After Sundown (5 page)

Travis seemed to relax a bit, nodding. “You her kin, then?”

“Yeah.” Lucas felt his stomach turn at the very idea—and felt his pulse pick up as he sensed he was closing in on his quarry at last. “Distant relation.”

“That explains it, then.”

“What?”

The boy glanced across the street, looking directly at the house where the pretty brown-eyed elf had disappeared, then pointed.

“Why she didn’t seem to recognize you.”

Lucas choked out a vicious curse.
Damn the little bitch, she had fooled him
. He was already running, drawing his pistol.

But before he was halfway across the street, he saw a dappled mare light out from behind the house and take off at a gallop—its rider’s skirts and long hair streaming behind her on the wind.

T
he dappled mare’s hooves pounded the earth, clods of dirt and grass flying. The rocky landscape whirled past in a dizzying blur of green and gray. Annie clung to the reins with one hand, the horse’s mane with the other. Her pulse roared in her ears as she fled blindly into the sun’s fading light. The wind tore at her hair, at her clothes. She barely felt its cold fingers.

Panic had already turned her to ice. After she had stepped into Dr. Holt’s house, she had looked out the front window—and saw the black-haired stranger talking with Travis. Saw the boy point right at her. Knew that her first terrified guess had been correct.

She had been found
. By a lawman, a bounty hunter—she didn’t know which. Didn’t want to find out. She had run for the back door, shouting to Dr. Holt that there was trouble and she needed his horse.

The little mare seemed to fly over the meadows, leaping over every rock and branch in her path. Annie’s whole body felt bruised and jolted and she wished there had been time to saddle the animal. Wished she remembered better from childhood how to ride bareback. She clung desperately to the mare’s neck and glanced behind her again.

Oh, God, he was getting closer!
Minutes ago, she had dared hope that she’d lost him. That she’d had enough of a head start. But now he was gaining ground. She could see his black hair and the bay color of the horse he rode.

And the metallic flash of a pistol in his hand.

A terrified cry rose in her throat but Annie choked it back. Faced forward. Tried to make sense of the jouncing landscape in front of her.
There, to the north
. She tugged hard on the reins, turning the mare. Heading up the mountainside. Toward the pines and aspens blanketing the uneven slopes.

It was almost dusk. If she could reach that forest, maybe she could lose him in the darkness. It was her only chance. She loosened her grip on the reins. The mare stretched out her neck and galloped headlong for the woods.

They splashed across a creek. Barely lost speed as they raced up a hill and down the other side. Annie could already see the gold of the aspen leaves. Felt desperation and hope surge inside her. They raced up another steep rise. Reached the crest.

And suddenly the ground fell away sharply from beneath the horse’s hooves.

The mare whinnied, pawing at empty air as they plunged forward.

And tumbled straight down.

~ ~ ~

Lucas swore as his quarry disappeared in the distance. Vanished as if she had dropped right off the mountain.

Where the hell did she go?
Fury shot through him.
Not this time, damn it
. He dug his heels into the bay gelding’s sides, kept his Peacemaker drawn and ready. He wouldn’t let Antoinette Sutton slip through his fingers again. Wouldn’t fall for another of her tricks.

All dressed up in calico and innocence
. He felt sick at the way she’d duped him with her disguise. Made him think that such a sweet face and gentle smile and big brown eyes couldn’t belong to a coldhearted killer. She’d played him for a fool.

He kept his gaze fastened on the place where she had vanished. Blocked out everything else. As the bay galloped toward the trees, Lucas felt a familiar, icy cool slide through his veins—a sensation that always overcame him when he neared the end of a long, grueling hunt. It made him all the more aware of the heavy pistol in his hand, powder and steel ready to ignite and explode.

In some remote part of his brain, he noticed the peacefulness of the meadows around him, thought it strange that this was where his search for his brother’s murderer would end. And it
would
end. Today. Now. She might be tricky, but the dappled horse she had stolen was no match for the bigger, faster gelding he had taken from the livery.

And she was no match for him.

It was almost too easy to follow the swath cut through the tall grass. He rode within yards of the spot where she had disappeared—and yanked the bay to a sudden, rearing halt.

He studied the crest of the steep rise, his eyes narrowing as an obvious explanation for Antoinette’s disappearance hit him.

She might have one last bit of treachery up her calico sleeve. Maybe the direction of her headlong flight hadn’t been random at all—maybe she had led him here on purpose.

This would make a perfect spot to bushwhack him from below as he came galloping over the top. She could very well be armed. Could’ve been carrying a pistol in her skirts all along.

Lucas dismounted, dropping quietly to the ground, holding his Colt ready. He hadn’t survived eight years in the Federal Marshals’ service by making careless mistakes. He slapped the bay on its lathered flank and sent it trotting back down the way they had come.

Then he crouched low and silently crept toward the top.

The clouds high overhead played with the vanishing sun, made its light shifting and deceptive, bright rays and black shadows dueling over the green landscape. The wind moving through the grass sounded unnaturally loud, his own breathing even louder.

His every muscle tensed. His boot crushed a dried leaf and he flinched. Paused. Kept moving.

The last few feet he covered on his belly, his eyes never leaving the fringe of grass that marked the crest of the hill. When he was just inches from it, he stopped and remained still, flattened against the ground. He waited. Listened. Heard nothing.

Only the peaceful chirping of meadow birds.

He waited a moment more.

Then he lunged to his feet and brought up the .45 and swept the hillside below in a swift arc.

But he didn’t see her standing at the bottom, waiting to kill him.

He saw her lying at the bottom, on her back, a patch of crumpled, faded blue among all the green.

His heart thudded a strange, doubled beat. Her horse was nowhere in sight. It looked like she had come up on the sheer drop too fast and fallen—

No, it was a trick.

“Antoinette Sutton,” he shouted, starting to walk down the hill toward her, aiming right at her.

He called her name a second time and she stirred, moaning. She lifted her head, pressed her hand against the ground as if struggling to raise herself up on one elbow.

He couldn’t see her other hand. Kept waiting for her to whip out a gun. Instead she froze, staring up at him. He looked down into her lovely face.

And knew it had been the last thing his brother saw before he died.

Cold, blinding fury seized him. He thumbed back the hammer on his Colt. His finger tightened on the trigger. Her eyes widened, locked on the barrel of the .45.

His breathing became harsh. He could feel the steel curve beneath his finger. So smooth, so hard. So
easy
.

One shot and it would all be over.

But still she didn’t pull a weapon. Didn’t beg for mercy or curse him or spit in defiance. She just gazed, transfixed, at the Peacemaker, with those brown eyes so like a doe’s.

And a second later she lowered her lashes, her expression shifting to one that held no terror or even resignation but...

Acceptance.

Lucas felt a tremor go through him. He ignored it. Held his hand steady. Sweat trickled into his eyes. He blinked it away, remembering young Peter and Cordelia, crying. His sisters, looking to him for justice. Olivia, pleading with him.
The West is an uncivilized place
...

No questions would be asked.

Before he knew what he was doing, he was at the bottom of the hill, standing over her, the pistol still in his hand. Antoinette flattened herself against the ground with a cry that might have been fear or pain or both.

This close, he could see her cheek badly bruised, her lip bleeding. No gun in her hands. He eased the hammer forward.

And holstered his pistol.

She blinked up at him with a look that mirrored his own surprise at what he had just done.

And
now
she looked terrified. “W-what do you... what...”

He reached down for her but she shook her head and tried to scramble away—only to stop, gasping sharply.

He caught her arm, his fingers clamping around her wrist.
So soft
. Quickly, he searched her for weapons—sure that he would find a pistol, a knife—and found none. When he pulled her to her feet, her right leg gave way beneath her and she crumpled to the ground with an exclamation of pain.

He told himself he didn’t care. Took a pair of handcuffs from the pocket of his trousers.

“Federal Marshal,” he bit out, his voice heavy with disgust—for her and for himself. “Miss Antoinette Sutton, you are under arrest for the murder of James McKenna, your lover.” He knelt in front of her, jerked her hands together, and locked the steel manacles around her wrists.

Then he pulled her close to him, glaring into her eyes as he revealed the rest. “My brother.”

She uttered a choked, wordless sound. Her eyes filled with disbelief. Shock.

Panic.

He slid one hand behind her back and the other beneath her knees to lift her up. She fainted in his arms.

~ ~ ~

It took one hell of a long time to make his way back to town.

The sun dropped behind the white-capped peaks in the west, leaving the mountainside gray and soft and shadowy with dusk as Lucas rode across the meadows. He kept the gelding to a slow walk, his right arm around his unconscious prisoner, the reins in his other hand. The dappled horse limped a few paces behind.

He’d found the mare stumbling back toward town with a lame leg, and at first had considered just putting her out of her misery. God knew he wanted to put a bullet in
something
. But it wasn’t his horse, so it wasn’t his decision.

He only wished he had such a simple explanation, any explanation, for why he hadn’t shot the woman now cradled in his lap.

He looked down at her, this wisp of a female, her weight almost nothing against his thighs and his shoulder, her slender throat arched back over his arm, her dark curls tumbling down the horse’s side. Her face was so delicate, her features so flawless, she could pose as a model for an expensive china doll. He could see why James had found her attractive, he thought bitterly.

James would have wanted to protect her, take care of her.

Lucas felt fresh anger simmering in his gut. Anger at this innocent-looking lightskirt... and at his own weakness. It had come as an unpleasant surprise to discover that—despite his hunger for retribution, despite all the god-awful things he had seen and done in his life, despite the hatred he felt—he didn’t have it in him to shoot Antoinette Sutton.

And he didn’t understand why.

Because she was unarmed
, he told himself.
Because she was hurt and vulnerable
.

He briefly thought it might be her beauty, but it had been a long time since Lucas was an inexperienced kid, hypnotized by every pretty female who came within ten feet of him.

He had no real answer. Only the fact that, so far, nothing about Antoinette Sutton was what he’d expected.

Her clothes and her thinness and the dark circles under her eyes told him she hadn’t been living the carefree life of ease and luxury he’d imagined. Nor had she been waiting to ambush him out on that hill.

She had, in fact, simply fallen from her horse. And gotten badly hurt. The bruise on her cheek and cut on her lip were the least of it. He could tell she had broken a rib or two. And maybe her ankle. Hell, if the fall had been bad enough, she could be bleeding inside.

If he had any sense, he would just dump her here in the middle of nowhere and leave her to the slow, painful death she deserved.

Yet he kept riding. And tried to figure out what he intended to do next. Things would’ve been simple if he had taken vengeance, let his Colt dispense justice.

But he had allowed that moment to pass, like the storm clouds that had vanished from the sky overhead without releasing even one flash of lightning.

The bay gelding stumbled and Antoinette moaned, her lashes fluttering upward. When her gaze met Lucas’s, she made a sound of distress and started struggling to break free.

He tightened his arm around her. “Don’t even
think
about it, lady. You cause me any trouble, you give me just one reason to put a bullet in you, and I’ll take it.”

She went still, her breathing shallow and uneven, her body tense in his hold. Her dark eyes, glassy with pain, searched his face.

And somehow he sensed what she was thinking. “Yes,” he said harshly, “James’s brother, Lucas. I favor our father. James favors our mother—or rather, he
did
. Until you shot him dead.”

She swallowed hard, looked away.

“Aren’t you even going to try and deny it?” he demanded, his fingers digging into her arm. “Tell me I’ve got the wrong woman,
Mrs. Smith
? Insist there must be some mistake?”

He could feel her body trembling against his. She remained silent for a long moment. The horse’s hooves clopped through the grass.

“There’s...” Her voice was soft, and bleak. “... No mistake.”

Surprised, Lucas couldn’t respond for a moment. Then he whispered a curse. Hearing her admit her guilt brought him no satisfaction. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.