Remember Me (Defiant MC) (27 page)

He hugged her close.  “Thanks, Gabs.” 

She pushed back slightly and looked at him curiously.  “For what?”

Maddox kissed her on the forehead and let his hands trail through her silken hair.  “For not believing it.”

She smiled and slipped her hand underneath his shirt and just like that he was ready to go.  Gaby felt it and smiled. 

“Not in the daylight,” she said teasingly. 

“Who taught you that fucking only happens at night?” 

She arched an eyebrow.  “No necessarily at night, just when any potential observers are asleep.”  She brushed her lips against his and a flicker of worry skated across her face.  “We need to talk about stuff, Mad.” 

“I know we do, babe.”  He rubbed the sides of her arms absently. 

“Later?” 

“Later,” he agreed.  “I swear.” 

Alice always came through.  If she said she was going to get back to you in an hour she meant it completely.   She was in her element, launching into details scarcely before Maddox managed to utter a ‘Hello’.

“Contention City was founded to serve the needs of the extraordinarily prosperous Scorpion Mine.  The business of the mine was organized into the Scorpion Mining Company in the late 1870’s.  It was a rotten enterprise, working in the mine.  The pay at the time was higher than just about any other undertaking, thus the attraction, but those who went into the earth usually suffered a high price.  Blindness, lung damage, lost limbs, lost lives.  It was a brutal profession overseen by men who tended to be criminally greedy and less than humanitarian.  And once the miners exhausted themselves underground there was no shortage of red light perils in the local town to sap their paychecks.  Poor sons of bitches though.  Can hardly blame them for getting sick drunk and favoring the company of prostitutes who would-“ 

“Jesus, Alice,” Maddox interrupted, feeling rather exasperated by her long speech.  “Cut to the fucking chase, would ya?”

“I’m getting there, you moody shit,” she said irritably.  “Theft of gold was rampant and, if discovered, harshly punished.  The thief, who may or may not be a patsy, was often swiftly executed by so-called mob justice which was financed by the overseers of the mining operation.  Yet it went on with regularity.  Now, as best I can tell, that old story which has been passed down through the generations does have some basis in fact.  There were some real unscrupulous types running the town at the time, again a common theme in the old west.  Evidence points to the fact that they were colluding to steal gold, recruiting worker bees to go down into the depths and cooperate with their nefarious intentions.   The chief foreman, a cunning fucker named Swilling, purportedly kept quite a stash in his private office, locked in a safe.  Pretty unintelligent given the fact that anyone could have picked the damn thing up and walked off with it.  Anyway, it disappeared around the time he was shot to death in his parlor by a gang of desperados.  There were all kinds of rumors flying around that it was buried somewhere in the Scorpion Mountains or washed down the Hassayampa River but since no one knew for sure of its existence in the first place all those stories are just that, rumors.  More than likely that same pack of outlaws carried it off anyway.  Interesting how stories get passed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next until anything resembling the truth is hopelessly obscured.  You know, my honors thesis at ASU was of a similar subject, the effect of oral tradition on factual-“

“Alice,” Maddox grumbled again, sinking into an old redwood chair and shaking his head. 

“Right,” she said.  “Sorry.  You know I carry on, Mad.  Anyway, about that other matter?  The death of Chaz Colletti?  I called in a favor and was able to snag a virtual copy of the police report.  Seems like a typical male bonding exercise gone wrong.”

“Come again?” Maddox asked. 

“A poker game. At least that was the official story.  Bunch of dudes sitting around in their beer bellies tossing cards when your old buddy Chaz started to get excited, thinking he’d been cheated.  He waved a gun around and fired off a shot which caught a certain Officer Jensen McLeod-“

“In the knee,” Maddox finished, already figuring that part out. 

“Right.  So your brother fired a better shot, nailing Chaz smack in the heart and that was that.  The two other men present confirmed they felt in fear of their lives before the threat was eliminated.” 

“Two other me
n?  Was one of them named Bryce Sanders?”

“Yup.  Googled it.  I see he’s mayor now.  The other man present, Alan Townsend, is his cousin apparently?” 

“Yeah,” agreed Maddox, remembering that it was true.  “Quite the incestuous ring of circumstances here in Contention.  I remember Alan.  He was about as useful as Chaz.” 

“Hell Maddox, is there anyone you do like?”

“I like you,” he said, smiling.  “Thanks, Alice.” 

“You didn’t tell me her name,” Alice demanded.  “You know I’m required to search engine the shit out of her as soon as we hang up here.”

“Gabriela de Campo,” he said softly, smiling to himself.  For so long the mere hint of that name was a spasm in his gut.  But now he felt only the heady warmth of passion mixed with something deeper. 

When he finally ended the
call he found his nephew three feet away and staring at him.  He looked at Miguel incredulously. 

“You part cat or something?”

Miguel raised his eyebrows.  “Huh?”

“I didn’t hear a freaking thing and yet here you are like you just dropped out of the sky.  That could be a handy skill to have.” 

Miguel looked pleased.  “Yeah, I practice.  Mom hates it, accuses me of ‘skulking like an animal’.  I think someday I want to be a Marine, like Priest was.” 

“And sneaking up on folks is a required piece of training?”

“Can’t hurt,” the kid shrugged.  “Who were you talking to?”

“A friend.” 

“Like a girlfriend?” 

“No.”

“Is my mom your girlfriend?”  Maddox didn’t miss the hope in Miguel’s voice though he kicked the dirt and tried to keep his tone casual.  Mad tried to pick his words carefully. 

“I think you ought to ask your mom that.” 

“I did.  She yelled at me.” 

“Well, there’s your first clue, Sherlock.  Sometimes people don’t want to pour their hearts out to a ten year old.” 

“I’m not your average ten year old.  I’m absurdly precocious.” 

Maddox laughed.  “Who told you that?”

“My teachers, my dad.” 

“Well then, I guess that’s proof positive.”

“Hey Mad, do you have Grinning Gulls on your phone?”

“Doesn’t everyone?  Shit’s addictive.”

“I don’t have it,” Miguel said pointedly, “because I don’t have a phone.” 

Maddox grinned and passed his phone off to Miguel, who grabbed it eagerly.  “Next time just ask me straight.” 

Gabriela was sitting on the floor of the living room folding a pile of clean laundry.  She was perpetually industrious, always breezing from one chore to the other as if the concept of spare time was anathema.  He remembered she was like that in high school too, always with her nose in a book or penciling some homework.  She was never still. 

“We should barbecue tonight,” he said suddenly. 

Gaby looked at him oddly, her hands in mid fold of a faded turquoise bath towel which Maddox knew had seen at least three presidents.  “I think there’s still a grill out back. It’s charcoal though.” 

“Yeah, I know.  I saw some old charcoal in the garage.  Throw some lighter fluid on it and it’ll be fine.”

“What’s up, Maddox?”

“What do you mean?  I’m just planning dinner.” 

“You’re all jittery.  How come?” 

He sighed.  “I don’t know.  Maybe it’s all that bullshit with Jensen.  I’m gonna take a ride into town.  You need anything?”

“You can pick up some meat.  If you really want to grill tonight.”  Her face was anxious.  She had refolded the towel three different ways as he watched. “Maddox, you’ll be back soon, right?”

“’Course I’ll be back soon.”  He bent down to kiss her.  He’d meant
it to be a quick one but she took a firm grip on his shirt and hauled him to the floor on top of her.   Her tongue was instantly in his mouth and he was worked up in the space of a heartbeat.  Maddox grinded his hips against hers so she would feel what she did to him every time.  Every goddamn time. 

The embrace didn’t last long.  Gaby pushed him off and resumed her laundry folding. 

“Tough to ride with a massive boner,” he told her wryly, hinting she ought to do something about it before letting him go. 

“It’ll give you something to look forward to later,” she smiled, crossing her legs neatly underneath her.   

Miguel was hunkered down on the porch with his face pinned inches away from electronic candy.  He looked up when he heard the motorcycle engine roar to life and Maddox waved.  When the boy smiled, Mad had a sudden flash of déjà vu; for a split second he swore it had to be twenty years earlier.  And that it was his brother sitting there. 

Contention City, Arizona Territory

1890

Two weeks passed and Annika had seen nothing of James.  Truthfully, she tried to stay away from town now that she was a well known adulteress.  The last time Mrs. Swilling had caught sight of her outside the Mercantile, the purse-lipped woman had cut her dead.  Annika tried to tell herself it did not matter but whenever she imagined Mari Larson’s horror if she were to discover her daughter’s indiscretions, she could not help but feel shame.  She had only written to her sister, Britta, of the partial truth, intentionally omitting any mention of Mercer.  Britta herself was distracted anyway.  Her letters spoke often of coming west; she had rec
ently wedded a troublesome Scotsman and her letters were full of the lively exploits of Cassius McLeod. 

Annika’s ankle was slow to heal and she was becoming increasingly restless on Lizzie Post’s ranch.  Mercer was gone each day from dawn to nearly dusk.  Every time
she heard him riding back she breathed with weak relief that he had survived another day without being caught or smothered or blown to bits as miners sometimes were. 

He would always be impatient for her and would always answer her same question with a cynica
l grin.  “Soon,” he would say when she asked him how much longer until they would be free to leave. 

It was a perfect a
utumn day and Annika decided to ride into Contention on Misty.  She intended to stop at the Mercantile no matter who gave her the evil eye.  Perhaps there would be a letter from Britta.  As the horse ambled through the dappled morning Annika allowed her mind to wander.  It went where it always did, back to Mercer. 

The more she was with him, the more he opened up.  Mercer Dolan was not just a crude outlaw.  Annika had already known that.  He was a complicated and passionate man.  It had tugged at her heart when he’d lain across her chest and talked about the curious displacement of growing up with no memory of his parents.  Of course, he had loved Lizzie Post as well as any natural mother.  And, he had said tensely, James was always there.  The last living link to his Dolan name.  

Mercer had never felt at home in Contention City.  He found his place with a group of gruff men who had been flung into the fringes of society.  He told her a little bit about them.  The Tanner Brothers were carved out of the war era violence on the Kansas-Missouri border.  Como Medici, a name Annika had not heard before, was a learned Italian immigrant who fled some mysterious legal difficulties in the city of New York.  There were others too, men who drifted in and out of the company of The Danes.  There was one name he hesitated to mention.  He knew how it irked her.  Nonetheless, he had told her about Cutter Dane when she had asked.  The leader of the outlaw gang was only a boy when he saw his mother shot by a pair of Yankee deserters as the Union Army burned its way through Georgia.  Cutter Dane’s uncle, ironically a former Union soldier, had taken the orphaned boy west.

“Has he really killed men?” Annika had asked Mercer and felt him tense. 

“Only when he had to,” Mercer responded in a short tone and she knew he was done talking about Cutter. 

“Have you?” she whispered. 

Mercer had turned his head away and refused to answer. 

As Annika reached Contention Way it was with a touch of sadness that she regarded the scrappy town.  She had grown fond of it in the two years she had spent here.  She supposed that once she and Mercer departed for places unknown she would likely never see it again.  The Danes were disbanding.  For good, Mercer had told her. Cutter Dane had grown shrewd about the price on his head and aimed to make a new start with an unknown name.

“And where will we go?” she had questioned Mercer. 

“Anywhere you want,
Anni my love,” he’d answered, wrapping her in a fierce embrace.  

Annika heard the distant whistle of the mine and shuddered.  She hoped wherever she and Mercer settled would not be a mine town.  When describing to him the open land she had always longed for he had nodded thoughtfully.  It distressed her that they would be leaving Contention with stolen gold, but who would it have otherwise served?  The Swillings?  The Townsends?  The smarmy Dr. Cletus who had arrived in town last year and was on the take as well?