In her sleep, she latched onto it greedily, tugging it tight to block out more of the chill. Another soft sound, much more contented than the last, whispered through her parted lips.
Turning away, he trudged to a nearby tree. He sank to the ground at its base, propping his feet on a root that bulged from the soil. He was weary enough to sprawl out under the stars and court the temporary oblivion of sleep. Weary enough that it wouldn’t matter if the ground was cold and damp beneath him. Resting his back against the trunk, he stared into the night sky.
He’d been a damn fool to take on this mission. These schemes always sounded simple enough in some Washington office. If he’d known what was coming with the plot they’d concocted to snare Emma Davenport, he would’ve taken off for the nearest battlefield. At least there he’d face combatants who brandished bayonets, rather than a sweetly smiling face and eyes a man could wake to every morning of his life without tiring of the sight.
He hadn’t gathered enough intelligence to clear Emma or convict her. His gut told him she wasn’t in on Staton’s plans. She’d fallen for the deceptions of a charming serpent of a man.
But could he trust his instincts when he wanted her more with every breath?
He gave in to the impulse to look at her. Beneath the moon’s lustrous light, she might have been a fairy fallen to earth, a pixie’s smile curving her delicious mouth. What was she dreaming of? What had brought joy to her features, even in her slumber?
He really was going soft. Maybe the blood loss he’d suffered over the last few days was starting to get to him. He’d never been so irrational in his thirty-one years.
Still, he allowed his gaze to trace the bow of her mouth, savoring the memory of that one stolen kiss.
He’d meant to bring color to her cheeks and elicit a vexed exclamation from her coral lips. Something in the way her eyes flashed and she pronounced each syllable with crisp precision—desperado and barbarian had never sounded so good as when the words rolled off her tongue. He’d meant to infuriate her. But instead, he’d triggered a hunger that gnawed at him day and night, a hunger taking her to bed wouldn’t entirely sate.
He shook his head in disgust. What the hell had come over him? At this rate, Emma could write her own melodrama with him as the tortured hero.
He’d snap out of it soon enough. Once Emma was out of his custody, he’d make his way to Richmond and infiltrate the DuBois brothers’ operations. Keeping one step ahead of those wily and vicious bastards would require all his mental resources. There’d be no time to dwell on a pretty girl who was never meant for a man like him.
Even if they’d met in some sedate Washington parlor, she was a senator’s daughter. Emma would make a fine wife to a man who could offer her the life she deserved. A wealthy man, or at least, one whose occupation didn’t involve dodging bullets and tracking down unprincipled bastards who’d kill him quick as they could blink.
His eyes lit on her delicate features, drawn by a force he didn’t understand but couldn’t entirely resist. What would it feel like to hold her in his arms, to feel the gentle rise and fall of her breasts against his chest, to savor the sensation of her hips cradling his?
He tore his gaze away and stared up at the sky. Damn, this was going to be another long night.
* * *
Emma rubbed her eyes, stretched lazily, and tugged the blanket to her chin. The blanket. How had she come to have the blanket draped over her? Her sleepy gaze lit on her satchel. Cole had dared to remove the barrier. Oh, the man was incorrigible.
But still, why was she under the blanket? How was it possible, when he’d intended to sleep on the portion of the bedroll that now covered her from her shoulders to her toes?
Glancing toward the rising sun, she spotted Cole. Legs stretched out before him, he rested with a tree as his only cushion. He met her gaze, his eyes heavy-lidded. Had he spent the entire night in such an inhospitable circumstance? After insisting he wouldn’t sleep on the ground, had he chosen to do just that?
“Sleep well, Miss Davenport?” he asked, his voice a lazy rasp.
“I managed a passable slumber.” A vague memory of shivering beneath her improvised cover invaded her thoughts, accompanied by a hazy awareness of someone tucking a blanket over her, just as her father had when she was a girl.
Cole.
The hair-thin layer of ice she’d struggled to erect around her heart shattered. She propped herself up on her elbows. “You slept there…under the tree?”
“Yep.” He raked a hand through his hair like a makeshift comb. “Didn’t have much choice. You talk about me snoring? I actually heard some critters moving deeper into the forest to get away from the racket.”
Oh, the nerve!
“I do not snore.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “You’re sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’m a lady. Ladies don’t—”
He regarded her without so much as a quirk of his lips. “Don’t bet the farm on it.”
“I do not snore. Aunt Elizabeth would have sought some cure or another if I’d been so afflicted. Heaven knows she’s scrutinized every other aspect of my life. I doubt she’d spare my sleep.”
He nodded, his expression thoughtful. “To tell you the truth, you don’t snore.”
“Good.” She hiked up her chin. “I knew you were making that up.”
His mouth hiked up. “Actually, you talk in your sleep.”
“Me? Talk in my sleep. How absurd!”
“A telegraph operator would have a hard time keeping up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” A note of horror settled in her brain. What might she have revealed? She’d had one particularly decadent dream—a dream in which he’d played quite a part. A silent prayer that her slumbering self maintained some discretion wafted to heaven.
“Would I lie to you?”
She nodded. “I’ve no doubt.”
He met her words with a shrug. “A raccoon took off running when you started calling out for Romeo.”
“Romeo?” Relief washed over her. “You can’t be serious.”
“I think that was it. He’s one lucky guy, judging from the rest of the stuff coming out of your mouth.”
“I assure you I’ve never fancied myself to be Juliet, even in my sleep,” she protested, but he regarded her with such an unwavering gaze, she wondered if he might be telling the truth. “What kind of…stuff?”
“The usual. Sighs, moans…a cry here and there.”
She pushed herself up and marched over to the tree. “Nonsense.”
His dark brows quirked as he looked up at her. “Is it now?”
“I do not talk or make noises in my sleep. My chaperone’s up and down all night. I’m sure Miss Calder would have alerted me.”
He came to his feet. Now, he stared down at her. “With all that noise going on, no wonder the woman can’t get any sleep.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Suit yourself.” His attention fixed on the flesh below her right ear. “Your throat is bruised. That son of a bitch hurt you. I should have killed him.”
The primal note in his voice riveted her.
“What will become of that man?” she asked, wondering if she really wanted the answer.
“If the men who hired him realize he’s failed, he’ll probably wish I’d put a bullet in him.” Cole scanned the grove. “I know you’re tired, but we’ve got to move on. We’re too vulnerable here.”
“And where do you intend for us to go? I’ve no intention of boarding a train back to Washington. I suppose you’re stuck with me.”
“Stuck with you?” He rubbed his jaw. “Well, ain’t that a switch?”
“Sooner or later, you will realize that returning to Washington will bring nothing but trouble—for both of us.”
He kneaded the arm below his wounded shoulder. The weariness in his eyes dulled their luster. “I already know you’re nothing but trouble, Miss Davenport.”
“I am n
ot trouble as you put it. If you’d left matters alone, I’d be in St. Louis now. We’d both be—”
He stared past her, into the small clearing. Heavens, he was an exasperating man. She planted her hands on her hips. “Could you at least show me the courtesy of listening to me?”
Without warning, Cole’s hands were upon her. He shoved her to the ground, his body covering hers, his heat permeating the layers of fabric that separated them. Instinct reared its head, and she struggled against him. He pinned her wrists with his free hand, weighting her lower body with his legs.
“Have you gone mad?” she murmured in a rush of breath.
He was breathing hard, the lean length of his body taut with tension. “Stay down and stay quiet,” he ordered. “We’ve been followed.”
A gunshot rang out, whizzing past the tree he’d used as a resting place.
“Does he want to kill me?” The question fell from her lips in a gasp.
His head moved in a rough motion. “He wants to kill me, but the son of a bitch isn’t very good at it.”
“Is it the same man?”
“Don’t think so.” One hand darted down to his ankle. He pulled a gun from a holster beneath his trouser leg. “You know how to use this?”
She nodded, though her hands shook as she accepted the weapon.
“I need you to cover me. Shoot anything that moves.” His weight peeled away from her, and he sprang to his feet. “Except me.”
With one hand, he pushed her behind the massive oak’s trunk, then darted behind another tree.
Shots rang out. Another bullet grazed the tree that served as Emma’s shield.
Cole took off running toward the source of the gunfire. Weaving back and forth, he quickly crossed the clearing. He aimed his weapon and fired once. And again.
A man’s ragged, agony-filled shout bore into Emma’s mind like a banshee’s cry.
“Holy hell, don’t…don’t do it…don’t shoot me…again.” The same hoarse tones, pleading now.
Cole leveled his weapon, ready to pull the trigger again. “Get the hell out here where I can see you.”
A pale, sunken-cheeked thug slunk out from behind the trees that had provided his cover. Holding his right hand—his gun hand, most likely—before him, he stared at the bloody nub where his thumb had been.
“You alone?” Cole gritted between his teeth.
“You shot me, you son of a—”
“Answer the goddamn question. Are you alone?”
The gaunt man managed a surly nod. Cole dug the muzzle of his six-shooter into his ribs.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Cole ordered. He led the gunman to a tree, snatching a coil of rope from his saddle as he passed. “Why’d you come here?”
“To kill you.” The stranger glanced in Emma’s direction. “And get the girl.”
“Who sent you?”
The thin man stared down at the blood oozing from his wound. “I’m going to bleed to death if you don’t do something.”
“It’s just your goddamn thumb.” Cole’s words held a flinty edge. “Who are you working for?”
“Some English bastard lookin’ for a hired gun. The money was good.”
“Where was he?”
“Baltimore.”
“Did he pay you?”
“What kinda question is that? Why the hell do you care?”
Cole nudged him with the gun. “Answer the question.”
“He gave me half. Said I’d get the rest when I brought back proof.”
“What proof?”
“The woman.” He eyed Cole like a cornered rodent. “Dead or alive.”
Chapter Seventeen
Cole studied the scrawny thug’s eyes, searching for some indication the son of a bitch was lying. If what the rat-faced bastard said was true, the situation was even worse than he’d expected. What else did the hired gun know about the man who’d paid him to go after Emma? Cole had to know—every damn detail. Emma’s life was on the line, and he was running out of luck.
He nudged the thug in the ribs with the barrel of his six-shooter. Cole had spent many a night infiltrating the Baltimore waterfront, hunting for leads on a rash of weapons thefts. He’d blended in with seamen and two-legged-vermin alike, skulking around in saloons and alleys, watching and listening and waiting for drunken boasts and guilty ramblings that would provide a clue to the culprits. At the cabin, he’d recognized the Englishman—the hawk-faced hoodlum had stood out among the brutes on the wharf. But damned if he could recall laying eyes on this man’s sunken face.
“What’s your name?”
The thug stared down at his bloody hand. “Why do you want t’know?”
“What do you call yourself?”
“Smith.”
“Smith? That’s mighty convenient.”
“I swear to God, that’s my name. Hiram Smith. What’s it to you?”
“How’d you know where she was?”
Smith’s jaw trembled. “I didn’t…didn’t know about this place.”
“Then how’d you find us?”
“The Englishman…went by Jones…he knew all about that cabin. I was supposed to ride with him, but he changed the plan at the last minute, sent me to some whorehouse instead.”
An invisible fist plowed into Cole’s gut. The hired gun had gone after Dunham.
He dragged in a breath between his teeth. His finger tapped the trigger. This could be bad. Real bad. But he had to control himself. He couldn’t kill this cur. Not yet. Not until the bastard spilled everything he knew.
“What’d you do there?” Cole ground out the question.
“Not a damn thing but get my…” His gaze flickered to the ground and back again. “There wasn’t anyone there but harlots, and I think one of ’em slipped somethin’ in my drink. There was no sign of the guy I was supposed to kill. So I went after Jones. Figured the som-bitch thought to cheat me out of my cut.”
“You caught up with him?”
A long silence met his question. Smith’s throat constricted over his Adam’s apple. His gaze darted, a rat trapped in a snare he couldn’t escape.
“Answer the question, Smith.”
The lump in his throat bobbed. “What was left of him.”
Cole slanted Emma a glance. She’d gone pale, but she followed the interrogation intently. At those words, what little color remained in her face leached away. She offered a nod, as if she’d read the concern in his eyes.
“What the hell do you mean?”
Smith shuffled his feet and stared at the ground. “Just what I said. What was left of him. Jesus Christ, you didn’t have t’do that to him. You coulda just put a bullet in him.”
“What are you talking about? The man was alive when I left him.”
“He sure as shit wasn’t when I got there.” The thug shifted his glassy stare to Emma. “You don’t want me to tell you the rest, not in front of her.”
“Please, go on,” she said calmly, though Cole noticed she’d braced her feet wider beneath her skirt and crossed her arms as if to buttress herself.
“Somebody gutted him like a goddamn trout. And before that, it looked like…Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Whatever it is, you must tell us.” Emma’s voice was surprisingly strong. “If not, I’m afraid my companion here will lose his patience with you.”
Smith dragged a hand over his jaw. “The poor son of a bitch was missing a couple fingers. Judging from the blood, he was alive when they took ’em off.”
The DuBois brothers. The bastards liked their knives, that was for damn sure. Staton had gotten himself mixed up with these rabid dogs, and he’d drawn Emma into their sights.
Cole had heard enough. There was no need to subject Emma to any more talk of the DuBois brothers and their savagery.
“How’d you get here?” he asked.
Smith cocked his head toward a thatch of trees to the east. “The English bastard…well, he had a lookout, a kid. Br
at couldna been more than ten. I found him hiding up in a tree near the cabin. Scared so bad, he could barely talk. But he pointed in a direction, and I figured to follow it. I knew you’d run along the tracks. But I knew you’d stay outta sight, keep back some. A lot of men can’t make their way through the forest. But you and me, we know how to control a horse.”
“Why’d you come here?”
Narrow shoulders lifted and fell. “Just because Jones wasn’t around t’pay me didn’t mean no one would ante up the money for the girl. I figured to take her. Someone back in Baltimore would know who t’go to for the rest of it.”
“You thought you’d kill me and run off with her?”
“Something like that.” Smith squirmed against the gun. “You gonna shoot me now?”
“Nope.” Cole bit the syllable between his teeth. “But something tells me you’re going to wish I had.”
* * *
Cole left Smith tethered to a tree and spurred his mount to a furious gallop. Desperation drove the hired gun’s voice to a shrill, panic-laden pitch. Death by a bullet must have seemed a palatable choice after what the gunman had seen back at the cabin.
A shudder ran through Emma’s core. The Englishman had been a vicious cur, but even he didn’t deserve to die in such a horrendous manner.
Cole had said little beyond a few sparse commands as he readied his mount. Snatching up Emma’s traveling bag, he secured it to the saddle, then tied his bedroll to the other side. As he’d swung her into the saddle, only the grim set of his jaw betrayed any hint of his thoughts. If whoever had butchered the Englishman caught up with them—no, she wouldn’t consider the possibility. This was no time to dwell on such evil.
Now, as he urged on his steed, the tension in his body seemed to ease. Emma allowed herself to relax against him. “Will that man be able to get away?”
“If he’s lucky—if the people who hired him don’t find him first. Staton’s dealing with some very ruthless men. They don’t tolerate failure.”
“I don’t know what to believe any more. Why would he choose to associate with such vermin?”
“Staton’s a traitor. He’s let his greed guide him.”
Secrets, Spies & Sweet Little Lies (Secrets & Spies) Page 15
