Cherished (46 page)

Only a little while ago, he had been alive,
handing her the basket, sending her on her way...

Who had done this? What animal, what crazed
animal, had done this?

She whirled about, her heart in her throat,
as if expecting the killer still to be lurking in a corner or under
the table. No one was there. Unless, in the back room ...

Danger. She felt it as keenly as a knife
blade at her own throat. Fighting off her faintness and her fear,
she acted without deliberate thought. She reached down to the gun
Skunk wore still in his holster, the gun he’d never even had a
chance to draw. She wiped the bloody barrel on the rag folded on
the countertop, the one she’d used that morning to dry the dishes.
She locked her hands about the pistol, and cocked the trigger.

She started slowly toward the bedroom. Her
heart was thumping painfully in her chest. Terror beat through her,
but she kept going. She wouldn’t run from the person who had done
this to Skunk. She wouldn’t go after Gil, or try to hide. If that
monster was still here, she would kill him herself, because he
deserved to die.

But the back room was empty.

Juliana’s skin crawled. Knife Jackson’s
tar-black eyes and pockmarked face crept into her mind. Who else
would kill in this manner?

Somehow, Knife had found this cabin. She
remembered the noise she and Gil had heard earlier, like a rock
dislodged along the trail. Knife must somehow have followed Gil
back from Plattsville.

A horrible thought struck her, and her hand
shook as she clutched the gun. Josie. Gil could be leading him
straight back to Josie. It was Josie whom Line McCray wanted, maybe
even more than he wanted the Montgomerys.

She had to warn them, and fast. Already she
was out the door, running to the lean-to where the horses were
kept. But suddenly she felt a huge weight hit her from behind, an
immense body tackling her into the dust.

Juliana went down screaming, the gun
clattering from her grasp. She twisted around as her attacker
straddled her, but she could not get a look at his face. His
bandanna covered all but his eyes, yet there was something vaguely
familiar about him. She didn’t have time to think about it, she was
fighting for her life. She clawed at his neck, drawing blood under
her fingernails and kicked out frantically with her legs, but he
was too large and overpowered her.

“Damn you, you wildcat,” her captor swore as
he grabbed her wrists, jerked her upright, and rammed her hands
together behind her back. Tears squeezed between her eyelids as he
tied her wrists together with a rope that bit so viciously into her
flesh, Juliana cried out in pain.

“It’ll be much worse than this before it’s
over,” he taunted in a muffled voice that was vaguely familiar.

Shock ripped through her as a voice that was
unmistakable to her ears answered him. “Damn right it will, Bart.
She might be a damned wildcat, but I’m just the man to tame
her.”

John Breen suddenly stepped out of the brush,
as elegant and unruffled as though he were strolling through the
big parlour at Twin Oaks. Juliana blinked, thinking she must be
seeing things. But no, the sunlight reflected like hazy molten gold
off his burnished hair and tan shirt and pants, and seemed to touch
his lean, handsome face with an amber glow as he came slowly,
relentlessly toward her.

“You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, Juliana,
and I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay for it,” he said
softly.

Her heart began to hammer in painfully rapid
beats.

Breen was smiling widely, his topaz eyes
burning through her in a way so strange and intense, it made her
cringe.

“But we’ll discuss that later, when we get
where we’re going,” he added pleasantly, then nodded, almost to
himself. “Where I’m taking you, honey, no one will find you.”

He was close enough now for her to smell his
hair pomade, and nausea engulfed her. She struggled to suppress her
terror. Pale hair hung limply in her face, tangled from her
struggle with Bart Mueller. It was Mueller who held her still, one
hand gripping her elbow, the other coming up to pull his bandanna
away from his face. All the while, John Breen came closer.

When she tried to shrink from Breen’s
approach, Mueller held her rooted to the spot. All the blood had
drained from her face, and she stared at the man closing in on her
as if he were some handsome devilish specter in a nightmare,
drawing in for the kill.

Breen reached up and touched her hair. Smiled
that flashing, patronizing smile she remembered all too well. Then
drew back his arm and struck her full force across the face.

Juliana fell to her knees. Red pinpricks of
light exploded in her head and jarring pain rattled her teeth. She
gave a low, anguished sob as the pain throbbed through her jaw and
spread, convulsing throughout her entire body.

“Howdy, honey,” Breen said quite pleasantly.
“It’s time we got back together again. I missed you real bad. And
don’t you worry. I’m going to see to it that nothing separates the
two of us ever again.”

She was being baked alive. Engulfed by dry,
scorching flames. Withering into bits of dust. Or so it seemed.

Caked with grit, head thrumming with pain,
Juliana slumped in the saddle before John Breen for hours (or was
it days?) tormented by the deadly heat of the sun. She lost all
track of time and direction. Her face was on fire. Her hair hung
like straw in her eyes. She felt as if she’d been riding on this
horse through these barren hills and hopeless valleys all her life,
and she couldn’t remember a time when her throat wasn’t packed with
grit and when hellfire did not seem to shimmer orange and yellow
all around her.

And still John Breen pushed on.

Once, Bart Mueller suggested they stop and
rest, but Breen snapped at him to keep moving.

He then spurred his horse to an even faster
gallop across the parched valley floor they were crossing at the
time, and Juliana felt a momentary relief as the dry, hot air
slapped her cheeks. But soon, the molten rays of the sun enveloped
her again, and even this small refreshment lost its effect. She
sagged against Breen, no longer able even to support her own weight
in the saddle. She felt as if life were seeping out of her,
crumbling away beneath the cruel glare of that merciless sun.

When dusk came, the cool air washed over her
like mist from the seas, but by then she was too exhausted even to
notice.
Where are we going?
she wondered for perhaps the
hundredth time, but she hadn’t even the energy to ask John Breen,
and a cavern of hopelessness swallowed her.

On they rode, forever it seemed, until at
last, when she felt the last shreds of consciousness slipping away,
she became suddenly aware that the horse beneath her was slowing,
then coming to a stop. John Breen swung from the saddle and rough
arms pulled her down. Her legs collapsed, and he caught her,
laughing. Not a pleasant sound.

Mueller drank from his canteen long and
greedily. Breen dumped Juliana on the grass, and drank his fill as
well. Only then did he hunker down beside her and hold the canteen
before her dazed eyes.

“Water, honey?”

Cracked lips tried to answer him. It hurt to
even move her mouth.

Breen’s grin widened. He looked like a devil
in the murky, fading light. “Well, maybe later. I’d better make
camp first. Got to make my little bride-to-be comfortable, don’t
I?”

He left her lying there, parched, too weak
even to rise to her knees, stretched across the grass in a heap of
exhaustion.

An hour later he gave her a half-dozen sips
of water. “Not too much. You’ll be sick, and we can’t have that,
now, can we?”

Juliana couldn’t even open her eyes to look
at him, but she had never hated a voice as much as she hated that
one. After drinking the water, she closed her eyes and slept, sick
and weary beyond words, unable to move.

She dreamed of Cole. Of him holding her,
kissing the nape of her neck, stroking her breasts. She dreamed of
a bed of flowers, cool, fragrant flowers, with Cole stretched out
beside her, tickling the tip of her nose with a daisy. Its petals
were perfect, white as ermine.

He loves you
. A voice whispered
sweetly in her ear.

Then she was reaching out to him, calling his
name.

Cole, Cole
. But he was gone. And the
flowers were all shriveled and dead. As she reached out her arms
her hand fell upon something wet and sticky lying amid the decayed
petals. It was the carved figure of the horse Cole had been working
on that night at his campfire, and it was dripping with blood.

She awoke, sobbing in terror. The dream fell
away like a curtain, and it was dawn. She was in John Breen’s camp
in the middle of nowhere. Mueller was gobbling greasy strips of
meat and hardtack, John Breen was sipping a cup of coffee. And
watching her.

Juliana passed a trembling hand across her
red-rimmed eyes. After a moment she tried to sit up, and
groaned.

Breen came to her. He stood for a moment,
saying nothing, then knelt down beside her and lifted her to a
sitting position. He handed her a plate of meat and a biscuit, and
set a steaming cup of coffee down beside her.

“We’re leaving pronto, so you’d better eat
what you can. Won’t be stopping again until nightfall.”

And they didn’t.

By then, she was almost past caring what
happened to her. She couldn’t think of anything but the racking
pain in every muscle in her body, of unending thirst and gnawing
hunger. Even supper huddled alongside Breen and Mueller over a
glowing campfire left her feeling empty and sick. The food was
keeping her alive, just barely, but she felt as if she were dead
already, for these men hated her, and she knew that it was only a
matter of time before they reached their destination and her real
punishment at the hands of John Breen would begin.

The next few days were a blur. At last, the
torturous journey ended. John Breen pulled his lathered horse to a
halt and Juliana forced her eyes to focus on the windswept ridge
upon which she found herself. It was a barren shelf of land jutting
beneath a still higher escarpment that extended out over the desert
like a giant crab’s claw. Prickly pear, juniper and
piñóns
grew here. She looked out,
squinting, and saw mountains in the distance, cloaked in ponderosa
pine. Nearer at hand were a series of buttes and flat-topped mesas,
dun-colored in the haze of the day. A kangaroo rat squealed,
dodging from behind a rock to spook Mueller’s horse. Then there was
silence. The place seemed to Juliana to shimmer with some blazing
evil. Her scalp tightened as Breen dismounted and helped her down.
The sun-baked earth was hard, unyielding beneath her feet. A lizard
sunned itself in the dirt, and from somewhere far above came the
cry of a vulture. Even the sun in the blazing azure sky seemed a
living thing, alive with menace.

Now what happens?
she wondered as
the men made camp and she sank onto the hard ground, her limbs
lifeless.
How will Cole or Wade or Tommy ever find me here?
It’s the end of the world—or so it seems. A place as forlorn, as
isolated and full of desolation as the moon.

Suddenly, the realization reached her that
she would never leave this spot alive.

John Breen would do whatever he wanted with
her here, for as long as he wanted, and then he would kill her. She
knew it as clearly as if she could read his mind.

Glancing over at her suddenly, he grinned,
that officious stretching of his mouth across his teeth that she
had come to despise.

“How do you like this place, honey?”

Juliana stiffened as he strode toward her,
reached down and dragged her to her feet. He began unknotting her
bonds.

“Might as well make yourself at home. We’re
going to be here a while. There’s a stream back there, behind the
rocks. Maybe we’ll have a bath together this afternoon. You sure
could use one, and so could I.”

“Why are you doing this?” She heard herself
asking the question, her own voice sounding half-dead already in
her ears. When he didn’t answer, she rushed on with an agonized
urgency to know.

“Why didn’t you go out and find a woman who
did
want you? Just tell me
why
.”

Suddenly, his eyes, more brilliant even than
the sun, sharpened on her face with frightening intensity.

“Because I chose you,” he said and hauled her
into his arms, close against his chest. “From that first moment,
when I saw you in that ballroom, beautiful as a goddess from some
ancient Greek myth, I knew that I wanted you. And what John Breen
wants, he gets.” He kissed the top of her head, ignoring the way
she tried to flinch from him. His hand came up to cup her breast,
his thumb stroking its crest beneath the bedraggled organdy
gown.

“And it all started right here, Juliana—at
least, not far from here. With that kid. I killed him and stole the
gold for myself and that’s how it all began.”

What was he saying? Distraught by the way he
was touching her, the possessive hold of his hand upon her breast,
she could scarcely make sense of his words.

She kicked him then with all her strength and
jumped back, and surprisingly he released her. She faced him,
breathing hard, biting her lip, for she half expected him to strike
her, but instead he was staring almost through her, speaking in a
low rushing tone that reminded her of a brook that could not be
stopped from spilling over a falls.

“I wanted to bring you here. To this spot. So
close to where it all began. Maybe then you’ll understand me, and
why you could never get away from me. Because I always get what I’m
after. You know why? Because I’m smarter than other folks—and I’ll
do anything, whatever it takes, to get what I want. That’s the
difference, sweet Juliana, between those of us who win in this life
and those poor damned losers like Edward Tobias and Line McCray and
that ugly piece of scum back there in that cabin, the man Bart
killed on my orders.”