“You ride ahead,” Serenity said to Jacob.
He gave his horse a gentle kick and turned it in the direction of the house. Serenity and Zora took up positions behind him. He could feel the iron eye of Zora’s rifle aimed at his back.
It took them about two hours to reach the house. Sometimes Serenity rode beside Jacob, just out of reach, and looked at him with a battle raging behind her eyes. Leroy began to groan loudly not long after they left the arroyo, and within an hour he was cursing and hurling threats.
By the time they reached the outer corral, Leroy was too hoarse and thirsty to do any more complaining. The yard was empty when they rode in, but Helene soon hurried out of the house with a little exclamation of surprise and alarm.
“Serenity?” She looked from Leroy to Jacob and Bonnie. Her knees buckled.
Serenity jumped out of her saddle. She caught Helene and supported her until she could get to her feet. Changying ran from the bunkhouse a moment later. She came to a sudden stop when she saw Bonnie.
Zora sheathed her rifle, dismounted and stood beside Jacob’s saddle. Jacob eased Bonnie into Zora’s arms and swung down. Changying rushed up and pressed her fingers to Bonnie’s throat, though she must have realized that the other woman had been gone for hours. No one could have survived the wound she had taken.
Slowly Changying lowered her hand and met Jacob’s gaze. Her expression remained quiet, but there was as much turmoil behind her eyes as Jacob had seen in Serenity’s.
Zora firmed her hold on Bonnie and started for the house. Helene was sobbing, and Serenity remained behind to comfort her. Jacob waited awkwardly, unable to help, unable to do anything to restore any part of what had been taken. Changying shot him a troubled glance and followed Zora. Leroy had slumped over the saddle horn, begging for water in a ragged whisper.
Last chance, Jacob thought. With Zora and Changying out of sight and Serenity occupied with Helene, he wouldn’t find it difficult to take Leroy away. The fact was that Serenity was making it easy for him.
Did she trust him after all? Or did she want him to take Leroy, so she wouldn’t have to act on her darkest impulses? He was pretty sure she’d killed Hunsaker, but that had been in the heat of battle. There was too much goodness in her, too much basic decency, to go through with what she’d planned for Leroy. She had to know that everything she and the others had worked for could be destroyed with a single mistake.
He could spare her that. All he had to do was jump back into the saddle, cut the lead of Leroy’s horse and ride away.
“Jacob.”
Serenity’s arm was still tight around Helene, but her gaze was all for him, and this time she didn’t look away.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for bringing her back.”
Jacob struggled for the right words. “She was a good woman,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “One of the best.” Helene nodded, dabbed at her eyes and walked to the house.
“She told me she’d only been here about a year,” Jacob said once he and Serenity were alone again.
“You spoke to her?”
He was surprised to hear more yearning than anger in Serenity’s voice. No hostility, only a sad curiosity. Maybe she wanted to know what Bonnie had talked about in the hours before her death.
“She told me a little about the ranch,” he said, “and why she came here.”
Fresh grief welled in Serenity’s eyes. “She had a hard life before. She didn’t have enough time to be happy.”
Jacob almost couldn’t bear her pain. He raised his hand halfway, clenched his fist and dropped it back to his side.
“I wish I’d been there sooner,” he said.
“So do I.”
Her voice was rough with more than sorrow. Jacob knew she blamed herself. She believed she was personally responsible for every woman at Avalon. She would be ready to comfort anyone who needed it, but who would comfort her?
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
“I sent Bonnie out when I knew she wasn’t any good with a gun. I thought if she was with Zora…” She covered her face with her hands. “I should have known it wasn’t safe. I should have known.”
Just as he should have known that he and Ruth had no chance of escaping the feud that had haunted the Constantines and Reniers for a hundred years.
Without considering the consequences, Jacob walked up to Serenity and took her in his arms. For a few fragile seconds it seemed that some profound understanding passed between them. It didn’t matter that Serenity didn’t know about Ruth or his own guilt. Somehow, instinctively, she sensed they shared something that words couldn’t define.
Then she remembered who she was. She pulled away, stumbling back in confusion. Her face was deeply flushed, but there was no anger in her eyes. She moved close to Jacob’s gelding and stood beside the horse’s head as if the animal’s sheer bulk could protect her.
Jacob realized he was just as shaken as she was. He swallowed a mouthful of curses.
Serenity leaned her cheek against the gelding’s broad forehead. “Why didn’t you take Leroy when you had the chance?” she asked suddenly.
Her voice was almost unnaturally quiet, and there was no accusation in it. But Jacob knew he’d failed her. He’d intended to spare her the ugliness of revenge, but he’d been too slow to act. He could no longer make any sense of the thoughts in his own head. Or the turmoil in his heart.
Unaware of his impending fate, Leroy croaked another desperate plea for water. Serenity flinched. That alone made Jacob wish he could put a bullet through Leroy’s brain.
“We’ll have to give him something to drink,” Jacob said. “I’ll take care of it. You go on inside and see to Miss Maguire.”
They gazed at each other, neither quite ready to sever those last remaining threads of understanding that had so briefly bound them together.
“Jacob,” she said softly. “Promise me you won’t try to take Leroy away.”
The spell was broken. Jacob felt his body become heavy, weighted with the soul-deep knowledge that the answer he gave her would have greater consequences than he was prepared to face. If he refused, he knew he would lose something precious, something he hadn’t even known he’d found. Something as deadly as it was sweet.
He laughed at himself. The desert sun had addled his brain, and he had to get it straight again before he made a mistake he couldn’t undo. There was only one answer he could give.
But when he gave it, it wasn’t the one he’d planned on.
“You have my word,” he said. “On one condition.”
CHAPTER SIX
SHE WENT VERY still, and it felt as if she’d put the whole of New Mexico Territory between them.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You said when you gave Leroy his trial you’d let him speak on his own behalf. I want to do it for him.”
“You want to defend him?”
“I’ll just tell the other women what I told you. About seeing that justice is done the right way, even when it seems hard to trust to the law.” He paused. “Of course, they might decide to go against what you want if I convince them.”
It was a test, and she knew it. However much she hated Leroy, she couldn’t pretend it would be any kind of trial if no one was allowed to speak except those who wanted the outlaw dead.
“Very well,” she said coldly. “You do what you must, and I will do the same.”
She turned sharply and began to walk away.
“Wait,” Jacob called after her.
She didn’t turn around. “What is it?”
“Where do you want me to put him?”
“In the shed, if you think you can tie him up well enough to make sure he doesn’t escape.”
Serenity went on to the house without another word.
Jacob removed his hat and ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. He’d broken the brief truce between them for the sake of a man he hated, but there hadn’t been any choice. If he was going
to compromise the Code in one way, he had to make up for it in another or let it die. And if it died, the man Jacob had pieced together from the shards of his old life would die with it.
Feeling more tired than he had since he’d woken up in Avalon’s barn, Jacob untied Leroy’s feet and hands, and pulled him down from the saddle. While the outlaw sprawled on the ground, too weak to move, Jacob went to the yard pump and unhooked the tin cup that hung from the adjoining post. He filled the cup and carried it back to Leroy.
“You…you sorry son of a bitch,” Leroy rasped. “Takin’ orders from them—”
Jacob grabbed a fistful of Leroy’s greasy hair, lifted the outlaw’s head and pushed the rim of the cup against his cracked lips. Leroy sucked greedily until the water was gone. Jacob jerked the cup away.
“These women would like to see you hang,” he said. “And they don’t plan to wait for any judge and jury. I don’t think they’ll much care if I haul your dead carcass to Las Cruces and collect the bounty.”
Leroy grinned raggedly. “You won’t let them hang me, Constantine. You’re too—” he hawked and spat “—honorable.”
Jacob shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you now, Leroy,” he said. “Still, you got a better chance with me than you do with these women you despise so much. If you cause one speck of trouble, you won’t get any chance at all.”
The outlaw tried to laugh, but he ended up choking instead. Jacob set the cup down, seized Leroy by the front of his torn shirt and dragged him to his feet. Leroy cried out in pain and went limp. Jacob half pushed, half carried the outlaw toward the shed.
Once he had Leroy well tied up and had given him another drink of water, Jacob returned to see to the horses and found Zora leading the four from Avalon toward the stable adjoining the barn. He collected the outlaws’ horses, tied them to the fence of the corral just outside the stable, and went inside.
Zora didn’t acknowledge him until she had the horses secured and had begun to remove their saddles. Even then, she only glanced at him, her dark eyes unreadable, and went on with her work without speaking.
Jacob didn’t see any reason for delicacy. “You know what I am,” he said, picking up a brush and setting to work on Serenity’s mare.
Zora gave a short nod. “I know,” she said.
Her English was perfect, if formal, and that told him she’d had a decent education somewhere, maybe in an Indian school. Still, most Indians Jacob had known didn’t talk unless they had something to say, and Zora was obviously no exception, half-breed or not. If she felt any curiosity about him, she wasn’t going to let on. It was up to him to keep the conversation going.
“Do they know what you are?” he asked.
Her hands stilled on her horse’s bridle. “No,” she said. “And they will not.”
He didn’t have to ask her why she spoke so firmly. There were a fair number of werewolves in the West, but most of them took pretty great pains not to let ordinary folk know they existed. A few were less cautious, but they were the ones with the least to fear…the ones who had the kind of power that made people reluctant to look too closely.
A woman who was half Apache, half white, would have double the reason to be careful.
“What brought you here?” he asked as he bent to examine the gelding’s forefoot.
“Why do you ask so many questions?”
No anger, not like she’d shown when she’d threatened to stab Leroy, but Jacob wasn’t deceived. “Wouldn’t you, in my situation?” he asked.
She hung the bridle over a hook on the wall and faced him. “You do not have to stay here,” she said. “It would be better if you left today.”
Without Leroy, she meant. “I’ve given my word to Miss Campbell that I won’t try to take Leroy,” he said. “But I’m making my case that he should have a real trial.”
Her impassive face flared with emotion. “You have brought nothing but pain to this place,” she said. “No one wants you here.”
“Miss Campbell seems to think I did some good today.”
Zora made a cutting motion with the side of her hand. “Those men would not have been here if you hadn’t come.”
“You’re right. But I said I’d work off the debt in trade for saving my life, and that’s what I aim to do.”
She stared at him so long that he began to see the little flecks of yellow suspended in the black of her eyes. “It was men like you who hurt Serenity,” she said. “If you ever give her even one moment of pain, I will kill you.”
“You’ll have to stand in line,” he muttered. But his thoughts were snagged on the other thing Zora had said.
“Men like you.” Was she comparing him to Leroy? He would have thought he’d proven to these women that he wasn’t that kind. And he didn’t think Zora meant bounty hunters.
“Are you saying it was werewolves who hurt her?” he asked in amazement.
Zora’s expression became stolid again. “Yes.”
His heart began to race. “How?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“How can I make sure I never hurt her if I don’t know what makes her the way she is?”
“There is nothing wrong with her.”
But Zora’s voice told Jacob that she didn’t believe it. She frowned, letting the silence drag on so long that Jacob thought she’d decided not to answer.
“Her parents were killed,” she said abruptly.
It wasn’t what he’d expected. Hell, he hadn’t known what to expect, though he’d decided that she must have suffered some abuse at the hands of a man to hate them so much. But this was worse. He felt it all the way to his bones. The hair on the back of his neck bristled, and a growl rumbled in his chest.
Werewolves had hurt Serenity, just as they had killed Ruth.
That was why Zora didn’t want Serenity to know what she was. Why Jacob could never let her catch even a glimpse of his true nature. Because she would hate him even more than she had in the beginning.
“How much does Serenity know about our kind?” he asked.
Zora gave him a long, assessing look. “I think she knows there are others. But she has no reason to believe they are not all killers.”
She would have no reason to think otherwise even if she’d never met any werewolves. It was natural for regular folk to feel horror and fear when they found out such creatures existed, even though most werewolves lived peacefully among them, never causing a lick of trouble or hurting anyone. Jacob’s family had been like that, except when it came to the feud, and that had nothing to do with humans.
“Do you think I’m like the ones who killed her parents?” he asked.
“Are you?”
“No more than you are,” he said, holding her gaze with his most aggressive wolfish stare.
Zora was the first to look away. “Then maybe you would help her,” she said.
Her sudden change in attitude caught Jacob off guard. “I thought you wanted me gone.”
“Maybe I was wrong.”
His fingers curled around the brush so hard that he crushed the sturdy bristles. “How can I help her?”
“She will never be free until someone finds the ones who hurt her.”
“Were there many of them?”
“A gang, like Leroy’s.”
Icy claws raked down Jacob’s spine. “What were their names?”
“If she knew, she never told me.”
Jacob closed his eyes. There was more than one outlaw werewolf gang in the West. The odds of any connection…
“Where did this happen?” he asked.
“In Texas.”
Where Ruth had died. A breath of hot wind gusted into the stable, licking at the cold sweat dripping down the nape of his neck.
“Are you suggesting that I should go after these men?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice as level as Zora’s.
“You are a hunter of evil men,” she said. “You can track them as a human could not. I and others here have saved
money. We will give it to you if you—”
“Is this what Serenity wants?” he asked.
“She would have done it herself long ago, if she could. But she does not know how to find them, and—”
“And you won’t help her.”
Zora hesitated. “I cannot.”
“Because you don’t want to lose her friendship by admitting you could do it.”
“She would try to follow me. With you, it is different. You will leave anyway. She does not have to know.” She searched his eyes. “If she found them, she would try to kill them herself.”
“Has she killed many men?” he asked, hoping to hear the right answer.
“No. The man in the arroyo was the first. It would not matter. She would still try. Her courage cannot be doubted, but courage is not enough.”
Jacob’s imagination conjured up the picture Zora evoked far too clearly. Ruth had been brave, too. But she hadn’t been strong.
What if they are the same men?
“No.” He dropped the ruined brush and backed away, stopping only when he reached the wall behind him. “I’m not in the business of revenge for hire.”
Zora’s gaze followed him, dark and implacable. “You do not care for Serenity.”
“I don’t know her.”
“You know enough. You are one of the few of our kind who fight for the laws that protect men from those who would harm the weak. The evil ones are bound by no law. Who will prevent them from killing again?”
Who would stop the werewolves who had killed Ruth? Jacob had chosen to let them go rather than shed more blood that would stain Ruth’s memory and feed the feud that would continue to take more lives.
But these men weren’t likely to be Reniers, no matter how much his overwrought suspicions tried to conflate them. He might be able to stop them…not for his own sake or Ruth’s, but for the greater good.
He caught Serenity’s scent before he heard the rustle of hay and the scrape of a foot in the doorway. He and Zora exchanged glances.
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