Stay With Me (33 page)

“You hurt my little girl.”

Everyone in the room, including Dority,
whirled toward the door. A man, almost as big as Fred, stood there,
wearing nothing but a nightgown and socks and holding a rifle in
his arms. Before anyone could move, he fired. Dority staggered
back, his hands clenched to his chest, before dropping awkwardly to
his knees, then face down on the wooden floor.

“Jesus Christ,” Fred said.

Suzanne looked up, saw Dority and the blood
pooling under his body, and clapped her hand over her mouth. Fred
stared at her for just a second before reaching one long arm down
and grabbing the chamber pot off the floor. Then he held it for her
while she vomited.

John lowered his gun. He turned and grabbed
Sarah who stood absolutely still, as white as her undergarments.
“Sweetheart, don’t look at him. Look at me. Come on, Sarah.”

George looked from Dority to the old man in
the doorway and then back again to Dority. He bent down and felt
Dority’s neck. He stood up and shrugged. “It’s over,” he said.

The old man in the doorway hadn’t moved. “He
hurt my daughter,” he said, his voice quiet.

“I know he did, sir.” George reached into his
vest pocket and pulled out his tin star. “I’m the sheriff of
Bluemont, North Dakota. You need to put your gun down.”

Sarah lifted her head. “Sheriff?”

John nodded.

“She was a good girl,” the man said. “She
insisted on helping me. Said I needed my sleep. She’s only
seventeen.” A tear ran down the man’s weathered face.

“She needs a doctor,” George said, taking a
step toward the man. “Is there one nearby.”

The man didn’t act like he’d heard George. “I
woke up when I heard someone screaming,” he said. “I didn’t know
what was going on. I went downstairs and I…” the man’s voice
faltered, “…I saw Mary Beth. I went to get my gun. I keep it in the
kitchen. I heard another scream and then saw the three of you
running up the stairs. I knew the bastard was still here. He had to
pay for what he did. It’s only right.”

“I understand,” George said. He was close
enough now that he gently removed the gun from the man’s hand.
“More than you know. I understand.”

“I’ve got to go tend to my daughter,” the man
said. “She ain’t got no mother.”

George nodded. “I’ll help you.”

“You going to arrest me?” the old man
asked.

“I…I don’t—”

“The way I saw it,” John said, interrupting
George, “it was self-defense. He was coming at you with his
knife.”

“That’s what I saw, too,” Fred said. He got
up, walked over to the dressing table, poured water out of the
pitcher onto a strip of sheet, returned to the bed, and carefully
wiped Suzanne’s face.

George looked from Fred to John, indecision
clear on his face. Then he looked at the old man before raising his
eyes to the sky. “This is for you, Hannah,” he whispered. He
brought his gaze back to the old man. “No doubt about it. Self
defense. You didn’t have any choice but to shoot him. I’ll talk to
the sheriff for you.”

Sarah let out a sigh and John hugged her
tighter.

“What are you going to do with him?” the old
man asked.

“We’ll leave him right where he is until the
sheriff can get here,” George said.

“I’ll go find him,” Fred offered.

“That’s fine,” George said. “John, why don’t
you take the women somewhere else. They don’t need to be seeing
this.”

I’ll take care of it,” John said.

George wrapped an arm around the old man’s
shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

John turned toward the women. “Get your
things and wait for me down the hall.”

“I want to help him,” Sarah said. “I want to
help Mary Beth.”

“Me, too,” Suzanne said, already moving off
the bed. “She’ll need a woman to talk to.”

***

An hour later a remarkably calm Mary Beth had
regained consciousness. Sarah and Suzanne had cleaned her up and
sat with her until she’d fallen asleep.

“She’s amazing,” Sarah whispered as the two
women walked out of the room. “I’d have been hysterical. When she
said that Dority’s badness didn’t shame her I thought I was going
to lose it.”

“Lose it?”

“You know, go crazy.”

“I think she’ll be fine,” Suzanne said.
“She’ll have some bad days ahead but she’s got a good head on her
shoulders. She knows life goes on.”

Sarah turned toward her friend. She
remembered Suzanne admitting that she’d sold herself at thirteen,
but her friend’s knowing tone told her this was something else.
“You say that,” she said, carefully picking her words, “like you’ve
had some experience with this.”

Suzanne nodded. “Men can be bastards.”

Sarah felt rage, pure burning rage, at the
hurt both Suzanne and Mary Beth had suffered. “How old were
you?”

“Twelve. He was my mother’s cousin.”

“God.” Sarah rested her head against the wide
wooden trim around the doorway.

“Come on,” Suzanne said, pulling at her arm.
“I’m so tired I could fall asleep standing up. I need a bed.”

They walked down the hall and ran into John
Beckett. He held two keys in his hand. “How’s she doing?” he
asked.

“As good as can be expected,” Suzanne said.
“How is her father?”

“The sheriff wanted him to come down to his
office. Before he left, he said you two could move to new
rooms.”

“Rooms with a bed?” Suzanne asked.

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I thought I might
have to sleep in the hall.”

John handed her a key. “Fred’s outside taking
care of the horses. We rode them pretty hard. He should be back in
a few minutes. I…I gave him your room number.”

Suzanne blushed. “That was very thoughtful of
you.” She turned toward Sarah. “Will you be all right?”

“Dandy,” Sarah said, hugging her friend. She
waited until Suzanne had unlocked her door and gone inside before
turning toward John.

“Separate rooms?” she asked.

John looked over her shoulder. “Fred’s
idea.”

Maybe, just maybe, it was going to work out
for one of them. “When he sat on that bed with Suzanne, he looked
every bit like a man who didn’t intend to let go.”

“I thought the same thing.”

“I’m happy for them,” she said. She needed to
concentrate on that. Not on how darn unhappy she was. And she most
definitely needed to get inside before she did something incredibly
stupid like ask John to come in. “May I?” she asked, holding out
her hand.

John didn’t answer. Instead he walked over
and unlocked the door. “I’d like a few minutes of your time,” he
said.

A few minutes of her time.
He sounded
stiff and formal and not at all like the man who’d held her in his
arms just an hour before. “Come in,” she said.

This room looked identical to the one they’d
left just an hour before—with the exception that there wasn’t a
dead man on the floor. Sarah took a seat on one bed, careful to
keep her eyes off the spot where, two doors down, Dority probably
still lay in a puddle of his own blood.

John took off his hat and hung it on the hook
by the door. He remained standing, just staring at his boots. For a
man who’d needed to talk to her, he seemed to have little to
say.

Lord, but he looked tired. She desperately
wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him close. She wanted
to comfort him, to console, to soothe. She wanted what she couldn’t
have.

She slipped her hands under her bottom.
“John,” she said, unable to stand the silence a moment longer, “I
appreciate your help tonight.”

He looked up, one eyebrow raised.

Great. Now she sounded like a tired hostess
thanking a party guest who’d stayed around to pick up dirty dishes.
Like a nervous hostess, she rattled on. “That’s kind of surprising
news about George. He’s a Sheriff?”

John nodded. “With a reason to hate
Dority.”

Dority
. Would she ever hear the name
and not feel the bone-chilling fear? “I never thought he’d follow
me.”

John pushed himself away from the wall.
“Follow you? You knew he was in Cedarbrook?”

He asked it casual enough but she could hear
the tension in his tone. “I saw him smoking with George.” She
smiled at John but he didn’t smile back. “I didn’t realize that
George was on our side.”

“I suppose,” he said, inspecting the nails on
his right hand, “that you forgot to mention it to either Fred or
me.”

She wouldn’t lie about it. “No, I didn’t
forget. I chose not to tell you.”

His head jerked up and he had fire in his
eyes. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

Sarah took a deep breath and tried to
remember that this man had, in all likelihood, saved her life
earlier that night.

John began to pace around the small room, his
steps short and jerky. He ran his hands through his glorious hair.
“I thought you cared more about Suzanne.”

That hurt more than most any insult he could
have come up with. “I warned Suzanne,” she said. “Freedom knew,
too.”

John threw one hand in the air. “No wonder
you felt so safe.”

Sarah stood up. She’d been awake for close to
twenty-four hours and she couldn’t handle this. “Look, John. I can
tell that you’re pissed.”

He stopped pacing and stared at her.

“Yes, I said pissed. I’m not only stupid, I’m
vulgar. Maybe I screwed up. Maybe I underestimated Dority.”

“You think so?”

Damn him for acting so smug. “Everything I
did, I did to protect Suzanne or Fred or you. I did the best I
could. If it wasn’t good enough for you, that’s too freakin’
bad.”

“Protect me?” He threw out both hands, like
he couldn’t believe it. “Who told you I needed to be
protected?”

“Nobody. I figured it out all by myself.”

John shook a finger at her. “Do you know? Do
you have any idea how lucky you are? Do you know what Dority could
have done if he’d have had five more minutes?”

Did she know
? It was her body the
man’s hands had crawled across. All the fear, all the shame, all
the pent-up rage she’d felt for the last hour exploded. “Yes, damn
you,” she yelled. “I do. When he put his hands on my breasts and
squeezed and groped, I knew. When he pushed himself up against me
and I could feel him, I knew. And”—she could no longer hold back
her tears—“when I thought about what he’d done to that young girl,
I thought dying might be easier. I started to pray for that.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, all traces of
anger gone.

His concern made the dam break. She cried,
her body heaving with sobs.

“Now, now,” he said, wrapping his arms around
her. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

She cried harder.

He put one hand behind her neck and pressed
her face into his shirt. He absorbed her cries, her pain, her utter
desperation at having been at the mercy of Mitchell Dority. When
she finally stopped, he had a big, wet spot on his blue shirt. “I’m
sorry,” she said. She lifted up the edge of the bedspread and
dabbed at it.

“Forget it,” he said, and captured both her
hands into one of his. He took his free hand and brushed remaining
tears off her cheeks. “You’re a mess,” he said, giving her one of
his sweet smiles.

Mess
. It reminded her of the note John
had left for his mother.
I have to go clean up another one of
Peter’s messes
. “John,” she said, trying to scoot away. He held
her tight. She squirmed but couldn’t budge him. “Thank you,” she
said. “Even if you just did it for Peter, that’s okay. You still
came. I’m alive today because—”

John pushed her away. “What did you just
say?”

“I’m alive—”

“No, before that.”

Too late, she realized her mistake. John
didn’t know that his mother had shared his note. She doubted Mrs.
Beckett would have offered that up.

“Sarah?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “I saw the
note you left for your mother.”

“I left a note for my mother?”

“You need to know something. Your mother came
to see me last night at the saloon. She offered me two hundred
dollars to leave town.”

“What? Two hundred dollars?”

“Yes. And I took it.”

He sat down on the bed, looking dazed. He
closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t
understand.”

“It’s pretty simple. Your mother believed
that you intended to go with me on Wednesday’s stage.”

“I told her that,” John said.

“You never said anything.”

“I meant to. I hadn’t had the chance.”

“Why?”

“I…I don’t know.”

Sarah swallowed. John Beckett was a good man.
Even when he did it for the wrong reasons. “I saw the note, John.
You told your mother that you had to leave town for a couple days
so that you could clean up another one of Peter’s messes. After all
that happened between us, that’s all I was. Just another one of
Peter’s messes.”

“No,” he said, standing up.

“John, I saw the note.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“It was pretty clear.”

“No. What you saw wasn’t clear, it was
convenient. I know the note. I wrote that note when Peter got in
trouble with a married woman. Three years ago.”

“Three years?” Sarah put one hand over her
mouth. “You wrote it three years ago?” She shook her head, trying
to clear it. “How your mother must have hated Sarah One.”

“Sarah One?”

With every word she said, she seemed to
digging a deeper hole. She couldn’t even keep her stories straight
anymore. Everything was so mixed up. And John was looking at her
like he couldn’t figure out if she was the lunatic or if he was. He
deserved to know the truth. “John, I think you better sit
down.”

“There’s more?” John asked.

She inclined her head toward the chair by the
door. “Please, just sit.” She couldn’t bear to have him too close.
Her resolve would weaken. When John sat on the edge of the chair,
she jumped in.