With a cold certainty, Starla knew her life was over; her father had won. She had nothing to bargain with and everything to lose. Her own future was no longer important to her. It would become a game of pretend. They wouldn’t have to force her to take the mind-blanking tonic. She’d swallow it willingly to escape the truth of what her lot would be. But she’d accept her fate on her terms.
“You won’t hurt Tyler.”
Cole smiled, feeling generous in his victory. “Not if you behave and he don’t get stupid. You’ll see to that, won’t you?”
Starla nodded faintly. She understood the rules and the hell that came with breaking them. It wouldn’t matter, though, not if her last condition was met.
“And you won’t hurt Tony.”
“Tony? The Yankee? Oh, I’m sorry, darlin’, I can’t promise that. See, he’s too dangerous. He’s making problems for too many people. The only way he’ll let you go is with a very persuasive bullet to the brain. You see, unlike your brother, he is a brave man and he won’t be intimidated. That’s the way it’s got to be.”
Starla fought down the waves of nausea and
fright, resisting the want to curl up and weep in bitter defeat. She had to think. Christien would soon be on his way to Pride. There had to be a way to get her son and her husband to safety no matter
what
she’d have to sacrifice.
“You don’t have to kill him,” she said with a grim certainty. “I can drive him away. I can get him to hate me so much, he’ll leave Pride behind and never want to look back.”
“And how would you do that?”
“With the truth. I’ll tell him the truth, every disgusting detail, every shameful secret. He won’t be able to get away from me fast enough.”
Tears streamed down her face as she made that last claim, knowing in her heart it was true, no matter how much she might have wished it not to be. Her husband was no different than any other man. And no man could ever accept the depravity she’d allowed through her weakness and her fear and her pathetic need to be accepted. She’d force the facts into Dodge’s face until he squirmed away from them in repugnance. She’d tell him things that would make him sick at the fact that he’d ever touched her. She’d make him despise her … and in doing so would spare his life. She met her father’s victorious smile with a lift of her chin and a fierce summation.
“You don’t have to kill him to get rid of him. I’ll do it for you. What man would want any part of a woman like me?”
And from behind them came a soft, sober statement.
“I would.”
Starla turned toward the door, not knowing whether to feel relief or dismay. Dodge stood slightly behind Benson and Milton, the big bore of his Navy Colt trained on the two startled men. He sagged on his crutches, his features pinched with pain, but there was no mistaking the bulldog set of his jaw and the all-business directness of the stare he leveled on Cole Fairfax.
“I’ve come to take my wife home, and this time, by God, you’re not getting in my way. Starla, come here.”
She hesitated just long enough for Dodge to feel a stab of alarm and for Cole to realize all was not lost.
“Go to him, if you think he’ll still want you after he knows what you are,” Cole purred with a silky confidence.
Starla looked between her husband and father, indecision warring with logic. She knew her father and what he was capable of. Dodge may have had the upper hand for the moment, but how long would it be before those tables turned?
A bullet to
the brain
. Her father would have him killed. She never doubted it.
“I can’t go with you, Tony.” It was a quiet whisper that echoed through his head like a scream.
“What? Of course you can. He’s not going to hurt you.”
“You don’t understand.” She wasn’t worried about herself.
“I understand plenty. Come over to me now. Don’t be afraid.”
Cole chuckled. “I’m afraid you don’t understand anything, Mr. Dodge. She’s not going anywhere with you, and perhaps that’s for the best, considering.”
“Considering what?” Dodge was blinking hard, trying to keep the sweat that poured off his brow from blinding him. Struggling to keep the pistol lethal and level.
“Considering the kind of woman you married. Tell him, Starla. Tell him why he’s better off without you.”
“There’s nothing she could tell me to make me believe that.”
Starla swallowed down a sob. How sure he sounded. Because he didn’t know.
“You tell him, or I will,” Fairfax snarled.
“Tell me, Starla,” Dodge said with a fierce intensity. “Trust me.”
“I can’t.” How could she look at the man she loved, a man of decency who knew only the goodness of a family’s love, and tell him of the horrors embraced by hers?
“I know he hurt you and your brother—”
Starla’s laugh was edged in hysteria. God, how naive he was!
“Tell him, Starla. Tell him about that time after your faithless bitch mother ran off with another man, how hard you worked at being Daddy’s girl, making sure your daddy never got lonely enough to find himself another wife to replace you in his affections. Tell him how you spent all your time at your daddy’s knee, learning to be a teasing little whore to get what you wanted, just like your mama.” He paused to emphasize his last claim. “And how to have it all, you took your mama’s place.”
Starla knew the instant awareness hit Dodge between the eyes like a twenty-pound maul. Shock blanked his stare as he looked to her. And she knew she’d lost him.
And that was when the brown-toothed Milton decided to take advantage of his surprise.
The bulky brawler spun with remarkable speed, knocking the gun aside as he used his foot to sweep Dodge’s crutches out from under him. Catching his balance on Benson’s shirt collar, the banker managed to make a lunge for the man’s holstered pistol just as Milton dealt him a smashing elbow to the kidneys. Dodge dropped with a groan.
Starla took a running step toward him. Her father snagged her up with the tangle of his fist in her hair, jerking her to a standstill at the painful end of that tether.
“Kill the son of a bitch,” Fairfax snarled at his men.
Benson looked up in confusion. “In here? We can drag him out back—”
Cole brought Starla to her knees with the wrench of his wrist. “Do it right there. I want her to see it. I want her to know what happens when folks cross me.”
Thinking about the mess to the fancy rug and marble floors, Benson shrugged. As long as he didn’t have to clean it up. He drew his pistol, eager to repay the surprisingly gutsy little Northerner for nearly crushing his jewels and ruining his love life for better than two weeks. He cocked the pistol, having no trouble closing out the sounds of his boss’s daughter’s shrieks. The banker’s eyes opened, focusing just long enough to register the fact that he was about to die, to challenge his assassin with an “I’ll see you in hell!” defiance … when Benson staggered back, howling, clutching at the knife hilt protruding from his shoulder.
The sound of a palm gun chambering back froze Milton from intervening as Tyler Fairfax stepped carefully over Dodge to extract his favorite throwing knife.
“Were I you,” he murmured, wiping the blade on Benson’s shirtfront, “I’d be gone from here quick.”
They didn’t even look to the elder Fairfax. There was enough menace in the younger man’s eyes to convince them that fleeing was the wisest action to follow.
Tyler knelt down over the fallen man, giving him a wry smile when he had his attention. “What did I tell you about watchin’ your back?”
“You’re getting pretty good at it,” Dodge mumbled against the tearing pain.
“Well, it ain’t a job I’m lookin’ to fill permanent, you understand.”
Dodge nodded, his jaw spasming, his eyes closing tight as he tried to ride out the agony. Failing.
“Star, darlin’, you c’mere now.”
Starla hesitated, looking between brother and father.
Cole smirked at her. “Think he’s gonna want you now? Best you just stay where you belong, girl.”
Trust me…
.
Starla jerked free with a cry of, “Yes, yes, he will, because he loves me. That’s something you’d never understand.” She ran to where her husband now lay insensible and said to Tyler, “Help me get him to the doctor.
Hurry.”
On Doc Anderson’s table, just before the morphine had him completely under, Starla saw to her promise to be the last thing he saw, kneeling by her husband, his slack hand in hers, but she had no idea if he did. Or if he wanted to.
“You’ll have to leave now, Mrs. Dodge.”
“Just a minute more,” she entreated, then leaned over Dodge to whisper close to his ear, “I love you, Tony. Please remember your promise.”
She walked into the waiting parlor in a daze, scarcely aware of Reeve and Patrice’s presence or of the comfort of her brother’s embrace. She was haunted by the look in Dodge’s eyes when all of her secrets had been stripped bare before him.
Trust me…
.
Starla buried her face against Tyler’s shoulder, clinging to her faith by the fingernails.
Hours later, a bloody Doc Anderson emerged from the back room. He crossed to Starla and placed a small misshapen bit of lead in her palm.
“He might want to save that as a souvenir.”
“Is he going to be all right?” Patrice cried hopefully.
“He made it through the operation. That’s all I can say. I can’t give any guarantees he’ll survive the night, or that if he does, whether he’ll be paralyzed. We’ll have to wait.”
“He’s tough,” Reeve stated for everyone’s benefit. “He’ll make it.”
Despite his assurances, the waiting was torture. Unable to sit still beneath the sympathetic looks from her friends, Starla excused herself to step out onto the front walk for air, finding little relief in the thick late-day humidity. She sagged against a porch support and let her fears shiver through her unchecked. In her continual prayers for Dodge, she’d forgotten her own troubles.
Let him live, Lord. Just let him live
. She didn’t care if he walked. She didn’t care if he never wanted to see her again. She just needed to know that his exquisite light didn’t expire when its brightness led the way for so many.
“Missy Starla?”
She looked up in surprise to see Matilda clutching at her sleeve. “Tilly, what is it?”
“The mister, how is he?”
“It’s too soon to tell. But I’ve been praying like you taught me.”
“Your mama, she be the one who taught you that, not me.”
Starla’s features hardened and she turned away. Tilly tugged at her determinedly.
“Missy, there be something you need to know, something about your mama. I kept quiet all these years to protect you, but now the truth needs be told.”
“What is it, Tilly?”
“Something I should have told you long ago. Something I need to show you.”
The earth was rich, cold, and wet where she dug by the riverbank. She was on her knees, unmindful of the black soil staining her gown as shovelful after shovelful of Kentucky topsoil was flung helter-skelter from the ever-deepening hole. A fearfully superstitious Tilly stood at a distance, crossing herself and muttering incantations to prevent disturbing the restless spirits left to roam the unhallowed ground.
Starla sat back, rubbing to ease the low ache in her back, at the same time swiping at the moisture dotting her brow. A dark streak of dirt marred her flushed skin.
“Are you sure this is the place?”
“Yessum.” Again the old black woman made an anxious sign of the cross.
Starla sighed in determination and continued to dig until something pale shone through the soil. Faintness threatened her as she scooped the dirt away from the skeletal remains of a once fine hand. Tears wobbled in her eyes as she lifted the fragile
bones to remove a ring hanging loosely from one white digit. A big emerald. Like his darlin’s eyes, her father had been fond of saying, as he’d admired the jewelry the same greedy way he looked at his wife.
“Oh, Mama,” Starla moaned, clutching the ring in her palm as she wept.
After a time, when the dry pinch of anguish grew bearable, she turned to the uneasy Matilda and said, “Help me, Tilly. I want my mama in a proper grave.”
Cole Fairfax greeted his daughter with a guarded pleasure that turned sour the minute he saw her expression. For the first time, he saw no fear in her eyes, just a gleam of pure hatred. How like her mother she looked just then.
“You killed them,” she spat at him in disgust. “You couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving you for another man, and you killed them both and told everyone she’d simply run away. You let everyone pity you for your wife’s cruel abandonment when
you
were the one who deprived her children of their mother’s love. She was going to take us with her, wasn’t she? Is that what drove you to do it?”
Cole’s features congealed in a loathing he’d kept too long a secret. “I would have let the bitch go, and good riddance. I would even have let her take you, the brat she bred with her lover. She tried to fool me, but I knew. I couldn’t father no more children after Tyler. A sickness, the doctor told me. Then she had you and told me you was mine. I would have let her take you. But she wanted my
son as well, and that I couldn’t allow.”
Starla’s head swam with that unexpected news. “You’re not my father.”
“It was that sneaking Frenchman, the cousin her parents refused to let her marry because he didn’t have a bankroll to measure up to mine. She told me when I caught them trying to leave. She told me how you’d been conceived when she was visiting family in New Orleans, and she swore she’d humiliate me before all of Pride County unless I let her take both children with her. She underestimated me, a mistake she made only once.”
“You let me believe I was your daughter. You let me think that I’d allowed my father—” She couldn’t continue, too sick in her soul to express the depths of the mortal anguish she’d suffered. Then she realized the entire consequence of what he’d said.
“You bastard.”
“No, my dear. I believe that name applies to you. But who will ever believe you, once I have you locked safely away?”