by C. A. Asbrey
Nat arched a dark eyebrow as his eyes bored into her. "It could be argued you did exactly that."
"No. You were never supposed to be there, and I tried my best to keep you away when you arrived. We have agents planted to rob the place, but if they had done it too quickly, it would have looked suspicious. The agents can pass for you both to someone who's never seen you and was going on your descriptions alone. I’m supposed to plan assignation and McCully’s gun will have been tampered with so we can catch him in the act of killing without provocation. The tampering is my job. The only problem is you two turned up and almost ruined the whole plan."
"How do you know he's never seen us?"
"He told me so."
Nat narrowed his eyes and stood, letting out a long slow breath. It figured because they never mixed with criminals unless they were working and the gang was tested and loyal. So, McCully had never seen Quinn and Conroy, but they had made sure they had seen him. Their lives depended on it.
"Why didn't you tell me this before now, Abi?" asked Nat.
"I couldn’t. I wasn't allowed to, and it couldn't get out, but you guessed. Even if this didn't work out we had to find a way of winning him over so he'd use me again if he went after someone else. He’s a mass murderer, and he'll continue to kill unarmed people. If he's not stopped, he'll undermine the rule of law and endanger more of my colleagues as criminals treat all arrests like life or death. And he's not just killing criminals; he's also killing men, women, and children who don't stand a chance. They’re defenseless. For that reason alone, I have to do this. He’s a cold-blooded murderer." She dropped her head. "Besides, if I had told you there would be no way you'd keep out of this. You’re too damned bloody-minded for your own good."
"You’re no better. What if he found out about you?"
She looked him straight in the eye. "We all know what he'd do. He shoots unarmed men in the head while their hands are handcuffed behind their backs, so a woman who double crosses him wouldn't be a problem, but there would be someone else to take my place."
Nat shook his head as he bit his lip. "I can't let you risk your life for mine, Abi. Does he know your real name?"
"Yes. Why not? If any one of The Innocents had talked, I could have been exposed. You might have told them my real name. It wasn't worth the risk to lie."
“The Innocents don’t talk, Abi. I make sure of that. I also don’t tell the gang about people like you. You need to protect yourself more.” He rubbed his face and turned toward Jake who was staring at them, transfixed with horror at how he had treated her.
"This could be a lie," he muttered. "She could have been settin’ us up to hand us over."
"Except for one thing, Jake." Nat shook his head. "She pushed and pushed for me to keep away."
"Double bluff? She's a real good liar."
"She's not bad, but she ain't a poker player. In fact, she's real easy to read for anyone skilled at it. Right from the first day in the cabin, remember?"
"You sure?"
"It's a gamble, but I'll stake my life on it."
Jake mused on everything he’d heard before he spoke again. "It sounds like you have, Nat."
Jake turned to her, struck by Nat’s certainty. He leaned over and stretched out a hand toward her bruised neck. Shame kicked him in the guts as she flinched at the approaching hand, and he stopped short.
He was suddenly caught in a vortex of abhorrence, seeing himself through her eyes as his stomach turned over. Adrenaline still filled his system from his episode of anxiety, and it charged every emotion with a special power. The bile rose in his gullet, fired by his anxious episode, until he clutched a hand to his mouth and ran behind a tree, revolted at what he might have done. He had turned into one of the men he hated. He was as bad as one of the gang who had cheered as Mary’s body had smashed onto the street to escape the fire back in Philadelphia.
Abigail glanced at Nat in surprise as the loud retching and heaving drifted over to them. He smiled tenderly and gave her a reassuring pat on the back of her hand. "I guess Jake believes you, too. It’s his way of saying sorry."
He straightened and looked into the trees, following Jake's movement. His pensive eyes dropped to Abigail and drank in the woman whose confusion melded with her clear irritation at the men who were treading all over her carefully-planned operation. "Catch your breath. I need to speak to Jake so we can decide what we're going to do with you."
Fire flashed in her eyes. "You're going to let me get on with my job. Too much time has gone into this and it could cost dozens of lives if we have to start again. I simply won't tolerate interference. Not this time. Am I clear?"
He turned and fixed her with a cold grin as he removed the Derringer from her ankle holster. "I hear you, but you’re unarmed in the woods with two criminals, and are in no position to give orders. Am I clear?" His eyes softened but the set of his jaw told her he meant business. "Rest a while. We’ll talk, but I'm in no mood for ultimatums, Abi."
He pinned her with a hard glare and allowed his warning to sink in. “I need to speak to Jake. Stay there. Listen to a warning for once in your damned life.”
The outlaw leader was still shaking his head in frustration as he strolled back to his uncle. Jake was pacing the copse as though he was trying to shake off the malignant spirits dogging his every step.
“You all right?"
Jake turned bleary, red-rimmed eyes on his nephew. "You believe her, don't you?"
Nat’s eyes glittered with sympathy. "Yup. She’s not the sort to allow anyone to be slaughtered, it goes against her values. I got to know her mind when I questioned her in the cabin. I explored her and tested her. I even know her breaking point. It wasn't pretty." He turned and sat on a fallen tree, lost amongst the troubling memories which came flooding back to him from that night. "You didn't see that side of her until now. You didn't have the chance to know her that deeply. Don't beat yourself up over it."
"Just how hard were you on her?" Jake asked, his face drawn and weary.
"Real hard." Nat flickered a reassuring smile. "Harder than you were. I broke her, remember? I took her right to her worst fears. I had to. She was too strong to fall for anything less." He dropped his head. “I felt like a shit, too, and I wondered what I’d turned into. Why was I even considering treating a woman like that? But I had to find out the truth to save our lives.” Nat placed a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. “We’ve turned the wrong corner when we’re hurting innocent people to save our skins. It’s time we reconsidered a lot of stuff, huh? We fell into this life. I guess we’ve fallen too far.”
Jake sucked in a breath. "The thought of what I might have done is killin’ me. I didn’t even realize. I lost my mind, Nat. What’s wrong with me?"
"Nothing. Not one thing. You’re human enough to be scarred by all the hurt you’ve seen. Being human is nothing to apologize for," said Nat with a shake of his head. "It's not in you to hurt her. If you really wanted to kill her, she'd have been dead before I got here. Your instincts took over, but the real you won."
"Fine, so I ain't the brains of the outfit."
"I wouldn't say that. You see things I miss all the time. It’s clever, just a different type."
"Huh? Instincts so good I half-strangle an innocent woman?"
Nat laughed softly. “Oh, Jake. You can say a lot of things about Abigail MacKay, but innocent isn't one of them. She’d turn us in, but she wouldn't let anyone kill us. That's about as far as I'll go. Besides, you’ve got a medical reason for what happened. She hasn’t. She’s with McCully, and she has some explaining to do. Why don’t they just arrest the bastard?"
Jake dropped down onto a log and supported his pale face in his hands. "I was hit by what I nearly did; I was like the men who hit our place in Philly when we were kids. My stomach turned over at the thought of it. My sister’s body layin’ there at that angle. No human body could make that shape without being broken. She jumped to escape the fire they set. How could grown men cheer the death of a
girl just because she was Irish?"
“Yeah. The Know Nothings? Evil bastards. They claimed to hate Catholics, but the way they hungered for violence, I think they hated everyone and anything.” Nat gripped Jake’s forearm reassuringly, knowing the visions which filled his mind with nightmares. "You ain't that man. You're better than that, or I wouldn't be sitting here with you, family or not."
He laid an arm on Jake’s shoulder. "Well, partner. The question is where do we go from here? Do we high tail it outta here and let McCully target someone else, or do we get involved and help her?"
"She don't want our help. She's got agents ready to take our place."
"They ain't got the vested interest we got."
"True." Jake sighed.
Nat paused. "We got two big advantages, though."
"What?"
"We know what he looks like, but he doesn't know what we look like."
"And the other?"
His grinned widened. "We got you. You lied about us being brothers to keep us together in the orphanage when our folks were killed. You’re the man who feigned a bad chest to stop from getting adopted, and taught me to do the same. The same man who took me from the orphan train going across country trying to sell us off as cheap labor to farmers, and found us a good home with Pearl. If you could do all that when you were a little kid, what can you do now? There’s grown men who can’t keep a family together. You’re remarkable. You’re way better’n McCully at every single thing you do. Especially with a gun."
Jake raised his deep blue eyes to his nephew. “I could’ve killed her, Nat.”
“But you didn’t. You chose not to because you’re better than that, even in the middle of an attack. I know you get the horrors from what you saw that day and I know what brings them on. I guess I was too young, and you protected me from it. You get dreams as well as waking flashes and tremors. Your mind went to the wrong place, but you still couldn’t follow through. She’ll understand. I guess we’ve got to tell her more about our past so she understands…everything.”
“What am I gonna say to her?”
The sound of hooves clattered in the background and both men turned. Nat groaned. “How about, why are you stealing Nat’s horse, Abi?” He leaped to his feet. “Stay here, I’ll get her. That damned woman is impossible.”
Chapter Four
She was lighter on Nat’s mount, but Nat was a superior horseman on a larger animal, and it didn’t take long before she heard the percussive pounding of the horse battering across the dry road toward her. Abigail turned. She could see Nat high in the saddle with a forward seat, urging his mount on faster and faster toward her. She gritted her teeth and pressed in with her heels, but the pulsating thumps behind her were getting inexorably closer. The adrenaline flooded her system and her heart beat like a drum which filled her ears, but somehow, the horse refused to go any faster. The mare’s ears flicked back listening to the pursuit, but the thump of the hooves got louder, which told her Nat was gaining on her. Her dress fluttered in the wind as she rose in the saddle, the petticoats annoying her as they flapped around, robbing her of everything but comic value.
Her peripheral vision caught the shadow of the chasing man closing in, an arm outstretched. A hard hand grasped at the reins, tightening them and pulling the beast to a halt.
“Whoa, there, Gypsy. Good girl.” Nat glared at her. “That was aimed at the horse. Not you. What the hell are you playin’ at, Abi?”
“If he didn’t want me taking his horse, he shouldn’t have brought me out here.”
“That’s my damned horse. This isn’t over. You can’t go running off.”
She raised her chin. “Oh, it’s well and truly over. You need to put as many miles between yourself and Everlasting as possible so I can get on with my job.”
Nat gathered the tethers in his hands, his jaw firming. “No, it isn’t. For a start, you need to understand what happened back there…and why.”
She tilted back her head, eyes flashing. “Your uncle nearly strangled me while you discussed more convenient ways to kill me. What else is there to discuss?”
“There’s why.” He paused, his voice softening. “He was diagnosed by a doctor in the orphanage as having irritable heart. That’s what you saw today.”
Her brows gathered. “Irritable heart? He has a bad heart?”
He shook his head. “He’s as strong as an ox. It’s more a melancholia which comes with attacks of panic or the horrors. It’s his reacting to a terrible event from his past that never leaves him. It shifts his reality back to when the damage was done; when he was first traumatized. He doesn’t get it often now. It can come when he’s asleep as bad dreams.” He paused and gazed at her pointedly. “Or when he’s forced to face the things which it caused it in the first place, like the loss of a loved one. They diagnosed a lot of soldiers with irritable heart after the war, but some children saw enough to have it, too.”
“Children?” Her brow creased. “He wasn’t a child during the war. He’d have been, what? Maybe twenty-three or twenty-four when it started.”
Nat’s horse shifted under him. “The damage was done by then. Have you ever heard of the Know Nothings?”
She shook her head. “Who? No.”
“We came here from Ireland in the eighteen forties. The potato famine caused a lot of us to emigrate. There was a big influx of German Catholics, too, and the change worried a lot of Protestants. They felt outnumbered and threatened. They formed a political movement called the Native Party, but everyone called them the Know Nothings because they’d commit violent crimes in public, and everyone in the community would know nothing when the authorities tried to do anything about it. They weren’t interested in what Catholic witnesses had to say. We didn’t count.” His face hardened. “They did terrible things, and our folks got caught up in it.” He paused and dropped his head. “Nobody cared. Nobody helped Jake. He saw it all, and it damaged him.”
Her jaw dropped open. “Where was this? What happened?”
“Philadelphia. Our folks lived in a rundown house. Three families in one place, and we had the room right at the top. The men were back from work for the day, and everyone was in there. Jake was twelve, and had been sent to deliver work the women had done at home. Piece-work, decorations for hats, that sort of thing. I went with him, to get me out from under their feet. I was only about four, and worshipped my uncle Jake. When we got back, the place was alight and surrounded by a baying mob that’d blocked the doors back and front. Mary, one of Jake’s sisters, climbed out of the attic window and tried to escape across the roof. She fell.” He swallowed hard and dropped his head. “She was my aunt. They say her head split right open, but I don’t remember it. Jake made sure I didn’t see, I think—I’m not sure. He watched everything…and was never the same again. It’s how we were orphaned. They all died, and he heard them scream as they burned to death.”
“Oh, Nat!” She reached out and grasped his arm.
“He did everything he could to keep us together by lying to the authorities and saying we were brothers. We pretended to be too sick to get adopted as cheap labor. Then, we ran away and he looked after me all by himself.” His shrug was weak. “He doesn’t have these episodes often, but it’s not the real him. It’s what happened to him. It’s like an old wound or a scar that plays up. He starts breathing too fast, he gets tingling, and his head buzzes. He can’t think straight. It takes something to set him off, and the thought of McCully putting a bullet in our heads was enough. I’m sorry you experienced that. Yelling at him or fighting him wouldn’t have helped. That’s why I talked to him the way I did when he had you by the throat. He needed to be diverted, not confronted. That would have made him worse.”
Her mind ran through everything she knew about the gunman, picking out his squeamishness around violence connected to women, and remembering the man who had fixated on the little girl they’d seen when they had broken into the undertaker’s office in Bannen. His breathing had changed and his
body stiffened; she’d had to nudge him out of his trance. Words from her training came back to her. The woman who had trained her talked of the mental state of traumatized warriors and how dangerous they could be when they snapped. Her blood ran cold at the rider to the lesson ringing in her ears, “They often take their own lives. Their greatest danger is to themselves, but they can occasionally run with a folly which puts them right back in that moment and they don’t see what is really going on around them. Be aware.”
Her brow creased. “Poor Jake. Can’t anyone help?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I’ve tried to read about it, but there isn’t much out there.”
Soft brown eyes fixed on him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Quinn.”
His cheek pitted with a joyless dimple. “Back to Mr. Quinn again? I was Nat a few seconds ago.”
She dropped her head. “A few seconds ago, you were four years old and watching your family die horribly. I’m so sorry. I really am.”
He urged his mount into action, ponying her mare along with him. “Good, because that’s why you and him need to clear the air, for both your sakes.”
Her brows curved in surprise. “Why for my sake?”
“Because I’m not finished with you yet, Abigail MacKay. Not by a long shot, and if you’re going to be around, you need to understand a few things about us.”
She opened her mouth, but he kicked the pace to a canter and left her reply hanging in the air.
Chapter Five
Jake Conroy walked back into the clearing and fixed Abigail with eyes full of contrition and shame. "I'm sorry Abi. Real sorry."
Soft eyes drifted over to him, her physical vulnerability hitting him like a blow to the stomach as Nat lifted her from the horse. Her tiny waist was only about the size of his thigh, and her soft, white hands with their long, delicate, fingers plucked at her skirts where she subconsciously worked at the fabric. How could he have even have thought about grasping her around the throat?
