Wanted

by Potter, Patricia;

  EARLY BIRD BOOKS

  FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

  BE THE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT

  FREE AND DISCOUNTED EBOOKS

  NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PATRICIA POTTER

  “Patricia Potter is a master storyteller, a powerful weaver of romantic tales.” —Mary Jo Putney, New York Times–bestselling author

  “One of the romance genre’s finest talents.” —Romantic Times

  “Patricia Potter will thrill lovers of the suspense genre as well as those who enjoy a good romance.” —Booklist

  “Potter proves herself a gifted writer as artisan, creating a rich fabric of strong characters whose wit and intellect will enthrall even as their adventures entertain.” —BookPage

  “When a historical romance [gets] the Potter treatment, the story line is pure action and excitement, and the characters are wonderful.” —BookBrowse

  “Potter has an expert ability to invest in fully realized characters and a strong sense of place without losing momentum in the details, making this novel a pure pleasure.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review of Beloved Warrior

  “[Potter] proves that she’s adept at penning both enthralling historicals and captivating contemporary novels.” —Booklist, starred review of Dancing with a Rogue

  Wanted

  Patricia Potter

  PROLOGUE

  West Texas, 1844

  A scream of agony came from inside the adobe building.

  John Davis felt the cry vibrate through him. Rivulets of sweat ran down his body and soaked the back of his rough cotton shirt.

  He wasn’t a praying man. But as he searched the hot, dry country outside the way-station compound, he prayed as he had never prayed before. A few hours, God. Only a few hours.

  He looked at his friend, Ranger Callum Smith, who had galloped in on a horse now heaving with exhaustion.

  “The Comanches are raiding this whole area,” Cal said. “You have to get the hell out of here.”

  “Susan …”

  John didn’t have to say anything else. Another scream did it for him.

  “Christ, John, but she picked a poor time for birthing.”

  John wiped his forehead with his bandanna. He had to do something; he didn’t like feeling this helpless.

  He had quit rangering because of Susan, because Susan had worried herself sick about him. Ten months ago the Overland Stage Company had offered him the job of managing this way station on the mail route. It was a chance to build a home and a future, and he had taken it because he could finally spend time with his wife, and the children who were at last on their way.

  And now …

  The Comanches hadn’t come this way in over ten years, not since the Ranger post had been established twenty miles away. But its manpower had been drained in the past months, most of the Rangers having been pulled down to the border, where Mexican bandits were laying waste to the new settlements there.

  “I’ve got to go,” Callum said. “I have to warn the settlers. But I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

  John nodded. “I’ll saddle you a fresh horse. You get some water from the well.”

  Callum nodded as another scream came from the house.

  “How long …?”

  John shook his head. “Labor started late yesterday. Month early. Thank God some woman on the stage agreed to stay over.”

  He hurried to the barn, remembering how he had planned to take Susan to El Paso in three days, to the nearest doctor in a hundred miles. But then the pains had started just as the stage arrived. The lone woman passenger, a pretty but sad-looking woman dressed in black, offered to stay and help. Fleur Bailey, she’d said her name was, and she was returning home to Ohio after having lost her husband and two-day-old child.

  Now she was in danger too. John cursed the Comanches, cursed himself for bringing Susan out here to this desolate place, as he finished saddling the pinto. He decided to get the wagon ready, too, so they could leave for the Ranger post as soon as the baby was born.

  He watched as Callum mounted the pinto, gave him a brief salute, and spurred his horse into a gallop, disappearing quickly in the endless tall grass of the prairie. With any luck, John thought, by the time Callum returned from alerting the Kelly and Marshall families, he and Susan and the baby would be gone.

  The baby. His child. He prayed again, then went back to the barn for two horses to hitch to the wagon. He set the other horses loose. He didn’t want them trapped inside if there was an attack.

  He heard the loud plaintive cry of a child.

  Thank God, he thought gratefully. Perhaps prayers were answered after all.

  He hurried to the cabin and opened the door. Fleur was holding a small bundle, a look of possessiveness on her face. He felt sudden apprehension, but then the woman smiled so sweetly at him, he immediately dismissed the momentary fear.

  “A boy,” she said as she cleaned the newborn with a wet cloth. Then she handed him to John, who stood awkwardly, feeling like a giant holding a baby bird.

  When Susan screamed again, the woman stooped down over her and then looked up at John with a wondrous expression. “Dear heaven, there must be another.”

  Astonished at the unexpected news, John held his child as he listened worriedly to the continued groans and cries of his wife. Then there was one last scream, part agony, part triumph. Fleur, a stranger no longer in this most intimate of all dramas, straightened, holding a child. “Another boy. Twins.”

  John leaned down and kissed Susan, placing the first baby in her arms as Fleur cleaned the second one. She stopped in the middle of wiping one of the tiny feet. “Birthmarks,” she said. “Almost like half hearts on their feet, one on the left, one on the right.”

  That observation meant little to John Davis. All that mattered was that his children were healthy despite the fact that they had come early. Now he had to make sure they stayed that way. He took Susan’s hand in his. “Are you strong enough to move?”

  Her blue eyes widened slightly in question.

  “A small renegade bunch of Comanches,” he said. “Probably nothing to worry about, but you and the babies would be safer at the Ranger post.”

  She swallowed. Her face was smudged from sweat and tears, and she looked tired, but she gave him a weak smile and nodded.

  “I’ll put a mattress in the buggy,” he said, watching as her fingers ran over the older twin.

  “Morgan,” she whispered. They had already settled on that name if the baby was a boy. But the other? They hadn’t expected him. Something to brag about at the Ranger post Papa. At forty-three, he had become a papa twice over!

  He knelt next to the bed and moved aside the brightly colored rug there to reveal a trapdoor. Below was a room he had made himself. Eight feet long, six feet wide, and five feet deep, it served several functions: a fruit and cheese cellar, a storage area for mattresses for those occasions when stagecoach passengers stayed overnight, and a hiding place in case of Indian or outlaw attack. The wood trapdoor was underlaid with layers of tin to protect the occupants from fire.

  He carried two mattresses to the buggy, a double layer to make his wife more comfortable on the jolting ride.

  When he returned, Fleur had diapered one of the babies. “You take the twins,” John told her. “I’ll bring my wife.”

  But Susan refused to relinquish the child in her arms. “I want to hold him,” she insisted.

  He turned to Fleur. “Can you take your valise and the other child?”

  She nodded and quickly grabbed her valise. She had caught John’s urgency. In the two days she had been there, she had learned that he was not a man who frightened easily. She had lost one husband and a baby. She didn’t want to lose the one she held in her ar
ms. The child felt so good. Just as her own son, Nicholas, had such a short time ago.

  She nearly ran to the wagon, where she set the baby down and stowed the valise. She’d barely climbed in when the horses stamped nervously. She lost her balance and fell, just as she heard the sound of hoofbeats and a godforsaken yell.

  She gathered the infant in her arms and ducked down underneath the seat. The wagon moved as the horses tried to pull loose from where they were hitched. She thought about returning to the cabin and peered through a crack in the wagon. A dozen or more painted Indians were racing toward her. She would never have time. She could only hide here and hope they didn’t find her.

  “Don’t cry,” she whispered to the child. “Please don’t cry.”

  There were shots then. So many shots. They seemed to surround her as she huddled deeper under the seat. And then she heard the snorting of the horses, felt the jerking of the wagon, back and forth at first, and then wildly. Somehow the horses had gotten loose.

  With one hand she clutched the seat while with the other she held on to the baby. The wagon swayed and rocked as it hurtled across the prairie, and Fleur desperately tried to keep from rolling over on the infant. The shots faded behind her, and she concentrated her whole being on protecting the child, the little boy so much like her own.

  She didn’t know how long the wagon plunged across rocks and indentations. It seemed forever. And then there was another jolt and the wagon careened even more wildly. She knew the horses had broken free of the traces and that she and the child were passengers aboard a runaway vehicle.

  The wagon hit a deep rut and stopped abruptly, and she was thrown against one of its sides, but the baby was pillowed by her body. Agonizing pain stabbed through her shoulder, but she managed to lift herself slightly to look up. The way station was no longer visible, but she saw smoke coming from its direction. So much smoke that the sky was dark with it.

  She saw no savages, but they might be coming soon to look for the wagon, for the horses. That was what they wanted. She’d heard the Rangers talk about that.

  She took the baby and crawled from the wagon. They were in the middle of nowhere, but there was tall prairie grass here. She could hide. She and the baby.

  He whimpered, and she pressed him to her. Nicholas. “I’ll take care of you,” she whispered, knowing that the others in the cabin must be dead. This baby was a gift, sent by God for her to protect, to take the place of her own boy.

  John Davis knew he was going to die. His blood had turned cold when he heard the first Comanche yell. He ran to the door, estimating whether he could reach the wagon; more than likely, he would be caught in the open and Susan and Morgan would have no protection. He had to leave the woman and the other child in the wagon. Thank God she had moved out of sight.

  He slammed the door and went for one of his two rifles. It was too late to hide in the cellar; the wagon and smoke from the chimney told only too well of someone’s presence.

  He broke the glass in the window, aimed, and fired. He hit one of the Comanches, then another. As they drew back, he looked over at Susan, who was now sitting up in the bed, clutching the baby. He laid the gun next to the window, moved swiftly to the trapdoor, and pulled it open. He reached for her.

  “No,” she said. “Put the baby in there, but I won’t go. I can load for you.”

  He hesitated, then saw the determination in her eyes. He knew that look. If he forced her down, she would be back up immediately. He simply nodded, thinking how lucky he was, how lucky he had been, to be loved by her.

  Maybe that luck would hold. If he could only hold out for an hour, if Callum could gather others … He put the small wrapped figure of his child in the cellar, holding him tightly for a moment first. Morgan. His firstborn. He rubbed the small dark fuzz at the top of the baby’s head, and then shots intruded on that very short time of tenderness. He lifted himself up, closed the door, and replaced the colorful rug.

  He turned around and saw that Susan had taken the other gun and was trying to aim it. But her hands trembled. John took it from her, his blue eyes holding hers for an instant before he looked out the window once more.

  He saw the wagon horses pull free from where they were hitched and watched as the wagon went careening across the prairie. His distraction ended immediately when a bullet plowed into his chest. He heard Susan’s cry, felt her arms go around him, and then there were more shots. He felt another pain, then the weight of Susan’s body as it slumped on his, her blood mixing with his blood.

  His last thought was of the babies. “God keep them safe,” he prayed as his life emptied on the floorboards.

  Callum Smith found the baby in the cellar. He had warned the two remaining families and accompanied them to the Ranger station, where one small unit of Rangers had returned from the border.

  Five of them rode hell-bent for John Davis’s place, only to find ashes—and two corpses burned beyond recognition. Disregarding the lingering heat from the fire, Callum went to the trapdoor, hoping against hope that he would find someone alive.

  His glove protected his hand from the heat that remained in the tin. He and another Ranger pulled until it finally came off, and he heard a weak cry from within.

  He lowered himself and found the tiny mewing bundle. The air was hot and stuffy, and he wondered at the newborn’s will to live.

  Callum picked the child up awkwardly. John had told him he intended to name the baby Morgan if it was a boy, after one of their old commanders in the Rangers. He swallowed. Neither John nor Susan had any family. What would happen to the little tyke? He handed the baby to one of the other Rangers, then climbed up.

  If only they had arrived sooner, he thought as he took back the baby. If only …

  He looked at the two embracing bodies. What had happened to the other woman? Probably taken by the Comanches. She had been pretty, blond. The kind the savages preferred in white women. The Rangers would look for her, but he didn’t hold much hope. White women didn’t last long with the Comanches, and he suspected this small group of renegades would head to Mexico now that the Rangers were back.

  The baby. Callum felt responsible. He had let down his friend. His fellow Ranger. He couldn’t let the child go to an orphanage. He owed John and Susan. He would take the baby and somehow raise it. Maria, his housekeeper of sorts, could take care of the child whenever he was gone. He would raise him as John would have liked.

  As a Ranger.

  Two days. Maybe three. Fleur Bailey stumbled along the rutted road. Her milk was drying, the milk that had remained in her after her baby died. The milk that kept Nicholas alive.

  She was thirsty and hungry. Her left shoulder hurt like the devil, but she had to keep going. She had to find help.

  She heard the sound of a wagon, and she dropped to the ground. She had become wary, afraid that the Comanches would come, or that someone would take her child from her. Her Nicholas.

  She listened as the heavy wagon came closer and she could see the words on the gaudily decorated sides. DR. BRADEN’S MIRACLE MEDICINES.

  A doctor. She crawled on the road, clutching the baby, and heard a shout, heard the sound of a team being pulled to a halt She was tired, so tired. And safe.

  Her eyes closed, her body finally succumbing to the shock and exhaustion and fear of the last few days. She didn’t even wake when a small man, less than four feet tall, scrambled over to her side. Nor did she feel the arms of the taller man, his dark eyes curious and compassionate, as he picked her up and carried her inside the wagon, while the small man followed with her son.

  She wasn’t aware of her mutterings, of her scrambled words about Comanches and a dead husband. All were dead, she said. All but her son, Nicholas.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wyoming, 1876

  A Texas Ranger’s face had no place on a wanted poster!

  Not for the first time, Morgan Davis pulled out of his pocket the wrinkled piece of paper, stared at the features sketched there, which were so like hi
s own, then folded and replaced the poster. Every time he looked at it, his blood boiled.

  He turned his gaze down toward the cabin that sat on the bank of a creek below. After eight weeks of trailing Nicholas Braden, he had finally tracked him here last night to Medicine Bow in southeast Wyoming. Braden and his sister, dammit. Morgan had been watching both of them move around outside the cabin since early morning.

  When the two had first appeared, Morgan swore softly, reluctantly deciding to bide his time until exactly the right moment. It had taken him two months to locate Braden. A few more minutes didn’t matter.

  Morgan’s hand went up to his face. After being mistaken for Braden several times, he’d decided to grow a mustache in pure self-defense. But he hated the damn thing. He hated being forced to change his own appearance because of a killer. Days of traveling had added even more bristle to his face, and he felt like one of the renegades he’d chased over the past fourteen years. He rubbed his cheeks, despising the feel of roughness, the dust that clung to him.

  His outrage had grown when he’d observed that Braden had not felt it necessary to disguise himself. But it was that very carelessness that would be his quarry’s downfall. Braden apparently believed he was out of the law’s reach. He hadn’t counted on Morgan’s persistence.

  Three months ago Morgan’s life had suddenly changed radically from that of hunter to hunted. Three months ago the first bounty hunters had accosted Morgan.

  He’d been returning to the El Paso Ranger station after spending four hard weeks tracking a group of cattle rustlers. He’d stopped for the night at a spring when two men rode up. Morgan had been suspicious. Hell, he’d been raised to be suspicious, and nothing in his fifteen years as a lawman had moderated that attitude. But with hand on his pistol butt, he’d extended prairie hospitality, offering to share his coffee. He hadn’t liked the two strangers, but, then, he liked few people other than his fellow Rangers. He had a core-deep distrust of his fellow man, and there was a coldness in the newcomers’ eyes that bespoke of an occupation Morgan despised. If they weren’t gunfighters, he’d eat his well-soiled hat.