to do in this situation.

  “He insulted my wife.”

  “That wasn’t an insult. You can believe what he told you.”

  “Oh, I believe him. I just don’t care.”

  “If you believe him, why did you hit him?”

  “Someone had to. I was hoping for a bullet from Fedya, but that didn’t happen.”

  Gunfire erupted in the distance.

  “My men are gonna kill you both.” The threat in the outlaw’s words was negated by the nasally whine of his voice through a blood-clogged nose.

  Annabeth cocked the gun. “I’m gonna kill you if you give me the slightest reason.”

  “Bitch,” he muttered.

  Annabeth appeared bored. “I’ve been called worse than that by better than you.”

  Ethan considered his left hand, which he’d already curled into a fist as the right was pretty much worthless. Morant wouldn’t be able to talk at all with a broken jaw.

  “You have better uses for that hand,” she said.

  Ethan looped his left arm around her shoulder. She was right.

  The gunfire slowed, picked up again, ended. Distant shouts were followed by a whole lot of silence. Just when Ethan was about to take the path upward, the sound of hoofbeats came downward; Fedya and Farquhar appeared.

  “Mikey?” Ethan asked as they dismounted.

  Please let him be okay, he thought, then realized that his definition of “okay” had changed. All Ethan wanted was for Mikey to be as he’d been the last time he’d seen him. He didn’t care if his brother called himself Mikhail and didn’t know Ethan from General Grant.