by Jodi Thomas
Adam didn’t say a word. It was too late for words. He simply pulled Nichole close and held her as tightly as he could against him. For one morning of his life he’d known paradise. He’d held passion and wild beauty in his arms. For a few nights he’d slept next to someone whose heartbeat matched his own. He wanted a hundred more passion-filled mornings, thousands more days holding her, and ten thousand more nights. But if they never had them, at least he knew of their existence. And he’d go to his grave remembering every smell, every taste, every feel, every heartbeat of the little time he had with her.
Nichole pulled away. “I have to go,” she whispered. “Don’t worry about me.”
Adam couldn’t force any words past his throat. The very air he breathed was vanishing. He was suffocating. But he couldn’t say more. She read his mind, she knew his heart. She’d return, he told himself. If she didn’t, he’d find her.
When she reached the door, she turned and tried to memorize him.
“I love you,” he whispered his thoughts.
She turned unable to say the words she’d so longed for him to say. Opening the door, she melted away.
At the end of the hall, Wes handed her Adam’s medical saddlebags. “The doc wants his bag back,” he mumbled. “Rose packed food for you in it.” He saluted as he moved away in a hurry to be back at his post. They’d all agreed that if something happened and she made a sound while in the passage, or in the shack, they’d make enough noise in the house to keep the shooter busy.
“Ready?” Nance asked, proud to man a station in her escape.
“Ready.” Nichole bent and kissed him on the cheek. “Tell the others I’ll see them soon.”
Nance wiped his face as if to wipe off the kiss as he opened the trapdoor beneath the rug in the corner of the foyer. “It drops down a bit to a kind of cellar. I think the troops who stayed here used it to store supplies, but Mom never let me go down there except one time with my dad.” Nance repeated what he’d told her several times before. “Feel the wall and keep to the side and you’ll find a tunnel about my height. Follow it and you’ll come out in the cellar of the shack across the street. My dad says the cavalry built it as an escape from Indian attack. If nothing’s fallen on that trapdoor, you should be able to push it open. I haven’t been down there since I went with my dad and he carried a light, but you’ll have to go through in the dark. Adam says any light from the tunnel might show through across the street.”
“I’ll find my way.” She slipped into the trapdoor. If this worked, all the hours of listening to Nance tell of the mazes in this house would have paid off. “Thanks, General Ears.”
He saluted as he’d seen Wes do.
The drop was not far, not more than eight feet, but for a boy it must have seemed long. She hit soft dirt, uneven beneath her feet.
As Nance closed the trapdoor, the world turned black. Not night like she was used to, but total, absolute black.
She reached out and touched the soft earthen wall of the cellar. Move along the wall to an opening, she said to herself as she slowly felt her way. The room was so silent she could hear her own heart pounding. As she slid her fingers along the wall dirt dribbled off in her hand.
Something scurried behind her. Rats! She clenched her teeth, forcing herself to stay calm. Of all the animals on this earth, rats were the only ones that made her shiver. She’d face a wolf, or a bear, or even an angry porcupine before getting close to a rat.
Another movement, rattling something near her feet. Two rats. Maybe she hated them so much because they thought they owned the night.
Probably a tiny one, she thought, only traveling over broken bottles or bits of trash. The rats weren’t interested in her, she reasoned. Keep moving! Find the tunnel.
A weight scurried across the toe of her boot. Not a tiny mouse, but a long fat rat that widened as it moved until the body covered her boot and pressed against her leg.
Nichole couldn’t stand still. She twisted, kicking the varmint off her foot. It hit a wall and let out a cry, causing the floor to liquify with movement. They were everywhere. Not one or a dozen, but a hundred running past her boots, sniffing up her legs almost to the knee, pushing other rats into her shins.
She kicked again, almost losing her balance. Her hand reached out to steady her. She touched a shelf in the blackness. A moment later something ran across her fingers and jumped from the shelf. Reacting, before thinking, she stepped away and bumped into another shelf. It toppled, sending rats squealing as they fell to the floor.
Panic climbed up her spine on tiny feet. It took all her willpower not to scream or run. But if she ran, she was sure to step on one and in the blackness she might fall or they might bite through the thin leather of her boot. If she fell, they’d be all over her in victory.
She’d lost her bearing in the blackness. She no longer knew where the wall was. If she took the wrong step, she could trip and fall, or bump into something, or feel another rat. There was as great a chance of her moving away from the wall as toward it.
Nothing, not a single beam of light pointed the way. Not even a smell or sound to follow. If she made the wrong choice and fell . . . Oh, God, if she fell she’d die of fright.
“Help me,” she whispered to the stale air as a rat tried to climb her leg. “Help me!”
Adam and Wes were only a matter of feet above her, but with the trapdoor and rug, she knew they wouldn’t hear her cries even if she screamed. She couldn’t force herself to reach out again and try to find the wall. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t breathe in the heavy musty air.
“Help me,” she whispered in panic to no one.
Something shifted to her left. A shuffling sound unlike that a rodent would make.
“Easy, now,” someone said to her as the shuffling sound came again. “Don’t lose control of your senses. And don’t be afraid of me. I was told to help if needed.”
For a moment, she thought she was imagining a voice. Nichole forced herself to remain perfectly still, not even breathing.
“Who are you?”
Movement came again. “I’m Celestine’s brother. She said we had to help you, even if it meant my getting caught and being sent back to prison. She said I had to do what I could to see you safely away.”
“You killed a guard.” Nichole remembered the nun’s confession.
“I did. I killed the man who murdered my partner, Nance’s father.”
Nick didn’t say a word. She was trapped in a cellar with a killer and a hundred rats. There was no light to point her way. If she hoped to get out, she had to trust a murderer.
“Hold your hand out,” the voice commanded so softly she still wasn’t sure she heard it. “Stay real still, I’ll find you and see you out.”
Nick slowly raised her hand out in front of her, ready to pull back the moment she encountered anything.
“I’m not going to harm you,” the voice moved closer. “I’m only going to touch your hand.”
She breathed. The voice had anchored her in the blackness. Panic began to recede. This man in the cellar with her was making the world return and her fears move back to nightmares.
A wrinkled hand, not much larger than her own, grasped hers. “I’ll show you the way,” he whispered in a voice rusted with age. “I’ve walked this tunnel many a night. I’ve seen you travel the darkness also. Only you do good, I only want to disappear.”
Slowly, one step at a time, she followed as they moved across the room. She could still hear the rats running about, but they no longer crossed her path.
“Lower your head,” he mumbled as he pulled her down into a crouch. “The tunnel’s free of rats mostly, but when it rains the walls get muddy. Be careful of the uneven ground. My sister, Cel, will have my hide if I let anything happen to you.”
She followed as they shuffled through the tunnel slowly. A dozen questions came to m
ind, but she didn’t speak. This guardian angel was risking his life and his freedom to help her.
The air was a little easier to breathe as they came out of the tunnel and into what must be the cellar across the street from the boardinghouse. Here a few cracks in the trapdoor provided enough light to get a vague view of the room.
The man turned loose of her hand and slid a box between them. “All you have to do is stand on this box and push the door gently. I checked to see that it was unblocked when I heard Nance tell you about the secret passage. I guessed you’d choose this way out.”
“Thanks.” She waited, hoping he’d tell her his name. “You saved my life.”
“No,” he stepped away. “I’ve watched you in action. You would have found your own path. I just helped out a bit. We all need help now and then.”
Before she could say more, he was gone. She could hear him moving back through the tunnel, brushing the wall with his hand. The rats scurrying to get out of his path. Someday, maybe they’d meet again. She’d always remember the feel of his old hand.
Straightening her stance, she touched her Colt and took a deep breath. It was time to do what she had to do, she thought. It was sunset.
TWENTY-FOUR
WITH A SHOVE, Nichole pushed the trapdoor open and pulled herself into the remains of what once had been a building. The roof was half caved in and the last glow from the sun could still be seen lighting the sky. The air felt good on her face and in her lungs.
Sister Cel’s brother had saved her life in the tunnel and when everything settled down, she planned to see what she could do to help him.
She walked silently across the cluttered floor, careful not to step on a loose board that might make a sound. Slipping out the back where a door had once stood, Nichole moved down the alley toward the stables.
No one was in sight. If the shooter were near, he couldn’t see her in the dying light. She slipped through the skeleton of what once had been a settlement. The town might be growing, but it seemed content to allow the quickly erected old fort to die.
The fine black stallion Wes had bragged of trading for at Emery’s Post was tied by the door of the barn, still saddled. Wes said it had been trained to respond to a touch or a tug on the bridle.
A gunshot sounded from behind her. She glanced at the prairie beyond the stables. She could be away and free before full dark.
Another gun fired from the direction of the boardinghouse. They should be safe once it was dark, she reasoned. Unless they lit a lamp. Unless they tried to come out. Unless the shooter managed to crawl through the night and get to a window of the house. If he shot Wes or Adam, there wouldn’t be anyone left to cover all the sides. It would only be a matter of time before he’d be in the house. Everyone might be dead before the shooter figured out Nichole wasn’t in the house.
She swung into the saddle and turned Wes’s horse toward the boardinghouse. She couldn’t leave without helping them.
At full gallop she rode between Adam and the shooter. The dusty, deserted street made a perfect racetrack and Wes’s stallion was all Wes promised he would be.
Shots came from the second floor of an old building and from a corner beside the very shack she’d escaped through. The bullets flew past her and Nick leaned low over the horse, blending into the midnight mane. Answering shots came from the boardinghouse, splintering off the walls where the shots were fired. She thought she heard the shooter yell an oath as she passed from range.
Turning at the corner, she reined her horse and began crossing back and forth through the town, staying out of sight, leaving no trail. By full darkness, she was riding slowly out of town to the east, slumping in the saddle providing a silhouette of a tired hand heading home for the night. She’d learned years ago no one would look at her twice if she moved at an easy pace, but if she hurried, all would remember seeing her leave.
She knew the shooter would follow her as best he could. She also knew that he’d never find her. As soon as she was away from the lights, she’d find the stage trail and follow it. Here she could travel twice as fast without near the danger and uncertainty of the land. By dawn they’d be circling Fort Worth looking in every bush and she’d be at Daniel’s settlement.
Nick’s wild ride between the shooters and the house was the break Wes’s men had been waiting for. In all the excitement, they closed in on the two outlaws and overpowered them.
A few minutes later when they hauled the shooters into Adam’s office, everyone in the house was surprised to see Harry from the stage line leading the posse. As soon as Wes’s men made plans to help, Harry and several other merchants joined in the fight. They’d been waiting patiently for their chance.
Suddenly the boardinghouse rivaled any saloon for noise. Everyone was talking at once and hugging except, of course, for the nun. Adam didn’t miss the way she stood quietly in the corner, her arms still folded around the rifle.
When she thought no one was watching, Adam saw her walk past the two prisoners tied in chairs and “accidentally” thump the butt of her rifle against both men’s knees. Then she went to the kitchen, put the gun down, and began serving everyone raisin bread and coffee.
Adam smiled and shook his head. She was the kind of saint Nick would probably turn to. There was something ornery about the old lady who looked like an angel.
“She made it.” Wes lifted his cup toward Adam. “The kid made it.”
“I know.” Adam smiled. “But I wanted to strangle her for riding past us. She should have headed right out of town from the barn. She had a clear shot there with little danger.”
Wes took a drink. “She knew what she was doing. She had to make sure the men firing at us knew she was no longer in the house.” He took another drink. “And she damn well better take care of my horse. I thought we told her to steal a mount.”
Adam laughed. “She did.”
Shaking his head, Wes added, “You need to marry that girl if we ever find her again. Maybe if you kept her pregnant, she’d slow down to a gallop.”
“Before I think of marriage, I’ve got to make sure we have all of the gang. The deputy managed to lose two of the three you caught this morning before he got back to town. I just heard the third escaped an hour ago. Once we have them in our sight I don’t aim to look away until the sheriff gets back to town. I want Nick safe away until I know they will stay behind bars.”
Wes looked at the two prisoners. “The third won’t be hard to find. Nick cut a line across his throat just deep enough to bleed last night. He was shorter than average and thick bodied. I’ve got until my partner shows up to help you find him. Even if Vincent shows up, I might have him start moving and I’ll catch up. I wouldn’t want to leave with someone still gunning for Nick. I haven’t had this much fun in years.”
“Captain McLain?” Charles interrupted.
Both Wes and Adam turned around, but Wes answered, “Yes?”
Charles straightened. “I’ve been informed that you need a cook for the trail drive. I feel my qualifications are adequate though I know nothing about driving a herd. My first position was as assistant cook at a hunting lodge. I can prepare any game and am familiar with cooking on a campfire. I’ll make the drive with you as cook on the condition that you buy me a train ticket back to Indiana when we reach the rail station.”
The little man wasn’t friendly even when applying for a job, but Wes and Adam didn’t make fun of him. They’d both been raised by a strong working-class foreman who’d taught his sons to respect a man’s right to work no matter what rank the job.
“You believe your position is over here?” Wes asked.
“I was told so today,” Charles answered. “I have enough funds to secure the proper clothing and personal supplies needed for such a trip.” The cold little bully of a man who’d tried to put them both in their place stood proudly before them as he awaited their answer. He wasn’t ask
ing for a handout, only employment.
Wes offered his hand. “The job’s yours if you want it, Charlie. And a share of the profit at trail’s end to go along with your ticket.”
“Thank you, sir, but it’s Charles.” The man lifted his nose. “I’ll be ready within the hour.” He walked away without another word.
Adam smiled at his brother. “You figure he’ll survive out there with the cowhands?”
“If he can cook half as well as I’m betting he can, they’ll allow him his room and even call him Charles. Besides, it would be worth the train ticket to know how happy I’m making Bergette.”
“Speak of the devil.” Adam pointed with a nod of his head.
Bergette floated down the stairs looking all fresh and powdered, as if she’d been bathing and sleeping while all the trouble was going on. Lily followed, mirroring the other side of the coin. The poor maid looked like she’d been trapped in a cage of screaming monkeys. Her normally orderly hair was a shambles, her dress wet and her hands red from hauling water up and down the stairs.
“Lily!” Harry pushed Bergette aside, breaking her featherlike descent into the room. “Lily! Are you all right?”
The poor girl melted into the young man’s arms. “Harry!” she cried. “You saved me.”
“You knew I’d come.” Harry looked a little embarrassed by all the folks staring at him, but he didn’t push Lily from his embrace.
Several cowhands cheered and shouted comments like, “She’s all right now.”
Harry smiled nervously.
Bergette opened her fan loudly and continued into the room, allowing her face to show anger for only a moment at the young man’s attention toward her maid. She cared nothing of Lily and her beau, but she bitterly hated having an entrance spoiled.
Adam watched her move into the room. Every step seemed calculated, every movement planned to provide the best advantage to her figure and dress. She was as perfect as always, her golden hair curling down her back to her waist, her face powdered and brushed with just the right touch of rouge, her tiny hands and waist, her startling blue eyes she knew how to use almost like a language.
