His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (38 page)

"Is that the kind of man you want to be, Kit? A bully who beats up little kids?"

Kit scowled. "Hell, Collie was born old. 'Sides. I tried to do him a favor. Tried to give him a family—"

"Even I don't want anything to do with our family."

Kit sneered. "So why don't you go back to Colorado? Oh wait. Now I remember. 'Cause you let the wrong bounty learn there's a reward on your head."

"I can't help it that Taggart recognized me. And it's not my fault that Jasper Hatfield couldn't take a whupping like a man, either."

"I ain't arguing with you. But now that Taggart knows who you are, he's gonna track your ass 'til he gets you in his sights. The smartest thing you ever did was come home to kin. We'll see the bastard has an accident."

Chance grimaced, averting his eyes. "I didn't come home for the feud. I came home for Jillie's wedding. Now that she's safely on her wedding tour, I'm heading for Mexico."

"Mexico?
What's in Mexico?"

"Rosita. And a new life." Chance's smile was mirthless. "The Hatfields and McCoys have been feuding since the war. I'm sick of it. I want out. I want to raise a family in peace."

Kit snorted. "Shit. If you get any softer, Ma and Jillie will have to spread you on toast."

"At least you still have a ma and sister to eat toast with."

Kit rolled his eyes. "Fine. Go to Mexico. I'll find Black Bart's loot myself.
And
I'll spend it by my lonesome, too. Where do you reckon Collie's hiding?"

Chance shrugged.

"Sera would know." Kit's smile oozed with new cunning. "Sera knows everything that goes on in this pissant town."

"That old taxidermist is a better bet."

"You mean Gunther?" Kit frowned, and his hand hovered in midstroke above Millie's head. "How come?"

"Where do you think the boy gets his pets?"

Understanding dawned on Kit's coyote face. "Reckon ol' Gunther did have a heap of rustling trouble awhile back. And for once, nobody thought to finger you or me." He smirked. "Tell you what. I'll talk to Sera. You talk to Gunther."

"I figured you'd want to call on Gunther," Chance countered, "seeing how he made you a laughingstock last week."

Kit's eyes narrowed. "I got bigger fish to fry than some two-bit card cheat. 'Sides, I can't do every damned thing myself. The sooner you help me find Collie, the sooner you can vamoose to your
senorita."

"I didn't realize I needed your permission."

"Don't start," Kit snapped. "You owe me. You owe me for busting you outta that Virginia jail before some Hatfield could string you up."

Chance scowled. He flicked more ash into the frost-coated needles.

"You know," Chance said, changing the subject, "with a ribbon and a bow, that rabbit would make a nice gift for a sweetheart."

"You mean Sera?" Kit snorted. "That skirt can't kiss worth shit. And her cooking's even worse."

"Yeah? So why do you care so much that she sent you packing?"

It was Kit's turn to scowl.

Suddenly his hand dropped. Millie screamed, flailing, until her neck snapped with an audible crack.

Kit smirked at the limp carcass in his arms. "I love it when the bitches scream."

Collie's eyes burned with tears of outrage. If he hadn't clamped his teeth over his sleeve, he would have retched all over Chance's slouch hat, ten feet below.

"Christ, Chance. You gonna stand there all day?" Kit was tying Millie's carcass to his saddle horn. "Get yourself a rabbit, or get your ass to Gunther's."

Chance dropped his smoke, rubbing it out with his boot toe. As he did, his gaze rose slowly, unerringly, pinning Collie like a striking panther pins its prey. Chills scuttled up and down Collie's spine. When the elder McCoy turned, padding past the cages, Collie's heart hammered so hard, he felt dizzy. But Chance didn't stop. He didn't open a cage. He headed straight for his horse.

Every muscle in Collie's length was shaking as the outlaws spurred their geldings and rode away. His tremors had nothing to do with the cold, though. Hatred seeped into his bones, burning hot enough to repel an alpine blast.

Something changed in him that day. Something hardened. He vowed to make Kit McCoy pay. He vowed to keep him away from Sera.

Chapter 13

Streaks of rose-tinged tangerine fanned across the western sky, heralding the end of day. Michael barely noticed. He stood where he'd been standing for the last hour, his fists shoved into his coat pockets, his breaths curling around his head like miniature geysers. The temperature was sinking with the sun, but Michael couldn't feel the change.

Or maybe he didn't care.

He simply continued to stare at the tombstone, bleached white by the years, deepening to a luminescent gold in the twilight.

HERE LIES GABRIEL JONES.

BELOVED SON AND BROTHER.

HEAVEN KNOWS A BRIGHTER SMILE.

Sera had insisted on the epitaph. She'd gone toe to toe with Papa for it, the only time in Michael's memory that she had fought Jedidiah Jones and won.

"Gabriel didn't understand scripture," she'd argued. "He hated stuffy old churches and prayer. Stop trying to make him an
angel,
Papa. Just let him be Gabriel."

Later, Sera had confided to Michael that Gabriel, in all his otherworldly glory, had floated down to sit on her bedpost the night of his death and had told her that heaven was a happy place where everybody smiled. "He likes it there," she said, beaming. "He said to tell you not to cry."

Sera had been ten years old at the time. Of course, Michael hadn't believed her and her visions.

His throat aching, Michael wondered how his life had gone so wrong. How had he lost his brother's friendship, his sister's respect... his wife's love?

I'm no damned coward.

Still, there were times when he envied the people who died in their sleep, never suffering the pain or loneliness of a lingering illness.

Maybe it's true
,
he thought ruefully
.
Maybe in some ways I do wish for death.

The gravel path crunched behind him. He tensed. Usually he was immune to flights of fancy. Nevertheless, he felt every hair on his scalp rise. Boot hill wasn't the most comforting place for surprises.

"Figured I'd find you here."

He recognized Collie's mutinous tenor before he spied the boy over his shoulder. Grim and pale, Collie stood silhouetted like an avenging fury against the backdrop of sun, dogwood, and neatly sculpted graves. He was coatless and gloveless, despite the garments Eden had purchased for him, and he gripped the barrel of Claudia's shotgun in a white-knuckled fist.

"Collie," he greeted cautiously
.
Careful what you wish for, Jones.

The boy narrowed his stare. Michael couldn't ever remember seeing that particular gleam in the boy's eyes.

"How come you always come here?" Collie demanded.

Michael turned slowly to face him. Was it his imagination, or were Collie's cheeks moist with tears? "I come to visit Gabriel, mostly. Sometimes my mother. Don't you ever visit your pa?"

"Hell no. Pa ain't lying in some cold, lonely patch of ground. He's racing with the wind and howling at the moon. I take my pa with me wherever I go."

Michael averted his eyes. Racing with the wind sounded like paradise compared to rotting in a pine box for eternity. The trouble was, he couldn't believe in paradise, much less in God. And he'd never found any tactile proof to convince him that he possessed anything remotely resembling a spirit—despite Eden's belief that he'd killed it.

"You know I ain't ever liked you much," Collie blurted.

Michael braved the boy's hostile stare. "Yes."

"'Course,
Jamie
thinks you hung the moon."

"Jamie misses his father."

Collie's jaw jutted. "He's got that Luke feller wantin' to marry his ma. He don't need no fathers anymore."

Michael's smile was fleeting. "And you do?"

"I didn't say that. Don't go puttin' words in my mouth."

"I'm sorry."

"Humph."

Collie cocked his head. That suspicious, half-wild stare pierced Michael like an arrow. "I'm man enough to own up when I'm wrong, I reckon."

"What makes you think you've been wrong?"

"I got eyes. Kit McCoy's back in town."

Michael sucked in his breath.

"You were right all along about that bastard."

Something in the boy's manner chilled Michael more than the wind that kicked up the fallen dogwood leaves. "Where is he?"

"Headed to your house, I reckon."

Michael muttered an oath.

"You got a gun?"

Michael froze in midturn on his way to Brutus. "Why would I need a gun?" he demanded, forcing neutrality into his tone.

The boy shrugged. The gesture did little to detract from the canniness that hardened his features. "Rat huntin'."

"Collie..." The boy was already loping into the blue-black shadows of the coining night. Michael raised his voice above the wind. "Where are you going?"

But if Collie answered, the words were lost in the eerie scraping of the dogwood's barren branches.

* * *

The warmth of the sun was a distant memory as Michael dismounted, slapping Brutus toward the stable. Although Claudia's cottage glowed behind its overgrown hedgerows, every window in his house was dark. Both chimneys were smokeless.

Dread seeped into his bones.

Shoving open the door, Michael fumbled with half-frozen hands to strike a matchsafe and illuminate the foyer. No rosemary or cinnamon wafted from the kitchen hall. Stazzie didn't saunter out of the shadows to greet him with a stretch and a yawn.

"Sera?"

His call reverberated through the two stories, making them sound as hollow as a dry well. He had to force the next name from his lips.

"Eden?"

Facing the woman he loved, the woman who thought him a coward, would be harder than burying Gabriel.

But the echo of her name sighed into a silence that was broken only by the chiming of the parlor clock.
Seven bells.

The trading post had long since closed. She should be home by now.

Frowning, he removed the lamp from the wall. He liked to think Collie's talk of guns was the only reason for his growing unease. After all, Rafe was most likely keeping company with Sera—and hopefully, distracting her from any rumor of Kit McCoy's return. Thus, for the moment, Michael was less worried about his sister than he was about the unusual silence in his house.

He headed for the bedroom, the lamp's circular, saffron glow bobbing at his feet. It was the peculiar absence of Stazzie, he decided, that had triggered his alarm.

"Eden?" he called again.

The door was cracked open; he pushed it wider—and froze. Stazzie's pillow was gone. So was the portmanteau Eden kept under the armoire. A quick inspection of his footlocker and chest of drawers proved that she'd removed her shoes and bonnets, skirts and blouses—in short, everything she owned.

Except those things that he'd bought her.

Realization knifed him. He searched for a letter and found a sheaf of paper propped against his shaving bowl.

I love you too much to watch you waste away your life,
she'd written in a shaky hand
.
Since you don't want me, or even need me, I think it's best that I leave.

He ran his thumb over the ripple where her tear had fallen. Was this some sort of test?

Crumpling the letter in his fist, he crossed to the window. His neighbor's guest room was lit. Perhaps Eden had merely fled to Claudia. Who else might be occupying that spare bedroom? Not Collie, certainly. The boy had yet to overcome his aversion to "fancy living." Although he'd agreed to do chores in exchange for shooting lessons and board, he'd flat-out refused Claudia's offer of a feather mattress, instead making his bed with her mare, Nag.