Blood Blade Sisters Series (16 page)

“Let’s get to it then. Sooner we get this pain in the ass out of the way, sooner we can run this town the way it should be.”

Cilla had to clench her fists to keep from jumping out and pummeling the two braying jackasses. But she kept it together. Time enough for revenge.

Cilla turned to go back into the store and ran smack into Leo’s hard, unyielding chest. She jumped as if he’d bitten her.

“What do you think you are up to?” he asked.

“Just wanted to hear a little more, that’s all.”

“Cilla…”

She ignored him and the warning tone in his voice and marched back into the shop.

“Mrs. Williams, how often are Frank’s men in here getting free goods?”

“Oh, don’t pay any mind to that. They just keep an open tab, that’s all.”

The sound of shattering glass interrupted Cilla’s next thought and she ran to the window to look out into the street. A fight had broken out in the shop across the street and it looked as though a chair had been thrown through the window. Cilla gasped and made to run outside, but Leo held her back. She went back to Mrs. Williams, who didn’t seem surprised in the least.

“Does that happen often?”

“Often enough. It’s all right. That’s the Bartons’ place. They cleared out of town a few weeks ago.”

“The Bartons have been around for longer than I can remember. Why would they leave?”

“Sheriff Richardson raised their rent again. They couldn’t pay. He gave them a week to pay up or get out. So they left.”

“But Frank doesn’t
own
their shop. They were in this town before it was a town.”

Mrs. Williams fidgeted with a few knickknacks on the counter. “The sheriff bought them out, let them stay on as tenants. He owns most of the places around here now. Keeps trying to get me to sell, but I won’t, no matter how much pressure he puts on me,” she said, a spark of her old stubbornness returning to her eyes.

“If I could get word to Blood Blade how bad things have gotten, he could…”

“Oh, goodness, no! I mean,” she said, her face turning red as she reached out for Cilla’s hand, “I know you mean well, child. But no. We don’t want no part of Blood Blade in this town anymore.”

Cilla felt as though she’d been socked in the gut. Blood Blade had never done anything but help these people.

Mrs. Williams obviously knew what Cilla was thinking.

“I know your family has always been…friendly with…you know who. And I know he’s helped a bit in the past. But any help from him would just come at too great a cost. Maybe if my Bobby hadn’t been…” She sniffed and shook her head.

“Never mind. Here.” She pushed the package toward Cilla. “Here. Give this to your sister. We heard that she had her baby. Is it…doing well?”

The guilt on her face made it apparent that she also knew that the midwife had refused to deliver the baby. Cilla pushed away the spark of anger that flared up. She couldn’t blame these people for not wanting to get on Frank’s bad side. Even if it had almost cost her sister and the baby their lives.

“Yes, Brynne and the baby are both doing well. She had a little girl.”

Mrs. Williams smiled. “I’m glad to hear it. Children are such a blessing.”

Her smile faded and grief crept across her face. Now it was Cilla’s turn to feel guilty. She took the package.

“Thank you. This is very kind of you.”

Mrs. Williams swiped away a few tears that had escaped and waved Cilla away. “Oh, it’s not much. Some old baby blankets I’d been saving and some cloth that makes the softest diapers this side of the Rockies. A few other odds and ends.”

“Brynne will be glad for them.” Cilla gave her a warm smile and gathered up the rest of their purchases.

By the time they’d stashed the supplies away in the saddlebags, Cilla’s mind was already back on the gold. They mounted and headed out of town. Leo didn’t say anything, but she knew it was coming. He knew her well enough by now that he would know what she was thinking.

He waited until the town was a ways behind them and it was clear no one was following them before he let into her.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Leo, do you have any idea what we could do with that amount of gold? We could buy the whole town back!”

“First of all, you have no idea how much gold will be there. And second, it has to be a trap! Do you really think it was coincidence that two of Frank’s men just happened to walk into the general store at the same time we were in town for supplies?”

“Well, no.”

“And do you believe they would just walk into a public place blathering about a train full of gold coming in, where anyone could hear it,
and
just happen to let it slip where they’d be keeping all that gold once it did arrive?”

“Of course not!”

“You’re crazy. Absolutely, lock-you-away, out-of-your-mind
crazy
!”

“I am not! If we’re aware it is a trap, then it’s not really a trap, is it?”

Leo frowned at her but he didn’t argue. She took that as a good sign and pressed on.

“A trap needs a certain element of surprise in order to work, agreed?”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “I’ll agree with that. So what’s your point?”

“If we know going in that they are waiting for us, then we can plan ahead for that. We are already two steps ahead of them because we know that they know that we are coming but they don’t know that we know. See?”

Leo sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. “Cilla, no one could follow that.”

“You’re just being obstinate! This can work, Leo. We can do this.”

A grudging smile played at the corner of his lips. “Arguing with you is like yelling at a deaf cat. Neither one of you hears a thing and wouldn’t follow directions if you could.”

Cilla grinned at him. “So you’ll help me?”

Leo shook his head and laughed. “I’ll hear you out. But you get to tell Brynne.” He spurred his horse into a gallop.

Cilla stuck her tongue out at him and followed him home. She had no idea what to say to her sister, but she had a feeling Brynne would be a lot harder to convince than Leo.

Only one way to find out.

Chapter Seventeen

“Are you out of your mind?”

Brynne slammed her hands down on the table and glowered at Cilla. The scene felt eerily familiar. Leo had apparently noticed because he spent an unnecessary amount of time rubbing a finger across his twitching lips. Finally, Cilla had had enough.

“Brynne, I am not crazy. This could work! And you!” she said, rounding on Leo. “I fail to see what is so amusing about this.”

He shook his head. “Then you are blind as well as deaf. Brynne is right. You are out of your mind. It’s a trap. You know it’s a trap. Frank will be waiting to pounce the second he sees your face. Did you ever stop to wonder what Frank is doing with all that gold? What possible purpose he might have for bringing it here?”

“It doesn’t matter what he plans on doing with it. It can’t be for anything good.”

“Exactly!” Brynne shouted. “Cilla, that gold is nothing but bait to lure you in. And you are falling for it.”

“I’m not falling for it. I’m fully aware that Frank is trying to lure me in, but he can’t capture me if I steal the bait first.”

Leo frowned and even Brynne calmed down enough to look curious. “What do you mean?”

“Frank will be waiting for us, as you said. He’ll probably have a dozen men guarding his office, his house, and anywhere else where he might hide a safe. His men even said they were setting up a fake safe, which means he doesn’t plan on putting the gold anywhere we’d look for it. So we just have to get to the bait before the trap is set.”

Brynne sat with a huff and crossed her arms. But her expression did carry a spark of interest. “Explain.”

“We take it off the train before it ever gets to Bethany Ridge.”

Leo was shaking his head again. “That’s easier said than done. Frank might be setting the trap here, but that doesn’t mean the gold won’t be guarded on the train. We know there will be at least one man with it. And even if you manage to get back into the cargo hold without being seen, how are you going to get the gold off the train? You can’t just stuff it inside your reticule.”

“True. So we simply have to separate the train from the gold.”

Leo and Brynne both stared at her like she was a cat chasing a fly on the wall.

“How?” Brynne asked.

“We can stash away underneath the train, and once it’s on the move, and a safe distance from any station, we unhook the cars. By the time the conductor realizes he’s lost the cargo car, we’ve already gotten in and out again.”

Brynne and Leo stared at her for a full minute without speaking, their mouths open in shock. Finally, Brynne turned to Leo. “You were right. She’s gone insane.”

“Argh!” Cilla dropped into her chair and glared at both of them. “It
could
work!”

“You are going to hang on to the bottom of a moving train and climb across the connectors to release the pin? While the train is
moving
?”

“I didn’t say it would be easy.”

Brynne snorted.

Cilla shot her a dirty look. “But I think it can be done. I can even practice.”

A short bark of laughter erupted from Leo. “How?”

“Strap me to the bottom of a moving wagon and see if I can unhitch the wagon from the horse.”

Brynne stared at her, dumbfounded. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s better than trying on the train for the first time and finding out I can’t do it.”

Brynne kept quiet, just shaking her head as if Cilla had finally struck her speechless.

Leo leaned his elbows on the table and Cilla took heart in the fact that his brows were drawn together in thought.

“How do you get the gold?” he asked.

“We get in, incapacitate whatever thug they’ve got watching the gold, snatch it, and get out of there.”

“What if there’s more than one?”

“We deal with it then. But Frank doesn’t have that many men he trusts, and I’m guessing he’ll have most of the men in place at his office and stashed around town. Especially if he thinks we are behind Blood Blade. Frank has a bad habit of underestimating us. I doubt he’d believe we’d try a train heist. All the information those idiots were feeding us at the store revolved around the gold being in his office. Not the train. They didn’t know I was listening to that part.”

Leo nodded, but the frown still sat between his brows. “What if the gold is in a safe?”

Cilla’s eyes darted between Leo and Brynne.

“I’ve got it covered.”

“How?” Brynne insisted.

Cilla huffed and walked to her saddlebag, which was leaning against the wall by the front door. She’d been hoping to keep this part to herself until absolutely necessary, but here went nothing. She reached in and pulled out two sticks of dynamite.

“Priscilla Marie Richardson, where in the name of all that is holy did you get that?”

Brynne looked like she wanted to rip it from Cilla’s hands but was too afraid to touch it.

Cilla sighed. “I knew you’d overreact.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter where I got it. Point is, I have it if we need it. If the safe is small enough, we carry it off and deal with it at our leisure. If it’s too large for that, we blow the sucker open.”

Cilla couldn’t keep the smile from her face. She’d always wanted to blow something up.

“This isn’t fun and games, Cilla,” Leo said, his chastising tone not quite mixing with the amusement in his eyes. He wanted to play with the dynamite every bit as much as she did. She knew there was a reason she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

The moment the thought invaded her mind, she pushed it back out again. No time for any of that. Now or ever.

She needed to focus on what was important. Which, at the moment, was the fact that Leo seemed to be on her side.

Brynne must have noticed the same thing. “Leo. You can’t possibly be considering this crazy plan.”

He held up his hands and opened his mouth to speak, but Cilla cut him off.

“As long as the train keeps the same schedule it has for the last five years, it’ll arrive Thursday night around two o’clock in the morning. Which means they’ll stop in Redford around midnight. They’ll unload whatever mail and cargo bound for Redford and we should have at least twenty minutes before they leave again. One of us stows away beneath the train, and the others ride ahead to the rendezvous point and wait for the train to pass by.”

“One of us will stow away? Let me guess…”

Cilla had the grace to flush, but she stuck out her chin anyway, determined to see this through.

“I’m smaller than you and lighter. I’ll fit easier and it will be easier for me to move about.”

Before he could protest, Lucy spoke up. “I’m smaller than both of you. Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to do it?”

All three of them spoke up at once. There was no way any of them would let Lucy ride beneath that train.

Lucy’s lips jutted in a pretty pout. “You can’t do this all alone, Cilla. You let me ride on raids with you. Why not this?”

“Raids are a bit different than strapping my baby sister to the bottom of a moving train,” Cilla argued.

“Exactly!” Brynne jumped in. “There is no way you are going to do this, Priscilla Richardson. I forbid it! We have to find another way to fight Frank.”

“How?” Cilla asked. “Give me another option and I’ll listen. You didn’t see what I saw, Brynne. The town has been completely overrun by Frank and his goons. They own the place. They bought out nearly every business in Bethany Ridge and those who won’t sell are terrorized out of town. And no one will accept Blood Blade’s help anymore. Frank has them so terrified that even if they don’t believe Blood Blade is the one killing everyone, they know that people are being killed in his name or because they are connected to him somehow. What else can we do?”

Brynne opened her mouth to answer but closed it again.

“Exactly,” Cilla said. “There is no other way. But if we had that gold, all that gold that Frank has wrung out of everyone,
then
we’d have something to bargain with. We’d have something to
fight
with. Without it, we are just as helpless as the townspeople.”

Leo sighed. “I hate to admit it, but she has a point.”

“Leo,” Brynne said, her voice hitching with emotion. “It’s too dangerous. It’s a suicide mission. At best, one of you will be captured, and at worst…”

Cilla spoke before Leo could. “That is true every time we walk out that door to go on a raid. Nothing has happened so far.”

“We’ve been lucky. And what do you mean, nothing? You were shot!”

Cilla rolled her eyes. “Once. It was barely more than a scratch.”

“Next time it might be more than that! Even Frank could get lucky one of these days.”

“Brynne,” Cilla said, speaking like she was trying to calm a skittish horse, “I know this is dangerous. I know what we are risking. But if we can pull this off, it’ll be over. Don’t you see? No more raids. No more risking our lives. One way or the other, we can use it to get Frank out of town. And then it
will
be over. We’ll be free.”

Brynne stared at Cilla, her chest heaving. But Cilla knew she was right. Even Brynne had to agree. When her sister’s shoulders slumped in defeat, Cilla knew she’d won.

Cilla looked up into the sea of stars above her head and wondered how she’d once again ended up huddled up with Leo in the dark. Oh, right. Because he was an overbearing, overprotective, completely irritating nit who refused to let her do
anything
on her own. She tried very hard to stamp down on the tiny part of her heart that thought his concern was sweet. She couldn’t afford to let herself dwell on any of that. He wasn’t hers, and never would be.

Maybe after they got the gold and rid the town of Frank, she could go off somewhere. Maybe go east. Or head up north. The thought of leaving her beloved ranch nearly broke her heart. But the thought of staying and watching the man she lov—watching Leo as her sister’s husband was more than she could bear.

“What are you thinking?” Leo said, moving to sit beside her.

Cilla kept her eyes on the train station several hundred yards in front of them.

“I’m thinking that it’s ridiculous that you stayed behind to babysit me. I can manage to slip onto a train by myself. You should have gone ahead with Miguel and Lucy.”

“You don’t have to do everything by yourself, you know.”

“I don’t try to do everything by myself.”

Leo snorted.

“Shut up.”

Leo’s chuckle rumbled from deep in his chest, sounding warm, guttural, and intensely virile.

And entirely too enticing. She tried to scoot a little farther away, but Leo reached out and grasped her arm. “You don’t have to move away.”

“Yes,” she said, staring up into his eyes. “I do.”

“Why? Are you going to take advantage of me, Miss Richardson?”

A smile played at his lips and it took everything Cilla had not to lean over and kiss him. She’d like very much to take advantage of him. In fact, she’d like nothing more than to taste every single, solid inch of him. Repeatedly. Until he shouted her name and begged her for mercy.

Instead, she tried to smile back.

“Something like that,” she murmured.

“Maybe I want to be taken advantage of.” He leaned in closer and Cilla prayed for strength. She reveled in the musky scent of leather and the faint hint of peppermint that always hung about him. She’d once caught him sucking on one of the candies that Mrs. Williams had slipped into her purchases. It was probably one of the things she loved most about him. Her big, strong man who loved a child’s treat. She’d never be able to smell peppermint again without thinking of him.

“This isn’t a good idea, Leo.”

“I don’t care,” he whispered, reaching out to cup her cheek.

He drew her closer and Cilla’s eyes closed as his lips brushed against hers.

A train whistle sounded and Cilla jumped up, adrenaline pumping through her system with such speed her head swam.
Showtime!

She stripped off her coat and shirt, leaving her in her tight-fitting long johns and pants. She patted her hair to make sure it was bound as tightly around her head as it could be. Any loose clothing or trailing hair would be trouble. Everything seemed to be in place.

Cilla took one step in the direction of the station, but Leo jerked her back. He grabbed her face in his hands and kissed her, good and hard, his lips crushing hers with a desperation that frightened and excited her.

Far too soon, he released her. “Be careful,” he said, kissing her once more before letting her go.

Cilla nodded and sprinted for the train, though every ounce of her being screamed at her to turn around and jump back into his arms. Maybe they could find another way to fight Frank. Maybe they could work around their situation with Brynne. Maybe they really could find a way to be together and live happily ever after.

By the time she’d reached the third “maybe,” she’d reached the train and the time for maybes was over.