After Sundown

by Shelly Thacker

  If she was still alive.

  Every muscle in his body had bunched up tight. He forced himself to relax. To stay levelheaded, his hand easy on the reins.

  Until a half-hour later, when he rode into a valley and lost the trail. He couldn’t make out the hoofprints in the snow anymore. Or even the trail itself, not in the darkness. The storm had obliterated everything. And there were three different passes that led out of the valley.

  He should stop, he thought logically, reining the gelding in ever-widening circles, looking for some sign of which direction they had taken. He should stop and wait until morning. Getting through the passes would be one hell of a lot safer in daylight. If the bounty hunter was smart, he had already stopped somewhere.

  The thought of what he might do to Annie before dawn—what he might already be doing—brought a sound from Lucas’s throat, a snarl of anger and frustration.

  He tried to calm down. Think rationally. Find the usual detached, icy cool he had always relied on in situations like this.

  But for the first time, he couldn’t find it. Couldn’t feel logical or steady or rational anymore. His heart was drumming in his chest and he was soaked through from the sleet and practically frozen solid, and he just kept riding in circles through the hopeless mess of snow and darkness, refusing to give up.

  And then he saw the shoes.

  Annie’s shoes, small patches of black against all the white.

  They had either fallen off—or she had kicked them off. As a signal. A trail marker. To show which pass they had taken.

  Smart girl. Lucas smiled grimly and hoped the latter was true. Because it would mean she was still alive. He dug his heels into the gelding’s flanks and reined the horse forward.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Get up, damn it. You son of a bitch, I said get up!”

  Annie’s heart thudded with fear as she sat pressed against the ice-slick rock of the mountainside, watching the bounty hunter curse at his horse by the light of a small lantern he held. His mood had changed abruptly when the buckskin had lost its footing on the steep trail, sending them both tumbling to the ground.

  It looked like the poor creature had broken a leg.

  “Worthless goddamn nag.”

  Annie flinched as the bounty hunter wrenched cruelly on the reins. “M-Maybe we should stop for the night and let him rest—”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He turned on Annie, his eyes blazing in the light of the lantern. “I had different accommodations in mind, Miss Sutton—nice little place I found on the way up here. Got some supplies and a fresh mount waiting.” He turned and kicked the injured horse. “Guess we’ll just have to walk the rest of the way.”

  Annie shook her head, her teeth chattering as she tried to keep her bound, bare feet under her, hidden in the wet snow. With her long skirts, he hadn’t noticed. Yet. “You’re... you’re not just going to leave the horse suffering like that, are you?”

  “You want me to put him out of his misery? With a nice loud gunshot to signal anyone who might be tracking us? No chance.” He bent to unfasten his saddlebags and weapons.

  Annie glanced back up the trail behind them. She didn’t know how anyone would be able to track them through this storm, which had turned into a blizzard as darkness fell and the temperature dropped. No sane man would risk traveling the steep mountain trails in this weather.

  And the one man who had the most reason to follow her was definitely sane. Methodical. Logical. And he probably believed she had hurt Travis. After all, he believed she had murdered his brother in cold blood.

  She doubted Lucas McKenna would risk his life simply to reclaim her as his prisoner.

  But she prayed he was on her trail.

  Because the one man who hated her more than any other was now her one hope of survival.

  The bounty hunter slung his saddlebags across his shoulder and walked over to her, bending down with a knife to reach for the ropes around her ankles. “What happened to your shoes?” he demanded.

  “I-I guess they came loose and fell off.”

  His eyes met hers and his expression turned ugly. “You smart little bitch.”

  Annie flinched as he raised his fist.

  But he didn’t hit her. After a moment, he relaxed and smiled again. “A rather creative idea, Miss Sutton, but it won’t work. No one would risk following us through this pass at night. Not in this storm.”

  He crouched down in front of her and sliced through the bindings on her ankles. Then he opened one of his saddlebags and pulled out a pair of soft, beaded deerskin boots, like moccasins but high enough to reach the middle of the leg. He shoved them on her feet. “Got these off a Cheyenne medicine man years ago. Snow’ll probably ruin them but for five thousand dollars, I’ll get a new pair.” He stood up. “Now let’s go.”

  “I... I can’t walk very far in these—”

  “Of course you can. Indians do it all the time.” He drew his gun and aimed it at her head. “And the only reason you’re not dead already is because a live body moves a whole lot easier than a dead one.” He thumbed back the hammer on the pistol. “If I have to carry you, you might as well be dead right now. It’s so cold out, you’d probably keep awhile, smell real nice all the way to Central City.”

  Annie stood up, shuddering. “All right.”

  “All right. Guess you should have thought of this before you went kicking off your shoes—to leave trail markers for someone who isn’t even following us.” He motioned her forward with the gun. “Ladies first.”

  Annie headed down the trail, the bounty hunter right at her back. His lantern offered just enough light for her to see in front of her. The moccasins had thick soles and fur lining, but after a while, her feet became soaked from the wet snow. Every breath of the cold air burned her lungs, and her ribs ached from so many hours of being slung over his horse.

  By the time dawn began to lighten the sky a couple of hours later, her limbs felt numb. Her whole body hurt.

  She tripped on a branch, stumbling to her knees with a sob.

  “Get up.”

  “I can’t... go any further.”

  He pressed the barrel of his gun to the back of her head. “You better hope that’s not true.”

  She was breathing hard, so wracked with pain and so numbed by the freezing weather, she couldn’t even feel fear anymore. “How... much further?”

  “Another hour maybe. Get up.”

  “Let me rest. Please.”

  “I have several virtues, but kindness isn’t one of them. Get up.” He cocked the gun.

  Annie staggered to her feet and turned to look up at him, her fatigue and frustration brimming over into defiance.

  And that was when she saw him.

  The rider. A black silhouette against the brightness of the dawn sky. Galloping toward them down the steep mountainside on a dark horse.

  She couldn’t catch her breath, for a second thought it was only a trick of the shifting light. But then she knew—knew the outline of those broad shoulders and the flash of silver in his hand and the hat tilted low against the sun. Knew who it was with every fiber of her being.

  The bounty hunter turned, his arm still outstretched, his pistol glinting in the first rays of the morning. “Shit.”

  He aimed at Lucas and started to pull the trigger.

  “No.” Annie threw herself forward, slamming into his back just as the gun went off.

  The shot went low.

  And struck the horse.

  The animal whinnied shrilly in pain and went down. Annie screamed as she saw Lucas fall into the snow.

  He was too far away for her to tell if he’d been hurt. The bounty hunter grabbed her by the arm and shoved her toward a jumble of rocks and boulders, taking cover behind them.

  Annie strained against his hold on her, trying to see over the top of one of the boulders. Dear God, what if he was dead?

  The bounty hunter fastened an arm around her throat and dragged her back against him, cursi
ng under his breath. He shoved his saddlebags to one side and pulled out another gun. “Who the hell is that?” he hissed. “Who the hell would follow us through those passes? At night. In a snowstorm.”

  Annie didn’t reply.

  A moment later, a voice rang out from a few yards up the trail.

  “Federal marshal!”

  Annie almost cried with relief as she heard that familiar bellow. He sounded unhurt. And just as ornery as always. Thank God. Oh, thank you, God.

  The bounty hunter cursed and fired another shot in Lucas’s direction. “I haven’t come this far to lose my five thousand now!” he shouted up the hill.

  There was silence for a while. The bounty hunter looked around wildly as if seeking some way to escape. But the pass was too narrow at this point. If they left the shelter of the rocks, he would be vulnerable to Lucas’s gun.

  “That woman was in my custody,” Lucas snarled, closer this time. “I suggest you give her back while you still can.”

  The bounty hunter fired again, several shots this time. Annie braced herself against the roaring of the gun so close to her. After it died down, she didn’t hear anything more except the echoes of the gunshots off the icy walls of the pass. And the ringing in her ears.

  And the pounding of her heartbeat.

  There was nothing else. Nothing.

  The bounty hunter emptied the spent cartridges onto the ground and reloaded his gun. And waited. For several long minutes. Still the pass remained eerily quiet. He chanced a look over the top of the boulders.

  Then he stood up, dragging her with him, apparently satisfied with what he had seen. He kept his arm tight around Annie’s neck, a pistol in each hand.

  Annie cried out, glimpsing a crumpled form several yards up the trail, facedown in the snow—that familiar black coat, the hat, one black boot twisted out at an awkward angle. “No.”

  “Looks like I got him,” the bounty hunter said with pleasure.

  “Look again,” a familiar voice snapped from behind them.

  The bounty hunter whirled, losing his hold on Annie as he brought up his pistols. She lunged away from him, falling to the ground.

  And everything seemed to explode around her. A deafening roar echoed off the walls of the narrow pass as Lucas and the bounty hunter exchanged fire. Shouts and the acrid smell of smoke and hot steel filled the morning air.

  It was over within seconds. As the echoes died down, Annie lay very still, afraid even to breathe.

  Then she saw the bounty hunter stretched out on his back, his eyes unseeing, a single crimson stain spreading across his starched white shirt and satin vest.

  She looked toward Lucas. He was still standing, smoke curling from the barrel of his Colt.

  But it wasn’t until she struggled to her feet, rushing toward him, filled with relief that he was alive, that she noticed the blood.

  Blood on his face, on his shirt.

  The pistol dropped from his fingers as he sank to his knees and fell forward.

  “Lucas!”

  Chapter 11

  Sleet pelted down from the gray skies as Annie huddled over Lucas, but the fear that drenched her was sharper than the prickles of ice on her skin. The outcropping of rock a few inches above their heads offered precious little protection from the storm. The thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders, taken from the bounty hunter’s saddlebags, wasn’t much help either.

  Her skin burned with cold, her legs and arms still felt numb—and she was ready to tear her hair out by the roots if the mess of wet curls didn’t stop getting in her eyes as she worked.

  “You have to wake up,” she pleaded, cutting another strip of cloth from her petticoat with Lucas’s hunting knife. “Lucas, you have to wake up and tell me what to do. I don’t... I can’t...” Annie realized she was babbling. Tried to swallow the panic bubbling up in her throat.

  Two hours had passed since he’d been shot, maybe more. At first, she had thought his injury might not be so bad: A single bullet had struck him, cutting a deep furrow along his temple.

  But it wouldn’t stop bleeding. The snow all around him was stained dark red.

  And she had no way to get him to safety or help. The first shot the bounty hunter had fired had killed Lucas’s horse. When the snow had turned to sleet, slashing down out of the morning sky, she had dragged Lucas to a sheltered corner of the pass, but that had taken almost half an hour, and the last of her strength. He was too big, all muscle, too heavy for her to tug more than a few yards.

  “I don’t know how to help you,” she cried, her shallow, unsteady breaths forming clouds on the frigid air. “I don’t even know if I can help you.”

  The possibility that he might never wake up again caused a hard tug on her heart that she couldn’t explain. She tied the makeshift bandage in place around his head. Wasn’t sure what else she should do. She didn’t know anything about gunshot wounds, had no idea how serious it might be. He was so pale, so still. His pulse seemed steady, his breathing even, but he hadn’t moved, or made a sound. Or opened his eyes.

  All she could think was that she should try to stop the bleeding and keep him warm. But she seemed to be failing at both.

  She tucked his coat and blanket closer to him, but they had started out damp—because he had left them in the snow up the trail, along with his hat and boots. He had arranged the bedroll beneath his coat to make a decoy. A clever trick that had allowed him to sneak over the rocks to surprise the bounty hunter.

  And save her.

  Gratitude, she told herself. This strange feeling in her heart was simply gratitude. She owed him her life. And whatever help she could offer.

  Exhausted, shivering, she hunched over him, trying to protect him as best she could from the shards of ice and snow that slanted in at them like arrows from some unseen enemy.

  For one desperate moment, she considered leaving him to go for help. But as she looked down the trail, she didn’t know where she might find help. Or how long it might take, how long she would last on foot. Or where in God’s name she was.

  And only then did it occur to her. Only then.

  She was free. Outside. In the open. No cell, no iron bars, no handcuffs, no one pointing a gun at her. Free. For the first time in weeks.

  Her pulse quickened. The bounty hunter had said there was a shelter of some kind, further down the trail. A horse. Supplies.

  A chance to escape. The first chance she’d had. Maybe the only one she’d get.

  But when she looked down at Lucas again, her heart seemed to go still. If she saved herself, it would mean abandoning him. Leaving him here—alone, unconscious. He could freeze to death. If he didn’t bleed to death first.

  Annie shut her eyes, trying to think. To be logical and rational. Like he would. Even if she did stay, she wasn’t sure she could save him. She would probably freeze to death with him. Already, her skin was turning red, and her muscles felt strange and shaky, her body wracked by more and more frequent shudders that left her trembling so badly she could hardly tie the bandages.

  But when she opened her eyes, gazing down at him, she felt only confusion. Because there was no question in her mind.

  Regardless of logic, regardless of all common sense, she couldn’t leave him. She just couldn’t.

  She bent her head, tears of frustration in her eyes. They were both going to die out here, and there was no way she could stop it. All she could think of to do was pray, and she couldn’t even manage that.

  Annie hadn’t prayed in a long time... not since she had begged God to save her baby’s life.

  And God hadn’t listened then.

  She wiped the tears and drops of melting ice from her face. She wasn’t even sure He would listen to someone like her—a criminal, a mistress, someone who had taken a life, had been the cause of so much hurt for so many people.

  God didn’t owe her any favors.

  But as she knelt there in the snow, huddled over Lucas, she began to pray, silently.

  For the life
of this man who held her prisoner and wanted to see her spend the rest of her days in a Missouri jail.

  ~ ~ ~

  His head felt like he’d been hit by a cannon instead of a .44.

  The pain jostling and bouncing around inside his skull made Lucas groan, made him wish he could sink back down into the soothing darkness that had cushioned everything. But a different kind of discomfort made that impossible.

  It was hard to breathe. Felt like there was a weight on his chest. Like maybe he’d taken another bullet, near his heart.

  He opened his eyes and immediately shut them again, blinded by a world bright with ice and sunlight and pain. Only after he remained still for a few moments and steeled himself did he slowly, reluctantly open his eyelids again, bit by bit.

  He was under some sort of rocky overhang, lying on his back in the snow. Was covered with his coat, and a blanket. One of his saddlebags cushioned his head. When he reached up with one unsteady hand, he felt a frilly piece of cloth wrapped around his temples.

  And there was a weight on his chest.

  Annie lay curled up beside him, half on top of him, using him for a pillow.

  He let his eyes close again, relief flowing through him. She was alive. Safe. For a moment, for reasons he didn’t want to examine too closely, that was all that mattered.

  As he lay there in the snow and ice and what he figured was an awful lot of his own blood, all he felt was gratitude.

  When he looked up again, he shifted his gaze, moving only his eyes, until he saw the bounty hunter a few yards away—stretched out, dead. Lucas felt a shot of satisfaction, fierce and hot enough to warm every drop of blood in his veins.

  There was no remorse. No regret. Not because the interloper had drawn first, or even because he’d shot Lucas’s horse out from under him.

  But because of the way Lucas had felt when he first spotted them, when he saw Annie fall to her knees, saw the bounty hunter draw his gun and aim it at her head.

  Everything—the mountain, the snow, the gun—had vanished in a white-hot haze. The whole world had narrowed to a single, driving impulse. He had to get to her, had to get between her and that bullet.