Josie: Bride of New Mexico (American Mail-Order Bride 47) (15 page)

Her heart pounded so hard and her breathing rasped so loudly in her hears she couldn’t tell whether the horses approached from the front or the back.

She and Adam had circled the house, listening carefully for any signs of dogs.

Dogs!

Why on earth weren’t Gertie’s dogs— the little ones asleep in the opposite corner— barking up a storm? What had to happen for those dogs to alert their owner?

Lessie pushed back into the corner even tighter. She held the pistol up and at the ready, her finger on the trigger but the barrel pointed at the ceiling. It wouldn’t do to shoot herself or Adam… or even Gertie.

She didn’t know if this little gun held six shots or more, but she wouldn’t waste a single one. And she wouldn’t give away her presence by doing something foolish like flinching and setting the gun off before she was ready.

She eased her finger off the trigger and rested it against the loop of metal she thought was called a trigger guard.

The thunder of many horses hooves was joined by the jangle of harnesses and the shouts from men. The sounds came from the open rear windows and from the front of the house at her back. The raiders— posse?— circled the house.

More calls. Someone fired a gun.

Josie stifled a shriek.

Where was Adam? Where
was
he?

One of the riders must’ve carried a torch because the door yard became brighter. The rider circled the house, sending beams of firelight through the front window, kitchen window, then back…

From where she sat, the burning torch gave her a clear view of the crowd on horseback outside. Dozens of men.

Dozens
.

The firelight doubled, tripled— were they lighting the outbuildings on fire? Or just more torches? The odor of cloying wood smoke and burning kerosene carried in on the breeze. Shouts from the men increased with the level of light.

Already, the blazing torches lit the yard as if it were noonday.

Josie forced herself to search the house’s interior for signs of Adam or Gertie or the dogs.

Nothing. Where had they gone?

Why hadn’t Adam dragged her into hiding with him?

She should hide. Somewhere far more remote than this. She should make herself harder to find.

The sofa’s bare legs hid nothing. No closet or cabinet in the spartan room.

She trembled so hard the gun flopped in her hands like a live fish fighting for freedom and to escape back into the water where it could breathe.

Outside, one of the riders shouted. His bellow sounded like an order.

“Adam Taylor!” A masculine voice bellowed from the mob. “Come out with your hands up. We know you’re in there. And bring your bride with you.”

“Five!”
The mob allowed less than five seconds before someone started a countdown.

Where
was Adam?

“Four!”

She refused to believe he’d left her.

“Three!”

To her horror, a torch flew, end over end, until it thudded heavily on the roof of the adobe house.

They hadn’t so much as reached one, much less zero in their count.

The stick and burning rag knotted on the end rolled drunkenly down the pitch. It fell past the window into the dirt of the yard.

But the damage was done.

Fire
!

The house would burn. Surely in this arid place, without rain in so long a time, the house would go up like tinder.

Reminds her of the fire her sister told her about in the factory— and how terrifying it had been. Some of the women had still dreamed about it in the nights following.

If she ran out the back door, she’d run straight into the waiting men on horseback, and by all that was holy, the men were not friendly.

From the shouts and light she knew they circled the house completely. To bolt out the front door would not yield anything better.

If she stayed put, she’d burn. She couldn’t leave and she couldn’t stay.

“Adam!” She crawled toward the bedroom door, her skirts impeding her movement. “Adam!”

The dogs had left their corner.

Where had the animals gone?

She shoved against the bedroom door. Already the room filled with smoke.

A window in the main room of the house exploded. Glass shattered and tinkled onto the flooring and furniture. The fire grew, consuming greedily and making a horrendous noise.

Overhead the beams swayed, groaned.

“Adam!”

Josie coughed. Even this close to the floor the air was hot, thick, acrid.

A crash in the main room had her whirling. Had the bad guys come in after her? Had the ceiling fallen?

Someone— definitely someone— grabbed her ankle.

She whirled, her heart stuttering to stop.

Adam.

Adam dragged her by her ankle closer to the cot against the wall.

Beneath the bed, a trunk lid was open. Adam gestured for her to follow, the noise from the fire and the mob outside so great there wasn’t a hope of hearing him above the din.

Adam climbed into the trunk.

No— no! Didn’t he realize the trunk would be airless— no solution at all?

But he dropped inside, so far inside only his shoulders were above the rim.

And suddenly she saw. The trunk had a false bottom. And below that trunk, a crawl space.

Chapter Nineteen

Josie clung to her husband’s hand as he led her into the cool depths of a basement? A tunnel?

In the absolute darkness, she couldn’t tell which.

He’d taken time to close the trunk, reset the false floor, to ensure anyone who followed wouldn’t know where they’d gone.

“You were going to
leave
me up there?”

“No, dearest. No.”

“So where is Gertie?”

“She went ahead.”

“And you know about this tunnel?”

What else hadn’t her husband told her? Had he chosen Gertie’s house to rob because he
knew
the woman? Was this a set-up?

“She called to her dogs, ducked inside here, and I followed, just far enough to make sure she didn’t lock us out.”

“Where are they now?”

“Ran on ahead. Do you feel the air current?”

The air wasn’t close and dank as she expected, but fresh and cool, as if well-ventilated.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Pray she hasn’t locked a gate or a grill on the other end.”

Josie scooped up her ruined dress to hold it high enough to prevent falling.

Moisture seeped up through the holes in her boots and made her stockings uncomfortably wet.

At least the ceiling was high enough for even Adam to stand and walk.

He must have had his hand extended to feel the wall because he moved forward with confidence and certainty, surging forward at a near-sprint.

The tunnel took a gradual curve. Josie sensed it more than felt it, but eventually a pale light showed at the far end and in another twenty or so paces it became evident they approached an exit— or at least another access point.

“Who built this tunnel?” she asked.

“I have no idea.”

“What is it for?”

“I don’t know.”

But when they reached the other end of the tunnel it became apparent the passageway dead-ended, with only one other access point— at least that they’d noticed in their dark and rapid trek.

How far had they come, underground? One mile? Half a mile? Less?

Light fell through a trap door in the tunnel ceiling. A rough hand-hewn ladder— heavy and sturdy, provided access to the building above. Golden lamplight, a halo around his black hair, mussed from numerous scuffles and endearingly rough.

From where Josie stood, exposed rafters in the structure above identified it as a barn or other outbuilding.

With care, Adam waited at the bottom of a sturdy-looking wooden ladder and peered upward, through an open trap door leading into a wooden building.

Josie’s heart climbed in her throat. He
couldn’t
go up there unarmed. She retrieved from her pocket the pistol Gertie had given her and tapped Adam’s hand with the grip. “Take this,” she whispered.

He nodded, checked the hammer and tucked the weapon into the back of his trousers.

Adam grasped her hand, silently nudged her behind himself. He put a shoe to the bottom rung. He climbed just enough to peer above the floor boards.

He stiffened, as if he’d heard or seen something she could not.

Footsteps sounded on the rough floor boards.

Someone approached.

“Well, well. Look who finally came calling.” A man’s voice. Deep. Resonant. And almost hard. “A dead man.”

Josie’s skin crawled in fear for her husband. How would they escape?

Whoever it was, a burly man, heavy, thick through the shoulders dropped to his haunches at the mouth of the trap door.

Josie’s heart beat raced, and not from her underground rush. This man could easily be one of the marauders, one of the men who knew she and Adam were in the adobe house and wanted them dead.

All this time, Adam kept the pistol Josie had passed over to him tucked in the back of his trousers.

Why hadn’t Adam pulled it free, kept it in his hand as a show of strength and so he might use it in self-defense?

Her husband must have held the other man’s gaze for some sort of silent communication passed between them. Adam slowly moved his feet up the rungs. He stepped out of the tunnel, and though he kept his attention completely on the lean and powerfully built man beside him, Adam curled his fingers in an invitation for Josie to come on up.

Surely, if he feared for their lives he’d tell her to run, wouldn’t he? Rather than bring her up where she’d bring herself into closer proximity to a murderer?

Josie couldn’t think about it. She scurried up the ladder and ducked under Adam’s protective arm. This close, the older man towered over Adam’s more-than-six-foot frame. Gray streaked the hair at his temples, beneath a weather-beaten Stetson. He dressed much like Gertie had, in working gear. This man ranched or farmed or otherwise belonged in this rustic, wild place.

Was this his tack room? It had to be within a spacious barn. The tunnel had led them to a tack room.

Probably out of line of site from the mob burning down Gertie’s house.

But once the house was consumed in flames, the floor boards reduced to ash, the foundation of that house would be exposed, and someone would easily see the lack of human bones and the tunnel lined with stone.

They wouldn’t be safe here for long. She nearly opened her mouth to remind the men of impending danger when the stranger offered Adam a handshake.

“Adam Taylor,” the big man said. “We finally meet.”

Adam’s accepted the handshake. Did he know this fellow? Or was it out of habit?

“And you are…?”

“David Forsberg.”

Josie clung to her husband’s damp shirt, trembling herself. Who was this man, and what on earth did he want with them?

“Where is Gertie?” Adam asked.

“Nearby.”

“I’ll take a wild guess and assume as Gertie led us to you,” Adam said, “and you seem to know who I am. You’re no doubt the David Forsberg on the Silver Queen payroll.”

“Are we safe here?” His heart still pounded and he wanted nothing so much as to push past the door of the lamp-lit room into the barn beyond and peek out a window or door, get the lay of the land, so to speak.

“For now.”

“Then talk, Forsberg. How are you and Gertie tangled up in this?”

Josie had wrapped both of her hands on the waistband of his trousers. She clung to him with the same force as she had when he’d last seen her with her sister, at Union Station. She obviously found strength in physical touch.

For now, it was enough that she stayed behind him.

“You’re bleeding.” Forsberg had seen the blood on Adam’s shirt.

“It’s stitched— don’t worry about it.”

And blast it if Forsberg didn’t approach and yank Adam’s shirt out from his trousers.

Adam grabbed the older man’s forearm. “Hold up there.”

“You have no idea what I do for you and your company, do you Mr. Taylor?”

“You’re—” He drew a blank. A big, yawning blank.