by Pam Crooks
“Just renewin’ our acquaintance, that’s all. Been a long time, Red. I got to missin’ you.”
The lie set her teeth on edge. He wanted something. He needed it bad, too, for all the trouble he went through to find her.
“Let me go. We’ll talk,” she said.
Her mind worked every angle for his motive. She hadn’t seen him since that terrible day at the Turf Club when the Pinkertons busted into their hideout. The Pinks and one lousy bounty hunter with blood on his hands.
Her blood.
When the smoke from the lawmen’s guns cleared, only Catfish managed to escape arrest. From that day on, Lark suspected he’d been on the run.
“Not so fast, Red, honey. Not so fast.” The blade pressed against her neck. Lark closed her eyes and dared not breathe. “You got to make me a promise first, y’hear?”
“A promise?” What did he want from her? She had nothing to give. “Holy hellfire, you forgot, Catfish. Wild Red don’t make a promise she can’t keep. But I’m not promisin’ nothing until I know what it is.”
She let herself fall into the old way of talking—guarded, evasive, crude. Outlaw to outlaw. As if the past five years had never happened.
“You’d best promise me. Or you die right here.”
He was calling her bluff. He wouldn’t kill her. Not yet, anyway. He couldn’t get the information he needed from her if she was dead.
Heart pounding, she waited. Right now, he held the whole deck. She didn’t have a single card to play.
“Don’t scream. That’s what you got to promise. And don’t do nothin’ stupid to make me run this blade right through you.”
“What do you want?” she grated.
He cackled again. Shivers skidded over her spine.
“I want the money, Red, honey,” he purred in her ear.
“Money?”
She blinked in confusion. The savings she’d amassed in her account at the bank had been slow to build these past six months. She wasn’t wealthy, not hardly, and even if she gave him every dime she owned, the total sum wasn’t enough to make him search her out like this.
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he warned. Again, the blade pressed into her skin. “Tell me where it is.”
“I don’t have any money, Catfish,” she said. She hated the desperation in her tone, but there was no help for it. “I swear I don’t.”
Suddenly, a new horror ripped through her. Had he somehow learned of her place of employment? Did he know Mr. Templeton was on his way to Omaha and had entrusted her with the keys to his bank?
Did Catfish intend to rob it?
Not if she could help it. Lark refused to be an accomplice, even an unwilling one. She’d never do that to Mr. Templeton. She would die first.
Catfish sucked in a breath of rage and spun her away from him. She grappled for balance and fell backward against the windowsill. A potted geranium toppled to the floor and shattered.
She hastily righted herself and kept him in her range of vision, especially the ominous knife clutched in his hand.
“I’m talkin’ about the Muscatine heist,” he snarled, teeth bared. “The loot you hid when you was ridin’ with the Reno gang.”
Her heart dropped to her toes.
The Muscatine heist. The thousands of dollars in gold coins, bank notes and stacks of greenbacks they’d taken from the county treasury there. She had helped John and Frank strip the vault clean. They’d taken it all.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
In the years since, she’d buried the crime in the recesses of her mind, just like she’d buried the loot. Buried everything so deep no one knew that part of her past existed anymore. It was easier that way, except when the guilt came back to haunt her.
Guilt and a gut-wrenching fear of the consequences.
Her breath quickened as that fear grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, choking every gasp of air out of her lungs.
“I heard you talkin’ about it that day at the Turf Club,” Catfish said. “Remember? I was drivin’ your rig. I heard every word.”
The memory hurtled back. She’d been cocky then, talking to Frank without a care for the two men riding with them. She’d been so sure of herself.
So stupid.
She couldn’t let Catfish see her fear, all that she had to lose. Her life. Her job. Her very reason for living.
Her fists clenched. “Those days are over for me, Catfish. I don’t want to have anything to do with that money.”
“Tell me where it is. Then you won’t have to do a damn thing.”
She shook her head. “The money’s not yours to take. It’s not mine to give, either, so I’m not going to tell you. I’m not going to tell anyone. Not ever.”
He bettered his grip on the knife, took a step closer. “I always figured you for smart, Red. Guess I was wrong.”
Lark let him talk. Keeping that money out of his greedy hands was the right thing to do. She’d made too many mistakes in her life to make another one now.
He halted only a foot or two away. His peculiar, mismatched eyes raked over her, from the hair she kept pinned close to her head, to her prim navy blue dress, right down to her new leather shoes.
“You’ve changed.” He made the words sound like an insult. “Made yourself into a right fancy woman, all hoity-toity. Like you’re better than me.”
“I served my time for the crimes I committed. I’ve started over. I’m never going to be an outlaw again,” she said fiercely.
His raspy chuckle sounded like a snake slithering through the weeds. “Once an outlaw, always an outlaw, Red. You got Reno blood in your veins. Remember?” He shifted, and Lark detected the faintest loosening of his grip on the knife handle. “You hear that Frank got lynched?”
She steeled herself against a sharp bite of grief. “Yes. In New Albany, with William and Simeon. Laura told me.” Three Reno brothers, pulled from their jail cells and killed in a night of vigilante justice. Lark had cried for days when she got the news. “Charlie Anderson swung from the noose with them.”
“Yeah. All four of ’em at once.”
Lark suspected Catfish had been as affected as she had. Every outlaw, no matter how cold or devious, held a secret fear of one day being a guest at his own necktie party.
Catfish, however, seemed to shrug off the ugly past with ease, considering. His hand tightened over the knife handle again.
“John still doing hard time in the Missouri State Prison?” he asked.
His interest in the whereabouts of the last remaining member of the Reno gang made Lark even more wary. “Yes. Twenty years left.”
“Twenty years.” A cold smile curved his lips. “Guess he won’t be needin’ that heist money for a good long while then, will he?”
A fraction of a second too late, she saw Catfish’s intent, and before she could escape him, he shoved her against the wall with a fierce snarl, the blade once again at her neck. Pain exploded in her head, her back, her hips.
“Tell me where you hid the loot, Red, else I’ll carve up your pretty face so you’ll never forget you didn’t help ol’ Catfish find it.”
She clamped her jaws shut, forced slow, even breaths through her teeth, kept her eyes and senses fixed on what he might do next.
“We’ll split it.” Frustration threaded through his voice. Lark clung to the knowledge he had to keep her alive to reveal the money’s location. “Fifty-fifty.”
“Go to hell,” she grated.
He shook his head. “Not hell, Red. South America. That’s where we’ll go.” His rank breath billowed into her face. “You wanted to do it that day, back in Canada. Remember? Hide out in South America. We’ll go as soon as we can buy the tickets to get us there.”
He was guilty of who knew how many crimes. And he expected her to help him elude them? Be no better than he was?
He could rot in jail first.
“Red, I’m warnin’ you,” Catfish said.
Her fingers closed around a potted geranium.
He gave a quick, negating shake of his head. “Not a chance you’d forget that kind of money.”
She tightened her grip on the pot. “It was dark. We were in a hurry. I-I’m not sure—”
“Think harder, damn it.”
“How can I think when you’ve got that blade pressed up next to me?” she demanded hoarsely. “You think I don’t know how it could slip? Accidental or on purpose?”
He swore viciously and pulled the knife back a scant inch. She lifted the pot slowly, slowly…
“It might come back once I got in the general area.” Now that he gave her some breathing room, she could goad him. Tell him what he wanted to hear.
Hope flared in those strange eyes. “Sure it would, Red. You’d remember just fine.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’d remember….”
She swung the pot hard against his temple, and he staggered back with a roar of pain. The knife slashed across her shoulder, but she felt no pain, only a searing need to escape him before he killed her.
And, oh, God, she wasn’t ready to die yet.
He recovered with alarming speed and came at her with the ferocity of a wounded grizzly, but she met him with Mrs. Kelley’s polished three-legged table. Wood splintered and snapped in two. Lark’s bones rattled from the force of the blow.
Catfish went down, and his weapon skittered across the floor. Blood spurted from a gash across his cheek. Dazed and furious, he sprawled on the rug, then gave a quick shake of his head, as if to chase the stars away.
He glared up at her, venom spewing from his eyes. Lark gripped what remained of a table leg, one in each hand, her feet spread and pulse pounding.
“I been watching you for a while now,” he said, his voice an ugly rasp. “You didn’t know that, did you?”
Whatever she thought he’d say, it wasn’t this. Lark’s muscles coiled, one by one, the dread building with every beat of her heart.
“Your dandy bank president ain’t going to like hearin’ his favorite bank teller used to ride with the famous Reno gang. No, sirree, Red, honey. He ain’t going to trust you workin’ for him anymore.”
A sound of dismay escaped her. Mr. Templeton. Her beloved job…
“You’d make fascinatin’ readin’ in the newspaper, too. Lark Renault, alias Wild Red,” he sneered. “Folks from miles around will know all about you.”
And Ollie would print the story, she knew, her horror building in leaps and bounds. It was what he did. Print stories about people every week.
She’d be front page news.
Suddenly, with more speed than she thought him capable, Catfish reared up with a snarl and lunged for her again. She cried out and reacted with gut instinct, tossed aside the table legs and dove for the ceramic water pitcher on the dresser top. She hurled the thing at him, found her mark with more luck than skill. The pitcher shattered against his skull, and Catfish dropped like a lead weight, bringing her down with him.
He lay motionless on top of her. Her breaths came in frantic whimpers, and when she realized he couldn’t hurt her, at least not now, this minute, she pushed against him with all her strength. The smell of his body, the ugliness of his greed and revenge, nauseated her.
He rolled, cadaverlike, off her, and she bolted to her feet. Panic wrenched a choking sob from her throat.
When he came to, Catfish would talk. He’d tell anyone who’d listen all about her. Everything. Her crimes. The Muscatine heist—the one robbery for which she’d never been charged. The citizens of Ida Grove, her newfound friends, and, oh, God, Mr. Templeton, would be shocked and scandalized.
She’d be a disgrace in town. Shunned. An outcast.
What would she do? Where could she go?
How could she survive?
Lark couldn’t think, couldn’t plan. The panic consumed her—a raw, debilitating despair of losing everything.
Everything.
Muffled voices sounded outside her door. Someone called her name, Mrs. Kelley maybe, or one of her boarders, concerned about the sounds coming from inside the room.
They’d be in here any second now. They’d see her standing over the ruthless outlaw, her sleeping room in shambles, her reputation on the brink of being destroyed.
How could she face them? How could she make them understand?
They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t.
Lark pressed a fist to her mouth, and blinking hard, she made her decision.
The doorknob turned. By then, she’d slipped through the window and onto the second-story veranda.
Mrs. Kelley screamed, but Lark was already gone.
Somehow, she found herself in Ida Grove’s only church. She sat in the farthest pew, alone, in the darkest corner. Her shoulder ached from the knife’s blade, but she felt dead inside.
How she got there, she wasn’t sure. Some inborn instinct guided her feet to seek the sanctuary of a holy place, a haven not even Catfish Jack would penetrate. Here, she was protected, if only for a little while.
She stared at the rows of tiny flickering candles on the altar. They burned steadily, silently, a tribute to the faith of whoever lit them. The candles, too, were sheltered from the outside world, just like she was. Here, they could burn freely. Undisturbed. Proud.
If only she could be so fortunate.
She was a tribute to no one. Instead, she was guilty of a great sin. Catfish intended to hunt her down and kill her if she didn’t tell him where the stolen money was. Most likely, he’d kill her if she did, too, and take all that loot for himself.
Despair billowed inside her. He would’ve regained consciousness by now and given Mrs. Kelley the scare of her life. Lark prayed he didn’t hurt her or any of the boarders who’d rushed to Lark’s defense.
One thing she knew with miserable certainty. Catfish was looking for her at this very moment. Even wounded, he’d flee the boardinghouse to chase after her. It was only a matter of time before he found her again.
A sob pushed into her throat, and Lark covered her face with her hands. Never had she felt so helpless, so cowardly, so afraid.
Cool fingers touched her shoulder. She emitted a gasp and leapt from the pew bench. Her gaze clawed the darkened church behind her for a pair of peculiar, mismatched eyes.
Instead, she saw a starched white collar—and Father Baxter’s worried expression.
“I’m sorry. I’d hoped not to frighten you, my dear.” He whispered in deference to their sacred surroundings, but his tone was stricken with genuine apology.
Relief flooded through her, left her shaken, almost giddy. She pressed a hand to her breast; pain burned in her shoulder from the movement, but she hardly noticed. Father Baxter was pastor of the Ida Grove church, and she’d not known a man more kind than he.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“Fine, fine.” She hesitated. She’d told her share of lies in her lifetime, but saying one to a man of the cloth, in a church no less, was wrong. She fought the ridiculous urge to cry. “No, it’s not.”
“I didn’t think so.” In the shadows, his teeth showed in a gentle smile. “Mind if I join you?”
Again, she hesitated. She’d come here for solace. For inspiration and time to think. Her time was running out, and she still had no plan to save herself from Catfish.
“Of course.”
How could she refuse him? It was his church, his lot in life to console the afflicted. And God knew she was afflicted, all right.
His black frock coat rustled as he settled himself next to her in the pew. For a moment, neither spoke.
“You’re deeply troubled,” he said quietly. “Let me assure you, if you have a need to talk, everything you say to me will be kept in the strictest confidence. I have vows I must keep in that regard.”
Lark stared at the candles, those silent, flickering candles. She couldn’t tell Father Baxter her terrible secret. She couldn’t tell anyone.
“I su
spect the reason you’re here is because of the attack against you at Mrs. Kelley’s Boardinghouse.”
At that, her glance flew to him. “Is she all right? Has anyone been hurt?”
“Mrs. Kelley is unharmed. Rattled to her soul, of course, but unharmed and quite worried about you. I was just there, you see.”
Lark swallowed and thought of the chaos she’d left behind. “You were?”
“She always calls for me at the slightest sign of trouble, no matter where she is. A deeply religious woman, Mrs. Kelley. She feared your intruder was going to die. She wanted me to pray for him before he did.”
Lark held her breath. “And?”
The good priest grimaced. “He was gone before I got there. Physically, I mean. They left him alone just long enough to get word to me, and by the time they returned, he’d escaped through the window.”
Yes. Catfish would be that shrewd. That quick. It was how he’d evaded the law for so many years. Being shrewd and quick.
“He means to hurt you. That’s why you ran away?”
She drew in a breath, let it out again. “He’ll kill me if he gets the chance.”
“God have mercy.”
She felt the shock roll through him, heard it in his stunned words. “He wants something from me. I can’t give it to him. Not ever.”
“I see.”
But he didn’t, Lark lamented. How could he? How could anyone?
“Your attacker must be caught before he hurts you—or worse. You must enlist the sheriff’s help, Lark.”
“No,” she said sharply. “No one must know. You promised, Father. No one. Especially the law.”
He studied her for a long moment, so long Lark was sure he could see right into her dishonest soul.
“I have a solution to your problem, then, my dear Lark.”
She eyed him doubtfully.
Father Baxter nodded in reverent satisfaction. “His name is Ross Santana.”
Chapter Three
“And Mrs. Kelley said she saw him yesterday, right in front of the boardinghouse, walking real slowlike. She didn’t pay him much mind because he’s got a right to walk wherever he wants, just like everyone else.” Chat Santana drew in a breath. “Of course, she never dreamed he’d sneak into her place the next day and attack one of her boarders. Poor thing.” Chat stopped stirring her biscuit dough. “Her boarder, I mean. Not Mrs. Kelley.”
