Micah rubbed his forehead absently and Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wish you’d let us help you,” Micah said into the silence.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. You had safe lives. It’s what I preferred for you.” It was why he’d done what he’d done. “If I were challenged to make the same choices, I wouldn’t change them. We can’t change the past. Dwelling on it serves no purpose and we have other issues that concern us now, like the doppelganger. He needs to be killed. As long as he’s alive, he’s a threat. The others that are coming, they’re dangerous. We need to have our attention focused on dealing with them and minimizing any collateral damage.”
He didn’t really need his brothers to agree. If Jason saw Blade or Masterson or both, he’d deal with them ruthlessly and without mercy. He couldn’t afford to act any other way. They had too many vulnerable amongst the ranch population and now the town.
“That’s not the point—”
“Actually, he’s right, Micah.” Sam surprised him when he cut their brother off. Micah, too, if his expression were to be believed. “Jason is right. We do have far more pressing problems. We’re not just executing the doppelganger. We don’t have that right. The man deserves a trial. I’d thought if we caught him, we would turn him over to Stanley, but that’s not a good idea, is it?”
Jason shook his head. “No. I can’t imagine Stanley doing anything other than trying to turn him to his cause and putting him to work.”
“Is he lying about his daughter?” Sam studied the wooden floorboards as though a great weight pushed down on him. Perhaps it did. He took his position as marshal very seriously and, like their father, had a very set sense of right and wrong.
“No, he’s not lying. MacPherson has his child. As long as she remains useful, I am relatively certain she will be well cared for.” In his experience, MacPherson coveted those he could use as weapons. He’d sheltered Delilah absolutely and made her wholly dependent upon him, even as he kept her carefully under the tight rein of his control. The heart could recover from the emotional bruises of such captivity.
“We can’t leave another child in his custody.” Sam wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
“We won’t. As soon as I’ve dealt with Masterson and the others, I’ll go north. I’ll get her.” The moment he said the words, regret curdled in his stomach. He’d planned to deal with MacPherson all along, as soon as his family was secure. Eliminating the greater threat would provide them with long-term safety. But leaving meant leaving Olivia behind.
Her presence made the decision painful.
Micah scowled and took a step forward, but it was Sam who spoke. “Two things we need to have absolutely clear between us. One, you are not alone. You are not the one who will have to deal with these threats, we will. Two, baby brother, I will hogtie you if you try to pull the I have to protect all of you again. We’re a family, and we make the decisions together. We’ll fight this war together. You are not our assassin and no one is going to use you that way again. Understood?”
“You both have wives and, Sam, you have children. Neither of you are up to doing what has to be done. It isn’t a judgment, but you’re good men and you want to make the legal choices—”
“Not when it comes to protecting our family.” Micah didn’t let Sam take lead. “I have no problem killing those who would try to kills ours or, worse, take them from us. You said Miller’s original plan had been to capture Cody and Scarlett, and kill Buck?”
Jason nodded. “Miller didn’t care about that as much as getting Jo back so he could punish her for leaving.”
“Ignoring his insanity for a moment…” Sam clasped Micah’s shoulder. “How likely is it that these coming hunters are set to the same task?”
“Anything is possible. MacPherson’s lost a few of his strongest—with those that he sent at the ranch, Delilah’s defection—but the scope of his influence goes wildly beyond just those who are loyal to him. He cultivates relationships, by using loyalty owed to those who follow him.”
“Explain.” Sam wanted facts, the man worked best with them.
“For example, the firestarter Quon wasn’t one of MacPherson’s men. He was Miller’s. Miller was loyal to MacPherson, but he ran his own people. Those people could be used, but wouldn’t provide us with much of a lead back.” He lifted his eyebrows in silent question.
“Makes him slippery as a newborn calf.” Micah’s scowl matched Sam’s. His brothers were straightforward and preferred hard work to politics—or espionage. It was another reason Jason was uniquely suited to the tasks at hand. He lived in the moments between the lies.
“More or less. The only way to get to MacPherson is to isolate him, which is harder than you might think. Whatever his actual ability is, the fact that he engenders such absolute devotion makes him far more dangerous than we can imagine. And I can imagine a hell of a lot. This is why we need to take them out, we do not give them time to get word back or escape. Ryan could have done a great deal more damage had he returned to MacPherson and been believed…”
“Wait,” Sam’s eyes narrowed and the lines of tension radiating out from the corners whitened. “There’s a chance MacPherson wouldn’t believe him?”
“The man is mercurial. He doesn’t always believe what he is told. He expects his followers to succeed or die in the attempt.” It was an iron forced rule that kept his people from challenging him.
“Ryan didn’t die, so if he goes back—”
Jason inclined his head. “It makes him desperate. Desperate men make bad choices. Don’t consider sending him on some fool’s errand, as though we could turn him to our advantage. We have nothing to offer him that could compensate for the damage MacPherson can inflict.” Nothing he would willingly offer the man, anyway.
“This is hell.” Micah turned away and shoved his fingers through his hair. “I want to argue with you, but we can’t risk Scarlett, Jo, or the kids.”
“We can’t risk anyone,” Sam agreed. Weariness rippled over his face. “When I first found out what Scarlett could do, she begged me not to tell anyone. She said there were people in the world who would hunt them, to kill them at best or use them at worst. Considering what she can do, I couldn’t imagine how anyone could force her to do what they willed….not then.”
“Molly,” Jason said solemnly and held up his hand as he ticked off the names with his fingers. “Cobb. You. Her brothers. Their wives. The children. One doesn’t have to simply control the person, if they have leverage. Is there anything Scarlett wouldn’t do to protect you?”
“No.” Sam shook his head. “There isn’t anything I won’t do to protect her.”
“Then let me take care of this.” He kept his voice soft, but he never looked away from either of his brothers. “You don’t have to like it. But this? This I can do. The doppelganger, the hunters, all of them. They won’t touch the ranch and they won’t touch the family.”
Signaling neither approval nor disapproval, Sam studied him for a long moment, then asked, “What does that cost you?”
“Killing costs nothing.” The lie he’d told for so long flowed easily. He relegated the act to a mental exercise. All he needed was a line of sight for a few seconds. Sometimes, he didn’t even need that.
Distant sounds of the town coming to life filtered into the quiet of the empty store. “Are we really standing here contemplating murder?” Micah asked.
“Yes.” Sam nodded. “We are.”
“If it helps, you can call it a preemptive strike in a war, we’ve been fighting skirmishes in.” Platitudes, perhaps, but for his brothers, he’d find the right ones.
“Two years ago, our worst problem was making sure the cattle didn’t get into the wrong pastures and Pa didn’t find out about where Kid was hanging his hat.” A trace of nostalgia echoed in Micah’s voice. “But I didn’t have Jo then.”
“And I didn’t have Scarlett. Jason’s right, looking back doesn’t help us. We’re not giving up our wives or the
extended family we’ve formed. So we protect what we have with who we have.” Sam took his hat off. “Still, there’s a problem with your plan, Jason.”
Intrigued, Jason raised his brows and waited. The faint smile on Sam’s face and the sudden glee washing over Micah’s should have clued him in.
“Olivia Stark,” Sam said in quiet answer.
“She’s innocent. She doesn’t know of anything that is going on, save for the loss of her parents.” She didn’t need to carry the burden of anything else, not when he could take care of it.
“That’s the problem.” Whether it was Sam’s tone or the sudden erasure of Micah’s smile, the alarm sounded through Jason.
“What is the problem?” The temperature around him plummeted several degrees.
“She needs to know. She’s going to be right in the middle of all of this—”
“No.” Jason straightened. “She will not be in the middle of anything. We can keep her safe at the ranch…”
“The ranch isn’t so safe that danger doesn’t come there. Eliminate our enemies for the moment and we still have a group of unstable children learning to master their gifts. We can’t handicap her by keeping her ill-informed, nor can we hold her hostage.”
“You will say nothing to her Sam.” It wasn’t a request. He understood his brother’s good intentions, but it mitigated nothing of Jason’s response. “Olivia doesn’t need to know. It would frighten her.”
“I’ll be damned,” Micah exhaled. “You were right.”
“Told you.” Sam pulled off his hat and blew out a breath. “He’s got it bad.”
Jason looked from one brother to the other. Their laughter did little to ease the hard fist in his gut.
“Do you even know what to do with a girl?” Micah asked, mouth turned up in a half-smile. “Kid? Him I’m used to chasing skirts. You’ve never shown any signs.”
“I am not chasing a skirt.” He went with the literal definition, because this was the last conversation he wanted to have with them.
“From the look on her face, I don’t think you’d have to chase her very hard.” Sam commented. “She’s already set her cap for you.”
Turning away from them, Jason calmed his shallow breathing and pulled the tendrils of cold back inside. His breath still frosted in the air. “Olivia is a friend. Nothing more.”
“Yeah, you may be the best liar I’ve ever known, but your silver tongue will never convince anyone who’s seen you with her.” Sam crossed the room and leaned against the counter, and Micah bracketed Jason so he couldn’t avoid one’s gaze without looking at the other. “We’re going to help you, but helping means we start by being honest with her. You see, brother, if she belongs to you then she belongs to us, too.”
Surprise flickered through him. Not that his brothers would make the offer, since they were the kind of men who looked after those around them. It was who they all were, ingrained in them since childhood. Olivia wasn’t his. She acted as though she might be and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her, but telling her the truth of it all? It would close the door on any possibility of a relationship between them. He could end the discussion by simply declaring she wasn’t his. Wishing they could be more, that he could still hope, surprised him.
Still, he couldn’t say the words.
“Hey.” Micah nudged him. “We can do this, you know that, right?”
“We do not need to do anything,” Jason repeated. “Olivia is safe at the ranch. I will take care of the hunters and the doppelganger. When everything is settled, I’ll go after MacPherson. Better to face him on his territory than give him another shot at ours.”
“No.” Sam shook his head. “I’ll grant you, we need to deal with the others that are here, but you’re not just going to leave. We do this together or we don’t do it at all.”
The door to the street opened and all three brothers turned to find Jed. The old man gave them each a steady look. One-by-one, they straightened under his scrutiny. “What are you three in here plotting?”
“What are you doing in town, Pa?” Sam gave their father a hard look. “No one is supposed to be traveling alone.”
“Don’t give me that nonsense, Samuel. I came in with Buck and Delilah. They’re checking on Jimmy. He said you lot had gone to talk. He also told me you caught the doppelganger.” What he didn’t mention was that no one had informed him.
In any other circumstance, the wooden silence his statement earned might have amused Jason. Sam and Micah were not usually in Jed’s bad books.
“Why did you come into town, sir?” The best way to deal with Jed’s anger was to divert the conversation to a different topic.
“To see you and find out what you were planning to do with Olivia.” Jed brought the full weight of his attention to Jason. “I put the relationship off long enough. She was too young before, but she isn’t now. We need to make arrangements for her.”
“You ‘put the relationship off long enough’?” Jason dimly heard Micah echo the same question.
Sam didn’t join them, instead, he stepped in front of Jason and squared off against their father. “What did you do, Pa?”
The move took Jason completely by surprise.
“Don’t take that tone with me, Samuel. I’m not so blind that I didn’t see the way those two were sweet on each other, nor did I miss how much time he spent with her whenever he could slip away.” Every sentence was news to Jason and he rocked under the revelation. “I had to warn her father off more than once when he wanted me to hold Jason back. The man was worried about your attention. After that dance, I had to take action. I sent her back east to get a proper education and to let her have time to grow up. You were going to school, you needed a wife who could match you.”
Micah leaned closer to Jason and muttered, “What happened at the dance?”
The last time he’d seen Olivia had been at a dance just before her birthday. She’d sat in a corner, listening to the music and the thump of the feet. He’d sat with her, content to simply speak to her and share her company and the blissful silence it wrought around too many other minds. Until she’d made a wistful sigh…
“I danced with her,” Jason said quietly.
Sam swung a look toward him and Micah nodded.
“And looked at her like a man should look at a woman, but she wasn’t a woman yet.” Jed clapped Sam on the arm. “You two go find real work, I want to talk to Jason.”
Jason barely heard their responses. He’d had no idea his father knew about Olivia. He’d told no one. Absolutely no one. He hadn’t then and still didn’t want to share her.
“I think we’re going to stay, Pa,” Micah said after a long moment and then he leaned back against the counter, his shoulder butting up against Jason’s. “This is a family matter. Our brother needs us.” Sam didn’t hesitate, he backed up and took a position on Jason’s free side, communicating without words that they had his back and weren’t leaving him to deal with their father on his own.
It left him to flounder in a sea of unfamiliar emotion and the ice inside him shuddered.
Jed stared from one son to the next. “I’m not going to beat him.”
“No, but you do have a way of walking over everyone else to have your way. Sir.” Sam’s laconic tone took the sting out of the words. “Like inviting a prisoner to be a guest…”
“…or sending me off to pick up a school teacher when I had too much work as it was.” Micah added.
“It worked out very well for both of you.” Jed glared at them. “I think I know a little bit more about women than either of you two hardheads.”
“Maybe so.” Sam grinned. “We’re staying, all the same.”
“I agree. We’re staying.” Micah didn’t sound as certain, but he didn’t make any move to abandon his post.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was alive?” Jason asked. The question had plagued him since he’d lain eyes on Olivia. If he’d known sooner, he could have gone to her directly and…he didn’t kno
w what. But he could have acted.
A cloud fell over their father’s face and he sighed. “Because I’m an old man and I forgot, in all the turmoil, you didn’t know that I’d paid for the schooling or the escort to get her there.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d sent her to school?” Keeping his distance from her and the town had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Discovering she’d been close enough to see all those years he’d spent back East sat harder on him.
“Because you were keeping her a secret and a man who wants a wife, he lets the world know. You never did that.” Disapproval rang through the words. “At first, I thought it was shame.”
Denial roared through Jason and his spine snapped straight. Sam’s sudden grip on his arm kept him in place. “I was never ashamed of her.”
Jed nodded slowly. “I know that now, son. Just seeing the way you looked at her told me as much, but neither of you were ready for where passion was taking you. Could you really have kept your distance as she continued to flower right in front of you?”
Jason wanted to argue the point, but how could he? Had his father not sent her away, she would have been in Dorado when Miller infected the town.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He began to pack away the unsettled feelings again. They had far graver problems. She was alive, which remained the only important fact.
“So, you want me to look into finding her a different husband, then?”
His earlier fury returned with a vengeance. Sam hissed and jerked his hand away. The whole room snapped with frost. A black urge to strike out and rip the idea out of his father’s mind lest he ever give it voice again unfurled inside of him. He choked it back. He would not hurt his father. No matter the provocation. “No.”
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