It was too much. Too damned much.
Nick led her to a back table and got her settled in a chair. Then he returned with two whiskeys and the rest of the bottle.
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She sipped hers and then gulped it. Pouring more, she looked at it and knocked it back. What the heck?
“Easy there now, girl. You’ll end up getting drunk.”
“I don’t care. Maybe that’s what I need.”
“Maybe what you need is Nick.” He reached across the table and lifted a curl, tucking it behind her ear.
She recognized it right away. Nick was being seductive. What the hell was this? A full conspiracy? Was the whole darn reenactment team in on Buck’s special little payroll? Get rid of the Easterner. Get rid of the woman any way you have to. Though her head was spinning, Victoria stood up and glared at Nick.
Though it was Wes she wanted to punch, she got very close to Nick’s face and whispered, “Leave me alone. Go away. You’re all the same. You’re all hoping I’ll go back…”
He grabbed her wrist and stood up, coming around to haul her to him. “No.
You belong here. You light up this town. Before you came it was dark, so dark sometimes I couldn’t see. But now, now that you’re here…you’re never going to leave.”
Victoria looked at Nick. For the first time, she really studied the way he looked at her. His eyes were dark and nearly desperate, and dangerous. Spinning out of his grasp, liquor woozy, she headed for the stairs. Crazy. She had crossed the line. She’d gone around the bend and didn’t even know it till now. That’s the only answer. As she climbed the stairs, she fought to think clearly but sense evaded her. Only slashes of pictures darted across her mind. Only fragments of sentences typed their way across her brain like newspaper headlines. She laughed. What was next? A straitjacket? A room with rubber walls and attendants with no ears and huge bald heads that shone in the light or something equally bizarre? You have just entered the Twilight Zone…
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Waking up was very painful. Her head throbbed. Her eyes felt swollen and tight. Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth all night. The fact that a fat little hand was poking her, prodding her to wake up didn’t clear the cobwebs for several seconds.
God, what a nightmare. “Morning, Katie. Did you sleep well?” She certainly hadn’t. As she pulled the warm, soft little girl against her for a hug, something was trying to push itself to the front lines of her brain cells. Yes. That was it. Wes.
The turncoat. Traitor. Benedict Arnold. Her heart broke. And then the sharp pieces stabbed their way through her system. She flopped back down on the bed, willing her body to feel. Nothing.
It was as if her body had traded itself for Styrofoam. No emotion seeped out through the little white holes of her existence. She was only an entity with her brain trapped on top.
As her feet touched the floor, determination thudded into her gray matter.
Bullheaded and pious men. She’d stay. Just long enough to make them wish they had never heard her name. Never laid eyes on her. And after she made them the sorriest bunch of cowpunchers to exist on earth, she’d leave. Back to her vets, back to her friends…and what? The constricting life at Twin Forks where her life was being squeezed from her? No. Not to stay but she would go somewhere.
Glory Town could go to hell. She’d open her own town and put them out of business. Yes, that was an idea. See, all she had to do was think clearly. And to do that she had to keep some distance between herself and J. Weston Cooper.
Damn.
She couldn’t believe that she could begin to love a man and then find out he was deceitful…or had he really, truly come to love her?…No. She wouldn’t analyze it. She would go on instinct. As Wes had taught the men, she would
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come out with both guns blazing and let the chips fall where they may. No play-acting. No guesses. No more wondering. She’d been a fool once before, but it would never happen again.
But he loves me,
her mind cried.
Hah!
her brain answered. Taking a deep breath, she smiled at the little girl waiting for her and thanked whatever gods watched over fools that all emotion was replaced by cold, startling anger.
“Well, Katie. Let’s you and me mosey on down to the dining room and see what Joe is serving for breakfast. Did I say that right?”
Katie giggled and Victoria took that as a yes. Pulling on her jeans and cotton shirt, she jammed her feet into her Western boots, blisters be damned. Victoria dressed for battle.
Dazzled. That must be it. And thrown by the death of her horse.
Excuses. Excuses. She was a bad judge of things. Now she had the proof.
And she was going to swing it by the tail.
She took Katie by the hand and they literally marched down the stairs to the dining room.
“Your daddy’s first staged bank robbery is being rehearsed at nine. Watch me throw a monkey wrench in the works.”
Katie looked up at Victoria and asked her, “What’s monkey works?”
Victoria threw her head back and laughed. A cold, calculated laugh.
Watch.
Just watch,
she thought as she smiled at the sweet little girl. “After breakfast I want you to stay and help Joe. I’ll be back later and we’ll do something. Okay?”
“Okay.”
As she ate, she plotted. Everything was supposed to go smoothly just because “big man” had choreographed the scene. By now everyone must be in on the joke. Get the girl to leave town. By sundown. Ha! After today they would be praying for her to leave. She could play the game, too.
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“Joe. Look after Katie for me for a while, will you?”
“Of course. After I dry these few dishes, me and Katie will go down to the barn and saddle that new pony her daddy bought her the other day. I’ll keep a good eye on her, don’t worry.”
“Thanks, Joe. I won’t be long.” No, this would take only minutes. A short amount of time to put things in order.
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She stomped out into the glaring sunlight. Victoria looked up on the roof, shading her eyes with her hand from the sun. Yes, good old Nick was there preparing to be shot down, to act out his spiraling fall from the building. She had seen it plenty of times and he was good. She toyed with the idea of moving his air-filled mattress, just a few inches one way, but shoved it aside. She couldn’t get much revenge if she was going to have to spend the rest of her days behind bars for murder, although at this point she knew she was capable of it.
She moved quickly. She had no problem finding the tools to build her revenge. A hammer. Screwdriver. Three potted cactus plants. A trip to the kitchen netted her a half-full can of shortening. She checked to be sure she had a pair of handcuffs swinging from her belt and that her gun was loaded with blanks.
Running to the barn, she swung around the corner only moments before the men filed in. In the prop room, she slashed slits in the bottoms of the money bags. She grabbed the crowbar and was running out again unseen. At the bank she was able to quickly complete her work. She pried two boards off the walk and then set them back
so they appeared to be stable.
Placing a few cactus plants strategically made her chuckle. She tapped the bolts from the door loose so that it would take one swing open but probably not the second. Tying a rope around one end of the porch post, she coiled it and hid it for later.
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Most of the other reenactors not involved in this skit gathered around to watch the results of Wes’s hard work.
Eight men were involved in this show, two on the roof because the band of desperadoes was expected and was to be ambushed. Two men were in the bank and four were holdup men. She knew Wes would cross the street and watch from a good vantage point to pick up any mistakes. She hoped he saw every detail.
When he walked down the road to take his place, just seeing him squeezed her heart. But she pushed the feeling away and took a place close by. Larry and Jeff took their places inside the bank as tellers. Tim joined Nick atop the building.
Wes signaled and the action began.
From the west, the desperadoes rode up, guns drawn and bandannas covering their faces. Dismounting, they whipped the reins in a circle over the hitch rail, looked this way and that, and then dashed into the bank. Victoria held her breath when one of the men teetered over a loose board but relaxed when he simply pounded on into the bank.
Now she had only seconds to act. It didn’t matter at this point that she would be seen. No one could stop the chaos that would follow. She pulled the loose boards up and tossed them aside, leaving enough of a space to trip them yet not wide enough to break an ankle. Then she stretched the rope across the walk and let it lie there. Running around the horses, she smeared great gobs of shortening on the saddles. Back beside the porch post, she held the end of the rope with one hand and her revolver with the other and waited…
In five seconds the men backed out of the bank. The door flopped aside and down with a loud crash. The men jumped, startled, but recovered right away.
After all, they were actors and nothing should stop the scene.
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Firing their pistols, they made a break for the horses. The first two men stumbled on the missing boards, fell, looked around confused, but righted themselves and went for their mounts. The last two men sprawled into the dust when they tripped over the rope she wrapped around the post and drew tight, cussing when they rolled into the cactus pots and picked up some spines.
Victoria’s wicked laughter rolled across the air.
And then again, she laughed as the two men swung into the saddles only to slide almost off the other side. The play money finally worked its way through the bags and fluttered out and up on the breeze. While the men struggled to stay in the greased saddles, the horses circled and skittered in confusion. Victoria jumped toward the two men sprawled on the ground and handcuffed them together. Working her gun, she killed the two on horseback and then ran into the street to fire at the men on the roof. She plowed them unexpectedly. Nick laughed and took a dive to his mattress. Tim holstered his gun and merely stood, guffawing and holding his stomach muscles at the hapless group below.
Both hands raised in the air in triumph, she turned to face Wes and Buck with a bright smile on her face. Confusion. Anger. The reenactors dusted themselves off and lined up. They waited to find out what this was all about.
Victoria heard one of the men lose his seat in the saddle and hit the ground with a thud and a four-letter word. She leveled her gun at Wes and Buck and walked slowly toward them, gunfighter-like.
“Bang bang. You’re dead,” she said and stopped fifty feet from them.
Both men were still stunned and speechless. They stood staring at her, waiting and watching for her next move. Neither man could decide just what it was he was witnessing.
Victoria advanced again a little slower. “All you high-riding heroes are the same. Egos. Giant glass ones. Come one, come all. I’ve got a story to tell. About a 160
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town full of traitors and pious little people who thought they could band together and get rid of the gutless creature from the East.”
Wes took a step toward her, a smile creeping across his mouth. This had to be a joke. Buck shook his head and hooked his thumbs in his belt.
Victoria stopped Wes from coming one step closer when she fired her gun in the air. “One more step J. Weston Big Man Cooper, the teacher, the cowboy…the turncoat and I’ll blow your cocky head off. See, I can play the game, too. Only this time, I almost wish the blanks were bullets so I could shoot you in the butt.
“Thought you could hire ole Wes here to scare me off, did you, Buck? Low, underhanded snake. You made a fool of me, all of you.” She waved the gun around to include everyone. “Well,” she laughed, “now we’re even. You should see yourselves. Well, I can stay and make your lives hell since I own half of this, half of you. Or I could demand that my half be bought out or have this place sold. Or I can fire all of you and get a new crew. But you all would like that too much. Then I would be exactly what Buck wants you to believe I am.”
“Now listen, missy,” Buck began.
“No, you listen. I came here eager and willing to learn. Anxious to fit in and be a part of what I thought was a nice but weird family. I liked you. I liked all of you. But worse, I trusted you. And then you hired Wes to get rid of me, discourage me. How dare you? All of you were in on it. All of you.” She swung her hand in a wide circle. “And you all betrayed me.” Her heart was encased in steel and the coldness it splayed throughout her system threatened to make her sick.
How the hell did she find out? Who told her and what did they tell her? Wes turned to the small crowd and quietly asked them to disperse. They did, but some were very reluctant.
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They wanted to see how this turned out. Whatever it was. They were at a loss as to what Victoria was talking about. But it was obvious that Buck and Wes knew.
Nick disappeared. Tim climbed down from the roof.
Wes walked to Victoria. He had never wanted her to find out. Didn’t have any idea how she had. But he damn sure was going to be certain she knew the whole story. “Point taken. Now, let’s you and me and Buck go to the hotel and sit down and have a talk. You’ve had your laugh at our expense.”
She holstered the gun. Tears burned behind her eyes but she refused to let them fall. This little joke of hers hadn’t lent itself to the satisfying result she thought she would feel. She merely seemed more the fool. Anger jumped in to protect her.