The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3) (35 page)

FORTY-SIX

I
n Denver, Annie waited on the train while Jem checked the depot platform for any sign of Creed. He made sure they were the last ones off, and then hailed a hackney cab to take them to the closest hotel.

Tall buildings crowded in around Annie as they rode down the street. Delivery wagons and buggies trundled past, horse hooves clopping on the pavement. A horse-drawn streetcar passed by them, nearly close enough to scrape the sidewalls. There were people everywhere. Soaring telegraph wires lined the sidewalk. A dirt-brown mongrel ran loose, barking and nipping at businessmen in black suits and ties. The tremendous noise of it all beat against Annie’s ears. A stench defying description filled her nose, along with a gritty haze of dust and smoke that seemed to clog the air.

Once the hackney dropped them at the hotel, Annie’s heart raced as she and Jem supported Gabe between them. He was awake, but unsteady on his feet. Jem took most of Gabe’s weight and carried his bags under one arm. Annie carried her heavy carpetbag slung over her elbow, the handles digging painfully into the inside of her arm. All the while, she clung to Mae’s tiny hand, afraid the girl would be bustled into the busy street by the press of pedestrians. By the time they had Gabe settled on his stomach on a hotel bed, Annie was spent and wished she could collapse in her bed too.

Jem had secured two rooms on the third floor, both little more than four walls with a connecting door. Theirs had a four-poster bed and a cot for Mae. But they all gathered in Gabe’s slightly smaller room, which had matching furnishings: a modest pine wardrobe, washstand, dressing screen, a wooden armchair, and a single bedside table with a gas hurricane lamp set on it.

Jem immediately gave Gabe a dose of laudanum to dull his pain. Once the medicine began to take effect, he gently stripped off the shirt plastered to Gabe’s skin. As Jem worked to free Gabe, Annie busied Mae with some drawing materials she’d packed in the bottom of her carpetbag. Then she helped Jem apply cool cloths to take out the heat that had built up in Gabe’s wound. Together they washed his poor ruined skin with soapy water—as Jem had been taught in school, he said—dried it carefully, and applied an oily salve.

Afterwards, Jem brought up food for them all from the hotel kitchen. Annie lifted a spoonful of beef broth to Gabe’s lips. He hadn’t eaten anything since they’d left Castle Ranch. He pressed his lips closed and shut his eyes, ignoring her. He lay face down on the hotel bed, with his head turned to one side. She imagined he would’ve turned away from her if he’d had the strength.

He just wanted to rest. Maybe slip into oblivion. She didn’t begrudge him that desire, but he needed to eat or he’d just get weaker and weaker. Jem had said so. And Annie had no intention of being the one responsible for Gabe wasting away.

She slapped the flat of her hand on the bedside table, making the china bowl clatter against the wood, spilling a bit of broth. Her palm stung.

Gabe’s eyes popped open.

“Eat,” she signed using the spoon. It wasn’t a request but a demand.

He obediently lifted his head, just enough for her to be able to give him a spoonful. He swallowed, and a look of surprised appreciation crossed his pale features.

“See, it’s good,” Annie signed, smiling at him. “Now eat some more.”

“She says to eat up,” Jem spoke up behind her, adding his own note of command.

Annie spooned more broth into Gabe’s mouth. He didn’t finish the whole bowl, and he fell into an exhausted sleep soon afterwards, but she’d gotten him to eat. She set the bowl and spoon out in the hallway with a sense of accomplishment.

It was a long night though. Annie and Jem took turns watching over Gabe, who thrashed from fitful sleep. Jem gave him something more for the pain, and Annie sat up with him, smoothing hair off his fevered brow until he finally drifted off to sleep.

All the while, sleep tugged at Annie, trying to drag her down in its insistent grasp—had since they’d arrived. But as soon as she crawled into the bed beside Jem, her thoughts refused to settle. She kept thinking about Creed and wondering if he’d been on their train. Even now, she was plagued with the notion that he stood just outside their door. She told herself over and over that she was being silly—how would he find them?—but the impression wouldn’t go away.

Jem was awake too, she sensed, and aware of her presence. She laid her head on his shoulder and stared up at the ceiling, wondering how long it would be until morning. Wondering just what she was to him. He never once moved or said anything. His eyes may have been closed, but his breathing seemed too shallow for sleep.

* * *

There was a scrape at Gabe’s hotel door in the night. The latch lifting.

Gabe struggled up from a deep sleep, still half-drugged from his last dose of laudanum. Annie must have closed the drapes earlier. His room was nearly pitch black.

The door creaked open on its hinges, letting in a cool waft of air.

Light slanted in from the hallway lamps. A figure stood in the doorway. A man.

Gabe’s heart jammed in his throat. All the hairs on his neck stood on end.

“Jem?” he asked. Even though he knew something was wrong. Jem wouldn’t come in through the door that opened to the hallway. He’d enter through the connecting door.

The figure stepped across the threshold, nudging the door closed with his boot. With him came the sour scent of wine.

“It’s y-you, isn’t it?” Gabe whispered.

“Get up and get dressed,” his father’s voice ordered.

He was
here
. In the hotel. Steps away.

“I’m n-not going with you.”

“Yes, you are.” The floor creaked under his father. Closer. “I said, ‘Get up.’”

He didn’t ask how Gabe was. Never said sorry that he’d burned him. Not that Gabe truly expected him to. It was always like this after. Pretending nothing had happened.

“How did you get in here?” Gabe asked, stalling.

His father—not much more than a darker shape against the dark wall—held up an object. Then he tossed it toward the bedside table. A
clink
, then a slide. Another
clink
-
clink
. A key hitting the tabletop and bouncing to the floor.

“Where’d you get a k-key?” Gabe wondered how he could alert Jem. Surely their talking was making enough noise to wake his friends in the other room? Gabe thought of Annie and Mae and his mind swam. He’d do anything to make sure no one got hurt.

“I have my ways.”

Meaning he’d stolen it. Or bribed a hotel employee. Either way, he was
here
. In Gabe’s room.

“How’d you find me?” Gabe asked loudly, aiming his voice toward the connecting door, which stood slightly ajar.

“Does it matter, Gabe?” His voice was flat, bored.

“I want to know.”

“Had Kirby watching the Castle place.” The major named one of his most trusted ranch hands, a man who’d served with him in the war. “He brought word that a wagon left the property early—before dawn. From there it was just a matter of following your tracks.”

He likely meant literal wheel tracks in the dirt, as well as asking around town if anyone had seen a boy matching Gabe’s description traveling with a man and woman, possibly a child. It was probably why he’d been prowling the boardwalk at the train stop in Littleton. And it was probably how he’d tracked them to this hotel.

It was just what his father would do.

Gabe swallowed. His throat was painfully tight. “Jem saw you at the Littleton depot.”

His father inhaled sharply. “That face. I thought it looked familiar.”

“But you didn’t know it was him?”

Silence.

Seconds later, cold metal pressed into the small of Gabe’s back. A gun. Against the bottom edge of his burn. Waves of heat licked up his spine. Lighting up the edges of his vision in red. His teeth clenched uncontrollably. He grabbed the sheet in his fist, determined not to cry out.

“Let’s go.” The major yanked at Gabe’s arm.

Gabe gathered all his strength and pushed him away. Somehow he managed roll off the bed and stand, wobbling on his feet. Cold sweat beaded his upper lip. He was shaking so hard he thought his knees might buckle. He didn’t know how, but he’d protect himself. He wasn’t about to let his father lay another hand on him.

Never again.

His father lurched forward. Gabe’s vision blurred. He struck out blindly, landing a glancing blow to his father’s face.

“I don’t w-want to hurt you. But I will,” Gabe warned. His knuckles stung, but he readied his fists again.

His father moved in the darkness, away from the bed. “
You’ll
hurt
me
?” His voice came from the direction of the window. The curtains parted and he stood there, illuminated by the street gaslights, wiping a thin trickle of blood from his mouth. He stared down at it with a frown. As if he couldn’t believe it, but the proof was right there on his fingertips.

Through the gap of the connecting door Gabe saw Jem approaching, a shadow of a man, signaling something to Annie. She flew across the wood floor, silent on her bare feet. Not much more than a flash of white nightgown. Headed toward Mae’s cot in the corner.

Gabe held his breath, certain his father would alert to her quick movement, but the major’s gaze remained fixed on Gabe.

Jem edged the door open and cocked the hammer of his gun—a distinctive metallic
click
in the stillness of the night. He leveled the barrel at the major. “I think you better leave, Creed.”

Gabe’s father glanced over at Jem without the slightest show of alarm, as if he’d known all along that he’d come. That he’d be armed.

Gabe fumbled and lit his hurricane lamp. Light flared into the room. Lit up his father, standing there, a six-shooter in his hand.

“Drop your gun,” Jem ordered. “Slow and easy. And kick it over here.” He gestured to his own feet.

“You wouldn’t dare fire a shot in here.” The major’s lips curled.

“Don’t tempt me.” Jem’s aim never wavered.

The major faced off with him, not budging in the slightest. Gabe knew from experience his father wasn’t one to back down from a fight, especially one where he was armed.

“Get out. Now,” Jem said, “Or I’ll shout this place down—get security. Tell them you broke into my rooms. Armed. They won’t like that.”

“My
son’s
here.” The major jerked his chin toward Gabe. “I have every right to be here.”

“I guess that will be for the police to decide,” Jem said. “The
Denver
police.”

The major’s nostrils flared.

“Don’t have the Denver police in your pocket?” Jem raised one dark brow. “No, you don’t, do you?”

They stared at one another for what seemed to Gabe to be an eternity.

“This isn’t the end of it.” The major’s voice crackled with cold fury, but he lowered his gun to the floor and kicked it aside. Nowhere near Jem’s feet.

Jem glared at him. “I told you to kick it here.”

The major lifted one shoulder.

Gabe watched them, frozen. “What did you tell Mama?” he managed to ask, his voice hoarse.

“What do you think? That you ran away. Isn’t that what boys your age do?”

“Did you t-tell her why?” Gabe asked, knowing his father would never admit what he’d done. Especially not to Gabe’s mother. He was poking a bear to even mention it.

The major took a step toward him, then his gaze dropped to the gun.

Gabe lunged for the six-shooter, scrambling to get to it first. His father grabbed for it, but it was too late. Gabe had it. He held its unfamiliar heft with both hands, pointing the barrel at his father’s chest. Pain lanced up his spine.

“Back up,” Gabe ordered, his voice betraying a hint of a quaver he couldn’t control.

It would be so easy to pull the trigger. It could be over forever.

“Give me the gun—you don’t even know how to use it.” The major reached out his hand, his gesture full of sure command. His words delivered with an unnerving expression of calm.