Reckless Territory (16 page)

“I agree.” Jace smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I could use a drink anyway.”

Under other circumstances, he might even have gotten drunk. He was a fair shot even when inebriated, and he’d tipped back a few too many before a fight before, but not this time. It wasn’t the same—life wasn’t the same, and he was here to settle a score, not recklessly risk his life.

It was enlightening to have a reason
not
to risk it, actually.

Careful was fine, but too much caution could get you killed, because hesitation was the enemy. He reined in his horse with one hand hovering near his hip, conscious of the lack of pedestrians. He drawled, “Well, what do you know. Seems sort of like we’re expected or somethin’.”

“The Saxons probably clear the streets all on their own.” Cole muttered. He dismounted and tossed his reins over the rail. “Lawrence has a way of making friends. Let’s go in and make sure that he realizes we’re looking for him. I’m going to bet he’ll be glad as hell to see me. What do you think?”

“I think hell will be glad to see
him
,” Jace said and slid off his horse in one smooth motion.

There was no doubt Cole was not in a very congenial mood. He’d ridden to the mountains and back, hadn’t slept in two days, and he wanted this over as soon as possible.

He could have chosen anywhere to live, and Lawrence might have found him. Cole knew that. He’d seen the valley, fallen in love with it, and he had to settle somewhere eventually.

What he hadn’t expected was for Saxon to be smart enough to trail him so soon.

His gods would tell him that like the summer rains, life wasn’t predictable. He certainly never expected to find a woman he couldn’t live without either, and the collision of the two had him setting his jaw and checking to make sure his revolver was ready to slip free at a moment’s notice.

The saloon was decently crowded, so noisy that when Cole and his two companions strolled through the door it quieted enough to be noticeable, and that wasn’t surprising. They were well-armed and not the usual crowd, and had he been sitting at one of the tables or leaning against the bar, Cole would have gone quiet too as he waited to see why three heavily armed strangers had just entered the building.

That question was answered by Jace, who was about as stoppable as a thunderstorm when riled. “Saxons?” he said succinctly in his Texas drawl to the room at large, his spurs clinking as he advanced. Then his gaze riveted on a man who had half-risen from his chair. “Well, lookie there. It’s Frank, Cole. I’m thinkin’ he can tell you where Lawrence might be hiding out. If he was in town, he’d be here, because I’ve been told he ain’t welcome back at the hotel, so that kinda means he isn’t in Rio Verde.”

“I’m telling you nothing,” Frank Saxon, lanky and sandy-haired, started to bluster, but when Cole leveled a cold stare his way, he stopped. His vest was open and his gun low on his hip but he sank back down and put his hands on the table. Courage had never been his strong point, and it was obvious his brother had left him behind. “I don’t know where he is.”

“Liar.” Jace strolled closer, slow and deliberate. “Maybe you could recollect if you had a bit of persuasion.”

“Like what?” The sneer lacked any real conviction. Frank looked a little pale.

Cole knew he had to keep this situation under control from beginning to end. Still, Victoria was safe with Greer and combustible was a relative word. The lighting of the match was the crucial choice, and Frank alone was not much of a challenge.

But then again, they’d come to pick a fight, and Jace was very, very good at that.

Amused, Cole watched him work.

“Ya know”—Jace scratched his jaw while his other hand hovered low near his hip—“I’m not so stupid as to think your brother would leave town with most of his entourage and not tell you where he was headed. As a matter of fact, I’m not stupid at all, so unless you want to walk out into that street right now and face me, I want to know exactly where your slinkin’, low-crawlin’ brother went.”

As diplomacy went, it didn’t rank high, but Cole was keeping an eye on the entire room, so he didn’t bother to throw in kinder words just to protect Frank’s tender feelings.

“You calling me out?” Frank would have done it better if his voice hadn’t cracked just a fraction, but it did, and Jace was like a wolf scenting blood.

“Yep. We shoulda done it in Kansas City. I shoulda done it the other day. I was tempted, mind you, but decided to let you walk. That’s not happening this time.”

The clatter of chairs scooting back was hardly unfamiliar, but Cole wasn’t just a bystander. He’d had friendships—not many that stood the test of notoriety and time—but he uttered an inner curse for Victoria’s sake, because he sure as hell didn’t want to be the one to tell her Jace got himself shot, and it wouldn’t make him very happy either. The three of them were close enough he thought of them as brothers.

The four of them were a family. For whatever reason, the thought of it almost shocked him, and at the moment, he couldn’t afford to be distracted.

Robert evidently felt the same way, because he said so quietly that only Cole could hear, “Can we handle this?”

It was easy enough to gauge the crowd and Cole nodded barely. “The one in the silver vest. He’s twitching. Watch him. I’ve got the rest. Jace can handle Frank. He’s wanted this since Kansas City. Let him go.”

Robert actually grinned. “Do I have a choice?”

“I’m thinking you don’t,” Cole admitted, his gaze sweeping the room yet again, always looking for signs of movement. “He’s an unstoppable force sometimes.”

“Yeah, I pretty much came to that conclusion too,” Robert muttered, but he moved right, his hand hovering near his gun.

It wasn’t complicated, because Frank was not an enigma to begin with but a bully with his brother and their cohorts behind him and not nearly so brave on his own. The only reason he’d stayed behind was probably because he was holding a big pile of chips on the table.

“Where’s Lawrence? I’m not gonna ask again.” Jace swaggered closer, his hand quivering, and everyone at the table dived away. “Tell me or draw. Now. I’m not in a kindly mood. I keep remembering the last time we met.”

Frank now went truly white under his dusky tan, but he stood suddenly, his hand sweeping up. “Go to hell.”

Wrong thing to do. Jace was a blur, the retort of his gun going off well before Frank’s, and the latter clutched his thigh, rolling to the floor, groaning.

“Where?” Gun quivering, Jace advanced.

Gasping, Frank sat up and spat the words, “He went to burn you out.”

The coffee was jet black and bitter, but she was getting used to the taste, though she had to admit it was much stronger than what Robert had taught her to make. Victoria used her hand to cover the cough.

“Like sucking down distilled black earth,” the man, introduced to her as Greer when she was summarily dropped off on his doorstep—not that the ramshackle cabin actually had one—remarked, his smile brief and a welcome break from his usual taciturn silence. “I’ve always liked it that way. It will warm your innards.”

She had a vague idea that the term
innards
was indelicate—she had certainly never heard it before—and that her host was only a reluctant one at best, but she nodded and cleared her throat. “I can see how it might be an acquired taste.”

He chuckled. “You really are an English lady. Could tell it even without the accent. Only someone born and bred polite would pretend to like my coffee. I’ve seen hardened men not able to choke it down.”

Greer, who was certainly not a cultured gentleman at all with his strange red fuzzy shirt and suspenders, sank down into a crude chair. He looked unkempt and rough, but there was a definitive intelligence in his eyes, and Victoria had to admit she didn’t feel threatened, but oddly at ease. However, this was the first even remotely personal thing he’d said to her since her arrival. He actually seemed to spend almost all his time out of doors, disappearing into the pines surrounding the little cabin and not returning for hours, but Victoria had the feeling he was always close by.

“From Wiltshire,” she confirmed. Then she set aside her cup on the floor, since every available surface was covered by books stacked in piles, crowded in corners and even used to prop up the makeshift table where they’d eaten an interesting breakfast of rabbit in a stew of some kind. She hadn’t recognized half the ingredients, but she was hardly an accomplished cook.

Unshaven and of an indeterminate age, flecks of gray in his beard, Greer nodded as if he knew exactly where Wiltshire was in regard to the rest of England. He downed his cup of coffee like it tasted good—it was
awful
—and set the tin cup aside. “Never been there.”

Cole was gone. When she’d woken two mornings ago he wasn’t there, even though it was barely dawn. Victoria had a feeling he’d left in the middle of the night, probably the minute she’d fallen asleep.

She was stuck in a literal sense with this man after Cole had unceremoniously dumped her off. She had to admit, glancing around the humble rough-hewn interior so incongruously filled with books, she wondered why the conviction existed she would be safe and equally why she would be welcome without any advance warning at all.

“It’s very different from here. Have you traveled much at all?”

“France. Thought I’d like to see it. My mother was part French,” he said reflectively. “Truth was, I didn’t care for it much.”

It was someplace she’d always wanted to visit, so she was a bit speechless, especially since she didn’t picture this man—the one currently rolling a cigarette with one hand, his tobacco pouch in the corner of his mouth—the type that would travel to the Continent. After a moment, she asked curiously, “Why not?”

“Too many Frenchmen.”

That drew a small choked laugh. “I thought you were part French.”

“I am. That’s why I went. Land of my fathers and all that.”

When she stared at him, he added with a gruff laugh, “Not so much that they were French, I suppose. It would have been that way anywhere. Just too damn many people.”

That certainly wasn’t a problem where they were now. A low, lonely wind rustled the pines outside. “How do you know Cole?”

The man shrugged. “Just friends. We met years ago out east. I don’t care for that part of this country either. Crowded noisy cities bother me, but it took me a while to figure it out. That’s why I came out here. This suits me fine.”

It was a long speech for him and so Victoria didn’t pursue it. It wasn’t like Cole would ever leave her with someone he didn’t trust. She
knew
that. Now all she had to do was take her mind off what might be happening in Rio Verde.

But she couldn’t.

“What are they going to do?”

He could have pretended to misunderstand, but that didn’t seem to be his character, and he didn’t disappoint. “Cole has needed to kill Lawrence for a while now. Saxon is a mean cuss, and there is some really bad blood between them. Best just to spill it.”

That was brutally honest enough, but it wasn’t as if she was so sheltered she didn’t understand that removing her from the ranch indicated a fight in the making. Victoria took a minute, decided that since he seemed to be plain-speaking it wouldn’t hurt to ask, and said simply, “How?”

“Showdown, I reckon.” Greer shrugged his hulking shoulders. “I didn’t ask. But Cole is a hunter…he’ll corner the varmint, dare him to try to fight it fair, but Lawrence won’t do it. That’s where his friends will be helpful…to keep it even.”

“I had the impression there were more of them.”

“The Saxons? There are.”

She couldn’t help it, she got up and paced across the small room, weaving her way through the stacks of books, wondering abstractly how long it had taken her gruff host to pack all those heavy volumes up to this remote place. “He told me about his past.” She equivocated, “Or some of it.”

“You probably wouldn’t want to know all of it.”

It wasn’t like she hadn’t come to the same conclusion, or for that matter, Cole had said so straight out, but he was also adamant he wasn’t ashamed of anything he’d done, and she thought that was true. “Maybe not,” she admitted.

“He won’t be back for days. You like to read?”

It was difficult not to laugh. She wasn’t sure her grandfather’s precious library held as many books as this small cabin. “I do.”

“Good thing, that,” he remarked, getting up to pour another cup of that vile coffee. “Ain’t much else for a lady to do around here.”

Luckily she’d taken a minute to pack the precious paper and writing instruments that Robert and Jace had brought back for her, so maybe this was a good time to start her journal.

Chapter Fourteen

They found the Saxon gang camped on the other side of a clump of cottonwoods by a meandering stream, their horses openly grazing in a small natural pasture. With a bullet in his leg, Frank was more inclined to talk than he’d first let on, especially when he really started to bleed and no one was interested in finding the local doctor. His directions had been pretty accurate, probably because Jace said with ice-cold conviction he’d come back and finish the job if he sent them in the wrong direction.

By now it was dusk, Robert was strung tight as a wire, and when Cole motioned with his head in a swift, meaningful jerk, they all dismounted and tied off their horses. The ridge that ran along the valley was only miles from the ranch, and it was pretty clear that the Saxon outfit was waiting for nightfall.

By his calculations, about the time they were reaching Rio Verde, the gang had been riding out, and they must have just missed each other because it didn’t look like they’d been there long.

Jace’s and Cole’s weary horses were lathered too, and Robert was glad they’d found them easily enough. He rubbed his gelding with a soothing hand. “I need to be a little closer for a shot. From this range, I can’t promise anything.”

“If we wait too long, they’ll saddle up. I’m not sayin’ in the end we won’t cut them down in their tracks, but I don’t want to lose the house and any stock. We’ve got two new foals in that barn.” Jace sounded more furious than anything. “At least Victoria isn’t there. But if we hadn’t happened to go to town…”