Orphan Maker (33 page)

He swaggered toward her, not speaking.

Loomis remembered the semiautomatic pistol Weasel had been wearing in Lindsay Crossing the day before. She felt sweat break out on her upper lip, but didn’t back away. “Aren’t you supposed to be in town with the others?”

Weasel sneered. “What are you going to do? Call the cops?”

She blinked, puzzled at his reference. “We don’t need cops.”

“No, we don’t.” He stopped in front of her. “Here’s what’s going to happen,
chica
. You’re going to kick Gwen out of your homestead. She’ll come back to me, and everyone will be happy.”

Loomis scoffed. “You’ll be happy, you mean. Gwen won’t be.”

“I’ll make her happy. At least I’ve got a dick to do it.”

“And if I don’t?”

Weasel gave her a menacing grin. He reached out and poked her in the center of her chest. “You don’t have a choice.”

“There are always choices.” Loomis slowly pulled the satchel over her head, dropping it beside her. “You can choose not to be an asshole, for instance. You can choose to let Gwen do what makes her happy.”

“Happy?” He let out a bark of laughter. “She’s only with you because you da
jefe
, bitch, da boss woman. She’d bang Riddick himself if she thought he was strong enough to protect her.”

The hated name coupled with her underlying fears about Gwen’s motives made Loomis snarl. “Shut up.”

Weasel held his hands out at his sides. “What? You still haven’t figured it out? She doesn’t want you. She wants her mama and papa. You obviously ain’t her papa.” He gave her a scathing once-over. “Or are you? Maybe that’s why Riddick left this podunk place—you had a dick and balls bigger than his, and he was jealous.”

She tasted bile in the back of her throat. “I said shut up!”

“I didn’t know Riddick was a fag, though. He’d have to be to fuck another guy like you.” Weasel leaned close. “Tell me, does she scream your name when you fuck her? She will if you chop her hard, she’s always liked it rough.”

Loomis’s swing was wild. Weasel expected it, easily blocking it and driving his fist into her belly. She doubled over, her pain increasing as he drove an elbow into her shoulder. She grunted and almost fell to her knees. He got hold of her shirt, forcing her back up. He laid her out with another punch, bloodying her nose.

Shaking his hand, he stared down at her prone figure. “What the hell does she see in you? You can’t even fight worth a damn. How are you supposed to protect her?”

Stunned, hurting, Loomis wiped at the stream of blood coursing down her chin. She shook her head, groaning at the sudden movement. The pain cleared her mind, and she pushed up on her elbows. “She doesn’t need protecting. She needs to be loved and cared for.”

“I do love her!” Weasel seemed to have forgotten who he was addressing as he yelled. “I care for her! She’s mine!”

“Loomis!”

Both of them turned toward the sound, Loomis with a combination of relief and fear. If she could just talk him down before Gwen got here…“She doesn’t want to be, Weasel. She’s always told me good things about you; she just doesn’t want to be with you that way.”

“Loomis, where are you?” Gwen was getting closer.

Bleakness flashed across Weasel’s face, quickly disappearing behind a mask of stone. “She don’t want to be with me, fine.” He pulled the pistol from his belt. “But you ain’t getting her, either.”

For a moment, Loomis thought he was going to shoot her. Instead, he turned away, leaving her on the ground. In a flash she understood what he meant—if he couldn’t have Gwen, he was going to make sure no one would ever have her. “No!” Adrenaline chased away her pains. She launched herself at him, tackling him before he could get more than a few feet away. They struggled, she relying on her farmhand strength and experience to pin him in a hold. The pistol fell a few feet away, and she blocked his attempt to retrieve it. Flipping over, Weasel tried to escape. Despite six weeks of healing, he still wasn’t strong enough to overcome her longer reach and heavier build. Loomis straddled him, hitting him in the face as hard as she could. Fear and anger made time contract. She continued to pound until something grabbed her arm. Spinning, shocked, she looked into Gwen’s face.

“Loomis. It’s okay. It’s over.”

She stared blankly at Gwen, and time slowly began moving again. Looking down at Weasel, her blood ran cold at the sight of the damage she’d done him. His nose was obviously broken, and his left eye was nothing but a monstrous bruise. He seemed barely conscious. The distortion wasn’t that dissimilar from her recollection of Cody Riddick’s head after she’d shot him. With revulsion, Loomis released her hold on Weasel’s collar and sat back. Soothing hands caressed her back, tugged at one upper arm.

“Come on. Get off him. It’s okay.”

In the distance someone shouted, “Loomis!”

She allowed herself to be pulled away from Weasel. Once again she felt her own wounds, her pain. She looked at her scraped and bleeding knuckles, noted with an odd detachment that her hands shook. Gwen urged her a step or two away, and more voices called. Gwen yelled back, guiding the searchers toward them. Loomis hardly noted the pistol in Gwen’s slender hand.

Weasel groaned and shifted.

Loomis blew out a breath. She turned to see him open and roll one eye until it finally fixed upon her. “Don’t ever come near me or her again, you understand?” she asked, surprised at the gruffness of her voice. She coughed and cleared her throat, pointing at him. “If you do, I’ll kill you. I’ve done it before.”

“Come on, Marissa.”

Turning away, Loomis took one step toward Gwen. She stopped in shock. Gwen’s eyes widened, and she raised the pistol, pointing it at Loomis. Two shots rang out. Loomis felt a tug along one shoulder, a burning cold sensation across her skin. It shoved her into a spin, and she whirled to see Weasel with a gun in his hand. Blood pumped and squirted onto the grass, his throat torn out by Gwen’s bullet. Turning back, Loomis barely caught Gwen as she sagged to the ground.

More shouts, frantic calls, people coming closer.

Loomis felt a strange weakness, looking over her shoulder as the ice cold turned blistering hot, stinging her. Weasel’s bullet had grazed her shoulder, and crimson stained her shirt. Gwen wept in her arms, the ugly pistol still in her grip. Loomis took it away, cuddling her lover close, turning them so Gwen wouldn’t have to look at Weasel’s twitching body. She well remembered the reaction to killing a human being. “Shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s over now.”

The searchers came nearer, and Loomis knew it wouldn’t be long before they saw Tempest standing restlessly nearby. “Can you stand?” Gwen nodded, and they struggled to their feet together. Loomis guided them away from the corpse, tasting blood. “It’s okay. Help’s almost here.” She hefted the gun in her hand. “No one has to know. I’ll say I did it. It’s okay.”

That brought Gwen out of her fugue. She violently shook her head, eyes red and nose running. “No! We’re not going to lie, Loomis. Look what happened last time.” She made a noise as she realized Loomis had been injured. “Lies are no good. Besides, what do you think the Gatos are going to think about a townie killing their leader?”

Shaking her head, Loomis tried to come up with an argument, something to save Gwen from having to admit to killing the man with whom she’d spent four years. This was the second murder since Orphan Maker; Lindsay Crossing didn’t even have a court system or laws in place for this. “Gwen…”

“No, Marissa.” She wiped her face on her shirt, taking the pistol from Loomis’s hand. “No more lies. The truth starts here.”

“Hey! Found them!”

Loomis’s head shot up at the shout. She saw Malcolm Schneider with Tommy Boy behind him ride up the street. Others echoed the news, and it seemed like half the township was about to converge on their location. “Are you sure?”

Gwen kissed her. “I’m sure. You’ve been down this road before and it’s a dead end. I love you, Marissa Loomis. I can’t let you take the blame for something I did.”

“I love you.”
Loomis’s throat tightened, and the tears began to fall. “I love you too, Gwen.”

She looked up as Schneider’s horse pounded to a halt beside them.

This night was so like the one five years ago when Loomis’s world had fallen apart. Chill wind and rain swept through the valley, a precursor to the coming winter. Dread filled her heart, just as it had when Cody Riddick’s gang had confronted her here in the sheep barn, beat her, raped her. Rick paced by, and she let the memories go, distracted by his anxiety. Things had also become so different from that night. Her family had grown by five since then, one of them her daughter and the other her lover. A smile crept across Loomis’s face.
My lover.

Tommy Boy stood sentinel at the barn door, arms crossed stoically over his chest, his badass attitude belied by the homespun and leather clothing. Aside from his midnight black skin, he might have lived in Lindsay Crossing all his life from the look of him. He raised his eyebrow at Rick, his lip curling in annoyance though he didn’t say anything. Loomis could relate. Rick hadn’t stopped moving since Emerita and Cara had chased them out of the cabin. He had tried to stay at Heather’s side, but the first real pain of childbirth had made her shout things that blistered the air around the bed. He’d blanched so white that his freckles had appeared drawn on with ink, and Cara had tossed him out: “I don’t need you fainting or getting sick. Leave!” Rick had been all too eager to follow instruction. Loomis and Tommy Boy had brought him here—it was warm in the sheep barn and distant from Heather’s screams.

Rick stopped his pacing, staring in the direction of the cabin as if he could see through the barn walls. “How long is this going to take?”

“As long as it needs to, dawg.”

Loomis muffled a snort at Tommy Boy’s pragmatic response. “She’s just turned fifteen. Her body hasn’t fully matured yet. It might take some time.”

“You were fifteen.” Rick shot his sister a piercing look, his tone slightly accusatory.

“Yeah? And how long did it take me?”

His intensity faded, and he brought his thumb up to worry the nail. “I don’t know.”

Loomis narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know? You were there, weren’t you?” She cast back into the murkiness of Megan’s birth, remembering Annie Faber looking decidedly green about the gills as she instructed Loomis to push harder, and ten-year-old Cara’s horrified expression melting into adoration when the squalling Megan was placed in her arms for the first time.

“No.” Rick stuck his hands in his pockets and began to walk around the sheep barn once more. “Annie chased me out. I was out here with Malcolm.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “Looks like it’s going to become a Loomis tradition, huh?” Rick rolled his eyes at her, not amused. He looked remarkably like Terry. “She’s a strong girl and kept the baby to term. That’s saying something.” She hoped. The reality was that half of all childbirths in Lindsay Crossing resulted in either the death of the babe or the mother. Statistics would get better the older the mothers became, but that wouldn’t be for another four or five years.

Rick nodded. “Yeah, she’s strong. She’ll make it.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than his companions.

“She’ll make it,” Tommy Boy intoned with surety. When they looked at him, he shrugged, a slight hitch of his muscled shoulders. “She’s got good hips. Not like that little Louisa chick in town. The nannies with wide hips birth kids better than the skinny ones.”

Loomis had to agree with his pronouncement. Louisa Atwood had been a thin young woman of eighteen, and her pregnancy had forced her abdomen to jut out at a sharp angle early on. She died two months ago, unable to push the baby’s head out of the birth canal. Her family couldn’t work past the horror of cutting her open, and the baby had died as well.

“Heather’s not a goat.”

Tommy Boy gave a slight shake of his head, his scowl deepening. “I ain’t said that.”

“You said—”

Footsteps pounded close, and Loomis stood, holding up her hand to silence Rick’s nattering. The barn door was shoved open, blowing cold wind and rain inside. Drenched to the skin from her short trip, Gwen shivered, clutching her upper arms. “It’s over.”

“What happened? Is she okay?” Rick stumbled forward, his hands covering Gwen’s as he stared into her face. “Is Heather…?”

Gwen grinned. “Heather’s fine. She’s asleep.” She looked at Tommy Boy. “Emerita wants to stay over tonight to keep an eye on her, just to be sure.”

He nodded and reached for his jacket hanging from a nearby nail.

Loomis stepped forward, “The baby?”

If anything, Gwen’s smile broadened. “A healthy boy, Auntie Marissa.” She gave Rick a puzzled look. “You’re still here? Go see your family, Dad.”

Rick’s head swiveled as he regarded them with a shocked expression.

“Go, dawg!” Tommy Boy shrugged into his jacket, perching a wide-brimmed hat on his head. “You thought she was impossible when she was pregnant, if she finds you ain’t there when she wakes up, you ain’t nobody.”

Loomis laughed as Rick bolted from the barn. She collected his jacket, coming forward to drape it over Gwen’s shoulders. “Tommy, you want to come in for a drink? We need to celebrate.”

He shook his head as he fastened the jacket. “Naw. I’m going to head home. Let them know what’s what. You want me to keep the kids tonight?”

“Would you? They’ll just be underfoot.” Loomis glanced out the open door. “The girls and babies should probably be asleep anyway. No need to wake them.”

Tommy Boy brought his fingers up to the brim of his hat. “I’ll tell Lucky the news. See you tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow.” As he stepped into the rain, Loomis called, “And thanks, Tommy!”

He gave a negligent wave and disappeared into the weather.

Gwen hustled over and pulled the door closed. “Brrr! It’s flipping freezing out there!” She burrowed into Loomis’s arms.

“We should get you back to the cabin. You need to get out of those wet clothes.” Despite her words, Loomis was loath to let Gwen go just yet.