An Outlaw in Wonderland (29 page)

“If everything were all right, you wouldn’t be here,” Ethan said.

“Pravda.”
Ethan cast the man an exasperated glance, and Fedya smirked.

The only language besides English that Ethan understood anything of was Gaelic, and
it annoyed him when Fedya said things he did not comprehend, which was no doubt why
the man did it.

“Maybe we could stick to English,” Farquhar suggested.

“I will do my best, but sometimes the words just ”—Fedya waved a long-fingered, clever
hand—“slip out.”

Ethan grunted, causing Fedya’s smirk to widen, until he asked, “How’s your wife?”
Then Fedya’s expression froze.

“Did I not tell you to forget about her, about me, the instant we left?”

“You knew that wasn’t going to happen.”

“How did you find me?” Fedya asked.

Ethan jerked a thumb at Farquhar. The Pinkerton spread his hands. “Did you think I
wouldn’t keep an eye on you?” He glanced at Mikey, who was scowling mightily and rubbing
at his scar as if he could erase it by touch alone, then lowered his voice. “On him?”

Ethan frowned. “You know each other?”

“We’ve met,” Moze admitted.

“Where? Why?”

“I didn’t just stroll into Castle Thunder without an escort,” Fedya answered.

Ethan’s eyes widened. “Him?”

“Oui,”
Fedya said.

“You were a very busy boy,” Ethan murmured to Farquhar.

“My job.” Farquhar looked away, discovered Mikey’s steely gaze upon him, and looked
back.

“How close an eye did you keep?” Fedya wondered.

“Don’t worry. I couldn’t care less who you’ve fleeced.”

“Then why the eye upon me?”

“Never know when I might need a sniper or a scout. Like now.”

“But, Alexi—” Mikey began, and Fedya silenced him with a glance.

“You’re still using that name?” Ethan asked.

“It has become my own.”

“And your wife? How’s her—?”

“Her
pregnancy
is going well thus far,” Fedya interrupted.

Pregnancy? Was that the truth or another lie? As Fedya never coughed or twitched or
did anything else that might give him away, it was impossible to tell. If the man
didn’t want anyone to know the truth, about him or his “wife,” no one would know.
Because if anyone learned a truth he didn’t want known, he would just—

“Mikhail,” Fedya murmured.

Mikey no longer stood in the corner. For such a large man, he moved both quickly and
quietly. He snatched the detective by his shirtfront and lifted him several feet off
the ground.

“Put him down,” Ethan said.

Mikey ignored him. He hadn’t taken orders from Ethan since he’d forgotten who Ethan
was.

“What do you know of me?” Fedya demanded.

Farquhar attempted to speak, but Mikey was holding him too tightly. The detective
turned an ugly shade of puce.

“Can’t speak if he’s dead,” Ethan pointed out.

“Precisely,” Fedya answered.

“How many men have you had my—” Ethan bit his lip before the word
brother
slipped out. That always upset everyone. “Have you had
him
kill?”

“Too many to count.”

Farquhar’s eyes bulged. Ethan wasn’t certain if that were a result of his lack of
air or Fedya’s answer.

“A dead Pinkerton detective isn’t going to go unnoticed.”

“You’d be surprised,” Fedya said.

“No doubt,” Ethan answered, and Fedya laughed. For an instant, it almost felt like
the old days.

In prison.

They’d been friends—until everything had gone badly and they’d wound up hating each
other. Or Ethan had wound up hating Fedya. He wasn’t certain how Fedya felt about
him.

Fedya waved his hand, and Mikey opened his. Farquhar crumpled to the ground, where
he rubbed his throat and gasped for air like a fish upon a riverbank. Fedya didn’t
even look at the man as he spoke. “You asked us here to help our friend.”

Ethan blinked, frowned, glanced at Farquhar, then at Fedya. “You came for me?”

“Who else?”

“Annabeth?”

“She’s here?” Fedya looked around, a picture of perfect innocence. Except Ethan knew
he wasn’t perfect, or innocent, and never had been. “Since when?”

“Since you sent her. We’ll discuss that once I have her back.”

“What did you expect me to do,
mon ami
? Nothing?”

Farquhar peered back and forth between the two of them. “What are you talking about?”

“Shh,” Fedya murmured, and Farquhar did. “You said we must get Annabeth back,” Fedya
continued. “Where has she gone?”

“It’s a long story,” Ethan said.

Most of which Fedya didn’t know. Considering Fedya, he’d probably discovered some
on his own. Though Ethan doubted he knew that Annabeth had betrayed them or he wouldn’t
be saying her name with such fondness. Should he tell the man the truth or shouldn’t
he?

Ethan wrestled with the question. Apparently, his indecision showed on his face, for
Farquhar found his voice at last. “Shut up, Walsh.”

“I don’t like him.” Fedya tilted his head as he gazed at the detective who still sat
on the floor. “Do we need him?”

“No,” Ethan began, but then Fedya flicked a finger and Mikey started forward. “Yes!
We do. We need him.”

Fedya cast a disgusted glance at Ethan before calling Mikey off. “Water the horses,
Mikhail.”

Mikey lumbered out.

“You need to stop making him kill people,” Ethan said.

“I don’t make him do anything.”

“Suggesting?”

“It’s a difficult world. Only the strong survive.”

Fedya was no doubt right, but Ethan still didn’t like the idea of his little brother
as an assassin.

“Would you rather he was dead?” Fedya murmured.

“No,” Ethan admitted. Mikey might not remember him; he might think Fedya was his brother.
The sight of him might make Ethan want to weep. But Mikey was alive, and it was because
of Fedya that he’d stayed that way.

Considering it was Fedya who had killed him in the first place, that only seemed fair.
And it only seemed fair to be honest about everything, even to a man who didn’t know
what honesty was.

“Annabeth betrayed us.”

Farquhar cursed. As he still didn’t seem capable of standing, it was easy to ignore
him.

Fedya lifted a dark brow and waited. Ethan had taught him that, or maybe it had been
Mikey, during the time they’d spent in prison. According to the gospel of John Law,
there was power in silence. Folks often felt compelled to fill it, and a patient man
could learn much without ever asking anything.

Even though Ethan knew what Fedya was doing, he filled the silence. Not because he
felt compelled to, but because he wanted to.

“The trap—Lee and Davis. That was her doing. She was a spy.”

“Interesting.”

Ethan considered the information many things. Interesting was the least of them.

“You already knew, didn’t you?”

Fedya shrugged. “It was a long time ago. There has been enough blame and anger. What
good does it do? Can we change the past?”

“No,” Ethan agreed. He only wished that he could. “When did you become so . . . ?”
Ethan searched for a word.

“Smart?” Fedya suggested. “Mature? Virtuous?” Ethan gave a derisive huff, and Fedya
smiled. “Stones and glass houses, Doctor. As I recall, you were a spy, as well.”

“Annabeth still is,” Ethan muttered.

“She and Cat would get along well.”

“Cat?”

“O’Banyon.”

“The bounty hunter?” That would explain the gunshot wound.

“Former. She is now my wife.”

Trust Fedya to marry a legendary bounty hunter.

“Does her being a bounty hunter have something to do with the dead sheriff?” Ethan
asked.

“He wasn’t a sheriff but an outlaw by the name of Rufus Owens. He killed the man you’d
hired to be your sheriff and took his place.”

“Why?”

“He was tired of being chased by bounty hunters. He thought he was safe until one
turned up here.”

“Cat tried to arrest him?”

Fedya’s gaze darkened. “More or less.”

“But he fell out the window.”

Fedya’s lips quirked. “More or less.”

As Ethan had suspected, he would never know the whole truth of the dead sheriff.

“Your wife is Cat O’Banyon?” Farquhar asked.

Fedya hauled the detective to his feet. “My wife is Catey Romanov. If I hear any whisper
of Cat O’Banyon—”

“No one will hear it from me.”

“I don’t ever want to hear from you or see you again,” Fedya continued. “I am a businessman.
I have my own gambling hall and saloon. I came here only to help my old friend, not
to perform any tricks for you. I am not a show pony.”

“Anymore,” Ethan murmured, and received an icy glance from Fedya.

At one time, the man now known as Alexi Romanov had traveled the country as Fedya,
the amazing sharpshooting boy. Which was how he’d become the Union’s best sniper.

“Daylight’s wasting,” Fedya said. “Tell me everything.”

M
ikhail couldn’t wait to leave the town behind. Too many people staring, too many buildings
too close together. And that man. That doctor. Who peered at Mikhail with light eyes
full of so much dark. Whenever Mikhail saw him, he wanted both to run to him and away
from him.

Which made no sense attall. Or maybe it did.

Alexi thought Mikhail didn’t remember Castle Thunder, and Mikhail let him. Because
he knew that the place upset his brother. Hell, it upset Mikhail.

His memories of the prison were fuzzy. He was never really certain what was real and
what was a dream. He remembered only waking there—hurt and alone, missing Alexi, needing
to find him with a desperation he couldn’t ignore. He never could recall how it was
he’d come to be in Castle Thunder in the first place, nor how or why he’d been hurt,
not even how he’d escaped. He remembered only tracking Alexi and finding him.

The doctor had healed Mikhail, but whenever he looked at the man, all he remembered
was pain. So he stopped glancing the doctor’s way.

Over the past few years, there had been hard times, sad times, bloody times. With
Alexi, there always were. But they were together, and they had Miss Cathy—Alexi called
her Catey now, but Mikhail could never remember that—and a baby on the way.

Alexi said Mikhail would be the baby’s uncle and that was an important job. Mikhail
would protect the child, even though Miss Cathy was nearly as dangerous as Alexi.
Still, three was always better than one or even two. They were a family, and there
weren’t nothin’ stronger than that. Which was why he didn’t mind searchin’ for the
doctor’s wife.

Even though the doctor himself gave Mikhail the worst kind of headache.

•   •   •

Farquhar hadn’t spent the last two days staring at blue bottles as Ethan had. Instead
he’d been preparing to leave as soon as their scout arrived. Water, food, weapons,
bedrolls awaited them at the stable.

They rode out of Freedom within an hour of Fedya’s and Mikey’s riding in. Ethan could
almost like the man for that.

Almost, but not quite. He couldn’t forget Farquhar’s having recruited Annabeth as
a spy. Twice. What kind of man did that?

One who had no scruples, no kindness, no charity. One who couldn’t be trusted. Ethan
made sure Farquhar rode in front of him so he could watch the detective every second.
It wasn’t until they’d been riding for several hours that he caught Fedya doing the
same thing.

A sense of camaraderie that he hadn’t experienced since the war came over him. Ethan
didn’t miss the blood and the death and the artillery, but he had missed that.

Mikey followed the route of one horse carrying two riders. According to him, every
other trace that led out of Freedom belonged to one horse and one rider.

Ethan had never understood how his brother saw such things. To Ethan, a trail was
a trail. But for Mikey, each one told a story that only he could read. Oddly, the
ability had not been lost with the loss of himself but rather enhanced.

The four men rode across the prairie, stopping every so often so Mikey could climb
from his horse and scowl at the marks on the ground.

“How does he do that?” Farquhar asked, gaze on the swaying knee-high grasses that
appeared exactly the same all the way to the horizon.

“No one knows,” Fedya answered. “Him least of all.”

“From the moment he could walk,” Ethan said, “he followed me. I’d try to hide.” He
shrugged. “Little brothers, who needs them? But he found me every time. Once”—Ethan
paused as Mikey again stopped, dismounted, scowled—“a child disappeared. Her parents
feared the Shawnee had taken her. The law refused to look.”

The Shawnee Indians had relocated from South Carolina to Pennsylvania to Ohio and
then on to Kansas and eventually Indian Territory. When Ethan and Mikey had been children
in Pennsylvania, there had still been a few bands that refused to move.

“Where was she?” Farquhar asked as Mikey got back on his horse and continued on; the
three of them did the same.

“With the Shawnee,” Ethan said. “But the Indians were so impressed that Mikey found
them, they gave her back.” Fedya and the detective appeared dubious, and Ethan lifted
one hand. “I swear.”

They rode through the excruciating heat of midday. Farquhar stayed close to Mikey,
which gave Fedya and Ethan the opportunity to talk. Ethan had not thought he would
ever speak to the man again, but suddenly he wanted to.

“How is he?” Ethan asked.

“The same.”

“He’s remembered nothing from his life . . . before?”

“He remembers everything, Ethan. An entire life that he and I lived.”

“A life that never happened.”

Fedya shrugged. “For him it did.”

The two of them remained silent for several moments; then Fedya continued. “Wouldn’t
you rather forget the war? Castle Thunder? Everything that happened then and there?”

Ethan had thought so. But if he forgot that, he would forget Annabeth. Once he’d believed
that would be for the best, but he believed that no longer. Perhaps because he’d tried
every way that he knew to forget her, yet still she remained. In his mind, his dreams,
his heart.

“No,” Ethan answered. “I would not.”

Fedya’s glance said he understood. His sending Annabeth to Ethan proved it. While
Ethan had first wanted to strangle him for interfering, the urge had passed.

“Thank you,” he said.

Fedya’s brow lifted. Ethan waited for him to say something sarcastic—in any language—but
he didn’t.

“You need not worry about Mikhail. Catey loves him as I do. She’s never known him
any other way than the way he is now.”

“I just wish . . .” Ethan began, and Fedya finished. “Me too.”

“There might be a way to cure him.”

“Cure?” Fedya said, as if the word were as foreign as some of his own.

Quickly Ethan shared what had happened to him—the injury, his memory loss, its return.

“You think if we re-create the situation that caused Mikey to lose his memory, he
might regain it?”

“I don’t know.” Fedya opened his mouth, shut it again, sighed. “Ask,” Ethan urged.

Fedya slid his gaze to Ethan’s face, then set it back between his horse’s ears. “You
will not kill me?”

“I told you that I wouldn’t. Besides, that threat was entirely too optimistic on my
part.”

“Not really,” Fedya muttered.

“To think I could kill the Union’s greatest sniper, who happens to have a very large,
vicious bodyguard? Definitely overreaching.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Something in Fedya’s voice made Ethan frown. “What are you talking about?”

The man hesitated, then shook his head. “We are discussing you and the reason you
threatened the ‘Union’s once-greatest sniper.’”

“Courage, courtesy of a bottle.”

“
Oui
,” Fedya murmured. “You don’t seem in thrall to the bottle any longer.”

“She cured me.”

“Saved you.”

“Yes.”

Again Fedya turned his gaze forward, though he seemed to see all the way back home.
“They do that.”

As the sun tumbled toward the western horizon, Farquhar drew even with them. “I’ve
been this way before. There’s nothing but washouts and scrub.”

“Which might be why you’ve never found your outlaw,” Fedya said. “Looks deceive.”

If anyone knew the truth of that, it was Fedya.

Less than an hour later, Mikey dismounted, but he didn’t kneel and contemplate dirt.
Instead, he stared into a snarl of scrub and thorns. The three men joined him.

“Lose them?” Farquhar asked.

Mikey cast him a glare. Farquhar swallowed and lifted a hand to his bruised throat.
His brother’s gaze passed over Ethan as if he weren’t there, honing in on Fedya. “Horse
went in here. Then a bunch came out and went . . .” He pointed to the east.

“That can’t be right,” Farquhar murmured. “No horse can get through there. A bunch
certainly couldn’t.”

Fedya pointed to the ground where dozens of hoofprints headed in the direction Mikey
had indicated. They seemed to appear right at the edge of the scrub.

“But how—”

Mikey pulled back what seemed to be a solid nest of thorns. The thicket swung away
like a door, revealing a narrow path coiling downward.

“Rabbit hole,” Farquhar muttered.

“Sure ’nough.” Mikey moved forward.

Ethan put a hand on his brother’s arm. “No.”

Mikey jerked away; Fedya stepped between them, setting his own hand on the same arm.
Mikey quieted instantly.

Fedya turned to Ethan. “What do you think?”

“Outlaw gang.” Ethan held up one finger. “Many horses going that way.” He pointed
where Mikey had. “Stage robbed yesterday near Ellsworth.”

“Which happens to be that way,” Farquhar murmured.

“They haven’t come back?” Ethan asked.

“No,” Mikey answered, and the ache in Ethan’s chest eased a bit at the first word
his brother had said to him since he’d become someone else’s brother. It was a start.

“Didn’t we come to get the man’s wife, Alexi?”

“We did,” Fedya answered.

“Then why don’t we get ’er?”

Ethan blinked. “She’s . . . ?”

Mikey lifted his chin, indicating the entrance to the rabbit hole. “In there.”

Fedya shouted something behind him that Ethan couldn’t hear. He was already halfway
down the spiraling path.

•   •   •

“Shit,” Annabeth muttered.

Someone was coming.

She’d been chewing at the ropes that bound her wrists. Her mouth was sore and her
jaw ached. The rope looked exactly the same as it had when she’d started.

She’d have to return to her original plan. Hope that one of the men was so eager to
rape her that he barely removed his pants, let alone his weapons, and that this particular
fool was either the first to draw the short straw for her favors or that she survived
until a big enough fool did.

Not the best plan, but the only one she had.

Annabeth squinted at the opening through which whoever was arriving should appear.
She didn’t see enough dust to indicate the entire gang. The arrival sounded like a
single person. Had all but one of Lassiter’s gang been killed in their robbery attempt?

She couldn’t be that lucky. Except . . .

A skitter and thud was followed by the rattle of rocks rolling down the trail. Then
a man stepped out.

Annabeth closed her eyes. Opened them again. She had been in the sun for days. Her
water was nearly gone. She hadn’t eaten. That still didn’t explain what Ethan was
doing here.

Unless he wasn’t.

“Beth,” he whispered, and ran to her.

His hands felt real when they cradled her face, his lips the same when they brushed
hers. But she knew better. Not only was Wonderland impossible to find, but why would
Ethan come after her this time when he hadn’t the last?

“You’re not real,” she said.

“Now you sound like me.” He kissed her forehead, then tugged at the knots on her wrists.
“What the hell did you do to these?”

She opened her mouth, and he lifted a hand to her lips. A sweet gesture—she nearly
puckered up—then he plucked a rope fiber from between her teeth. “You’d have chewed
through them eventually.” He frowned at her black eye. “Someone’s gonna pay for that.”

“Now you sound like me,” she said.

He tugged a knife from his pocket, slicing through the rope at her wrists, her ankles,
and her waist. Then he hauled her to her feet. As she hadn’t stood on them for two
days, she swayed. Ethan lifted her into his arms. Annabeth started to think that maybe,
just maybe, this was real.

When she saw Lassiter Morant blocking the exit, she knew that it was.