Vengeance Road (14 page)

I feel like smiling. He's buying it. Every last bit of the act.

“All in.” Rose shoves his pile of chips forward. “In fact, I'm gonna sweeten the deal some more. This is worth the pot and then some.” He reaches inside his jacket, pulls something from the back of his pants, and tosses it onto the table. It lands with a thud, scattering some of the chips. My blood dries in my veins. The ribbing of Evelyn's dress is suddenly too tight. 'Cus it's the journal. Rose killed Pa for it, just like I suspected.

I can't stop staring. The journal's as worn and soft as I remember it. The cord wrapped round the middle, so tight, the leather puckers. The page edges worn and uneven. Pa's initials carved into the front.

“A journal?” I says, praying I sound unimpressed. “Worth more than the pot? How so?”

“You just gotta take my word for it.”

“All right,” I says after pretending to consider it a moment. “All in.” I shove forward the little I got left.

Rose flips his cards. He has another full house. Two aces and three queens.

But I got me
three
aces, thanks to Jesse. I'm loaded and I'm winning back Pa's journal and then I'm shooting this bastard right between the eyes.

“Now, sir,” I says in my sweetest voice. “How's it you can have two aces”—I lay my cards down—“when I's got three?”

Everyone at the table goes rigid.

The Apache, approaching with fresh drinks, stops so abruptly that the glasses slide off the edge of her tray. As they hit the floor, shattering and chiming, everyone at the table lurches upright, pulling weapons. The men at my right ain't sure who cheated, but they know one of us is the reason they're losing money. Will's pretending to look just as mad. Rose's gun hasn't once trained away from me.

“Search her,” he orders, and two of his men come forward from the wall. I stand there, frozen, trying not to grimace as foreign hands slap up and down my bodice and legs. They spend a bit too long on my chest, but I bite my lip. They don't find a thing 'cept the pistol strapped to my thigh, but it ain't unheard of for painted ladies to carry a piece for protection. They're only concerned 'bout cards.

“Maybe it's you who cheated,” I says as my boots are pulled off and searched.

“I don't need to cheat,” Rose scoffs.

“Then you won't mind turning yer pockets out for us,” says the man to my right. He ain't had a good game. He's almost broke on account of losing several hands to Rose.

Sighing, Rose sets his pistol down and shakes out his coat, turns out his pockets.

“And yer boots,” Will says.

Rose tugs 'em off, turns 'em over.

A single card floats free, landing face-down on the table. Rose stares at it, perplexed.

Will reaches forward, hesitant and confused-like, even though
he
planted it. He flips the card, revealing another ace. Its suit matches the diamond I already got in my hand.

Rose's face sours so fast, it's like he's a different person. Those blue eyes don't look like heaven no more. They look like ice and steel, like a demon ready to pounce. He knows it ain't him who cheated. He knows it, and yet everyone else don't. He's ready to kill, ready to carve another rose into the forehead of whichever player conned him.

“I'll take back the money you won from me,” the man to my right says. “Right now.”

“I ain't given you nothing,” Rose says. “I been set up.”

“You chiseled us,” says Hancock's clerk.

“She did!” Rose says, pointing my way. “If I knew I had an ace in my boots, I'd've played it
this
hand, gone with a full house loaded with three bullets, not two. It's her who's chiseling.”

“We all been here the whole time,” Will says. “She ain't done nothing but lose most of her hands and get lucky this once. But you? Two full houses in a row? And another two earlier in the evening. What are the odds?”

“Yeah, what are the odds?” the man to my right repeats. “I think you owe us some money.”

“Or else?”

“Or else I'm shooting you and taking it back.”

“Not if I shoot you first.”

Rose snatches up his pistol and sends a bullet into the man's chest. Then he turns on me. I dive to the side just before his gun flares, and in the time it takes me to hit the floor, the saloon erupts with gunfire.

I throw my hands
over my head and crawl beneath a nearby table for shelter.

'Long the far wall, one of the Riders knocks a lamp onto the floor. The glass shatters, and when the flames find spilled whiskey, it sparks to life and snakes through the saloon. The place goes ablaze like hay.

“Will!” I shout. “Jesse!”

A body smacks the floor beside me, and I find myself staring into the lifeless eyes of the Hancock's clerk. Jesus, he's dead. Everything's gone to hell. This weren't the plan, weren't how it was gonna unfold.

“Jesse!” I try again.

But there's smoke everywhere. Fire raging. My skin's so hot, I think it might blister and peel clean off. Someone's shouting for me. One of the Colton brothers, I'm sure, but I can't see nothing, and all I can imagine is my father yelling my name as Rose beat him senseless. Calling for help as he was heaved high. Praying I'd show up from the creek to save him before his air stole out.

But I failed. I failed him then, and I'm failing him again now.

Waylan Rose were right before me, his chest a table's-width away, and I didn't put a bullet in him.

I pull my Colt from beneath my dress and squint through the smoke. The poker table's overturned, and though the wood's going up in flames it ain't caught the journal yet. It's just lying there 'longside the abandoned cards and scattered chips. I scramble for it, and right when my fingers close over the leather, Rose comes marching through the fire like a devil unable to burn. He kicks me so hard, I go end over end. I manage to keep hold of the journal, but my pistol bounces free, clattering outta reach. As I come to a harsh stop, the sleeve of Evelyn's dress catches on the floorboards, ripping to expose my bad shoulder. Rose sees the bandage, and his blue eyes blaze.

“I knew it,” he roars over the flames. “Yer the same scum who shot my men!”

“And you hanged my father,” I says, cringing through the pain. “We ain't even close to even.”

He laughs—a deep, vicious cackle—and trains his gun on me. No, not his gun—
Pa's.
My father's Colt is gonna be what ends my life. Or maybe Rose'll take a knife to my skin first.

“And for a moment, I actually believed you a bounty hunter,” he says.

Outta the corner of my eye, I spot my gun beneath a burning table. I reach for it, stretch. My fingers graze the barrel. Rose just thinks I'm trying to crawl to safety 'cus a flaming chair between us has filled the place with smoke.

Come on, just a little farther.

“Consider this a favor, girl,” he says. “I'm ending yer suffering before you realize just how black that journal is. I'll even make it nice and quick, 'stead of stringing you up like yer Pa.”

He cocks his weapon.

Aims.

And then, 'gainst all odds, he pauses. Confusion ripples over his features.

My fingers close over the steel of my pistol. I turn and shoot.

The gunshot is just another crack in the already roaring saloon. Rose grabs at his shoulder, cursing and hollering, but I don't wait to see much else. Scrambling to my feet, I fire blindly over my shoulder and dive for a table the flames ain't found yet. With a shove, I overturn it, then crouch down behind the surface so it shields me like a wall.

Through the smoke, I risk a glance back Rose's way. He's cringing—at the strength of the flames, the pain from my bullet—but his eyes are scanning the room for me. How'd I manage to even clip him? I know he's the faster shot, am certain he could've left me dead. It's like he hesitated, like he changed his mind. It don't make a lick of sense.

I duck back behind the table and try to steady my breathing. When I look again, Rose ain't there.

Cursing, I push to my feet and dart for the door.

A series of shots rings out, chasing at my heels, and I'm forced to turn away from the exit and head deeper into the saloon. I race past the bar, beyond the stairwell leading to the loft, where the air-hungry flames are snapping fierce, and into a narrow hall. Maybe there's a rear exit, another way out.

“Jesse?” I shout again through the smoke. “Will?”

“Help!” someone calls back.

But it ain't the Coltons. It's a female.

“In here!”

I move toward her voice, choking on smoke, and find a door—or what once was one. Now it's just a blazing frame. Through the tongues of fire, I can see her crouched and cowering a few steps down. The Apache. Only, she don't look so much like an Apache anymore, but just a scared girl.

This stairwell must lead to the cellar. She prolly ran in there for shelter when the shooting broke out, only now she ain't gonna do nothing but burn if she don't abandon post.

“Come on!” I shout to her, waving. “Run through it.”

She shakes her head, frantic.

I reach an arm for her and snatch it back almost immediately. It's blazing stronger than hellfire.

“There ain't another way,” I says.

She moves toward the flames, staggers away, tries again. The flames beat her back each time, and the hallway's getting hotter and smokier by the minute. Bullets are still flying back in the saloon, some sounding like they're coming my way.

I glance back to the Apache. I ain't never seen eyes so wide and desperate. But the journal's gonna burn if I don't run.
I'm
gonna burn.

“I'm sorry,” I says.

Her screams chase me as I shove out the rear exit. When my lungs get a gulp of fresh air, I drop to my knees, panting. I could cry in relief. I could sing.

I glance over my shoulder. No one's followed me. There ain't nothing in the hall but flames and smoke. She's gonna burn to a charred crisp in there—like those poor souls Rose murdered in the coach, like the card-playing townsfolk he shot just earlier. And she don't deserve it. None of 'em did. Only difference is, unlike the others, she ain't dead yet.

I heave upright, still coughing, and glance round. Blankets hang on a line behind the building to my right, flapping on the evening's warm breeze. There's barrels on the back porch too.

Please have water,
I think, racing to 'em.
Please.

I yank one of the blankets free and knock my hip into the barrels till one sloshes in response. I pull the plug and sniff. Not alcohol, that's for sure. Hell, there ain't a smell, period. I shove it over and roll it back to the saloon.

The flames are devouring the rear entrance now too. It's an inferno. She's prolly already dead.

But you can't leave her trapped in there. You can't, you worthless coward.

I toss the journal aside, to a place where it'll be safe from the flames. Then I drench a corner of the blanket with water, hold it over my mouth, and shove the barrel forward. After fighting to get it over the doorway's lip, I roll it down the hall and to the cellar. My lungs start heaving again in protest, my eyes burning. Every instinct in my body's screaming for me to leave, to turn round and run, but I kick the barrel over, letting the water pour into the stairwell. I drop the blanket, let it become a sopping mess. Then I smack at as many flames in the cellar doorway as I can. They muffle and hiss beneath the material. Smoke fills the air as the water kills most of the flames on the stairs themselves. My hands ache from the heat even with the blanket protecting them. My legs feel like they're blistering.

“Hello?” I shout through the clouds of gray.

Nothing.

“Hey, you still alive in there?”

And then . . . a cough.

I take a step into the stairwell, and the wood groans. I spot her slouched on the steps, barely conscious from all the smoke. I grab her at the wrist and sling her arm behind my neck, then wrap the blanket round the both of us. Before the stairs can give way beneath our weight, I heave her outta the cellar stairwell and down the hall.

My knees give out when we're a few feet from the saloon, and we both tumble forward. She lands face-down in the dirt, not moving. My dress is burning, the white material singed black at the hem. I slap at it with the blanket, muffling out the flames, then pull up the folds of the dress to check the damage. My skin's hot and red, but it ain't blistered. My boots've spared me a second time.

“You all right?” I says, checking on the Apache girl.

She coughs and hacks and coughs some more. The palms of her hands are blistered white, prolly from when she tried to reenter the saloon through that burning cellar door. She looks up at me. Her eyes are still wide, but there ain't so much fear and desperation in them no more. No, now it's a look of shock, of astonishment.

The thunder of cracking wood brings me to my feet. The Tiger's roof is failing, starting to buckle. The Coltons might still be in there. I take a step toward the saloon, and that's when a section of the roof folds in, showering down flame and beams. I stumble away, the dress heavy with water and nearly tripping me.
Goddamn ten-pound dress!
I draw my knife from my boot and hack at the skirt, cutting the material free. It were half burned and ruined anyway. Evelyn weren't getting back something she could wear.

Evelyn.

My head jerks toward the parlor.

We were supposed to regroup there if'n something went wrong. That was the plan. If'n the Coltons are still in the Tiger, there ain't nothing I can do for 'em now. It was dumb enough going back in the one time.

I kick the discarded section of dress aside and snatch up Pa's journal.