“Now will you believe me?” Wes Douglas gave a thin smirk. “You’re all gonna die.”
Not without a fight. Roan would go down firing his rifle and swinging for all he was worth. He glanced at Wes, noticing a familiar leather watch fob hanging from his pocket. Roan yanked out the worn pocket watch, the spit drying in his mouth. He didn’t need to see the name engraved on the scratched back to know it had belonged to Mose. He’d watched his friend check it hundreds of times. Anger whipped through him like the thin leather strips his father had used to beat him.
“You were there the night riders killed Mose Mozeke. This proves it.”
“So what if I was? He was a stupid, raggedy old man. All his family was dead, didn’t have any friends, didn’t know squat. Nobody cared.”
“I was his friend. I cared.” Roan shook with the need to tighten his hands around this man’s throat until the life drained from him. “He had more smarts in his little finger than you’ll ever know.”
Marley took Roan’s hands, pocket watch and all, in hers. “Not this way. Your friend wouldn’t want this. Wait for Sheriff Bagwell and let him hold this man for trial.”
“She’s right, Roan,” Judd said. “Besides, we have bigger problems.”
“Let me go, Marley,” Roan said quietly. “I’m all right.”
But when she released him, Roan drew back and slammed a fist into the man’s face. His head whipped back and the chair flew over. Either the blow or the fall rendered him unconscious.
“Well, we won’t have to worry about him for a bit,” drawled Judd.
“You can’t deny me some sort of satisfaction.” Roan rubbed his knuckles.
Marley kicked the man, then stepped over him. “He deserves far more than that.”
“With luck, the rest will come later.” Roan picked up his rifle. “We’ll have to hunker down here in the house and pray to God that help arrives soon.”
If any of them remained alive.
But through the window he could make out the thin sliver of a waning moon.
Thirty
“You’re surrounded. Got no place to run,” Gentry yelled from the darkness. “Send out Marley Rose and I’ll spare the rest of you.”
“Like hell,” Roan murmured.
Marley clasped her hand over her mouth to silence her cry and pressed her face against Roan’s shirt. Ice invaded her bones, and she couldn’t stop shivering. They’d sent Jessie and the kids deeper into the house and dragged Wes Douglas into a closet and locked it. Judd was guarding the top floor.
After extinguishing every light, Marley and Roan huddled on the floor beneath the broken kitchen window. Her rifle was empty, and so was the extra pistol she’d found on the shelf next to the boxes of cartridges.
Empty casings and glass littered the floor. Any other time, her need for tidiness would kick in, but at the moment, she didn’t mind the mess.
Cold air blew the curtains out like ghostly shapes above her head.
Each time Gentry or one of the others yelled, she jerked. Gentry terrified her worse than any monster, and the evil coming from him put her in mind of an army of fanged, ravenous beasts with drooling mouths. With every passing minute, they inched closer to her.
Even now, she could feel their rough hands grabbing, pulling, dragging. They were going to get her, and no one could stop them.
Roan tightened his arms around her and kissed her temple, evidently sensing her thoughts. “He’ll have to kill me first.”
“I can’t let that happen.” Marley raised her head and met his shadowed gaze. “I can end this and save you and the others. I can’t let him kill Mama and the children.”
His answer came hard and fast. “Don’t even think about giving yourself up.”
“Is there any other way? Just answer me that.”
He searched her eyes. “I’ll think of something. But I’m not letting you walk out that door. Even if you did, he’d still slaughter everyone. He doesn’t intend to let any of us live—not even the babies.”
The contents of Marley’s stomach tried to rise. She sagged against him, knowing he spoke the truth. And that was why she stayed put—that and the fear of facing the rotten man whose blood ran through her veins. He’d already made clear his plans, and they terrified her. To be sold to someone to be used however he so desired made her more determined not to willingly face that pain and depravity.
Not yet. She felt like a coward, but she just couldn’t.
A slim chance remained that help would arrive or one of the ranch hands could free himself and the others—if they were alive. No one in the house knew the answer to that.
“If dawn would just come so we can see.” The night seemed a month long, and it wasn’t over yet. “It seems an eternity ago that we made love and talked about marriage. Did that truly happen? Did I lie naked in your arms, awash with unbelievable pleasure?”
“You did, and I took great joy in making love to you. When this is over and we’re married, we may spend days in bed at a time.” A crooked half smile curved his mouth. “What else can I do with a sex-starved woman?”
She appreciated his attempt to take her mind off their predicament, but nothing could. A noise outside alerted them. Roan raised his head for a cautious look. Propping his rifle on the windowsill, he fired.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Someone moving around. I think I might’ve hit him.”
Although the rifle and pistol were empty, she refused to turn them loose. If she had to, she could hopefully bludgeon and disable an attacker with them.
Where were her father, the sheriff, and their men? Did they lie dead somewhere as well?
It seemed that they were the only people left alive in the entire world. Just them and Gentry’s band of killers, waiting out this siege.
In another part of the house, the boom of a rifle shattered the silence—one, and then a second one. The noose around them tightened with every passing second.
No one had to tell her that Gentry and his men crept closer and closer.
She held the ability to save them. The thought refused to leave, despite Roan’s arguments to the contrary. She wished she were brave enough to walk out and meet her painful fate.
As she tried to dredge up slim hope, the faint cry of one of the triplets drifted up through the wood floor. The darling was probably hungry, or it could be Edith who was sick, burning with fever. But they didn’t dare expose the hidden trapdoor to the room under the kitchen. She said a prayer that the babe would go back to sleep. Maybe Matt would rock the infant. The kid was a wonder sometimes, far too old for his age.
A sudden burst of gunfire rent the air, but the sound was different, echoing more distantly, as though the shooter wasn’t aiming for the house. Had help arrived? She thought she’d go crazy not knowing what was happening.
The baby quieted. She was grateful.
Time dragged with nothing more to mark it but her heartbeat thrumming loudly in her ears.
“You got fifteen minutes to come out,” Gentry yelled. “Then we’re torching the house and burning everyone inside.”
White-hot terror enveloped Marley. “What are we going to do?” she whispered. “Mama and the children—I can’t let them die.”
“A lot can happen in fifteen minutes. Dawn will come soon. The sky shows signs of lightening a little.”
“Are you sure?” Marley scrambled to peer over the windowsill. The faint glimmer on the horizon almost seemed a mirage, but she knew it wasn’t. The coming daylight was going to be their time limit. Gentry was running out of darkness in which to do his dirty work.
While she looked out, she saw small, dark shapes running this way and that all over the compound. “Roan, what kind of animals are those?”
“They look like…cats.”
“Granny Jack’s cats. They must’ve gotten loose.�
�
“Or someone let them out,” Roan said. “It had to have been the old woman.”
“She’s alive.” Marley grinned. “I don’t know what she’s planning, but she has something in mind.”
For so many hours, they’d had little to bring a ray of hope. That Granny had survived made everything better.
“Maybe she’s freed the men and they’ll work toward us, hopefully eliminating any threat. Those shots a bit ago puzzled me, but if we’re lucky, then it was her.” Roan raised his rifle. “I lost count of my shots. I have to be down to the last cartridges.”
“We’ve emptied the boxes, Roan. All we have left are what’s in the rifles.” What would they do when those ran out? She didn’t want to consider the possibility.
He took a cartridge from his shirt pocket and handed it to Marley. “I saved one for you. Just in case you need it. I don’t know how this is going to end.”
She could hear how he struggled to keep his voice even—and he was losing. Her throat clogged with tears. Roan was the strongest person she knew, and if he was getting ready to die, she knew they really had no hope.
He cleared his throat. “If you have to use the bullet, I’ll be dead.”
Tears blurred her vision. “I can’t think about us dying this way. You’re the love I never thought I’d find. In the short time I’ve known you, my whole life has changed.” Her voice broke. “I’m glad we made love. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that.”
Firelight flickered through the window. She rose to peer out and sheer terror froze her.
“You could’ve saved them, Marley Rose. You always were a worthless child. Everything is too late now. Their blood is on your hands.” Will Gentry stood with legs braced apart, holding a torch. Flames rose high into the dark morning. His words chilled the very marrow of her bones.
Similar torches dotted the blackness around him. Stark horror settled in her chest, stilling her breath.
Marley’s fingers dug into Roan’s arm. “He’s really going to do it. He’s going to burn everyone alive.”
She thought of the babies down in the cellar who hadn’t had a chance to see what life was about. Of Matt, her mother, and the other children.
Only one person could save them—her. But to do it, she’d have to dance with the devil.
Was she brave enough?
Marley trembled and peered out the window again at the man she feared worse than death. She watched the light flicker across his bone-thin face and glitter in his frightening eyes.
Sucking in a ragged breath, she got to her feet and stuck the empty pistol into her pocket.
Her voice was as brittle as ice. “I’m coming out. You wanted me, you got me.”
Thirty-one
Roan clutched her arm. “No, I’m not going to let you go out.”
Marley averted her gaze; her voice was dull. “Let me loose.”
“I’ll never release you to that monster out there. Can’t you see? What you do won’t make any difference to our situation.”
She twisted and pulled to get free, and it was all Roan could do to hold her. But he had to. She was everything to young Matt as well as the rest of the family. He somehow had to save her from Gentry’s brutal hands.
A certain knowledge settled over him. If he let her go, she’d never know freedom again. Her paintings would go unpainted, her stories unwritten. Her life unlived. Gentry would either make good on his promise to auction her off, or he’d slip over the edge and kill her.
“I know what I have to do. Please let me do it. I can save you—my family. The babies. Little Edith’s sick. She needs treatment.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I have the bullet you gave me and the pistol is in my pocket. Once we’re away from here, I’ll use it.”
Everything in Roan stilled. She meant to kill herself. His beautiful Texas Star would choose death in her attempt to save them.
“I can’t let you sacrifice yourself. Sorry.” He tightened an arm around her waist and lifted her off the floor, looking for a safe place to put her until it was over.
A flaming torch crashed through the window, lighting up the kitchen.
“Let me go!” Marley screamed. She pounded him with her fists, kicking and squirming. “I have to go out to him before it’s too late! Think of Matt and Benji. The babies, the babies!”
“Listen to reason,” he pleaded, trying to get through to her. Her eyes were wide with panic. He doubted she could hear him, but he prayed he could make her see. “Whatever you do will make no difference. I know men like Gentry. I’ve seen how they work. How they think.”
In a twisting, blinding fury, she managed to break Roan’s hold. The sudden motion thrust her stumbling backward. He lunged to catch her, but she fell against the corner of the table, striking her head.
Marley lay still and silent, her face white as he lifted her head into his lap, cradling her. He felt the back of her head and located a raised lump. “I’m sorry, Marley.”
Wailing from beneath the floor penetrated his shock. Marley’s words echoed in his head—the babies and the boys under the floor. Smoke filled his nostrils, sending him toward the torch. He grabbed it and tossed it back out through the window, then lifted his rifle.
“I’m waiting, girl!” Gentry yelled. “Get your butt out here! Now!”
“Change of plans, you bastard!” Roan thundered. “She’s a little indisposed right now.”
Gentry ordered his men forward. Another torch came through the broken window. Roan had no time to put out the fire this time. He raised his rifle, praying it held a cartridge, and squeezed the trigger. Orange flame spat from the end. A man went down.
Still they came. Closer and closer.
Roan fired again, but this time nothing happened. His luck had run out.
Everything had run out—time, hope, love.
The things for which he’d searched were gone.
Smoke stung his eyes and clogged his throat. He was overcome with a fit of coughing. The house would go up in a minute.
Operating on sheer determination to save the ones he could, Roan yanked off his bandana and held it to his nose and mouth.
Although he didn’t know if Marley was alive or dead, he lifted the bandana from his face long enough to throw her over his shoulder. With the covering back on, he ran toward the front of the dwelling. “Everyone out! The house is on fire! Get out now!” He laid Marley down beside the front door and tied his bandana around her mouth and nose. Then he ran back to the flaming kitchen, Jessie at his side. He grabbed some dish towels and handed Jessie one. Holding his to his mouth, he clawed at the rug and lifted the trapdoor. Jessie pushed past him and raced down the ladder.
Before Roan could follow, a flurry of gunshots and thundering hooves sounded outside.
Help? Or reinforcements for Gentry? But all he could think about was getting to the children. Nothing else mattered.
Jessie grabbed two of the babies and hurried to the ladder. Roan got the other triplet and waved Matt over. The boy stumbled to him, holding Benji’s hand. “Take hold of my shirt and don’t let go for anything.”
Roan felt the tug of their hands as he climbed the ladder. Judd waited at the top. The cowboy helped Jessie up, then took the baby from Roan.
“Thanks, Judd. Let’s get everyone out of the house. Marley’s in the parlor.”
Judd grinned. “I carried her outside. Help came in the nick of time. Duel and the sheriff led the charge. We’ve been saved.”
Roan sagged against the wall as Duel raced into the burning kitchen. He scooped Jessie up, mindful of the two babies in her arms, and carried her to safety. Coughing and barely able to see, Roan stumbled from the house that had been under siege for what seemed an eternity.
He had to find Marley, had to get to her. Dodging men who flooded into the kitchen with buckets of water, Roan welcomed the dawn. He beat Du
el to the woman lying on the cold, wet ground. Roan felt for a pulse.
She was alive.
“Marley, honey. It’s Roan.” He sat down and put her head in his lap. “It’s over.”
Duel knelt, his face stony. “Who hurt her? Tell me.”
Roan had never faced a father’s wrath but found it something to fear. He wasn’t one to lie though. He met Duel’s hard gaze. “I’m the one you want. It was an accident.”
“You’d best explain yourself.”
As clearly as he could manage, Roan told about the siege and how Marley had been determined to save them when all hope was lost. “She went crazy. I had to stop her from going with Gentry. I held her, but she fought me.” Roan coughed to clear smoke from his lungs. “She wouldn’t listen. When she finally broke free, she fell backward against the corner of the table. I never meant for that to happen. I would never hurt her, not in a million years. She’s my life and the woman I love.”
“I believe you.” Duel rubbed his bleary eyes. “Thank you for saving her and Jessie and the children.”
Marley blinked and looked up. “Papa?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you’re alive.”
Duel bent and kissed her forehead. “I wish I could’ve gotten here sooner. I rode through the night. I’ll tell you all about the trip once I help put out the fire.”
“Just one thing—did you kill Gentry?” Roan asked.
“No. We’re still sorting through the dead, but I don’t think he’s among them. The ones able to ride fled when they saw us. He might’ve gotten away.”
Bitter disappointment filled Roan. It wasn’t over and wouldn’t be until the man filled a grave. “I’ll come help fight the fire.”
“No, stay here with Marley Rose. Get that smoke out of your lungs. It looks like they’ve kept it from spreading.”
His eyes stinging, Roan watched Duel hurry to join the fight for his house, unsure what to say. Marley probably wouldn’t speak to him after the way he’d thwarted her, and that would kill him.
“What happened, Roan?” she asked with a puzzled expression. “My head is splitting. The last thing I remember is walking to the door to go to Gentry, and you were trying to stop me.”
To Catch a Texas Star Page 27
