Hannah Howell (28 page)
Authors: Stolen Ecstasy
“You sure about this, punkin?”
“Yes.” Laurie sighed as she watched her mother, seated as erect as ever on the buggy seat, disappear down the road. “I just feel a little lost because she is all I’ve ever known.”
He tentatively put his arm around her shoulders. “Well, then, you’ll have to come to know us, won’t you?” He was a little surprised to see that she was very pretty indeed when she smiled, faint though the smile was. “You might find you’ll want to hightail it after Mother.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve met all those relatives in New Orleans. They are all as unhappy as Mother is. I don’t want to be such an unhappy person. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop Leanne.”
Although a little startled by the sudden turn in the conversation, Hunter replied, “You did the best you could. You made sure she won’t stay away long. I just wish to hell it hadn’t happened now,” he muttered.
“She has Jed and Charlie with her. They won’t leave her alone. They rather love her, I think. I think I know why too.”
“Well? Enlighten me.”
“She treats them the same as she does everyone else. She treats them like they’re gentlemen.” She patted Hunter’s hand where it rested on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll find her.”
Hunter wished he could share in her optimism. There was a lot of country out there. Leanne did not have to go to either her father, O’Malley, or even Charity. For all he knew, Jed and Charlie might take her someplace they knew about. He really had little idea of where to look. There was only one good thing about it and that was that Watkins would know even less. She was, in fact, lost and it could easily be a matter of who found her first. He wondered if his mother was even aware of what she had done in driving Leanne away.
Lorraine stared straight ahead, ignoring her driver and the well-armed man who rode at her side. Sloane had to be mad to think she would stay in that house one more minute than she had to. Him and his choices. There were no choices. She was an object of scandal either way. It was simply that one way gave her the funds to keep body and soul together. Well, he would pay for doing this to her—and pay dearly. So would Hunter and that little slut he was so enamored of.
She was ripped from her vengeful thoughts by the sound of shots. Her driver was flung from the seat as if by some invisible hand, his body jerking backwards, then slumping to the side and tumbling out of the buggy. Clinging to her seat as the startled team leapt into a gallop, she saw her guard fall. A man suddenly appeared racing his horse alongside her team until he drew them to a halt. Another rider reined in on her side of the buggy. Both men looked at her and smiled in a way that chilled her.
“Greetings, Mrs. Walsh. Allow me to introduce myself.” The rider bowed slightly in the saddle. “I am Henry Watkins and that is my brother Chester Martin. You may have heard of us.”
Shaking free of her frozen state, Lorraine looked at them, then at the other men slowly encircling her. She screamed.
Watkins watched as Martin threw Lorraine Walsh’s body into the buggy with those of the driver and the guard. “Hurry up. It’ll take a couple of hours before they’re found, but we need every minute of it. Don’t waste time.”
“This was a waste of time.” Martin slapped the buggy team into motion, watching as they trotted along for a few yards then slowed to an amble along the familiar road. “We didn’t find out much.”
“Enough. That little bitch has run out on . Hunter. She’s with those traitors Charlie and Jed.”
“So we go after Hunter now, then trail her?” Martin swung himself up into his saddle.
“You saw that ranch. It’s like a fortress. Fact is, dear Mrs. Walsh did us a kindness when she sent Leanne packing. We can get them one at a time. Hunter will also be going after the girl, so he’ll be drawn away from that ranch and easier to get.”
“We don’t know where the hell the girl is.”
“So? Neither does Hunter, from what his mother said. We’ll start by talking to Charity. She ought to be back from her honeymoon by the time we reach Clayville.”
“Don’t seem right to be so close to that bastard and not at least trying to strike at him.”
“Chester, we just killed his mother. Her body will be found before he leaves to find Leanne, and anyone who finds the bodies will know just what dear Mrs. Walsh endured before she died. Unlike you, dear brother, some people carry a soft spot for their mothers. We have just struck at him. Now, ride. He just might head for Clayville, and I want to reach Charity first.”
Despite cursing the delay, Hunter watched the day draw to a close feeling rested. He knew that was important. There would be little rest for him until he found Leanne and defeated Watkins and Martin. It would be him, Sebastian, and Owen again. He felt good about that. They had learned to work together and did it well. It was hard to convince his father that the three of them would be enough, though. There were obvious advantages to having more men and more guns, but three would be able to move more swiftly and, if necessary, more stealthily than a larger group.
A call from one of the men that someone was approaching the ranch drew him from his musings. His wary stance eased only slightly when he saw that it was Craig and Thayer. They had a buggy with them. When he recognized it as the one his mother had ridden off in only hours earlier, he hurried to meet them.
“Mother?” He saw the answer to his soft, urgent query in their pale faces as they stopped before the house.
Craig stopped Hunter from pulling the blanket off of the smaller of the three shrouded bodies. “Don’t look, Hunter. It’s not pretty.”
“What happened?” He had the numbing feeling that he already knew the answer.
“This note was pinned to poor old Sam’s chest with a knife.”
Taking the bloodied missive Craig held out to him, Hunter read, “This is only the beginning. No one betrays me. Watkins.”
“Oh my God. He’s here.” Hunter heard the sound of someone approaching and turned to meet his father. “It was Watkins.”
Ignoring his sons’ attempts to stop him, Sloane lifted the blanket covering his wife’s body, paled, then quickly covered her over again. “Sam and Ted too?”
“Yeh, Pa,” Thayer answered. “We found the buggy headed toward town.”
“Did anyone else see the bodies?” Sloane laid one hand on Craig’s shoulder, the other on Thayer’s, gripping them briefly in sympathetic understanding of what it cost to find their mother that way.
“No, Pa. No one. Oh, damn, here comes Laurie and the others.”
Sloane caught Laurie before she could reach her mother’s body and lift the blanket. “Don’t look, child. Better for you to remember her as she was.” He held her close when she burst into tears. “No sign of the ones who did it?” he rasped.
“We saw where it happened. The trail from there headed north,” Craig answered. “They’ve had hours to get away.”
“To find Leanne,” Sloane murmured, looking at Hunter. “This was Watkins’s way of letting you know he means business.”
“I know. God, I’m sorry, Pa. I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who sent her away.” He urged Laurie into Hunter’s arms. “Take your sister into the house. Have Molly come to your mother’s room. I’ll need help readying her for burial.”
A pall hung over the house. Hunter found consolation for his own feelings of guilt in easing those Laurie suffered. His father, however, was unreachable, staying closed up in the library, speaking to no one. In desperation, Hunter sought out Molly, who had pulled their father out of black moods in the past. The guilt that had his father so locked up in himself had to be broken. He located Molly sitting at the heavy kitchen table staring into a cup of cooling tea. She looked up and grasped his hand in hers as he sat down.
“I’m sorry, boy. All trouble aside, she was your mother.” She tightened her grip on his hand for a moment. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Thank you, Molly. I’d sorted that out already. Poor Laurie was feeling guilty, and in easing her guilt, I eased my own.”
“Good. Good. No one can plan for a thing like this.”
“Molly, Pa’s not managing very well. He’s in the library, black-browed and silent. He’s thinking on how he was the one who sent her away. He can’t seem to remember anything else—like how she insisted, against stern warnings, on leaving today.”
“I know. Fool man. I could see it coming when we tended your ma’s body. Seeing what they’d done to her didn’t help.”
He nodded, wincing from the images a fuller account from Thayer and Craig had left him with. “This is going to sound damn hard of me, but I have to leave in the morning as planned. I have to. I just don’t like leaving things this way.”
“Of course you have to go. Of course you do. Your ma’s dead, boy. There’s no changing that. That little girl of yours is alive, with her whole life ahead of her. You have to get to her before that madman does. You can’t dither here no matter how strong you feel you ought to.” She pointed to one of the cupboards lining the wall of her kitchen. “There’s a bottle of good whiskey and two glasses in there. Get them down for met.”
He did as she asked, setting the things on the table. “You need a drink?” he asked, a little confused.
“Not here. In with your pa.” She stood up, picking up the bottle and glasses. “Me and him have straightened out many a problem over a bottle of whiskey in the past. I’ll pull him outta this. The man just needs some sense talked into him. He’s got to spit that guilt out too.”
“I think we all suffer it some.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. I don’t like speaking ill of the dead but that woman was no mother to you lot and no wife to him. Yeah, she gave birth to you, and no one should be killed so viciously, but if you don’t feel a deep grief, it ain’t a fault in you. A person’s gotta earn feelings like that, even mothers. And I’ll tell your moping pa the same.”
By the time dinner was served, Molly had worked her magic. The mood was somber, but it was clear that everyone, their father included, had overcome their guilt and shock. Hunter had to fend off another attempt by his family to send him off with what amounted to a small army. Sebastian finally convinced Sloane of the good, sound reasons for only the three of them going, three who had worked together already and two of whom knew the territory to be traveled fairly well.
Therefore Hunter was curious when, after he had retired to his room, his father arrived. “I thought we’d settled everything.”
“We have. I just wanted to be sure you’re not feeling bad about leaving at a time like this.”
“I do in some ways. The need to help Leanne . . .” he faltered, unsure of how to explain himself.
“The need to keep someone alive has to take precedence over the mourning of the dead.”
“I have to get to Leanne before he does.”
“God, yes. I’ve seen what the man can do and Lorraine was not even one he sought.” He shook his head. “Three innocent people. That damn practical Molly and her whiskey may have stopped me from blaming myself, from feeling so godawful guilty, but even she won’t stop me from wanting that bastard dead.”
“I won’t make the mistake of not making sure he’s dead and buried this time.”
Sloane clapped Hunter on the arm. “Get that girl of yours back here where she belongs. And those two faithful puppies of hers as well,” he added as he walked out the door.
“I pray to God they’re still with her,” Hunter whispered.
Leanne sat down at the well-scrubbed table and looked around. “Now this looks much better.”
Glancing around as he and Jed sprawled in chairs at the same table, Charlie muttered, “Didn’t look so bad to me before.”
“Charles, it was filthy.” She frowned. “O’Malley couldn’t possibly have come here this past summer. It never would’ve gotten so dirty in just a few months. O’Malley and his sons were very particular. I hope nothing’s happened to them.”
“Could be a lotta reasons he didn’t get here this year. Don’t have to be real bad ones.”
“Charlie’s right, Leanne. Why, didn’t you tell us he and that woman Charity knew each other? Maybe she told him you’d gone off with Hunter and he didn’t see no reason to come up here, having other things to do and all. Maybe he’s waiting to hear from you—y’know, through her.”
“Of course. I worry too much. He always collected me at Charity’s. She would have told him what happened.” She smiled faintly. “And he always called coming here playing truant because he slipped away from work that needed doing. If you are still here come spring or summer, you’ll meet them. I think you’ll like each other.”
“We’ll still be here.”
“Now, Charles, you don’t have to stay because of me.”
“As good a reason as any.”
“Right.” Jed poured them all a cup of coffee from the pot Leanne had set in the middle of the table. “Good place this.”
“Yup,” Charlie agreed. “Not too far up into the hills. Easy to move about. Not too many people, but a good sized town only a few hours away. ’Sides, you can’t stay here alone.”
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