by Cora Brent
“Two other men? Was one of them named Bryce Sanders?”
“Yup. Googled it. I see he’s mayor now. The other man present, Alan Townsend, is his cousin apparently?”
“Yeah,” agreed Maddox, remembering that it was true. “Quite the incestuous ring of circumstances here in Contention. I remember Alan. He was about as useful as Chaz.”
“Hell Maddox, is there anyone you do like?”
“I like you,” he said, smiling. “Thanks, Alice.”
“You didn’t tell me her name,” Alice demanded. “You know I’m required to search engine the shit out of her as soon as we hang up here.”
“Gabriela de Campo,” he said softly, smiling to himself. For so long the mere hint of that name was a spasm in his gut. But now he felt only the heady warmth of passion mixed with something deeper.
When he finally ended the call he found his nephew three feet away and staring at him. He looked at Miguel incredulously.
“You part cat or something?”
Miguel raised his eyebrows. “Huh?”
“I didn’t hear a freaking thing and yet here you are like you just dropped out of the sky. That could be a handy skill to have.”
Miguel looked pleased. “Yeah, I practice. Mom hates it, accuses me of ‘skulking like an animal’. I think someday I want to be a Marine, like Priest was.”
“And sneaking up on folks is a required piece of training?”
“Can’t hurt,” the kid shrugged. “Who were you talking to?”
“A friend.”
“Like a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Is my mom your girlfriend?” Maddox didn’t miss the hope in Miguel’s voice though he kicked the dirt and tried to keep his tone casual. Mad tried to pick his words carefully.
“I think you ought to ask your mom that.”
“I did. She yelled at me.”
“Well, there’s your first clue, Sherlock. Sometimes people don’t want to pour their hearts out to a ten year old.”
“I’m not your average ten year old. I’m absurdly precocious.”
Maddox laughed. “Who told you that?”
“My teachers, my dad.”
“Well then, I guess that’s proof positive.”
“Hey Mad, do you have Grinning Gulls on your phone?”
“Doesn’t everyone? Shit’s addictive.”
“I don’t have it,” Miguel said pointedly, “because I don’t have a phone.”
Maddox grinned and passed his phone off to Miguel, who grabbed it eagerly. “Next time just ask me straight.”
Gabriela was sitting on the floor of the living room folding a pile of clean laundry. She was perpetually industrious, always breezing from one chore to the other as if the concept of spare time was anathema. He remembered she was like that in high school too, always with her nose in a book or penciling some homework. She was never still.
“We should barbecue tonight,” he said suddenly.
Gaby looked at him oddly, her hands in mid fold of a faded turquoise bath towel which Maddox knew had seen at least three presidents. “I think there’s still a grill out back. It’s charcoal though.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw some old charcoal in the garage. Throw some lighter fluid on it and it’ll be fine.”
“What’s up, Maddox?”
“What do you mean? I’m just planning dinner.”
“You’re all jittery. How come?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s all that bullshit with Jensen. I’m gonna take a ride into town. You need anything?”
“You can pick up some meat. If you really want to grill tonight.” Her face was anxious. She had refolded the towel three different ways as he watched. “Maddox, you’ll be back soon, right?”
“’Course I’ll be back soon.” He bent down to kiss her. He’d meant it to be a quick one but she took a firm grip on his shirt and hauled him to the floor on top of her. Her tongue was instantly in his mouth and he was worked up in the space of a heartbeat. Maddox grinded his hips against hers so she would feel what she did to him every time. Every goddamn time.
The embrace didn’t last long. Gaby pushed him off and resumed her laundry folding.
“Tough to ride with a massive boner,” he told her wryly, hinting she ought to do something about it before letting him go.
“It’ll give you something to look forward to later,” she smiled, crossing her legs neatly underneath her.
Miguel was hunkered down on the porch with his face pinned inches away from electronic candy. He looked up when he heard the motorcycle engine roar to life and Maddox waved. When the boy smiled, Mad had a sudden flash of déjà vu; for a split second he swore it had to be twenty years earlier. And that it was his brother sitting there.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Contention City, Arizona Territory
1890
Two weeks passed and Annika had seen nothing of James. Truthfully, she tried to stay away from town now that she was a well known adulteress. The last time Mrs. Swilling had caught sight of her outside the Mercantile, the purse-lipped woman had cut her dead. Annika tried to tell herself it did not matter but whenever she imagined Mari Larson’s horror if she were to discover her daughter’s indiscretions, she could not help but feel shame. She had only written to her sister, Britta, of the partial truth, intentionally omitting any mention of Mercer. Britta herself was distracted anyway. Her letters spoke often of coming west; she had recently wedded a troublesome Scotsman and her letters were full of the lively exploits of Cassius McLeod.
Annika’s ankle was slow to heal and she was becoming increasingly restless on Lizzie Post’s ranch. Mercer was gone each day from dawn to nearly dusk. Every time she heard him riding back she breathed with weak relief that he had survived another day without being caught or smothered or blown to bits as miners sometimes were.
He would always be impatient for her and would always answer her same question with a cynical grin. “Soon,” he would say when she asked him how much longer until they would be free to leave.
It was a perfect autumn day and Annika decided to ride into Contention on Misty. She intended to stop at the Mercantile no matter who gave her the evil eye. Perhaps there would be a letter from Britta. As the horse ambled through the dappled morning Annika allowed her mind to wander. It went where it always did, back to Mercer.
The more she was with him, the more he opened up. Mercer Dolan was not just a crude outlaw. Annika had already known that. He was a complicated and passionate man. It had tugged at her heart when he’d lain across her chest and talked about the curious displacement of growing up with no memory of his parents. Of course, he had loved Lizzie Post as well as any natural mother. And, he had said tensely, James was always there. The last living link to his Dolan name.
Mercer had never felt at home in Contention City. He found his place with a group of gruff men who had been flung into the fringes of society. He told her a little bit about them. The Tanner Brothers were carved out of the war era violence on the Kansas-Missouri border. Como Medici, a name Annika had not heard before, was a learned Italian immigrant who fled some mysterious legal difficulties in the city of New York. There were others too, men who drifted in and out of the company of The Danes. There was one name he hesitated to mention. He knew how it irked her. Nonetheless, he had told her about Cutter Dane when she had asked. The leader of the outlaw gang was only a boy when he saw his mother shot by a pair of Yankee deserters as the Union Army burned its way through Georgia. Cutter Dane’s uncle, ironically a former Union soldier, had taken the orphaned boy west.
“Has he really killed men?” Annika had asked Mercer and felt him tense.
“Only when he had to,” Mercer responded in a short tone and she knew he was done talking about Cutter.
“Have you?” she whispered.
Mercer had turned his head away and refused to answer.
As Annika reached Contention Way it was with a touch of sadness that she regarded the scrappy to
wn. She had grown fond of it in the two years she had spent here. She supposed that once she and Mercer departed for places unknown she would likely never see it again. The Danes were disbanding. For good, Mercer had told her. Cutter Dane had grown shrewd about the price on his head and aimed to make a new start with an unknown name.
“And where will we go?” she had questioned Mercer.
“Anywhere you want, Anni my love,” he’d answered, wrapping her in a fierce embrace.
Annika heard the distant whistle of the mine and shuddered. She hoped wherever she and Mercer settled would not be a mine town. When describing to him the open land she had always longed for he had nodded thoughtfully. It distressed her that they would be leaving Contention with stolen gold, but who would it have otherwise served? The Swillings? The Townsends? The smarmy Dr. Cletus who had arrived in town last year and was on the take as well?
Annika let out an exasperated sigh. She had already sold her moral center to be with the man she loved. It had marred her assessment of good and bad, right and wrong. Or maybe it was a new clarity. The truth was that life was not orderly. There were usually motives behind those who insisted it was.
Contention Way was fairly quiet. A new post office building had been set up adjacent to the Mercantile. Annika hoped for a letter to take her mind off her troubles.
She was not facing toward The Rose Room but a familiar cough made her turn in that direction. James stumbled out of the smoky depths holding a handkerchief to his face. Annika stopped the horse and stared at the man who was still legally her husband. He looked more than ill. He looked dreadful. Annika felt a keen sorrow as she looked at James Dolan struggling to catch his breath beside Contention Way. Presently one of the fancy girls emerged and guided him back indoors. Annika was grateful he hadn’t noticed her. She did not know what to say to him if he had.
She knew Mercer had gone to see his brother once since the flood. He would not tell her exactly what had been said but the way he had stared mournfully at the sky for an entire night told her of the trouble in his soul.
There were no letters and Annika was quite sorry she had made the ride to town. As she slowly walked the horse back to the ranch, she looked sorrowfully down into the low valley as she crossed the Scorpion Road. It was difficult to believe the tragedy which had occurred only a few weeks earlier.
When Annika heard a rider fast approaching she eased Misty to the side of the road to allow passage. When the rider pulled the horse to an abrupt stop beside her she looked up in surprise.
“Annika,” said Carlos de Campo, the urgency in his voice as well as the unusual use of her first name provoking dread in her heart.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
The man caught his breath and looked wildly around. “I’ve just come from the Scorpion. Mercer was caught. They say he was stealing gold. Swilling brags he’ll be strung up at daybreak. Says it will be a warning to other would-be thieves.”
“Swilling.” Annika hissed the name. “Cursed double crosser.”
Carlos nodded with sympathy. “I know. Believe me, there are many who know what that man is. But it doesn’t matter because the law is with him. Mercer will never sit before a judge. Swilling has sent for the city marshal to arrest him, but he will meet the same end as Emilio at the hands of the mob tonight.”
“James is still the city marshal.” Annika shook her head. “No, James won’t watch his brother hang.”
Carlos paused. “Annika? Are you sure of that?” he asked and she realized she was not.
The jail had been expanded the year before and the adobe structure which loomed at the far north end of Contention Way was perpetually populated by Contention City’s various transgressors. Annika could see the excited bustle from a distance as she rode Misty back through the center of town.
James saw her coming. He stood stone-faced in front of the jail with his arms crossed. Mercer must have already been thrown inside. Mayor Townsend stood before the small crowd with a beatific smile on his fat face. Annika saw several men spit into the dirt as the mayor shouted about ‘justice’. Swilling lounged against the side of the building as if he did not have a trouble in the world.
Annika cared nothing for any of them. She tied Misty to the nearest post and walked right up to James.
“I would like to see him please.”
James Dolan stared right through her. “The prisoner will not be allowed any visitors.”
“James,” she whispered in agony. “He is your brother.”
Her husband’s eyes, so similar to Mercer’s, were unbearably cold. “I know who he is, Annika. Do you?”
Annika backed away, grief already coupling with her horror. She had wishfully claimed that James would never hand his brother over to a mob to be hung from the nearest cottonwood tree. She now knew how wrong she was. She had seen it in his eyes.
She stared at the pompous men who ran Contention and hated them. She knew what they really were. If Mercer’s doom was already sealed then she would lose nothing by saying so.
But even as Annika opened her mouth and prepared to shout the allegations which might very well get her hung too, a hand grabbed her arm.
“Do not,” warned a voice. Annika looked into the gruff face. It was unfamiliar to her. The man nodded and the knowing intelligence in his brown eyes made Annika pause. “I am Mercer’s friend,” he said in a quiet, faintly accented voice. “And I know who you are, Annika. Meet me a half mile north of the Scorpion Road bridge.”
A few in the crowd began to clap over whatever inanity had sprung from the mouth of Mayor Townsend. Likely some harsh words about hellfire and punishment. The same words which had been howled when Emilio Rodriguez was briefly imprisoned before the Contention City mob hauled him out to his doom.
Annika realized the mysterious stranger had disappeared. She tried to catch James’s eye again but he stood stoically in front of the jail, expressionless as if he possessed no more heart than a block of wood.
Swilling, however, smiled at her. Annika looked into his rapacious grin and saw a cavern of evil. How many men had he ruined and murdered under the guise of respectability? The word around Contention was that Swilling was among President Harrison’s finalists for governorship of the Territory. The idea made her wonder whether all men in positions of power were appallingly corrupt.
No one appeared to pay Annika any mind as she rode out slowly, casting a despairing look over her shoulder toward the jail where she knew Mercer was being held.
The man was waiting just where he said he would be. He calmly sat atop his horse and watched her approach.
“Bella signora,” he called in an appreciative voice. “You are lovely as ever.”
Annika had little patience for pleasantries. Even now, Swilling and Townsend might be gathering their allies to raid the jail that night. Annika did not know the nature of The Danes’ arrangement with those men and she did not care. Whatever it was, it had gone horribly wrong and Mercer was to be the scapegoat. Annika thought of Carlos de Campo’s words. Mercer would not be their first sacrifice.
“Who are you?” she asked the stranger.
The man smiled. He was younger than she had originally supposed. “In the old world I was a remnant of nobility. In this new one I am penale, a reviled outlaw.”
“I have no time for riddles,” Annika grumbled, turning the horse.
“I ride with The Danes,” called the man. When she turned around again he tipped his hat soberly. “Indeed, I ride with Mercer. My name is Giacomo Medici but I am called Como.”
Annika remembered the name. Mercer had spoken of him.
“He won’t die,” Annika said, setting her jaw. “You take me to your leader. You take me to Cutter. I already know he’s holed up not five miles from here.”
“And if I refuse, sweet Annika?”
“I’ll find him anyway.”
Como Medici watched her. Even bearded and dusty there seemed to be something regal about the strange Italian. “I recall t
he day you first arrived in Contention, though you never saw my face. Yes, I was one of the masked men. Did you know that Mercer guarded you every night in those early days, even when you thought he had gone? He let it be known that any man who harmed you would not see the privilege of another sunrise. And Mercer Dolan doesn’t utter empty threats.” Como turned his horse and stiffened in the saddle. “Ride quickly,” he said and launched straight into a full gallop without checking to see if she followed.
Annika drove Misty hard to keep up with Como. When they were within sight of a handful of crumbling buildings a rifle shot rang out. Como yanked on his horse’s reins and held out a hand, warning Annika to stop. She did not obey.
Annika didn’t stop even when she noticed than the man standing at the threshold of a crumbling structure was trailing a rifle on her. She didn’t stop until she was within feet of the outlaw. She recognized him. He was one of the men who had visited Mercer only the day before.
“Where is Cutter Dane?” she demanded. She heard Como riding up quickly behind her.
The man holding the rifle curled his lip. “Como, what in the name of Christ are you at, bringing her here?”
“Mercer has been arrested,” said Como in a flat voice. “Gold theft. Swilling’s mob will get him.”
“Aw, shit.” The man lowered the rifle with a scowl.
“Cutter!” Annika screamed.
“Schoolteacher,” said a pleased voice behind her. “What brings your sweet calico out here?”
Cutter Dane stood not ten feet away regarding her as if she were nothing more than a mild amusement.
Annika did not hold back. “They’re going to kill him. Mercer is going to die because he was committing your goddamn thievery. Now what are you going to do about it?”
Cutter’s blue eyes were impenetrable. Lazily he removed a large knife from its sheath and began absently toying with it. “What should I do about it? And you get yourself off that horse. I don’t talk up to any man and I’d sooner swallow saguaro needles than talk up to a woman.”
Annika dismounted. She heard the waver in her voice and fought to control it. “Mercer is your friend. What he was doing was because of a deal that you made, Cutter. Now you need to do the right thing and –“
