Outside the mansion, where Ellis and the Jameses had rooms. Outside the main hub of the Crowmaker camp. Outside fucking everything, including Ellis’s good graces.
The Crowmakers had spent a long time lingering over breakfast that morning, before Vincent had broken up the party and set them to work per Ellis’s orders to get ready for tomorrow’s meeting with the Shawnee. Vincent hadn’t heard what they were talking about, the Crowmakers around their fire, but he could guess. The conversation had been too full of long looks and shaking heads to be anything but serious. Even the fools Rawle and Langston looked whipped and weary.
Vincent hadn’t missed how some of the long looks passed between Kellen and Ger Owen. Vincent watched that like he watched everything else, with cool calculation. He couldn’t afford to let himself keep losing his head over Kellen. Everything was riding on it.
Keep the Crowmakers in line. Keep an eye on Annie James. Those were the priorities. Those were the only things that mattered. Vincent shifted his weight from one foot to the other but stood his ground. Stood watch, just like he was supposed to.
A movement from the corner of his eye caught Vincent’s attention. He hadn’t seen Annie since Harrison’s man had hustled her along with her father and Ellis out of the rain and into the dry comfort of the mansion. But here she came down the steps now, shoulders down and rubbing at her eyes. The high-waisted dress she wore was a soft green, rumpled as if she’d slept in it.
“Everything all right?” It wasn’t a question Vincent thought about before he asked it. Talking with Annie didn’t generally require as much forethought and planning as talking to anyone else, so the words just tumbled out.
Vincent’s voice must have spooked Annie, because she immediately dropped her hands and stood up straight. She turned her head toward him. As she did, every bit of girl-like softness hardened into tight lines and tighter angles. A hint of alarm buzzed at the base of Vincent’s spine.
“Fine.” Just the one word, clipped and haughty.
Vincent stood up straighter and narrowed his eyes. Annie lifted her chin and stared him down, unflinching.
The ferry. The moment replayed itself in Vincent’s mind’s eye, him reaching for Kellen, back turned to Annie as her horse reared. Goodson had saved Annie. Vincent hadn’t even been looking. In the aftermath, Ellis had made it damned clear that Annie was Vincent’s most important responsibility.
It had never occurred to Vincent that Annie might have some opinions of her own on the matter.
Shit.
Vincent stared into Annie’s girl-trying-to-be-a-woman face and tried to think up some way to defuse the situation. Turn things back to how they should be again.
“If there’s anything you need—” he started.
“Nothing from you, thank you.” If Annie stood any straighter, she’d snap clean in two, Vincent thought.
Before he could come up with anything to say that might take back his mistake—the latest of so damned many—Annie turned on her heel and marched back up the steps. She didn’t slam the door. Vincent assumed that was only out of respect for Governor Harrison.
Yeah, that’s right, Bradley. Just keep screwing things up. Like shit’s not far enough out of your control as it is.
Vincent snapped his mouth shut and faced forward, returning his attention to the Crowmakers camp.
2
The scalding water in the laundry tub wreathed the surrounding area in lye-scented steam and drew more sweat from Kellen than seemed natural. Buckets of sweat, enough to make her question the sanity of trying to wash their uniform shirts back to a shade that resembled white. They’d only be sweat-soaked and stained again as soon as they put them back on.
But wash your shirts and mend your jackets was the order of the day. Kellen waited for the linen to show itself above the water and shoved it back down with the stick she wielded.
Across the wash tub from her, Jennett didn’t bother to pause for anything so bothersome as letting his shirt soak. He churned the water with a rapid-fire dunking of his shirt, thrashing up waves that slapped the tub in front of Petras and Goodson, who flanked him with sticks and shirts of their own.
From the front, the mansion looked calmly down on them. Kellen wondered if the inside was as big a bustle of preparation as outside. Probably so. Governor Harrison had enough servants, they were probably tripping over each other getting ready for tomorrow’s meeting. Kellen had glimpsed them out back by the kitchen, hauling and carrying, hurrying with every step.
The mansion’s big front door opened, and Tucker Ellis stepped out onto the mansion’s veranda-like porch, followed by Samuel James. As usual, James’s shirt sleeves were rolled up, and his jacket was nowhere in sight. Annie trailed out behind the men, spine stiff and nose in the air. The men spoke to each other, never even glancing at her, but she stood beside them and glanced intently from face to face as if they did.
Kellen noticed that Annie did not look at or speak to Vincent, even though he stood only a few steps away. He glanced toward Annie, but she turned her back and leaned toward the conversation between Ellis and James.
“It may be that yesterday’s goings-on spooked ol’ Ellis too, from the looks of it.” Jennett nodded toward the porch. Ellis planted booted feet in a wide stance and crossed his arms, staring fixedly at James. James also crossed his arms. He leaned back from Ellis as he spoke. “Wonder what they’re talking about,” Jennett said.
“Probably the same thing we have been,” Petras prodded his shirt deeper into the wash tub. His typically somber face drew into an even more sour expression. “Foolish ghost stories.”
Ghost stories. Kellen still couldn’t hear the words without thinking of Em Jacobs. And thinking of Em always made her feel like something she’d swallowed hadn’t gone down right.
“Or about the Crows.” Goodson stirred the water with a slow but steady motion that would probably have barely created a ripple if Jennett weren’t already sloshing water around. “And why the Crows reacted when we didn’t tell them to.”
Jennett snorted. “Of course that’s what it’s about. Ellis is telling James to fix whatever happened with the Crows. Broken weapons ain’t worth shit.”
Weapons. And not just the guns. We’re weapons now, too. Kellen’s shirt floated to the top again. Again, she shoved it down.
“Do you imagine they heard it, too?” Colley spoke up from behind Kellen, where he and Byrne and Kalvis sat mending tears in jackets. “Ellis and James?”
“Ellis was on the first boat, with me,” Kalvis said. “Until the Crows started moving, he was giving instructions to Mr. Lockton. Then when all the fuss started, he turned to watch, but not until after it had started.”
Off to the side, Bosch and Ger hung still-dripping shirts from a line they’d strung between two trees. From the corner of her eye, Kellen noticed Ger turn his head toward the conversation around the laundry tub. A sense of waiting surrounded him, had ever since the morning’s conversation. She felt recrimination in his every glance.
You heard them again before yesterday. Why didn’t you tell me? That was what Ger wanted to ask.
“James was on the second ferry,” Colley said.
“Samuel James would not notice the sky was falling until it conked him on the head,” Byrne said. “And even then, perhaps not.”
“But Miss Annie said something about it, right before the Crows and the horses spooked.” Goodson paused in his shirt-dunking and blinked toward the men behind Kellen. “She asked ‘What is that?’”
Following the line of recollected memories, Kellen spoke without thinking it all the way through. “Vincent looked up and around, right at the same time. I think he heard it, too.”
At the sound of Vincent’s name, Ger’s head turned sharply. Kellen trapped a sigh before it could escape. Now that would become a question for the next time Ger caught her alone, too.
Her resignation abruptly bristled and grew claws. How stupid was it, to be worrying about what Ger or Vincent or anyon
e else thought? They had bigger damned things to worry about.
Up on the mansion’s porch, Annie James still stood just off to the side of her father and Ellis, angled toward them but obviously still not a part of their conversation. On ground level but mere steps away from Annie, Vincent stood with crossed arms and furrowed brow outside his tent.
“I could talk to Annie.” Kellen hesitated a beat before adding. “And Vincent.”
She could. Annie had made friendly overtures once before. And Vincent was… Well, he was Vincent. But maybe she could convince him to have a reasonable conversation anyhow.
“Because Bradley is always so terribly helpful.” Ger’s voice, bright with bitterness but soft enough that Kellen wondered if he’d meant to speak aloud.
Kellen’s face heated. She turned her head far enough to frown in Ger’s direction.
“He’s doing his best, just like the rest of us.” Why am I defending him? But the words snapped out anyhow. “My horse nearly knocked me off the ferry. He came to help me.”
“I bet he did,” Jennett muttered. His shirt struggled toward the water’s surface. He smacked it down again.
Ger lowered his arms and turned toward Kellen. His cheeks reddened. “One act of concern doesn’t negate every other lousy thing he’s done or said to you.”
Words tangled up in Kellen’s gut, most of them ones that wanted to get shouted. But she was abruptly, painfully aware of the other men around the tub and of the dreadful, listening silence that had fallen.
Someone snickered. Kellen didn’t have to turn her head to know it was Langston, but she turned anyhow, because taking a shot at Langston would feel good right about then.
Langston and Rawle stood a couple of paces away, side by side.
“You should’ve seen it.” Langston elbowed Rawle. His eyes sparkled with ill-intentioned glee. “Out there on that ferry, when things got weird.”
Kellen’s fury toward Ger dissipated in a rush of trepidation over what Langston and Rawle might be up to this time. She wasn’t alone in her concern, evidently, because behind her boots shifted and uniforms rustled. Kalvis stepped into the edge of her vision.
Langston clutched at Rawle’s arm and made an exaggerated batting of his eyes. “Oh, William! Save me!” he spouted in a falsetto.
Rawle was already laughing, but he grabbed back at Langston and managed a fair approximation of a lady’s voice. His words swung madly between high and low, punctuated with very unmanly giggles.
“Janny, I’m scared! Hold me!” Rawle choked out.
Jennett dropped the stick he’d been using to drown his shirt and stood up, hands still dripping. Bosch lowered his arms and backed away from the laundry line. The two of them exchanged a look. Then, without a word and in perfect unison, they stalked toward Langston and Rawle.
3
Langston threw back his head and crowed.
“Gentlemen.” Kalvis took another step forward. “Please.”
“Not a gentle thing about them, Viktor.” Byrne replied from behind Kellen. His voice wavered, as if he was standing up as he spoke.
Rawle’s grin fell off his stupid face, and his eyes widened. Raising his hands in surrender, he stepped back from Langston. Bosch and Jennett ignored him and lunged straight at Langston.
Kalvis took more steps forward. Goodson and Petras were on their feet by then, too. Kellen stayed where she was—if someone managed to take Langston down a peg or ten, that would probably not be a bad thing. At least the fool had provided a diversion.
Kellen looked toward Ger, but his jaw was set and color still spotted his cheeks. Kellen resisted the urge to rub her hands over her face and maybe scream in frustration.
“Break it up. I said break it up!” Vincent’s long stride covered the distance between the mansion’s steps and the muddied ground surrounding the laundry tub. Without a glance, he stormed past Kellen and everyone else.
Jennett had gotten hold of Langston from behind and pinned his arms back. Bosch hauled back one massive arm and aimed his fist at Langston’s face. In the same moment Kalvis grabbed for Bosch’s arm, while Goodson angled around toward Jennett.
Vincent snapped to a halt, planted his feet, and drew his .36.
Kellen sucked in a breath, dropped her stick, and started to stand. Before she could even get all the way onto her feet, Vincent spun the gun around, gripped it by its barrel, and stepped up beside Bosch. With a sharp crack, the gun’s handle impacted Bosch’s temple.
Bosch went down, just folded in on himself and collapsed. Kalvis swapped from trying to hold Bosch’s arm back to trying to hold him up, but in the end he just stumbled back from Bosch’s weight. Bosch’s unconscious body lay at Kalvis’s feet like an oversized sleeping cat.
“I said, break it up.” Vincent flipped the .36 back around and shoved it into his holster.
Jennett let go of Langston, and Goodson let go of Jennett. Kalvis and Petras crouched beside Bosch.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ger’s shoved past Kellen. His hands had clenched into fists.
As Ger stalked up behind Vincent, Vincent turned on him. The downturn of his mouth and the narrowing of his eyes reflected the same loathing that Kellen glimpsed in Ger’s.
They’ll kill each other. God knows, they want to. Kellen could barely feel her legs, but the ground beneath her moved. That meant she was walking. She hoped she was walking fast enough.
“You want a piece of this action?” Vincent’s hand dropped again toward his holster.
“No.” Kellen stopped alongside Ger and clamped her fingers around his forearm. Ger jerked, like she’d startled him. “Stop it.”
Vincent rested his hand on his gun. His dark eyes stayed fixed on Ger. “If he comes at me, he gets what he deserves.”
The muscles of Ger’s arm tightened beneath Kellen’s fingers. But other than that, Ger didn’t move. That was good. Maybe she could talk Vincent down, too. “You can’t just—”
“I can.” Vincent finally shifted his gaze to Kellen and stared her down every bit as hard as he had Ger. “Everything we’ve worked for rides on the bunch of you assholes somehow learning to man up and stop acting stupid.”
In the silence that followed, Bosch muttered and sat up, but he stayed on the ground. Kalvis and Petras stayed crouched beside him, but they looked up at Vincent. They exchanged a glance, and Jennett and Goodson did the same.
“There are better ways—” Kellen started again.
“I’ll show you one.” Ger pulled at Kellen’s grip.
Kellen’s fear that Vincent might really hurt Ger twitched toward irritation. Her fingers closed tighter yet around his arm. “Knock it off.”
Ger could’ve tugged free of her. He could’ve dived at Vincent, maybe even managed to connect a fist with Vincent’s jaw. But that was something worthy of Bosch or Jennett. Kellen already knew Ger wouldn’t do it.
She was pretty sure.
Vincent apparently knew, too, because he smirked. Then his expression went all cold again, like he thought he was Ellis or something. The thought flashed through Kellen’s head that maybe she should’ve let Ger punch Vincent after all.
“There are a lot of other disciplinary actions we could be taking,” Vincent said. “Captain Ellis thinks the lot of you might be too special for them. But eventually, you’re gonna screw up so bad that he changes his mind.”
Kalvis did stand, then. As unpresuming a figure as he was, with his line-creased face and smaller stature, he managed to look taller than any of the men around him. “You are threatening us, Vincent?”
Vincent turned a dark look on Kalvis. “You don’t think a few of these men could stand to hang by their thumbs for an hour or two?”
“We’re volunteers.” Goodson said the words with his usual slow calm, but Kellen heard the doubt in them.
Vincent snorted. “You are not really that stupid.”
Irritated as she was with Vincent—more than irritated, because she suspected his hard line had more to do wi
th wanting to hit Bosch and name-call the rest of them than with needing to prove a point—Kellen thought he wasn’t altogether wrong. At least some of them were that stupid. And they kept proving it, over and over and over again.
Beside Kellen, Ger stood a little straighter. His nose tilted upward in an all-too-familiar expression. His gaze slid sideways toward Kellen, and he stepped as much forward and in front of her as he could while she still had hold of his arm.
Like she was the one in need of protecting. Like he was about to explain right and wrong not only to Vincent but to Kellen. As usual, because he obviously still didn’t believe she could figure it out for herself. Whatever else Vincent was, he at least understood the same shades of gray Kellen saw in the world.
And all that protecting Ger did, when had that ever made things better? She needed to be strong, all on her own. If she had been before, maybe Em Jacobs would still be alive.
And maybe sometimes being strong meant taking a stand even if it was unpopular. Wasn’t that supposed to have been one of Ger’s lessons?
“You have no right—” Ger started.
Kellen interrupted. “He’s not wrong.”
Vincent didn’t so much as glance at Kellen, but he stood a little straighter. The corner of his mouth curled, Ellis-like.
Ger half-turned toward Kellen, a frown falling across his face. He pulled away from her again. This time Kellen let him go.
Children. Both of them.
Kellen looked away from them both and stared straight at Langston. “We’re supposed to be working together.”
Kalvis and Goodson directed their gazes toward Langston, too. Jennett looked more or less down at his own feet.
Langston scowled and put on his best swagger. “Hey, I offered to ‘work’ with you. You turned me down.”
“God almighty, Bobby,” Byrne muttered from behind Kellen.
Kellen shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Exactly what I mean. Thanks, Langston.”
“You’d be thanking me more if you—”
“Hush!” Kalvis’s labor-reddened hands curled into fists. “Not another word, Robert.”
Monsters of Our Own Making (Crowmakers: Book 2): A Science Fiction Western Adventure Page 12