Authors: Beth Williamson
She wanted to weep and scream at the sky, to hurt Declan Callahan until he felt as bad as she did. None of it happened, no matter how hard she wished it. Frankie watched as Declan took two horses, saddled them, and she stood there and did nothing. She should have run, should have done something to change her fate, but she hadn’t. Now she couldn’t because he’d secured her to his side and gagged her. Unless she could drag a two-hundred-pound man, she could do nothing.
His threat against her sisters was real and she had already sold her soul to save them. She couldn’t risk their lives again. Instead, she stood impotent while Declan made plans to take her away from all she loved. It was untenable.
Her eyes burned with emotion, but she wouldn’t allow herself to weep. Tears had stolen too many moments of her life. She refused to fall prey to them. Declan kept glancing at her as he worked, his body tense and ready to punish her for any misdeeds. Frankie wished she had a weapon, something she could use to protect herself.
Le petit protector
was in the wagon, safely tucked away. If only she had brought it with her today. The situation would have ended differently.
For now she would go with him and try to find an opportunity to get away before they got to New York. She was smart and resourceful. While she didn’t want to hurt him, she would do what she could to survive.
Most days the pioneers were up and about, nosing around each others’ wagons. Not today. The cool weather must have kept them beneath their blankets, unfortunately for Frankie. Within minutes, he picked her up and set her on the placid-looking mare, then untied the rope from his belt before mounting the big gelding.
Declan took the reins of both horses and led them slowly away from the camp. He was stealthy and smart, not drawing attention to them by sudden movement or loud noises. Frankie wanted someone to note their absence, to raise a cry that she was riding away with a stranger. Yet no one saw and no one spoke.
She wished she’d had time to say goodbye to her family, to tell them she loved them. They would search for her, but by the time they determined what had happened, it would be too late. Wagons and oxen couldn’t catch horses. There were small amounts of equines, and most belonged to settlers. She knew Buck Avery, his brother Tom and John had horses, but they had the wagon train to take care of. Chasing one missing woman was not going to be a priority.
Frankie would be lost to them and her family would mourn her. Pain and heartache would once again plague the Chastains. She hadn’t meant to bring the darkness with her. And now it was too late.
John’s neck itched, which it did whenever something was wrong. Yet nothing was wrong, leastwise as far as he knew. The morning had been normal, but the coffee sat in his gut, churning. He trusted his instincts and they were telling him something was not right.
He threw the dregs of his cup on the ground and rose from the small fire Buck had built. The sun rose above the horizon, bathing the wagons in a pinkish hue. He walked around nodding to the folks who greeted him. What the hell was bothering him?
When he arrived back at Buck’s camp, he hadn’t found a damn thing wrong. It was time to focus on the task of getting ready to leave not chasing ghosts riding his back. He folded up his tent and bedroll quick, then saddled his horse. As he tied the bundle to the saddle, Mr. Pearson walked up. Nice enough fella, but quiet.
The dark-haired man stopped at the small corral and then whipped around to John. “Where’s my horse?”
John frowned. “She’s not there?” He knew the mare by sight, a beautiful quarter horse with stamina and a great gait.
“No, she’s not. Did you see anyone here this morning?” Pearson walked around the backside of the corral. “There are tracks here in the grass. Looks like two horses. Someone stole my goddamn horse.” He whipped off his hat and slapped it against his leg. “Isn’t it your job to prevent this?”
Yes, it was, and it stuck in his craw someone stole a horse out from under his nose. John held up his hands. “Maybe somebody borrowed her for an emergency. Let’s go talk to Buck and figure out what happened.”
After twenty minutes of searching, it was clear the horse was nowhere in the camp. John’s feeling that something was wrong had been dead-on. They had a horse thief. Damn it to hell.
While he stood there and let Pearson yell at him, rightfully so, his day turned from bad to worse when Mrs. Chastain walked up with a tall man he assumed was her husband, her face a pile of worry. His body tensed, waiting for the next piece of bad news.
“
Monsieur
Malloy, I need your assistance,
s’il vous plaît
.” The tough, no-nonsense nurse and mother wrung her hands together.
“You’ll have to wait your turn, missy. I ain’t done yelling about my horse that got stolen.” Pearson waggled his finger at John. “This fool is supposed to keep his eye on the lot of us and now—”
“A horse is gone too?” Mrs. Chastain grabbed Pearson’s beefy arm. “Our daughter, Francesca, is nowhere to be found. Is anyone else not accounted for?”
Heat raced through John at the news that Frankie was missing. Her father’s expression was both angry and scared shitless. John felt the same emotions slapping him. “Where was the last time you saw her?”
“Last night before we went to bed. She was gone from beneath the wagon this morning. Josephine saw her go to the small creek for her morning ablutions.” Mrs. Chastain’s green gaze, so much like her daughter’s, was full of the dark possibilities of what happened. “It has been almost an hour.”
An hour? It didn’t take that long to wash up, even if she was brave enough to strip down and jump into the tiny creek. No, something told him the missing horse was connected to Frankie’s disappearance.
“Is anything of hers missing?”
“
Non
. It is as she left it.” Mr. Chastain folded his arms across his chest. “Francesca would not leave willingly.”
“Probably met up with some beau and run off.” Pearson looked disgusted and annoyed. “These young folks today have no respect for what’s right.”
Mrs. Chastain glared at the man. “My daughter is not a foolish girl who would do such a thing. She does not have a beau and she certainly does not take what does not belong to her. Francesca would not leave her family.”
“Says you. Mamas are the last to know.” Pearson tipped his hat back, looking smug. “I know girls and they get their heads turned by the least little thing. Mebbe it was that new guy, that big fella with the black beard.”
Two things became clear to John at once. He shouldn’t have trusted the Irishman. Second, whatever happened to Frankie, he was to blame. The situation with Veronica had him twisted in knots and he was ignoring things he shouldn’t have been. Callahan’s story had seemed a little sketchy, but John knew what it meant to be scraping by with just lint in your pocket.
“What man?” Mr. Chastain’s scowl deepened.
“A man who was looking for work.” John didn’t know how to explain to Frankie’s father that he was the one who allowed the man into their midst. He turned to find Tom Avery, wide-eyed and mute. “Tom, tell your brother what’s happened, then go look for Callahan. His bedroll was cleaned up this morning and I haven’t seen him. Pearson, go back to your wagon unless you plan on helping us find the horse and the girl.”
“
Merci
,
Monsieur
Malloy. What can we do?” Mr. Chastain asked.
“Go back to your wagon and get ready to leave. No matter what, the wagon train is leaving in fifteen minutes.” The seriousness of the situation was not lost on him and he knew what he was asking of the man. “I’ll find her, don’t worry.”
“I will count on that.” Frankie’s father shook his hand, the older man putting his faith in John. The weight and enormity of the task not lost on him. John was afraid he was falling for Frankie, and it damn sure wasn’t a family kind of love. He’d done nothing but dream of kissing her, touching her since that night in the shadows of the wagons when he tasted the depths of her passion.
Mrs. Chastain leaned in close, grasping his hands in her surprisingly strong ones. “She has been through much,
monsieur
, too much for a young woman. Please do not judge her.”
With that cryptic statement, the Chastains hurried off, leaving him to ponder exactly what he’d be judging Frankie for. His first thought was Callahan was Frankie’s beau, who had come to fetch her against her parents’ wishes. But the way Mrs. Chastain told it, she had no beau and she hadn’t taken anything with her.
That meant someone had been responsible for her disappearance. His money was on Callahan. The question was, why? The man had ridden to catch a wagon train for three days, and the next day, he snatched a woman and a horse. The second mount must have been for Frankie. There were no answers to John’s questions and he wasn’t about to find any by standing there thinking too hard.
He took time to look around the area around the corral, noting the footprints in the dewy ground, signs of a man’s boots and a smaller set of feet, and the two sets of hoofprints heading east. He followed the footprints back to the creek and found a bar of soap and a washrag. The grass had been flattened as though a body had lain on it.
Images of Callahan having his way with Frankie flashed through John’s mind. The bastard. He pushed back the panic and told himself to focus. He would be ten times a fool to let his fascination with the woman cloud his tracking skills when her life was at stake. John fought against the fury, the intense anger that drove him to do things he later regretted. He punched the closest tree, the pain slamming him back to here and now.
Tom came running toward him, his skinny arms pinwheeling, out of breath and sweating. “I…told Buck…and he…said…”
“Get your breath back before you talk.” John slapped him on the back. “You’ll send yourself into apoplexy that way.”
Tom smiled weakly and gusted his breath in and out until he could straighten up. “The wagon train is getting ready to leave. Buck said the girl and horse are yours to figure out. They ain’t gonna wait.”
John grimaced. “I figured as much. The safety of the wagon train is your responsibility until I get back.”
Tom’s eyes widened. “Me?”
John knew he was giving the boy a huge task, one he wasn’t ready for, but John couldn’t move on without finding Frankie. His gut twisted into knots whenever he thought of what she was going through or had possibly already gone through. “You’ve been learning since we left Independence. You can do it, Tom. Don’t let anybody push you around and keep your eye on Miss Enid. She’s ornery, but if you just take care of her each morning and night, she’ll be fine.”
Tom’s head bobbed in agreement. “Yes, sir. I can do that.”
“You’re a good man, Tom. Now get going and make sure everyone’s ready to go. I’m sure Miss Enid’s waiting and you need to step in for me.” John shook Tom’s hand and waited until the younger man had run back toward the wagon train. He picked up the soap and washrag, tacky from lying in the morning dew. Wherever she was, he would find her.
John mounted his horse and watched the wagon train readied to move. He ignored the pull of the trail, the trip that was to fund the last piece he needed for his land. A woman’s life, Frankie’s safety, was worth more than a piece of land. An idea he’d never thought would cross his mind before now. Before he was shot by the tiny French woman whose lips were still imprinted on his mouth.
“Where are you going?” Veronica’s voice ripped through his thoughts. She ran toward him, her skirts hitched up to give her the freedom to lope across the ground. Her expression was determined. And angry.
“I have to locate a missing horse and a missing member of the wagon train. That’s my job, Miss Harvey.” He turned his horse east, pointedly ignoring his “fiancée” when she huffed at him. “Go back to your wagons and leave. I don’t have time for this.” He saddled his horse, wishing Veronica had disappeared instead of Frankie.
“You can’t leave, John. I need you. I need to get away from my father.” Veronica sounded almost desperate. “I heard what happened to Miss Chastain. You can’t leave me, not for that woman. She doesn’t deserve you.”
John finally looked at her, anger coursing through him at the way she spoke of Frankie. A woman who was worth a hundred times more than the woman who disparaged her. She must have seen something in his face because she backed up a step.
“Go away, Veronica,” he growled. “I don’t have time to waste on you.”
“Waste time with me?” Veronica’s face fell, then she pulled her features into a cold mask. “You’re ten times a fool putting your life on the line for
her
.”
John growled at her and Veronica squealed like a baby pig and ran. Why were the females on this wagon train hell-bent on making his life miserable? He hadn’t ever met a grown woman who sparked his interest or who had been interested in him. Now he had one female he couldn’t get away from and one who haunted his dreams.
He nursed his anger. It kept him from thinking about Frankie and what she was going through. If he thought too much about Callahan, the flattened grass and the tiny, curvy body beneath the big Irishman, John would do something really stupid, like kill the man.
No, he needed to keep his head and focus on tracking them. They had an hour’s head start. He would ride until he found them. There wasn’t any other choice.