by Pam Crooks
“Take your dinner into your room, Chat,” he said.
Chat gasped. “What? Why?”
“Miss Renault—” he taunted Lark with the name “—and I have matters to discuss.”
Chat’s glance bounced between them. “But I want to know what happened, too!”
“Do as I said.”
Lark’s heart began a slow pound. This was it. The confrontation that had been simmering between them for five long years. Santana knew she had one secret left. Did he think she’d give it to him without a fight?
Chat crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going to my room this time. I’m sixteen, Ross. Almost full-grown. I don’t need you protecting me all the time.”
His dark head swiveled toward her. “The hell you don’t.”
“Someone is after Miss Renault. Father Baxter brought her out here so you could help her. That means she’s in danger.” Chat leaned forward. “Does that put me in danger, too?”
Santana’s jaw clenched. Chat had zeroed in on her brother’s weak spot. She hit pay dirt and knew it.
“Then I have a right to know what’s going on, don’t I? Same as you,” she said.
Chat made a strong argument, but still Santana hesitated. In the coming moments, Lark knew, he intended to cut her wide open, make her bleed out the truths from her past. It was understandable he’d want to shield Chat from the ugliness of all that happened between them at the Turf Club.
Lark suspected, though, he was protecting her, too, for as long as he could. A gallant attempt to preserve her new identity and the respectable life she’d built in Ida Grove, the only one Chat had ever known.
Maybe Santana had a streak of honor in him. In spite of everything, he deserved to understand the threat Catfish Jack presented. Chat did, too. And Lark would do them both an injustice by not telling them.
She drew in a breath. “I’ll talk.”
Santana’s attention jumped back to her. “Damn right you will.”
“But I want Chat to stay.”
He seemed to ponder that, kill some time while he reached for the bottle of Old Taylor and poured himself a stiff one. Finally, he met his sister’s hopeful glance. He met Lark’s, too. And swore softly under his breath.
After throwing back a quick swallow of whiskey, he lifted his glass in a mock salute.
“Well, then. Talk away, Red. We’re listening.”
Chapter Five
“You’re not really Lark Renault, are you?” Chat asked quietly.
“Yes. I am.”
“But Ross called you Wild Red.”
Lark chose her words carefully. Besides Santana, Chat would be the only other person in Ida Grove, in all of Iowa for that matter, who would know of her past life.
Except Catfish Jack, and he didn’t count.
“My father was born in France, and his family name was Renault,” Lark said. “When he was a young man, he came to America and brought his brother with him.”
“Wilkinson Reno,” Santana said.
Lark glanced at him in surprise. “Yes. How did you know?”
“I always investigate the men I’m hunting for. Besides, Renault and Reno sound alike.” Santana speared a chunk of beef with his fork. “And given your association with them, it makes sense.”
After she was released from prison, Lark depended on the anonymity her legal name would give her. Santana was quick with details. It’d been in her favor he hadn’t made the connection between the two names until now.
“So your father and uncle chose to go by ‘Reno’?” Chat asked.
“Yes. Reno was easier to say. Easier to spell, too.” Lark finished off the last of the whiskeyed coffee. “After my parents died, Uncle Wil took me in. I was raised right along with his daughter and sons.”
“And took up their life of crime, too,” Santana said, his tone rough.
Lark hesitated.
“Yes,” she said finally.
There. She’d admitted it. Now Chat knew the truth.
“Those Renos?” Chat’s eyes widened. “You rode with the Reno gang?”
The guilt stung, but Lark lifted her chin high. Nothing she could do to change all she’d done. “I’m afraid so.”
Chat gaped at her in disbelief. “You can’t possibly be an outlaw.”
“I’m not. Not anymore,” Lark said. “Prison convinced me to change my ways. I’m an honest citizen now.”
“Are you?” Santana taunted in a low voice.
Her gaze slammed into his. Damn him for not believing her.
“Well, sure she is,” Chat said before Lark could answer. “Everyone in Ida Grove knows it, too. She works in a bank, Ross!” She turned to Lark. “But you still haven’t explained why he calls you ‘Red.’”
Lark shifted a little in her chair, giving Santana her back in a deliberate snub. “Outlaws are often given nicknames. Mine was Wild Red.” She flicked the curls that crowded around her nape. “Because of my hair.”
Clearly fascinated, Chat nodded in understanding. “Where is your former gang now? Don’t they want you to ride with them anymore?”
“They’re dead,” Ross said and shoveled in a forkful of vegetables.
Lark’s lips tightened at his callousness. “They were lynched by a mob of vigilantes. Except John. He’s in the Missouri Penitentiary serving out his sentence.”
Chat hadn’t touched her dinner, which wasn’t nearly as interesting as the sordid tale Lark had to tell. “Folks aren’t going to believe this, Miss Renault. They’re going to be positively shocked!”
Santana stood abruptly.
“Not a word to anyone about her,” he thundered, stunning Lark with his protectiveness.
Chat’s fingers flew to her mouth in instant remorse. “No, no. Of course not, Ross. I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
“Damn right you didn’t.” Santana braced both hands on the table and leaned toward her. “What’s said between these walls stays here. And I mean it.” Though the timbre of his voice had lowered, the fierce intensity of his words left no doubt he meant every one.
“I know, Ross. I know.”
“You think those gossiping hens in town wouldn’t have a heyday with this? You think news about her wouldn’t spread like wildfire? That she wouldn’t be tried and convicted all over again in their narrow little minds?”
Eyes shimmering, Chat’s head bobbed again and again. “You’re right. You’re right.”
“We don’t know who’s after her yet. Or why. Or where he’s at. If we’re to keep her alive, you can’t say a word to anyone. Not Sarah. Not Mrs. Kelley. Not anyone, Chat.”
“I won’t. I promise. You can trust me, Ross. I promise.”
Lark didn’t move. It appalled her to be the reason for their disagreement, that she’d disrupted their lives and their thinking. And, oh, poor Chat. In her youth and innocence, what would she know of outlaws and protecting one?
Worse, it seemed they’d forgotten she wasn’t an outlaw anymore. She was honest, respectable Lark Renault. Mr. Templeton’s favorite bank employee.
Chat turned to Lark, her dark eyes pleading. “Please know that you can trust me, too.” Her voice quivered with the tears she fought to hold in check. “I won’t tell anyone of your past. And I’m so sorry if I led you to believe otherwise.”
Lark battled miserable tears of her own. “No, no. I’m the one who’s sorry for putting you in this situation. I should never have come here. This has all been a terrible mistake.”
What could Father Baxter have been thinking? She rose from her chair. She couldn’t cry. She had to be strong, but she had to get away, too. She had to find some hole to crawl into and hide forever.
Long fingers clasped her wrist before she could bolt. She whirled back toward Santana and tugged against his grip, but he held her fast.
“You’re not running off again,” he growled.
“I don’t want to be here.” Sometime in the last five years, Lark had turned soft. She never cried, but she was precarious
ly on the verge of it now. “I just want to leave and forget this horrible day ever happened.”
He drew her closer. Suddenly, he was taller, broader, more dangerous than she ever remembered.
“Like it or not, you’re safest here,” he said. “No one else around who can give you protection like I can. Except maybe Sheriff Sternberg, and the best he can do is his jail.”
Lark swallowed. She knew the man, had handled his accounts at the Ida Grove Bank. His lack of tolerance for lawbreakers was well known throughout the county. Because of him, Ida Grove remained peaceful and safe.
He was the last man Lark could turn to.
“You’ve run out of options,” Santana said, ruthless in driving home his point. “You can stay here, convince me whoever’s after you needs to be caught and punished for attacking you. Or you can run and fend for yourself until he finds you again.”
His words circled in Lark’s head like a flock of angry crows. Catfish would kill her when he caught up with her. Even if she told him where the Muscatine loot was, he’d kill her so he could keep all that money for himself. The knife wound on her shoulder was proof he’d have no mercy to get what he wanted.
“What’ll it be, Red?” Santana asked, his voice low.
Humiliation seared through her that she needed him, just like he said she did.
“Her name is Lark, Ross,” Chat said, calmer now.
He merely grunted. Lark stood unmoving, pathetically indecisive about being dependent on a vengeance-seeking bounty hunter who would only turn her in when he learned the whole truth.
“Sit down,” he said finally, making the decision for her.
Miserable, she complied. She took a breath and let it out again.
He propped a booted foot on his chair seat, rested his elbow on his knee. She tensed at the change which came over him. An attitude. A grim power that made her even more uneasy.
“Who attacked you in your sleeping room tonight?” he demanded.
Lark had no choice but to meet that power head-on. “His name is Catfish Jack.”
Santana straightened and stared at her. “He’s here? In Ida Grove?”
“You know him, then.”
She wasn’t surprised. They were all there that day at the Turf Club. Santana, Catfish, herself. Frank, Charlie, the others. And a horde of those damn Pinkerton agents.
There’d been so much chaos. So much yelling, shooting, blood. Lark couldn’t keep track of what happened to whom. After she got shot, she didn’t care much either way.
“Yeah. I know him.” He looked grim, and Lark imagined his brain sifting through the ugliness, same as hers was. “Why did he come after you? After all these years, why now?”
“He wants something I don’t have.”
Santana waited.
“When I told him I didn’t have it, he didn’t believe me.”
Still, Santana waited.
“So he got mad and attacked me.”
Santana’s mouth went hard. “He didn’t believe you. Which means he’s convinced you have what you say you don’t. Which also means he’ll hunt you down until he can force you to give him whatever it is he wants.” Santana paused. “Knifing you is only the beginning.”
Santana had a cold way of looking at things. But an accurate one. Her misery doubled.
“Yes,” she whispered.
She braced herself for the question he’d ask next. What it was Catfish wanted. Or did Santana already know about the money she’d hidden?
“You fight him back?” he asked.
His unexpected question brought her head up. What did he think? That she’d just let Catfish attack her? “Of course!”
“How bad?”
“I hit him on the skull with a potted geranium. And Mrs. Kelley’s table. And a water pitcher.”
Chat, wide-eyed, emitted a sound of shock.
Santana nodded in satisfaction. “He’s hurting then.”
Lark glanced away. She found no gratification in violence, even against a cutthroat like Catfish. “Yes. I, well, I knocked him out, but—” her uninjured shoulder lifted “—Father Baxter assured me he came to again.”
“Most likely, he’s in no shape to ride. He’ll have to lay low a day. Maybe two.” Santana hooked a thumb in his hip pocket, stared a pensive moment at the curtain-covered window, as if he could see through the fabric and into the Ida Grove countryside. His bounty-hunter mind would be working. Calculating Catfish’s next move. He’d be thinking like the outlaw would, staying one step ahead of him.
“He’s out there,” Santana said, almost to himself. “Somewhere close.”
“Yes,” she said.
He turned back to her. “But he doesn’t know you’re here. That buys us some time. You’re safe, so try to relax.” He pointed to her plate with its dinner long since gone cold. “Eat up.”
Lark forgot to breathe. That was it? No questions about Catfish’s motive in hunting her down? No demand to know about the money she’d stolen?
Holy hellfire, the relief. Her secret was still intact, buried deep inside her where no one could find it. The one stroke of good luck she’d had the whole wretched night.
Santana strode away from the table, again taking his Colt with him. His meal, Lark noticed, was finished. “Chat promised you a bath. I’ll draw some water while you eat.”
His sister stood. “Ross, wait.”
He turned toward her.
She looked worried. “Are you still mad at me?”
The hardness faded from his expression, and he opened his arms. Chat flew into them, throwing her own around his neck. His embrace lifted her high from the floor.
“I know you’ll help me protect her,” he said quietly, setting her down but keeping her in his arms, talking as if Lark wasn’t right there with them. “You just needed reminding how important it is to be discreet with the folks in town. It could mean her life.”
“You can trust me, Ross. I vow it.”
“You’re a Santana. I do trust you.” He kissed her forehead, released her, and gave her a gentle nudge toward the table. “Finish your dinner. It’s getting late, and the kitchen’s a mess.”
He left the house, then, without a single glance back at Lark. Chat sat and dug into her meal. She caught Lark watching her and smiled, all her worry gone.
Lark lifted her fork. The bounty hunter’s show of affection left her bemused. She couldn’t shake the image of his embrace. Or the way he’d kissed Chat with brotherly ease.
But mostly, Lark couldn’t help wondering what it’d feel like to have someone like him love her, too.
Ross sat at his desk, the design for his new revolving bookcase laid out in front of him once again. He’d hoped to calculate the final measurements before turning in tonight, but his figuring was off, and he couldn’t find the mistake.
She was the problem. He couldn’t concentrate. The numbers kept blurring on the paper. Even more frustrating, the strain on his eye had brought on a low-grade headache.
Wild Red wasn’t ’fessing up to everything she knew. And maybe Ross couldn’t blame her, under the circumstances. Hell of a jolt to have her old crime come back, turn her new life upside down. She’d worked hard to put her sins behind her and start over in Ida Grove. Understandable she’d want to keep her mouth shut to keep from losing all she had.
But the law was the law. If she broke it, she’d have to pay the price.
His gut told him her silence had something to do with the Muscatine heist. All those years ago, suspicion had run high among lawmen and local citizenry alike that the Reno gang took the money, but without a single witness, no one knew for sure.
Ross intended to find out.
How Catfish Jack fit into the picture, Ross could only speculate. As far as he knew, the desperado had never ridden with the Renos. Yet Catfish had gone through a helluva lot of trouble to track Wild Red down. Why? What did he want?
Ross intended to find that out, too.
The revenge would be sweet when he did. He
had scores to settle, and only Wild Red could help him do it.
She was plenty skittish, though. He’d have to be careful. Take his time. Earn her trust before he could get her to talk.
Even more important, he had to keep her alive. He owed her that much. She’d been hurt too much already. Thinking back, Ross guessed he’d hurt her more than anybody.
For the dozenth time, his gaze strayed to the open door of Chat’s bedroom. Once dinner was over and cleared away, Red took the bath Ross prepared for her, and Chat helped wash her hair since Red’s lacerated shoulder kept her from doing it herself. Now she sat cross-legged on the bed in a borrowed nightgown while his sister brushed the wet mass, running the bristles through the waist-length strands again and again.
Inexplicably, his blood warmed just thinking of all that hair. How it’d feel wet. How it’d feel dry…
He tore his glance away with a muttered oath. He determinedly jotted down a series of fractions on a piece of scrap paper. Before his brain could convert the numbers into inches and feet, his ear strained to catch the bits of conversation drifting out from the bedroom.
He couldn’t decipher what they chatted about. Female things probably, since they seemed to get along well enough. But then, Red didn’t have to do much except sit and listen. Chat was prone to do most of the talking.
From what he could tell, the responses Red made were polite and reserved. Maybe she tended to be closemouthed, even on the best of days.
He narrowed his eye over the series of numbers he’d written and tried to remember what part of the bookcase they were for. He heard Chat set the hairbrush on the bedside table and stride toward him.
“Ross, we’re ready to go to bed now. I’ll give Miss Renault my room tonight,” she said. “Do you want to sleep on the couch or shall I?”
He gave up on the measurements. “Give her my room. I’ll take the couch.”
Red made a sound of alarm. She unfolded her legs and slid off the mattress, then padded toward him on bare feet. Chat’s nightgown ran a little short on her. A bit snug around the chest, too. His gaze clung to the provocative wobble of female bosom under the white cotton.