Diablo

by Potter, Patricia;

  Thompson finally moved. “Like a drink?”

  Hell yes. But Kane made sure his eyes revealed nothing as he moved inside the house, his gaze taking in the gingham curtains, the bouquet of wild flowers in a painted jar on the table. Small homey touches he hadn’t noticed during that other brief visit.

  Nicole? Where was she? His gaze went to the partially opened door of what he guessed was the kitchen, his nose twitching as he smelled something very nice wafting through the doorway.

  A drink was thrust in his hand, and he sipped it carefully, turning his attention back to Nat Thompson, who was still watching him with cagey eyes.

  “Good whiskey,” he remarked with casual indifference.

  A gleam of appreciation shown in Thompson’s eyes. “I’m glad you approve.” There was a tiny bite of sarcasm in the words, and Kane reminded himself not to underestimate the man.

  Thompson gestured him to a chair, and Kane sat. So did Thompson, who took a couple of sips himself before speaking again. “My nephew is real taken with that bird. I wanted to thank you for that.”

  Kane fought to contain his surprise. Thompson had made him aware of his proprietary view of his family, but the warm huskiness of the man’s voice revealed a deep caring. Kane felt his gut constrict. He didn’t want Thompson’s thanks or appreciation or any other damn thing. He wanted to get his job done and get the hell out of here.

  “My niece said she met you the other morning.” It was spoken as a question, and Kane wondered what else Nicole had said. Nicky. Remember, her name is Nicky. He didn’t think Nat Thompson would appreciate the fact that Kane knew her as Nicole.

  “I ride a lot,” he said.

  “So I hear,” Thompson said. “How did you like Rosita’s?”

  Was there anything Thompson didn’t know? Probably even how well he did in bed. The idea didn’t sit at all well with Kane. He didn’t like being spied on. But then that was exactly what he was doing to Thompson. He shrugged.

  Thompson played with his glass a moment. “How long you planning to stay?”

  “Until I run out of money.”

  “Then what?”

  “Maybe then there won’t be so many posses after me. I’ll make my way north.”

  “Planning a job?”

  Kane narrowed his eyes. He knew his own suspicion was showing now, but he didn’t care. In his role, he should be suspicious. “I thought questions weren’t asked here.”

  Thompson grinned suddenly. It was the first time he’d shown as much as a glimmer of a smile. “You’re right, of course,” he said. He held out the bottle, and Kane offered his glass for a refill.

  He was taking another drink when Nicole walked into the room. Surprise flitted across her face, then a deep flush settled in her cheeks. She turned to her uncle, her eyes asking a question even while she obviously ignored Kane. It was a deliberate slight.

  “Uncle Nat?”

  Nat Thompson, Kane noted, was watching both of them carefully, too carefully. He couldn’t miss the red in Nicky’s cheeks. Kane hoped his own face registered only indifference, even while he felt his pulse race.

  “You know Mr. O’Brien, of course,” Thompson said casually to his niece. Kane knew the comment wasn’t casual at all, though.

  She glared at Kane, acknowledging his presence for the first time. “Is he your guest?”

  Nat nodded. “I wanted to thank him for what he did the other afternoon.”

  “I don’t think …” She stopped suddenly.

  “You don’t think what?” Thompson asked.

  “That he’s a good influence on Robin,” she blurted out, not caring whether he heard or not.

  Thompson studied her for several moments. “And I am?”

  Nicky bit her lip, chewed on it for a moment, and Kane felt a moment’s sympathy for her. She obviously didn’t want to hurt her uncle. Just as obviously, she didn’t want Kane here, and he knew why. He’d been purposely rude the other day, as much for his own protection as hers.

  “I thought you wanted your ‘guests’ away from us,” she finally said defensively, her eyes avoiding Kane’s.

  “You saw him the other morning,” Thompson said. There was the slightest question in his voice, so slight she could choose to answer or not.

  “That was accidental.” She bit off the words. “It won’t happen again.”

  Warily, Kane watched the exchange. He had the oddest feeling of being the center of a tableau and yet not having the slightest hint of the story. Or more importantly, he felt as he had in prison when Ben Masters approached him: like a puppet in someone else’s hands. It made him damn angry. He turned toward his host. “Thank you for the invitation,” he said stiffly, trying to contain that anger. “I don’t want to cause problems in your family. I’ll have supper at the hotel.”

  “No,” Thompson said. “There are no problems. My niece was just surprised. I think dinner is ready. We eat in the kitchen. Nicky, get your brother.”

  Kane didn’t miss the look of astonishment that passed over Nicky’s face. Either she was unused to being admonished, or she was still startled at her uncle’s invitation. Well, so was he. His first instinct was to leave, despite Thompson’s order. But then his better judgment overtook his anger. He was in Sanctuary for one reason; this supper might help him accomplish his goal. It still galled him, though, to sit at a man’s table with every intention of betraying him. Even if that man was Nat Thompson.

  But Thompson was already steering him toward the open door, and he was following. He sat in the chair indicated by Thompson, and Nicky returned minutes later, Robin following in her wake. If his sister hadn’t been enthusiastic about his presence, Robin obviously was. His eyes lit like a candle’s first darting flame.

  “Diablo,” he exclaimed with pleasure, and something inside Kane shriveled at the boy’s obvious pleasure. “I named the hawk after you. Nicky agreed.”

  Kane darted a glance at Nicky, who was putting food on the table. She avoided his glance, but her cheeks flushed again, and he thought how pretty she was. Her hair was like a curly cap, golden tendrils framing the elfin face. Her eyes suddenly met his, and for a moment he thought of a startled fawn. They were so large, so brown, so … defenseless. That wasn’t true, of course. She had killed a man. She had lived among outlaws all her life. Yet there was something so innocent about her.

  He smiled. He smiled often, and he was good at it, but for the last few years his heart hadn’t been in it. This time it was. He wanted to reach out to her, to wipe away the worried frown that didn’t fit the face.

  “Thank you,” he said as she placed a platter of steaks near him.

  She spared him a glance then, and her face softened, as if she hadn’t been thanked much. But then she turned and was placing other platters on the table, this time fried potatoes and a bowl of tomatoes. Finally, she took a chair herself, the last empty one, across from her uncle and next to himself.

  He tried not to watch her as he ate. Nat Thompson lapsed into silence, shoveling food into his mouth as if he’d never had a meal. Robin ate in a similar fashion.

  The steak was better than the one at the hotel, and the potatoes were the best he’d ever had. As uncomfortable as he was at the table, as uncertain as to Thompson’s intent, Kane enjoyed every bite.

  Still, uneasiness gnawed at him. Although Thompson had thanked him for the hawk, Kane didn’t believe for one second that was the real reason for the invite. Nor, he suspected, had it been the pleasure of his company.

  Nicky was silent during the first part of the meal. She finally looked at him, and their eyes clashed. The side of her mouth curled up in a slight smile. “And how do you like Sanctuary, Mr. O’Brien?” she asked sweetly. It was a voice he decided he didn’t trust. “Are you still restless, or have you found some … more solace?”

  “Just being alive is solace,” he said, noticing that Nat Thompson had stiffened in his chair.

  “You escaped the day before they were going to hang you,” she noted conv
ersationally, and a challenge was in her eyes. “What did you think about?”

  “Escaping,” he said with some humor.

  “How did you do it?” Robin said eagerly as Nicky gave him a censorious look that had absolutely no effect.

  “By the grace of God,” Kane replied.

  Robin looked puzzled.

  “A priest,” Kane explained. “A man of God who wanted me to repent. I knocked him out and took his clothes. The rest was easy.” Nicky appeared taken aback, Robin incredulous, Thompson delighted.

  “I’ll have to remember that,” Thompson said.

  “I think they’ll be searching priests more thoroughly,” Kane said dryly.

  Thompson laughed, but his gaze was thoughtful as he watched Kane.

  “Will you teach me something about hawks?” Robin said eagerly, unaware of the tension in the room.

  “What little I know,” Kane said. “You will have to teach him to hunt on his own, since his mother can’t.”

  “When?”

  “When he can fly. And once he learns to hunt, you should let him go free.”

  “But I want to keep him.”

  “Birds are born to be free,” Kane said. “Just as men are.” He heard the hard edge in his own voice, a trace of the pain that lingered from his various imprisonments.

  “Is that why you fought for the South?” The question came from Thompson. After the past hour, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Like a boy playing with a fly, Nat Thompson had been picking away at him since he arrived.

  “Not particularly,” Kane answered carelessly, keeping his gaze on Thompson’s. He didn’t want to see the expression on Nicky’s face, not as he was about to say words that would kick her in the stomach. “I thought there might be chances of making money. Booty, so to speak. Turned out I was the booty.”

  “That’s a hard way to make a fortune.”

  “Not if you didn’t have anything, never had anything.” He looked at Robin. “I was orphaned when I was real young. My father was a dirt farmer, had lost everything, and he put a bullet in his own head. A neighboring family took me in, but nothing was mine, not even the clothes I wore.” Like all good lies, it had a foundation of truth.

  But Nat Thompson nodded, as if he understood. He rose, and Kane rose with him. “Mighty good meal, Miss Thompson,” Kane said formally. “I do thank you.”

  She stood and lifted her head, her chin sticking out. He saw disillusionment in her eyes. Good. She hadn’t liked that bit about the war, nor the priest. He remembered the way she’d looked earlier today when she’d told him he’d received his scar honorably. He’d felt a moment of pride then. Now he felt like the fraud he was.

  “You’re welcome, Mr. O’Brien,” she said, her voice icy. It had warmed a little during supper, but now he felt the chill through and through.

  He followed Nat through the door to the main room, Robin falling in next to him. “You will show me how to teach Diablo to hunt, won’t you?”

  Remembering the rules, Kane looked at Thompson for approval. Thompson leaned over and put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder. It was an affectionate gesture, the first Kane had seen pass between the outlaw leader and his wards.

  “If Mr. O’Brien doesn’t mind,” Thompson said mildly. “Remember he’s a guest here.”

  “You don’t mind, do you, Diablo?” Robin said.

  Diablo did. He didn’t want to get closer to any of these people. Yet taking Robin out and teaching him about the hawk would give him more freedom. Robin might even let something slip, might know something that would help. Think of Davy. Davy sitting in that damn cell, not knowing when he would die, not even knowing he had a slim chance at freedom—a chance that hinged on Kane.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t mind.” It had been a night for lies.

  He told still another one when he left several minutes later. “It was a fine meal, and a fine evening.” As before, there was a foundation of truth.

  Thompson didn’t offer to shake his hand. He simply showed Kane the door, leaving Kane as puzzled as before as to why he’d been singled out. Puzzled and filled with apprehension. Not for himself, but for Davy. Thompson had something on his mind. He’d been testing Kane, probing insistently. What did he know? Or think he knew?

  Chapter Seven

  Gooden, Texas

  Ben Masters hated to wait. It was always the hardest part of his job.

  This, though, was the worst wait of his life. He’d never liked owing anyone. And the debt to Kane O’Brien was larger than any other he’d ever incurred. If it hadn’t been for O’Brien, he would be dead.

  Christ, he wished he could quiet his doubts about O’Brien. Masters had lost him in the small trading town on the Texas border and he was stuck here now. Diablo had said he would try to get word to Masters, but nearly a month had passed and no word had come. Diablo had just disappeared off the face of the earth, he and his horse.

  And the government’s money.

  Masters had stuck his neck way out on this one. If he’d misjudged Kane O’Brien, he was through as a marshal. If he were a praying man he’d be on his knees right now. But he had little faith in prayers. God helped those who helped themselves. He wondered how—or even if—Kane O’Brien was helping himself, or if he were destroying them both.

  Kane settled into a routine, hating every minute of it but considering it necessary. He couldn’t afford to be different, not with Nat Thompson’s eyes on him. So he drank more than he should, played poker nightly, even visited Rosita’s one more evening with the same result as before.

  Kane rode several afternoons, avoiding his usual morning rides because he didn’t want to see Nicole. She was simply too dangerous to him. He made his rides seem as innocent as possible, never going toward the cliffs but always looking for a way out.

  No matter how many times he went over the problem in his mind, it came down to the same solution. The kid. Robin Thompson had to know something of value. He’d decided Nicky wasn’t the answer. She was too wary. But Robin—Robin was just waiting to be milked. Kane hadn’t been able to force himself to act on that knowledge yet, but he would. He had to. Time was running out.

  After nights of playing poker with the other residents of Sanctuary, he’d decided they knew less than he did, and cared nothing about knowing more. That lack of curiosity made it even more dangerous to ask questions; he had assumed others would also want to know where they were, curiosity being a natural part of him. But it seemed enough to the other guests that they were safe and had all the vices important to them available.

  In the afternoons, he was eager to escape. Escape the town that was little more than a mirage, the men who turned his stomach, the knowledge that he had to do something that went against every grain of decency he had.

  He kneed the gray into a gallop. He hadn’t named the horse; he’d stopped naming horses during the war. Too many died. If you named them, they were friends and it hurt worse.

  The gray was his temporarily. It had been given to him by Masters, and it was a damn good horse. His own horse had disappeared into the hills when he was taken by the Texas authorities.

  Ten years, and he was back to borrowed things: borrowed horse, borrowed clothes, borrowed money.

  Borrowed time.

  He rode alongside the creek, wondering where it went through the hills. It had been hot and dry this summer, and the creek was shallow. He dismounted and watered his horse, then leaned against a tree. Davy increasingly invaded his thoughts now. They used to go fishing together when they were only a couple of tadpoles. Sometimes he’d walked over to Davy’s house; there was always food there, and sometimes it was the only food he got that day. His disappearances always meant a beating, but they were worth a full belly and a few hours away from hatred.

  When his father died, Davy’s family took him in, and Davy became Kane’s brother in all the ways that mattered. But Kane had never forgotten that he didn’t really belong. That was one reason he’d enlisted in the Confederate Army
. Another was the anger he had toward his father, an anger that his father’s death hadn’t erased.

  That anger had died in the inferno of war. Kane soon discovered it held no adventure and offered no place to hide from his past. The closeness of death, of dying, only made the past more real. And battle did strange things to men. Some became better for it, some worse. Some took comfort in camaraderie, others became loners, afraid of loss.

  He’d been one of those who pulled away from people. Afraid to care. Afraid to love. Afraid to feel. He’d wanted to die himself after the first big battle, when he’d seen a field full of dying and dead men, heard the calls for help, and been unable to do anything. He’d tried to steel himself then against caring, had succeeded to some degree until that day at Shiloh when Ben Masters’s weak plea had reached him.

  God damn it all, he couldn’t afford that kind of weakness. Not then, not now. It was time to get to work, to do what he’d set out to do today. Another step toward damnation.

  He took a folding knife from a pocket inside the custom-made boots Ben Masters had given him. Kane looked carefully for exactly the right tree and finally found a thick cottonwood. He selected a sturdy branch and started cutting.

  For several days, Nicky used her brother as an excuse to stay inside the house at the times she usually chose to ride. Her uncle didn’t say anything, although she knew he was studying her with more than his usual interest.

  She still didn’t know why he’d invited Kane O’Brien to supper a week earlier, but the implications worried her. She knew exactly how devious—and ruthless—he could be. She didn’t like Kane O’Brien—she kept telling herself that—but neither did she want anything to happen to him on her account.

  On the sixth day after O’Brien’s visit, she almost went riding during the early morning hours, and not entirely because she wanted the morning air. Her body and her thoughts both betrayed her. They kept reaching toward something she knew could destroy her. Only sheer willpower had kept her in the house. Kane O’Brien was a charlatan, a man obviously used to getting what he wanted, and he didn’t mind how. Yet she found herself shivering every time she thought of his touch, the finger that had wandered over her cheek. He had known exactly what he was doing, even as he’d turned away from her. He’d made her want, then mocked that yearning.