High-Riding Heroes (21 page)
“No more talk. None. I’m out of here. I just wanted you all to taste the bitterness of being the court jester before I left.” She jerked her arm from Wes when he moved to pull her near him.
His dark eyes sparked dangerously when he reached to stop her again. “You seriously think I’ll let you walk away from here, from me, without a fight? The middle of the street is no place to talk about this.”
His eyes. What she saw there…or wanted to see almost cast her resolve aside. A flash of memory of the two of them, tangled together in ecstasy, feverishly uniting in the act of love, made her face burn. The remembrance of their soft words and contentment as she lay with her head on his chest almost broke her heart. But now her heart was lead, only a heavy, emotionless weight beneath her breast.
Buck sided with Wes. “Wes is right, Vic. Once you understand…you don’t know what you think you know. For once in your life listen to me.”
She shook her head. “The choice isn’t yours. Not anymore.
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I wouldn’t believe a word you said, either of you. So back off and…”
The sound of defeat in her voice, the look of weariness in her eyes scared the hell out of Wes. A desperation sliced through him when he realized just how serious all this was. He had to set it right. It couldn’t all go for nothing. He didn’t want life without her.
“Fire! Fire! The barn’s on fire.” The cry split the air and it seemed the dispersing crew took flight all at once like a gaggle of startled geese.
The three of them turned in unison half expecting this to be another joke but instead saw the black smoke billowing and spiraling from the roof of the old barn.
Terror froze the blood in her veins. Victoria’s heart clogged her throat. “My God. Katie’s down there with Joe to ride her pony.”
Wes grabbed her arm. “Katie’s down there?” She didn’t miss his look of disbelief and then panic before he was off and running, followed by everyone within earshot.
Shock and horror kept Victoria rooted to the spot for several seconds before she was able to make her feet go. Running for the phone to dial nine-one-one, she prayed and damned herself for not keeping the child with her. This was her fault. It hit her as she hung up the phone and started back toward the barn, running for dear life.
She prayed someone would wake her up and it would all be some cruel nightmare, but as she approached the fire scene she knew it wasn’t. The heat.
The sparks zinging toward the sky. The dazed and broken voices of the people moving everywhere around her told her it wasn’t.
The old boards and the stacks of hay fed the fire quickly. By the time Wes slid around the corner, the doorway was engulfed in flames. The wind was coming from the opposite end of the barn and had the front end blocked with
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searing heat and smoke. The townspeople coupled hoses and some lined up starting a bucket brigade from the water troughs but the fire was quickly getting out of hand.
His heart pounded in his head. His little girl was inside that hell pit. He had to get to her. Some of the men were jerking on the side door. The metal was hot and smoke hindered their movements. “Katie!” Wes ran to the end that was still free of flames and tried to pry the boards loose with his hands. “Katie!”
Victoria remembered the crowbar and turned back. She returned wielding it like a sword. She pounded at the boards with it. Wes jerked it away from her and stuck it between two slabs of wood. The boards creaked, split, and finally gave way. It was hot. Incredibly scorching. Sweat streaked his face and plastered his shirt to his body. Smoke blackened them both as they tore at the boards. More men came and pried and hammered at the wood. Incredible heat pushed at her as they made the opening wider. The men shoved her aside.
Choking and coughing, hands bleeding from splinters, Victoria slumped against the fence and prayed. Wes’s horse was the first to find the opening and he thundered out. Wes bolted through the same opening, into the gray, airless building. The fire roared like a train engine. Wes didn’t come out. He had disappeared into that blazing inferno of hell and he hadn’t come out.
In slow motion, like an old movie flickering on the screen, the cold, hard reality of what was happening made its way through her shocked brain. Wes.
Katie. Her entire life was in that barn. In that fire that tauntingly promised to take them away from her.
A new strength surged into her veins, reinforcing her. She got up running.
Pushing her way past the men and into the barn, she screamed Katie’s name over and over in the darkness only to gulp and choke. Somehow, remembering fire rules, she fell to the ground to crawl, knowing there would be some air there.
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The hole they had torn in the end of the building had created a backlash and the flames licked at her. She snaked along frantically.
“Wes!” The only two people in the world whom she loved more than life itself were in here, dying. Oh God, dying. She heard wood give and crash to the ground. Freezing, she waited to be justly crushed beneath the falling timbers. A new shower of sparks singed her hair and burned her skin like sparklers on the Fourth of July.
She should never have let Katie out of her sight. Hadn’t Wes left Katie with her? But no, she was too hell-bent on revenge. “Katie,” she screamed, her throat raw and her voice cracking.
Vaguely Wes heard Victoria’s cries and he damned her for coming in here.
And then he found them. Relief flooded through him, threatening to slow him down. They were slumped together in the back stall, unconscious. The pony was down. Grabbing Katie like a rag doll and dragging Joe by the collar, he began making his way back toward the opening. Flames licked at his clothing and the heat baked his skin. Thick black smoke cut his air off completely. Knowing his lungs would burst before he could get the bodies out, he forged forward…toward the opening. Timbers creaked and snapped as they swayed and crashed down all around him. With each movement, new molten heat reached for him. Any second the building was going to collapse. Katie and Joe in his hands, his mind flew to Victoria. She was still in here somewhere.
Outside, the fire trucks arrived and hooked up. Trained and detached, the professionals ran their routine. Drowning what was left of the building, they fought the stubborn flames. The hiss and snap sizzled in the air.
Wes nearly stumbled over Victoria. So glad to feel that he had the child in his arms, she groped around until she had Joe by the collar and yelled, “Get her out.” She pushed at Wes’s leg. “I’ll bring him.”
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Wes hesitated only a second. His child. His baby was going to die if he didn’t get her out. And the woman he loved…he reached down with his free hand and tried to yank her along.
But with the added weight of Joe… “Go! Go!” she screamed and he bolted for the hole in the wall, his daughter held tightly in both arms.
“Go. Go!” she shouted after him. Victoria crawled and pulled, snaked along and dragged. If she died, it would only be right. She had acted like the spoiled, stupid child they had all thought she was. But not Katie. And not Joe. He was heavy. She managed to drag him only an inch or two at a time. She heard him moan and it encouraged her. Fortified, steeling herself to the pain, she squeezed her eyes shut against her own sweat and forged on. And then Wes was back and others were with him.
Blessedly, hands were reaching down, many, many of them.
Unconsciousness wanted to take over as they pulled her and then Joe through the hole. Air. Cool air. She gasped and it ran down her throat and into her lungs, burning almost as badly as the smoke. Water. Wet. Frigid. The icy, cold spray of it dribbled down her face and onto her clothes.
As she was carried away from the scene, she fought to clear her eyes enough to find Wes. She did. He was running. Running for dear life, clutching his daughter in his arms, her head, arms, and legs flopping like the big gray bunny she always toted and held even now, toward the waiting ambulance. Rescue workers ran alongside administering oxygen. Victoria covered her eyes hoping if she couldn’t see it all, it wouldn’t be happening. But when she dared to look, the barn was fast becoming a heap of cinders. Joe was hurt and was being loaded onto a stretcher. Katie might be dead. Victoria prayed to die.
Bright lights. Burning lights. Voices. Smoke. Fire.
Katie! Oh God, the little
girl
…
have to get to her. My responsibility. My fault. She can’t die.
The noise rushed to 166
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a deafening roar. Her brain shot messages to her limbs to move but they wouldn’t. She fought. Sirens filled her head and red and blue lights flashed behind her closed eyelids. She was suffocating. She opened her mouth to draw in air, but there was none.
Crash. Sparks. Flames. Darkness. A tunnel. Long and cool. Someone said her name, slowly, over and over. A hand. The hand of someone she cared for stroked her. She moved toward it.
Opening her eyes to stark white and a glaring light hurt. She drew her hand up to cover her eyes and found it was stiff and sore.
Katie! Joe! Wes!
Terror stilled her heart as she remembered. She began to tremble. Opening her mouth to speak, she felt as if she had swallowed a cat with its claws bared. “Katie!” she croaked.
Then she was in his arms, being pressed against him as he said her name over and over. He rocked her and thanked God and fought the tears that threatened to spill.
“Katie” was all she could say when she had so many words she wanted him to hear.
At the weak sound of her scratchy voice, Wes wept. It didn’t matter that Buck stood behind him. It didn’t matter that cowboys don’t cry. He held her and stroked her and let his fear and desperation flow from him. She made it back. She was alive.
Head bowed, Buck turned and walked slowly toward the door. His hand on the knob, he turned and looked back at them. What had he done? He had never intended any of this to happen when he prepared the fake will…when he figured a way to… A single tear slipped down his age-roughened cheek. He yanked his hat down a little lower and crept quietly from the room.
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To quiet her, he talked to her in a soothing tone. “Katie is okay. A little shaken up. They have to keep her and Joe here a few days for observation but they’re fine. And so are you.” He kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips, and her hands. “You tore your hands up pretty good. Splinters and a few stitches. Your lungs are still battling with the smoke but in a few days you’ll be right as rain.
And you can come home.”
Home. The word struck her like a baseball bat to the gut. Home. Where was that? Certainly not Glory Town, where she had caused so much trouble.
Certainly not the old Wild West town she had cared about and then hated. She held tight to the man she loved so desperately and began to steel herself against what she knew she had to do.
She had caused too much hurt. Almost death. If there had ever been a minute chance that they could be together, it was gone now. Gone. Vanished.
And by her own hand. There was nothing left for her now. Nothing. She couldn’t be the person she wanted to be, pretended to be. It didn’t matter that she loved Wes. That she loved Katie. It couldn’t matter that they loved her. She was no good for them. Never could be after this. How could she live with the knowledge that just because she looked for revenge she had turned Katie over to Joe while she proved a point? Katie had been left with Victoria. That is where she should have stayed.
Victoria looked at Wes. The traces of tears were gone now. Dark shadows traced under his eyes. One hand was bandaged and she could see his arm was burned. His skin was smudged black. Lines of concern creased his forehead. He was exhausted…and lost. He appeared relieved. There was no look of blame. No hate in his eyes. But he must feel it. She had endangered his child. She had been irresponsible and stupid. But then he had tricked her. Manipulated her. And maybe laughed at her. She pushed his hands away.
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“I want to be alone, Wes,” she cracked. “Leave me alone.”
If she had hit him with that crowbar, it would have hurt less. “Leave you alone? Not ever again. No. I’m going down the hall to see Katie in a few minutes, but then we’re both going to come back and stay with you a while. Because Katie and Joe were overtaken by the smoke and fell to the ground, they were saved the worst of it.
It seems as soon as we made the hole in the back wall, air coursed in to them.
They’re both okay.”
He looked at her as if those words were all it was going to take to convince her that things were as they were before. She closed her eyes to his look. “Get out.”
Stunned, Wes picked up her hand and pressed it to his lips. Too much. It was all too damned much. The nightmare run to the hospital in the back of the ambulance watching them work on his little girl. The knowledge that Victoria was back there somewhere. He had seen them pull her through the hole. Seen her gasp to draw in air. But what condition was she in? How badly was she hurting? The agony had cut through him even in his dazed state.
Now she was telling him to go away. Shaking his head and realizing everyone was just too emotionally charged to make sense, he bent down and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Lady, I’ve got some things to say to you and not you or anybody is going to keep me from saying them. I never betrayed you. Not like you obviously think. You’ll hear me out. But right now we’ve been through a rough time and I understand. This isn’t the time or the place. Victoria, don’t look at me that way. I almost lost you. You were almost killed.”
“Me!” She struggled to sit up and slid back down on the cool sheets. “What about you and Joe? And my God, what about Katie? You think this is all about me? You’re crazier than I thought. Get out and stay out. There’s nothing to talk