by Ann Charles
The washcloth paused. “Your brother is your father’s son, right?”
I opened my eyes. “Yeah, why?”
“Nothing.” He went back to cleaning my wounds.
Nothing my ass. “Cough it up, Doc.”
“I was just wondering if there’s a connection between his quick healing and you being an Executioner, but I’m probably way off.”
I chewed on the idea of Quint having a part in this “other” world business for a moment. Wouldn’t he have mentioned if he were experiencing some of this bizarre shit?
“How many of those things back in Slagton did you take out?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Not nearly as many as you, Killer.” His breath was cool on my damp skin. “Those chimeras were strong and fast.”
Chimeras? Harvey must have told Doc what Dominick called the creatures.
“And relentless,” I added. “Thanks for coming in swinging and saving me.”
“You’re welcome.” He lowered the washcloth, inspecting his work.
I checked out the scratches. I’d had worse before and skipped the stitches then, too. The scarring would be minor.
“You’re hard on a guy, Violet.”
I looked up into his eyes. “Why’s that?”
Doc draped the washcloth over the faucet. “You were incredible out there, moving unnaturally fast, belting and stabbing like a killing machine, working that crowbar with the strength of two men. If you’d been wearing boots with tread on them, you would’ve probably taken out twice as many as you did.”
A killing machine. That gave me pause. I was a mom with two kids who had struggled for the last decade to provide for them and not screw up their heads in the process. I frowned down at my palms. With these hands I had killed not one or two chimeras back in Slagton today, but so many that I’d lost count in the thick of battle. How had it come to this?
“It was all I could do to fend those things off one at a time,” Doc continued. “When I looked over in the midst of the chaos, there you were, mowing down one after another with only a damned crowbar and a steering wheel.” He lifted my chin so I could meet his teasing gaze. “A man with a small fishing rod might suffer from a jarring blow to his ego after watching you in action, Tish.”
That snapped me out of my reverie. I chuckled, playing along. “Gomez, dear, what’s a poor girl to do? You know how wreaking havoc in lethal doses makes my heart pitter-patter.”
“Mi querida.” He leaned down, giving me a soft kiss. “I’ve been wanting to do that for the last hour.”
“What took you so long?”
He turned my head so I could see my reflection in the mirror. “I was waiting for some of the dust to clear.”
I picked some black fur and feathers from my hair, grimacing as I dropped them in the garbage bag with my sweatshirt. “Did any of them explode when you killed them?”
“No.”
“When Harvey shot that one by the car point-blank, it didn’t explode either. But every time I killed one, it blew up in my face. Why do you think that is?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s part of the Executioner package deal.”
I scowled. “There is so much of this I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, but together we’ll figure it out.”
“Or die trying.”
He stared at me in the mirror, suddenly serious. “That’s not an option.”
“I’m not saying I want to die.”
“Good. I’ve grown kind of fond of you and have plans for us.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “You. Me. Your underwear drawer. Fishing.”
“Dang. And here I thought you were going to say something about your hands, hot oil, my naked skin, and a deep-tissue massage.”
“Well, that’s certainly another way of saying what I’d like to do after you shower.”
“After I shower?” I smiled extra wide in the mirror, batting my eyelashes at him. “You mean I’m not irresistible now in all of my post-Executioner glory?”
“Oh, you’re still tempting.” He took my hand, raising it to his lips for a kiss. “To prove it to you, I’m willing to strip down and help you shower.”
I considered that scene for a few seconds, but practicality won out. “I’ll take a rain check on the shower. Cleaning off this mess isn’t going to be very sexy.”
He helped me down from the sink and then turned on the shower.
“I want it extra hot this time,” I told him.
“Sweetheart, we’ve been together long enough that I know how hot you like it—both in and out of the shower.”
Yes, he did.
He pulled the curtain back and hung a fresh towel over the rod. “I’ll be back when you’re finished to bandage those wounds.” He opened the door. “Do you need anything else?”
Yes, but I didn’t know how to ask for it. “No, thanks.” He started to shut the door behind him. “Hey, Doc,” I called out.
He looked back. “Yeah?”
“I love you.”
His mouth curved slowly upward. “You don’t say?”
I nodded. “Will you stay with me at Aunt Zoe’s again tonight?”
“There’s no place I’d rather be than in your bed, Boots.”
After the door shut behind him, I stuffed my bloodstained jeans in the garbage bag. Then I stripped off my bra and underwear and rolled them in a ball with my socks and cashmere leggings to wash later at Aunt Zoe’s.
In the shower, I stood under the hot water with my eyes closed, letting it wash away the layers of death coating my skin. The day’s battle scenes flashed through my thoughts. I analyzed what I’d done wrong, rehashed what I’d done right.
After scrubbing from head to toe with shampoo and Doc’s soap, I shut off the water. With the towel wrapped around me sarong-style, I stood in front of the steamed mirror. A swipe with the hand towel showed the girl I knew. I smiled, touching my cheek, my nose. It was all the same as before. Who knew a “killing machine” had been hidden under my skin all of this time? I sure hadn’t.
“Violet?” Doc said from the other side of the door.
I opened it, noticing the first-aid kit in his hands. “Do you want to play doctor in here or on your bed?”
“My bed. It’s less steamy out here.”
“I don’t know.” I moved over to his bed, sitting on the corner. “The last time we bounced around on this puppy, we got very steamy.”
He pulled a bandage from the kit. “Quit flirting with the doctor.”
“How about I play with your thermometer while you work?”
“Keep your hands to yourself, vixen, or you might get more than you can handle.”
“Promises, promises.”
A few minutes later, my shoulder was bandaged and my arms were covered with chills.
“You’re cold,” Doc said, bringing my clothes from the bathroom. “Get dressed and come downstairs. I’ll make you some hot buttered rum. It won’t be as good as your aunt’s, but it will warm you up inside and out.”
“You sure you don’t want to stay and heat me up some other way?” It was rare we had time alone together in his bedroom, and it seemed a shame to waste an opportunity.
“If you’re asking if I’d like to unwrap that towel and inspect your skin inch by inch with my mouth, the answer is ‘Hell yes.’ However, you’re dead on your feet and my ribs are killing me after today’s fun and games. Not to mention, we have company downstairs.”
I’d forgotten about Cooper and Harvey. “I’ll be down shortly.”
He started to walk toward the door leading to the back stairs that exited into the kitchen, but then strode back over to me.
“I just need to do one thing,” he said, unfastening my towel. He pulled it open, his gaze sliding down over my peaks and curves as he sucked air in through his teeth. “Damn.”
His obvious admiration made my libido purr. “It’s all yours, Doc.” I meant that, too, with every cell of my body,
and mooned up at him like a shrieking Elvis groupie.
Doc wrapped the towel around me again, hitting me with a pulse-pounding smolder. “I love you, too, Violet.”
He pulled me against him, leaning down to hit me with a slow, tender kiss that nearly made my towel catch on fire.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat,” I whispered when he stepped back. “Your kisses are like crack cocaine.”
“You inspire me, Boots.” He patted my bottom through the terry cloth. “Cookies and hot buttered rum will be waiting in the kitchen.”
After he disappeared down the back stairs, I slid my clothes on. Since Harvey had only grabbed a pair of underwear, not a bra, I had to borrow a sweatshirt from Doc to hide my bare fun-bags poking out through my T-shirt. I took the back stairs, joining Doc and Harvey in the kitchen.
Doc was leaning against the counter next to the stove, drinking a glass of water. His gaze raked down my front side. “I like my clothes on you better than on me.” He lifted the bottle of liquor sitting on the counter next to him. “You ready for some rum?”
I nodded. “Where’s Cooper?”
“He got a call from the station,” Harvey said. He was sitting at the bar eating cookies—dark chocolate with butterscotch bits by the look of them. “Something about a hit-and-run.”
My stomach pawed the ground, growling about those cookies. I perched on the stool next to Harvey and stole one from the plate in front of him. “That’s like the second one in days.”
“It’s a might slippery out there fer the tourists.”
I guess that might explain it, but for a small town like Deadwood, it seemed odd.
Taking the mug of buttered rum from Doc, I blew him a kiss. The sweet, warm liquor coated my tongue, heating my throat all of the way down the hatch.
“Thanks for sharing,” I told the old buzzard and bit into a cookie. Rich chocolate and creamy butterscotch coated my tongue. My eyes fluttered closed for a moment as a burst of flavor drew a low moan from my chest. “Oh my God, Harvey.” I grabbed two more from the plate, cramming the rest of the first in my mouth. “Did you buy these at the store?” I asked through gooey, chocolate heaven.
He snorted. “Bite yer tongue, girlie. That’s one of my momma’s recipes.”
“Damn. You’d make a helluva catch for a hungry lady.”
He scowled at my goofy grin. “Now don’t be gettin’ any notions about you and me unitin’ in holy bedlock. I’m allergic to bein’ bridled and tied to any female.”
I giggled. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
Harvey pointed a cookie at Doc. “There’s yer huckleberry. Young stallions like him ain’t against being roped and ridden.”
My cheeks warmed at the hint about marriage to Doc. Recently, he’d made it clear that wedding bands might be an option someday, but we hadn’t taken things any farther than that baby step.
Doc grinned. “Are we talking about riding bareback or saddled?”
“Well, saddles tend to chafe, leavin’ ya raw in all the wrong ways. Bareback will make ya bounce around like a colt in clover.”
“You would know, dirty buzzard.” I took another bite of cookie, keeping my moans to myself this time. It was time to change the subject before Harvey said something that made me squirm enough to slide off my barstool. “Seven,” I told my bodyguard after swallowing a mouthful of cookie.
“Seven what?”
“I added my kills while I was showering. I remember seven of those things blowing up in my face, and I think five or six were injured.”
Doc set his empty glass on the counter. “You were counting kills while you were taking a shower?”
Harvey snickered. “Seems like a waste of a wet female and hot water, if ya ask me.”
“Nobody asked you.” I snapped one of his suspenders. I took another sip of warm rum, chasing away the chilling memories of all those pointy teeth. “I was trying to figure out how many of them had been waiting for us, and what we have to face when we go back.”
“Go back?” Doc frowned.
I nodded. “We have to finish this.”
“Is that Violet the Executioner talking?” Doc asked.
Chewing on another cookie, I considered his question. Was this a matter of my Executioner pride being injured? Was it a need to kill no matter the cost because that was what I was programmed to do now? I looked from Harvey to Doc, lingering on the latter who’d stood next to me in the face of death, putting his life on the line to protect mine once more.
“No,” I answered. “This is the mother of two kids speaking. The girl who doesn’t want to risk the lives of those she holds dear when those toothy bastards come looking for her.” I broke the cookie in half, eyeing Doc. “You’re partially right, though. The Executioner has a say in this, too. She’s pissed as hell about how close she came to losing two people very near and dear to her heart in that ambush.”
“Only two?” Doc asked.
“Okay, Cooper, too. But you need to tell him to stop yelling at me in the midst of battle.”
“You hit him in the head with a crowbar,” he reminded me.
“Not on purpose.”
Harvey chortled next to me. “Coop’s gonna take a ribbin’ for that gash on his forehead from his buddies in blue.”
I winced. “Is he still pissed at me for that?”
“No.” Doc leaned his elbows on the bar. “He was too busy feeling guilty for the rookie mistake of taking us back there today.”
“We’re all rookies when it comes to this Executioner business.”
“Explain that to him.”
I would, the next time we had a moment alone and weren’t ramming our horns together. “Any idea how many you two and Cooper took out of the game permanently?”
The three of us spent the next ten minutes replaying the scene, adding up the dead and injured with Doc and Harvey estimating Cooper’s take since each of them had fired shots alongside the detective. In the end, we came up with Cooper taking out two for sure with his Colt .45, Harvey and Bessie blasting three to pieces, and Doc killing three with the steering shaft, which included the one he’d stopped from taking me out. With my seven ash clouds, that made fifteen confirmed dead and around ten more injured to some degree.
“Christ.” Doc looked at me. “And you want to go back?”
I nodded. “There’s another reason I haven’t told you.”
Shaking the cookie crumbs from his beard, Harvey’s eyes narrowed. “Daylight’s burnin’, girlie. Spit it out.”
“I need to go inside that woodshed next to the old Plymouth.”
“Why?”
“There was something hiding in there, and it knew my name.”
* * *
As soon as I finished my hot buttered rum, we packed up and returned to Aunt Zoe’s for the night. The kids were watching a Christmas special on television and barely looked my way as I kissed them each multiple times on top of the head. Ahhhhh, normal life.
I ran upstairs and put on a bra under my T-shirt, but I kept Doc’s sweatshirt on because it made me grin like a silly ninny when I looked in the mirror. Maybe I was being juvenile, but it’d been a long time since I’d had a man in my life, and getting to wear his shirts made me feel cherished, especially after the way Doc kept eyeing me at his place.
The smell of baked cheese and potatoes lured me downstairs. According to Harvey, supper tonight was going to be ham steaks with Aunt Zoe’s hearty, three-cheese scalloped potatoes. Just the thought of one cheese with my potatoes had me drooling, let alone three. Those cookies I’d inhaled at Doc’s place didn’t even put a dent in my hunger.
When I joined Harvey and Doc in the kitchen, Aunt Zoe looked over at me from where she was cleaning mushrooms and tomatoes at the sink. A bowl of green leaf lettuce sat next to her on the counter.
Her gaze dipped to Doc’s sweatshirt and then climbed to my damp hair. “Did you have a fun afternoon with Doc?” Her eyes twinkled.
I thumbed at Doc’s sweatshirt. “This isn’t wha
t it looks like.”
“It’s not your boyfriend’s shirt?” she joked, her smile wide as she glanced at Doc, who was getting plates down from the cupboard.
“Sparky got into a bit of a pickle today at work,” Harvey said, grabbing one of Aunt Zoe’s aprons from the pantry.
“A pickle, huh?” She scowled. “What’s your sexist boss having you do now to promote his damned business? Whipped-cream dunk tanks? Bikini mud wrestling down at the Prairie Dog Palace?”
“I was referrin’ to her other job, the one where she kills trouble-makin’ critters.” Harvey finished tying the apron and opened the refrigerator, as if he hadn’t dropped a truth bomb on Aunt Zoe.
“We need to buy some whipped cream, Boots,” Doc whispered in my ear as he passed, carrying plates to the table.
She lowered the knife, her face becoming serious. “What happened?”
I checked to make sure the kids were still immersed in the Christmas show before answering. “We took a trip back to Slagton this afternoon,” I said in a quiet voice. “Shit kind of blew up in our faces.”
“Blew up how?”
“We were ambushed,” Harvey explained, grabbing a big chunk of ham from the fridge and setting it on the cutting board.
Doc walked over and nudged Aunt Zoe aside, handing her a dishtowel. He grabbed a knife and begin cutting up the tomatoes she’d cleaned.
For the next few minutes, Harvey and I took turns telling her about the Slagton fiasco, while Doc added tidbits along the story trail.
When we finished, Aunt Zoe came over and wrapped me in a tight hug. Then she cupped my cheeks and kissed my forehead. “We need to make sure you’re better prepared.”
“For what?” I asked.
Her blue eyes held mine. “Next time.”
“Next time?” Doc frowned over his shoulder. “You’re okay with Violet going back there again?”
After planting another kiss on my forehead, Aunt Zoe let me go. “Of course. She needs to finish what she started, or the retribution will be worse.” She started collecting silverware from the drawer.
“Retribution,” I repeated, lowering into my usual chair. She’d confirmed my earlier suspicions.
