Rexanne Becnel (30 page)

There was only one solution.

“I’m all right,” she cried desperately into the night. “Don’t hurt Tanner. Please, I … I’m going with him willingly.”

“Stand up, Miss Morgan—ah, Miss Bliss,” someone called out after just a second’s hesitation.

“No.” Tanner’s harsh command and even harsher grip on her shoulder stopped her from standing above the shelter of the grasses.

“I don’t want anyone hurt,” she whispered furiously at him. “This way they can leave peacefully, and you”—she spat the words—“you can get that filthy reward you so covet.”

“I’ll tie you up and gag you, woman,” he threatened, his voice as hard as the steel barrel of his deadly weapon. “So help me, God, I will unless you swear to shut up and stay put. You don’t want me to be forced to kill them, do you?”

It was that which convinced her, for more than anything she feared having their deaths on her conscience. “I swear,” she muttered. “But don’t you dare hurt them in any way,” she added, her eyes flashing with fury.

He didn’t answer. Instead he melted into the thick grasses, blending in with their rustling as the wind pushed them in an endless ebb and flow.

She heard the erratic movement of the other men, closer now than before. Drawn by her voice, no doubt. One was just beyond her, the other farther back and to the right. But she didn’t make a sound. She just pulled her knees up against her chest and curled her arms around her legs, holding on for dear life as her ears strained to decipher the noises around her.

“Where’s he at?” the one farther from her growled, though Abby detected a fearful quiver in his voice. This one’s voice was not familiar at all. For some reason Abby didn’t think he was from the wagon train, and that sent a niggling shiver of fear up her spine. Who were these men?

The other man didn’t reply to his friend, but Abby heard his stealthy movement just to her right. He was coming her way. But where was Tanner? Her heart began to race in rising panic. Something was terribly wrong here.

Then the other man gave a startled cry, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. In the moonless night the ominous sound of struggle lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. Tanner had found one of them! Her breath caught in her throat and she strained desperately to see and hear. But only grunts and curses resounded and the muffled thuds of two bodies colliding. Dear God, they were killing each other!

Without thinking she cried out, “Don’t kill him!” though she meant Tanner now, not the man he fought.

But before she could take a follow-up breath, she was grasped from behind by a pair of beefy hands and hauled to her feet. She knew before he said a word—something in his cruel grip, in his very smell—and her heart plummeted in awful realization.

“Howdy-do, Miss Bliss,” Cracker O’Hara chuckled in her ear. “You and me, we’re sure gonna have a blissful time of it tonight.” He laughed at his own coarse humor.

She must have screamed, though she didn’t remember consciously doing so. O’Hara had her in a crushing hold, her back pressed against him, his thick arm tight around her throat. It wasn’t the grasp of a rescuer, she noted dimly as she struggled to breathe. Her fingers clawed his arm, seeking frantically to loosen his grip. But he only yanked harder at her.

“Settle down, little girl. Once McKnight’s gone, you and me will have more time to get acquainted.”

His taunt chased away the last of her hopes that he had come to rescue her. She didn’t know why he’d want to hurt her, but she was sickeningly sure he did. A fear far worse than anything she’d ever felt froze her awkwardly against him.

In the darkness beyond them the other two men still grappled, and it was an awful thing to hear. For life or death they fought, cursing, gasping for breath. Then an unearthly shriek ended abruptly in a gurgling sound that subsided into horrifying silence.

One of them was dead. Bile rose in her throat and she fought a wave of dizziness. One of them had just gone to meet his maker.
Please, God, don’t let it be Tanner.

“Bud?” O’Hara’s arm tightened as he called out to his cohort. Abby’s head began to spin from lack of air, but she struggled to stay sensible.
Don’t panic, just breathe. Slowly. Steadily.

“Bud?” he called again, angry this time. “Goddammit,” he muttered when there was no response. She felt his burly chest fill rhythmically with air, breathing hard and heavy as he waited in the hollow prairie darkness. But all Abby could think was that Tanner was alive. He must be!

O’Hara apparently thought the same thing. “Well, well, well. Now, what are we gonna do about this, McKnight? I’ve got that little ol’ prize you was looking for. That sweet little reward you was chasin’. Speak up, little girl.” He directed this last at her. “Tell our pretty boy who’s got his hands all over you.”

“I’m fine, Tanner,” she said, though she was anything but.

No response came, however, except for the distant cry of a coyote and the night call of some predatory bird. Abby’s heart thundered painfully in her chest. Where was he? Where was he! But despite her own overpowering fear, she sensed Cracker O’Hara’s as well. He stood stiff with tension, poised to react. But a muscle twitched in his left arm, twitched like the tail of an agitated cat. His gun pointed over her right shoulder into the darkness beyond them while he held her unyieldingly with the other.

What could she do to help Tanner? she wondered as the man’s grip on her throat loosened ever so slightly. If she suddenly became a dead weight in his arms …

Something moved to their left, and O’Hara spun, firing wildly. Abby lost her footing—and very nearly her hearing. But she scrambled for balance, too terrified to do anything else. Another noise behind them. Then one to the left. Abby could feel the violent slamming of O’Hara’s heart against her back as he jerked them around to face each new sound.

He was as scared as she was, she realized. Somehow that helped.

“Show yourself, you fuckin’ coward!” O’Hara screamed at his invisible foe. “Show yourself, or I’ll blow her head clean off her shoulders—”

Before he could finish the threat—before he could lower the barrel of the gun to her head—another gunshot sounded. Like a giant puppet pulled by invisible strings, O’Hara jerked forward at the deafening sound, and they fell. Abby landed hard with her captor’s crushing weight on top of her. The breath exploded out of her lungs, and she lay half stunned, wondering for a long painful and dazed moment if she was dead yet. She couldn’t cry out. She couldn’t catch her breath for the pressure on her back. Then she heard Tanner’s voice, and with a harsh rush she sucked in great lungfuls of air.

“Abby? Abby! Talk to me!”

The weight was abruptly removed from her—Cracker O’Hara’s inert form, the awful realization hit her. Then she was rolled over, and Tanner’s face loomed, shadowed and worried just above her own. “Abby. Sweetheart … Are you hurt? Are you hurt?”

“Tanner—” She croaked out his name, but for the life of her could manage no more.

“Are you hurt?” he repeated in an urgent tone. But he didn’t wait for her response. As she lay, gasping for breath, grappling with the reality of what had just happened—and what had almost happened—he ran his hands carefully over her, efficiently checking her for wounds. When he slid his fingers down her side, however, it tickled, and to her vast dismay she released the most inappropriate giggle.

“Abby?”

“You’re … you’re tickling me,” she said, her voice caught somewhere between another obscene chuckle and a hiccup. Then a violent shudder wracked her, head to toe, and panic began to set in. “Is he … is he …” She couldn’t finish the thought.

“He’s dead,” Tanner stated flatly and without the least show of emotion. “The other one too.”

Abby squeezed her eyes closed against the horror, but hot tears leaked between her lashes. “I … I don’t understand. They weren’t trying to rescue me.”

“No,” he answered. “They weren’t. And the other one—Foley—I’m pretty sure he tried to kill me back at Fort Kearney.”

“Kill you?” she gasped in renewed horror.

He seemed to realize then that he’d spoken out loud. “It doesn’t matter anymore. They’re both dead. They can’t hurt you now.”

Abby pushed herself up onto one elbow, shivering from both her shock and the cold. “Yes. They’re dead,” she repeated. Then she reached out a hand to touch his arm. “None of this makes any sense,” she admitted, unable to hide either the wavering of her voice or the tears that spilled past the edges of her eyes. “None of it. But I know you saved my life. Thank you.”

He let out a slow sigh, then stood up and took a step back. “If you’re all right, let’s get out of here. There could be more where these two came from.” He didn’t acknowledge her words of thanks. He neither took credit nor accepted the blame, Abby realized while he quickly retrieved the two horses, stuffed their bedrolls into the packs, and saddled the pair. He acted as if nothing of any particular consequence had taken place in this open, lonely place, somewhere in the vastness that was the Nebraska Territory.

Perhaps he was leaving that part of the task to her. He fought and killed so that they might survive; her role was to worry and moralize and regret anything and everything she might have done to contribute to this horror. That Tanner had kidnapped her and thereby precipitated the pursuit was undeniable. But this had been no rescue attempt. If they’d meant to harm her here, the intent had no doubt existed long before now.

Then she thought of the attack on young Rebecca Godwin, and the hideousness of this night trebled. These men preyed on defenseless women. Eventually they would have caught her unprepared. Eventually they would have plotted some way. It sickened her even to think of it.

Thank God Tanner had been with her. And yet it seemed one of them had tried to kill him too. Was any of this connected?

She didn’t realize how still she’d been, how small and slight and buffeted by the restless night wind she appeared. Tanner paused before her. “We’ve got to go, Abby.”

“Yes.” She nodded, still struggling with her fear. “But shouldn’t we do something? Bury them … ?”

She saw him remove his hat and rake one long-fingered hand through his midnight-dark hair. The faint starlight glinted in those long ebony strands. Like stray bits of goodness gleaming bright from within an otherwise frighteningly dark soul.

“Do you think they would have buried us?” his harsh reply came. “They can rot here, for all I care. The buzzards and coyotes can pick them over. It’s no more than the bastards deserve.”

She accepted what he said, for it so accurately reflected how she felt. Terrified. Vengeful. Yet once mounted before him, encircled by the strength of his arms, held gently and securely by the same man who only minutes before had engaged in—and won—a violent struggle for life or death, she was less sure. Her old values surfaced. Someone must have cared for those men, horrible as they were. Someone must wonder when they never returned.

“They were awful,” she said, whispering in the night as Mac’s rolling canter carried them away from the nightmarish scene. “But everyone deserves a proper burial.”

“Not everyone,” he bit back in a angry voice. “Not them.”

When she didn’t reply, Tanner felt an undeniable relief. He didn’t want to argue with her. He didn’t want to defend his beliefs or justify his actions. He just wasn’t up to it.

He’d killed before, and though he didn’t relish the idea of taking another man’s life, he’d always had good cause. It had always tempered any feelings of guilt he might feel.

But tonight … It wasn’t that he felt guilt for killing. He’d do it again. He wished he
could
do it again and that he could prolong the bastards’ agony and make them suffer more for what they’d tried to do.

That was what scared him.

What he felt wasn’t as simple as self-preservation or rage, or even righteousness. His arms tightened without conscious awareness around Abby. Those men had wanted to hurt
her.
They’d wanted to hurt the purest, most perfect woman he’d ever known. His need to protect her had sprung with astonishing strength from out of nowhere.

He hadn’t denied to himself that he was attracted to her. He knew she favored him too—or at least she had before she’d found out the truth about what he was up to. But this was more. This need to protect her went deeper than mere physical attraction. It was stronger than just the value she had in reward money. He’d fight for her against anyone, no matter the odds, and that scared the hell out of him.

He took a slow, steadying breath, catching the womanly scent of her, mingled now with dirt and fear and sweat.

He’d fight anyone on earth to keep her safe. Trouble was, there was someone out there—someone he didn’t know—who wanted her dead. O’Hara had called her Tanner’s prize. He’d known there was a reward for her return, only it was obvious he hadn’t meant to take her to Chicago.

That could only mean that someone was paying to make sure she
didn’t
return.

T
HEY RODE THROUGH THE
now ominous night for an indeterminate distance before stopping again. This time they camped beside a year-round creek, between a pair of ancient cottonwood trees that twisted in gray-barked torment beside a scoured-out section of the streambank. They’d ridden in silence, for Abby had been too drained even to speak, and anyway Tanner had been so remote, she dared not try. But he held her tighter than before and she’d slumped gratefully against his sturdy chest.

It could not precisely be called clinging, yet when he dismounted, Abby felt as if that was exactly what she’d been doing. She needed the strong, reassuring touch of him, and she let out an unwitting cry of disappointment when it was removed.

The coldness that had gripped her ever since the confrontation with those men sent an uncontrollable shudder through her. Seeing it, he reached up to help her down. But that only made it worse, for the touch of his hands on her waist, so strong and warm and alive, sent new tremors through her, and this time they were hot.

Too many confusing feelings. Too much death. And yet so much life.

Abby drew a breath, fighting even for the air to breathe, it now seemed. But Tanner’s blazing stare fed her the air and life and reassurance she needed.