Branded

by Vivian Vaughan

  “Why?” Jacy asked. Not that any reason could be good enough. Tom helped Drummond frame Trevor. She would have to work hard not to hate both of them for that.

  “He said it was to help me save Hunter. A friend helping a friend save his son from hanging.” Drummond paused so long Jacy thought he was through. Before she could ask another question, he added, “Tom had a son to save, too.”

  Jacy’s heart caught. “Tommy?”

  “That kid felt sort of like Hunter said. He never did cotton to the way his father stepped out on his mother. Wouldn’t surprise me to learn that kid put an end to it. Or to what he thought was happening.”

  “Then he would have killed Abbie.”

  “Tom was awful careful on that score. Would surprise me if Tommy ever knew about Abbie.” Drummond looked from one to the other. “Neither of you ever figured it out.”

  Suddenly Jacy’s head began to clear. “Tommy Guest moved to California after Oleta’s death,” she told Hunter. “According to Tom, he never got over it. He never writes or communicates with his father. Mary Jane writes occasionally, but Tommy doesn’t.”

  “There are enough holes in this to lose a buffalo,” Hunter countered. “Why did Tommy, saying it was Tommy Guest, why did he pick that particular day, that particular time?”

  Drummond thumped his walking stick against the sod floor, making dents.

  “Why, Papa?” Jacy demanded.

  “Because, damnit Sis, Tom helped me plan my little scheme. Tom wouldn’t have had reason not to tell Tommy. And the kid knew how much I hated that worthless Fallon.”

  Hardin stepped forward for the first time today. “What part of California did you say this Tommy moved to?”

  Jacy thought a minute. “Imperial Valley, I think. Why?”

  “Down by the Arizona border,” the attorney mused, then added, “Word came out of Yuma while you were away. Warden tracked down the killer of that guard. Some low-life from California.”

  “For his boots,” Hunter added. “The warden told me about it when they released me. Do you think there’s a connection?”

  “Bears looking into.”

  The silence lengthened until at last Jacy broke it with a cry. “I know how we can find out.”

  “How?” Hunter came to her side.

  Racing to the room that served as a dormitory, she dug into the basket Trevor brought her the night before, finally withdrawing the letter she had taken from Tom’s room. “This letter is from Abbie, too,” she explained, returning to the room. “Tom has a drawer full of them.”

  Hunter took the letter, examined it. She watched his face go white.

  “The signature,” she offered unnecessarily.

  Squinting at the fancy A at the bottom of the note, Hunter went stiff. “Son of a bitch! It’s the same.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Listen to this,” Hunter said, reading. “‘Many thanks for coming through with that Persian carpet, Tom. It’ll be perfect for our parlor. Like it was designed for it.’ Doesn’t sound much like a love letter.”

  “They were all like this. Trevor and I read them.” She smiled at Hunter, wondering why she dreaded telling him about their mother’s furniture, after everything else he learned the last day and a half. He reacted as she expected.

  “Tom’s whore has our mother’s furniture? Where’d she get it?”

  “Tom said he sold it to her, but I doubt that.”

  Hunter took a moment to respond, shaking his head. “Where did she put the furniture?” he asked at length. “I thought she was sent away.”

  “She’s back. Someone built her a fine new home, ostentatious, I should say, in Gila Bend.”

  “Someone? Like who?”

  “Tom Guest,” Drummond barked.

  “We don’t know that,” Jacy argued, although she wasn’t sure why. “They must be lovers, but…”

  “Doesn’t sound like a lovers’ nest to me,” Hunter said. “Sounds more like blackmail.”

  “Blackmail?”

  He shrugged. “If Tommy really killed Ana and Abbie saw it, Tom would have done anything to keep her quiet.”

  “Including frame Trevor?” Jacy asked rhetorically.

  “Of course.” He glared at Drummond. “Including helping his friend save his own son from…” The words trembled from Hunter’s lips. He drew a deep gulping breath. Mari came to him, held him, while he trembled against her.

  It all fell into place. It all fit. But how to prove it. Jacy scanned the room. Tía Bella had just put a dish of queso on the table and turned to the kitchen.

  “I know how we can call their hand,” she said, half a whisper.

  “How?” It was Mari who asked, for when Jacy looked Hunter was still standing stupefied.

  “Tía Bella can write a letter.”

  Mari grinned.

  Hunter looked confused.

  Jacy turned to Wes Hardin. “Do you think it would work? Will you help us?”

  “My pleasure, ma’am. Trevor Fallon’s a special friend of mine.”

  To Hunter, Jacy explained, “Mr. Hardin is an attorney. He helped when no one else in this town would even talk to us. He played a big role in getting your pardon. I’m sure he can help us work out something that will call their hand and get Trevor a pardon.”

  “If Pa hasn’t already ruined that,” Hunter growled.

  Jacy thought for another several moments, then made up her mind. “Mr. Hardin, if you could help me get to Trevor, I’m sure Hunter and Mari and Tía Bella can handle the rest.”

  He stroked his sweeping mustache, grinning. “Wondered when you’d get around to that. It’s getting late, though. Why don’t you work on that letter. I’ll be back before dawn with a horse and guard.”

  When she started to object, he hurried on. “You’d never find him in the dark, ma’am. He’ll get along all right without you till morning.”

  Morning. The hours would creep past, and every minute of them spent worrying about Trevor. Her own father was behind the scheme that sent him to prison and almost got him hanged.

  But would Trevor want to see her, once he learned the truth?

  Fifteen

  She found him where the old man said. In a little potrero, a hidden valley high amid the massive outcropping of granite. Although she left El Paso in the dawning hours, accompanied by Wes Hardin’s guard, it was well past noon by the time she arrived at Hueco Tanks. The Mexican guard rode with her up to the old stage station, which served as a temporary ranch house for Señor Silverio Escontrias, who agreed to show her the rest of the way. Fortunately, Señor Escontrias knew Hardin’s guard, so he was assured that she meant Trevor no harm.

  Jacy had no doubt it was from fear of Wes Hardin, not for love of Trevor. Be that as it may, the rancher seemed a reliable watchman.

  Hueco Tanks was almost eight hundred acres of solid granite rising in three distinct, yet connected, domes above the desert floor. The name hueco was Spanish for tank, and came from depressions in the granite that had held rainwater and served as water tanks for thirsty travelers since time immemorial.

  Finding the granite overhang where Señor Escontrias instructed her to leave her horse, she ground-hitched the animal under the natural shelter, within easy distance to a small pool of water and sparse grass and other ground cover.

  The sun was still hot at midafternoon when she began her climb up the smooth rock mountain.

  Heat steamed from the glass-smooth rock. She wished for the cool of evening and knew this mountain would be even more dangerous to climb in darkness. The trail, such as it was, wound in and out, higher and higher, into the jumble of boulders. Some were so slick she finally removed her boots to keep from slipping from the surface.

  The heated granite soon blistered her feet, but she would rather end the day with a few blisters than by falling off the face of the cliff.

  A good hour later, she crawled over a jagged edge of rock, found footing in a crevice formed by centuries of run-off water, and stopped to catch her
breath and give her aching limbs a rest.

  When she turned to see where to step next, she saw him. Actually, they saw each other at the same moment. Jacy looked down into the small potrero and saw Trevor rise from his knees at the edge of one of the larger huecos, canteen in hand. He froze in place. The branch of a hackberry tree skimmed his forehead with leaves.

  Her breath caught at the sight of him and at the way he looked at her, like he was seeing an apparition. How strange, she thought. Didn’t he know she would come? Eagerness swelled inside her.

  Eagerness to touch him. To be in his arms. Eagerness to spend the rest of eternity with him. Stuffing her boots inside the straw shoulder bag, she started down, just as he started toward her. When she was ten or so feet from the bottom, he held out his arms, and she leaped into them.

  Catching her, he staggered backwards, but she wasn’t sure whether from her sudden weight or from the impact of holding her. Holding him certainly jarred her.

  Then they were kissing, lips locked together, tongues thrusting, arms clinging, bodies pressing. Eager. Ah, yes, such blessed eagerness.

  At their first pause, he asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  She grinned and kissed him softly. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  His eyes told her it was. “Beyond the obvious.”

  She ran her tongue around the edges of his lips, felt his arms tighten around her, heard a groan escape his chest.

  “And don’t give me that bullshit about belonging together,” he said firmly.

  She grinned again. “You don’t believe we were meant to be together?”

  He eased her to her feet without answering, but he couldn’t seem to turn her loose. With an arm caught tightly around her shoulders, he held her close while they picked their way to the bottom where the only real grass in miles grew beneath the hackberry tree.

  She sat and rummaged in the bag for her boots. He took them from her and knelt, holding one for her. “You have no business being here, Jace.”

  She heard the concern in his voice. “I came to be with you,” she said simply, for it was the truth.

  “Romantic gibberish.”

  “Thanks for the welcome.”

  He averted his eyes. Exasperated, she jerked the boot away and tugged it on. “Why did you run out on me?”

  He turned at that, studied her a minute, then stood and stuffed his hands into back pockets. “You can’t stay. You’ll be in danger. Hell, you’re already in danger—”

  “Answer my question, Trevor. Why did you run out on me?”

  “I didn’t. Selman was on my trail.”

  “You were planning to leave anyway. Why?”

  She watched his shoulders bunch. “It was the only way,” he said to the cliff above.

  She jumped to her feet and went to stand beside him. It was all she could do not to throw herself in his arms. “The only way for what?” she demanded, remembering what Hunter had said. Had Trevor really said those words? Or had Hunter supplied them? Had her brother joined Mari’s matchmaking scheme?

  “For you to be happy, Jace.”

  She stared at the side of his face, wondering how she could get it through his head that she was here to stay, regardless of the consequences.

  “For me to be happy,” she repeated at length. “Well, you know something? I’m damned tired of everybody else deciding how to make me happy. From now on I will decide for myself. Do you hear that, Trevor? Me, I will decide. And I just did.”

  “Jace—”

  “I decided how to be happy.” Tears blurred her vision of him. “With you, damnit.”

  “Jace.” Turning he took her by the shoulders. “Damn, Jace, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  She stared at his Adam’s apple, feeling his hands on her arms, his eyes on her head. “So you ran out on me.”

  “It was the only way.”

  Aggravated, she pulled away, turned her back on him. “Stop being admirable. It doesn’t become you.”

  “No, I guess not.” She felt his hands on her back. She ached for him already, deep down low inside.

  “I’m an escaped murderer, Jace. On the run. What kind of life is that?”

  “If it’s your life, I want to share it.”

  He pulled her back against his chest, wrapped his arms around her, and rested his face close to hers. “I can’t allow it.”

  “Men! First Papa, now you.” She felt his heart beat heavily against her.

  “Who did you convince to bring you here?”

  His breath was hot and damp against her temple. His arms felt like heaven, safe and secure, and insidiously, deliciously sensual. “Wes Hardin.”

  “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How did you convince him?”

  “I asked, he agreed.”

  “And Hunter? Does he know?”

  “Yes, he knows. He’s busy trying to prove your innocence.”

  “I told him not to do that.”

  “Well, he’s doing it. By the way, Papa didn’t murder Ana.”

  “By the way?” He turned her to face him, thrust fingers through her hair, and stared at her uplifted face.

  She saw his agony, and his need. Then he pressed her face to his shoulder.

  “Damn Hunter. He wasn’t supposed to run to tell you that.”

  “He confronted Drummond.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  She wriggled free. “Don’t you know by now that you mean more to both of us than Drummond does?”

  “No, Jace. I can’t. He’s your father.”

  She started to say he didn’t have a very high opinion of his own father, so how could he expect it of her, especially since her father had set him up to hang for a murder he didn’t commit. “He may be our father, but you and Hunter are best friends, more so now than ever, I think.” Suddenly embarrassed, she ducked her head. “And last night I…I shamelessly told you my feelings.”

  Before she stopped speaking, he had lifted her face by a finger to her chin. His eyes were mellow with an emotion she wanted desperately to name but dared not. Not until he did.

  “Want to tell me again?” he asked softly.

  She thought she might melt in his arms, from the want in his eyes, from the tender passion in his voice. “I love you, Trevor.”

  He kissed her then. Softly at first, but so sensuously it set her on fire. “As God is my witness, Jace, I love you, too. Even if I’m eternally damned for it.” She watched the intensity of his feelings sweep over him. He pulled her to his chest again, held her face against his heart, and she felt it throb. Like hers. An echo of her love. Of his.

  She clung to him, trying not to cry. What fool cried when she finally learned that the only man she would ever love loved her in return?

  Hadn’t she already known it? When they drew apart, she kissed him. “Say it again, please.”

  He grinned. “I love you, Miss Fancy Pants.” His lips met hers in a kiss that left them clinging to each other with trembling limbs.

  When again they parted, he had turned solemn. “But I can’t let you stay. I’m wanted. They’ll never clear my name.”

  “They might not. Hunter and Wes Hardin will. With Tía Bella’s help.”

  “Tía Bella?”

  “Remember her specialty?”

  “Tending to other folks’ love life?”

  “No. Writing letters. Copying script. Remember the letter I took from Tom’s dresser?”

  He grinned. “So you put the old lady to work, huh?”

  “She wrote Tommy Guest, explaining that his father was going to be arrested for the murder of Ana Bowdrie. She said it really looked bad, that Tom would probably hang. Then she added that from what she had seen from her window that day, Tommy should do the honorable thing by his father and confess.”

  “So you think Tommy Guest did it?”

  “Papa does. And it fits.” She explained about Tom helping Drummond frame Trevor and about the way Tom hid his horse at Ana’s so no one woul
d get wise to his feelings for Abbie Brownley.

  “To think, Jace, you almost married the bastard.”

  “Guess I know how to pick ’em, huh?”

  He grunted. “What makes you think the letter will work?”

  “If he’s really guilty, it will. Tommy was always a nice person.”

  “I beg to differ. Of course, I was the one got pinned for his foul deed.”

  “I really don’t think he will let his father take the blame.”

  “What if he checks out the story?”

  “We thought of that. Tía made a couple of copies, exact, of course. One to send to the governor, the other for the U.S. Marshal in the area. Wes Hardin is having them all delivered by personal messenger.”

  “It’s a long shot,” Trevor mused, pensive. But Jacy’s mind was on something else. Something that had worried her all night and on the way to Hueco Tanks.

  “Can you ever forgive me for what Papa did?”

  He tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “You didn’t do it.”

  “It was because of me. I’m as much to blame as Papa is. If I hadn’t tempted and teased you, maybe you would have left—”

  “That what you wish would have happened?”

  “No, but it would have saved you five years in prison.”

  For a long time he just stared at her. When he answered she heard the awe in his voice, the sincerity, the yearning. “My God, Jace. Any man would spend five years in prison to hear you say you loved him.”

  Arrested by his tone, she held his gaze while her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. With great effort she resisted ripping it open. The need to touch him, really touch him, to feel him touch her, really touch her, overwhelmed her. “I didn’t tell any man, Trevor. I told you.”

  When his hands touched hers, she thought she might die, and when they lay together, clothes strewn over the grass, she knew she wanted to live forever with this man, in his arms, in his life. Filled by his love, by his body, that soft vulnerable spot inside her vanished.

  Together, as one, they chased the waves of passion, as one would chase a rainbow through a lightning-sparked sky. And when the last streak of lightning burst across the horizon and the last clap of thunder died into the stillness, they clung to each other and she felt whole for the first time in her life.