Prologue Page 25

  A table had been overturned and the lamp it had held lay shattered on the floor. The smell of kerosene filled the room as it soaked into the braided rug.

  He stepped around it, keeping his gaze steady on the incline of the stairs as he edged his way to the second floor. He saw a fallen satchel on its side at the top of the staircase, beribboned white under-things spilling from it. An old rag doll, the one he'd seen in Chloe's hands when he first woke up here, lay facedown below the bag, its arm torn off. At the sight of it, Travis stopped a moment and took a deep silent breath to steady his hands.

  He continued on light footsteps through the rooms upstairs. With each empty room he struggled harder to suppress the rage threatening to erupt from his fear. She wasn't in the house. No one was in this house.

  He bounded down the steps, two at a time, and strode to the back door. “Jace," he growled aloud, "we're about to have that talk Chloe suggested."

  * * *

  "Rankin!" Travis shouted. His own voice echoed back to him, bouncing off the silent, deserted buildings as he rode slowly through the center of Misfortune. Rankin may not be holding Chloe here, but for his plan to work, he'd have to be someplace where Travis could find him.

  Now and then a face would appear at a window, then vanish again, as though the few residents knew a terrible conflict was about to take place.

  "Here I am, Rankin," he called to the empty windows and shadowed doorways. "Come and get me but let Chloe go." The stillness was unnerving, broken by the squeak of an old shop sign swinging on rusted hinges in the wind, and the sound of his horse's hooves on the dusty, sunbaked street.

  Up ahead, a man emerged from the Twilight Star and sauntered into the street, in no particular hurry. His stature was compact and threatening. He held a Henry rifle diagonally across his body. The weapon almost looked too big for him but he handled it with familiar closeness, as though it were a well-loved woman. As the man stepped into his horse's path, Travis heard the ring of spurs and he reined the animal to a halt.

  A lengthy silence followed while the two men assessed each other.

  Travis found no emotion in Jace's eyes as they glinted up at him. He didn't see hate or anger there, only an aloof detachment.

  There really wasn't much about him Travis recognized. The easygoing openness he'd had as a younger man was gone. It wasn't just that he looked older. He looked old, in a way that only experience, not years, could bring about. He saw nothing in the bounty hunter to remind him he had been his closest friend. Now he was Travis's worst enemy. He climbed down from his horse, the saddle creaking in the quiet morning.

  Finally, Jace spoke. "I was just about to ride out and see you, McGuire. Thanks for saving me the trouble."

  Travis's hands hung at his sides, the revolver just inches from his grip. "You've fallen a long way Rankin—using a woman to get what you want. This is between you and me. It doesn't concern Chloe Maitland."

  Jace watched him unblinkingly, like a blue-eyed cat outstaring its prey. "Hmm, yeah, the new ladylove. At first she told me she'd never heard of you. Of course I knew she was just protecting your hide. She's feisty but she's not a good liar. She finally broke down and admitted you'd stayed with her for a while." His eyes narrowed slightly. "She must be pretty important for you to risk your chickenshit neck to tell me to stay away from her. Does she know you murdered your wife?" His voice was deliberate and smooth, as though he merely sought information.

  Travis felt his fingers close into a fist. He wanted to knock that flat expression off his face. No, that wouldn't help, not yet. He opened his hand. "Why should .I lie to her?"

  The action was not lost on Jace. "Looks like prison was good for that famous temper of yours. It ties my gut in knots that my old man had you turned loose. I still don't know why he did it."

  "What the hell do you want, Rankin?" Travis demanded, staring back. "I've had a bellyful of you following me over the last few months. Why did you do it?" Anger itched in his skin like a woolen union suit. Over Jace's shoulder he saw the DeGroots crowded against their shop window, watching them.

  "You did a pretty good job of staying out of reach," Jace acknowledged with mild amusement as he stroked the blue barrel of the Henry. "But it was never quite good enough, was it? When an old mule skinner I met on the road told me this town would be a hard place for a man who didn't like being an outsider, I knew I'd find you here. You're used to being an outsider."

  Travis frowned at him. In spite of his efforts to harness his anger, Jace's tactic was wearing on him. "You think you know me so well, but you never could get it through your head that I didn't kill Celia." His words grew louder. "I swear to God, sometimes she pushed me so hard, I was tempted. She slept with any man in town who asked. She even brought them home to our bed. I sure as hell would've had the motive if I'd known. You knew what she was doing. Everyone knew it but me." He wrapped his horse's reins around his gloved fist. "But I didn't kill her. One of her lovers did." He laced the word "lovers" with a bitter sarcasm.

  A spark of rage lit Rankin's features then, animating his cool appearance. His hands tightened on the rifle. His voice rose on a wave of controlled fury, “Don't"— then dropped —"tell me that again. I heard that lie often enough five years ago. My old man helped you cheat justice and I'm here to see that you don't get away with it. One way or another, you're going to answer for what you did. No matter what, she was my sister!"

  "She was my wife!"

  They glared at each other, their faces tight with anger, breath coming fast.

  "Goddamn you, Jace," Travis finally snarled, sick of this game. "Where is Chloe?"

  Jace's brows rose in mystification, shifting his hat slightly, his cool exterior recovered. "How the hell should I know? I haven't seen her since last night when I watched her ride out to find you. Maybe she went back to the schoolteacher." A slow smile widened his mouth. "Although a fine-looking woman like her seems wasted on that crazy sissy. He told me you stole her from him and ruined her reputation. Doesn't surprise me."

  Crazy sissy. Travis wondered if his heart had stopped. He got a funny empty feeling in his chest. He grew light-headed and his vision blurred for an instant while the sky seemed to change places with the ground.

  He knew instinctively that Jace was telling him the truth. He might be relentlessly single-minded in his purpose but he still had a fragment of honor and Travis could feel it.

  Jace hadn't taken Chloe. Evan had.

  Evan Peterson. The man who hid behind Chloe's skirts and lost his future security when Travis won her heart. The man with the mean streak Travis had detected.

  He grasped Jace's arm. "Help me find Chloe. I don't know where she is, but I know Peterson's got her."

  Jace pulled back impatiently, clearly offended. "Why should I? Get the sheriff to look for her."

  "He couldn't find salt in the ocean. I've got a bad feeling about this. Peterson could really hurt her." Travis hated the position he was in, but he had no choice. He didn't know anyone with Jace's tracking skills. "I need your help."

  Jace's eyes gleamed with his advantage. "What's in it for me?" he inquired softly.

  Travis clenched his jaw, then pulled his gun from the holster and held it out butt-first. "I'll go with you. Whatever you want."

  He studied Travis speculatively. Finally, he nodded but didn't take the weapon. "That's an interesting offer. She must be worth a lot to you."

  Travis looked up at Albert DeGroot, giving the nosy shopkeeper a menacing stare until he and Mildred backed away from the window. Then he returned his gaze to Rankin. "I owe her my life."

  The bounty hunter was silent a moment. "You've got yourself a deal, McGuire. I'll decide how I want to settle this after we find the woman." He pushed Travis's gun back toward him. "Keep the Colt, you'll need it. But stay ahead of me. I can't have you shooting me in the back."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Chloe twisted her hands in front of her. The rope chafed her wrists and two bright-red rings were appearing
on them. She tried shifting her feet but they were tied even tighter. At least her stockings kept the coarse hemp off her ankles. She sat crosswise on a dusty iron bed, her back propped against the rough plank wall.

  In this small room over the Rose and Garter Saloon, Evan paced feverishly before her, barely recognizable in his insanity. He'd ordered her not to speak and she willingly obliged—he was so agitated, she was afraid he might shoot them both.

  She watched him warily as he strode back and forth, muttering to himself, answering questions she couldn't hear, seemingly deep in thought. Horrified by his bizarre behavior, she laced her fingers together to hide their shaking. He wore a wrinkled, dirty suit that looked as if he'd slept in it for several nights. His white shirt was graying and damp with sweat. His cravat hung untied around his neck.

  She'd packed her satchel and was going down to the parlor when Evan had appeared at the foot of the stairs, waving a gun she didn’t even know he owned. He grabbed her by the front of her shirt, hurling the accusations of a jilted lover. With surprising strength, he forced her to this place, taking the back path that ran behind the buildings.

  Now he came to a sudden stop and whirled to face her, resting his chin on his fist. He studied her from several angles, as though she were a museum exhibit. His red-rimmed eyes were maniacal and accusing.

  “You belong to me, Chloe,” he said finally, “and I won’t abide a whore. I know you went to that blacksmith last night. And I know what you did with him. I sat in your kitchen and waited for you all night. But you didn’t come home. I cannot let this defiance pass unpunished. You were disobedient and you must be corrected.”

  You must be corrected. Through her fear her memory seized upon what Travis had told her about Cory Hicks and the bruises on his left arm. Cory had told Travis that Evan was “correcting” him.

  She’d thought she’d felt terror last night when Travis grabbed her in a stranglehold and pressed the barrel of his gun to her temple. That was laughable compared to the danger she faced now, but she had to venture a response, to try to remind him that she was an adult, not one of his pupils. “Evan,” she began in a surprisingly calm voice, “it isn’t your place to object. Won’t you please untie me?”

  “Silence!” he thundered. “How dare you address me by my first name? No student is allowed to do that!” He gestured recklessly with the gun. The weapon was clumsy in his hand and showed him to be a man who knew nothing about firearms. “Apologize at once!”

  Chloe froze, paralyzed with fear. She lost any hope of reasoning with him. He was completely out of his mind. “I apologize, Mr. Peterson.”

  He went on in a sly, confidential tone. “I know why you broke our engagement. You were pining for McGuire. When he left town, I though you’d see how foolish and pointless your little infatuation was.”

  He stopped and grasped his head with his hands. His face contorted with great pain, as if his skull were too tight. When he spoke again, his voice was filled with raging sobs. “Instead you turned me away. Twice! You wouldn’t let me touch you, but he got it all! I had a right, damn you! I had a right to marry you and live in that house. I courted you for six months. Did you suppose I wanted to live in the Tollivers’ attic forever? You made me believe it would be mine.”

  In the next instant his voice was calm again and he smiled patiently at her. “But now that I’ve told Rankin where to find you blacksmith, he’ll kill him for me.” He squeezed her chin in a hard pinch, then let his hand drop to fondle her breast. Lust crossed his twisted features and she squirmed away from his touch. “McGuire won’t bother us anymore and we’ll never be parted.”

  Chloe stared at Evan, overwhelmed, as boundless, gnawing terror licked through her. It would be foolhardy to remind him they’d never been engaged. Travis had sensed Evan's instability from the first moment he'd met him. Why had she failed to recognize all the signs that now seemed so obvious? She'd only admitted that Evan was weak and mean. The idea of his insanity had been one that she'd skittered away from as though it were a grotesque insect. Now she was forced to face it.

  She looked around wildly at her prison. Feeble sunlight penetrated the dingy lace curtains. The late morning breeze that blew through an open window couldn't dispel the years of mustiness closed in here. A hideous possibility formed in her mind: she might die in this room.

  Fortune had made her the captive of a man consumed by madness, a man she nearly married, and no one—not even Travis—knew where she was.

  * * *

  "That's where he's got her, right up there," Jace murmured. They were on the east edge of town, standing in the doorway of a vacant apothecary shop. All the buildings on this side of Misfortune were abandoned.

  He pointed to a second-floor window over an empty saloon on the other side of the street. A faded sign hung askew above the broken doors, telling any who cared that this had once been the Rose and Garter.

  "How do you know?" Travis whispered.

  "Wait a minute . . . there, see?" A lace curtain, pulled by the breeze, fluttered from an open window. "If the window was broken or had been open a long time, the weather would have shredded that curtain by now But it's whole and still sort of white. They're up there, all right."

  Travis pushed away the images crowding into his head of Chloe held prisoner by that lunatic. If he stopped to think about what could be happening, he'd be worthless to her.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. "Thanks. I'll be back in a few minutes." He drew the Colt and stepped out of the doorway.

  Jace pulled him back and leveled his dead stare at him for a moment. "Or maybe you won't. If you manage to save the woman, you'll be out the back door and I'll have to track you down again. Or that jittery teacher might kill you and I'll miss seeing it." He pulled off the duster and threw it over the hitching rail, then checked the rounds in the Henry. "No, I'm coming along."

  "Thanks for the bighearted offer," Travis snapped back, wondering if there was any limit to Jace's cold hate. But he grudgingly accepted that the bounty hunter had more experience in this than he did.

  "Then let's go. But use your head." Jace kept his eye on the window a moment longer. "If we spook Peterson and he's got a gun, someone is going to get shot. I don't plan for it to be me. Don't let your temper get in my way."

  Travis glared back, fed up with Jace's icy arrogance.

  "Get this straight, Rankin," he ground out, low-voiced. "If you want to help, fine. Otherwise, stay out here and wait. This isn't business—there's no reward. This is personal."

  Jace finally nodded. "Okay, for the next ten minutes, we're on the same side."

  They left the doorway and moved quickly to the Rose and Garter. Travis fought the urge to barrel through those doors and blow off Peterson's goddamned head.

  Inside the dim saloon, the once elegant back bar and nearly every other structure were festooned with cobwebs. Weeds grew through breaks in the rotting floor, leaning toward columns of sunlight that shone through bullet holes in the walls and dirty windows. Overturned tables and broken glasses lay scattered around the room. In the dark corners, unseen creatures made scurrying sounds as the intruders crossed to the staircase.

  Travis led the way up the rickety steps, staying close to the wall, his revolver extended the full length of his arm. He relaxed his fingers around the grip, forcing himself to maintain an easy, flexible hold.

  On the second floor Jace looked up and down the dark hall. There were three rooms on each side of the stairway, all with the doors closed. He swore silently, then put a finger to his lips. They stood motionless, listening for the sound of voices. Finally, a low droning reached them. Travis headed toward the sound with Jace behind him.

  In front of a door, Travis dropped to one knee and looked through the keyhole. He saw Peterson nervously pacing back and forth, like a wild dog in a pen. The room was small and each circuit brought him within inches of the door. Of Chloe, all Travis could see were her feet hanging over the edge of the bed, her ankles bound. If he'd
hurt her, Travis vowed to himself, he'd riddle Peterson with the Colt and drag his miserable carcass to the prairie for the coyotes. Without looking away, he motioned to Jace to be ready, and felt him move into place behind him. They needed the advantage of surprise. As soon as that son of a bitch turned his back—

  "Mr. Peterson, couldn't you put the gun down and loosen the rope on my wrists? I can't feel my fingers."

  Travis tightened his jaw and reached for the doorknob.

  Peterson whirled to look at her. "Be quiet, slut! I ordered you not to speak. You still haven't learned obedience. You just added another hour to your punishment." His voice took on a whining tone. "I can't be lenient with you. If the other students hear of it, they'll suspect me of favoritism."

  Now Travis understood why Evan had always made him feel as though he were looking into the bottom of his own grave. The man had hovered on the twilight edge of sanity all along.

  Turn around, damn you—

  Peterson paused to rub his eyes. "Just a little while longer," he said to Chloe, a satisfied smile on his pale, sweating face. "Then you can be my whore, Chloe, and give me everything you gave him—the smooth skin, those long legs, your soft breasts. ..."

  Every muscle Travis owned clenched in fury, and he felt Jace's warning hand on his shoulder.

  "Just till I know for certain that the bounty hunter has taken care of McGuire," Peterson continued. He pivoted toward the window—

  Suddenly the door crashed open and Chloe saw Travis and Jace Rankin storm the room, guns drawn on Evan. Both men wore cold, deliberate expressions even more deadly than Evan's frenzied raving.

  Travis spared her a glance as he ordered, "Don't move, Peterson." Then he rushed to Chloe and pulled her to the floor. There wasn't time to be gentle and she landed hard on her hip. He shoved her behind him and toward Jace.