The stall door, which had been slightly ajar, banged as he opened it all the way. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel his gaze on her.
“What are you doing? We’ve got to get out of here.” An unfamiliar male voice broke through the silence.
“Seems we’ve got a witness.”
“Looks like she’s asleep. We’ve got to get out of here. Folks in the street heard the gunshot and are trying to figure out where it came from.”
“There’s gunshots around these parts all the time. We’ve got to take care of her.”
Emma Jane heard the strange click again. Now she knew. It was the sound a gun made just before someone shot it. She swallowed, saying one last prayer.
Please, don’t let this be my final prayer.
“Then they’ll be on to us for sure. Let’s go.”
A heavy boot nudged her. “It’s that do-gooder.”
Footsteps crunched the straw nearby. “Jasper Jackson’s wife. We can’t kill her. Not with the Jackson power and money.”
Shouts came from the street. The voices grew closer.
“What if she heard? At the very least, she can finger me for Nancy.”
“We’ll take her with us. Maybe we can use her as leverage. That rich boy needs to learn he picked the wrong hobby in poking his nose into our business.”
This time, the man kicked her. Hard. Emma Jane winced at the pain.
Quickly, she yawned, hoping she was convincing in pretending that she’d just woken up.
“What’s happening?”
Dark eyes glinted against the sunlight streaming through the crack in the roof.
“You’re coming with us.”
The shiny barrel of a gun—the gun used to kill Nancy—pointed at her face.
Emma Jane stood slowly, her heart thudding so loud, it echoed in her ears. If she took her time, the voices she heard might make it. And then they could catch these evil men in action. Her throat was so dry, she couldn’t have screamed for help even if there wasn’t a gun pointed to her head.
“Hurry it up. I’m not afraid to use this. Just ask your friend.” He pointed toward the open stall door. Nancy’s lifeless body lay beyond.
Seeing Nancy dead somehow made the situation seem all the more dangerous. Jasper had warned her. Nancy had warned her. And now Nancy was dead.
Tears pricked her eyes at the senseless loss. As much as she wanted to cry for her friend, there was no time for that, not when she had to figure a way out.
Emma Jane scooted forward, letting her Bible settle in the straw. Would they notice it when they found Nancy’s body? Would they realize Emma Jane was in trouble?
Selfishly, she wanted to keep the Bible with her. Until now, she’d never had a Bible of her own. She always had to use the family Bible. It had brought her so much comfort already, and she had a feeling that, with these men, she’d need it.
But if it helped Jasper find her...
“Let’s go!”
Ray grabbed her by the arm and jerked her to her feet. The Bible remained where she’d left it as Ray pulled her out of the stall.
His partner waved his gun at her.
“You don’t have to die. But if you yell, fight or put up any kind of fuss to draw attention to us, we will kill you. Live or die, it’s your choice.”
Strangely, Emma Jane didn’t fear dying—not in this moment. Oh, she knew without a doubt that these men would kill her if they thought she was a threat. But something in her told her that if she just went along with them, she would be safe. Let them think she was cooperative, and somehow, some way, she would find a way to escape. If only she could convince her trembling limbs to believe in that hope.
* * *
Jasper removed his hat and ran his free hand through his hair. It seemed most of today had been a waste. Neither he nor Will had any leads, and it seemed like the bandits were toying with them. Even the gunshots they’d heard earlier seemed to be nothing but hotheads coming out of the saloon. Jasper sighed. The trouble with the lawlessness running rampant was that one never could tell if a gunshot was something serious or was just idiots fooling around.
At least things with Emma Jane seemed to be improving. He looked around for his bride.
The women were gathered in the main room of the barn, waiting for the noon meal. Knowing Emma Jane, she was probably helping set up.
Except, as he glanced at the women carrying dishes to and fro, he didn’t see her. Mary, Polly and several other women who helped with the ministry were all present. He walked over to where Mary had just set a platter of bread on the table.
“Have you seen Emma Jane?”
Mary looked up, her brow furrowed. “No. I thought...” She turned toward the barn door, where Polly was bringing in a large pot. “Where’s Emma Jane?”
Polly groaned and Jasper rushed toward her. The pot looked much too heavy for the woman to be carrying it herself.
As he took the pot from her, Polly said, “I have no idea. She wandered off to the stalls a while ago. There’s some kittens she likes to play with.”
Then Polly frowned. “But that was ages ago, and I can’t imagine why she’s not helping us. That’s not like Emma Jane.”
“Oh. You’re looking for Emma Jane?” Flora sidled up to him, a nasty smirk on her face. “I saw her ride off with two men earlier. Guess she’s as loose as we all suspected.”
It took every ounce of effort not to dump the contents of the entire pot, which smelled like a hearty stew, on the horrid girl. With Herculean control, Jasper set the pot on the table.
“I’m sick of your lies, Flora Montgomery. Emma Jane never did a thing to you. She’s a good woman, with more kindness in her pinky than you have in your whole body. You might be jealous that I married her, but let me set the record straight. There is nothing on this earth that would have induced me to offer for you.”
Flora blanched, and for a moment, Jasper felt awful for his cruelty. But when had she ever felt bad for her malicious words about anyone else?
“It’s true,” Flora insisted. “Sarah Crowley saw it, too, didn’t you, Sarah?”
Sarah walked over, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’m afraid so. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation why she’d ride off with two men who were not her husband, sitting on a horse with one of them, and her ankles bared for all to see.”
The looks she and Flora exchanged said that they clearly believed that only Flora’s theory could be true.
Will joined them. “What kind of horses were they?”
Flora made an unladylike noise. “As if I would pay attention to any such thing. I have work to do, so if you’ll excuse me.”
She flounced off, her head held high, and by the exasperated groans from Mary and Polly, it was clear that Flora hadn’t been doing any work at all. Jasper knew all too well that Flora often showed up to make an appearance at charity work so people thought she was helping, but she often just stood around, completely useless.
“What about you, Sarah?” Jasper narrowed his eyes at her, taking over Will’s investigation. Something wasn’t right, even if no one else seemed to care.
Before answering, Sarah looked away, her gaze settling on Flora, who wore such a deep scowl Jasper could hardly fathom why the other girl was considered so beautiful. Disgust filled him once again at the reminder of how he used to flirt with her.
How could he have thought a woman with Flora’s character held any value? An image of Emma Jane popped into his head. She might not have been considered one of the most beautiful women in town, but...
He shook his head. Dwelling on her characteristics wasn’t going to help him find her.
Sarah leaned in and lowered her voice. “Flora thinks it’s unladylike for me to have such admiration for horses, but the only reason we saw Emma Jane was because I�
�d been staring at what a beautifully matched pair of chestnut roans they were. I have not seen such fine horseflesh. I have to go.”
Then she straightened and turned, rejoining Flora.
Will nudged Jasper. “Where have you heard talk of a matched pair of chestnut roans?”
A flash of memory hit. “Didn’t Eric Abernathy come into the sheriff’s office the other day, ranting about his brand-new horses being stolen?”
Will nodded. “That’s right! I remember now. He’d just had them brought over from back east. He was madder than a newly woken bear that no one would form a search party to help find them. We just didn’t have the manpower.”
“I’m sure it’s the gang.” Jasper frowned. “But why would they take Emma Jane?”
A shout sounded from the stalls. “It’s Nancy! She’s dead!”
Jasper and Will ran in the direction of the voice. A woman stood by the door to the stables, sobbing. “I just told Ray... I didn’t mean...”
“Ray? He was here? What did you tell him?” Jasper glowered at her, grabbing her by the elbow. How had he missed one of the gang members in town?
“He’ll kill me, too.” The woman jerked from his grasp, then ran off.
Jasper started to go after her, but Will’s voice stopped him. “Don’t waste your time. Come here. I found something.”
As he stepped over the body, Jasper’s gut clenched. Another woman. Dead. Nancy had warned him that talking to him would get her and Emma Jane killed. Was this the result of Jasper’s actions?
Will held up a Bible. “Recognize this?”
Jasper pulled it out of Will’s hands without even looking at it. He didn’t need to. “Emma Jane hasn’t gone anywhere without it since the wedding.”
The memory of her sitting in her bed in her nightgown, reading that Bible, came back to him. So innocent. Emma Jane hadn’t been part of this fight. All she’d wanted to do was the right thing, to help, and now she was in grave danger.
Why hadn’t she listened to him and just stayed out of it? Knowing Emma Jane, she probably went to talk to Nancy on her own and somehow got caught up in this mess. Clearly, his wife hadn’t realized how dangerous the people they were dealing with were. She should have trusted him.
“You think she saw the murder and they took her to keep her quiet?” Will motioned toward the body.
Jasper swallowed the lump in his throat. “Why didn’t they just kill her?”
“A Jackson?” The tone in Will’s voice reminded him of how Will had come into his life. After Will had saved Henry’s life, Henry had asked Will to teach Jasper how to protect himself. Growing up, there’d been a number of kidnapping threats.
He’d just never imagined that, as an adult, those threats would still be there. Despite everything Jasper had done to learn to protect himself, he’d forgotten one important lesson. Passing those lessons on to his wife. Especially a headstrong one who didn’t trust him to do the right thing and took matters into her own hands.
“I never thought...” Jasper’s head spun as he realized the danger Emma Jane was in.
“Emma Jane is tough. You told me yourself that, during the mine cave-in, she possessed an inner strength you admired. She’ll get through this, too.”
Jasper nodded slowly, his gaze drawn back to Nancy’s body. What would they do to Emma Jane? His gut churned at the thought. Was this because she was a Jackson, or was this Nancy’s warning coming true? Or had Emma Jane somehow become more involved in trying to solve the case?
He looked around for clues, for any signs of struggle, but other than the dead woman lying at the entrance to the stall, the barn looked exactly as it should.
Will walked over to the other side of the stall area, leading out to the street.
“Over here!”
Jasper quickly joined him, looking at the place Will indicated on the ground.
“There haven’t been any horses staying in this barn since we put the women up in here. Two sets of horseshoe prints. That has to be the kidnappers.”
The prints left a clear trail as far as Jasper could see. Fortunately, the barn was at the edge of town, and the trail went straight into the brush, where other horses weren’t likely to tread on them. Easy enough to follow.
“I’ll get the horses.” Jasper started toward where he’d left his mount without waiting for Will’s response.
“We should get the sheriff first.”
Jasper didn’t pause. “You get the sheriff. I’m going after my wife. I’ll leave tracks so you can catch up.”
Chapter Eight
“What were you thinking, bringing him here? Bad enough you brought the woman, now him?”
Emma Jane looked up from the fire, where she’d been heating up a soup she’d cobbled together from the meager ingredients she’d found in the cabin. She’d realized pretty quickly that fighting the men would drain her of any energy she’d need to survive and, eventually, escape. For now, she’d make the best of things, and if cooking supper was part of it, at least she wouldn’t go to bed hungry.
Two men were dragging an unconscious Jasper into the cabin. His hands were tied behind his back, and a handkerchief had been tied around his mouth.
“Jasper!”
She started toward him, but the leader of the gang, the dark-haired man who’d objected to Jasper’s presence, pointed his gun at her. “You get back to tending that meal. I’ve still got half a mind to kill you, but so long as you’re useful, I might let you live.”
Emma Jane tried swallowing the lump in her throat, but it remained lodged in place. How had Jasper come to be here? Her heart sank and turned over in her stomach as she realized that he’d probably come after her, putting himself in danger in the process.
The men dropped Jasper on the dirt floor, his body thudding on the ground. A trail of dried blood had clotted down the side of his face. For a moment, Emma Jane’s breath caught. But then his chest rose and fell slightly. It was enough to let her take a breath, but not enough to ease the tightness in her chest.
“He’s injured,” Emma Jane said quietly but not moving. “Supper should be ready soon. Let me tend to him.”
“He’ll be fine. Just a knock on the head.” Ray, one of the men who’d kidnapped her, nudged his partner. “Might have been a little harder than we intended, but we got the job done.”
“What job?” Their leader walked over and smacked Ray on the side of the head. “Seems to me every job I give you gets messed up. You were supposed to go into town to take care of Nancy. You come back with her.”
He pointed at Emma Jane, giving her a dark look. “I do not need another woman in this place.”
As if to remind them of her existence, the other woman began coughing again. When Emma Jane had arrived, the woman had been coughing up a storm, delirious with fever. She’d felt so bad for the poor woman and had been doing what she could to make her more comfortable.
The woman also had a small baby boy, now sleeping inside an old crate near the fire. When Emma Jane had arrived, the baby was nestled in with his mother. With the woman’s raging fever, Emma Jane worried that the baby might get sick. She’d put together a makeshift bottle from odds and ends she’d found in the cabin, and one of the men, Mack, had given her some goat’s milk. Not the best solution, Emma Jane knew, but with the way the baby had gobbled up the milk, she’d probably saved the baby’s life. Already color was returning to the baby’s cheeks, and he had stopped whimpering. Mack commented that it was the first time the baby had quieted in days.
Emma Jane went to the fire to stir the soup. Tasting it, she deemed it fit to eat. Perhaps if the men had a little food in their bellies, they wouldn’t be so cantankerous. Which meant that maybe they wouldn’t be so eager with their guns.
A nearby shelf held some bowls, and as Emma Jane dished out the soup, the m
en continued arguing.
“I told you, she was there when I did it. I didn’t want her talking. I’d have shot her then, but Jimmy said killing a Jackson was a bad idea.”
“And you didn’t think to check for witnesses before doing it?” The leader blew out an irate breath as Emma Jane handed him a bowl.
“You didn’t put anything in this, did you?”
He eyed her warily, and for a moment, Emma Jane wished she had put poison in the soup. Of course, she had no idea what she could have used as one. It wasn’t as though there were bottles labeled Poison lying around.
“No.” She handed another bowl to the one called Jimmy. After all, she owed him her life. Were it not for him, Ray would have killed her.
“Prove it. Take a bite out of my bowl.”
Emma Jane did as he asked, looking him in the eye as she took a spoonful of his soup.
Satisfied, the man grunted and waved her away. “As I was saying, Ray, you’re a disgrace. I gave you a simple job, and you fouled that up. But that doesn’t explain how you ended up bringing him here.”
Ray pointed at Jimmy. “Ask him. He’s the one who had that idea, too.”
Jimmy set down his soup. “Same reason we grabbed the girl. There’s no way we’d get away with killing a Jackson. We went back to clean up our tracks, and he had started tracking us. Figured it was easier to knock him out and take him prisoner than it was to spend the rest of our lives running. You kill someone with that much money and power, there’s no way you’ll ever stop running, even if you do make it to Mexico.”
“I’m not afraid of no Jackson,” Ray declared.
“You should be.” Jimmy stood, then pointed at Jasper. “We might have the law around here handled, but his father has the money to buy more law than we can. I know a guy who tried robbing him once. Trust me when I say that you cross a man as powerful as Jackson, you’ll wish you were dead.”
His answer seemed to satisfy the leader, who stood. “We’ll continue this conversation outside. No need for big ears to learn the rest of our plan.”
He looked pointedly at Emma Jane, but she didn’t care. If the men left the cabin, she could tend to Jasper’s wounds.
Shotgun Marriage (Leadville, Co. Book 3) Page 9
