Authors: Sarah McCarty
“Goddammit, Shadow, get out first!”
Not without Fei. “Get her out of here.”
The rope pulled taut. Inch by inch, Fei came over the ledge. Above them, the cave groaned loud and long. A death cry. There was no more time.
“Haul her out now!”
They did. Fei went, speeding by him like a stick riding a hard current.
For a brief moment he saw her eyes and the accusation there, before her shoulder hit a rock and she turned the other way.
He told himself it didn’t matter how she felt. She was safe. She’d get over it. He’d done the right thing. It didn’t help.
“We’ve got her,” Sam hollered. “Now haul your ass out of there.”
He started working backward. Rock sprayed down, first small and then bigger. A sprinkle to a torrent, pounding him with the force of fists. Dirt and debris slammed his skull into the ground and began filling in the holes around him, beginning to entomb him in a slow steady trickle. He couldn’t move.
“Shadow!”
Fei. His Fei.
“Someone grab her! Don’t let her back in there,” he heard someone shout.
“Goddamn! She’s quick.”
Something touched his leg. Grabbed his ankle.
“Shadow, move!”
Fei? She wasn’t supposed to be there. “Get out.”
A rope slipped around his ankles.
“Pull!” she screamed.
“You first,” he whispered, pushing back with his hands. “Get safe.”
Fei didn’t answer. He didn’t know where she was. Was she out?
Get out.
The tugging at his feet increased and he slid along. He tried to twist around. He caught a glimpse of her at his feet, guiding the rope. He saw the crack start to break across the ceiling. Saw the end coming.
Pushing up on his hands, he lunged for her, kicking as hard as he could, knocking her through the opening and into the light.
Live.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
T
HAT
NIGHT
, S
HADOW
STOOD
at the window of one of the hotel rooms they’d rented. Pulling back the curtain with two fingers, he watched the street below. There was nothing untoward. No men lurked in strategic locations. No women hung in windows. All there was were the normal comings and goings of a sleepy town on Sunday evening. Which was good. From the looks of things he’d have time to rest and heal up.
A twinge in his shoulder had him rubbing it and rotating it in a small circle. There wasn’t a muscle in his body that didn’t ache. He was bruised from head to toe, and would likely be stiff for several days, but as it was a miracle he wasn’t dead, he wasn’t complaining. The memory of being in that cave would be with him a long time. The moment when the cave collapsed and Fei had been in the path of all that falling rock would haunt him to the grave.
There were moments in a man’s life that defined the right and wrong of his grasp on the world. That moment had been one for him. He’d always thought himself a cold-blooded killer. A man in whom the softer emotions had long since been beaten out, but in that moment when he’d watched the ceiling crack and known Fei would die if he didn’t get her out, he’d seen with crystal clarity his one thing. He loved Fei. For a man who’d thought he was empty inside, it was quite a revelation. It also scared the shit out of him.
He wasn’t sure what Fei saw in that moment, but in the aftermath, she’d been madder than a hornet. As soon they’d pulled him out and she’d been certain he was alive, she’d spun on her heel and demanded to be taken home. When she’d learned they couldn’t take her home until they knew what mischief the colonel had left in his wake, she’d huffed and demanded to be taken to a hotel. Away from him.
She’d gotten half her wish.
They were in a hotel a day away from Barren Ridge. Four days away from Hell’s Eight. Fei had studiously avoided him on the ride, seeming to gravitate to Tucker, riding with him, and talking to him to the point Shadow had felt a bite of jealousy. Another new emotion and one he’d never felt before. He didn’t particularly want to feel it right now when his emotions felt like raw meat sizzling on a fire. She hadn’t even said thank you. Then again, neither had he. He ran his fingers through his hair. Maybe he was a little one-sided at times with how he saw things.
Movement in the street below caught his eye. A familiar figure dressed in black drew his attention—Fei. He’d recognize that demure bring-on-the-world walk anywhere. She was supposed to be resting in her room. What was she doing out? She was moving at a fast pace, looking nervously over her shoulder as she stepped up onto the wooden walk on the far side of the street, heading toward the…saloon?
Where was Tucker? He was supposed to be watching her. Disregarding the impact to her reputation, there was no end of trouble Fei could get into in a saloon. Just when he was about to head down and drag her home and to hell with the risk of being recognized by someone, she came out. Her step seemed lighter. And that might have been a smile on her face.
What was she up to?
She crossed the street and disappeared out of sight unto a storefront. He couldn’t see what kind of shop it was from here. If he remembered correctly, it might just have been a dry-goods store. He waited for her to come out, scanning the surroundings constantly for any threat. His patience wore thin when ten minutes passed and there was no still sign of her. He pounded on the wall. “Tracker!”
After a moment, Tracker entered the room, bare-chested, stretching and yawning. Clearly he’d been asleep. He stopped inside the door. “You pounded?”
Shadow continued to look out the window. “Fei is out.”
Tracker cocked an eyebrow at him. “And?”
“She’s up to something.”
“She’s not a prisoner.”
Shadow checked the street again. Still no sign of her. “She gets into trouble.”
“She’s a grown woman.”
“That just means she gets into bigger trouble.”
Tracker leaned his shoulder against the wall. “She seemed to handle herself just fine with Daniels.”
Shadow let the curtain drop and turned around. “She blew up a damn cavern while she was in it.”
Tracker shrugged. “And walked out alive.”
“If we hadn’t been there she wouldn’t have.”
“But we were there. And isn’t it the Hell’s Eight motto that any plan that ends with us walking out alive is a good one?”
“It’s not hers.”
Tracker sat on the bed and leaned back against the headboard and just shook his head.
“What are you staring at?” Shadow demanded.
“You. You’ve really got it bad, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Love.”
Panic flared in Shadow’s gut. “Don’t say that.”
If it wasn’t said, fate couldn’t feel tempted and she wouldn’t be hurt.
“I am not in love with Fei.”
“Bullshit.”
Shadow set his jaw. “She deserves better.”
“Where do you think she’s going to find that?”
“Her uncles have found her someone.”
That gave Tracker pause. “Her uncles?”
“Yes.”
“Found? As in ‘we went shopping for canned goods and look what we found for you along the way’?”
“Arranged marriages are tradition among her people.”
“So is kidnapping among ours. Doesn’t mean I hold with it.”
“Just drop it, Tracker.”
“I don’t think I will. You dragged me out of a good sleep for this parlay, so I think I’ve got some room to ask questions. The first one being just what exactly makes this man so desirable?”
“Her uncles said he’s of good family, owns several dry-good stores and is generally stable.” He left out the part about Fei being second wife.
“He sounds as boring as hell.”
“Fei will be safe there.”
Tracker laughed out loud and shook his head. “Have you met your wife, Shadow? The woman plays with dynamite.”
The nudge of truth was unwelcome. “She probably isn’t my wife.”
Tracker sat up a little straighter. “Did you sleep with her?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’ll ask a different way, then. Are you using her?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then she’s your wife.”
And yet it touches me.
Fei had been miles from him, and his past had found her, putting her in danger. Married, it would be a constant way of life. “No promises were made.”
“How convenient.” Tracker’s drawl deepened with disgust. Not something he was used to hearing in his brother’s voice when it came to him.
“Son of a bitch, Tracker, she doesn’t want to be married!”
“I don’t blame her. A woman likes to know her husband knows his own mind.”
“I know my mind.”
Tracker went back to leaning against the headboard. “Part of it anyway.”
Shadow was in no mood for this. “What the hell are you implying?”
There was a long pause. Tracker ran his hand through his hair. Something he only did when uncomfortable. His lips thinned and his gaze narrowed the smallest bit. “We should have talked about this long ago.”
It was Shadow’s turn to push his hair off his face. “No.”
“Yes.” Tracker shook his head. “It doesn’t do any good to pretend it’s not there.”
“We were kids.”
“And now we’re not, but sometimes I think the old man is still there behind me, belt in hand, ready to tear apart the smallest good I find.”
Shadow took another step into the center of the room. Another step toward Tracker. “Stop it.”
Tracker stood then, the same legacy of hate in his eyes. “I was there, Shadow. I know exactly what it’s like to wonder why your father hates you. To try not to love because you know whatever it is will be hurt. I know that feeling of failure that settles into your gut when you loved despite yourself and he found out. The inability to save what you loved. I remember the beatings, the hate. Hell, I took beatings for you and you for me. Beatings we got for no other reason than we wouldn’t turn on each other. We survived and we’ve both got the scars to prove it.”
Shadow hated the child he’d been then. Too weak to save his brother, his dog, his cat, his mother. He’d sworn never to be that weak again.
Tracker took a step forward. Close enough to touch. Shadow couldn’t bring himself to reach out, bridge that gap.
“That was a long time ago.”
Tracker put his hand on Shadow’s shoulder. “Yeah, but sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I’m still there.”
Shadow took a step back, away from the comfort that felt like weakness. “The old man has a long arm.”
“It’s getting shorter.”
Not in Shadow’s experience. “Why?”
Tracker folded his arms across his chest and dropped the name like a challenge. “Ari.”
His wife. The woman who’d brought the sun to Tracker’s world and the darkness to his. A lot had changed between them when Tracker had found his wife. A lot had been lost.
“She does love you.”
“You finally believe that?”
“I wouldn’t have killed Amboy the way I did if I didn’t.”
“Uh-huh.”
Tracker dropped his hands to his sides. The easy camaraderie that was always between them frayed under the strain of the changes of the past year and a half.
“I want to thank you for that gift, and then I want you to take it back.”
Well, Shadow didn’t want this. He wanted his brother the way he used to be. “Is this where you tell me you’re going to you kick my ass?”
Tracker’s eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t planning on it, but you’re fast changing my mind.”
Shadow ran his hand though his hair and shook his head. He was too tired to fight tonight. “Just tell me what this gift is you want me to take back…get it over with.”
“You killed Amboy to give me Ari.”
He’d killed Amboy so his brother could be happy. “Happy birthday.”