An Outlaw in Wonderland (30 page)

A
man stood at the foot of the rabbit hole alone, no horse, which was how he’d approached
without them hearing. He scowled as if he’d like to kill them both. Considering the
gun in his hand, he probably would.

“Let me go,” Annabeth murmured.

Ethan released her legs. Her feet hit the earth with a dull thud. He kept his arm
around her waist, afraid she’d sink into the dirt. Maybe she should. According to
Fedya, those nearer the ground made the smallest targets.

“Get down,” he whispered.

She wavered, but she didn’t fall. “No.”

“What the fuck?” the man muttered, coming toward them.

Ethan stepped around his wife, wishing he hadn’t foolishly left his own pistols with
his horse. Although what good they would have done him now, he had no idea. The man
had the drop on them.

Not that Ethan was exceptionally fast on the draw. He could shoot. Sometimes he might
even hit something. But his best weapon had always been his brain.

“Lassiter Morant?” Ethan extended his hand. Maybe the fellow would holster his gun
long enough to shake. Stranger things had happened.

Instead, Morant wrinkled his nose at Ethan’s palm as if he’d smelled something foul
and kept the gun pointed at Ethan’s chest. “How did you find this place? It’s . . .
it’s . . . impossible.”

“Not really.” Ethan lowered his hand to his side.

“Oh,” Annabeth whispered, as understanding dawned.

Only Mikey could find the impossible. Which meant Mikey was here and, therefore, so
was Fedya. Ethan expected a bullet to pierce Morant’s brain momentarily. Both Ethan
and Annabeth stepped to the side, out of the line of fire.

The gun shifted, following them, along with the outlaw’s confused expression. Ethan
was equally confused. What in hell was Fedya waiting for? Except . . . if the trio
Ethan had arrived with had remained at the entrance to the rabbit hole, the outlaw
would not be here. Where were they?

“How did that stage robbery work out for you?” Annabeth asked. “You seem short a few
men. All of them, in fact.”

“I rode ahead. Wanted to get back to”—Morant smirked—“you.”

“Let him go,” Annabeth blurted. “I’ll do anything you want. You can . . . do anything
you want.”

“Oh, I plan to.” The smirk widened. “He can watch.”

Risking a glance upward, Ethan saw nothing, no one. He wasn’t surprised. Neither Mikey
nor Fedya had survived this long by allowing themselves to be seen by the enemy.

“You said if I was breathing when you returned, you wouldn’t hurt him.”

“And you believed me? Oh, Anna, you fool.”

Ethan disliked the man’s calling her a fool almost as much as he disliked Morant’s
shortened version of her name. At least the bastard wasn’t calling her Beth.

Annabeth shrugged. “Worth a try.”

“You think I’d leave you?” Ethan murmured. “You are a fool.”

Her lips tightened. “I left you. I went to him, chose him. You’re the fool.”

Ethan just rolled his eyes and returned his gaze to the man with the gun.

“She did come willingly,” Lassiter said. “She’s part of my gang. She’s stolen, cheated,
lied, and a whole lot more.”

“Me too,” Ethan said. “You both must think I’m an imbecile. My wife just said you
threatened my life. Of course she went with you.”

“I didn’t threaten you until we got here.”

“Bullshit,” Ethan returned. “That knife was a threat louder than words.”

“How did you—?” Annabeth began, then muttered, “Ass.”

Ethan hoped she was referring to Farquhar and not to him.

“You wanted her back,” Ethan continued. “I understand that. Who wouldn’t?”

“I didn’t want her back; I wanted her dead.”

Ethan shifted again. What in hell was taking Fedya so long to shoot this guy?

“If you’d wanted her dead, why didn’t you kill her before now?”

“She doesn’t get to die fast and easy. She betrayed me.”

“She was my wife first.”

“She’ll be my whore last.”

“Watch what you say,” Ethan murmured.

“Or what?” Morant asked. “You think I let her in my gang because she could ride a
horse? I let her in because she rode me.”

Morant stepped so close, the barrel of the gun brushed Ethan’s shirt. Huge mistake.
Ethan had been taught to disarm fools like this by a master.

He grabbed the barrel with one hand, pushed it away, and twisted. The gun went off;
the bullet plowed harmlessly into the dirt. Ethan used his other hand to break Lassiter
Morant’s nose.

The outlaw fell backward, blood spurting. Ethan handed the weapon to his wife and
followed. He wanted to hit him again and again, but Lassiter’s nose wasn’t the only
thing Ethan had broken. Ethan cradled his screaming hand.

“Are you crazy?” Annabeth asked, pointing Morant’s gun at Morant’s head. “He could
have shot you.”

Oddly, things had moved too fast for Ethan to even consider that. He’d wanted to stop
the outlaw’s words with his fist, so he had. Luckily, Morant had been stupid enough
to get close, and Ethan had spent time in prison with Fedya, a man who knew just what
to do in this situation.

“He insulted my wife.”

“That wasn’t an insult. You can believe what he told you.”

“Oh, I believe him. I just don’t care.”

“If you believe him, why did you hit him?”

“Someone had to. I was hoping for a bullet from Fedya, but that didn’t happen.”

Gunfire erupted in the distance.

“My men are gonna kill you both.” The threat in the outlaw’s words was negated by
the nasally whine of his voice through a blood-clogged nose.

Annabeth cocked the gun. “I’m gonna kill you if you give me the slightest reason.”

“Bitch,” he muttered.

Annabeth appeared bored. “I’ve been called worse than that by better than you.”

Ethan considered his left hand, which he’d already curled into a fist as the right
was pretty much worthless. Morant wouldn’t be able to talk at all with a broken jaw.

“You have better uses for that hand,” she said.

Ethan looped his left arm around her shoulder. She was right.

The gunfire slowed, picked up again, ended. Distant shouts were followed by a whole
lot of silence. Just when Ethan was about to take the path upward, the sound of hoofbeats
came downward; Fedya and Farquhar appeared.

“Mikey?” Ethan asked as they dismounted.

Please let him be okay
, he thought, then realized that his definition of “okay” had changed. All Ethan wanted
was for Mikey to be as he’d been the last time he’d seen him. He didn’t care if his
brother called himself Mikhail and didn’t know Ethan from General Grant.

“Guarding the door.” Fedya gave a graceful, Gallic shrug. “Such as it is.”

“Where are my men?” Morant asked.

“In hell, I imagine.”

“All of them?”

Fedya spread his hands. “I’m not sure how many you have.”

“Eleven.”

“Then, yes. All of them.” He narrowed his eyes on Lassiter’s face. “Nice work.” He
lowered his gaze to Ethan’s hand. “I must teach you how to break noses without injuring
yourself.”

“And I’ll teach you how to hit people in the head before I have to.” Fedya’s gaze
slid away, and Ethan frowned. “Where the hell were you?”

“Searching for an elevated position,” Farquhar said. “You know, so we could save her
like we wanted to and not get trapped in here. Like you.”

“The only reason I was trapped was because you wandered off and let the bastard in.”

“He has a point,” Fedya murmured.

“Shut up,” Ethan and Farquhar said at the same time.

“You’d have been searching a long time.” Annabeth waved her free hand—the other still
held Lassiter’s own weapon steady on him—at the narrow opening above them. “There’s
a reason this place is called a rabbit hole. It’s hard to get a decent shot from up
there. Though I suppose if anyone could have, that someone would have been you.”

“Perhaps,” Fedya agreed.

“We’re alive; they’re dead,” Annabeth continued. “We win.”

“I’m not dead,” Morant snarled.

“You will be,” Ethan said.

“No one ever saw me do anything. I made sure of it.”

“You killed Cora Lewis.”

“Prove it.”

Farquhar drew from his pocket the carved knife he’d “confiscated” from the sheriff’s
office. “Look familiar?”

“No.”

“One of my top detectives saw you carve it. I’m sure she’ll swear to that, as well
as anything else she knows about you.”

Lassiter’s gaze flicked to Annabeth’s. “I will kill you.”

“You can try.”

Lassiter exploded off the ground. The sun sparked off a second knife. Ethan leaped
in front of Annabeth. He didn’t realize he’d blocked both her shot and Farquhar’s
until the detective cursed and Annabeth shoved Ethan in the back.

The knife sped toward Ethan’s chest. He lifted his only good hand, hoping he could
stop its decent, as well as turn Morant around so that someone, anyone, had a shot.
But Ethan had never been much good at anything with his left hand.

The boom of a gun echoed around the cavernous space. The outlaw fell backward. He
no longer had to worry about a broken nose. If he were still alive, he might have
worried about his missing face.

Mikey stood near the entrance, rifle still at his shoulder. He lowered it and hurried
to join them.

Farquhar’s gaze narrowed on Fedya. “Thought you were the sniper.”

Fedya peered at his nails. “Times change.”

M
a’am.” Mikey ducked his head.

Annabeth could tell by the expression in his gray eyes that he didn’t remember her.
But why should he? Her days as Nurse Annabeth had occurred before his injury.

“Hello. I’m Annabeth.”

“Mikhail,” he said. “Yer the doc’s wife?”

“Yes. Thank you for finding me.”

“It’s what I do best.”

She almost said “I know,” but that would only confuse him. Instead, she patted him
on the arm and smiled. But that only seemed to confuse him, too, because he wandered
off, rubbing at his head.

“I blamed you for his death,” Ethan murmured. Annabeth wasn’t certain whom he was
talking to—perhaps all of them.

Fedya muttered something derogatory in a language that sounded quite pretty. When
they glanced at him, he shrugged. “He is not dead.”

“I know.” Ethan returned his gaze to Mikhail, who’d started cleaning his boots with
his knife. “He’s . . . fine.”

Annabeth peered at her husband. “I think you might finally believe that.”

“I do.” Ethan faced the former sniper. “I’m sorry.”

Fedya tilted his head, and his ebony hair slid over his ridiculously blue eyes. “I
think you might mean that.”

“I was wrong about a lot. Especially you.”

“It was war. Terrible things happened to us all.” Fedya glanced at Annabeth and smiled
the smile that had seduced a thousand women but had never had any effect on her. “The
only way to move on is to devote your life to something good. I must return to my
life. I miss her.” Fedya snapped his fingers, and Mikhail came toward them.

“Wait,” Moze said. “I don’t know why I never thought of this before.” He stared at
Mikhail as if he’d just dug into an anthill and discovered gold. “He can find anything.”

“He is not a show pony either,” Fedya said.

Moze ignored him as he moved his gaze to Annabeth. “He can find anyone.”

“Luke,” she whispered. She’d wished she could ask for Mikey’s—for Mikhail’s—help so
many times, and now that he was here, she hadn’t even thought of it.

“Who is Luke?” Fedya asked.

“My brother. He’s the reason I . . .” Annabeth paused, not wanting to go into all
that she had done.

“Annabeth’s brother was one of Mosby’s Rangers. He went missing at Mount Zion Church,”
Ethan said. “The intelligence came out of Chimborazo.”

“Ah,” Fedya murmured.

“Then she exchanged you for him,” Ethan continued. Fedya gave a half bow. “Except
the man they brought wasn’t him.”

Fedya glanced at Farquhar, who hunched his shoulders. Fedya’s gaze narrowed. “Do you
know where Luke is?”

Farquhar shook his head, then looked down. Both Fedya and Mikhail took a step toward
the detective, who took a quick step back.

“Stop,” Annabeth ordered.

“He’s lying,” Fedya said. “Believe me, I know lying.”

“I’m not! Annie Beth Lou, I—”

Fedya flicked a finger, and Mikhail lifted Moze by his collar; his feet dangled and
kicked. “I would hazard to guess that all the men he sent after Morant were unsuccessful.
No one ever got as close as you did to what he was after.
Oui?
”

“Oui,”
Annabeth agreed.

“And if he would have told you he’d found your brother, or at least had some word
of him, you would have left your post and gone searching?” Fedya cast her a glance,
and she nodded. “So he kept what he knew to himself and let you continue to . . .”
He waved a hand at the dead Lassiter Morant.

Annabeth turned her gaze to Moze, a man she’d known all her life, a man she’d trusted.
“Is this true?”

Moze tried to speak, but couldn’t.

“Mikhail,” Fedya murmured, and the big man released his prisoner.

Moze spent a few minutes catching his breath. But finally he gasped. “I knew you’d
succeed. You were so damn close.”

“You lied?”

“I’m a spy. That’s what I do. What you do.”

True enough. She just hadn’t thought he’d lie to her.

“She almost died,” Ethan said. “I thought you cared about her.”

“I do.”

“You have a damn interesting way of showing it.”

“I took her in when you cast her out.”

“I tried to find her,” Ethan muttered.

Annabeth’s heart lurched. “You . . . what?”

“I looked everywhere. I even got in touch with
my
old superior. He couldn’t find you, either.”

“And why was that?” Fedya kept his sharp blue gaze on the detective.

“Because Yankees can’t find their ass with both hands,” Moze snapped.

“Perhaps.” Fedya’s smile gave Annabeth a chill. “Or perhaps you made certain every
attempt at locating Annabeth was thwarted.”

“I—” was all Moze managed before Annabeth punched him in the chin. He fell to the
ground.

“I quit,” she said.

“I could not have done that any better myself,” Fedya said. “Perhaps now we could
focus on the question at hand?”

“What question?” Moze got to his feet, rubbing at his jaw.

“Where is Annabeth’s dear brother?”

“I . . . uh . . .”

Fedya sighed. “Must she hit you again?”

Moze glanced at Annabeth, then looked quickly away. The way he was behaving, she wanted
to hit him again.

“There’s word among the Indians of a man with hair of fire,” Moze blurted.

“Now we know why Joe was so damn fascinated with your hair,” Ethan observed.

“I thought he was fighting Indians.” Annabeth said.

“He was. But not long after he arrived, some white women and children were taken.
He was with the group that rode out to get them back.”

“Did they?”

“Yes. Only Luke wasn’t with them when they returned. Army thought he was dead, maybe
escaped. They didn’t care enough to find out which.”

His disappearance so soon after being “galvanized” might explain why there’d been
no record of Luke Phelan in Kansas.

“How long have you known this?”

“Not long.”

As Moze was the one who’d taught her how
not
to answer a question, Annabeth lifted a brow.

“I found another man who was with that party,” he explained. “Said Luke exchanged
himself for the captives.”

“And then?”

“There wasn’t any word of him, not a whisper until several of the tribes started talking
about the white ghost with hair of fire who lives in the hills and talks to the spirits.”

“What does that mean?” Annabeth asked. Moze spread his hands. “I’ll take Mikhail,
and we’ll—”

“Too late,” Fedya murmured, and when she glanced at him, he pointed upward. At the
rim of Wonderland, a puff of dust drifted west. “Mikhail has already left.”

•   •   •

They buried the outlaws at the bottom of their hidden Wonderland, then pulled shut
the thorn gate and rode away.

Fedya headed for Colorado, where his wife and soon-to-be child awaited.

Moze tugged a priest’s collar from his pack and positioned it around his neck.

“What are you up to?” Annabeth asked.

“If I live through it, I’ll tell you.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Annie Beth Lou. You
seemed better when you were working, and you were damn good at it. I wanted Morant
so badly. But I should have told you the truth.”

Ethan stood a few yards away with their horses. His cool, gray gaze, which he kept
trained on Moze, made the Pinkerton uncomfortable, but he deserved it. Still—

“If you had, I might never have gone back to Freedom. And, Moze . . .” Annabeth waited
until he met her eyes. “I needed to go back.”

He seemed about to say something else, then merely nodded and left, taking most of
the outlaws’ horses along for company.

Annabeth and Ethan headed toward Freedom.

She experienced a tingle of déjà vu as they rode into town in the depths of the night.
The moon cast the silent street in every shade of silver.

They dealt with their own horses, as the stable boy snored softly, then strolled toward
home. Ethan took her hand. Annabeth let him.

Inside the house, everything seemed exactly the same, except for the mattress against
the wall and the papers on the desk.

Ethan crossed the room, lifted them with his unbroken hand; the other was wrapped
in dirty strips of cloth, which didn’t do much but remind him not to use it. As if
the pain didn’t already. He tilted the sheets toward the moonlight. “Divorce papers.”

Annabeth stilled. She’d forgotten about them.

“I wanted you to be happy,” she said. “To have what you always dreamed of. What I
couldn’t give you. A wife, a child, a family.”

He stepped so close, his body skimmed hers. “Why can’t you give me that?”

She turned away. She couldn’t look at him while she admitted the truth. “It’s not
that I can’t. It’s that . . .” She took a breath. “What Lassiter said was true. I
slept with him to gain his trust. I pretended to be—no, I was—his mistress for months,
and he wasn’t the first. I’m not the woman you knew. I won’t ever be her again.”

She waited; she wasn’t sure for what. Then the silence was split by the screech of
papers being torn—once, twice, again. Annabeth spun as the pieces tumbled to the ground.
How he’d torn them with one good hand, she wasn’t quite sure. He must have used his
teeth.

“I told you before that I don’t care.” He crossed the room, cupped her neck. “I’ll
keep telling you if you like, or we could just forget the past five years ever happened.”

Annabeth didn’t even have to think about that. “Let’s forget.”

He kissed her softly, sweetly, the way he had the first time at Chimborazo. Back then
all they’d had were secrets. Later all they’d had were lies. But now . . .

Now they had a world of possibilities.

The door opened. For the first time in a long time, Annabeth did not reach for her
gun. She didn’t have one. She didn’t need it.

“Doc?” One of the townsfolk stuck his head in, relief flowing over his face at the
sight of them. “Thank God yer both back. We need your help. Hurry!”

Ethan extended his good hand; Annabeth put hers into it.

“My bag,” he murmured, and she snatched it as, together, they followed the man into
the night.

Toward the life they had always wanted.