Beauty and the Bounty Hunter (14 page)

He appeared unconcerned with her threat, which concerned her. Cathleen’s gaze once more slid to the guns. Could he reach them before she did? Would he shoot her? Did she care?

She stepped between him and the weapons. He rolled his eye. The movement, when performed by just one of them, left the impression of dizziness rather than derision.

“If I wanted you dead,” he said, “then dead you would be.
”

Cathleen snorted.

He moved quickly, proving, if he hadn’t already, that he wasn’t at all who he pretended to be. He had her by the throat before she could think, let alone move or scream. His nimble fingers squeezed just a little, and the whole world shimmered.

“I do not like threats,” he whispered, releasing her as quickly as he’d captured her.

She lifted her hand to her throat, rubbing at the dull-edged throb. “Who does?” she rasped.

Silence fell over them like a cool gray mist. Then he began to laugh, and the sound of it was even rustier than her own.

“Who does?” he repeated.
“Blestyashchii.”

“Blest—?” she began, but could not get her tongue around the rest. “What?”

He waved a hand. “Never mind. You wish to learn the fine art of confidence?”

“You seem to have enough to spare.”

“Clever,” he murmured, voice still bubbling with laughter. “That will help.”

The weight that had pressed upon Cathleen’s chest since her whole world died lifted just a little. He was going to agree.

“I have only one question.” She waited, expecting a request for her reasons, her origins, her name. “What’s in it for me?”

She opened her mouth, shut it again. She’d told him what was in it for him. “I won’t—”

“I know,” he interrupted. “You won’t.”

He no longer spoke in the gruff captain’s voice but instead in a smooth, slightly foreign one that she didn’t
think was his either. And while he hadn’t removed his hump or revealed his other eye, or taken a wet cloth and washed off the makeup that he must be wearing, even if she couldn’t see it, he no longer limped or hitched. His hand hadn’t trembled since he’d touched her.

He was right. She wouldn’t tell what she knew. Not only would this man throttle her if she tried, but she’d seen how quickly he could move, and in his eye there’d been something…ominous.

She rubbed her arms. He was not someone who appreciated, or forgot, betrayal. If he let her leave this room alive and she decided to tell what she knew to the law, he’d not only be gone before she ever reached the sheriff, but she would spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder more often than she already did.

Damn. If she didn’t have the threat of exposing him, she had nothing. The weight returned to Cathleen’s chest, making it hard for her to breathe.

“Calm down,” he snapped, and she realized she’d been gasping like a fish. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t teach you.”

A deep breath filled her lungs. She let it out, then took another. “But—”

“I said, ‘What’s in it for me if I do?’”

He was so close she had to tilt back her head to see into his face. She received no help there. His laughter had died; his eye was both as empty and as watchful as the snake she’d already compared him to.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“You.”

A
lexi watched the silhouette on the hill converse with a tombstone.

He couldn’t hear what she was saying; he probably didn’t want to. He had a pretty good idea whose tombstone that was.

His gaze wandered over what remained of the cabin and outbuildings. The fields were fallow; she’d been gone a while.

He’d never figured her for a farm wife.

“Should I fetch her?” Mikhail asked.

Alexi considered, then shook his head. If all she’d wanted was to visit with the dead, she could have done so and returned. That she’d said she would meet them in Denver City meant she was up to something. He wanted to know what.

By the time the sun washed over her, she’d taken care of business—pulled weeds, then carved something into the marker, which meant it must be wood and not a stone. She’d chatted up a storm, ran her fingers over the letters, then gotten on
his
horse, and moved on. What he hadn’t seen her do was cry. Alexi couldn’t remember when he had.

No, that wasn’t true. She’d cried on cue every time that he’d asked. But real tears…

Not a one.

When she disappeared over a very flat ridge, Alexi flicked a finger and Mikhail followed.

Then Alexi headed for the grave.

Cat headed for Rock River.

“Be truthful,” she murmured, and the horse flicked back his ear. He seemed a practiced listener, and she appreciated that, even though she wasn’t talking to him but herself. “You knew from the moment you left Brooks where you’d end up.”

Rock River—or someplace like it—had been inevitable.

She took her time; she didn’t rush. As before, Cat didn’t want to arrive with the daylight.

If Ben was surprised to see her so soon after the last visit, he didn’t show it.

“Got anything?” she asked.

He handed her a sheet of paper. One glance and she smiled. Her brother-in-law might disapprove of what she was doing, but he still saved the most likely culprits for her.

Frank Walters. Wanted—dead or alive. Crimes: horse theft, murder, rape; appeared he’d even shot someone’s dog.

“Last seen?” Cat glanced up to discover Ben frowning at her costume. Or maybe just at her.

His gaze flicked to her face. He didn’t comment on the obvious—the clothes weren’t hers. They were too big. Hell, they were too new. Alexi didn’t wear anything old unless he had to.

Lifting her brows, Cat waited. Ben just shook his head and answered her question. “Indian Territory.”

“Hell,” Cat muttered.

In the years before the war, many tribes had been granted land in the West to compensate them for the
land they’d been pushed off of in the East. The Territory had once encompassed Kansas, Nebraska, and part of Iowa. However, when white folks spread past the Mississippi, saw the ripe farmland and coveted it, the Indians were again relocated.

Indian Territory now lay south of Kansas. It was also a mess. The Five Civilized Tribes—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole—had been dragged west long ago. They’d established governments and laws; they’d enjoyed a relative peace. Then the United States had not only started shoving other tribes onto their land, but they’d pretty much ignored that it
was
their land and let anyone that wanted to traipse over it on their way to California and Oregon.

Indian courts and lawmen held no reign over the white intruders. Once the outlaws discovered this, Indian Territory became their favorite place to hide. Cat had gone there before to retrieve bounties. She didn’t much like it. Didn’t mean she wasn’t going back. Right now she needed to.

Alexi believed the man she’d been searching for was in Denver City. Maybe he was; maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’d just put the bounty on her head to distract her so she’d stop looking elsewhere.

Cat glanced again at the paper in her hand. And maybe she was just making excuses. In truth, she needed to hunt. Every time she removed another outlaw from this earth—by sending him to hell on her own, or taking him in so the law could do it—she felt like she retrieved another splintered shred of her herself.

Although she wasn’t quite certain anymore just how much of Cathleen was left. What really disturbed her was that she wasn’t certain how much she wanted there to be.

“You takin’ that bounty?” Ben asked.

Cat nodded, then glanced at the window. She couldn’t see past the night pressing against the panes, but he was out there. She could feel him.

“Ruby still bring your supper every night?”

Ben’s brow furrowed. “How else would I get anything to eat?”

Cat didn’t bother to point out that he had a stove in his room. He wouldn’t know how to use it any more than Billy had.

“When?”

Ben pulled his granddad’s timepiece from his pocket. Cat flinched before she could stop herself. He did that exactly the same way Billy always had. Luckily Ben was too busy studying the watch face to notice her reaction. “Twenty minutes.”

“Good.” Cat didn’t want to be near Ben any longer than she had to. “Here’s what we’re gonna do.”

Alexi kept to the alley between a haberdashery and an apothecary, directly across the street from the sheriff’s office. His hat shaded his two black eyes, while doing little to disguise the unfortunate size of his broken nose. He’d received a few too many curious glances already.

“You’re sure she went in there?” Alexi asked, rubbing his thumb over the small, smooth object in his pocket like a talisman.

Mikhail, standing even farther back so as not to be seen and remembered by the citizenry, or seen and recognized by Cat, merely grunted. If there was one thing Mikhail excelled at, it was tracking. Therefore, if he said Cat had gone into the sheriff’s office an hour ago, then she had gone into the sheriff’s office an hour ago. Alexi would bet his life on Mikhail’s abilities and often had.

Though he wasn’t certain of the specifics involved
in bounty hunting, Alexi didn’t think it would take anywhere near an hour to complete bounty hunter business. Therefore, the longer Cat remained within, the more uncomfortable Alexi became.

They’d watched a woman enter carrying a covered plate, then leave again a short while later without it. Since that occurrence there had been no one in, no one out. It was maddening. But maddening pretty much summed up Alexi’s life since Cat had come back into it.

“His name was William,” Alexi murmured.

“Whose name?” Mikhail asked.

“No one.” At least not anymore.

Mikhail gave Alexi a look that very clearly said he needed to stop talking to himself.

Alexi had wanted to know the man’s name, but now that he did, he wasn’t sure why he’d thought it important. What did it matter if he knew the name of her dead husband? The point was that Cat knew.

And she would never, ever forget.

Alexi inserted his thumb into the gold circlet of her ring. She’d left the chain looped over the tombstone. He still hadn’t figured out why.

Alexi squinted at the window, but as had been the case the dozen or so times he’d squinted at it before, he could see nothing through the glass but the edge of a desk and the far corner of the room.

“You’re sure—” he began.

“No back door,” Mikhail interrupted. “I’m sure.”

Alexi could see where a back door on a jail would be a mistake. One way in, one way out was best. Of course, Alexi always preferred multiple exits, but he had good reason to.

He should just stroll across the street, open the door, and walk in. As far as he knew, he wasn’t wanted for anything.

In Rock River.

And every other town that might be searching for him was not searching for
him.
Still, to set foot inside a jail voluntarily for no reason at all other than to—

The door opened; the sheriff stepped out. Cat followed, hat tipped low, the trousers she’d stolen from Alexi seeming to hang on her less loosely than they should. She laid her hand on the sheriff’s arm. He patted it fondly; then the two of them strolled around the back side of the building. Before they disappeared, Alexi could have sworn the man’s other hand also patted her behind.

Alexi waited; then he waited some more, but they did not reappear. “What the hell?” he murmured.

“He lives up the stairs.”

“What stairs?”

“In the back.”

“You didn’t tell me about any stairs.”

“You asked if there was another door. There ain’t.”

What possible reason could Cat have for going upstairs with the sheriff? Alexi could think of only one.

He was across the street and around the corner the next instant. The stairs were easy to climb, the lock even easier to pick. He entered the room so quietly the couple embracing in the center wasn’t aware of anything but each other. Alexi doubted they’d have noticed if he’d slammed the door and sung “hallelujah.”

The man’s hands were on Cat’s ass, his mouth on her lips. His tongue was no doubt caressing her teeth, tasting the flavor that was uniquely hers—spiced apples in midwinter, wine cooled in a mountain stream long about August.

When the fellow lifted his blond head, the expression on his face, the sound of her voice murmuring “Ben” in a way she’d never murmured “Alexi” caused an explosion of fury in his chest.

He was across the room, shoving her aside, fisting his hands in the sheriff’s shirt, and yanking him onto his toes before he really heard her. Then he snatched the gun out of Sheriff Ben’s hand and spun to face Cat O’Banyon.

Who wasn’t Cat O’Banyon at all.

Cat had no trouble retrieving another set of clothes from Ben’s room, leaving Ruby’s behind, then returning to what she now considered her horse and galloping south. If Ben did as she asked, Alexi wouldn’t know he’d been duped until she was so far away even he couldn’t catch up.

Oh, he’d find her. Eventually. Or rather, Mikhail would. But by then she’d have done what she needed to do. Maybe then she’d be able to breathe.

Finding Frank Walters wasn’t hard. Not only was the man painfully short, but he possessed a nose the size of Texas and a knife scar across one cheek. The physical description aside, he couldn’t seem to stop stealing things and shooting people. He cut a trail through Indian Territory it would have taken an imbecile to miss.

She caught up to him in Tennyville, which wasn’t much more than a circle of smaller tents surrounding a larger one. Considering that men went into the center construction walking straight and came out weaving, stumbling, and falling, Cat labeled it the saloon.

She considered strolling in and removing her quarry by force. But as most of the residents had the rough appearance of the men she usually hunted and she hadn’t brought along a Gatling gun to back up that kind of volume, Cat decided to wait until Frank rode out alone, then follow. It didn’t take long. Less than two hours later, Walters saddled his horse and headed south.