Diablo

by Potter, Patricia;

  “Then I’ll tell Mitch to kill him.”

  “No.” The word was explosive, expelled from some deep part of her heart.

  God, his belly was hurting. “Take him some water. He’ll need it. Mitch hurt him some.” Nat watched her pale. “Then give me an answer. Wake me up if I’m asleep.”

  She nodded slowly and left.

  Nat swallowed some more laudanum and did something he’d never done before in his life. He prayed he was right.

  Nicky closed her uncle’s door, feeling that the last remnant of her world had just been shattered. Uncle Nat had looked so old, so infinitely weary.

  She stopped to look in at Robin. He was asleep. The hawk was tethered on the perch Kane had made. Kane O’Brien, the traitor, the user … The man who’d taken time to save a hurt bird, who patiently taught a boy to care for it.

  Can we trust him? Her uncle’s question had astounded her, not only because he was asking her advice but because he was apparently willing to give Kane another chance.

  I don’t know, she had answered. And she didn’t. Her world had been rocked. Her faith. Her trust. Her love.

  You did the same thing. You were torn between him and me. You didn’t tell me things about our Diablo. Uncle Nat’s gentle admonition. Had Kane endured that same agonizing choice?

  Would she ever know? Really know? The hurt still ran deep. Hurt and anger and emptiness all ran together, like streaks of color in a sunset, each trailing roads in the sky before melding into one burst of color.

  In the kitchen, she mechanically prepared a canteen of water and some bandages and then left for her uncle’s office—and Kane.

  Mitch was sitting in the outer office, apparently guarding Kane. He was looking old, too. She had never thought of him that way before.

  “Uncle Nat suggested I bring … Diablo some water,” she said hesitantly. “And I want to talk to him.”

  He looked at her with sympathy. His lips, though, thinned in a hard line, and she knew Kane could expect no quarter from him. In fact, her uncle’s oddly tolerant attitude still confounded her.

  “Are you sure, Little Bit?” That had been his pet name for her years ago, though he hadn’t used it since she’d turned fifteen.

  She nodded.

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  She shook her head. “Alone,” she insisted.

  He hesitated and looked at the bundle in her hands. She smiled. “I don’t have a weapon. Just a canteen and some bandages.”

  Mitch looked dubious.

  “Uncle Nat suggested it.”

  Suspicion and doubt etched a frown in Mitch’s face.

  “He told me he was dying,” Nicky said. “That he might need to use O’Brien.”

  Mitch’s frown deepened, but he lit a lantern, handed it to her, then unbolted the door to the back room. “You call if you need anything,” he said.

  Nicky needed a great deal. She hesitated at the door, then went inside, closing the door behind her. The light illuminated the room, and she saw him lying on the floor, his hands pinned behind him, irons circling his ankles. He blinked several times in the sudden glow of the lantern, then tried to sit.

  He looked terrible. His face was discolored and swollen, and she saw a muscle move in his cheek as he struggled to sit. His eyes continued to move, trying to see beyond the bright light. She set the lantern on the floor and went over to him with the bundle.

  “Kane?”

  He blinked again. “Nicky?” His voice was low and disbelieving. And raspy.

  “I brought you some water.”

  He tried to sit straighter, and despite the anger still burning bright in her heart, she ached for him, suffered with him. She opened the canteen and offered its contents to him, holding the opening to his mouth. He drank greedily at first, then slowed. He finally withdrew his mouth from it. His eyes swept over her, traveling from her face downward over her body. She was still kneeling, fixed by those eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said simply.

  Nicky didn’t know what to say. He was so battered and bruised, and yet his eyes didn’t falter, didn’t look away from hers. She was the first to flinch, leaning over to take a piece of cloth from her bundle, wet it, and softly run it over his face.

  “How bad did Mitch hurt you?” she asked softly.

  Kane shrugged. “I probably look worse than I am.” He hesitated. “You shouldn’t have come here. Your uncle—”

  “Uncle Nat suggested it,” she said.

  His partly swollen eyes flew open, then closed in a kind of resignation. “I told him everything I know.”

  “Your friend,” she said hesitantly. “Tell me about him.”

  “He hangs in a week,” Kane said abruptly. “Maybe less. I’ve … lost track of days.”

  “You must care … a lot.”

  Kane shifted against the wall uncomfortably. He took his eyes off her for the first time, and they seem to fasten on a piece of the door behind her. He didn’t answer. He was slipping away from her, going someplace she couldn’t follow.

  “I want to understand,” she tried again.

  He finally focused back on her. Anguish twisted his face. “I do care about him, about you. Too damn much. Don’t ever think I didn’t care.” The words seemed torn from his throat.

  Nicky couldn’t help it. She dropped the cloth and her fingers went to his face. Touching it. Sketching his mouth, the lines around his eyes, the scar. Soothing it. “I loved you,” she said. It was almost a whimper.

  “I know,” he said. “I would have done anything to spare you this … I thought I could. Because I wanted it so damn badly, I thought I could serve two masters,” he added bitterly. “I was a fool.”

  “If you’d told me—”

  “And what would you have done?” he asked. “Telling you would only have given you the same damnable choice I had. I couldn’t do that to you.”

  “But you did give me that kind of choice,” she whispered. “I couldn’t tell my uncle what you told me. He knows that.”

  Kane cursed quietly, so quietly she couldn’t make out many of the words. She sensed their meaning, though. “And Robin, what does he know?”

  “Nothing. Yet.”

  A muscle throbbed in his cheek again. “Is your uncle sending you away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said, then turned his face. “Thank you for the water. You’d better go.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m not worth worrying about. Just take care of Robin. Don’t let him … go against the law.”

  “He says his hawk has learned to hunt,” she said desperately.

  Kane smiled. It was a flicker of one of the early smiles she remembered. Slow and lazy and affectionate. Her heart whirled again. She warned it to stop, but it wouldn’t.

  “What would you do if Uncle Nat lets you go?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why would he do that?”

  “He might need your help.”

  “You see what happens when I try to help.” He laughed mirthlessly. “My good intentions are the stuff of everyone’s nightmares. I’m a Jonah, Nicky. Don’t you know that yet?”

  “What would you do?” she persisted.

  “I would see that you were safe. I would try to see that you were safe, you and Robin.”

  “And then?” She wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say. But the question hovered between them. She was asking whether there was … any chance of a future, one that included the two of them. She was revealing her heart, surrendering her pride, but she had to know.

  She watched him swallow, and her heart sank. He didn’t want her. He was honest enough not to claim otherwise. Her heart broke all over again.

  Something of what she felt must have shone in her face. “Nicky,” he said, almost desperately. “Davy’s pardon doesn’t include me.”

  “What do you mean?” she whispered.

  “I go back to prison,” he said shortly. “Davy doesn’t go free unless
I turn myself back in. I don’t have a future.”

  Nicky stared at him, nonplussed. He was getting nothing out of this? He’d done it only for a friend. She’d believed he had traded Sanctuary at least in part for himself. She tried to breathe through the growing lump in her throat. But if he went back to prison … he had been sentenced to death. Surely, at least, that would be commuted. Kane’s face was saying otherwise. His features could have been carved from granite, but his eyes were filled with despair.

  “I don’t understand,” she finally said.

  “That was the arrangement,” he said. “One life. Davy or myself.”

  “Why? Why is this man so important?”

  Nicky watched as Kane tried to move again, pain flitting briefly across his face. She knew how uncomfortable he must be, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She didn’t have the keys to his irons. Or a gun. Nor could she ever bluff Mitch.

  “Why?” she asked again.

  He smiled. It was such a sweet, sad smile she thought her heart would break.

  “I didn’t have a family, Nicky, not even what you and Robin had,” he said. “My mother died when I was born, and my father hated me from that day. Kane, he named me, and he meant it with every fiber of his Bible-loving fanaticism. He tried to beat the devil out of me every chance he had. Davy lived on the next ranch. He used to bring me food, helped me hide. One day, my father discovered him doing that, and he started beating me. Davy wasn’t much older than me, but he went after my father. He nearly died for that gallantry, and his father finally threatened mine if he ever touched Davy or me again. I honestly wonder whether I would have lived if Davy hadn’t …” His voice trailed off.

  Nicky felt shudders rock her body. She put a hand on Kane’s leg, resting it there with the old trust.

  After a moment, he started again, his voice halting. “My father killed himself a few months later. Davy’s family took me in and raised me as Davy’s brother. Davy married, had a son—my godson—and his folks died the year before the war started. He stayed on to manage the ranch while I enlisted in the Confederate Army. I was looking for some place to belong, I suppose. Davy had married, had a wife and son, and I needed something of my own. I thought maybe the army would provide it.”

  “It didn’t?” she said.

  “Don’t let anyone tell you war is adventure,” he said dryly. “It’s blood and fear and pain and more fear. You never stop being afraid. Death is so damn capricious. It doesn’t make sense why the man next to you dies and you don’t. You stop making friends. You stop wanting to belong, because that belonging hurts too damn much.”

  Her hand had settled in his lap. She wished she could hold his hand, tighten her fingers around this. “You become more and more alone, because you can’t stand the loss any longer.” He swallowed. “And then it was over, and I came home, believing, thinking I would never kill again.”

  She waited, her body tense. She knew he was saying these things for her, not for himself. He thought he was a dead man. He was trying to make her understand, so she wouldn’t feel so betrayed, and he was giving up the last thing he had—his pride—to do it.

  “Some government agents came to Davy’s house, shortly after I arrived. They’d raised the taxes impossibly high and were going to evict him. Alex, my godson, was twelve. I’d just been telling him some glorious war stories, and … he took it in mind to raise a rifle against a deputy sheriff.

  “A deputy shot him … a kid, damn it, and he was going to shoot again. I killed the bastard first. Davy was blamed as much as I. Damn it, Nicky, it was my fault, my doing. If I hadn’t filled Alex’s head with war stories, maybe he never would have reached for the rifle.”

  “Alex?” she asked softly.

  “He survived. The bullet went in the shoulder. But Davy and I had to go on the run. We were both pretty angry, not only at what happened to us but to others.” Kane shrugged his shoulders. “So we did what we could to balance the scales … and survive.”

  “When I was taken, Davy tried to rescue me. That’s how he was captured. That deputy had died, and we were both sentenced to hang. Two days before we were to hang, a marshal showed up at the prison and offered Davy’s life in exchange for Sanctuary. I had the reputation; Davy didn’t. And then I met you and Robin, and … I wanted to take your uncle’s offer. I thought that was the answer. That’s why I went back to Masters—the marshal—to bargain for more time. I thought if they waited, then I could just hand over Sanctuary peacefully. Your uncle told me he was dying. A few months in exchange for a number of lives they would lose in trying to take it.” He stopped. “I wouldn’t have let you or Robin be hurt, Nicky. If you don’t believe anything else, believe that.”

  “Did the marshal give you the time you asked for?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Then your friend will die?”

  He replied through clenched teeth. “Not if they find my body. That was part of the bargain. If I died in the attempt, then they would have to honor their end.”

  “So that was why you wanted to come back? You knew my uncle would kill you.” She gazed at him in amazement. “But how did you imagine the authorities would find you in time?”

  A very long moment passed during which he refused to meet her gaze. Then he spoke in clipped tones. “I asked your uncle to leave my body where Masters would find it. I suggested an example might be appropriate. And—”

  “You asked me,” she finished.

  “Long odds against either,” he said, “but they were all I had.”

  She shook her head slowly. Then, leaning over, she touched her lips to his. “You’re a fool, Kane O’Brien. That posse doesn’t have any idea where Sanctuary is, does it?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they have an idea,” he said. “They’ll get here eventually. I had to give Masters something. He’ll be searching this whole territory, if I know anything about men.”

  Nicky was silent for a moment, the last of her anger draining away. “My uncle’s thinking about turning himself in,” she said cautiously. “He might need your help to do it.”

  “With my vast experience of failure?” Kane said drily. “He needs me like a boil on his backside.”

  She found herself smiling. Even giggling. But it was a nervous giggle. “I don’t think I’ll tell him that.”

  He eyed her suspiciously, as if she were capable of pulling wings off a trapped fly. “He has no reason to trust me.”

  “But he does,” she said gently. “For some reason he still does. Or else he thinks he doesn’t have any other choice. I told you Hildebrand planned to take over Sanctuary. Others are just waiting for a chance. They don’t know how sick Uncle Nat is, but they know something’s wrong. He can’t stay here. He has no place to go. And no time. I tried to talk him out of it. I don’t want to see him in prison, but he’s determined. He just wanted to make sure I … agreed that he could trust you.”

  Kane was silent. Nicky didn’t know what he was thinking. But she had heard the anguish in his voice, the stark honesty of his words. Any lingering doubt she might have about him was outweighed by her need to believe him.

  “Kane?”

  He swallowed hard. She could see the movements of his throat. “Can you?” he said after a moment. “Can you trust me again?”

  She hesitated, then announced evasively, “Whether I trust you or not, I can’t … stop caring.”

  He moved again awkwardly. “You must,” he said. “You’re smart and brave … and beautiful. You’ll find a good, solid husband.”

  “I don’t want a good, solid husband,” she said, her voice plaintive.

  He smiled, a sad, wistful twist of his lips. “You just haven’t had much of a choice.”

  But Nicky knew he was wrong. She remembered her uncle’s words. Your mother was like that. Once she fell in love with John, nothing else mattered.

  She looked at his face, remembered the agony she’d felt when she had to choose between him and the uncle who had raised her, knew he’d fel
t the same agony when faced with a choice between his lifelong friend and her. He’d done his best, as she had, to choose the path that would bring the least harm to those he loved. And how could she fault him for that?

  She couldn’t.

  Suddenly, all her doubts—and questions—faded away. Maybe she would always hurt a little because he hadn’t chosen her above all else, that he had gambled with her trust, but she could live with that. What she couldn’t live without was him. They had to get out of this mess—all of them—somehow.

  Nicky brought the canteen to Kane’s lips again, watched as he took some more water. She didn’t want to promise him anything, because she still wasn’t sure what her uncle planned. She knew, though, that one way or another Kane O’Brien was going to live. No matter what she had to do.

  “I have to go,” she finally said.

  His eyes searched her face intently, as if he were memorizing it, and then he gave her that devilish smile she’d seen his first day in Sanctuary. She thought then it was both devilish and devil-may-care, but now she knew better. She knew how much he cared about a great many things.

  “You were a sight for sore eyes, Miss Thompson,” he said. “Thank you for that. And for the water.”

  It was an attempt to make light of his situation. A gallant attempt, and Nicky thought her heart would break all over again. She didn’t want to leave him like this. Not trussed up like an animal headed for market. She hesitated. She wanted to reassure him, but she guessed now he wouldn’t accept, or believe, reassurances. And why would he? Whichever way he looked was death.

  She leaned over and kissed him lightly, pressing her cheek next to his, then she rose.

  And ran.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Despite Kane’s discomfort, both mental and physical, he slept on and off. He was totally exhausted, and he was used to discomfort.

  But he kept waking. Every time he moved, he hurt. His wrists were raw behind him, his arms nearly numb from their pinned position. He tried his best not to feel, not to think about things he couldn’t change. When he was in the Yank prison and his stomach was so empty it ached and his body so cold he could barely move, he’d tried to think of cloudless days and bright sun. Now he couldn’t envision those kind of days without thinking of Nicky, the way her brown hair caught the sun and her eyes sparked with mischief. Those memories hurt more than hunger or cold ever had.