Montana Surrender

by Simmons, Trana Mae

  "Is that gold worth you hanging from your own rope, David?" Harlin demanded. "If it is, you're on your own. I can arrange Storm's death, but there's not time to make sure Idalee and Gant can't get to that marshal. I'm not staying around to watch you hang, too."

  "Don't leave me, Harlin."

  "Then for once in your life listen, David. The money left in the bank can get us going somewhere else. I'll clean it out after the town takes care of Storm and meet you at the Lazy B. We'll have all night to get on our way. You take this bitch with you. The rest of them back at Tobias's will be out of our hair looking for her. Just make sure you keep her alive. Remember, she's our ticket out of here."

  "Idalee will still be alive."

  "Jesus, David! We'll hire someone to come back and take care of her — someone I pick this time, instead of that unreliable scum you always get hooked up with!"

  "You'll never get away with this!" Jessica screamed.

  "Shut up!" Harlin snarled. "And get on your feet, unless you want me to change my mind and get rid of your lover over there right now. If you give me even one more minute's trouble, I'll forget all my plans and do just that."

  "You're going to kill us anyway," Jessica said around a sob.

  "Do you want to lie there and watch me kill Storm first?" Harlin said as he stared down into Jessica's frantic eyes. "I saw you in his arms when we came up. Do you want to watch him die, inch by inch?"

  Terror clogged Jessica's throat as she caught a glint of the madness she had recognized in David's eyes growing in Harlin's. She shook her head wildly and tried to rise to her feet.

  Harlin reached down and jerked Jessica up before him, keeping a firm grip on her arm as he bent his face close to hers. "Then you better do exactly as I tell you," he said in a icy voice. "You're going to walk ahead of us while David brings Storm. If you make one wrong move, I'm going to help David kill him. Slowly."

  "He's hurt. He can't walk."

  Harlin ignored the plea in Jessica's sobbing voice. "Tie Storm's hands and go get a hatful of water from the stream, David," he ordered. "We've got to get back to the horses so we can ride out of here."

  The frenzied terror clouding Jessica's mind heightened as she watched David tie Storm and head for the creek. Each time Harlin glanced away from her to assure himself David followed his orders, she wrenched at the bound hands behind her back. But the knots held firm.

  There had to be something she could do — her feeling of helplessness grew with her terror. When David threw the water in Storm's face, waking him from his unconscious state, she took a step forward.

  "Don't," Harlin warned.

  Jessica froze and watched Storm slowly sit up. He glanced at her and she gasped softly at the blood running down the side of his face.

  "Jessica?"

  "I'm all right, Storm."

  "And if you want to keep her that way, you'll get on your feet," David said as he backed a few steps away from Storm, the rifle covering him. "Don't give us any trouble while we walk back to the horses."

  A moment later the small party made its way back up the canyon floor, with Harlin keeping Jessica a good ten feet in front of where David walked with Storm. When Jessica tried to slow her steps, Harlin grabbed her arm and shoved her forward, reminding her with a mutter what would happen if she caused him any problems. Giving up any thought of further resistance, she plodded along beside him until they reached the rock slide they had climbed down only a half hour before.

  "Ned," Jessica gasped as she stared up the rock slide. "What have you done with Ned?"

  Halfway up the slope, Jessica saw a booted foot sticking out from behind a rock. Immediately she recognized one of the old, run down boots Ned wore.

  Harlin laughed coldly and pulled her after him as he climbed the slope. She had time for only one frantic glimpse of Ned's still face as she passed his prone body, but her ears caught the sound as Ned drew in a tortured breath.

  "Stop!" she cried as she tried to wrench her arm free from Harlin's grasp. "He's still alive. You can't just leave him there!"

  Harlin almost pulled her arm from its socket when he ignored Jessica and jerked her forward again.

  "You want me to finish him off?" she heard David say from behind her.

  "No!" Harlin called over his shoulder. "We're too close to the top of this hill. A shot might carry down to Tobias's and bring the rest of them up here. He didn't see us and we need the extra time it will give us while they search for these three when they don't come back."

  At the top of the slope, Jessica stared around her, her eyes searching for Cinnabar. She saw only two strange horses and Ned's gelding, all three tied to some bushes at the side. She heard the sound of someone falling behind her and whirled to see David standing over Storm.

  "Get up, you bastard," David growled. "And get on that damned horse!"

  Jessica's eyes filled with tears as she watched Storm struggle to his feet and stand swaying beside David. She wanted so badly to go to him, but she didn't dare. She could only stand beside Harlin while Storm stumbled over to the horses.

  David untied the gelding's reins and prodded Storm in the back with his gun. "Get on," he ordered.

  "I can't mount that horse with my hands tied," Storm said around a gasp of pain.

  Harlin moved Jessica over into Storm's line of vision and pointed his rifle at her head. "You can and you will, Storm. We don't have time for any of your tricks."

  Harlin allowed Jessica only an instant to stare into Storm's ravaged face before he gripped her by the hair and turned her back around. The sight of the rifle on the edge of her vision froze her in place, keeping her from giving in to the yearning in her to turn back.

  "Help him up, David," Harlin said. "And tie him in place. I don't want him trying anything on our way back to town."

  Tears streaked Jessica's face as she frantically searched her mind for any possible way to escape. This just couldn't be happening. Damn that gold! The curse was reaching out to take Storm's life — and hers. While she remained trapped at the Lazy B with a madman, Harlin would take Storm to Baker's Valley and fire up a lynch mob!

  "Please..." she started to beg. Harlin tightened his grip in her hair, the pain sending more tears coursing down Jessica's face.

  "I won't tell you to shut up again," Harlin snarled.

  Jessica listened to the movements behind her, hearing the squeak of saddle leather and Storm's labored breathing. David passed her and grabbed a rope from the saddle of one of the other horses. Though her vision was blurred, she caught the chilling look David threw at her from narrowed eyes as he strode back toward the gelding.

  Harlin finally relaxed his hold on Jessica and shoved her toward one of the other horses. After lifting her into the saddle, he untied her hands briefly, then retied them to the saddlehorn.

  Jessica twisted her head around, trying but unable to catch sight of Storm behind her. The horse shifted under her as David approached and Harlin handed the reins to him.

  "Remember what I said, David," Harlin warned. "We need her to make sure we get out of here with no interference."

  "I hear you, Harlin," David growled as he swung up into the saddle and settled himself behind Jessica. "But you better not be late. I don't fancy waiting all night out there at the ranch, wondering what's going on. Don't come until after you see Storm swinging at the end of that rope, though. If I can't be there, I want all the details from you."

  Chapter 25

  Only once on the ride to the Lazy B did Jessica make the mistake of surreptitiously trying to work her hands free from the saddlehorn. She heard David's snort of laughter in her ear just before his hand closed over her breast and twisted it cruelly. Her scream of pain only sent his fingers clenching harder and his laughter turned into a cackle in her ear.

  Mercifully, his hand dropped after an instant. His words told her any further attempt at escape would only be met with more agony on her part.

  "Do you want me to turn you loose? Huh? Is that what you wa
nt, you little bitch? Just say the word and we'll stop right here for a while. Harlin only said I had to keep you alive — he didn't say what shape I had to have you in when he came for us. We can just finish what we started in the whorehouse that night right here, if that's what you want."

  "You!" Jessica gasped. "I thought...."

  "What?" David prodded when she fell silent. "Tell me what you meant or I'll...." Swiftly, David tore open her blouse and shifted his reins to his other hand. He arched his fingers into a claw and held them a scant inch from her other breast.

  "I'll tell you!" Jessica cried. "I thought it was your brother that night. I didn't know it was you."

  "Harlin?" David asked with an astonished laugh. "That brother of mine doesn't have the guts to treat a woman like she deserves." His fingers relaxed somewhat and he flicked his thumb across Jessica's nipple, then cupped his palm under her breast.

  Jessica shuddered, but made no move to pull herself free, even when David snugged his hand holding the reins against her crotch and pulled her back against him.

  "No," David continued in a musing voice. "Harlin doesn't know how good it can make a man feel to see a woman beg and plead for her life — how much better it can make me feel when Fiona screams out how sorry she is for what she did.

  "But you still haven't told me enough times to make me believe you, have you, Fiona?" David breathed softly. "Maybe this time it will happen. Maybe this time I'll finally believe you and I won't have to look for you any more."

  "I'm not Fiona," Jessica managed in a strangled voice.

  David laughed wildly. "You always say that, don't you, Fiona? Just like you always tell me how sorry you are every time. Remember? Remember how you begged and said you'd do anything I wanted, if I'd only let Pa live?"

  "My God," Jessica whispered.

  David caught her words. "God won't help you, Fiona. He knows it's not right for a man to turn from his own blood sons and give his love to a whore's daughter and a boy he adopted. I saw the Will, did you know that, Fiona? No one knows I hid it behind that loose stone in the fireplace, not even Harlin. He knows I have it, though. How do you think I got him to do everything I wanted over the years?

  "Answer me, damn it!" David screamed when Jessica remained silent.

  Jessica couldn't control the shiver of dread crawling over her skin. Her bound hands gripped the saddlehorn in front of her and she forced her words from a throat clogged with terror.

  "Y...you threatened him with the Will."

  "Yes, I did," David admitted. "You aren't so dumb after all, are you, Fiona?"

  Jessica shook her head, the only answer she could manage.

  "But I'm smarter," David said with another wild chuckle. "I'm smarter and I always get what I want. And now I'll have all the money from the bank, too. I won't have to beg Harlin for money."

  "But...but you said...you promised Harlin...."

  "You didn't think I'd really leave the ranch, did you, Fiona? Huh? Why, I'll never leave the ranch. You're there. You'll always be there. My brother will bring that money out and then I'll have all I need to live on after I turn him in for robbing his own bank. I'll tell them he must have buried the money, but it will be all mine. I've always been the smart one and I've never let Harlin push me around. He won't this time, either. And after that, I'll get that gold. The money from the bank will get the mine started, and I'll never have to beg anyone for money again. See how smart I am, Fiona? I let Harlin do all the talking back there, while I made my own plans."

  "But...oh my God," Jessica breathed. "He's your brother."

  "He should have remembered that, Fiona," David insisted in a hollow voice that told Jessica he had indeed slipped into the throes of his insanity. "He should have remembered that a person doesn't go against their own blood. Pa did that and I had to make him pay for it. I had to. It's just not right."

  David finally fell silent and though he kept his hands busy moving over Jessica's body on the remainder of the ride to the ranch, Jessica swallowed her revulsion. Frantically she searched her mind for words that might trick David into releasing her. Could she insist she needed to make a nature stop at the side of the trail? She shivered involuntarily at the thought of his eyes watching her while she slipped down her skirt.

  Could she spook the horse, hoping it would unseat David and leave her on its back? What if he pulled her with him, despite her hands being bound to the saddlehorn? Once on the ground, he would surely follow through with his threat to rape her.

  Clearly any attempt she made to reason with him while he remained in the throes of his madness would only endanger her further. Nothing she could think of would break through the insanity clouding his mind. But somehow she had to find a way to escape before Harlin carried out his plan to have Storm hung.

  As David rode his horse through the weed choked yard of the Lazy B ranch house, Jessica stared around her, hoping desperately for a sign of someone to help her. The corral stood empty and broken windows on the bunkhouse met her eyes. She heard an eerie creak and turned her eyes on the barn, only to see a door swinging on one hinge, the other one broken.

  Even the chickens went about their business of searching out bugs in the tall grass in a strangely silent manner. A rooster hopped onto a broken railing of the hitching post beside them, flapped his wings, then opened his mouth. Not a sound came out, though, when the rooster glanced over at them. He hopped back to the ground and walked away from them in his stilted gait.

  David swung down from the horse and untied Jessica's hands. He pulled her roughly to the ground, then reached for the hem of her blouse to tie the gaping opening shut over her breasts. Seeing her eyes fall to the gun he still carried on his hip, he grabbed her hands again and wound the bandanna back around them.

  "If you know what's good for you," he said in a low voice, "you'll keep your mouth shut until we get up to the bedroom. You won't look so pretty with half your teeth missing if I have to shut you up myself."

  Jessica felt a flicker of hope. If he was worried about her screaming for help, there had to be someone else in the house. After one look at his face, though, Jessica had no doubt he meant what he said, and she nodded reluctantly. She felt his hand go to the back of her blouse and walked beside him as he guided her up the steps and through the door at the end of the porch. Once inside the door, she stifled a sneeze as she gazed around her at the dusty interior of the room.

  "Guess Old Maude's gonna need another lesson on how to keep the house clean," David said as he led Jessica toward a stairwell in the corner of the room. "I can take care of that later. Right now, we've got better things to do."

  When David shoved her at the first step on the stairs, Jessica glanced into the mirror on the bureau beside the stairwell. Though the glass reflected the dinginess of neglect, she thought she saw the shadow of a face staring back at her — a vaguely familiar face. Where had she seen it before?

  Craning her neck around toward an open doorway as David pushed her up the stairwell, she found it empty. If anyone had been there, they thought better of interfering with David.

  The bedroom David led her into was a huge room and, surprisingly to Jessica, sparkling with cleanliness. David stopped inside the door and watched her closely as she gazed around her.

  Her eyes tried to avoid the huge, four poster bed taking up one corner of the room, covered by a deep blue comforter. Instead, she concentrated on the flower sprigged wallpaper covering the walls, but the blue flowers on it matched the bedspread and she wrenched her eyes away to the windows.

  Clean, snow white curtains billowed in a breeze flowing through their slightly open frames, and Jessica found herself amazed to see the sun still above the horizon. Surely more time than that had passed since she had ridden out of Tobias's ranch that morning.

  David turned the key in the door latch behind him, the sound loud in the quiet room. He held the key up before Jessica's eyes and then slipped it into his pocket while his cruel stare kept her frozen in place.

 
; "I've kept it just like you fixed it up when you thought you'd live here, Fiona. Maude knows I better never find a speck of dust in this room. And look."

  He walked over to the bureau against the wall and picked up a cut glass bottle. Pulling out the stopper, he tipped a drop of the contents onto the carpet.

  "See?" he said as the aroma of honeysuckle filled the room. "It's your favorite scent. I've kept it ready for you, too. I want you to put some on now."

  When David turned to lay the stopper back on the bureau, Jessica lunged wildly for the window. A splinter of wood pierced the palm of one bound hand as she threw the frame upward. Ignoring the pain, she flung her body forward. The roof of the porch below her would break her fall and then she could....

  The cruel hand in her hair brought a scream of pain from Jessica as she was jerked back into the room.

  "Shut the hell up!"

  Though Jessica fully expected David's fist to come crashing into her face again, he held her in front of him and shook her. The sickening scent of honeysuckle surrounded them.

  David shoved her to the floor and stepped over her to close the window. He turned back and raised one shaking hand to point at the bottle of scent on the floor.

  "Pick it up!"

  Jessica cringed against the floor until he took a threatening step toward her. Scrambling to her knees, she crawled over to the scent bottle and reached across the soaked portion of the carpet to clasp the bottle in her still bound hands and hold it out to him.

  "No," David said. "Put it on your body, Fiona. I love to smell it on you when we're in bed."

  "I'm not Fiona!" Jessica cried around a sob of fear.

  David shook his head sadly as he stared down at her. "You always say that, don't you, Fiona? Why do you always say that? Does it make it more exciting for you to pretend you're someone else when you're going to bed with another man besides Pa?"

  "David, I'm not...!"

  David took another step and grabbed her shoulders to pull her to her feet. His fingers bit cruelly into her and his maddened eyes fixed on her face, sending a crawl of horror over her entire body.