Russia, if the marshal comes for you, I can promise you that I won’t do a thing to stop him.
His declaration blazed through her mind. He’d left her. She knew he had. True to his word, he wasn’t going to help her. He wanted no tangle with the law and had packed up, abandoning her to the hangman’s noose.
She stumbled into a pothole. On her knees, she moaned and felt assaulted by uncontrollable fear.
The marshal started to pull her to her feet. “Get up, or I’ll drag—”
“Marshal Wilkens!” a man shouted as he raced up. “The bank! Mr. Emerson! Four men— Where’s Deputy Barnes? I’ll go find him! I’ll—”
“Hold on, Cecil!” Marshal Wilkens admonished, tightening his grip on Russia’s arm and jerking her up from the ground. “What—”
“Bank robbery,” Cecil said, panting. “Four men—Marshal, it’s the Baylor brothers. I was leavin’ the livery, and I seen all four of ’em with my own eyes! Not but five minutes ago, Mr. Emerson was closin’ the bank, and they forced him back inside. He— God, Marshal, his wife was with him, and they got her, too! Them murderin’ bastards say they’ll shoot Mr. and Miz Emerson dead if they don’t get some dynamite! And poor Miz Emerson—she’s fixin’ to have that baby any day now! What if she starts havin’ pains? What if—”
“Dynamite?” Marshal Wilkens yelled. “What—”
“To open the safe!” Cecil screamed, pulling at his sideburns. “Mr. Emerson done sent the safe keys over to your office! You know how he don’t like takin’ the keys home with him. The Baylor brothers, they want dynamite, and if they don’t get it, they’ll kill Mr. and Miz Emerson! And they’ll do it, too, Marshal. They killed six people over in Snide Junction just last month!”
Marshal Wilkens shivered with an ominous chill. No one had to tell him about the Baylor brothers. For over a year they’d been wanted for every crime it was possible to commit, and no one had ever come close to catching them. They were inhuman killers, all four of them.
And now they were in his town. He felt as if he were falling into a bottomless gulf of fear. “The Baylors.”
“Worst thing about it, Marshal,” Cecil continued wildly, “is that them Baylors lie! What if you get ’em the dynamite and they still kill Mr. and Miz Emerson?”
Marshal Wilkens hung his head, staring at the ground without seeing it. “Deputy Barnes rode over to Gladesboro for a county meeting, I don’t…I don’t know what to… I can’t—”
His head snapped up. “God! Where’s Santiago Zamora? No less than ten people told me he was here!”
Cecil nodded so vigorously his hat fell off and flew down the street. “I’ll get every man in town to look for him!”
When Cecil dashed down the street, Marshal Wilkens pulled Russia toward his office. His confidence having been restored by the comforting knowledge of Santiago Zamora’s presence in town, he grinned broadly. “Looks like you’ll be having company in jail, Miss Valentine.”
“What do y’want to arrest me fer? I ain’t some kinda criminal like them Baylor brothers, and I ain’t gonna be put in the same jailhouse with—”
“I’ve a good mind to put them in the same cell with you. Now there’s an idea,” he said, his smile widening as his gaze swept to her breasts. “Tonight, after the town’s asleep, I could put you to work. I’ll be the first to discover the hidden charms between your white thighs; then the Baylors’ll be welcome to my leavings. One last night of earthly pleasure is the least I can give to four men who are doomed to hang.”
“Of course, that all depends on if they’re able to enjoy it,” he amended. “From what I’ve heard about Zamora, he’d rather kill his prey than take the time to bring it in alive. The man thrives on bloodshed. But don’t you go worrying about being alone in a dark and scary jail all night. I’ll still make my little visit.”
A thread of hysteria began to wind through her. Memories exploded inside her. Come to Wirt, darlin’. Come to yer sweet ole Wirt.
No! she screamed inwardly. She would never let that happen again!
Tossing her head defiantly, she met the marshal’s lust-filled gaze with a piercing glare. “When tonight comes,” she began, her voice strong and steady, “it’s gonna be mighty interestin’ to see who’s alive and who ain’t. I seed how scared you was before you remembered Zamora was in town. You was jumpy as a basketful o’ bullfrogs, but y’know what, Marshal? Zamora ain’t here. I reckon you’ll have to handle them Baylors all by your yeller self.”
He jerked her up the steps in front of his office. “What the hell do you know about Santiago Zamora?” Opening the jailhouse door, he shoved her inside.
“Buenas noches, Marshal.”
Russia gasped. In the marshal’s chair, his long, muscular legs propped up on the desk, sat Santiago. “Why, you slicker’n-a-boiled-onion varmint, you! I thought you was gone! Smooth as a mole’s tit, ain’tcha, Zamora! Slithered yourself right outta that cafe when the marshal come fer me! Snake! How dare you let me git arrested!”
He gave no sign he was even aware of her presence. His eyes remained on the wide-eyed lawman. “Several men have been in here looking for you, Marshal. I hear you have a little problem over at the bank. Would you accept my help in solving it?”
Marshal Wilkens felt relief course through his every vein. He nodded. “There’s a five-thousand-dollar reward.”
Santiago raised a brow. “That’s if the Baylors are brought in dead. It’s ten thousand if they’re alive.”
“I—Yes, you’re right, Mr. Zamora. But I just assumed you would kill—”
“Your assumption was wrong,” Santiago snapped. “When can you get the reward money? All ten thousand of it?”
“I could have the county sheriff get it here tomorrow afternoon.”
Santiago flicked his cheroot to the floor and snubbed it out with the toe of his boot. “Ten thousand dollars,” he said, letting the words roll off his tongue as if he were testing to see if he liked the flavor they left in his mouth. “I’m sorry, Marshal, but I’m afraid that won’t be enough. Looks like you’ll have to deal with the Baylors without my assistance.”
The image of a tombstone pushed into Marshal Wilkens’s mind. He saw his own name carved on it. Sweat dripped down the sides of his angular face. “But I’m—I’m not at liberty to offer more.”
“It’s not more money I want.”
The marshal frowned in confusion and desperation and fear. “Then what else can I give you?”
Santiago slid his ebony gaze to Russia. “Her.”
Chapter Six
“So you see?” Santiago concluded, the bank’s safe keys dangling from his fingers. “There will be no need for dynamite.” He leaned forward in the marshal’s chair, waiting for Russia and the lawman’s reactions to the scheme he’d just finished explaining to them.
Russia, standing inside a locked cell, grabbed hold of the bars and pressed her face against the cold metal. “Well, now I know how the hell dumbbells are maked! They use your head fer a mold! That’s the stupidest plan I ever heared of, Zamora! If you think I’m gonna jist waltz into that bank with them keys, you’d best know right here and now that I ain’t. Ain’t! Now git me out o’ this damn cell, hear?”
He gave her a slow smile, rather enjoying her anger. He’d locked her up himself. Maybe now she’d think twice before comparing him to a mole’s tit again. Shaking his head in refusal to grant her demands to be set free, he glanced at Marshal Wilkens. His smile faded instantly. “Marshal?”
Marshal Wilkens rubbed the back of his neck. “I do have to agree that it’s a strange plan, sending Miss Valentine in with the keys. There are any number of men in town I could send instead. It’s a simple matter of deputizing one of them.”
Santiago didn’t miss the fact that the marshal didn’t offer to take the keys himself. “Your concern for Miss Valentine touches me, Marshal. You’re afraid for her safety, is that it?”
Marshal Wilkens gave a weak nod.
“What do you care, Mars
hal Corn Cob?” Russia blasted, her eyes slanting as she pushed her face further between two bars. “You was gonna hang me anyway! Or maybe it’s jist that if I git shooted by one o’ them Baylors, you won’t have the pleasure o’ execratin’ me with your own hands!”
Santiago looked down at the desktop and smiled again. “The pleasure of executing you.”
“Whatever! Execrate, execute—what the hell difference does it make? Either way I’m gonna die!”
Santiago rose and went over to the cell, stopping just far enough away so that Russia couldn’t reach him should she try. “You are not going to die. Nor will you be hurt. Not at the hands of the Baylor brothers or Marshal Wilkens. But you will serve a term in jail for returning to Rock Springs after having been ordered not to. That is, unless you cooperate with the plan. Isn’t that correct, Marshal?”
Marshal Wilkens struggled to conceal his disappointment. He wouldn’t dare argue with the infamous gunslinger, but the loss of his night with Russia pained him considerably. He’d been so ready for the feel of her bucking beneath him. So anxious to smother her screams with his hot kisses. Even now…even knowing she obviously belonged to Santiago Zamora…his loins burned.
“Marshal?” Santiago asked again. He turned, sizing up the lawman with black eyes that missed nothing. Lust crawled all over the man’s face. Disappointment, too, and Santiago realized then that the destroyed hotel was only part of the reason that Marshal Wilkens had been so damn anxious to arrest Russia.
The thought of her in the bastard’s skinny arms infuriated him. He didn’t bother trying to understand the motive for his anger, but concentrated only on containing the urge to kill the man with his bare hands. “I asked you a question, Marshal,” he snapped, his voice sharp as shattered glass.
At the expression in the gunman’s eyes, Marshal Wilkens gulped. The fire of fury flared from those black depths, a fire so real the marshal began to sweat from its heat. “Yes, yes, of course! She’ll get her freedom if she agrees to your plan. She—I— It’s the very least I can do to show the town’s gratitude for her assistance.”
Santiago gave the shaking man one last crucifying glare, then turned back to Russia. “The Baylors have been waiting for their instructions to be carried out for half an hour already, and I think it’s safe to say their patience is near an end. Now what’s your decision?”
She tapped her chin with her index finger, her nail brushing her bottom lip. “Why are you so sure I ain’t gonna git killed or hurt?”
“Because I’ll have my eye on you the whole time you’re in the bank.”
“And you’ll shoot the first man who tries to git me?”
“Through the head, through the heart, or through the earlobe. Which would you prefer?”
Damn the man for taking her fear so lightly! “What if you miss, Zamora? What if—”
“I can shoot the balls off a flea, and he’d never realize he’d been gelded. Have you forgotten that?”
Oh, to knock that smug grin right off his face! she thought angrily. Thrusting her arm through the bars, she took a wild swing at him. Her knuckles only brushed the collar of his black shirt, and, much to her dismay, his arrogant smile widened. Infuriated, she turned her back on him.
Santiago watched her stiffen, then walk to the back of the cell and plop down on the small cot. But she didn’t quite get the whole of her bottom on it. She slipped off, landing on the floor.
Santiago crossed his arms over his chest. “You wanted to know why I chose Miss Valentine to take the keys to the bank, Marshal?” he asked, squelching his amusement. “Let’s just say that no person in this entire town, man or woman, is capable of accomplishing the job quite like she will.”
* * *
Standing in the middle of the now-deserted street, directly in front of the bank, Russia watched Santiago creep along the side of the building. A second later she could no longer see him and knew that his somber clothing, sable hair, and dark skin had helped him blend in with the night.
He was alone; she wondered where Marshal Wilkens was. Looking all around, she couldn’t find the lawman anywhere.
A brisk breeze swept past her, blowing dust in her eyes, ruffling her hair and skirts, and making her shiver with cold and fear. “‘Knock on the door,’ he says,” she muttered, repeating Santiago’s instructions. “‘Tell ’em you got the keys,’ he says. ‘Go straight in and give ’em the keys,’ he says. ‘I’ll take care o’ the rest,’ he says.”
Her hand tightening around the safe keys, she felt deep anger shake her. “Damn you to hell and back, Zamora,” she seethed quietly. “What do you got to worry about? You’re armed to the teeth and ain’t nowheres near them killers. Here I am gittin’ ready to go meet ’em eye to eye, and I don’t got as much as a slingshot to defend myself with!”
Struggling to find whatever valor existed inside her, she stared at the bank. The windows, though curtained, were blazing with light. She could see shadows moving past them and knew they belonged to the Baylor brothers. Every part of her longed to turn and run.
But the Baylors were not the only people in the bank. The banker and his pregnant wife were in there, too, she recalled. She was to draw the outlaws’ attention away from the couple. How could she run away, knowing their lives depended on her following Santiago’s plan?
“Be brave, Russia,” she told herself, taking a few steps forward. “Die courageous-some fer your feller man.” With her chin lifted so high that her nose pointed to the moon, she strode briskly to the door of the bank. She knocked loud and long, all the while reminding herself that Santiago was close by and ready to move to her immediate aid. “Flea balls,” she said, the words soothing much of her fear.
“Brung the safe keys, Misters Baylors!” she yelled, her lips touching the sturdy wooden door. “Ain’t no need fer dynamite, y’know?” She tried to recall everything Santiago had told her to say. “It’s a good thing there ain’t no need fer it, on account o’ there ain’t as much as one lousy stick of it in the whole damn town! That’s what took us so long to git back to you, y’see. We was all huntin’ dynamite. But like I done tole you, there ain’t none.”
She saw the curtain in the window part to reveal the homeliest face she’d ever seen. And his ears! She’d never seen such big ears! “Good God, feller,” she mumbled without moving her lips, “what do y’do with them ears? Swat flies?” Forcing a huge smile to her lips, she held the keys up for him to see.
Someone abruptly snatched the door open. “Get in here!” a man’s voice exploded from behind it.
Again she remembered Santiago’s promise to stay close to her. She had no idea exactly where he was, but she remained confident he was near. “Oh, well, that’s jist plumb nelly kind o’ you to invite me,” she chimed to the empty doorway, then sashayed inside.
She stopped short when she saw the Baylors. The other three were just as big-eared and ugly as the one at the window. All four of them held guns, and one had a dagger clamped between his teeth.
Shuddering, she forced herself to remember that she was supposed to distract them. She decided to sing. Taking a deep breath, she prepared to belt out a lively song. But before she’d sung a note, she saw the Emersons. She gasped.
Mrs. Emerson, tied to the leg of a heavy desk across the room, panted and moaned through the gag around her mouth, her pale face contorting with spasms of pain. Russia realized immediately that the woman was in labor.
The banker himself, Mr. Emerson, lay near his wife, motionless. Blood flowed from a wound on his temple, pooling around his face.
Blood.
Instantly, nausea assaulted Russia. In great waves it rolled through her, and she couldn’t quell it. Clapping her hand over her mouth, she stumbled around, weaving through the maze of red velvet cording that partitioned the room, desperate to reach some solid object on which to support herself.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, girl?” one of the Baylor brothers shouted. “Give us the damn keys!”
Vague
ly, Russia heard his command and raised her hand to show the men the keys. Still struggling to subdue her queasiness, she began to sway and realized she was right on the verge of fainting. She spun, lunging for the bars of the cash window atop the service counter.
But she misjudged the distance from the steel-barred window and toppled over a section of the thick velvet cording. Her tumble to the floor knocked the breath from her lungs and the keys to the safe from her hand. She groaned with both pain and apprehension when she saw the keys skid under the counter.
The Baylors, mouths agape, watched as the carved posts that held the cording began to teeter. One by one, in a chain reaction, the posts tipped over, sending the heavy mass of cording writhing all over the floor like a huge crimson snake. “Dammit, look what she done!” one of them yelled.
“The keys!” another boomed. “The bitch dropped ’em, and they slid under the counter!”
All four of the outlaws started picking their way over the tangle of cording. Two fell, landing in a heap together; the other two made it to the service counter.
“Blood,” Russia murmured weakly, raising her finger toward Mr. Emerson.
“Shut up!” one of the brothers demanded, battling the cording entangled around his feet. “We gotta move this damn rope before we break our necks tryin’ to get around it!” he screamed at his cohorts.
Together, the men lifted the thick cording, hoisting it and the posts over their shoulders and heaving them across the room. That done, they got to their hands and knees and crawled to the service counter.
“Dammit to hell!” one of them cursed, the side of his face pressed flat on the floor as he peered under the solid counter. “They’re right there, just outta reach!” He tried to slide his hand beneath the counter, to no avail. Less than half an inch of space existed between the counter and the floor.
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