A Wanted Man (14 page)

She couldn’t let him strip her of something that had
meant so much to her. But she didn’t know how to regain her pleasure in the journey.

Tomorrow, she decided. She’d give herself one day to wallow in misery, then she’d just have to get over him. He wasn’t worth more than a day.

She flipped the sketchbook shut and stood. “I’m going to bed.”

Her brow puckered in consternation, Mrs. Bossidy looked up from the scarf she’d been working on for three days. Considering she’d managed all of three inches, Laura figured she might produce a scarf in time for Christmas. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m just tired.”

She balled up her project. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, stay.”

“Laura.” She paused, debating for a moment, then plunged in. “You’re better off without him.”

“Mrs. Bossidy…” She didn’t want to discuss this with her. Well-meant, sympathetic platitudes about the temporary nature of first crushes were the last thing she wanted to hear.

“Even if he was what he seemed,” Mrs. Bossidy continued, “even if he hadn’t lied, you’d still be better off without him.”

“I was never with him.”

His face swam above her, a soft, cloudy, heated dream. There was gentle concern in his eyes…concern for her? And she was so happy to see emotion there that she smiled.

His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear what he said. She reached up and touched his cheek; lean, prickly with beard, and it felt so real…

It was real. He was real.

Laura blinked and struggled to sit.

“Easy now,” he said, one arm firm around her back as he helped her up. “Your head’s gonna be muddled for a while.”

“Where are we?”

“Nowhere, really.”

She swiveled her head carefully until she was certain it would remain properly attached. She sat on a blanket on the ground. A thin sliver of moonlight ghosted the landscape with gray light: rocky ground, clumps of sagebrush, clusters of wheatgrass. A horse—one of
her
horses—was tethered a few feet away.

“You stole one of my horses?”

“Borrowed it.”

Her muddled brain cleared in stages, like fog thinning in uneven patches over a marsh. She was angry at him. She knew it, felt it burn in her belly, but couldn’t locate the reason at first.

“What are we doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

And then the memories crashed back on her. She lurched from his grip, skittering back across the blanket until her hands hit bare ground, rocks biting into her palms.

He let her go, just remained crouched on the blanket. “Watch out,” he said. “There could be scorpions out there. Rattlers. And it’s dark.”

She’d gone to sleep in her bed and awoken outside. They could be anywhere. Miles away from the train from the look of it. Miles away from anyone that might save her. Try as she might, she couldn’t put this together with
him
, couldn’t be as worried as she obviously should be. “You…
kidnapped
me?”

“If you want to be technical about it,” he said calmly.

L
aura scanned the area, trying to pick out a path, somewhere to run or hide, or anything that could serve as a weapon against him.

“You can yell, but there’s no one to hear you,” he warned her. “And you can run, but you know I can catch you. You can try the horse, but I’m betting you don’t know which direction to go. All in all you’re best off if you simply stay put, hear me out, and wait for me to take you back.”

Over the years she’d imagined what she might do if she were abducted. Fight back, certainly, or try to escape. Something other than meekly accept her fate. But he laid out her options so reasonably. And it was Sam. The darkness cloaked him, leaving only the deep glitter of his eyes, the flash of teeth as he spoke.

“Laura, if I meant to do you real harm, I could have done it weeks ago easily enough.”

True. But still…“Where are Hiram and Mr. Hoxie? Mrs. Bossidy?”

“Still sleeping comfortably in their beds, I imagine.” He shook his head. “If I’d been in charge, I would have made certain someone was on guard at all times, but that’s just me. Heavy sleepers, all of them.”

“They protected me just fine until you came along,” she protested, deeply offended.

“Evidently nobody tried very hard to get to you before.”

She touched her fingertips to her temple, willing her brain to function. “I don’t remember…I went to sleep. I woke up here. How did I not wake up when you took me from the train car?”

He winced. “Chloroform.”

“You
chloroformed
me?”

“It seemed simplest. I didn’t want to knock you out. Didn’t much like the idea of gagging you either.” He shrugged. “Didn’t want you struggling and waking up those clowns. Someone could get shot. Might’ve even been me.”

She shook her head. “I still don’t…how much do you want?”

“Want?”

“Yes,” she said, briskly businesslike. “I have some resources, of course. But that’s all that’s available. It will do you no good to compromise me. My father long ago made it clear that he would not force me into marriage in such circumstances.”

“Would I have to force you?”

“It wouldn’t matter,” she hedged, avoiding the question. “Even if there’s no force, he told me in no uncertain terms years ago that he would not settle a fortune upon my marriage unless he approves it first.”

“I don’t want to marry you.”

She would not let that hurt. “Why, then?”

“I told you. I needed to talk you.” Guilt, untimely and unfamiliar, nagged at Sam. He’d chosen the most expedient solution. He’d gone over his plan a dozen times and hadn’t come up with a better one.

One of the reasons for his success as a hired gun had been his ability to ignore extraneous twinges of conscience and go for the simplest and quickest solution. He wasn’t going to allow whatever inconvenient…sympathy he’d developed for her to get in the way of doing what needed to be done. And yet…
damn
.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, curling up like a child in front of the fire. Her hair was braided and pinned back simply, leaving the pure lines of her face clear and unadorned. “Why didn’t you talk to me, then? Why all
this
?”

“They weren’t going to let me say anything. Not then. And I didn’t want to…there was no reason for them to know. They didn’t
need
to know.”

“Still—” She wanted to protest. Wanted to hold on to the anger and the offense. And didn’t want to be touched by the fact that he’d trusted her with his story when he trusted no one else.

But it did no good to ignore the truth when she heard it. “A bit extreme, don’t you think?”

“I don’t have that much time to waste,” Sam said.

“All right.” She nodded, then dropped her chin to her knees. Her nightgown was white and simple, far plainer than the beautiful and elaborate clothes she wore each day. Somehow it suited her better, Sam decided. Her clothes were always so extraordinary you noticed them first. In this waft of thin white, you noticed
her
.

But he’d always noticed her, hadn’t he?

“Talk,” she ordered him.

“It’s a long story.”

“Then you’d best get started.”

Start. Where to start? He’d been so busy plotting how to get her away from her guards that he’d spent no time planning how he’d explain everything. Even now, he’d rather go to her, scoop her up in his arms, and continue what they’d begun in his bed.

He’d stood over her bed, the chloroformed rag in his hand and contemplated what he would do, how she’d slip deeper into sleep, and it had taken an act of will stronger than surviving prison to force his hand over her mouth. When he lifted her into his arms—light, limp, the soft curve of her hip bumping his belly, the narrow width of her back—he’d swallowed hard and nearly tucked her safely back into her bed instead of quietly slipping out the door with her.

And then on the horse—getting on had been a trick, flopping her awkwardly across the back in a way he knew she’d never forgive him for if she ever discovered it. She’d rocked in his arms with each step of the horse, that sweet floral scent—he didn’t know flowers, was it lilac or rose or orange blossoms?—drifting up and clouding his senses, so much so that he’d almost ridden farther than he’d planned because she felt so natural in his arms.

“Well?” she prompted.

He’d never said it out loud, he realized. Not once. It clogged in his throat, as painful as a bone splinter. “I was in Andersonville.”

“What?” Laura lifted her head in surprise. She’d heard tales of the place, stories her parents had tried to hide from her. She’d been too young to know of them then, of course, but there’d been a story in the paper, interviews with the tragically few survivors of the notorious Confederate prison.

Sympathy swelled. She cursed the night. What would she find now, if she could see more of his eyes than an expressionless gleam? Would she see the truth?

But he’d lied to her, she remembered. He’d
drugged
her. This could be calculated as well, a skillful play on her sympathy. “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“I’m getting to that.” The grim line of his mouth softened. Recently it happened more often around her, frequently enough that it no longer surprised her. It still pleased her. Even now, when nothing about him should please her.

“I told you I was in the army.” It had been stupid to lie about his age to join up, he realized now. But his older brother, Tom, whom he’d idolized from the first, had marched off in search of glory, and he always did everything Tom did.

Except die.

“I was captured two months later.”

“Sam.”

Her voice carried a whisper of sadness, a richness of sympathy that drew forth a fresh burn of memory. Was that why he’d never told anyone before? Because it was easier to ignore when you never spoke of it? Pretend it hadn’t happened?

“Was it as terrible as they say?”

Worse
. Nothing anybody ever said or wrote could come close to the terrible reality of it. Even now, though he’d lived through it—
existed
through it—he could scarcely grasp the horror. Perhaps the human mind rejected it, the way a stomach revolted against rotten food, because no one could truly know that and remain sane and whole.

Laura edged closer on the blanket and gently laid her hand over his.

“I didn’t intend to play on your sympathy,” he said. “Though I do appreciate the side benefits.”

“What, then?” Laura knew she shouldn’t touch him. But his flesh beneath hers, living texture, the hard bump of strong knuckles, the sinewy strength of a man who’d survived, was comforting and compelling and really, what did it hurt?

“I had a—” What to call him? Sam wondered. “Friend there.”
Friend
. That was a pale approximation of what Griff Judah had been to him. Compatriot, brother, lifeline. Even a replacement for the family he’d just lost. “He kept me alive, all those months. I would have given up without him.”

How many times had Griff talked him back from the edge? Had told him that he
couldn’t
die because then Griff would be alone? “He got a job on the Silver Spur.”

“I see.” Her hand remained, a precious connection to the present, keeping the past from swamping him.

“I never heard from him again.” When he looked at her in the moonlight, all pretty and young and clean beside him, a part of him wavered. Wondered if maybe he shouldn’t give it up and simply get on with his life. Not with her, of course. But someone like Laura would be if she hadn’t been born rich.

For if Haw Crocker was trying that hard to hide something from him on the Silver Spur, Griff was likely long past Sam’s help anyway. Would just knowing what had happened to Griff be worth all Sam risked, all he’d done?

But no.
No
. He owed Griff, and himself, this much. He’d never be able to live with anything less. And if there was even the slightest chance Griff survived, he
had
to do this.

“Maybe,” she ventured, “he…perhaps he did not
want
to get in touch with you again.”

She’d said it so cautiously, as if afraid to make the suggestion, he couldn’t help but smile. “Not too surprising to you, hmm, that somebody’d want to cut me out of his life?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean—” And then she caught his expression, and her own discomfort eased. “Not surprising at all,” she teased.

“I came here looking for him. No one knew anything, or so they said. They swore he never showed up here at all.”

“Maybe he never did.” Laura wondered if he even realized she touched him, so lost was he in his thoughts and the story he told her. Thinking of his friend, no doubt, a friend who was obviously more than a simple friend. Someone you’d survived that much with…clearly there was a bond there that others could not always understand. The fact that he could care that much for someone, remain so loyal to someone for what had to be a good twenty years, made him all the more appealing.

“I considered that,” he said. He turned his head, gaze sweeping the shadowed land. “I asked around in town. They all swore they’d never seen him. But, I had to give it one last try before I gave up, and so I sneaked back onto Silver Spur land.”

He fell silent, his jaw working, eyes narrowed as if there were something fascinating out there. Looking into memories, she thought, memories she waited patiently for him to share. Because he
was
sharing them, giving them to her—perhaps not freely, perhaps with ulterior motive, but far more than he’d revealed to her before.

“They were waiting for me,” he said at last.

“Waiting—oh.” She swallowed. “The injuries, when we first met…”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “They said it was because I was trespassing. I wondered, for a while, why they didn’t just kill me. I suppose my death would have caused more questions than they wanted to answer. For all they knew I’d told someone about my suspicions.”

Anger exploded in Laura. If so much damage had been visible, there had to have been even more that she hadn’t seen. She was furious at them for having done that to him. And if that’s how she felt, she could begin to guess what it meant to him that Griff might have been hurt, too.

He turned toward her. His hand rotated in hers, face up, his fingers weaving with hers, though he seemed unaware of what he was doing. And that made it all the more stirring that he would hold her hand for support, thoughtlessly, instinctually.

“You know what that means,” he said.

“That they had something to hide?”

He nodded. “I needed a way back in.
All
the way in. I read the article about you in the paper, and I figured you were my best chance. They’d never expect me to come as part of your party. I’d be just another one of your guards. They’d probably never even look at me all that closely.”

It was an awfully big risk for him to dismiss as if it were nothing. “What if someone recognized you?”

He shrugged, tossing off his personal safety. “I wouldn’t be any worse off than I was already, would I? I shaved off my beard and chopped my hair. It was worth a shot.”

And if someone recognized him, this time they really might kill him.

If they had something to hide,
she reminded herself. Haw Crocker and her father had done a lot of business together, and her father often spoke well of him and his acumen. She couldn’t believe her father would be that wrong about someone.

But the Silver Spur was a massive operation. Likely Mr. Crocker didn’t even personally know half of the people who worked for him, much less keep close tabs on them.

And if there was nothing to find, there was nothing to find. Either way, at least Sam would be able to get on with his life knowing he had done all he could.

“Was it really necessary to…lie to me?” It was a soft pain now, gentler than the bright stab of anger she’d first felt when Mrs. Bossidy had told her the truth.

She remembered the time they’d spent together. The way he’d looked at her, listened to her, and she couldn’t sort out the truth from the lies. Had it
all
been a lie? She was afraid that it was. Clearly he wouldn’t let a few minor points like truth and her emotions get in the way of what he considered necessary and expedient.

She’d known he was capable of that from the first. She’d just chosen to ignore it.

“Crocker and your father have done business together. For all I knew, he’s your father’s friend, too. You didn’t know me,” he said, his voice softening. “More importantly, I didn’t know
you
.”

But she couldn’t let her own wounded pride interfere and dig in her heels for spite. This
mattered
to him, and she could help.

“All right then.” She lifted her free hand and brushed back the loose swath of his hair, exposing the strong, clean bones. A beard? He could have been covered in turf from head to toe and painted white, and she was sure she would know him.