Donovan's Bed: The Calhoun Sisters, Book 1 (33 page)

The gunshot apparently got through to Susannah as Sarah’s screams hadn’t, and she took off at an unsteady run.
 

“Bitch!” Luke roared, turning his gun on Sarah. She swung the bag around again, but he was ready this time and deflected it with a blow to her arm that numbed her fingers. The bag dropped into the dust at their feet. Luke seized her with his arm around her neck and dragged her back against him, pressing the gun to her temple as Susannah disappeared down the rocky incline.
 

“The only reason I haven’t killed you yet,” he rasped, “is because I want you to take a
long
time to die. I want you to
suffer
for what you’ve done to me!”
 

With one hand, Sarah clawed at the arm that was cutting off her air supply. With the other, she reached down to the pocket of her skirt.
 

Suddenly her throat was free. She spun to face him, but his hand closed over her wrist as she pulled the derringer from her pocket. Despair swamped her as he easily took the weapon from her.

“What’s this? Were you going to kill me, darlin’? How very bloodthirsty you’ve become.” He tossed the derringer over the cliff, and with it, Sarah’s greatest hope for survival. Then he grabbed her braid and used it to drag her face close to his. “You’ll wish you had it back by the time I’m done with you,” he hissed, the promise of pain shining in his eyes. “You’ll want to kill me—or yourself.”

With a nasty laugh, he jerked her around and shoved her into the cabin.

Donovan and the search party sat looking up at Stony Ridge.

“They could be anywhere,” Mort was saying. “Them mountains are full of caves and ravines where a body could hide for months, as long as he had enough food.”

“What about water?” Donovan asked.
 

“There’s plenty of water. Streams all through the caves.”
 

“Damn.” Donovan glanced at Jedidiah, whose expression was grim. “We know she stopped here.”

“But where did she
go
from here?”
 

Donovan dismounted and walked slowly around the area. He knelt where they had found the hoofprints from Sarah’s horse, then got up and walked around some more, his gaze directed to the ground. Finally, he knelt again, this time by a break in the trees. “Here. She went this way.”
 

“There’s a track off that way,” Amos said. “Goes up the mountain to some of those abandoned mines.”
 

“Then that’s where we’re going.” Donovan mounted his horse and picked up the trail.

“Do you know how long I’ve waited for this moment?” Luke asked softly. “Do you have any idea what it was like in that filthy prison, constantly on guard against the scum that inhabited the place?”
 

Sarah said nothing, since any words that passed her lips would only set off his temper. She sat on the bare dirt floor in front of the fire, which was where she’d landed when he shoved her. Luke stood just inside the door with his gun pointed at her and the bag of plates in his hand.

“Do you have any idea,” he continued, “how I used to dream of getting you in my grasp again? First your father interfered with my plans, and then
you
sent the sheriff after me! Every night in that stinking prison I imagined what it would be like to make you pay for that little betrayal, just like your father paid. And now I have my opportunity.”

He slammed the door with a suddenness that made her jump. She watched him warily as he came toward her, prepared for him to make a move in her direction. Instead he sat down on the bedroll he had spread on the floor close to the fire. Tucking the plates safely in his saddlebags, he waved the gun at her. “Stand up, Sarah.”

Her limbs shaking, she got to her feet. Would he simply kill her now?
 

As if he read her thoughts, he leaned back and gave her a cocky grin that she had once found roguishly charming. “Don’t worry, darlin’, I have no intention of killing you—
yet
.”
 

She licked her dry lips. “What do you want, Luke?”

“To start?” He traced a finger over his slim mustache and watched her with unreadable pale gray eyes. “To start, you can take off your clothes.”

Her legs lost all strength, and her stomach knotted. “What?” she asked hoarsely.
 

“Take off your clothes, Sarah. I want you dressed like the whore you are while you cook my supper.”
 

“Cook your supper?”

“You always were the wifely sort.” The smile faded. “Take off your clothes.
Now
!”
 

She flinched at the unyielding command and raised trembling fingers to the buttons of her blouse. This could buy her some time, she realized as she slowly unfastened the first button. Perhaps she could draw out the process…

“That’s it, darlin’.” A half smile of pleasure tugged at his thin lips. “Do it slowly, as if you were a slut I’ve paid to please me.”

She moved to the next button, and the next, her nerves becoming more and more frayed with every second she stood as slave to that steady, unrelenting regard. The only thing that kept her from losing control was the knowledge that Jack was coming for her.

All she had to do was stay alive long enough for him to find her.
 

Chapter Twenty

Donovan held up a hand to halt the search party. “I hear something.” He pulled a rifle from his saddle.

Jedidiah rode up beside him, the Colt in his hand. “What is it?” the marshal murmured.

“Someone’s up ahead,” Donovan answered in the same barely audible tone, lifting the rifle to sight down the barrel.

The marshal signaled to the rest of the posse, and Donovan was satisfied to hear the quiet snicks of weapons being cocked. They had the advantage, since they were at the edge of the woods right before it opened up at the base of Stony Ridge. To make it to the safety of the concealing trees, whoever was ahead of them would have to leave the shelter of the rocks and cross a bare, flat clearing that would leave that person vulnerable.

Donovan hoped it was Petrie coming down the rocky path. He wanted nothing more than to put a bullet in the bastard who had taken Sarah from him.
 

A horse and rider cleared the rocks. Donovan recognized Senseless immediately, and his heart leaped as he saw the blonde hair flowing over the back of the person who clung precariously to the saddle.

If Petrie had hurt her—

“Susannah!” Jedidiah shouted.

Susannah
. Donovan saw the differences even as the marshal galloped from the cover of the trees to assist Sarah’s sister. The silver-gilt hair that should have been honey blonde. The fancy green dress that should have been a practical shirtwaist and skirt.

Not Sarah
.
 

Rage made him want to howl, but he needed to keep calm. If he gave in to his emotions now, Sarah was as good as dead.

If she wasn’t already.

That thought made him spur his horse forward. Jedidiah had pulled Sarah’s sister off Senseless and was now cradling her in his arms on his own mount. Susannah had to be hurt, Donovan thought grimly, otherwise she and Jedidiah would have been into one of their near-famous arguments by now.
 

“She’s almost unconscious,” Jedidiah said as Donovan pulled his mount alongside the lawman’s. “But she insists on talking to you. Won’t let us take her to the doctor until she does.”
 

Donovan looked down at Susannah, frowning as he saw evidence of hard treatment in the bruises that marred her skin. Her eyes were closed, and he wondered if she were even conscious. “Suzie,” he said, using Sarah’s nickname for her sister, “it’s Donovan.”

Her eyes opened, and he could tell from the dullness of her blue gaze that she was in a lot of pain. Her lips formed his name, a mere breath of sound.

“I’m here, Suzie.”
 

“Luke…”

“Luke has Sarah. I know that. But
where
, Suzie?” He stroked a hand gently over her cheek. “Tell me where.”
 

“Plunkett,” she rasped, wincing. “Up…Plunkett.” She made a weak upward gesture with her hand, then with a whimper, she passed out.

Jedidiah cradled her close, his gaze meeting Donovan’s with implacable resolve. “I’ve got to get her to Doc Mercer’s.”

“Go.” Donovan clapped a hand on the marshal’s shoulder in farewell, then turned to the search party as the lawman galloped toward town. “She said Plunkett,” he announced. “Does anyone know what that means?”

“Horace Plunkett,” Amos answered, spitting a wad of tobacco juice into the shrubbery. “Crazy old prospector who used to live up the trail. Filthy son of a gun. Used to stink like an outhouse.”

Everyone turned to stare at Amos.

With a defensive scowl, he snapped, “I take baths once a month just like the rest of you!”

“Amos,” Donovan said, drawing the old man’s attention. “Do you know where this place is?”

“Sure do,” Amos replied, sending another wad of brown spittle into the trees. “Horace’s shack is up the trail a ways. Real easy to find, if you’re looking for it.”
 

“Then you ride with me. The rest of you, get ready to surround the place when we get there. No one fires a shot until Sarah is safe.”

With Amos at his side, Donovan started up the trail.

Barefoot in her camisole and bloomers, Sarah wished Luke Petrie to hell with every fiber of her being.

She could tell that he enjoyed humiliating her. He had made her take off everything but these last garments, and he made her do it in such a way that she felt like a harlot putting on a performance for a paying customer—just as he had wanted her to feel.

“You’ve got a real talent for this sort of thing,” Luke drawled, his gray eyes narrowed with meanness. “I think you missed your calling, Sarah.”
 

She didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response.

He merely laughed. “Take off the rest of it, darlin’. I want to see if your body is still as lovely as I remember.”

“No.”

She hadn’t planned on saying it, but when she saw the surprise that flashed across his face, she was glad that she had.

“What did you say?”
 

“I said no.” Grateful that he had been too startled to shoot her, she straightened her spine proudly. “I refuse.”
 

He sprang to his feet, and it was all she could do to hold her ground. “Do you want to die, Sarah?”

“You’re going to kill me whether I do what you ask or not,” she replied. “I’d rather die with my clothes on.”

“So you want to choose how to die?” He gave a nasty chuckle. “Let me help you then.”
 

He came to her and cocked the gun. Bile rose in her throat as she felt the deadly steel pressing against the pulse that throbbed at her temple. “I could shoot you in the head,” he said. “Very quick death. Or perhaps…”

He slid the gun down the arch of her cheek and along her jaw, leaving a trail of chilly fear prickling her flesh, until the barrel touched her lips. Her panicked exhale misted over the cool metal. “This would be quick, too,” Luke mused, “but messy.”
 

She didn’t dare take another breath until he moved the revolver away from her mouth. Once more the weapon glided along her flesh, tracing a path down her throat to rest snugly between her breasts.

“Heart shot,” Luke whispered, the thrill of power in his tone. “Again, quick, but messy.”
 

Not taking his eyes from hers, he reached up and deliberately caressed her breast with his other hand. A shudder of revulsion shook her, and he laughed.
 

“There was a time when you moaned my name when I touched you like that,” he taunted. He squeezed her breast until a gasp of pain escaped her lips. Grinning in enjoyment, he moved the gun down her torso until it nudged her abdomen. “Gut shot,” he whispered close to her ear. “Very painful, and a
very
slow death.”
 

She bit her lip to keep from crying out. His face was so close that she could see clearly how much he relished her terror, and she resolved not to give him the satisfaction of hearing her beg for her life.

Whatever atrocities he committed on her person, if she just stayed alive, then Jack would find her.

“Sarah, you always were stubborn.” He grabbed her hair and jerked her head back, the gun pressing against the vulnerable flesh under her chin. “You can keep being stubborn if you want, but it won’t do you any good in the end.”

“Why don’t you just take the plates and go, Luke?” she whispered. “You know they’re going to come looking for me.”

“They’d kill me as soon as I hit the trail. But as long as I have you, darlin’, they’ll have to give me safe passage.”
 

“The search party could be here at any minute,” she pointed out. “What if they surround the cabin?”

Luke just laughed. “No one in this backward town is smart enough to find us. The only one who ever managed to outwit me was your dear, departed father.”