After Sundown

by Shelly Thacker

  His fingers seemed to go numb around the glass of beer in his hand. Why was he even hesitating? This was exactly what he’d wanted, what he’d come here hoping to find. A woman to relieve his hunger. No complications. No questions. Just an hour with a willing, beautiful, available female. The type who had always satisfied him in the past.

  This one was eager and no doubt highly skilled. But somehow, he found himself wanting something... different, something...

  More.

  Something he couldn’t even name. Never in his life has this happened to him. It was stunning—unnerving—to discover that she wasn’t what he really wanted.

  That the longer he looked at her, the more he thought of another woman.

  A delicate elf in faded calico who had soft brown eyes, and the scent of herbal soap in her hair, and the sweetest lips he had ever kissed... and a tender heart.

  “What do you say, hmm?” Indigo ran a finger down his chest. “Come on back to my place and help me celebrate leaving this town for good.”

  “No thanks.” He couldn’t believe he was saying it, even as he heard the words coming out of his mouth.

  Indigo arched one shapely brow, looking surprised. “My mistake,” she said lightly, withdrawing her hand and taking his rejection with a shrug. “But something’s sure got you all knotted up.” She turned away from the bar, a sly, knowing look in her eyes. “What’s her name, lawman?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she sashayed toward the door.

  One of the three remaining card players stood up and followed her. “I’ll give ya a last go, Indy.”

  “You got money?” She kept walking, not even looking back at the prospector. “Cash money?”

  “Just won twenty dollars.” He waved the bills in the air.

  She looked over her shoulder at him, sighing. “Come on, then.”

  Silence fell as the pair left. Lucas stood there, burning with a mix of unsatisfied hunger and befuddled confusion at what he had just done.

  Made worse by the fact that the other men in the room seemed equally curious about his actions.

  Holt in particular was looking at him with a furrowed brow and questioning eyes.

  Lucas responded with a glower and turned his back, glaring down into his beer.

  “Things sure have changed around this place,” O’Donnell said morosely. “Remember the old days, Cam? Two hundred men a day coming through those doors, their pockets heavy from the silver mines, every one of them eager for a bottle, a woman, a game of cards...” The gambler sighed fondly. “And we all made so much money, we could hardly carry it to the bank.”

  Fairfax polished the bar with his apron. “That we did, Morgan, that we did.”

  “These days, all we’ve got left are a bunch of hardworking pioneers too damned careful with their dollars,” O’Donnell said with distaste. “Half of them hoping for another strike they’re never going to find—”

  “Oh, Hell, Morgan, don’t sink into one of your melancholy moods,” Holt said. “You can’t blame everything on the silver going bust. You know damn well Indigo was right. You should’ve done right by Ivy or left her alone.”

  “Don’t you start in on me, Danny boy. I never told Miss Ivy any lies and I never made her any promises.”

  Lucas choked out a derisive breath. “Much as I hate to agree with the doc,” he said, turning to face them, “any man worth a bucket of warm spit does right by a woman. If she’s a proper lady, you marry her—and if she’s a whore, you pay her. You don’t just help yourself to a girl’s favors and then toss her aside.”

  O’Donnell shoved his chair back and stood up. “Now I’m not worth a bucket of warm spit? Would you care to take a boxing lesson out back, Marshal?”

  Lucas stepped away from the bar. Punching something would feel damned good about now. “Anytime, O’Donnell.”

  “Do we have to have a fight in here every week?” Holt gathered up the cards on the table and calmly started shuffling them. “This keeps up, I’m going to stay home and play solitaire.”

  Fairfax chuckled. The prospector at the bar started laughing.

  After a moment, O’Donnell shook his head, looking chastened. “Yeah, and with your luck at cards, you’d still lose.” He sat back down and pushed away the bottle of bourbon that sat in front of him. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Marshal.”

  “Forget it.” Lucas finished his beer and tried to decide whether to have another. Since he had turned down Miss Indigo for some idiotic reason, and it didn’t look like another saloon brawl was going to present itself, getting good and drunk seemed about the only distraction he was likely to get at the moment.

  “How about you boys smoke a peace pipe.” Fairfax grabbed an open box of cigars from behind the bar, tossing one to Lucas and one to each man at the table. “Another beer, Marshal?” He refilled the glass before Lucas had a chance to reply.

  Then the saloonkeeper lit a cigar for himself, took off his apron, and walked over to take a seat next to Holt.

  “Since you scared off half the players, Marshal,” O’Donnell said, clipping the end off his cigar, “the polite thing would be to sit in for a hand or two.”

  Lucas regarded the three of them warily, turning the fragrant Cuban cigar in his fingertips. This was another of Fairfax’s recruiting efforts, and he wasn’t going to be drawn in by it. He didn’t want to get mixed up in the lives and problems and big plans of this town. He was not staying here. He was leaving. Soon.

  But since he was leaving soon, he thought, a hand or two of poker probably wouldn’t do much harm.

  He picked up his beer and walked over to the table. “Deal me in.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The snow was falling more thickly through the dim light of afternoon as Lucas walked back to the jail, past the stage that was just pulling out of town. He felt a little better, another cigar clamped between his teeth, his pockets heavier by forty dollars, much of which used to belong to the good doctor.

  Travis was no doubt starving—the kid was always starving—and eager to get home for his supper. And Lucas had two letters to write.

  Which should be enough to keep his mind off Antoinette, he thought with a grimace. At least for the evening. The night was another matter.

  He opened the hotel’s front door. And stopped dead in his tracks.

  Travis was sprawled on the floor, facedown.

  Lucas cursed, closing the distance in two strides and bending over him. He found a pulse at his throat, but the back of the kid’s head was wet with blood. There were broken pieces of a heavy china plate scattered on the floor around him.

  Lucas’s heart hammered as he ran to Antoinette’s cell.

  He cursed, vividly. Furiously. The door was hanging open.

  She had escaped.

  Chapter 10

  The layers of blackness gave way slowly, one by one, until Annie could feel again. Could feel icy dampness pelting her cheek. And hard ground beneath her. And snow, bitterly cold through the fabric of her dress and undergarments. Pain throbbed at the back of her head. Where the stranger had hit her.

  “You still alive, miss?”

  The voice was soft, oddly polite. A booted toe nudged her in the back and Annie moaned. Everything hurt. The pounding ache in her head. Her ribs. And the muscles in her arms. Her hands were tied behind her. Her ankles were bound. She was lying in the snow, on her side. She opened her eyes and the cloudy sky and the white ground spun dizzily for a moment.

  Then her vision steadied and she could see pine trees scattered around her. Mountain peaks everywhere. And the evergreens’ limbs glittering with ice. A buckskin horse grazed a few feet away, pawing at the snow, its reins trailing on the ground.

  The stranger stood over her in the faint light of... evening? Early morning? She couldn’t tell. Didn’t know how much time had passed.

  Her mouth went dry with fear as he crouched beside her.

  “I’m so glad you’re still with me.” His smile was warm, almost friendly. He wore a
gray suit with velvet lapels, a striped satin vest, a string tie in his starched white collar. The falling snow stained his fashionable, wide-brimmed felt hat. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five, almost looked like some prosperous young shopkeeper or lawyer.

  Except for the spots of blood on his fine clothes and shiny black boots.

  “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength,” he said, reaching down to brush a strand of her hair out of her eyes with his gloved fingers. “But I’m relieved I didn’t kill you, Miss Sutton. A live body’s so much more pleasant to transport than a dead one. Learned that the hard way. Dead body gives off such a disagreeable odor after a few hours—and then there’s rigor mortis. You have no idea what a headache that can be.” He tilted his head to one side. “You’re really much prettier than on your wanted poster.”

  A bounty hunter. Annie stared up at him, numb with cold, with shock. He was a bounty hunter.

  Terror seized her—just as it had when he’d stalked toward her cell and drawn a gun, threatening that if she made a sound, he would kill her, and Travis as well. Annie had watched helplessly as he’d unlocked the door with some kind of key. She’d had no weapons, no way to protect herself when he came inside, when he had grabbed her and struck her so hard, and the world had gone black.

  He sighed, brushing his gloved hand along her cheek. “Didn’t expect you to be this pretty.” With a smile, he lifted a strand of her long hair to his lips. “And you smell so good. Think I’d like to keep you that way. At least for a while. I so rarely get the pleasure of bringing in a woman.”

  He looked up into the falling snow. “Unfortunately, we don’t have time for this now, and good old Buck here has had enough rest. Better get back on the trail. People will be coming after us.” He straightened and walked over to the buckskin. “Or rather, coming after you, the escaped outlaw.”

  Annie rolled onto her side, gasping at the pain, and managed to struggle to her knees. “What are you talking about?” She tried to keep her voice from wavering. “What did you do to Travis?” Quickly, she looked around for anything she might use as a weapon or to cut through the ropes. A broken stick. A sharp rock. Anything.

  “The kid? I told you I wouldn’t harm him as long as you cooperated,” the bounty hunter said mildly. “I don’t break promises, at least not to women. Always had a soft spot in my heart for the ladies.” He bent down to tighten up the loosened cinch on the horse’s saddle. “All I did was hit him good and hard. By the time he wakes up, I’ll have collected my five thousand and be long gone.”

  Annie hoped that he was telling the truth, that Travis was all right. “And what makes you think you’ll be paid the bounty?” she asked in disbelief, leaning to one side, biting her lip at the pain. Her numb fingers closed around a small, broken piece of rock. “I was already in jail. You stole a prisoner from a lawman’s custody.”

  “No, no, you escaped,” he corrected lightly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, you know. I prefer to let someone else take care of the tracking and capturing, then I just bide my time, wait for an opportunity.” He led the horse over to her. “Even your lady friend fit nicely into my plan. It’ll look like she helped you get free, then you ran off. I left my skeleton key behind on the floor, next to the basket. Nice touch, don’t you think?”

  Annie felt sick. “I suppose hurting Travis was a nice touch, too.”

  “Yes, in fact, it was. I made it look like a woman had done it. Took one of your dinner plates and busted it over his head. Something larger might’ve been nice, but I was in a hurry.”

  Annie shook her head, choking back a sob. It sounded like he had enjoyed every step—planning it, doing it. “Nobody will believe I would hurt Travis.”

  “Really?” He reached into one of his saddlebags and withdrew a creased, tattered piece of paper: the reward poster with her picture on it. “You’re a wanted murderer, Miss Sutton.”

  Annie stared at the paper in his hand, shivering with cold. With shock. She had never seen the actual handbill that showed a sketch of her face beneath the words WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE. The picture made her look cold, hard. Like an outlaw.

  She shut her eyes, hanging her head. She was an outlaw. And Travis had been hurt because of her. Because she was worth five thousand dollars to any man who wanted to collect it.

  The bounty hunter walked over and grabbed her bound arms, yanking her upright, ignoring her cry of pain at the sudden movement. “I’ll be celebrated as a hero when I bring you in—an escaped lady outlaw wanted for murder, who also attacked a most unfortunate, gullible boy.”

  Annie wrenched her arm free, blinking hard. “It’ll be my word against yours.”

  “No, you see, it would be your word against mine.” He recaptured her easily, his grip tightening like a vise as he hauled her to her feet. “But when you tried to escape from me, I was forced to shoot you.”

  Annie froze, staring at him in horror. He had planned every detail.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve done this.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, dragging her over to his horse, “it’s a long way to Central City. You have several whole days left on this earth. And we’ll have time to get to know each other much better, you and I.”

  He stepped up into the saddle and pulled her after him, slinging her across his lap, facedown. Annie inhaled sharply in pain. Her ribs felt like they were on fire and the saddle horn dug into her belly. She struggled, but he held her still easily, linking one strong arm through her bound hands, pressing his elbow into her spine.

  “What’s this?” He found the rock she had clutched in her fingers, taking it from her. “A weapon?” He threw it away.

  As he dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and set off at a gallop, he was laughing.

  ~ ~ ~

  One horse, two riders.

  Didn’t add up.

  Lucas knelt in the snow, staring at the hoofprints. As the last light of day began to fade into violet shadows, he turned up the lantern he had brought, studying the marks more clearly.

  His first reaction when he had found Antoinette missing had been fury—that she had escaped, that he had been tricked. After he had carried the injured kid over to Holt’s place, he had given the doctor a blistering earful.

  But both Holt and Mrs. Greer, who had been at his house, had reacted with shock to the news that Antoinette was missing. As Holt went to work on the unconscious Travis, he insisted he knew nothing about any plan to help Antoinette escape tonight. And Mrs. Greer had been frantic, crying that she wanted to launch a search, telling some wild story about Antoinette hearing a prowler outside her windows at night.

  Lucas had refused to believe any of it, refused their help, and set out alone to hunt down his escaped prisoner. He didn’t want any more civilians getting hurt, and he didn’t know who he could trust, who might be trying to help Antoinette.

  The snow had made her path easier to follow down the twisting, treacherous mountain trails. But it kept coming down, thick and fast. For the first snow of the season, it had quickly become one hell of a storm—and the hoofprints began to disappear too quickly. Lucas had galloped down the mountainside at reckless speed, trying to catch up before nightfall, before the snow covered Antoinette’s trail completely.

  But now as he knelt and studied the tracks more closely, he realized they’d been left by one horse carrying two people. And he felt a growing sense of unease.

  From the beginning, some nagging, stubborn part of Lucas’s brain hadn’t been able to believe that Antoinette would hurt Travis.

  And if someone was helping her escape, why would that person think the best chance to get away would be to share a horse?

  Lucas stood, lifting the lantern and looking down the trail, through the snowfall and the deepening shadows. His instincts told him something was wrong—but he wasn’t sure he could trust his instincts where Antoinette was concerned.

  His eyes on the hoofprints, he walked over and mounted the iron-gray gelding he had taken fro
m the livery stable and set off again. It was getting dark, the icy white snowflakes kept falling, and the wind had become so cold it sliced through his drover’s coat and chilled him to the bone. But he didn’t want to stop for the night. Not yet.

  Within an hour, the tracks led him to a copse of pine trees, where he found a crushed place in the snow. Like the two riders had stopped here to rest.

  But when he dismounted for a closer look, he saw only one set of footprints.

  Made by a man’s large, booted feet.

  Lucas went still. It looked like the man had taken some burden from his horse and laid it under the trees. Maybe a bundle of supplies.

  Or maybe a person.

  A person who was tied up. Or dead.

  Lucas felt like a lead weight had just dropped through the pit of his stomach. He didn’t see Antoinette’s footprints anywhere.

  Maybe Holt and Mrs. Greer hadn’t been acting. He remembered how the gray-haired woman had burst into tears, the look of panic on her face. And her story about a prowler outside Antoinette’s windows.

  Bounty hunter.

  Lucas swore. He should have guessed. Didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it earlier.

  But then he knew why: because he was always willing to think the worst of Antoinette.

  He returned to his horse, grabbed the reins and vaulted into the saddle, three words ringing through his head, over and over.

  Dead or alive.

  The reward Olivia had offered was for Antoinette dead or alive. Five thousand dollars. There were plenty of ruthless bastards in the West who would do anything for that kind of money. Anything.

  Lucas spurred the gelding down the steep mountain trail, into the night. It was too dark to keep going, the moon and stars almost blotted out by the clouds and falling snow. He didn’t stop to question why he was risking his neck.

  Especially when he knew the son of a bitch could’ve killed Antoinette already.

  Duty, he told himself, unable to explain his racing pulse. She was his prisoner—and if some goddamn bounty hunter had taken her from his custody, it was Lucas’s duty to get her back.