Mary Connealy (43 page)

Now, an hour later, amazed that there was enough water in her body to form tears, Grace lifted her hand to wipe her eyes. Her hand shook until she couldn’t bear to see it. She closed her eyes and let her long tangles of dark blond hair stick on her soppy face.

She’d come here by choice, wanting the West to be uncivilized, wanting to be far removed from her trouble with Parrish. But never had she imagined anyone or anything as uncivilized as Daniel Reeves and his sons.

Sitting in her one-room attic home was the loneliest moment in her incredibly lonely life. She felt as if she were shrinking away to nothing, hiding here from the fate that surely awaited a jobless, penniless woman in the unforgiving West.

She’d had such dreams. She’d planned to help children and protect them in ways she’d never been protected. She’d planned to make enough money that, once she was sure Parrish had been left far behind, she could send for her ragtag family in Chicago and have a real home at last.

Instead, she’d failed everybody who’d ever been foolish enough to trust her.

When she’d arrived home, she’d cast her ruined dress into a heap on the floor and pulled on her nightgown. Grateful in her misery that there was no mirror in the room to reflect her emaciated body, she held herself tight in the tissue-thin, dark blue flannel gown.

“What am I going to do, Lord?” She bowed her head. She heard the words slip past her clenched jaw. It hurt to move her lips. They were chapped from the salt of her tears and the bitter cold in the attic.

The room was heated only by what crept up from the general store downstairs, and the store banked the fire at night. She had her own potbellied stove, but it cost money to buy firewood or took energy to hike out and cut it herself, energy she just didn’t have.

What did it matter anyway? She could freeze to death tonight or she could starve to death next week. Grace wept, not so much for her own failure as for the way she’d failed Hannah and the other children.

All her promises rang hollow now. She couldn’t even take care of herself, let alone care for someone else.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have sent Hannah every penny she had to spare each payday. If she’d set a few dollars aside for a time of trouble, she could have moved on and started teaching somewhere else. But she’d never dreamed of such trouble as Daniel Reeves. Holding nothing back for herself, she’d barely kept enough to eat.

She wept, ashamed of her weakness. But what did it matter? There was no one to be disgusted by her. No one this side of Chicago cared if she lived or died. There was no way out. She’d finally hit bottom, plunged to the very deepest pit.

Her door slammed open.

The
bang
jerked her head up.

Everything that was wrong about her destroyed life suddenly meant nothing.

Parrish, with his stooped frame, hawklike nose, and cruel eyes, stepped into the room with a satisfied laugh. “Ah, Grace, have you missed your dear daddy?”

With a scream, Grace leaped from the chair. Parrish’s eyes narrowed, and he rushed at her. Without making a conscious choice, Grace chose the only other exit.

Parrish tore at her nightgown. Fingernails clawed her skin as she threw herself out the second-story window. The jagged glass slit her as she crashed through. It rained around her, slashing her skin. The ground rushed at her. The icy December wind seemed to cut her skin as surely as the glass. She instinctively twisted to keep from landing headfirst.

“You won’t get away from me.” Parrish’s roaring threats faded as she plummeted earthward.

The frozen ground hit like a fist. Glass stabbed and sliced.

“You owe me, and I’m here to make you pay!” The ugly voice overhead stung her into moving.

She scrambled to her feet, pain in every movement. The soft flesh on her hands and knees ripped on the sharp edges of frozen ruts. She was driven to survive, even when, minutes ago, she’d been ready to give up.

She darted around the corner into the alley between the general store and the diner. She tripped, falling, imbedding rock and dirt in her bleeding skin. She staggered to her feet, pressing her back against the wall. She glanced around the side of the building and up.

The broken window no longer framed her nightmare come to life. There was no sadistic, menacing man to be seen. The only way down was the back stairs.

She ran toward the front of the building, mindless of the pain in her feet, only conscious of the need to flee. She darted out of the alley in the frigid Texas night.

Mosqueros was closing down for the evening. The door banged open in the back of the store. Parrish, coming.

She saw a wagon. She scrambled in and ducked under the tarp tossed over it. She crushed her body between wooden crates, scraping new wounds in her flesh. She dragged her bare feet under the cover and stopped dead.

He’d be on Mosqueros’s main street by now. He’d know there was only one place she could be. He’d pull back the tarp and put his hands on her. And then he’d make her pay for every bit of her defiance.

The wagon tilted. She heard whistling, incongruous in her terrified mind. Was Parrish climbing aboard the wagon?

A shout and the rattle of leather and chains came from the driver’s seat. The wagon lurched forward with a creak of old wood.

She gathered herself to jump out of the wagon and run again. Forever running and hiding, for years, across a continent. Even in this remote Texas town, there was no place he couldn’t find her. She lived like a frightened animal.

“Hold there,” Parrish shouted from the walk beside the wagon.

That voice, that threatening, brutal voice. How many times had he lashed her with it? How many others had he treated the same? She’d lost count, but the faces of the others haunted her.

Grace didn’t dare move. Once she was discovered, any man would hand her over. How well she’d learned that lesson.

“Whoa,” the driver said, breaking off his whistling.

Grace’s stomach clenched. She knew that voice. The man who’d ruined her life in Mosqueros, just as Parrish had ruined it everywhere else. The driver had seen to her firing and left her cold and hungry in a darkened room. It was the voice of a man she hated only slightly less than Parrish. Now she needed him to survive.

She didn’t count on it. Daniel Reeves would probably hand her over with pleasure.

“I need to—” Parrish’s voice halted.

Grace waited, trying to control her gasping breath that blew out white in the bitter cold. One move, one twitch of a muscle, and the coarse gray tarp would be thrown back.

“Need somethin’, mister?” Daniel Reeves talked too loud, as usual.

“Forget it. Never mind.” Footsteps clomped away on the wooden sidewalk.

“Hmm, what wazzat about?” Daniel Reeves asked under his breath.

But Grace heard him. He was mere inches away from her. She could have reached her arm out of the tarp and tapped him on the back.

There was a slap of reins on the horses’ backs. The whistling resumed and the wagon began rolling, swaying side to side.

Why had Parrish left? He had to know it was at least possible she’d hidden under this tarp. It wasn’t like him to quit hunting.

He didn’t want a witness
.

The minute the idea came to her, she knew it was right. He was still out there. Watching. He had an instinct for the hunt. How many times had he proven that to Grace?

But he’d never minded witnesses before. He’d delighted in dragging her home, screaming and crying. He’d gloated and laughed about it to anyone who watched. That could mean only one thing. He wasn’t here to drag her home. Not this time.

He was here to kill her.

He would want no witnesses to tie them together when she turned up dead.

After enough time had passed to put the town behind them, the cold broke into her terror. Inch by inch so no movement or sound would draw Daniel’s attention to her, Grace curled in on herself. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and bowed her head until she lay in a tight ball among the boxes and gunnysacks. Stiff as a corpse, she hugged herself. There had never been anyone else to do it.

The cold invaded her hiding place until her bare toes went numb. As the wagon rumbled over the rough trail and Daniel whistled his mindless tune, Grace lost the feeling in her body. She fought the need to shiver as her legs, then her arms and torso, grew chilled until there was no feeling left. But she was only distantly aware of that and the bruising of the wagon box and the sliding supplies.

She closed her eyes and let the tears start flowing again. She let the cold, cruel world beat on her to its heart’s content. She remembered Jesus’ lament as He hung on the cross:
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Why
wouldn’t
God forsake her? Everyone else had.

She was surprised how much she regretted dying. Life hadn’t held much pleasure for her. Clinging to it seemed at odds with the miserable existence she led.

She felt the cold wrap around her like icy hands, deepening her exhaustion, pulling her under to sleep. She didn’t expect to wake.

She didn’t fight it. She decided to let Parrish win.

Parrish had taught her long ago that she deserved it.

D
aniel Reeves let the winter weather cool his temper on his long drive home. The team clambered up the steep stretch of trail that twisted through the narrow mouth of his canyon home. The wind whistled through the walls of the canyon towering over his head.

The trail was so narrow in places he was tempted to suck in his gut as his sure-footed team slipped through the gap. One razor-thin switchback went almost straight sideways and straight up at the same time. A few flakes of snow drifted down on him, and he hated to think of scaling this path if it was slick.

Just as well the boys don’t have to go to school anymore. Waste of time anyway
. Most schooling was nonsense. Still, it burned something fierce to be told to stay away. He sucked in frigid air and shook off his anger.

Pay attention to the trail—watch the team
. These are the things a rancher needed to know, not a bunch of book learning.

The snow gusted into his face as he wound around another tight switchback. A wonder they’d found this place. The boys playing around their campsite had come up with it. As far as Daniel could tell, no man had ever stepped foot in this fertile valley before he’d claimed it.

Snow sifted down from his hat, and a breeze sent it whooshing down his neck. Shivering, he thanked God it didn’t snow much here.

At least that’s what he’d been told. He hadn’t lived through a Texas winter yet.

Good thing. If the snow came down here like it had in Kansas, this gap would close up tight and stay sealed until spring.

After he’d gone a couple of hundred yards feeling so closed in the sensation almost smothered him, the canyon opened out and he caught his breath with delight. It was full darkness, but the moon glowed in the sky through gaps in the high, skittering clouds, lighting up the gentle snow flurries.

Daniel could see the wide-open spaces of the 6R Ranch. Belly-deep grass, cured lush on the stem, waved in the bitter wind as if it waved hello. Trees covered the steep edges of the canyon that disappeared out of sight. Cattle, fat with spring babies, lowed softly as he passed by them. They were all as tame as dogs from being overfed and gentled by his boys.

Home. He loved it. He loved his brand—the 6R, chosen for the six Reeves men. He’d left grief behind and begun life anew. Finally, his life was in perfect order.

A single dark thought intruded. That awful, prissy Miss Calhoun. Well, he’d gotten even today in town, but the boys still weren’t welcome back. He scowled at the thought of that fussy old maid.

He shook off his temper. Miss Calhoun was gone. Spring would come soon enough, and the board had said his boys could have another chance then. Daniel was tempted not to bother. He decided he
would
reenroll them, at least for a while, just so no priggish female could take credit for stopping his boys from learning.

Satisfied to know a good teacher might take the place of Miss Calhoun, he turned his thoughts back to his idyllic life at the 6R.

He always thought of God’s promises when he looked at his canyon.
“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
God had indeed comforted him. It had taken time for Daniel to accept that comfort, but he’d found it in his isolated canyon with his sons.

When he was within shouting distance of the cave, he yelled, “Boys, get out here and grab a box.”

Daniel hollered to be heard over the commotion that came from inside the house. It sounded as though his boys were having a fine old time. He laughed as they tumbled out of their little house, all trying to shove through the door at the same time.

“I can hear the lot of you, through stone walls, from over a mile away. It’s a wonder it didn’t scare the team.” Daniel pulled back on the reins, but the well-trained horses knew their job and stopped without much effort from him. He set the brake.

“What’d ya get, Pa?” Ten-year-old Abraham beat his brothers to the wagon, dragging his coat on as he came, none too worried about the wicked cold.

Isaac dashed out one step behind him. The twins always moved as a team. Abe fastest and first, but Ike sticking to the end and finishing whatever Abe started.

“Did ya get plenty of taters?” Ike swung himself up on the back of the wagon beside his brother.

“An’ apples, Pa.” Mark, the firstborn of his five-year-old triplets, stormed after his brothers, with his two mirror images just behind.

“You said you’d try ’n’ get some winter apples,” John shouted.

“We heard at school Mr. Badje had extras in his cellar, ’member, Pa?” Luke came out, his blond hair a replica of his four brothers’.

The cave door stood open in the teeth of the December night.

Abe threw the tarp back.

“Get that door, Luke,” Daniel yelled.

“Did’ja get us a ma?” Abe asked.

“Luke, last one out gets that door closed. I’m gonna be chopping wood all winter if—” Daniel stopped. He turned to Abe. “What?”