“Slade killed no one. That is absolutely preposterous,” came Isabel’s outraged cry.
“Is it? You know this—all without seeing our evidence? I find that very interesting. Hannah’s at risk, too. Slade’s using her until she no longer serves his purpose. And then he’ll rid himself of her, just as he has the others. Patience and I are next, you see. He had Hannah make her public accusations right here in our own home. As a result, Patience and I are cut off from all help, shut out of society. Ruined. No one will receive us.
“And we’re practically penniless—because of my grandmother’s misplaced loyalty to Catherine and to Slade. Again, Slade. Always Slade. We must rid ourselves of him—you and me and Patience. He’ll kill you for your money, too, Isabel. You must forgive the late hour, but we had to see you tonight—alone. To warn you.”
Isabel sat as still as an oil painting, her teacup suspended halfway between the saucer and her lips. “You’re quite mad, Cyrus. Insane.”
An oily grin exposed his crooked teeth. “Am I? Or am I just clever? Either way, that makes me quite dangerous, doesn’t it? So, if I were you, I’d sip my tea while we await the arrival of young Mr. Garrett.”
“No.” Isabel thumped her cup and saucer on the low table in front of her.
“Pick it up,” Patience warned. “Pick it up, or I’ll shoot your precious granddaughter-in-law.” She hefted the Peacemaker with both hands and waved it at Hannah.
Isabel glared at the white-haired woman and snatched up her cup and saucer. “What makes you think Slade will show up? He’s asleep. He has no idea that I’m even here, much less that Hannah might be. Because, following your own instructions in your note, I told no one of my destination. And my carriage still awaits me out front, so—”
Cyrus’s cackling cut off Isabel’s words. “Are you sure your carriage awaits you? What if I told you I sent that old fool driver of yours—Sedgewick, isn’t it?—back to Woodbridge Pond with a note to Slade? A note that said he’d best show up in thirty minutes or have your blood on his head. And as for Hannah? Well, she’s simply a bonus, a surprise, if you will.”
Even as Isabel’s eyes rounded and she gasped and threw her teacup and saucer onto the carpet, all Hannah could think was Slade’s walking into a trap. She worked furiously at her ropes, chafing and burning the skin over her wrists. Were the ropes loosening, or was it just her wishing it to be so?
When the tea spattered and stained the carpet, Cyrus and Patience jumped up, calling for Mrs. Wells, who popped in so quickly that she had to have been listening at the door. Hannah narrowed her eyes at the smirking snotty-old-ass as she cleaned up Isabel’s spill, poured her another cup, and exited the room as if she owned the place. Hannah’s gaze followed her until she closed the door behind her hefty self. Hateful hag. She’d get her comeuppance.
Hannah snapped her attention back to Cyrus as he again approached her. “Feeling a strong urge to hit a woman again, Uncle?”
“Not at the moment.” He fairly minced over to her. “Don’t think I don’t see you over here, trying to work the ropes loose. Let’s see if they’re still tight enough.” He went behind her and gave a savage yank to the big knot that secured her wrists.
Hannah grunted with the pain, but bit back a groan. Some primal instinct warned her not to show fear or weakness to this creature. He was of the sort to jump on her like a badger and tear her apart if she did. When he began yanking on the ropes around her booted ankles, Hannah looked to Isabel.
And frowned. Isabel now stared intently out the French doors behind Patience. Mindful of not alerting her captors, Hannah cut her gaze to the doors. Her angle was too sharp to see anything. It was probably just Esmerelda out there. Hannah looked back to Isabel, only to see her patting her hair … and poking her finger out, as if pointing at … Me? She’s pointing at me? Why? Why would Isabel gesture like that at Esmerelda? Well, the answer was—she wouldn’t. The dog would have no clue what she meant.
Then suddenly Hannah knew. Slade’s out there. Her heart pounded against her rib cage, against the crisscrossing ropes over her chest. When Cyrus stepped in front of her and tested the ropes binding her torso, Hannah smoothed her features into a poker face. But inside she crowed, Prepare to die, Cyrus Wilton-Humes, because my avenging angel has arrived.
When Cyrus knelt in front of her to yank on the ropes securing her booted feet to the chair, Hannah shot Isabel a look, trying to let her know she knew Slade was out there. That formidable lady dipped her eyelids in a slow blink of acknowledgment. Hope surged through Hannah. Because if Slade remained true to form, he’d come heavily armed and he’d have a host of men with him.
And when she and Isabel were freed? Well, that was up to Cyrus and Patience. If they were still alive after the next few moments. But Hannah knew what her preference was. Given one clean shot, and then another, she’d kill them both.
When Cyrus straightened up in front of Hannah, he glanced up, peered out the window behind her, and screeched in terror as he backed up.
Patience came to her feet, waving her Peacemaker wildly. “What is it, you fool? Are you frightened of a tied-up girl?”
“There’s a wild animal at our window!” He drew Hannah’s Peacemaker from his waistband.
Hannah frowned, thinking, Wolf? Slade? No—Esmerelda! “No!” Hannah’s cry tore from her at the same time Cyrus fired wildly, narrowly missing Hannah’s head, but shattering the glass behind her. A high-pitched animal yelp of pain signaled the beginning of the end. The bastard shot Esmerelda. Hannah pitched about in her chair, enough to actually move it, and screamed out in her anger. Cyrus shoved at her shoulder as he pushed past her to look out the broken window.
Using the momentum he’d given her, Hannah purposely pitched the chair to the floor. She hit the carpet with a painful thud, head and shoulder first, and heard a splintering sound. Of wood? Or of bone? A split second’s assessment of her body told her that, flipped over like a turtle though she may be, nothing was broken on her. A grunt of hallelujah escaped her as she struggled to further weaken the chair’s structure and just maybe free herself.
Fighting her own pitched battle, she belatedly became aware of the sounds of other struggles in the room. More shattering glass. Frightened screeching. The blunt impact of body against body. Grunts, cries, blows, thumps. And an opening door. On edge now, Hannah jerked her head back as best she could. To her mounting horror, she saw Isabel—that grande dame and Garrett matriarch—locked in a death grip with Patience as they both fought for Hannah’s gun. Into Hannah’s line of vision flew Mrs. Wells—at a dead run and with a large vase upraised over her head.
Hannah screamed out, “Isabel! Behind you!”
A gun roared, freezing Isabel and Patience in each other’s grip. Her own heart bleeding in fear, Hannah watched the two women stare at each other, waited the interminable, heart-stopping seconds with them for one of them to fall, mortally wounded. But neither one did.
Had the gun simply misfired in their struggle? Then, Hannah heard the thump. Isabel and Patience pushed away from each other and jerked around. Hannah wrestled her chair until she’d scooted herself around enough to see.
Mrs. Wells lay facedown on the floor. The vase rolled ineffectually across the carpet, stopping when it hit the sofa at Isabel’s back.
In the benumbed silence that followed, Hannah realized something else. The shot had come from behind her. Surely Cyrus hadn’t shot Mrs. Wells just before she crashed the vase down on Isabel’s head? The same thing apparently occurred to Isabel and Patience because they spun to the shattered window. Try as she might, Hannah couldn’t wrench her chair enough to see who’d shot Mrs. Wells, but what she heard made her want to cry.
“Drop the gun, Patience. One false move, and I’ll shoot Cyrus.”
Slade!
Hannah wilted in a crying slump of relief and joy. Her movement freed her tied hands from her chair’s broken slat. But freeing herself didn’t matter now, because Slade was here and everything would be fine.
In another moment, his men would come bursting in and the nightmare that had begun out in No Man’s Land would finally end.
“Shoot Cyrus? You? I hardly think so. He’s bungled events so badly that he doesn’t deserve to live, much less share all the money with me. So, allow me to save you the effort, Mr. Garrett.”
Hannah’s head snapped up. Surely she hadn’t heard that right. Surely—
Cyrus screeched. “No, Patience! Don’t! I beg you—”
Another shot rang out.
“Jesus Christ! You shot him.”
Hannah froze at Slade’s incredulous words. She jerked mightily in reaction, forcing her legs out straight, an action that splintered the chair. Her mind registered that she was free of the chair but still tied up. She kicked and rolled over as best she could to face the window.
With one of her Peacemakers held loosely in one hand, Slade held on to a bloodied and slumping Cyrus with his other. Hannah’s great-uncle, his eyes open and staring at his wife, clutched at his chest as he flowed with his blood to the floor. Transfixed, Slade stared at the body.
Hannah’s mind registered another sound—the metallic click that signaled a round being chambered. Dear God, no. Time slowed. And everything happened at once. Wasting no breath or reaction time on calling out, Hannah tore at the ropes that bound her wrists. She kept her gaze riveted on Patience, saw the hateful woman swing her weapon to align it with Slade’s chest.
Hannah then saw Isabel react, saw her outstretched arms as she jumped at her enemy. Screaming in her head, Hannah wrenched her arms apart in a superhuman effort and came up with her hands free. From her position on the floor, realizing the crying gasps she heard were her own, she ripped her Smith & Wesson .32 out of her pocket, cocked, aimed, and fired—at the same time both of her Peacemakers, the one in Patience’s hands and the one in Slade’s hand, belched their fire and death.
In the unearthly quiet and calm that followed the loud reports, people fell to the floor. Patience. Isabel. Hannah flipped over. Slade. “No!” was the one wrenching scream that ripped her asunder. “No!”
Had she then lost everyone? Slade, Isabel, Esmerelda. Mama and Papa. Hannah repocketed her gun, sat up, and attacked the ropes around her ankles. Her fingernails were torn and bloody by the time she freed herself.
“No, Slade. No. Oh, please, God, no,” she whimpered as she scrambled in a crawl toward her husband’s prone, facedown body, mere feet from Cyrus. With Slade’s face turned toward her, she could see that his mouth slacked open. His eyes were half-closed, and his face was an ashen gray.
Intent on her husband, and crawling over Cyrus, paying him no more attention than if he’d been a log, Hannah sucked in a shocked breath. A hand grasped her ankle. Before she could do more than absorb the fact that it had to be Cyrus, she heard a gun being cocked behind her.
Her heart set up a pounding, even as her mouth dried and a hot nervy feeling snaked over her. She felt the weight of her weapon in her pocket. Timing would be everything. She inched her hand toward her pocket.
“Did you think I’d die that easily?” Cyrus’s voice sounded weak and bubbly. “They’re all dead now. Except you.” He stopped to wheeze and cough. “And when you are, the money will be all mine.”
While he was talking, Hannah slipped her hand into her pocket, closing her fingers around the pistol’s comforting steel form. Knowing he’d fire when he’d said his piece, Hannah ripped the pistol out of her pocket and jerked her leg. Wrenched off-target, Cyrus fired wide to Hannah’s left.
Hannah heard him cocking the Peacemaker again. She jerked over on her back and saw him, bloodied and near death’s door, but nevertheless using both hands to level the gun at her again. Vengeful hatred burst forth in Hannah as she raised her arm and took aim at Cyrus’s openmouthed face.
She looked deep into his eyes. She wanted to be sure he knew and understood. “The only thing that’s all yours, you murdering bastard, is a free trip to hell. This is for J. C. and Catherine Lawless.”
Cyrus snarled out one word. “Bitch.” And steadied his aim.
Cold to the core, Hannah squeezed the trigger, centering a bullet right in the middle of his forehead. Cyrus jerked backward and then toppled over. Dead. Hannah sat up, staring at the gun in her hand as if she’d never seen it before. Turning, she pitched it out the broken window. It was done. Vengeance was hers and her sisters’. It was a hollow feeling.
With her mind shrouded in a sanity-saving cloud, Hannah crawled to her husband. Stopping by his unmoving side, she crouched in a kneel and stared at him, her hands over her nose and mouth. She couldn’t touch him. Her arms refused her brain’s order to turn him over. Just as her legs refused the order to get up and go check on Isabel. She would, she promised, but right now she had to … had to see to her husband.
So, breathing raggedly, her heart thump-bumping painfully against her chest wall, she stared transfixed at the blood oozing from an unseen wound in his head. Her gaze lowered to the small pool of red that stained the carpet, that forced her horrified yet fixated attention to its deadly pattern. Watching Slade’s lifeblood flow from him, Hannah felt nothing, heard nothing, did nothing. Time, unnoticed by the living or the dead, ticked by.
She closed her eyes, hoping against hope that when she opened them, Slade would be alive. She opened her eyes. She stared at the unmoving body before her. With no conscious forethought, she slowly dragged out her shirt’s tail. Leaning over, suddenly galvanized, she scrubbed savagely at the blood on the carpet and pleaded with it. “No. Stop it. He’s not dead. He won’t be dead if you’ll just stop. Why won’t you stop?”
The cloud lifted. A wrenching sob tore its way up from the bottom of her soul, giving her the strength to lift his shoulders, turn him over, and slide her legs under him so she could cradle his head. She doubled herself over him, putting her cheek to his forehead, still so warm. Rocking him, holding him close, she cried, “No, no, no. I love you. Don’t leave me, Slade. I love you.”
With a dizzying suddenness, she jerked upright and stared at him, feeling a deep anger invade her heart. She thumped his unmoving shoulder. “Do you hear me, damn you? Don’t you die! Don’t you dare. I will never forgive you.” Realizing what she was doing, she sounded a cry of sorrowful despair and doubled herself over him again.
“Hannah? Is that you?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The feeble cry brought Hannah’s head up. She turned to look toward the sofa. The voice was Isabel’s. Relieved beyond measure for this one blessing, but still numb from her grief, Hannah scooted out from under her husband. And froze. Blood. Everywhere. On her hands. Her clothes. Just like Mama and Papa. Hannah shook her head. No. No more blood. Please.
“Hannah? Are you … unharmed? Can you … help me … get this horrid … old bitch … off me?”
Standing at the cliff edge of sanity, Hannah laughed at Isabel’s words and her angry grunts of effort. One word of sympathy, one word of pity from Isabel probably would have sent Hannah leaping over that precipice into madness. As it was, though, the older woman’s feistiness set Hannah’s feet in motion. And away from the edge. “I’m coming, Isabel. Hold on.”
After no more than three steps in Isabel’s direction, Hannah was staggered and spun when someone ran past her, hitting her legs, knocking her sideways. An involuntary cry escaped her as she whirled away from the passing body’s momentum. Spreading her arms and legs to steady herself, stumbling to the sofa, Hannah clutched its upholstered spine with one hand and slipped her other hand into her pocket. Empty. No gun. Then she remembered—she’d thrown it out the window.
Forgetting about guns, forgetting about her own bruised and dizzy self, refusing to lose anyone else dear to her, Hannah grimaced in hatred as she whipped around and flung herself—to a standing halt. Her eyes flew open wide as she put her hands to her mouth. Then, joyfully, tearfully, she went to Isabel—and helped Esmerelda pull Patience’s dead weight off her mistress.
Once their joint mission was accomplished, Hann
ah assisted Isabel in sitting up. She then beamed at the mastiff, noting the wound that grazed the dog’s powerful shoulder, noting the matted blood in the tan fur, and the intelligent intensity in the dog’s brown eyes. “Poor Essie,” she whispered, her throat clogged with emotion. “Were you out there hurting and licking your wound all this time?”
Esmerelda inclined her head regally. Hannah’s hand went to her heart in recognition of the mastiff’s newfound majesty. Until the dog pricked her ears up, flopped her slobbering mouth open in a wide grin, and lolled her tongue out to the side.
That sight burst Hannah into real tears. Isabel clutched at her sleeve. Hannah dragged her other sleeve across her eyes and focused on the woman. The grande dame’s white hair was as rumpled as her clothing and her mood. “Stupid old woman, thinking she can shoot my grandson. Hannah, dear, where is Slade?”
Hannah couldn’t answer her. Not with words. Her chin quivered, her eyelids blinked rapidly, and she looked down, shaking her head.
Isabel became deathly quiet. She reached out a trembling hand and ran her fingers through the drying blood that coated Hannah’s shirt. She wiped it on her own skirt and then put her blue-veined, wrinkled hand up to Hannah’s cheek, pulling back a hand covered with the same red. “This isn’t … this isn’t”—she felt of her own fingers, smoothing them together in tiny circles—“yours?”
Hannah shook her head no.
“Oh, dear God.” Isabel’s voice held a death-knell quality to it.
Esmerelda nosed Hannah’s shoulder and whined. Hannah clutched at the huge dog, hugging her fiercely, burying her face in the warm fur. For once in her life, Esmerelda sat still for such familiarity, even licking at and nosing Hannah’s shoulder.
“Slade!” Isabel suddenly cried out.
Hannah heard her, but couldn’t seem to raise her head to comfort his grandmother. She heard too Esmerelda’s tail thumping on the carpet. Then, strong hands clasped her arms and turned her, sobbing and crying, to hold her against a warm chest. Hannah took a gasping, lurching breath and clung to this new comfort, this new and broad and masculine-scented chest … that was very familiar … in feel and texture … and breadth.
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