Daniel swallowed, his face went pale. “I’m sure if he said it didn’t hurt, it didn’t. Your papa wouldn’t lie to you.”
“No,” Fiona said decisively. “Lying is bad. Mommy said so. My daddy would never lie.”
Daniel stood with Fiona still in his grasp, swinging her around so that she giggled, before setting her on her feet. “That’s right, sugar,” he said. “Your daddy would never lie. He’s a good fella. The best.”
Eden’s first real smile of the day came to her face. Everything was going to be all right. When she looked up, an obviously exhausted Nadine stood in the doorway.
“Fiona,” Nadine said, her eyes very purposely staying away from Daniel. “Would you go upstairs and see what Millie’s up to?”
“She’s reading,” Fiona said, making a face. She was still quite put out that she could not yet read herself, even though Eden had assured her that at four years old she wasn’t expected to read.
Eden took her eyes from her willful daughter and put them on Nadine. Something was wrong. She knew it, felt it, saw it on Nadine’s face. Her moment of optimism hadn’t lasted nearly long enough. “Fiona, please go check on Millie. Have her read to you for a while.”
Fiona left reluctantly, a grimace on her face. When she was gone, Nadine stepped into the room. “I think I missed something. Maybe a scrap of his shirt that was blown into the wound, or there’s a small sliver of bone I missed.”
Eden went dizzy at the picture those possibilities presented.
“His fever is getting higher, and the wound is infected. I’m going to have to go back in.”
Daniel reached the doorway in two long strides. “But you can fix it, right?”
“I think so,” Nadine said weakly.
“You think so?”
Eden rushed past them and toward the stairs, catching the last of their conversation.
“Get Nate for me,” Nadine ordered. “I’m going to need help.”
* * *
Nate wasted no time rushing over to the hotel, leaving Cash standing in front of the church with his hands in his pockets. He had never felt so helpless in his life.
He looked to the church, quiet and deceptively divine in the last light of day.
None of this was fair, he thought with a rising surge of pure anger. Sullivan, Eden, Nadine, JD... they didn’t deserve any of this.
He turned and ran up the stairs to the church doors, throwing them open, stepping inside with fury and frustration and despair in his heart. He slammed the doors behind him, looked heavenward to the rustic, weathered ceiling, and shouted.
“What the hell do you want from me?”
He didn’t get an answer. Of course not. He hadn’t talked to God in a long time, and even then... no one had ever been listening.
Alone in the long room, he stalked down the aisle. His boots clipped loudly on the uncovered wooden floor as he approached the altar. “I screw up, and everyone else has to pay. Well, if you have something to take out on me, take it out on me, you cowardly son of a bitch.”
The light from outdoors was dying, so he lit a candle. He wasn’t finished, not by a long shot. “You can’t take Sullivan,” he said in a lowered voice. Even he could hear the fear there. “He and Eden... they have all those kids, and another one on the way, and I don’t think they’re done yet. I don’t think they’re close to done. Why would you even think of taking his life?”
He paced before the altar where Nadine had become his wife. “If you’re trying to make me pay through them, through Sullivan and Eden, through Nadine and JD, well... you’ve made your point. They haven’t done anything wrong. They’re here every Sunday, they live like goddamn saints. What else do you want?”
Cash stopped before the altar. “You want me on my knees, is that it?” He dropped to his knees, eyes heavenward, arms open wide. “Well, here I am,” he whispered.
He heard the door open, turned his head to see Jo stick her head inside, no doubt brought by the noise he’d been making.
“Get out,” he said. She obeyed, never saying a word.
Alone again, in the echo of the closing doors he closed his eyes. “I’m begging you,” he said softly. “Don’t let Sullivan die, don’t make Eden pay for my mistakes. The kids need them, this town needs them. I don’t want to be responsible for making Eden a widow, for Fiona growing up without a father. I don’t want to be the man who killed her daddy.”
His eyes stung as he kneeled there, his heart beat too hard. “And while I’m here, I might as well ask you to take care of Nadine and JD after I’m gone. They shouldn’t suffer just because I love them. It isn’t fair.”
Life wasn’t fair, and he had never expected anything so simple as justice in his world. But he wanted it now; he actually prayed for it.
He stayed there for a long time, on his knees. Cursing God, begging for justice. The light outside faded away until the only illumination came from the single candle he’d lit. No one else came to the door to tell him Sullivan was alive or dead, recovering or on his deathbed. So he prayed awhile longer.
His head swam, he swayed on his knees. He hadn’t slept for more than two days, he hadn’t eaten either. It was all catching up with him.
He dragged himself up and stepped back to the front pew, sitting down hard.
“What else can I do?” he whispered. “What the hell else can I do?”
* * *
Nadine was glad to have Nate with her as she treated Sullivan. This seemed to be his area of expertise, and he was eerily efficient. She didn’t want to know how he had come to know so much about treating such wounds.
It was a scrap of fabric that interfered with the healing, just as Nadine had suspected. Going back into the already nasty wound was not for the squeamish, so no one remained in the room. No one but Nadine and the preacher. Even Sullivan was no longer with them, since he’d passed out as soon as Nadine had cut into his shoulder.
From everything she’d heard, Nate and Cash had once been two of a kind. For a long time they’d hired out their guns and lived with nothing to lose. Why was it that Nate could start over and Cash couldn’t?
“This has been hard on Cash,” Nate said, as if he could read Nadine’s mind.
“I know.”
“You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he’s really not a bad person. He’s just made some... really bad decisions.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” she said, glancing up. “Might not hurt for you to tell him, though.”
Nate almost smiled. “He doesn’t listen to me much anymore.”
“Does he listen to anyone?” she snapped, unable to hide her anger.
“You know, he talked about you once, years ago.”
“He did?” She looked down, not wanting Nate to see the pain in her eyes.
“I don’t remember everything about our time on the trail,” Nate qualified. “I used to drink. A lot. This night I’m thinking of, Cash got rip-roaring drunk with me. I don’t know what set him off. Something that didn’t seem like much at the time. We sat around a campfire in the middle of nowhere. He talked about a girl he used to know, and I pretended not to listen.”
Nadine swallowed hard. She didn’t want to know that sometimes Cash revealed his tender side for the world. It gave her hope, and she should have none. “That was a long time ago.”
“Yes, it was,” Nate said as together they finished bandaging Sullivan’s wound. “But he loved you then, and I truly believe he loves you now.”
“He has a funny way of showing his love.”
Nate was silent for a moment, so Nadine looked up to study a suddenly solemn face. “Yeah,” he finally said. “He does.”
Chapter 19
The world was his kingdom, and he ruled with the ruthlessness of a nineteen-year-old king who has no heart. He showed no mercy and he no longer feared death, and soon they called him a hero.
The soldiers he fought with called him fearless, a hero, but they were afraid of him, too. They were afraid of
the deadness of his eyes and the accuracy of his aim and the way he stood tall before the enemy, as if daring them to shoot him. Bullets whizzed around him but never found their mark.
And so they sent him here. Cash studied the men in the secluded camp. The half-breed long-haired Sullivan, who hadn’t said ten words in two days, and the Mex kid who tagged along with him, a boy surely too young to go to war, stayed close together much of the time. The kid, Rico, was damned good with a knife, no matter how young he was. The rough and vulgar Jed Rourke swaggered around the camp carrying his rifle like it was a part of him, another limb. Or a woman. The big man looked like he hadn’t had a shave or a haircut or a bath in a while. A long while.
Nate Lang stayed drunk, and was given to quoting the Bible when he was so intoxicated he couldn’t stand up straight. Rourke had made the mistake of trying to stick Nate with the nickname Preacher. Nate had not taken it well, but in the days to come he would let Cash call him Rev. He didn’t seem to mind that irreverent tag so much. Reese had quickly become their leader, not because he wanted to be but because he was the only man fit for the job. Determined and serious, he was a man who would brook no nonsense.
They were all heroes of a sort. Not a one of them was over twenty-five, and not a one of them was afraid to die.
Nate plopped himself down beside Cash and offered to share his flask. Cash refused.
The drunk looked up and down Cash’s crisp uniform. Of the six, he was the only one wearing anything that remotely resembled a uniform. The jacket was open, offering him access to the double six-shooters he wore, and revealing a strictly non-regulation shirt.
“Nice shirt,” Nate said, slurring the words just slightly. “No holes, no blood... It isn’t even dirty. And ruffles on a soldier. I swear, it just doesn’t look right.” He squinted at the elaborate garment as if it pained him to look upon such a thing.
“This is my lucky shirt,” Cash explained. The first of many, though he didn’t know it yet.
“How lucky?” The drunk wobbled uncertainly as he took another sip from his flask.
“I haven’t been shot since I put it on.”
“Where does one obtain such a lucky shirt?”
“I got mine from four grateful women.”
Nate’s eyebrows went up. “Four? At the same time?”
Cash nodded.
“I’m in awe,” Nate mumbled, not sounding at all impressed.
So far nothing about this bunch had impressed Cash. Of course, they hadn’t seen action yet. That would come soon enough. He might eventually respect them, but they would never be friends. Friends got their faces blown off or stabbed you in the back.
Nate continued to study Cash’s getup curiously. “Are you as good with the left hand as with the right?”
“Almost.” A little more practice, and he would be. Two guns meant twice as many bullets, twice as long to fight without having to stop and reload. Cash conducted an inspection of his own. His gaze finally ended up on Nate’s head. There wasn’t much to see. “What did you do to your hair? It looks like shit.”
The drunk raised a hand to touch the very short stubble on his head. “I got tired of messing with it. It’s not that bad. You’ll get used to it.”
Cash was quite sure he wouldn’t be a part of this motley crew long enough to get used to anything.
Nate leaned too close, so close something in Cash went on alert. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as the drunk squinted at Cash’s chin. “Kid, are you trying to grow a beard?”
“Yes,” Cash answered in a low voice tinged with warning.
Nate didn’t heed that warning. “Doesn’t look like much of a beard to me.”
“It will. I just started growing it.” A month ago, he thought sourly, almost envying the hairy, older Rourke.
The drunk laid eyes that saw too much on Cash.
“Why are you here?” he whispered.
“Because I’m good,” Cash said proudly.
“Good at what?”
“Good at killing people.”
Nate leaned in close. “So am I,” he hissed. “So are we all.”
Cash closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again, everything had changed. Sullivan was gone. A chill running up Cash’s spine told him something was wrong. And then Eden walked from behind a wide tree, the gun in her hand aimed for his heart.
“You killed him,” she said softly. “You killed him.” In an instant she became the thief who had blown off Melvin’s face, and then, an instant later, she was Eden again. She pulled the trigger.
* * *
Cash came up off the pew with a low cry. His heart pounded hard. His blood ran cold beneath his skin, and he still felt the explosion of gunfire from his nightmare. He laid a hand against his heart, checking for blood.
It took him a moment to remember where he was, what had happened. The candle on the altar had burned down to nothing and snuffed itself out. Early morning light shot through the windows.
They all knew he was here. If Jo knew, everyone knew. If Sullivan had survived the surgery, someone would have come to tell him. If he had died, someone would have come to tell him. Which meant Sullivan was still caught in between. Not dead, not alive.
Cash dropped his head into his hands. “You want a life?” he whispered. “Take mine. It’s a good trade, I promise you. I have more sins to atone for. Prove to me that you do know what justice is, and take my life in exchange for Sullivan’s.”
The doors behind him burst open, and JD ran to the front pew, wide-eyed and looking so damned young. The man within him was there, too, but he was still very much a child.
“There’s a man here looking for you,” JD said softly. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk and there he was.” The boy took a deep breath. “He said you killed his brother and he wants to call you out.”
“Now?”
JD nodded. “What should I do? Should I get Uncle Jed?”
Cash laid a hand on JD’s shoulder. “No. I can handle it. You run along and get into the hotel. Into one of the back rooms,” he added. Just to be safe.
JD nodded again.
“How’s Sullivan?”
“Better, I think,” JD said.
“Good. Tell this man I’ll be out in five minutes. I’ll meet him in front of Rogue’s Palace. The clinic,” he amended. There was no more Rogue’s Palace. “And then you go to the hotel, like I told you.”
“Okay. Are you sure you don’t want me to—”
“JD,” Cash interrupted. If he thought about this too long, he’d change his mind. “Take care of your mother for me.”
The kid’s eyes went wide. “I will.”
After JD had gone, Cash looked heavenward. “You work fast, I’ll give you that.”
* * *
JD delivered the message to the twitchy gunman and then ran back to the hotel, bounding up the stairs. Cash wouldn’t have told him to take care of his mother unless... unless he didn’t plan to survive this gunfight.
Last night he’d heard the preacher’s wife telling her husband that Cash was in the church. He’d stayed there all night, apparently. Strange for a man who claimed to never set a foot in one.
He didn’t like the way Cash had looked. Something about his eyes was... wrong. Deep in his gut, JD had a bad feeling about what was about to happen. He had to do something, didn’t he? He couldn’t just ignore this certainty that something really bad was about to happen.
JD burst into his mother’s room. He wasn’t going to hide in the back of the hotel like Cash had told him to, waiting to see what would happen next.
* * *
He should have known it would be a child, a freckle-faced kid not much older than JD, who came for him.
“Daniel Cash?” the kid asked, his voice squeaking uncertainly as Cash approached.
At just past dawn the streets of Rock Creek were deserted.
“Yep,” Cash said calmly.
“I’m calling you out.” The kid’s voice was i
n the process of changing, either that or he was so scared, he couldn’t manage to speak properly.
Cash gave the kid a cold, confident smile. “Are you putting me on?”
The kid shook his head. “You killed my brother in Webberville. He challenged you—”
“Webberville?” Cash asked with a slow, cold grin. “The only man I ever shot in Webberville tried to ambush me while I was unarmed and in bed with a woman. That was your brother?”
“He never woulda done that,” the kid said softly.
Time’s up. Cash knew that as he took a single step toward the frightened kid. He also knew that if he wanted to, he could take this boy out in the blink of an eye. The kid could draw first, but it wouldn’t make any difference. No more. He was not about to shoot a freckle-faced kid whose voice hadn’t changed yet. A child. A baby.
Cash spread his legs wide, took a firm and confident stance as he deftly unbuckled his gun belt and let it drop to the ground. The kid was too damned slow. The gun belt and the fancy six-shooters had already hit the ground before his own gun cleared the holster.
“You want to shoot me?” Cash asked calmly, spreading his arms wide.
“Cash.”
Cash turned his head to see that JD watched from the boardwalk, just a few feet away. “Get out of here.”
JD shook his head. Just as well, Cash thought as he returned his attention to the redheaded gunman. If JD ever decided again that he wanted to be a gunfighter, maybe this moment would be enough to scare some sense back into the kid.
With a yank he opened his ruffled shirt and presented the gun-wielding kid with an expanse of bare chest. “In the heart is best. Fast and clean. You don’t want some wounded hombre coming back up on you, trust me.”
He took a step forward. The kid’s response was to shake. His legs trembled; his gun hand shook.
“Ever killed a man before?”
The boy shook his head quickly.
“Might as well get used to the sight of blood, then, the way a bullet tears into flesh. It’s not pretty, but a gunfighter who retches over his victim is rarely feared and respected.”
Cash (The Rock Creek Six Book 6) Page 23