An Outlaw in Wonderland (25 page)

Joe leaped to the ground, slapped Ethan on the shoulder. The Kaw unleashed a stream
of his own language, very little of which Ethan understood. From the softening of
his usually stoic features, Ethan assumed the man was pleased with how much better
he appeared than when the Kaw had left.

Joe attempted to hand Ethan the reins of two horses. Ethan refused, taking only his
own. Joe tried again. Again Ethan refused. If he and his wife possessed only one horse,
she would have to return to Freedom with him. He’d worry about getting her to stay
once they got there. He was fairly certain that if she went back to Lassiter Morant,
he would never see her again.

Joe let out an exasperated huff; then he pointed at the full moon, the ground, Ethan,
and himself.

“I’ll be here,” Ethan said.

Joe leaped on his mount and, trailing the spare, crossed the creek. He and his friends
rode west without looking back.

The next morning, Annabeth frowned suspiciously at Ethan’s horse. “What do you mean
Joe was here and gone?”

“When I stepped out to relieve myself, there he was.”

“Just him?”

“And my horse.”

Annabeth’s gaze narrowed. “Your eye is twitching.”

He touched a finger to the pulsing muscle. “So?”

She merely snorted and put out the fire.

•   •   •

As they didn’t have much to pack beyond each other, Ethan and Annabeth were on the
trail within fifteen minutes. Getting back to Freedom took a lot longer.

Annabeth hadn’t realized they’d strayed so far, although she should have. If they’d
been closer, someone would have found them. She didn’t believe that the folks of Freedom
would allow their doctor to disappear without ever searching for him. She was certain
Cora wouldn’t.

As the sun fell toward the horizon behind them and Freedom appeared before them, Annabeth
reined in.

“What’s wrong?”

She fought a shiver as Ethan’s breath stirred her hair. The sight of town reminded
her why they’d ridden out in the first place. As she still had no idea who had fired
at them or why, riding into Freedom in the daylight made them an easy target.

“Maybe we should wait until dark,” she said. “Less attention, less trouble, fewer
questions—”

“Too late,” Ethan murmured.

Annabeth had been twisting the horse’s mane around her fingers. Now she glanced up.
A posse headed their way, Marshal Eversleigh in the lead.

“Why would they ride out to meet us?” he wondered.

“I doubt it’s because they can’t wait to extend a welcome home.”

They could do that in town.

“Marshal,” Annabeth greeted as the posse reined in. She nodded to the townsfolk; she
didn’t know most of their names. That Jeb wasn’t among them concerned her.

“Ma’am.” Eversleigh pulled on the brim of his hat. “Doc. We didn’t think you’d come
back.”

“Where would we go?” Ethan asked, obviously confused.

“Anywhere but here.”

The marshal’s gaze flicked to Annabeth’s, and she frowned. Something wasn’t right.

“Cora Lewis is dead,” he continued.

Ethan straightened so fast, his chest slammed into Annabeth’s back. She set a hand
on his thigh and squeezed. Eversleigh lowered his eyes to Ethan’s leg then back to
her face.

“How?” she asked.

Before he even spoke, she knew. If Cora had died from natural causes, there’d be no
need for a posse. She’d have been buried, and they would have learned about her death
in gossip—as it should be.

The same would be true if she’d been killed by a known culprit, even herself. She’d
be buried—either outside the churchyard if she’d died by her own hand, or within—before
her murderer swung from the gallows. Which left only one reason Annabeth and Ethan
would be met out here by a federal marshal and a group of armed men.

“I did it,” she said at the same time Ethan blurted, “It was me.”

Y
ou wanna hand that over?” The marshal indicated Annabeth’s gun with a tilt of his
head.

“No,” Annabeth said.

The members of the posse murmured; their horses shifted, revealing their unease. They
were townsfolk, not lawmen, and they weren’t sure what to do.

“Beth,” Ethan murmured.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t hand it over. Just that I didn’t want to.”

If things went badly—and considering the posse, she wasn’t sure how things wouldn’t—she’d
do whatever she had to do to save Ethan. Without her pistol, that was going to be
more difficult than she liked, but she didn’t see any way to keep it.

Annabeth reached for her Colt.

“Easy,” the marshal cautioned, laying a hand on his own weapon.

Did he really think she’d risk a shoot-out on the prairie with Ethan in the way? The
posse might be made up of amateurs, but even Sadie would be able to hit them out here
where the only cover was the town of Freedom, which lay too far away.

She tossed the gun to the ground, and a young man she’d never seen before, which only
made him the same as the rest of the group, dismounted, snatched up the Colt, and
carried it to the marshal.

“You’re gonna come back with us; then we’ll talk.” Eversleigh urged his horse toward
Freedom.

Annabeth considered kicking their mount into a run, but that would leave Ethan exposed
to over half a dozen guns. She couldn’t do it. Then the posse surrounded them, and
the opportunity was lost.

Ethan’s breath brushed her ear. “You did not kill Cora.”

“How would you know?” she whispered.

“Because I did.”

“Stop saying that!” She glanced between the men on their right and those on the left.
No one was close enough to hear them over the movements of the horses.

“I’ll say whatever I have to say to keep you safe,” he murmured.

“So will I.”

They remained silent the rest of the way to town. The marshal stopped in front of
the building marked
SHERRIF
, dismounted and indicated they do the same. Annabeth glanced longingly at the building
labeled
DOCTER
. Would she ever step foot in it again?

The posse dispersed, taking Ethan’s horse with them. Eversleigh swept his hand in
an exaggerated flourish toward the door.

“Made yourself right at home, I see.” Annabeth turned the knob and walked in.

Ethan followed, Eversleigh on his heels. “I couldn’t leave with people dying all over
the place.”

“Sure you could.” Annabeth took the chair in front of the desk. Ethan stood behind
her and rested his hands on her shoulders.

The marshal leaned against the desk, boots only inches from Annabeth’s own. His gaze
touched on Ethan’s hands, then Annabeth’s face. He removed his hat, tossed it onto
the desktop, lifted a brow. “I’ll assume, Doctor, that you’ve remembered . . .” He
paused, waiting.

“I have,” Ethan agreed.

“Where have you been?”

“We were on the hill . . .” Annabeth’s quick glance at the lawman revealed he knew
what else was there. “Someone shot at us again.”

Eversleigh frowned. “Did you see who it was?”

“Didn’t wait for them to come out of the high grass; just got on the horse and left.
How about you? Didn’t anyone hear shots?”

“Shots on the prairie?” He shrugged. “Hunters. Outlaws. Indians. No one goes looking.
Maybe if you’d come back right away, we might have found something. Why didn’t you?”

“Because, apparently, I murdered Cora Lewis,” Annabeth muttered at the same time Ethan
blurted, “Twister. Came between us and Freedom.”

“We were lucky it missed town,” the marshal said. “But that was days ago. Pert near
a week.”

“We were lost.”

Eversleigh snorted. “Gossip around town is that Mrs. Lewis was in a family way.” Neither
Annabeth nor Ethan said a word. “Did that come as a shock to you, Mrs. Walsh?”

“Why would it?”

“As your husband is rumored to be the father, I’d say it might.”

“Rumors? Gossip? I don’t listen to either one.”

“Then why were you and Mrs. Lewis arguing on the street? Why did she say you’d struck
her?”

“Because we were and I did.”

“Why?” the marshal persisted.

“I don’t like her.”

“Did you dislike her enough to kill her?”

“She didn’t do anything,” Ethan said. “It was me.”

Annabeth lost patience. “I filed for divorce. You can check with Pryce Mortimer. There
was no reason for Ethan to kill her. I was going to free him so he could have everything
he wanted.”

Ethan’s sigh brushed the top of her head. She could have sworn he whispered her name
in a voice that made her ache.

“But what if what he wanted, Mrs. Walsh, was you and not her?”

Annabeth frowned. “He didn’t kill her. I did.”

“If you were divorcing him so he could be with her, why would you?”

“She didn’t.” Ethan lifted his hands from Annabeth’s shoulders. She had to clench
her own to keep from snatching them back. “I did.”

“You expect me to believe that you—a man described by everyone as a healer, the saver
of lives and not the taker of them—killed both the mother of your child and that child?”

“There was no child.”

Eversleigh’s expression sharpened. “What’s that?”

“Cora lied.”

“Ethan,” Annabeth murmured. Both men ignored her.

“How do you know?” Eversleigh asked.

“I examined her. I’ve done the same for many women who were with child. She wasn’t.”

“So the woman was trying to ruin you.” The marshal’s eyes narrowed. “I suspect that
made you angry.”

“He examined her days before she turned up dead,” Annabeth interjected. “If he was
going to kill her in a rage, he’d have done it then.”

“When he examined her, he didn’t remember who she was,” Eversleigh pointed out.

Hell.

“Once I remembered,” Ethan murmured, “I wasn’t happy.”

“Hush,” Annabeth said. “I wasn’t very happy when I found out, either. I was furious.”

“You didn’t find out until I told you,” Ethan snapped. “Out on the prairie. After
I’d already killed her.”

“I saw her alive before we left town,” Annabeth returned. “We were arguing in plain
view of dozens of others. You were already on the hill. I killed her, came to you,
and we ran.”

“I thought you ran because someone was shooting at you,” the marshal murmured.

“I lied.” Annabeth cleared her throat before the cough broke free. Ever since they’d
started discussing this, her throat had tickled so badly, it hurt.

Eversleigh straightened away from the desk, looming over Annabeth. Ethan made a movement
as if he would come around the chair and step between the two of them, so she stood,
sweeping out her arms, a barrier to keep Ethan back.

“It wasn’t him,” she repeated. “It was me.”

“She lies.” Ethan shoved past. “She just admitted as much. And about this she definitely
did, since I killed Cora Lewis.”

“Enough,” Eversleigh snapped. “I’ll solve this argument. How did she die?”

Annabeth glanced to her right, where Ethan hovered. His forehead creased, and he glanced
at her. “Shot,” he said, at the same time she chose, “Strangled.”

They turned to the marshal. His gaze narrowed on Ethan. “Shot where?”

Damn! She should have picked shot, but strangled—considering Cora Lewis—was so damn
appealing.

“In the . . .” Ethan drew out the words, narrowing his own gaze on the marshal. But
Eversleigh was smart. He gave away nothing, merely waited for Ethan to finish. “Head?”
Ethan frowned. “Um, chest. Neck?”

“Neither one of you did it.”

Relief flowed through Annabeth, and she reached for Ethan’s hand just as he reached
for hers. Their fingers tangled; their palms met, held.

“You rode out because someone shot at you, stayed away because of the storm, and then
didn’t come back because you were lost. That about right?”

“Yes.” Annabeth squeezed Ethan’s hand. It would not do for the marshal, or anyone
else, to discover Ethan’s penchant for laudanum. Lord knew what he’d be accused of
then.

“Convenient that you would disappear when the woman who’s made your life hell is killed.”

“I thought we’d just established that neither one of us did it.”

“If you were smart, you’d work together. Spy and a . . .” He shrugged. “Spy. You could
lie right to my face, and I’d probably never know.”

He was right, but Annabeth wasn’t going to say so.

“You might purposely tell me the wrong thing, confuse the issue.”

“We might,” Ethan agreed. “However, being a spy and a . . . spy, as well as a physician
and a nurse, we certainly wouldn’t kill anyone in a way that could be construed as
murder. If we were smart.”

Eversleigh lifted a brow. “Go on.”

“If I wanted to kill someone, there are ways to do it that wouldn’t get me hung.”

“For instance?”

“Don’t answer that,” Annabeth snapped. The marshal thought they were shifty; he was
the same. “How did she die?”

Eversleigh contemplated Annabeth for several seconds, then stepped behind the desk.
He pulled a rifle from beneath. “Ever seen this?”

“May I?” Ethan held out his hand.

The marshal passed over the weapon, and Ethan lifted it to his shoulder. “This is
a sniper rifle.”

Annabeth frowned. Had Fedya left it behind? That didn’t sound like Fedya. She peered
at the rifle more closely.

“That’s an Enfield,” she said, the weapon of choice for most Union sharpshooters.
However, the Union’s most dangerous sniper had used a Confederate rifle—a Whitworth,
the best of the best, no doubt stolen off one of his victims.

“Where’d you find it?” Ethan asked.

“Come with me.”

When they got back onto the street, folks scurried out of their way as they followed
the marshal to Lewis’s Sewing and Sundry. No one greeted them; everyone stared. Annabeth
was happy to duck inside, though she could still feel the brush of curious gazes through
the window.

Eversleigh strode behind the counter and pointed beneath. “I think it was right about
here.”

“Here?” Ethan echoed.

“Next to some buttons.”

“Walking around town with an Enfield would be suspicious,” Annabeth murmured.

“Mrs. Lewis wasn’t shot,” Eversleigh said. “She was stabbed.”

“Then why did you show us the rifle?”

“I thought you might recognize it.”

Annabeth didn’t understand what difference it could make if they’d seen it or not.
Cora hadn’t been shot.

“Woman alone,” the marshal mussed, “with a business. If she hadn’t had a weapon beneath
the countertop, I’d have wondered. But there was the little matter of a sniper rifle
under this counter and the shot through your upstairs window.”

“Cora loved Ethan,” Annabeth said.

“Enough to lie to keep him,” Eversleigh agreed. “Enough to kill for the same?”

“It makes no sense for her to kill him,” Annabeth insisted.

“She wasn’t trying to kill him, Mrs. Walsh. She was trying to kill you.”

“Well,” Annabeth said, “that makes sense.”

Ethan rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t see the connection between a rifle under
the counter to a shot through my window. If there were, the majority of the town would
be suspect.”

“The majority of the town wasn’t carrying your child.”

“Neither was she.”

“I see your point,” the marshal allowed. “And I wouldn’t have thought any more about
it except for her husband.”

“What husband?” Annabeth asked.

“
Mrs
. Lewis? Doesn’t that mean there was once a mister?”

“Not necessarily.” Annabeth spread her hands. “People come West for a lot of reasons.
Change their names, change their pasts, invent a husband.”

“She didn’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I looked into it.”

“Why?” Ethan asked. “How?”

“It’s my job.” The single sentence answered both questions; nevertheless, the marshal
elaborated. “I’ve discovered that the motive for a murder can often be found in a
person’s past.” He lifted a brow in Annabeth’s direction. “Mrs. Cantrell informed
me that Cora Lewis hailed from Cleveland, Ohio.”

“She did,” Ethan agreed. “Or . . . at least that’s what she said.”

Anyone could say anything out here. Unless they were murdered and a federal marshal
with a brain happened to be in town, no one would ever know the truth. It was how
Annabeth had made her way the past five years. She became who she had to be, said
whatever was required. As she’d been dealing with criminals who did the same, no one
had been the wiser.

“I sent a telegram,” Eversleigh continued. “Asked for information about Mrs. Lewis
and her husband. Hiram Lewis trained sharpshooters during the war. His prize possession
was an Enfield. The only people allowed to touch it were he and his wife. The two
of them practiced marksmanship together. I hear that, for a woman, she was damn good.”

“Yet she couldn’t hit me in the head with a plate,” Annabeth muttered.

“What plate?” Ethan asked.

“You said my name in your sleep. She tried to crown me with crockery; she missed.”

“Strong feelings can make the hands shake like leaves in a winter wind,” the marshal
observed.

“True.”

Something in Ethan’s voice made Annabeth glance his way. She could tell by his expression,
he was thinking of Mikey. Had he accepted, at last, that his brother had been injured
due to excess emotion and trembling hands rather than a conspiracy no one knew the
why of? She hoped so.

“She was angry when I left that day,” Annabeth murmured. “I said I was filing for
divorce, but she didn’t want to marry a divorced man.”

“She couldn’t have it both ways,” Ethan began, then uttered a soft, “Oh.”

“Exactly.” Annabeth’s fingers clenched; she still wished she could put them around
Cora’s neck just once. “No need for a divorce if I was dead.” The woman had said as
much several times. “The first shot, through the upstairs window, occurred right after
she found out her widowed doctor wasn’t so widowed.”