by Becca Van
* * * *
Lacy hummed as she cut back the last of the tomato plants. She stood up, easing the muscles in her back as she stretched, biting back a groan as her spine cracked. She rolled her shoulders and elongated her neck, sighing when the tautness in her muscles eased.
She glanced across the yard and sighed when she saw Will and Walker carrying large bales of wool on their shoulders, their muscles bulging and flexing, sweat glistening on their skin as they moved. She’d often caught herself staring across at them, practically drooling over their bare chests and muscular physiques.
When they disappeared back into the wool shed she walked toward the side of the house where she’d hidden the shovel. She’d pulled out half of the pumpkin plants which were dying off with plans to replant with dried-out pumpkin seeds, but first she needed to turn over the soil.
She rounded the side of the house, her eyes on the shovel, and then gasped as she slammed into a hard object. Just as she looked up to see what it was, a hard arm wrapped around her waist from behind and a dirty hand covered her mouth. She stared up into the eyes of one of the stockman she’d seen from afar and when he moved closer to her he gave her an evil smile.
Lacy kicked out, her booted heel connecting with his stomach, pleased when she heard the breath whoosh from his lungs in a grunt. She clawed at the arm around her waist and the hand over her mouth, but it didn’t do her any good. The arm moved up to her ribs and squeezed, pushing the air from her lungs.
The one in front of her stepped forward, the hand over her mouth lifted, and just as she opened her mouth to scream pain slammed into the side of her jaw and radiated up into her head. Her knees buckled as she saw stars, but she didn’t hit the ground like she expected.
Her arms were tugged in front of her and as she struggled and gasped for breath a cloth was shoved into her mouth and something secured around her head. She tugged at her arms but the hand holding her wrists tightened into a brutal grip and then rope was tied around them.
Lacy kicked out as she was lifted from her feet but more hands grabbed at her ankles and pushed them so hard together her ankle bones hurt. Rope was wrapped around her ankles so tightly she could feel her blood being cut off and then she was slung over a shoulder and being carried away.
She lifted her head, bucked and wriggled and although she couldn’t see since they’d pulled a hood over her head, she wasn’t giving up. It didn’t matter where they were trying to take her or even who they were, what mattered was that she didn’t give up at trying to get away.
Chapter Thirteen
Walker raced out of the shearing shed when he heard a gunshot. Will was on his heels.
When he got outside he saw their hired stockmen pulling pistols from their holsters and lifting muskets. He heard the sound of pounding hooves before he saw Chet and Kent racing toward them.
“Where is she?” Chet bellowed his question.
Walker turned and pointed toward the large vegetable patch but he didn’t see any sign of Lacy.
“She must have gone inside. She was there not five minutes ago,” Walker explained.
“Go check,” Kent ordered as his eyes roved over their stockmen.
Will raced toward the house and although Walker had no idea what was going on he felt the urgency his friends were feeling.
“She’s not inside,” Will yelled as he slammed out the door.
“Where are Curly and Hitch?” Chet asked.
“They’re…” Walker glanced about but couldn’t see them. “They were at the wagon, last I saw.”
“We need to find them.” Kent growled. “We think they took Lacy.”
“Lacy?” Walker yelled for her, hoping she would come running, but when she didn’t appear fear permeated him to his soul. “What’s going on?”
“Curly and Hitch are a part of William Strutt’s gang.
“Fuck. Let’s move.” Walker ran toward the vegetable patch hoping he’d be able to follow tracks.
He saw small boot prints in the ground and followed them around the side of the house. His friends hurried after him.
“Look.” Kent pointed to two sets of larger boot prints and then the smudged out smaller footprints. “She put up a fight.”
“Get your horses,” Chet ordered. “Leave two stockmen here and the rest come with us.”
Walker and Will raced toward the stables, shouting to their men as they ran. Walker leapt into the saddle and nudged his horse into a trot and then a canter, and lastly a gallop as he hurried after Chet and Kent.
* * * *
Lacy swallowed bile as it threatened to erupt. She was face down over a horse, hard thighs digging into her stomach and hips. Pounding hooves sounded loud and close to her ears and she knew they were moving fast. She couldn’t draw a proper breath because each time she tried, her body bounced and impeded her lungs, making her feel lightheaded.
She wriggled when the saddle pommel banged her hip, trying to get some space between her and it, but there was no room. She had no doubt she was going to end up with bruises. Her face was throbbing and so was her head, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of her upside position or because of the hit to her jaw. It didn’t matter, though. Nothing mattered but getting out of this and staying alive.
Her ears pricked up when she heard more horses’ hooves and she wondered if Will and Walker had noticed she was gone, but when she heard a man speak she knew it wasn’t them.
“They’re on the move,” a gravelly voice shouted. “We have to hurry.”
Lacy shifted her hands and that’s when she realised she wasn’t as helpless as she thought. She tried to listen carefully and figure out where the other horses were, but it was hard when she was gasping for breath and her heart was racing and pounding in her chest. She had no idea how close the other horses were, but she had nothing to lose.
She slowly lifted her arms, hoping whoever had her draped over him wasn’t taking any notice of what she was doing, and then she braced her hands onto the horse’s side, hoping she wasn’t too close to the man’s leg. She didn’t want to alert him to what she was about to do.
Lacy drew as deep of a breath as she was able to and then she pushed as hard as she could. She felt her body slipping from the horse and the man underneath her cursed. A cruel hand gripped her ponytail and she was hauled back across his legs. A punch landed between her shoulder blades, robbing her or what little air she had in her lungs, leaving her struggling to breathe.
“Try that again and I’ll kill you now.” A hard, sharp slap landed on her arse, making her skin crawl.
Lacy tried to relax her body and inhaled as deeply as she could when the phantom weight on her back and chest dissipated. She sobbed with fear, tears leaking from her eyes, and prayed her men would rescue her.
When the horses slowed, she began to shake with fear. Her cry of pain was muffled when she was hauled from the horse and dragged by her hair, her legs scraping on the ground and over rocks. Her skin burned and she was sure she felt her flesh slice open on a sharp protrusion, and she tried to get her feet underneath her even if she couldn’t walk since her ankles were bound.
She’d just managed to get her toes onto the ground and then she was flying. She flew through the air and landed with a hard jolt onto cold, damp rock. She whimpered when she heard footsteps moving toward her and tried to scrabble back but it was impossible while she was trussed up.
When the footsteps moved away from her, she sighed with relief, rolled to her hands and knees, and inched away as fast as she could. Her head hit something hard, making the throbbing in her head worse, but she lifted her hands and felt around, encountering more rock.
Lacy thought she might be in a cave, hollow, or beneath an overhang, because she couldn’t feel the sun’s warming rays on her skin and she could hear water dripping in the distance. She hoped the men who had taken her weren’t watching her but didn’t really care. After lifting her arms toward the hood over her head, she waited to be hit or told off, but when no o
ne said anything, she eased the material covering up and off.
After blinking a few times to adjust her sight to the lack of light, she looked around. She was in a small cave and from the look of the supplies it was where the men had been camping out.
When she looked toward the entrance she saw a large man with his back toward her. He was crouched behind a large rock with a musket in his hands. She knew there were more men but they weren’t within sight.
Lacy tugged at the cloth, holding the material in her mouth, and was surprised when it came away easily. She removed the cloth and wadded-up material from her mouth and threw it aside and then inhaled deeply several times while she looked around for something to cut the ropes away.
* * * *
“They’re heading toward the Great Diving Range,” Kent yelled over the noise of the horse’s hooves. “We can’t let them get up there. There are too many caves they can hide in.”
He and his friends urged their horses to run faster and harder than they ever had before. His stallion leapt forward as if he felt Kent’s urgency, not missing a step. He ducked when a shot echoed through the air and he was sure he felt the wind of a bullet as it rushed past him.
“Take cover,” Chet shouted.
Kent veered over toward a group of boulders at the base of the range and he jumped from his stallion’s back as another volley of shots rang out and ducked behind the rocks. “Can you see where they are?”
“The shots came from halfway up that slope. I can’t see much with all the trees but they’ve probably holed up in a cave,” Chet said quietly.
“Walker, Will, see if you can get to higher ground without being seen.”
Kent looked toward their stockmen and motioned them to spread out. They jumped from their horses, checked their weapons, and moved along the base of the mountain, looking for cover. He assumed the bushrangers had expended their bullets and were reloading when no more shots were fired.
He glimpsed Will and Walker moving up through the trees as they kept low and out of sight of the bushrangers, but when a shot rang out and bark flew from the tree next to Walker’s head, he knew they’d been seen.
Walker and Will dove for cover and belly-crawled closer to the hiding bushrangers. Kent wanted to fire back when he saw a hat above a rock and as he squinted his eyes he also noticed the top of an opening and knew the rangers were in a cave, but he held his fire, scared of shooting Lacy.
* * * *
Lacy spied a dirty knife sitting on the side of a plate near the dead fire. She glanced toward the cave entrance, and when she saw that the man crouching behind the rock wasn’t taking any notice of her she inched her way over to it. She was glad she’d donned her pants after Will and Walker had made love to her at lunchtime because a skirt would have hampered her movements and rustled as she moved.
It was hard going with her wrists and ankles bound, but by keeping her lower legs lifted she was able to slowly crawl toward that knife. She once more looked at the man just outside and then clasped the knife in her fist, before working her way back to where she’d been sitting against the wall.
She shifted until she was sitting on her arse and began to saw at the rope around her wrists. It was hard going since she had to push hard against the rope to twist her wrists, the thick twine abrading and tearing at her skin, but she managed to turn them so they were the opposite way to each other. Then, using her fingers, she got the blade between the hemp and her flesh, and she began sawing.
She slipped a couple of times, holding in cries of pain as the steel cut into her skin, but she wasn’t cut too badly. After a few tries the rope began to fray and every now and then she tried to tug it apart.
Gunfire peppered the air irregularly as time was taken to reload flintlock muskets and pistols, and although she kept an eye on the man outside, she kept right on cutting. By the time she had the rope off, blood was dripping from the self-inflicted wounds, but she pushed the pain to the back of her mind and started on the rope around her ankles.
When she was free she clutched the knife tightly and crept toward the fire where a half-burnt thick branch was sticking out the side. She lifted the branch, gripping it hard, and crept toward the entrance.
* * * *
Will had been able to move away from Walker when his mate had been spotted and dove for cover so he wouldn’t be shot.
He literally crawled up the slope beneath the cover of brush and stayed as low as possible and behind the tree trunks. When he heard a musket being snapped closed after being reloaded, he peeked out and spotted Curly. His hat had come off somewhere and his bald head gleamed white in the afternoon sun. When he saw the idiot chug down some whiskey from a bottle, he hoped he was getting good and drunk. If his senses were dulled hopefully he wouldn’t hear Will creeping up behind him. He glanced about and when he didn’t see Hitch or Strutt and his brother, he moved closer.
Will holstered his pistol, drew his knife from his belt, and shimmied forward.
“Curly?” a deep voice called.
“Yeah?”
“You see anything?”
“Nah, I think maybe I shot one of ‘em. He went down onto his belly and from what I can tell hasn’t moved since.” Curly chuckled and took another swig from the bottle.
“Keep your eyes peeled.”
Will couldn’t believe how stupid these guys were. By calling out to each other, they’d just given away their positions. He was glad that Walker had remained where he was since Curly thought he’d killed him. If the dick kept watching Walker, he wouldn’t have any trouble getting behind him.
When he’d worked his way higher than Curly’s spot behind a large tree, he tried to find Hitch, Strutt, and his brother. He caught sight of Strutt near the cave entrance and then spied Gillian off to the far left of his sibling. That left Hitch, but he couldn’t see him anywhere.
A shot rang out and then a thud, and when he looked down about twenty yards he saw Hitch lying on the ground, his eyes wide open and blood seeping from his chest. With one less bushranger to worry about, Will eased closer to Curly.
He froze when Curly’s arm moved and then glanced up to see his eyes close as he gulped from the whiskey bottle.
Will made his move.
Making sure he didn’t step on any twigs or dry leaves, he took a step to the side, two steps forward, and slit Curly’s throat. He caught the glass bottle as it fell from Curly’s slack fingers and grabbed his body before it thudded to the ground. Will lowered Curly and the bottle and hoped the gurgling sound the bushranger made wouldn’t be heard by Strutt or his brother. Thankfully neither of them seemed to hear and Will crept back behind the brush and worked his way up higher to the rocks above the cave opening.
When he was crouched above the entrance he signalled Chet and Kent to cover him with gunfire.
* * * *
Another burst of gunfire sounded and Lacy used the noise to move closer to the entrance. She was barely five feet away when she heard one of the other men talking to the one near her.
“Can you see any of ‘em, Bill?”
“No, but Curly reckons he killed one of the fuckers.”
“Good.”
Lacy’s heart tumbled in her chest and she had to shove her fist in her mouth so she wouldn’t be heard. Pain pierced her heart and tears burned her eyes. Her knees weakened and it took everything she had to lock them so she wouldn’t fall to the ground. One of her husbands had been shot and possibly killed.
Rage such as she’d never felt before raced through her body until she was shaking with fury.
She clutched the knife and branch so hard her knuckles ached. Everything seemed to slow down as if she was having a dream. She couldn’t feel herself moving but she knew she was getting closer to the prick, and when she was just two steps away, just inside the rock wall, she raised her arm and made her move.
Her throat hurt as she held back her scream of anger and grief and then she plunged the knife as hard as she could into the arsehole’s back.
She watched with morbid fascination as his head turned, his mouth open with shock or a shout of pain she didn’t hear, and then he slumped to the ground. She turned her head, looking for one of the others and was surprised to see Will standing next to another man with a gun pushed against his temple.
Lacy’s legs gave way and she fell to her knees. She stared at the red blood that was coating and dripping from the knife blade uncomprehendingly for a moment before she let it go and crawled to the side.
Her stomach heaved as she vomited until her muscles were sore. After wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she struggled to her feet and turned to face Will. He’d tied up the guy he held the gun to and then he hurried over to her.
“Lacy? God, honey, you’re hurt.”
Lacy looked down at her wrists when Will carefully cupped the back of her arms and lifted them.
“Will, there are more…”
“Shh, sweetheart. We’ve got all four of them.” Will released her arms and pulled her into his body, wrapping her in his protective brace.
Tears flowed over her bruised face and even though she wanted to remain in his arms, she needed to know which one of her husbands had been shot.
“Will?” she asked, frowning when she wondered why he was swaying.
“Yes, honey?”
“Wh–who d–did th–they sh–shoot?”
“They didn’t shoot any of us, Lacy. Walker was playing possum.”
“H–he w–was?”
“Yes, we’re all safe and sound, honey. You’re the hurt one.”
Lacy tried to smile but her lips wouldn’t cooperate and she realised that Will wasn’t swaying at all. She was the one moving since she was shaking so much. Her teeth began to chatter and she was so cold, she didn’t think she’d ever get warm again.
