Captive (50 page)

“James, you don’t understand. It’s not just the military now,” Jarrett said. “It’s Warren, and his men aren’t army, they’re cutthroats.”

“Warren!” James said incredulously. “Warren has returned to St. Augustine, discovered the escape, and come here so quickly? It can’t possibly be Warren—”

“James, you knew he’d been informed that you were here,” Jarrett reminded him. “And I’m telling you, I recognize the man! I don’t know how he has managed to move so quickly, only that he has. Perhaps he arrived at the Castillo with his troops just as the escape was discovered. What difference does it make? He is here, riding toward this house right now.”

“Oh, my God!” Teela breathed. She stared at James. “You knew that he knew you were in St. Augustine? You shouldn’t have come here! You fool, you shouldn’t have come—”

“I had to come,” he told her.

She leapt to her feet, racing across the room to the place where he stood by the window. “You’ve got to go quickly, please! He’ll kill you.”

James hesitated. “And what will he do to you?”

“Well, he can’t
kill
me,” she stated, and added bitterly, “Not in front of witnesses.”

“But he can take you from Jarrett’s house.”

“James, you’ve got to leave us. You have to go,” Jarrett said.

“I should have this out with him!” he cried passionately. “He hasn’t the right to his cruelty, his determination to destroy so many lives.”

“James!” Teela pleaded, “don’t be insane. You can’t talk to him rationally. You can’t fight an entire company of men. You’ve got to go.”

“Wait—” James said.

“For the love of God, go!” Jarrett exclaimed.

“Please!” Teela added.

He didn’t want to go. The greatest feeling of unease
was ripping through him, and not because Warren could have him fired upon by a half dozen rifles at once. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to leave Teela.

But it seemed that she and his brother were right; he would only invite disaster if he stayed. With no logical argument, he couldn’t fight Jarrett and Teela, and it was certainly true that he couldn’t tackle Warren and all his men alone and bare-handed. He stared at Teela one last time, then turned and ran silently for the balcony. He leapt over the rail, balling his body to fall to the ground with a spring action, then stayed hunched low behind the shrubbery as he watched the riders approach, stopping in the front.

He saw the first man on horseback, saw him as he reined in.

Saw Warren.

The man’s eyes seemed alight with a fanatical glow. He had the greatest zest for a chase, a pursuit.

For murder.

“Surround the place, men!” he ordered. “See that no one goes in or out. Pay me heed! That renegade half-breed will not hide behind his brother’s white flesh tonight!”

James counted the men. Ten of them with Warren, all of them armed with rifles, knives, and bayonets. As they scattered, Warren observed the house with that same gleam, seeming to grow brighter in the night.

“Indeed!” he said softly, almost to himself. “Tonight that McKenzie half-breed will pay the price of his wretched audacity—with his blood. With his blood, by God, I swear it!”

With that, Warren dismounted and started for the house.

J
ames slipped along the flower bushes growing beside the walk, keeping very low. Warren’s men had all dismounted. James could have stolen a horse and disappeared quickly into the night—except that he knew he wasn’t going anywhere, not until he had seen what Warren had in mind.

He didn’t leave the yard. He crawled quickly to a heavy branch of a very old oak in the yard and climbed it. From where he perched, he could see dimly into the parlor of the house, and into Teela’s room above it. He heard a rustling below him as Warren’s men surrounded the house, two to the back, two in front, and two to each side—two, with their guns loaded and aimed, had entered the house with Warren. The fellow on James’s side of the house was all but beneath him, guarding a window.

Candlelight suddenly blazed throughout the house. James heard Warren, demanding entry and the right to search the place. He heard Tara speaking next, her voice outraged. He strained to listen as others spoke. Jarrett warned Warren in no uncertain terms that he would have words with the governor, General Jesup, and even Martin Van Buren if Warren didn’t get himself and his men out of the house.

“Your half-breed brother staged the disappearance of some of General Jesup’s most important captives! If you think that Jesup will overlook your brother’s part in the escape, McKenzie, you are sadly mistaken.”

“This is private property, Warren. My property. And I want you off it.”

“I can’t oblige you, sir. Now stand aside, or I will shoot.”

“You shoot me, and I can guarantee that you’ll go on trial for murder. If you live that long. The half-breed you’re hunting would find a way to slit your throat.”

“Ah, yes, McKenzie, you know his violence as well as I do!”

“I know
your
dishonorable violence.”

“Let him search the house if he wishes, Jarrett,” Tara said. “We can speak to his superiors about him at a later time.”

“I’ll start in my daughter’s room,” Warren said. “Newman!” he barked out, addressing one of his men. “If he moves to stop me, shoot him!”

“I’m not going to stop you. Search your daughter’s room. My brother isn’t there.”

James quickly drew his gaze to the second floor. He saw through Teela’s window as Warren came bursting through her hallway door.

“Well, daughter!” Warren stated, a wealth of venom in the two simple words.

“Warren,” Teela said in return. “You’ve returned alive and well from the bush.”

“Indeed!”

“What a pity, sir, for all those who will continue to die because of you.”

James did not hear Warren’s next words, for the man lowered his voice to a deadly quiet pitch.

And he didn’t hear what Teela had to say in return, but he definitely heard the venom Warren spilled out after. “Injun-lovin’
whorel
Vilest bitch seed I’ve ever seen thrown out of woman …”

Warren was suddenly across the room, one of his hands in Teela’s hair, holding her taut by a thick hank of it.

“I’ll kill you, girl! At the very least I’ll kill that brat bastard you’re carrying!”

*  *  *

Kill you, kill you, kill you, kill the brat …

She wasn’t in the forest, or the swamp. On a pine barren, or anywhere that might have been called wild or dangerous. Yet here it was. Her nightmare.

She had run and run, and heard the footsteps after her all the while. Because there had been nowhere to run. Warren was the monster in her life. The savage.

The one who meant to kill her babe.

She shouted out expletives to him, words she hadn’t realized that she knew …

Kill the babe, oh, God, no. She couldn’t let him, couldn’t let him. But she had no weapons. He was strong. A military man. A well-trained savage.

She had to fight him.

For the baby.

Their baby.

James tensed, ready to spring. Teela didn’t even scream, she just gritted her teeth, her nails digging into Warren’s hands with such force that he shouted, freeing her. She started to back away from Warren. He caught her with so stunning a blow she fell backward against the wall. Then he started to hit her. Again, and again.

James saw red. Blood red.

Reason deserted his mind; no thought of the possible consequences deterred him. He leapt down from the tree and headed for a trellis to skim up the wall to Teela’s balcony.

One of Warren’s men, guarding the window, stepped toward him. “Halt!”

James kept going.

“Halt, or I’ll shoot!”

“You ass! He’s beating his daughter!”

“He’s her father; it’s his right!” the man defended.

James moved so swiftly the soldier was never able to raise his rifle. He knocked the man unconscious with a solid blow to his jaw. He flew to the balcony, then propelled himself swiftly into the room—and onto Warren.

He caught the man by the throat, spun him around, and slammed his fist into his face. He heard a crunching that assured him he had broken the man’s nose. Warren swore, trying to lash out in turn, but a vivid, hot anger, unlike anything he had known in all his life, seized hold of James.

He had killed men before. Killed them in battle. Killed them because they would have killed him first.

He had never wanted to kill.

Now he did.

He beat Warren, and beat him again, until he fell to the floor. Then he crawled atop the man, ready to smash in more of his face.

But he heard Teela’s voice, crying out to him.

“No, James! God, no! They’ll call it murder. They’ll want to hang you for it. James, you can’t kill him. You just can’t do it.”

Her hands were on him, long fingers digging into his arm. He barely heard her at first. The whole of the room seemed to be spinning in red.

He stopped and looked at her. Her hair was wild; she was flushed. Yet there were no marks on her face. If she’d been seriously hurt, she gave no sign.

“Teela, you—”

“I’m fine.”

“Our child?”

“Fine. Please, James, don’t kill him! You didn’t cause the massacre or kidnap anyone. You don’t stand condemned now. But if you kill Warren, you will be hunted for murder. Please, James, he’s not worth it! I tell you, he isn’t worth your spit, and he’s not worth the rest of our lives.”

He stood, dragged to his feet by her. He stared down at Warren, still seized by that consuming, heated anger.

“For you,” he whispered, tenderly setting his hands upon her shoulders, kissing her forehead. “For you, he lives.”

“For us!”

Yet even as he pressed his lips quickly against her
forehead once again, the door to Teela’s room suddenly burst open. Soldiers streamed quickly into the room, all of them with rifles aimed at Teela and James.

“The savage has done in the major!” a young man shouted.

“Not—done in!” Warren gasped, trying to rise. Men rushed forward to aid him. “But the savage surely did try to finish me off!”

“We’ll have him in custody, sir—” another of the men began.

“Custody, hell!” Warren raged. “We’ll hang him here and now, out on the oak. Take him!”

Teela screamed, trying to grasp James as the soldiers rushed in on him, but even as Teela was dragged away, James fought. He punched, kicked, gouged, threw his fists again and again. The men fell back, injured. Wailing.

But they kept rising. They kept coming. He kept fighting.

Then he heard a shot, fired into the ceiling. He stopped fighting, because Warren had a Colt repeater pressed against Teela’s skull. “Her or you,” Warren said flatly.

“Sir!” began one of his men.

“Silence! Her or you!” Warren raged.

James didn’t trust the man not to put a bullet through her skull, even if it did mean he would pay with his own life. James went still. He lifted his hands in surrender. Soldiers surged around him again, grappling him by the arms.

Jarrett was somewhere, he thought, not believing that he could die here. Lose the sweet taste of life to a man so wretched and treacherous as Warren. Warren could not get away with this atrocity.

One of the soldiers pressed the muzzle of his gun against James’s throat. “Your hands, Mr. McKenzie,” the man said. He was shaking. He was afraid of James.

“Mr. McKenzie!” Warren spat. ”Running Bear,
breed
.
He is no ‘Mr.’, son! Now bind his hands and be quick about it.”

Maybe the young soldier was every bit as afraid of what he was doing as he was of James.

James had no choice. He offered up his hands. The soldier was still shaking as he tied James’s hand behind his back. The man did a poor job of it. James was not at all securely tied. However, it wasn’t his place to let his captors know it. He remained still, staring at Warren.

“Let’s head for the oak,” Warren said.

“No!” Two of the men had taken Teela’s arms and pressed her to the wall across the room. She shrieked with a wild fury, freeing herself from the soldiers to throw herself at Warren, scratching, clawing, slamming against him. “No, you’ll not get away with this. You’ll—”

Warren whipped his Colt against her head. She fell to the bed with barely a whimper. James started to surge forward. The gun muzzle pressed against his Adam’s apple.

“Did you want her to watch you die, eh, injun?” Warren inquired. He tried to wipe the blood from his face. His nose was smashed. Tomorrow he’d have two huge black eyes. The whole of his face would be swollen and bruised.

Pity I won’t live to see it!
James thought.

And Teela had offered Warren mercy!

Well, he might die himself, James determined, but if he did so, Warren was going with him. Teela was going to be free. And she would love their child, and Jennifer. And there would be a future for the three of them, at least.

“Let’s go!” Warren barked. He was obviously still in great pain.

The men began to usher James toward the door, down the hall, and toward the stairs.

He found his brother at last, and realized that Jarrett had never been given a chance to come to his aid. He lay slumped down on the bottom step with Tara kneeling
over him. A soldier stood over her, gun aimed at her. She gasped, looking up as she saw James coming down the stairs. Tears were streaming down her face. ”You fools! You’ve already injured my husband, and I swear, you’ll have the devil to pay. Stop this, stop this!”

James burst free from his retainers, hurrying toward Tara and his fallen brother. He fell to his knees at the bottom of the stairs, trying to see Jarrett’s face, to ascertain what had happened to him. “Tara—”

“Jarrett will be all right. He’s knocked out,” Tara assured him quickly. “He tried to run up the stairs when he heard the shot, and this big brave soldier here”—she mockingly indicated the man with the gun—”slammed the back of his head with his rifle butt. James, where are they taking you, what are they doing?” “It’s all right, Tara, stay with him.”

”James, what—”

“Tara, stay with Jarrett. See to Teela when you can.”