After Sundown

by Shelly Thacker

“Talked to Holt this evening,” Lucas said after a moment.

  “Oh?” Annie asked reluctantly. Her friend Daniel was not one of her favorite topics these days—because he agreed with Lucas that the best thing for her to do was go to Canada. The two men were working on a plan together, and they had Lily Breckenridge and some other experienced miners traveling out to the passes now and then, keeping an eye on the snows and reporting back.

  While scouting, Daniel’s friends had inadvertently solved the mystery of what had happened to the two prospectors suspected of poisoning Lucas at the Christmas dance: The pair had been found on one of the mountain trails, frozen to death. Apparently they had tried to get out of town rather than face Lucas’s fury, and paid with their lives. The case, Travis had declared, was closed.

  It also offered proof of just how dangerous the passes around Eminence were in the winter, Annie thought, a shiver going down her spine.

  Lucas remained silent a long moment before finally sharing the news Daniel had given him. “Said it might be only another week,” he told her quietly. “Maybe ten days.”

  Annie blinked hard, knowing that meant the two of them had even less time left together than they had thought. At the first opportunity, Lucas and Daniel intended to get her to safety.

  And she was still equally determined to turn herself in and face the charges against her. “Lucas, I don’t want to—”

  “Shh.” He stopped drying her hair, set the towel aside, and kissed her shoulder. “You know this is how it has to be, Annie. I want you safe.”

  He slid one arm around her waist and she covered his hand with hers. He threaded their fingers together.

  She leaned back into his embrace, wanting so desperately to believe that his plan could work, that everything would be all right. But there were too many things that could go wrong.

  And he would be risking too much, giving up too much. She couldn’t let him do it.

  “Annie, I’ll come find you as soon as everything’s taken care of back in Missouri,” he assured her. “I know we said no promises—but I’m giving you one. However long it takes, I will come find you.”

  She closed her eyes, fighting the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks.

  “All you have to do is wait for me,” he murmured encouragingly. “Just make sure you don’t meet some nice Canadian man.”

  How did he keep managing to make her smile when she felt like crying? “I don’t want to meet any nice man.” She nuzzled her cheek against his. “I want you.”

  He chuckled, low in his throat. “Thanks.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she corrected, brushing kisses along his beard-roughened jaw. “You’re very nice. And caring and gentle, and honorable and brave. And I love you.” She whispered it against his mouth, turning in his arms so he could kiss her the way she wanted him to kiss her. With that sweet hunger, deep and potent.

  When he lifted his head, she looked into his eyes. “I will never love any man but you, Lucas.”

  Their lips met again, and he drew her closer. Enveloping her in his strength and passion, and there were no more words between them. Only sighs of longing and low murmurs of need.

  Tomorrow, or the next day there would be time enough to discuss the future, Annie thought desperately. She didn’t want the world to intrude on them. Not yet.

  Please God, not yet.

  ~ ~ ~

  She was late. Her woolen coat still unbuttoned, Annie juggled her gloves, a biscuit she had grabbed from the kitchen for breakfast, and a handful of hairpins as she left the hotel, closing the front door behind her, trying to do it quietly so she wouldn’t wake Lucas. Rebecca would never complain, but Annie felt terrible for being late. It was already a quarter to nine, and Monday was usually a busy day at the store.

  With each new morning, she and Lucas had grown more and more reluctant to greet the dawn as it invaded the home they had made, reluctant to begin another day that carried them closer to the moment they had to part.

  A week... maybe ten days.

  Annie forced the painful thought from her mind, putting her gloves in her pocket and finishing the biscuit in a few quick bites as she hurried down the board sidewalk toward the general store. She picked her way around icy spots and drifts sculpted by the wind during the night. Her gaze on the planks, she pinned her hair up, not even bothering to button her coat. The store was only a short distance from the hotel, and the air today had lost its bitter edge, seemed remarkably...

  Warm.

  She wasn’t sure if it was that realization that slowed her steps, or the sound she heard.

  The sound from the livery stable on the other side of the street.

  Annie lifted her gaze and froze, her hands still raised to her hair, one hairpin still in her fingers. For a moment, she just stood there. Unable to think. Unable to move. Her heart was pounding so hard, it blotted out all sound.

  The noise she had heard was the braying of mules and the jingling of harnesses.

  A mule train. The first mule train of the season had arrived—a string of fifteen or twenty pack animals, loaded with provisions, accompanied by drovers with long whips. There was a laden wagon. And riders on horseback. Five of them.

  A dozen thoughts all collided in her mind at once. The scouts had been mistaken. One of the passes was already open! She would have to leave Eminence. Now. Today. Leave Lucas.

  Her fingers seemed to go numb. She let her arms drop to her sides, too stunned to take another step, to take a breath. It felt like she was being splintered in pieces, part of her numbly accepting that the inevitable had come too soon, part of her wanting to turn back, run to the hotel, to have just one more day, one more hour with him.

  She took a step backward, shaking her head in denial, anguish.

  And that was when she saw the woman.

  For a second, some part of Annie’s mind found it odd that a finely dressed lady should be among the rough muleskinners, odder still that she seemed to be in charge. The men who had been on horseback gathered around as she spoke with Mr. Ballard, the owner of the livery stable.

  Then all at once, whether it was the woman’s fine clothes or the way she held herself or the color of her hair, Annie realized that she looked familiar.

  “Oh, my God.” Annie flattened herself against the wall of the abandoned building behind her, feeling dizzy. Everything started spinning around her. No. No, it couldn’t be... Annie had only seen her a handful of times, from a distance, back in St. Charles.

  The men had started looking around at the few townsfolk who were out at this time of day—then one of them caught sight of Annie, said something to the lady.

  She felt an icy chill go down her back as they all glanced her way. Terror flashed through her. She obeyed the instinct to turn and start walking back toward the hotel. Toward Lucas.

  “Antoinette Sutton?” one of the men called out, his voice sharp and challenging in the clear morning air.

  “It’s her!” another male voice shouted.

  Not even thinking, Annie broke into a run. She heard them coming for her. Yelling at her to stop. Panic seized her. Their boots pounded the boardwalk. She kept running, faster, blindly.

  Hands grabbed at her coat, her shoulder.

  “No!” she screamed, her hair tumbling loosely around her as she was shoved back against the wall. There were five of them, their faces hard and angry as they looked at her. Two of them held her pinned, one on either side of her.

  All of them were wearing badges.

  The lady had followed them across the street, her beautiful face a mask of fury as she approached, her voice shaking with outrage. “That’s her.”

  Annie shook her head in mute disbelief.

  It was James’s wife.

  “Antoinette Sutton,” one of the lawmen said, taking out a pair of handcuffs, “you are under arrest on the charge of murder in the first degree.”

  They wrenched Annie’s arms behind her. Her mind was reeling. Mrs. McKenna came close
r, until she stood only inches away. Her blue eyes ablaze, she glared at Annie as the cuffs were locked in place.

  Then the elegant woman raised one gloved hand and slapped her across the face, hard. Annie cried out and would have stumbled if not for the firm grasp of the men who held her.

  “You murdering little whore,” Mrs. McKenna spat. “What in the name of God are you doing out of jail? What happened to my brother-in-law? Did you kill him, too?”

  “Olivia!”

  Annie glanced up the boardwalk at the same time Mrs. McKenna did—to see Lucas standing in the open door of the hotel, wearing only his trousers and his unbuttoned shirt, his face stark with shock.

  “Lucas!” Mrs. McKenna cried, looking relieved as she rushed toward him. “Thank God. We thought you were dead! Your sisters and I were worried sick when there was no word. I’ve been in Denver for a month waiting for... Lucas?”

  He barely glanced at her, staring at Annie and the two lawmen who held her with an agonized expression. “Annie—”

  “No.” She shook her head, trying to tell him it was all right. For a moment, she had panicked, but this was what she wanted, what had to be. Tears blurred her vision and started to fall. “Lucas, no.”

  Mrs. McKenna looked at Annie, then at Lucas, her eyes narrowing.

  Mr. Ballard had run over from the livery, and a few other townsfolk came into the street. Suddenly the morning air was filled with noise, everyone asking questions and talking at once. One of the lawmen who had been standing apart from the others, a dark-haired young man with long sideburns, stepped forward as Lucas walked toward Annie. “Marshal McKenna, sir—”

  “Weatherby!” Lucas looked surprised. “What are you doing here?”

  “Knew something was wrong, sir, when you didn’t write back after we let you know about Thompson and Reynolds,” the young man said. “Sent a telegraph to St. Charles and they told us you’d disappeared. After we rounded up the last of the Risco gang, the boys picked me to go see if you needed any help—”

  “I organized an expedition and set out as soon as I could.” Mrs. McKenna’s voice had shifted, become cool. “Lucas, would you mind telling me—”

  “And who the hell are the rest of you?” Lucas challenged the other lawmen. “If you’re from St. Charles, you’re out of your jurisdiction—”

  “Private detectives, Marshal,” one of the men holding Annie explained. “Mrs. McKenna here hired us to find out what had happened to you and your prisoner.”

  Annie inhaled sharply as the two men holding her by the arms pulled her toward the street, their grips bruising.

  “Hold on,” Lucas snarled, stalking over to block their path.

  “Lucas, don’t, please, it’s all right.” With her hands cuffed behind her, Annie couldn’t even wipe away her tears. She knew he was trying to buy time until he could figure out what to do, but it was too late. “I’ll go with them, willingly.”

  One of the other men took a sheaf of folded papers from inside his coat and handed it to Lucas. “We’ve been legally empowered to enforce the warrant for this woman’s arrest, Marshal.”

  “Lucas.” James’s wife walked toward him, her tone icy, her eyes full of suspicion. “What is going on? Why was this little tramp walking around free? And why do you care what happens to...” When he turned to look at her, whatever she saw in his face made her gasp and cover her mouth with one gloved hand. “Oh, dear God.”

  “Olivia, there’s a lot you don’t understand—”

  “It can’t be.” She stared at him in horror, shaking her head. “How could you? You let this whore seduce you, didn’t you? You took her to bed! The tramp who murdered your brother—”

  “She’s not a whore. And it wasn’t murder,” he told her curtly. “It was an accident—”

  “An accident?” Mrs. McKenna cried. “What are you saying? All this time we were all so worried about you, and this is what you’ve been doing”—she pointed at Annie—“sleeping with your brother’s whore? Letting her trick you into taking leave of your senses?”

  Annie shut her eyes, feeling sick, wishing she could sink into the wooden boardwalk beneath her feet.

  “Olivia,” Lucas said, biting off the word as if he had lost the last of his patience. “I have to explain—”

  “You don’t have to explain a thing! I understand perfectly! She seduced you just like she seduced James. She lured you into her bed with her harlot’s tricks and played you for a fool!” She stepped away from him as if she couldn’t even stand to breathe the same air. “Men are all such swine! It would be a miracle if just once a man could do his thinking with his brain instead of his... his...” She whirled on Annie. “You devious, low-born little gutter trash! You’ve turned everyone against me!”

  “No,” Annie sobbed. “No, that’s not—”

  “Don’t you dare even speak to me!” Mrs. McKenna gestured for her hired men to take Annie to the wagon. “Your lies and your tricks won’t save you this time. You’re going back to St. Charles. And you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.”

  Chapter 21

  The courtroom was so packed, Lucas found it hard to breathe. He’d attended dozens of trials before—but always as an arresting officer giving testimony.

  Never as a loved one of the accused.

  The trip to Missouri had taken twelve days, first on horseback as the mule train slowly made its way down the snowy mountain, then by stagecoach to Denver, then by train to St. Charles. He had stayed close every step of the way, refusing to leave Annie at the mercy of Olivia’s hired muscle.

  He had almost come to blows with one arrogant son of a bitch, but he had insisted on making sure she was well treated and unhurt. His deputy, Shane Weatherby, had come along to offer whatever help he could, and between the two of them, they’d managed to keep watch over her.

  When he had been allowed to speak with her in the St. Charles jail, Annie had pleaded with him not to try anything rash to rescue her. Never had he seen her so brave, ready to stand up for herself and clear her name, assuring him that his presence alone would give her the strength she needed to face whatever might come.

  Lucas felt his throat tighten painfully. He intended to do more than lend her his strength.

  To save Annie, he would move heaven and earth.

  And now that his worst nightmares about the trial were coming true, that might just be necessary.

  Lucas glanced behind him at the people filling every seat and standing in the aisles, some lounging against the mahogany paneling and marble pillars at the back: society ladies, business associates of James’s, constables, reporters, newspaper artists busily sketching on white pads of paper. All of them whispered and gossiped as they waited for the afternoon recess to end and testimony to resume.

  For two days now, the population of St. Charles had hung on every word uttered by every witness as the prosecutor presented his case in lurid detail. The man had made it clear in his opening statement that he considered this crime so despicable, and Annie’s guilt so clear beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the only possible justice lay in the most severe punishment, one that the state of Missouri hadn’t meted out to a woman in half a century: hanging.

  Lucas clenched his jaw, an icy shard of fear lodged in his chest. He turned to stare at the American flag behind the judge’s bench.

  Justice. For most of his life, he’d been pursuing justice, chasing it like it was something he could capture and hold on to. He had always believed there was a firm, unmistakable line between the saints of this world, and the sinners.

  But he’d been wrong. His time in Eminence had taught him that. Changed his mind... and his heart. It wasn’t possible to put solid, unbreakable boundaries around people.

  Because they had a way of breaking right through them.

  Lucas felt a hand on his arm and looked down into Rebecca Greer’s face. Her eyes were filled with uncertainty and fear.

  He covered her hand with his.

  The bailiff entered the
court from behind the judge’s bench. “All rise for the Honorable Judge Knapp.”

  Lucas stood with everyone else. The gossiping onlookers scurried to reclaim their places. Olivia’s friends and supporters filled the entire left side of the room and had overflowed onto the right, since supporters for the accused were sparse.

  In fact, they numbered four: the defense attorney appointed by the presiding judge, Lucas, Rebecca, and Daniel. Annie’s two closest friends had followed them to St. Charles as soon as they could.

  This afternoon’s witness was brought in: the defendant.

  Lucas tensed as Annie was escorted into the court wearing handcuffs. She looked pale, and her gown of blue gingham seemed too big for her slender frame. He had to fight the urge to walk over, scoop her into his arms, and carry her out of here, take her someplace safe. Somewhere he could protect her.

  After the shackles were removed, two constables led her toward the witness box. She walked with calm dignity, in spite of the looks everyone in the room gave her—looks full of distaste, reproach, condemnation.

  She didn’t lower her gaze, didn’t turn her face away from these people who had hated her since she was a child, who had always treated her as an object of scorn.

  Lucas swallowed hard past a lump in his throat. For the first time in her life, she faced them without flinching. As if she finally realized that, in every way that mattered, she was as good as any one of them. As worthy of respect and fairness.

  And justice.

  A hush fell over the room as everyone reclaimed their seats—including the twelve men in the jury box on the right side of the courtroom, some of them stonefaced and impassive, others looking at Annie exactly as Lucas had feared they would: with scathing expressions.

  None of them looked inclined to be merciful.

  As Lucas sat down, he saw his sisters file in from the back of the courtroom to take their places near Olivia and the prosecutor. Lucas had tried talking to Callie and Eden and Faith as soon as he arrived in town, but he’d been turned away. Olivia had gotten to them first, and they refused to see him. He wasn’t welcome at James’s house, wasn’t allowed to see his nephew and niece, had been staying at a hotel with Daniel and Rebecca.