Tears welled in her eyes, making it frustratingly difficult to focus. She blinked and craned her neck as Taggart nudged his horse into action, but all she could see was Matthew’s crumpled form lying in the dust, his men scooting like oversized inchworms to get to their captain.
The first tear fell.
Matthew.
The healer in her started running through all the possible injuries that a bullet could cause, each more dire than the last.
“Matthew!” Desperate to tend him, she struggled against Taggart’s hold, willing to throw herself off the horse if it meant getting back to the man she loved in time to save his life.
“Sit still,” Taggart growled, locking an arm around her midsection and trapping her arms at her sides.
No. She wouldn’t yield to this man. She’d fight until she had no fight left inside her. She threw her head backward and slammed her skull into Taggart’s chin.
He cursed, then head-butted her in return. The blow dazed her momentarily.
“Hey!” Charlie shouted. “You agreed she wouldn’t be harmed.”
“That was before I knew she was a hissing she-cat. She bloodied my lip.”
Josephine blinked as she regained her bearings. Matthew. Matthew needed her. She kicked Taggart’s shin with her heel and was preparing for a second, more powerful shot when her captor transferred the reins to the hand holding her in place and drew his weapon.
“Kick me again, and I’ll shoot your brother.” His voice slashed with lethal accuracy across her soul. “I don’t need him for ransom anymore, little girl. All I need is you. So behave yourself, or he’ll be the one to pay the price.”
Josephine’s body stilled, but her heart beat hard and fast in her chest as her gaze flew to her brother.
Charlie looked at Taggart as if not quite sure whether his threat was a ruse.
Josephine knew it was no idle threat. Taggart had no conscience. No honor. Whatever arrangement he’d made with Charlie, he’d cut her brother’s throat in a heartbeat if it meant getting what he wanted. Charlie might be too cocky and full of his own agenda to recognize the danger, but Josephine saw it all too clearly. Taggart didn’t need him.
She lowered her leg. Relaxed her seat. Submitted to the man at her back.
Charlie was still hers to protect. Even if he was a self-absorbed idiot who thought aligning himself with outlaws was the best way to get what he believed he was owed. Foolish, shortsighted, impetuous boy.
When Charlie’s gaze moved to her face, Josephine arched a brow as she returned her brother’s stare, doing nothing to hide the disgust and disappointment she felt for him in that moment. Yes, she’d stopped fighting Taggart out of concern for his welfare, but she held Charlie responsible in this fiasco. He’d chosen to get involved with Taggart and his gang. To gamble money he didn’t have. To extort their father. To betray his sister. To ally himself with a killer who thought nothing of shooting a man for sport—a man bound hand and foot, incapable of defending himself.
Charlie’s gaze turned rueful and finally fell, unable to bear the weight of her silent condemnation.
As Taggart relaxed and holstered his weapon, Josephine closed her eyes. A second tear squeezed past her damp lashes.
The Horsemen had nothing. No horses. No supplies. They didn’t even have their boots. How would they manage to get Matthew to help in time?
Only you can save him, Lord. Please. Save him.
“Captain!”
Matt barely had time to brace himself before a rolling Preach slammed into his face.
“Where’re ya hit?” His corporal nudged him with his shoulder, knocking his hat off and bruising his ear.
“Well, my face has felt better.”
“A head wound?” Preach stretched his neck up in an effort to get a better view, clipping Matt’s chin as he moved. “I don’t see any blood.”
Matt groaned. “That’s because the bullet creased my side. A rolling mammoth hit my face.”
A half-grin sprouted on Luke’s face. “‘Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved . . . they have made their faces harder than a rock.’ Jeremiah 5:3.”
“A rock sounds about right.” Matt grumbled and groaned, but in his soul, he thanked God. Not only for sparing his life just now, but for giving him men—no, friends—he could count on to have his back. Or his front, in this case.
Luke grew serious. “You sure it’s just a crease, Matt?” He tried to look for himself, but with his arms bound behind him and his shoulder lodged near Matt’s throat, he had practically no leverage.
“There’s blood,” Jonah confirmed, his knees bumping into Matt’s feet. His kneeling shuffle might have been slower than Preach’s roll technique, but he’d managed to keep his head upright. “It ain’t pooling, though. Just soaking his shirt along the bottom of his rib cage. Might be deeper than a crease, but it don’t look life-threatening. It’s a good thing you dove when you did. I thought you mighta been too lock-eyed with the doc to notice Taggart’s draw.”
“Nah,” Preach denied on Matt’s behalf. “The captain’s reflexes still work, even if his brain has gone soft.” Another nudge with that overlarge shoulder, this time in the windpipe.
Matt scooted backward to create a much-needed buffer from Preach’s shoulder and his assessment. He wasn’t wrong. Matt’s dodging lunge had been born purely of instinct. All he’d been thinking about in that moment was Josephine and what it would take to find her.
“If you ask me,” Wallace said, having inched his way over to the group with some kind of sideways crawl on his good shoulder, “Matt had nothing to do with it. My money’s on a guardian angel. Same one that steered bullets away from him in that canyon saved him again by shoving his face into the dirt. Somebody upstairs is keeping you alive for a reason, Captain. Best not disappoint him.”
“I don’t know about angels, but Wallace is right about one thing.” Matt eyed his men. “We still have a mission to accomplish, and the first order of business is to get free of these ropes. I managed to preserve a bit of slack in mine.” He began working his wrists back and forth. “I might be able to—”
“Save your skin, Cap,” Preach said as he tucked his knees to his chest. “I buried my pocketknife in the creek bed over yonder. Gimme a minute, and I’ll fetch it.”
Suddenly Preach’s frustrated kicking and slow rise during their surrender made a lot more sense. Matt grinned. “You wily old coot.”
Preach winked, then set off on a bone-jarring, lopsided roll that made Matt wince. It must be killing Luke’s shoulders to have his arms trapped behind him as he rolled, not to mention that he had no way to protect his face.
Yet in less than five minutes, Preach had retrieved the knife and returned. He smiled through the dirt coating him from hair to heel like a boy who’d just uncovered buried treasure, then squirmed around until he got his knees under him. He backed up to meet Jonah hand to hand. As the two non-injured members of the team, it made sense that they worked the problem together, but waiting was excruciating, and not just because the wound in Matt’s side had started to throb more noticeably now that he had nothing active to do.
He could deal with the pain. It was the thought of what could be happening to Josie that tortured him.
Taggart yanked Josephine off his horse with all the finesse of a farmhand grabbing a ham sandwich off a platter. Fitting, she supposed, since they’d stopped at an abandoned farmhouse about as far off the beaten path as one could get. She hadn’t seen a single house, homestead, or hovel in the last hour. Whoever had settled here had either foolishly believed more settlers would come or had prized his privacy more than was healthy. Whatever its origins, the place had not fared well since its abandonment. The house looked large enough to hold three rooms, maybe four. The size a man with a family would build. Yet with its weathered siding and leaning walls, an enthusiastic knock on the front door would probably topple the entire building.
“I’ll take over her care now, Taggart,” Charlie said as
he swung down from his horse. He took a step toward Josephine, but Taggart’s grip on her arm only tightened.
“Dawson!” Taggart barked.
The man with the red beard who’d ridden next to Charlie the entire way lunged at her brother from behind. He wrapped his arm around Charlie’s throat while sliding Matt’s gun from Charlie’s holster.
“Charlie!” Josephine struggled against Taggart’s hold, trying to get to her brother, to help him before they killed him right in front of her. “Let him go!”
Surprisingly enough, Dawson did just that. Once he had the gun in his possession, he released his choke hold and shoved Charlie onto the ground.
Charlie sputtered and gasped, but once he caught his breath, he surged to his feet, his face mottled in anger. “How dare you! You work for me. I won’t stand for this.”
“You won’t stand at all, rich boy.” Dawson twisted sideways, his leg kicking out, his foot smashing into Charlie’s knee.
Charlie howled in pain and fell back to the ground, grabbing his right knee.
Taggart dragged Josephine a step closer, close enough for him to lean over Charlie and gloat but not so close that she could reach her brother as he writhed.
“Time to get something straight, Burkett. You’ve never been in charge. Your ransom scheme was clever, I’ll give you that much. Paying back what you owe me with your father’s money? Brilliant! Using your sister as insurance in case your daddy didn’t feel like paying for you? Even more brilliant! In fact, I gotta admit that when I saw your hat come sailing into the canyon, signaling the move to the second plan, I considered offering you a permanent place in my gang. After all, a man who’d betray his sister to gain his own reward is a man who wouldn’t care about casualities during a bank robbery or train heist. But then I remembered you were just a snotty-nosed rich kid used to getting his own way, and the urge passed. Knowing your sister was nearby, though, and that you would lead us to her—well, that perked me right up.” Taggart wagged his brows at Josephine. “Bigger paydays always put me in a good mood. And your brother arranged it perfectly. He only forgot one thing.”
Taggart turned back to Charlie, his smile twisting into a sneer. “You forgot who you were dealing with. Consider this a renegotiation of our deal, Burkett. I’m no longer satisfied with half the ransom money. Me and my boys are going to take it all. And if you want to live to learn from your mistakes, you’ll accept my terms without complaint.” He waved Dawson forward again. “Shackle him to the chuck wagon and let Cookie put him to work. If he gets out of line, shoot him.”
Dawson yanked Charlie off the ground, locking his arms behind his back. Charlie’s right leg buckled when he tried to stand on it.
“Wait. He’s hurt.” Josephine tried to go to her brother, her healing instincts punching through the horrified numbness freezing her insides at the story she’d just heard. “Let me help him.”
“Nope. Got other plans for you, darlin’.” He pulled her in the opposite direction.
“Jo!” Charlie called. She heard the fear in his voice. Fear that turned to anger when he called out a second time. “You better make sure nothing happens to her, Taggart. Those mercenaries she hired to free me? They’re not just ordinary hired guns. They’re Hanger’s Horsemen. Harm a hair on her head, and they’ll destroy you.”
Taggart’s step hitched, but he kept walking, dragging her away from Charlie.
Josephine craned her neck around until she could see him. He hobbled alongside his captor, not fighting, but not submitting either. His eyes sought hers.
“Jo, I’m sorry. I didn’t think . . .”
That was the problem. He hadn’t thought. Not about consequences or dangers or how this scheme of his could possibly go wrong. All he’d thought about was himself. And now the man she loved lay shot and abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
Josephine turned her back, no longer able to stomach the sight of her brother.
One step at a time. That was all she could focus on now. One step, one minute at a time. She wrapped her ravaged heart in the gauze of stoicism. She had to stem the emotional bleeding if she was going to survive. Had to keep her mind engaged, her wits sharp.
They approached a barn. Half the roof had caved in, and the rest seemed glued together by nothing more substantial than a series of mud nests that a family of barn swallows had deserted.
“Your brother tells me you’re a doctor.” Taggart drew her to a halt. “That true?”
Josephine lifted her chin. “It is.”
“Good.” He handed her over to a scowling fellow with a mean-looking scar running down his throat. “Your mercenary friends left several of my men injured after that stunt they pulled back in Uvalde. Tending them will keep you occupied while we make arrangements for your ransom. Carver will supervise.”
Keeping her back straight and her head erect as she’d trained herself to do when facing powerful men who belittled her abilities, Josephine met the guard’s cold stare and gave a brief nod. “Mr. Carver.”
Disdain radiated from him. As did a soulless quality that made her insides quail. As much as she wanted to pretend he was just one more in a long line of arrogant men who tried to put her in her place, she knew more than arrogance dwelled beneath his surface. Cruelty lived there. A cruelty she could easily imagine had put more than one man in an early grave.
“Let me know if she causes any trouble, Carver,” Taggart said as he flung her toward the guard. “Any disobedience on her part can be meted out on Burkett. I know how much you’d enjoy teaching the whelp a few much-needed lessons.”
Carver smiled, the expression knotting Josephine’s stomach. “Open season, huh?” He turned that smile on her, and a shiver coursed down her nape. “Just give me an excuse, Doc. Even a little one.”
She forced herself to hold the terrifying man’s gaze. She’d make Matthew proud. Stare into the face of evil and not flinch. “I think not, Mr. Carver.”
As much as she longed to escape and find a way back to Matthew, she wouldn’t take the chance of Charlie being beaten or killed in retaliation. An act this man would obviously take great pleasure in.
Using her haughtiest voice to disguise the trepidation surging inside her, she turned her gaze toward the open barn door and took a single step forward. “Now, I believe there are injured men who need tending. If you’d be so good as to have someone fetch my medical bag from the horses you stole?”
She didn’t wait for an affirmative response. She simply marched into the barn as if she had no doubt her instructions would be obeyed. Carver allowed her arm to slip through his grasp, but he followed close on her heels. So close that he bumped into her hip when she stopped abruptly.
The smell of dried blood and unwashed male bodies stole her breath. Well, at least she’d have plenty of work to distract her from worrying about Matthew. The men eyeing her from strung hammocks, stump stools, and bedrolls might be outlaws, but they were patients too. Patients who required a physician.
“I’m going to need a plentiful supply of hot water,” she said. “And soap.”
Lots and lots of soap.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Matt winced as a half-buried rock jabbed the arch of his foot, but he didn’t slow his pace. They needed to get back to Chatfield before dark, and to do that, they needed to get to the road and find a local farmer or rancher with a wagon and a hospitable spirit.
God, I don’t know if Wallace is off his rocker with that angel talk or not, but if you do have an angel warrior on loan to us, I’d sure appreciate you reassigning him from protection duty to transportation detail. If we don’t make it to Chatfield before the last train departs, our chances of finding Josie are all but gone.
They had to get to Gringolet Farms before Thaddeus Burkett left. Taggart would have the ransom demand delivered tonight or tomorrow morning. Which meant Matt had to arrive by midday tomorrow to ensure he didn’t miss his window. The banks would be closed on a Saturday, but he couldn’t count on that
slowing Burkett down. Josie’s father could easily have his own stash of cash in a safe at his home. Or he could convince the bank owner to conduct an unscheduled transaction, either by emotional appeal or by threatening to take his business elsewhere. If it were his daughter in peril, Matt would do whatever it took to procure her safety. He couldn’t imagine Thaddeus Burkett being any different. Refusing to pay ransom for a wastrel of a son who’d dug his own hole was one thing. Abandoning a faithful daughter was another thing entirely.
“How’re ya holding up, Cap?”
Preach dogged his side like a faithful hound, constantly shooting him sidelong glances as if he expected Matt to keel over at any moment.
“Fine.” Matt didn’t dignify the question with eye contact, just kept trudging forward one step at a time. His side burned like fire and his head ached, but none of that mattered.
“That shirt stain’s gettin’ wider. All this walking’s keeping that wound from closing. You ain’t gonna do the lady doctor any good if you bleed yourself to death.”
Matt shot his corporal a glare. “I’m not gonna do her much good if I sit down in the middle of nowhere and take a nap either.” He tucked his arm close to his throbbing side and let out a sigh. “I know you’re looking out for me, Preach, and I appreciate it, but I’m not the one we need to be concerned about. Josie’s alone with an entire gang of outlaws.” Ruthless men with the morality of snakes. His throat worked as he fought to keep the worst visions of what might be happening to her out of his brain. “Charlie won’t be able to protect her. Her father might ransom her, but Taggart can’t be trusted to keep his word. There’s no telling what he’ll do to her before or after he gets his money.”
The image of Taggart’s knife blade on her face shot raw terror through Matt and energized his tired muscles. This was why he wasn’t supposed to let himself care about a woman. It tore a man up inside when he failed to protect her. When circumstances stole her well-being from the realm of his control. Left him feeling helpless and fearful and . . . and none of that mattered. He couldn’t undo loving her. Didn’t want to. So he’d use that fear as a weapon and let it push him harder. Straightening his stance, he quickened his pace.
At Love's Command Page 19
