by Lori Austin
“Guarding the door.” Fedya gave a graceful, Gallic shrug. “Such as it is.”
“Where are my men?” Morant asked.
“In hell, I imagine.”
“All of them?”
Fedya spread his hands. “I’m not sure how many you have.”
“Eleven.”
“Then, yes. All of them.” He narrowed his eyes on Lassiter’s face. “Nice work.” He lowered his gaze to Ethan’s hand. “I must teach you how to break noses without injuring yourself.”
“And I’ll teach you how to hit people in the head before I have to.” Fedya’s gaze slid away, and Ethan frowned. “Where the hell were you?”
“Searching for an elevated position,” Farquhar said. “You know, so we could save her like we wanted to and not get trapped in here. Like you.”
“The only reason I was trapped was because you wandered off and let the bastard in.”
“He has a point,” Fedya murmured.
“Shut up,” Ethan and Farquhar said at the same time.
“You’d have been searching a long time.” Annabeth waved her free hand—the other still held Lassiter’s own weapon steady on him—at the narrow opening above them. “There’s a reason this place is called a rabbit hole. It’s hard to get a decent shot from up there. Though I suppose if anyone could have, that someone would have been you.”
“Perhaps,” Fedya agreed.
“We’re alive; they’re dead,” Annabeth continued. “We win.”
“I’m not dead,” Morant snarled.
“You will be,” Ethan said.
“No one ever saw me do anything. I made sure of it.”
“You killed Cora Lewis.”
“Prove it.”
Farquhar drew from his pocket the carved knife he’d “confiscated” from the sheriff’s office. “Look familiar?”
“No.”
“One of my top detectives saw you carve it. I’m sure she’ll swear to that, as well as anything else she knows about you.”
Lassiter’s gaze flicked to Annabeth’s. “I will kill you.”
“You can try.”
Lassiter exploded off the ground. The sun sparked off a second knife. Ethan leaped in front of Annabeth. He didn’t realize he’d blocked both her shot and Farquhar’s until the detective cursed and Annabeth shoved Ethan in the back.
The knife sped toward Ethan’s chest. He lifted his only good hand, hoping he could stop its decent, as well as turn Morant around so that someone, anyone, had a shot. But Ethan had never been much good at anything with his left hand.
The boom of a gun echoed around the cavernous space. The outlaw fell backward. He no longer had to worry about a broken nose. If he were still alive, he might have worried about his missing face.
Mikey stood near the entrance, rifle still at his shoulder. He lowered it and hurried to join them.
Farquhar’s gaze narrowed on Fedya. “Thought you were the sniper.”
Fedya peered at his nails. “Times change.”
CHAPTER 32
Ma’am.” Mikey ducked his head.
Annabeth could tell by the expression in his gray eyes that he didn’t remember her. But why should he? Her days as Nurse Annabeth had occurred before his injury.
“Hello. I’m Annabeth.”
“Mikhail,” he said. “Yer the doc’s wife?”
“Yes. Thank you for finding me.”
“It’s what I do best.”
She almost said “I know,” but that would only confuse him. Instead, she patted him on the arm and smiled. But that only seemed to confuse him, too, because he wandered off, rubbing at his head.
“I blamed you for his death,” Ethan murmured. Annabeth wasn’t certain whom he was talking to—perhaps all of them.
Fedya muttered something derogatory in a language that sounded quite pretty. When they glanced at him, he shrugged. “He is not dead.”
“I know.” Ethan returned his gaze to Mikhail, who’d started cleaning his boots with his knife. “He’s . . . fine.”
Annabeth peered at her husband. “I think you might finally believe that.”
“I do.” Ethan faced the former sniper. “I’m sorry.”
Fedya tilted his head, and his ebony hair slid over his ridiculously blue eyes. “I think you might mean that.”
“I was wrong about a lot. Especially you.”
“It was war. Terrible things happened to us all.” Fedya glanced at Annabeth and smiled the smile that had seduced a thousand women but had never had any effect on her. “The only way to move on is to devote your life to something good. I must return to my life. I miss her.” Fedya snapped his fingers, and Mikhail came toward them.
“Wait,” Moze said. “I don’t know why I never thought of this before.” He stared at Mikhail as if he’d just dug into an anthill and discovered gold. “He can find anything.”
“He is not a show pony either,” Fedya said.
Moze ignored him as he moved his gaze to Annabeth. “He can find anyone.”
“Luke,” she whispered. She’d wished she could ask for Mikey’s—for Mikhail’s—help so many times, and now that he was here, she hadn’t even thought of it.
“Who is Luke?” Fedya asked.
“My brother. He’s the reason I . . .” Annabeth paused, not wanting to go into all that she had done.
“Annabeth’s brother was one of Mosby’s Rangers. He went missing at Mount Zion Church,” Ethan said. “The intelligence came out of Chimborazo.”
“Ah,” Fedya murmured.
“Then she exchanged you for him,” Ethan continued. Fedya gave a half bow. “Except the man they brought wasn’t him.”
Fedya glanced at Farquhar, who hunched his shoulders. Fedya’s gaze narrowed. “Do you know where Luke is?”
Farquhar shook his head, then looked down. Both Fedya and Mikhail took a step toward the detective, who took a quick step back.
“Stop,” Annabeth ordered.
“He’s lying,” Fedya said. “Believe me, I know lying.”
“I’m not! Annie Beth Lou, I—”
Fedya flicked a finger, and Mikhail lifted Moze by his collar; his feet dangled and kicked. “I would hazard to guess that all the men he sent after Morant were unsuccessful. No one ever got as close as you did to what he was after. Oui?”
“Oui,” Annabeth agreed.
“And if he would have told you he’d found your brother, or at least had some word of him, you would have left your post and gone searching?” Fedya cast her a glance, and she nodded. “So he kept what he knew to himself and let you continue to . . .” He waved a hand at the dead Lassiter Morant.
Annabeth turned her gaze to Moze, a man she’d known all her life, a man she’d trusted. “Is this true?”
Moze tried to speak, but couldn’t.
“Mikhail,” Fedya murmured, and the big man released his prisoner.
Moze spent a few minutes catching his breath. But finally he gasped. “I knew you’d succeed. You were so damn close.”
“You lied?”
“I’m a spy. That’s what I do. What you do.”
True enough. She just hadn’t thought he’d lie to her.
“She almost died,” Ethan said. “I thought you cared about her.”
“I do.”
“You have a damn interesting way of showing it.”
“I took her in when you cast her out.”
“I tried to find her,” Ethan muttered.
Annabeth’s heart lurched. “You . . . what?”
“I looked everywhere. I even got in touch with my old superior. He couldn’t find you, either.”
“And why was that?” Fedya kept his sharp blue gaze on the detective.
“Because Yankees can’t find their ass with both hands,” Moze snapped.
“Perhaps.” Fedya’s smile gave Annabeth a chill. “Or perhaps you made certain every attempt at locating Annabeth was thwarted.”
“I—” was all Moze managed before Annabeth punched him in the chin. He fell to the gr
ound.
“I quit,” she said.
“I could not have done that any better myself,” Fedya said. “Perhaps now we could focus on the question at hand?”
“What question?” Moze got to his feet, rubbing at his jaw.
“Where is Annabeth’s dear brother?”
“I . . . uh . . .”
Fedya sighed. “Must she hit you again?”
Moze glanced at Annabeth, then looked quickly away. The way he was behaving, she wanted to hit him again.
“There’s word among the Indians of a man with hair of fire,” Moze blurted.
“Now we know why Joe was so damn fascinated with your hair,” Ethan observed.
“I thought he was fighting Indians.” Annabeth said.
“He was. But not long after he arrived, some white women and children were taken. He was with the group that rode out to get them back.”
“Did they?”
“Yes. Only Luke wasn’t with them when they returned. Army thought he was dead, maybe escaped. They didn’t care enough to find out which.”
His disappearance so soon after being “galvanized” might explain why there’d been no record of Luke Phelan in Kansas.
“How long have you known this?”
“Not long.”
As Moze was the one who’d taught her how not to answer a question, Annabeth lifted a brow.
“I found another man who was with that party,” he explained. “Said Luke exchanged himself for the captives.”
“And then?”
“There wasn’t any word of him, not a whisper until several of the tribes started talking about the white ghost with hair of fire who lives in the hills and talks to the spirits.”
“What does that mean?” Annabeth asked. Moze spread his hands. “I’ll take Mikhail, and we’ll—”
“Too late,” Fedya murmured, and when she glanced at him, he pointed upward. At the rim of Wonderland, a puff of dust drifted west. “Mikhail has already left.”
• • •
They buried the outlaws at the bottom of their hidden Wonderland, then pulled shut the thorn gate and rode away.
Fedya headed for Colorado, where his wife and soon-to-be child awaited.
Moze tugged a priest’s collar from his pack and positioned it around his neck.
“What are you up to?” Annabeth asked.
“If I live through it, I’ll tell you.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Annie Beth Lou. You seemed better when you were working, and you were damn good at it. I wanted Morant so badly. But I should have told you the truth.”
Ethan stood a few yards away with their horses. His cool, gray gaze, which he kept trained on Moze, made the Pinkerton uncomfortable, but he deserved it. Still—
“If you had, I might never have gone back to Freedom. And, Moze . . .” Annabeth waited until he met her eyes. “I needed to go back.”
He seemed about to say something else, then merely nodded and left, taking most of the outlaws’ horses along for company.
Annabeth and Ethan headed toward Freedom.
She experienced a tingle of déjà vu as they rode into town in the depths of the night. The moon cast the silent street in every shade of silver.
They dealt with their own horses, as the stable boy snored softly, then strolled toward home. Ethan took her hand. Annabeth let him.
Inside the house, everything seemed exactly the same, except for the mattress against the wall and the papers on the desk.
Ethan crossed the room, lifted them with his unbroken hand; the other was wrapped in dirty strips of cloth, which didn’t do much but remind him not to use it. As if the pain didn’t already. He tilted the sheets toward the moonlight. “Divorce papers.”
Annabeth stilled. She’d forgotten about them.
“I wanted you to be happy,” she said. “To have what you always dreamed of. What I couldn’t give you. A wife, a child, a family.”
He stepped so close, his body skimmed hers. “Why can’t you give me that?”
She turned away. She couldn’t look at him while she admitted the truth. “It’s not that I can’t. It’s that . . .” She took a breath. “What Lassiter said was true. I slept with him to gain his trust. I pretended to be—no, I was—his mistress for months, and he wasn’t the first. I’m not the woman you knew. I won’t ever be her again.”
She waited; she wasn’t sure for what. Then the silence was split by the screech of papers being torn—once, twice, again. Annabeth spun as the pieces tumbled to the ground. How he’d torn them with one good hand, she wasn’t quite sure. He must have used his teeth.
“I told you before that I don’t care.” He crossed the room, cupped her neck. “I’ll keep telling you if you like, or we could just forget the past five years ever happened.”
Annabeth didn’t even have to think about that. “Let’s forget.”
He kissed her softly, sweetly, the way he had the first time at Chimborazo. Back then all they’d had were secrets. Later all they’d had were lies. But now . . .
Now they had a world of possibilities.
The door opened. For the first time in a long time, Annabeth did not reach for her gun. She didn’t have one. She didn’t need it.
“Doc?” One of the townsfolk stuck his head in, relief flowing over his face at the sight of them. “Thank God yer both back. We need your help. Hurry!”
Ethan extended his good hand; Annabeth put hers into it.
“My bag,” he murmured, and she snatched it as, together, they followed the man into the night.
Toward the life they had always wanted.
Read on for a look at the first novel in Lori Austin’s
Once Upon a Time in the West series,
BEAUTY AND THE BOUNTY HUNTER
Available from Signet Eclipse.
By the time they reached the hotel, Alexi was behaving so strangely, Cat’s skin started to itch. Was someone watching them? Following them? Was that target she felt on her back real?
“How long should we stay?” she asked.
“Until full dark at least.”
Cat understood why, but she didn’t like it. She wanted out of this town.
Yesterday.
They strolled through the lobby, heads together, murmuring like the lovebirds they weren’t. Alexi nodded to the clerk, who’d been here when the Signora arrived but obviously hadn’t been when Jed did since the man stared at them without recognition.
“Jed and Meg Nelson.” Alexi held out a hand. “Room 12.”
The clerk handed over the key after a quick glance at the register. Knowing Alexi, his scribbled name was so illegible it could be anything, even Jed and Meg. Another trick of their trade. One never knew when an identity might need to be changed middodge.
Once Cat was inside, her gaze circled the room, which was exactly the same as hers down the hall—right down to the deck of cards sitting in the center of the table.
She crossed to the window, through which a tepid breeze blew. Tossing off her bonnet, she stuck her head out, knocking the “baby” against the casing. She wasn’t used to having all this extra front.
She reached around to remove her costume, and Alexi snapped, “Leave it.”
Cat started and glanced over her shoulder. He was closer than she’d thought. Very close. “Why?”
“All we need is for someone to knock on the door and you’ve . . .” He waved vaguely in the area of her midsection.
“Lost the baby?”
He winced, and she heard what she’d said. The words gave her a strange, hollow feeling. But what was his excuse?
Cat tilted her head. She couldn’t decipher his expression. His face seemed so . . . different.
The bruises, she thought. She’d never once seen Alexi with a bruise on his face. It changed him, made him vulnerable. She wasn’t sure she liked that any more than he appeared to.
Come to think of it—she tilted her head in the opposite direction—she’d rarely seen Alexi with a bruise anywhere. And she’d seen
everywhere.
The memory of that seeing, the touching, the tasting suddenly hit her so hard, she swayed.
He cursed. French? Spanish? Italian? She wasn’t certain, but whatever language, the words, the tone, and the cadence were both beautiful and brutal. Kind of like Alexi himself.
She brushed her fingertips across his face. “Why did you let him hurt you?”
“Sometimes,” he said, “the hurt just happens.”
She narrowed her eyes. She didn’t think he was talking about Langston anymore.
He peered at her as if trying to see into her mind, her heart, her soul. “Don’t you agree?”
Cat froze, hand still in the air. She’d never shared a single word about her hurts. As she didn’t plan to start now, she sidled away.
Alexi crossed to the table, where he picked up the deck of cards and began to shuffle. She became entranced, seduced by the grace, the rhythm. How could she have forgotten? In Alexi’s hands, cards did whatever he wanted them to. Kind of like women.
“When you say ‘knock,’” Cat murmured, bringing them back to their earlier conversation, happy to pretend the other had never happened, “you mean ‘bust in here and drag us back to jail’?”
“No.” He didn’t look up; he just kept shuffling the cards. “As long as you keep that kid in place, and Meg on your face, we’ll be fine.”
Why was he irritated with her? She’d just saved his life.
Cat paced in front of the window. The urge to peer from it again was nearly overwhelming. What was out there that was bothering her? If there was a rifle, and considering the prickling of her skin, there might be, she should stay away from the window.
She sat. First on the bed. Then on the chair. Then on the bed again. Alexi ignored her, seemingly captivated with the cards.
Cat went to the door, put her hand on the knob. Alexi tsked, and she turned away. Her gaze went again to the window, and from this angle, with the horizon framed like a picture, she saw what was wrong. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before, but she’d been Meg, and Meg wouldn’t recognize that vista. Only Cathleen would.
She had not been back to the farm since she had left it nearly two years ago. It took Cat only an instant to decide that she was going back now. Or at least as soon as she could get away from Alexi.