An Outlaw in Wonderland (27 page)

Their attempts to hang for a murder they had not committed only strengthened his belief
in their future. He’d die for her and she for him. That vow was more binding than
any
I do
.

A shadow fell over his face. Annabeth. Had to be.

His lips curved in welcome; his member stirred with the same. He began to lift his
arms to embrace her and—

“Whatcha doin’ thar?”

Ethan groped for a sheet to cover his nakedness. There wasn’t one. He drew up his
knees and hugged them so tightly, they crackled as he met Sadie Cantrell’s very interested
eye. “What are you doing here?”

“Asked ye first. How come ye be sleepin’ downstairs? Naked?”

“I . . .” He thought it fairly obvious what he’d been doing, considering his and his
wife’s clothes were all over the floor. However, when he glanced about, Ethan saw
not a single one of his wife’s garments. Or his wife.

“Where’s Annabeth?” Sadie shrugged. “How’d you get in?”

“Walked.”

“The doors were locked.”

“Not the back one.”

Ethan closed his eyes as the significance of his wife’s missing clothes, along with
his missing wife and the no-longer-locked door, became clear.

Annabeth was gone.

L
assiter Morant motioned for Annabeth to mount in front of him. When she hesitated,
he cocked his gun and pointed it at Freedom with a smirk. “Bang-bang, they’re all
dead.”

Annabeth had seen him do worse, so she climbed on, and they galloped west. He kept
a swift pace until they were well away from town. Even then, he didn’t slow the horse
enough for conversation. Annabeth didn’t mind. When he did, she’d have to explain
why she’d gone to Freedom and hadn’t come back.

How much did he know? What would he do? Maybe she should just kill him and be done
with it. Unfortunately, she didn’t have her Colt, or anything else with which to do
the job but her bare hands.

She might be a tall woman, a strong woman, but Lassiter was taller, stronger, and
a helluva lot meaner. Folks had been trying to kill him for a long time; no one had
succeeded.

Deep in thought, she didn’t at first notice that they’d passed the place where Lass
always paused to blindfold her. Unease prickled across her skin. She doubted Lass
had suddenly decided she was one of them. His behavior suggested just the opposite.
But there wasn’t much she could do other than keep her wits about her. No gun. No
horse. No help. She was in even more trouble than usual.

Her eyes watered as the wind whipped past. The sun hovered on the horizon, and everything
appeared craggy and gray. As the flat Kansas plain tilted downward, they wound through
gullies that most would believe ended nowhere. Except these led to a deep, wide gorge
with only a single entrance concealed by thorny, overgrown brush.

The horse picked its way along the narrow, winding path that led to Morant’s Wonderland.
They emerged into the protected hideaway. The just-born sun hovered at the edge of
the world, casting shadows the shade of Ethan’s eyes whenever he kissed her. She wanted
to see his eyes again, but she didn’t think she ever would.

It was early yet, and the others still slept around the campfire—or at least pretended
to.

“What were you up to in Freedom?” Lassiter’s voice rumbled against Annabeth’s back
as he reined in.

She listed away from his broad, damp chest, and he turned his head, slapping her in
the cheek with his chestnut hair. He’d gathered the length at the nape to keep it
from trailing in the breeze. Lass didn’t like to wear a hat; sometimes she thought
the hours of sun beating on his uncovered head had addled him.

Many believed that an outlaw became an outlaw because he was too stupid to do anything
else. But an outlaw who was an outlaw for as long as Lass had been was a perfect combination
of ruthless and cunning. He was still breathing because so many others weren’t. Annabeth
had to remember that.

“Anna!” he snapped, calling her by the name she had given him, a name no one else
had ever called her. “Did you sell me out?”

A chill came over Annabeth. If the eyes reflected the soul, then Lassiter’s was dead.
She’d listened to him promise mercy and then shoot a man in the back. The last lawman
who’d gotten anywhere near him had died at the end of a rope, and it hadn’t been a
quick snap of the neck, but a purposeful, long, drawn-out choking that had taken days.

“I can explain,” she began.

“Doubtful.” He shoved her off the horse; she landed hard, but she scrambled up when
he followed. “You didn’t come back . . .” He stepped in close; she had to grit her
teeth to keep from stepping away. “And I got worried.”

Annabeth’s skin prickled. Lass didn’t worry about anyone but himself.

“Started thinkin’ what kind of town could it be where people went in and never came
back out?” He tugged on her shortened hair. “Like they fell down the rabbit hole into
Wonderland.”

Right now, Annabeth wished that she had.

His fascination with that book was almost childlike—a trait that should have made
Lass endearing but instead made him more frightening. Because his favorite character
was the Queen of Hearts, and there’d been several times she’d heard him murmur in
his sleep, “Off with her head.” Personally, Annabeth thought he was more of a Mad
Hatter—minus the hat.

“Freedom isn’t like Wonderland,” Annabeth said. “Nothing worth seeing there.”

Lass’s full lips lifted, causing another chill to trickle over her despite the steadily
climbing heat of the awakening sun. The only times Annabeth had seen Lassiter Morant
smile had been right before, or sometimes after, he killed someone.

“Not even your husband?”

•   •   •

Despite having learned well the futility of hope, Ethan listened all day for his wife’s
footsteps, her voice, someone—anyone—calling her name.

Sadie left, but Ethan wasn’t alone for long. The marshal returned with questions.
There
had
been a murder.

“Why would Mrs. Lewis be in your bedroom?”

Ethan, who couldn’t keep his gaze from hopping between one citizen and another as
they filed past the front window—none of them were his wife—spread his hands. “We
had a relationship.”

“Which ended when your wife returned.”

Not a question, but Ethan answered anyway. “Yes.”

“Then why would she be here?”

“To talk to me. Seduce me. Kill me. Or maybe my wife.”

“She didn’t have a weapon.”

“Unless you count the one in her chest.”

The marshal frowned. “Was it hers?”

“I never saw it. But I never saw the rifle either.”

“You think she took her own life?”

If Ethan hadn’t heard Annabeth cough after saying she’d never seen that knife before,
he would have considered it. That would be just like Cora to dramatically end her
own life in his bedroom.

Except he had heard that cough.

“No,” Ethan said. “I don’t.”

The marshal sighed. “Me either. Could I speak to your wife?”

“She’s resting.”

Eversleigh eyed the mattress leaning against the wall. He didn’t ask the obvious question:
Upon what was she resting? Instead he frowned, pulled on his hat brim, and left.

For that, Ethan was almost pathetically grateful. But then he was pathetic. He’d believed
last night had meant something. A promise. A vow. A new beginning, not another goddamn
end.

Ethan opened the medicine cabinet and reached for a blessed blue bottle, but there
were none. He would make more.

He found several empties, washed them inside and out, set them in a row. After retrieving
the glazed crock he used only for making laudanum, he set it on the stove. Steeling
himself, he climbed the steps. In his bedroom, he averted his eyes from the bloodstain
that had seeped into the wood. That mark would never go away.

“Out damned spot,” he muttered, then yanked open his nightstand drawer.

Inside rested a basket of dried poppies along with the needle he used to pierce the
heads before he set them in the heated crock. He turned with the basket in one hand,
the needle clutched between two fingers of the other, and the downstairs door opened.

“Doc?”

The marshal had returned. Ethan placed the items on the dresser and strode to the
head of the stairs. The lawman stood at the bottom, Annabeth’s gun in his hand. “Figgered
yer wife might want this back.”

Ethan stared at the Colt and frowned.

“Doc?” Eversleigh lifted the weapon along with his brow.

“Thank you. Just put it . . .” Ethan waved his hand at the desk.

The marshal set it down and departed, but Ethan continued to frown. Annabeth would
not have left without a weapon. She wasn’t that foolish. Had she taken his?

He opened the armoire, stood blinking at the sight of his weapons right where he’d
left them. A prickle raced the length of his spine. He forgot all about the poppies
as he hurried down the stairs and out of the house to the stable.

“Sure ’nuff.” The stable boy ran his hand over the nose of a lovely roan. “This is
yer wife’s horse righchere.”

“She didn’t take another?”

The kid’s face scrunched. “Why would she do that?”

For many reasons, none of which Ethan planned to explain. He tried a different tactic.
“Are any horses missing?”

“’Course not! What kind of job would I be doin’ if folks come for their mount and
it ain’t here?”

“When was the last time anyone took a horse and went anywhere?”

“That’d be you, Doc. But yer back and so’s . . .” He pointed to Ethan’s gelding, which
hung its head over the stall and snuffled for attention. Ethan absently scratched
between the animal’s eyes as he considered.

Annabeth was gone, but she’d left behind her gun and her horse. Certainly she could
have walked away, but without food, water, or a weapon, that was suicide.

Had she been taken? By whom? For what reason?

At a loss, Ethan returned home. He was no tracker—that was Mikey’s talent. Unfortunately,
he had no idea where his brother had gone after he’d left here last month. Other than
with Fedya—a man who disappeared quicker than free whiskey on a Saturday night.

Ethan remained inside as the day waned. A few folks needed doctoring—cut hand, broken
finger, loose bowels—nothing serious.

Night descended, and Ethan let the mattress fall to the floor. Dust puffed at the
impact. He barely noticed. Instead he lay down and stared at the ceiling.

What if he contacted the army? Maybe they had an idea where their best sniper had
gone. One never knew when he might be needed.

Ethan snorted. Fedya had spent the past five years wandering. He’d changed his name.
His appearance. His occupation. Even if someone had known at one time where he was,
he doubted they would any longer. Fedya would have made certain of it.

Panic pulsed at the base of Ethan’s throat. The more he thought about it, the less
he believed that his wife had left on her own. Which left two possibilities.

Moses Farquhar or Lassiter Morant.

Ethan didn’t much care for either one.

•   •   •

Lass backhanded Annabeth. She landed on her ass in the dust. She figured the bruise
on her rump would be almost as colorful as the one that would bloom on her face.

He climbed onto his horse. The ten men around the fire no longer pretended to sleep.
They sat up and watched the show. If Lass’s eyes were dead, most of theirs were dying.

“How is it that you never mentioned your husband, the doctor?”

Annabeth didn’t like the way Lass glared at her from on high. She particularly didn’t
like the way his hands clenched on the reins, causing his mount to prance far too
close. She got to her feet again. Being trampled to death in the dust was too damn
humiliating.

“Why would I? I left him before; I just left him again.” Lass tilted his head, and
Annabeth pressed the advantage. “I didn’t go there to scout the bank. I filed for
divorce. I wanted to end it forever.” She stopped talking before she said something
that would give her the urge to cough. So far everything out of her mouth had been
the truth.

Lass breathed in as if he could smell her fear. She could have sworn he fed on it.
Like with the damnable
Eat Me
cake in his book, his chest would expand and he would grow so tall, his head would
brush the sky. She wished she could pour the potion from the
Drink Me
bottle down his throat, watch him shrink, then step on him like a bug.

“Ain’t there more you should tell me?”

Annabeth breathed in herself, striving for calm. “I can’t think what.”

“Oh, maybe that your husband was a spy. Just like you are now.”

Annabeth froze; the other men shifted and murmured. Annabeth managed to keep herself
from glancing around for an escape route. There wasn’t one. And she knew better than
to take her eyes off a wild animal ready to strike.

“You aren’t going to deny it?” he asked.

“Would it help?”

He lifted his face to the speck of bright blue sky visible at the top of the rabbit
hole. The rock face above them narrowed so sharply, it was impossible to enter unseen
and equally difficult to get a good shot from the top at any inhabitants on the bottom.

“When you didn’t come back, I had some of the boys ride to the nearby towns. In Freedom,
everyone was talkin’ about the doctor and his back-from-the-dead, redheaded wife.
Made me angry.” Lass’s fingers clenched on the reins again. Again, Annabeth took a
step back. The horse followed. “You’re mine.”

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t his, never would be or could be. Because she was forever
Ethan’s.

“I went to the doc’s place, found you . . .” His voice lowered, and the next words
were the growl of the animal within. “In his bed.”

If Lass had discovered her in Ethan’s bed, she’d be dead. Annabeth considered what
might have happened. A dark house, a darker room, a woman asleep. Lass had mistaken
Cora for Annabeth and stabbed her. Although, if that were the case, the blood would
have been on the bed and not the floor. That it was on the floor changed everything.
Cora Lewis—five foot nothing when standing—could never be confused with Annabeth.

“Why did you kill her?” Annabeth asked.

“What did you expect me to do? Let her scream and bring down the law?”

“You could have tied her up, gagged her . . .” Oh, what Annabeth wouldn’t have given
to see the woman gagged. “You’d have been gone before anyone found her.”

He shrugged and waved away the seamstress’s life as if he’d done nothing but swat
a fly. “She told me everything she knew. About the doc, about you.” His lip curled.
“Bein’ married.”

“I won’t be for long. I filed for divorce so I could . . .” Annabeth cleared her throat.
“Come back to you. Free and clear.”

“I know what you were. What you are. Spy. Liar. Detective.”

Obviously Ethan had told Cora about his past. A relationship based on lies was no
relationship at all. At least he’d learned that much. Still, she wished he’d kept
her secrets out of it.

“Miz Lewis was a sneaky bitch,” Lass continued. “Can’t say I blame her, considering.
She crept around, listened at keyholes. Told me everything she heard.”