Wanted (6 page)

He continued to watch as she lay down on her own bedroll several feet from Nick and a noticeably long way from Morgan. She was still almost immediately, but Morgan sensed a feigned sleep. She would wait, hoping he would fall asleep.

Morgan tucked his rifle next to him and leaned against the tree, watching fragile clouds scurry across the sky, sometimes eclipsing the moon, throwing the camp into darkness. He had stayed awake many a night when tracking outlaws or Indians, or as a scout during the war. He enjoyed the stillness and innocence of a night sky. He thought of it as innocence—a pure, pristine beauty unsullied by man's greed or anger or hate.

He had tried to explain the feeling once to Callum, his father's friend who had been his principal instructor. Callum had only laughed. Night, he said, is a breeding ground for evil.

But Morgan never thought of it that way. It was one of the few disagreements he'd had with Callum.

Morgan's eyes returned to Lorilee. He wondered what Callum would have thought of her. But Callum, the closest thing he'd had to a father, was dead, and the night, brilliant and beautiful as it was, was going to be damnably long.

CHAPTER THREE

Impatience nibbled at Lori. Then it began to gnaw in earnest.

He
had to go to sleep!

Huddled underneath the blanket in the cold night air, she slowly opened her eyes, allowing them to adjust to the darkness before turning ever so slightly to where the Ranger had settled.

He was still sitting, the rifle resting on the ground near his right hand. His head was leaning against the tree, but she sensed an alertness about him. Lori gritted her teeth.

“Can't sleep, Lori?”

She sat up, knowing it was foolish to feign sleep any longer. She stared at him … hard. In the moonlight his face looked even darker. Everything about Morgan Davis was severe and harsh. Lori wondered if he even knew how to smile, and then she recalled the bleakness in his eyes when she had asked about a family.

He hadn't understood. He would never understand how she felt about her family, how Nick felt, and that gave her one advantage over him.

“No,” she finally replied. She moved close enough to him to talk without raising her voice. Perhaps she could make him understand that Nick was innocent, that he didn't have to be chained. She looked over at Nick, and she sensed he was listening. He wouldn't be sleeping, not trussed up as he was. “Can't you at least take off those leg irons?”

The Ranger shook his head. “No,” he replied flatly.

“Why? He can't go anyplace with his wrist chained to that tree.”

He peered at her, and his eyes seemed almost black now, dark holes she couldn't penetrate. Yet she felt an odd, irritating familiarity. Because he resembled Nick? She didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to believe he and her brother had anything in common, other than a few facial features that meant nothing at all.

He just shrugged. “He seems to be doing all right.”

“You don't know him.”

“You're right, Miss Lori. I don't know him. I don't want to know him. I don't need to know him. Now, I would advise you to get some sleep. We have a long ride tomorrow, and I won't be slowed down.”

“What about you? Don't you need sleep?”

His lips twisted in a mirthless smile. “I've gone as long as three days without sleep, Miss Lori, when I'm tracking someone. And I plan to get some in Laramie, since you're so concerned over my well-being.”

Lori shifted slightly at his sarcasm but made no move to return to her bedroll. He raised an eyebrow, then allowed it to settle slowly back into place with lazy indifference. She saw his body tense, though, and she knew he wasn't as indifferent to her as he tried to appear. But, then, neither was she.

Something was happening. She didn't know what. She didn't know why. But she felt little knots of heat flame in odd places and move along her blood, like prairie grass in a fire, tumbling across the plains, igniting everything in its path.

She struggled to speak, to ease the sudden stiffness in her throat. She'd always been able to charm. She knew she wasn't beautiful, but laughter and smiles came easily, just as they did to Nick, and she'd discovered they more than made up for any physical lack. But the few smiles she'd directed his way hadn't seemed to work on the Ranger. Even now his expression was wary, suspicious. It had to be five hundred miles or more back to Harmony. Five hundred miles of rough terrain, of mountains, valleys, and rivers. Indians. Outlaws. The rest of the Braden family, if she could locate them and send word.

And sleep. Eventually there had to be sleep. The Ranger might consider himself an iron man, but no one could go weeks without sleep, without lowering his guard. He had made a mistake in not tying her. He didn't know that, but she did. If he couldn't do it tonight, he wouldn't be able to do it tomorrow night, or the next, and then …

He might think he was going to leave her in Laramie, or put her on a stage, but she knew otherwise.

“I'm not concerned about your well-being at all,” she said honestly. “I'm just curious. Have you tracked so many men?”

He shrugged. It seemed to be his usual response.

“How many?” she insisted.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Know thine enemy,” she responded quickly with a whimsical smile that usually softened the most difficult of men. She had found that honesty disarmed much more swiftly than subtle methods.

“Smart,” he said. “Is Nicholas that wise?”

“Know thine enemy?” Lori's retort was quick, and she saw a hint of appreciation in his eyes before it disappeared just as quickly. “He
is
your enemy,” she said softly, “just as I am. You'll never bring him back to Texas.” She hesitated, then tried reason once more. “He really is innocent. That was a fair fight in Texas. Don't make him—or me—do something we don't want to do.”

“And what would you do, Lori? How far would you go? Would you kill? Or do you just maim?”

“What do you think?”

His dark, hard gaze seemed to impale her. “I think you'd better get some sleep.”

“You didn't answer me before,” she said. “How many men have you hunted?”

“Enough,” he said flatly.

“Do you have trophies?” she taunted. “Locks of hair? Notches on a gun? Do you enjoy being a hunter?”

Lines tightened at the edge of his mouth, and the glow from the fire gave his eyes a dangerous glint. “Go to sleep, Lori.”

Lori felt her heart skitter oddly. It was a new feeling and she didn't understand it, not at all. It spurred her anger. “Don't call me Lori. Only people I like call me that.”

“I didn't ask you to come sit here. I assumed that indicated … a brief cessation in hostilities,” he replied dryly, letting her know he thought no such thing. His words irritated Lori, as did everything about him. The way he looked like Nick. The way he sat with Indian stoicism. The way he created strange, hot sensations in her. The latter most of all. He had no right.

“You aren't really going to try to leave me in Laramie?” she asked.

“I'm not going to try anything,” he said stiffly. “I'm going to do it.”

“What about my horse?”

“I'll make arrangements.”

“There are laws against horse stealing in Wyoming.”

“There are also laws against attacking lawmen.”

“You're not here as a lawman,” she accused. “You just want the bounty.”

“I don't give a damn about the bounty,” he said, something more than irritation in his voice. Lori sensed she had hit a nerve. She wondered exactly how sensitive it was.

“Then why …?” Nick had said nothing to her this afternoon—not about the Ranger's reasons, or motives, or Nick's own intentions. The Ranger had always been too close, always listening. She studied his every feature now, particularly the eyes. “You look like him,” she said, “but you're nothing like him. You don't have his heart.”

A muscle tensed in his jaw, and he looked away. And then she saw the dimple, that same ridge in his chin that Nick had. It had been hidden before by the new beard, but it was visible when he turned his head at a certain angle. “Dear God, but you do look like him,” she whispered.

“Enough that three men tried to kill me, and several others are on my trail,” he said roughly.

She frowned. “Is that why you came all this way …?”

His silence answered for him.

“You could almost be brothers.…” Lori stopped. It was impossible. She knew it was impossible. Nick was
her
brother, just as Andy was. It was impossible and unfair. Morgan Davis had tracked down her brother simply because they looked alike.

“More than a few bounty hunters would be glad to substitute me for your brother and bring me in dead,” the Ranger said. “But he's not my brother, and I'll be damned if I want to look over my shoulder the rest of my life because of something he did.”

Lori was silent for a moment, digesting his words. “You'll sacrifice him to save yourself,” she accused bluntly.

The Ranger's lips thinned. “He murdered a man, Miss Braden. And then he ran.”

“Because he had no choice. They would have lynched him. And it was a fair fight.”

“Then half of Harmony's lying. I've already been there.”

“And you've tried and convicted him,” Lori said heatedly.

“I told you that's not my job.”

“But that's what you'll be doing. You'll be the killer then.”

“I've never arrested a guilty man yet,” he said wearily. “There isn't one who didn't swear he was innocent.”

“You never believed them?”

“Once I did,” the Ranger said bitterly. “He was like your brother. Had a pretty young thing with him, said she was his wife and was pregnant. She pretended to have a miscarriage, and he grabbed my gun when I was trying to help her. He put three bullets in me. Probably would have put three more if he hadn't heard riders coming and lit out. Left his wife there. I found out later she wasn't his wife, wasn't even pregnant. She was just some saloon girl he took up with several days earlier.”

“Did he get away?”

“Then he did,” the Ranger said shortly.

“Then?”

“I got him eventually.”

“Where is he now?”

“Do you really want to know, Miss Lori?” His voice was almost gentle. Almost but not quite. That one moment of gallantry years ago apparently had robbed him of any compassion or trust he might once have had, Lori thought. Or had there been other moments of betrayal as well?

“How long have you been a Ranger?”

He looked surprised at her abrupt question. “I joined the Rangers in sixty-one.”

Lori was startled. “You must have been very young.” He looked several years older than Nick. The very harshness of his expression made him seem a decade older, and there were lines in his face that Nick didn't have. Still, the hard leanness of his body, the restrained energy in him, told her he couldn't be that much older.

She waited for an answer.

But Morgan Davis's face closed completely. “Know thine enemy,” he observed, a curious half smile on his face.

That hadn't been the reason for her comment. She had simply become intrigued by him during their conversation. She'd always been able to draw people out, with her keen ability to listen. Listening was the key, her father had always told her. But this time listening had trapped her, too. There was an intensity in him that somehow spoke to her in a way nothing else ever had. Equally as interesting was that quality of aloofness about him, a sense of isolation that touched something inside her, even as she told herself she had to hate this man. Trick him. Use him. Even shoot him if necessary.

She tried not to let her own feelings show, her sudden reluctance to leave. “Know thine enemy,” she confirmed as she stood and went back to where her bedroll lay. She felt her brother's eyes on her, even though he lay in the shadows. He had been still. Too still.

Lori covered herself with the blanket, wrapping it tight against her. She felt chilled. Chilled and alone. She would no longer try to keep from sleep.
He
wouldn't sleep. She knew it now. But he would be tired tomorrow.

Very tired.

Nick clenched his teeth as the Ranger unlocked the cuff chaining him to the tree. The lawman's eyes were weary, but he seemed just as cautious as he had been the day before. He had lost none of that sharp edge that seemed a primary part of him.

Nick fought the urge to swing a fist at Morgan Davis for those brief seconds his hands were free, but he was still sitting, and he knew he couldn't move fast with the leg irons. Still, he itched to wipe every feature of his own face from the Ranger's. His fists clenched into balls as he recalled the way Lori had sat with the man last night, at the way they had talked for so long. He knew exactly what Lori was doing, and he was helpless to do anything about it.

He could damn well fight his own battles. He didn't want her involved in this, nor did he want her to think she could charm someone like Davis. Nick had met few men like him before, but he recognized the breed: hard, unbending, and so damn sure they were right.

Nick kept his face empty as the handcuffs were again locked around both wrists, now protected, thanks to Lori, with scraps of his bandanna. He rose awkwardly, unable to do much more than shuffle along in a humiliating gait.

The Ranger already had a fire going, a coffeepot on the coals. Lori had brought some freshly baked bread with her, and she broke off a piece for Nick and herself, ignoring the Ranger. She was clearly challenging the Ranger with every move. Nick damn well wished he knew what she thought she was accomplishing. Morgan Davis wasn't like all the other men who swarmed around her, and Nick already sensed her fascination with someone who wasn't taken in by that damned breathtaking smile of hers.