by Amber Scott
“Samantha is thrown back in time face to face with sexy bandit Jesse Kincaid. This is one hot romance that will scorch your fingers with each turn of the page.”
-Elena Gray,
Author, Widowmaker
“Hold on tight because this one will steal your heart.”
-Carolyn McCray
Kindle Bestselling Author, Fated
WANTED
By Amber Scott
©2011 Amber Scott
Start Reading
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Sneak Peek
Acknowledgements
Bookshelf
Copyright
~~~
Chapter One
Samantha Hendricks didn’t know which felt worse—the numbness that settled around her heart for long hours at a time, making her wonder if she hadn’t loved her dad, or the sudden rip of pain that shot through, taking her by surprise and removing any doubts.
Henry Hendricks might not have been the best dad. But yes, she loved him and couldn’t believe he was gone. Somewhere in the single-wide trailer, her cousin roamed around, fussing with tidying up, giving Sam some space. Maybe stocking the fridge with leftovers. Potato salad and burnt rolls.
The bed sat neatly made. Coins lay on the table. A couple thousand Post-its took up one faux wood-paneled wall. Sam sat with a huff onto her dad’s bedroom floor and stared from the taped-up cardboard box to the letter written in her dad’s elegant scroll. “Sammie, if you’re reading this, then I am dead.”
Dead. Yep. Gone.
The bank owned the trailer, and the pawnshop owned the truck title. Sam got this box when what she needed, he once again, couldn’t give her.
This side up. She didn’t want to open it. Instead, she rotated it on the carpet with one finger. The carpet shushed with the movement. Fragile. Whatever that duct tape protected, maybe should stay a mystery. Right now, numb felt good. Opening that box could open up the hurt.
The single-wide’s thin walls groaned against the outside wind. Footsteps squeaking down the hall warned her that Mary, her cousin, was outside. Samantha schooled her features and smoothed back her hair.
Mary knocked before opening the door. Samantha looked up, resisted the urge to roll her eyes over the older woman’s empathetic gaze. Pity. Loud and clear. Not just because Samantha’s dad died six days ago on his way to his mailbox, or so the coroner and sheriff concluded. Mary felt sorry for Samantha for more than that. Exactly what more, Samantha couldn’t say. Her new orphan status, maybe, or her being unmarried at twenty-five and starting law school, thereby doomed to spinsterhood. Who knew?
Maybe because Samantha and her father hadn’t seen or talked to each other in more than two years. Didn’t matter now. “Heading home?” Samantha asked.
Mary nodded. Her hands wrestled each other. “Yep. Heading home. Unless you need anything?”
Samantha smiled despite the urge to scowl. Mary sounded desperate to stay, to help. She’d done so much already. “No. Thank you. Really, Mary, you’ve done far more than I could ask.” Far more. The funeral arrangements, the flower arrangements, dinner arrangements.
Mary’s hands went still and gripped each other. “Well, then, I suppose I’ll go. My number is on the fridge, should you need me. Call anytime. Herb can’t hear a thing and refuses to get a hearing aid, and I’m a night owl, always have been, so...”
Samantha nodded and shoved her hands behind her, wishing she wore jeans with deep back pockets instead of the plain wool skirt. “I will.” She wouldn’t. “Promise.”
“All right, then.” Mary’s hands released, and before Samantha could blink, the woman got her into a tight hug. Shorter and heavier, particularly up top, Mary felt like a big, squishy stress ball. She didn’t simply hug, she rocked. To and fro, to and fro. Samantha gave in and hugged her back in hopes it would buy her an out.
Mary only held tighter, then pulled back, holding onto Samantha’s shoulders. Her lips pursed, her eyes glistened, and Samantha’s stomach knotted tighter. “Let me walk you out, Mary.”
Another hug and another promise later, Mary and her cloud of powdery perfume left Sam alone. Samantha returned to the bedroom and her illustrious inheritance. She had to head back to Reno tomorrow. First thing in the morning, really. Mary would go through Henry’s things. Donate his clothes.
All Sam had to do was sleep. Grieve.
She could open the box anytime. Didn’t matter when.
Or did it?
Missing her jeans again, she scowled at the box. She sat on the floor and crisscrossed her legs. Tentatively, she picked it up and gave it a shake. Nothing inside moved, and it wasn’t all that weighty. Hmmp.
Slosh.
She shook it again, listening. “Liquid?” she asked the box. What could be liquid inside? Perfume? Maybe, if it was a Christmas gift, but it had been years since he’d loaded her stocking with “all that female stuff.”
She set the box down and fingered a lip of the tape. How long ago had he put this box together? No dust. The tape looked and felt new. Her curiosity climbed. And with it, ever so slightly, the awful numbness receded.
“Screw it.”
She got enough of the tape loose to rip the rest off. One strip at each seam. Off and wadded into a ball that she tossed at the particle-board dresser. She put her palms on the papery surface and took a deep breath. She could do this. It would bring her closure. That’s what she needed. Closure. So that she could function again instead of live like a zombie.
Sam tipped up one flap, the next. Pink foam popcorn spilled over as she dug a hand in to feel around. Her hands felt smooth glass. She pulled out the bottle by the neck. Brown liquid sloshed inside an old wax-sealed bottle. Samantha rubbed the contours, confused. Booze? He gave her booze?
Shaking her head, she dug through the popcorn some more, not caring how much spilled out. She felt down to the very bottom. Plastic. Like a book report sleeve from middle school biology. She pulled out two pages of it. Her heart sank to her toes. One sleeve contained a well- worn map a pirate would give his left hook for. The other, an all-too-familiar sketched image of gentleman bank robber, Jesse Kincaid.
WANTED: Jesse Kincaid. Dead or Alive.
Shocker. Her inheritance was the paraphernalia of her dad’s lifelong obsession? Gee. Thanks, Dad.
What else had she expected, though? Money for college? Photo albums? Jewelry?
Better yet, what in hell did he expect her to do with this stuff? Keep it? Carry on the quest in his stead? Sure, right between her next attempt to high score the LSAT and the first day of law school. Conveniently, his death letter failed to mention why she got any of it—only that she did, and that one day she would know why.
Samantha read the letter again. No. Not “know why.” “Understand.” One day she would understand. She snorted. Not likely. She never understood her father’s obsession. Why bother starting now? Much as she might one day want something sentimental of his, some keepsake to show her future children, herself, that she had been loved and well thought of, these were not proof. The measly six—make that seven—lines (inc
luding the cliché opener and the closing, “I will always love you.”) would not do the job, either.
No one to dispute this and put it through probate. No siblings to fight over the treasure map, and no one to toast a shot of whiskey with her, either. Inky black eyes stared up from the poster.
Wanted.
What she wanted was the $10,000 reward the stupid thing promised. Probably a pretty penny back then. Not much now. Enough to get her through USD’s law school’s doors this fall, no more. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she told Kincaid.
A heart attack, of all things, when her dad had been reasonably young and fit, a daily runner, and only an occasional pipe smoker. Unless things had changed in two years.
Setting aside the poster, Samantha sagged back against the aged double bed and studied the map. She turned over the thick, waxy paper. It looked old, but looks were deceiving. Probably a replica rather than an original. Taped to the back was a worn photocopy of the original map, marked and annotated in her father’s handwriting. All these copious notes, and marks that guided her eyes through the map, would make a Kincaid treasure enthusiast drool.
The whiskey—she could only assume the amber liquid was, in fact, whiskey—perplexed her. It didn’t even have a label, only watery slaps against foggy glass.
The whole place smelled like him, but mostly in here. Stale, cherry-scented smoke and Brut. She hadn’t thought she’d ever miss his smell, or him. She found she did. Now only scent remained to burden memory, his life wasted chasing a pipe dream.
Samantha swiped away a tear and surveyed the room. He’d died a better housekeeper. Neat. The same bed her mother used to tuck Samantha into, snuggled between them on cold mornings, lay made. Everything was clean, tidy in a symmetrical way she didn’t recognize. She didn’t know what it all meant. She barely knew her father in life. Why would death be any different?
Jesse Kincaid stared up at her, the whiskey next to his stubble-shadowed chin.
What about the outlaw had so fascinated Henry Hendricks all these years? When had it started? Before Mom died? After?
The gentleman robber. Glimpses, recollections of sitting with her father, and an Old West fairy tale tugged at her mind. Samantha pushed them back and shook herself out of her thoughts. She should call home. Charles, her roommate and closest friend, would want to know she’d made it through the day, and what hour to expect her back. “The post mortem, babes, pun intended,” he’d said. Charles liked to keep an eye on her, and he would worry.
She didn’t move to her cell phone or her father’s rotary phone next to it on the nightstand. Instead, she stared at Jesse Kincaid’s cunning eyes and those stupid words. Wanted: Dead or Alive.
Somewhere in her memory, his robbery count, even some of the locales, sat dormant, unused since childhood, stories told and retold while she sat on her father’s lap. Buried treasure.
She reached down for the three items again, laid them out on the bed. A ragged sigh escaped her. What she wouldn’t give for a small break from this heaviness inside. She grabbed the bottle. Knowing somewhere in heaven her mother was wincing, she uncorked the whiskey with her teeth.
She sniffed the bottle’s mouth. Yep. Definitely malt liquor, though if it was single, double, or whatever else, she couldn’t say. Whiskey wasn’t her drink. A martini wet, dry, or even blue, yes. A glass of wine, maybe. Whiskey, nope. She didn’t need the hair her father liked to say it put on his chest. It didn’t smell bad, though, sort of sweet. Like hot candy. The already broken wax seal proved she wasn’t the first to open the thing, but it was mostly full.
Curious and a bit miserable, she tasted. The hot part, she’d gotten right. The drink burned from her lips to her throat, leaving a strange trail all the way down to her belly.
A bare hint of sweetness came at the very last. Breathing out, Samantha puckered her face. Why on earth would anyone drink such dreadful stuff, let alone bequeath it to his only daughter? She sighed in frustration and missed him all the more.
Her belly and shoulders warmed. Tingled a bit. If she ever had to, she might learn to like it. A little.
“Well, Dad, I hope this makes you happy.” She toasted the empty room. The walls hardly held in the sound. “But it had better not put a single extra hair on any part of my body.” She tried to laugh.
He would have laughed. He would have said something funny and cutting. “Nah, you’ve got enough already,” or, “It’ll make you sophisticated, European-like.” The emotional wall she’d been slowly bricking upward since high school, when he became so consumed by his outlaw-quest that he failed to notice if she was even home, let alone still in school, broke. Sam drank another sip. A good burn this time, not as severe, and, in a way, sweeter than the last.
The table lamp burned yellow, making the walls and carpeting and comforter orangey rather than the sunnier color she’d found that morning. It suited the sickness inside her.
The tears burned nearly as much as the whiskey. A sob shook her chest, choking up her throat. Gone. He wouldn’t see her finish law school; he’d never hold her babies. All these fruitless, empty years of waiting for him to notice her. To miss her.
All she had was this stupid booze. Some memorabilia.
“Figures,” she whispered, looking out the window. A full moon radiated light outward, creating eerie, little rainbow rings. Stars fluttered in the darkness.
She drank another pull from the bottle, let it burn, and let the tears run.
She was damned tired. A hint of drunkenness began to settle into her muscles.
First, the bumpy flight into Reno, the rental car, two and a half hours of sagebrush-spotted barrenness until Winnemucca snailed into view. All three traffic lights turned red on her drive through downtown to her father’s small spread. She sensed the whole town knew, and everyone talked softer, like children in a library, until she passed by.
A surprisingly nice funeral. The whole place filled wall to wall. She never knew how well known or well loved Henry Hendricks had been. It seemed every last person in town knew who she was, where she was going in life, but not a single face rang safe or familiar to her.
The day blurred past with hugs and sympathetic smiles, rubs on her shoulder. Tuition due, no word on loans, rent. Loneliness. A sob hiccupped out of her. No one to hear or see her cry. So she cried until no more tears could wrench free and, a little bit drunk, sore-eyed, and heavyhearted, climbed into her parents’ bed, sadly noticing how small it felt.
It was all that damned Kincaid’s fault.
As her eyes drifted closed and sleep wrapped comforting arms around her, she prayed gentleman outlaw Jesse Kincaid had earned his own corner in hell for all he’d stolen.
*
The campfire crackled and sparked. Pretty near Hinkey Summit, Jesse grew confident he and his two campmates were alone. He’d gone out to scout the area, though, just to be sure. With more than ten men on horseback following less than an hour behind, one might have gotten lucky.
The robbery went as smooth as ever. Most did. Started when that truth-stretching reporter picked up their scent, offering his “unbiased observing and reporting for the common good.” Nowadays, bankers almost smiled when they saw his gun. Like he’d blessed them. What good came out of misguiding the public about mannerly robbing, Jesse’d never know.
Winnemucca was still a small enough town to make it easy, even if his illustrious reputation preceded them once again. Made the stealing easier, the hiding a hell of a lot harder.
He longed for a good, warm bed and some well-cooked food instead of a godforsaken campsite among the birches and brush. The dried meat boiling in potato broth did little more’n fill the angry hole in his gut.
Jesse walked soft in his hard-soled boots. In truth, the fire would attract anyone who’d followed them this far north. But they needed it, and Jesse gauged the risk as low. His two partners-in-arms were back there now, readying food, likely complaining about their smaller share of the loot.
Jesse could
care less. Avoiding the noose took precedence over hurt feelings at his bigger portion. When he told them he took no more than they got, they didn’t believe him, and he didn’t like explaining what the fourth portion was for. He did the robbing. His neck was the one wanted. He got the larger share. That was that.
The fourth portion would go to an orphanage this time ‘round but might’ve gone to another needful place, as it was intended, depending on what day and where he’d happened upon. If it didn’t go somewhere, he’d be no more than a common, greedy criminal. Like his companions.
Which was why he’d long since stopped trying to explain his motives or the loot-distribution system to the two blockheads. They wouldn’t care.
After leaving the camp as unobtrusively as possible, he’d tramped about it in circles. A near-full moon gave him plenty of visibility, but he didn’t like to trust his eyes alone. Listening to the night sounds, he heard the creek gurgling nearby. He went to it, alert for hoofbeats, soft neighing, a snort. A man could hold his breath, keep everything stone-still—except his heart. A beast didn’t know any better.
Well, his stallion Diamond might. He was Apache trained, and a rarity. Hearing nothing beyond the chirping summer night, Jesse turned back for camp, taking the long way in.
A twig snapped under his boot. He stopped. Listened. He smelled the air. Something was different. He couldn’t quite place what, though. A shiver ran over his skin from the inside out. A low wind rustled the leaves, whispering over the babble of water behind him. He heard it. A whimper. Soft—no horse and no man. He’d recognize the sound of a woman anywhere, and one was close ... crying.
A trap. The thought raced into his head and slammed his heart to life. He scoured the ground and foliage, his senses on the alert for a sound beyond the whimper, to confirm his fears and rid his gut of plain fear.
Near the stream, lying on the ground beneath a scattering of yearling trees, Jesse spotted a snaking tendril of blonde hair. Among the shadows, it stood out like moonlight on water.
