Catch Me (17 page)

Despite her crime, Maggie didn’t deserve to be treated like that. She was a good woman who’d made one bad decision. That she could very well handle herself made no difference. They were poor excuses for men to pick on a woman.

He couldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t.

He’d looked forward to this job as a last chance for his red-stained soul. A way to get on the straight and narrow, his only opportunity for salvation.

But there was no salvation to be had by sacrificing the woman he loved.

His heart punched and fluttered in his chest. No. Not just no, hell no. He couldn’t love again. He
wouldn’t
. Considering how unworthy he was of protecting a family, he couldn’t allow himself to do that again.

Dean pressed his forehead to his fist, still on the windowsill. But it was too late. Somewhere along the trail, he’d lost his heart to his wild hellcat. Or more accurately, she’d stolen it. Maggie was so fiercely full of life that any man in his right mind who spent more than an hour in her company would fall in love with her.

And he’d already failed her. He’d been so fucking afraid, he’d handed her over to a man who’d make it his goal to break her soul. In jail, at his mercy. Even Maggie’s ferocity would stand little chance against a man like that.

There was only one thing left to do. After blithely handing her over, Dean had little hope she’d forgive him. He wasn’t sure he could forgive himself. Though he couldn’t stand by and watch her abused and mistreated, he didn’t feel capable of piecing together a sugar-spun dream of the future. But there was business to be done before he could even come to that bridge, much less cross it.

He had to break Maggie out of jail.

It only took a couple hours for Dean to collect what he needed and track down Andrew at the town’s only saloon.

Andrew sat at a table in the corner, his back to the wall and his feet kicked up on another chair. Dean was sure his brother saw him walk in, but he turned his attention back to the buxom blonde seated next to him. While her dress buttoned all the way up to her chin, her actions betrayed her as a whore. Fingers wiggled between the buttons of Andrew’s waistcoat and she looked likely to curl herself around him any second. Andrew gave the woman a lazy smile and wound a strand of her hair around his finger.

Dean plopped into an empty chair and dropped the satchel he’d spent the last hour collecting. “Thanks for the invitation to join you, don’t mind if I do.”

Andrew took a hefty swig of whiskey from a glass tumbler. “I don’t much feel like talking to you. So if you know what’s best, you would probably be moving along. Plenty of empty tables around.”

Dean waved at a serving girl wearing a long, blue skirt with a corset that looked like it had probably once been white. “Look, I know I’ve been an ass.”

“Is that right?” Andrew brushed a kiss over the woman’s cheek and whispered something in her ear before sending her away with a swat on the posterior. He leaned back in his chair and looped an arm over the back as he watched her sway away. “I’ve been watching you act like the veriest jackanapes to ever walk the earth. It is astonishing that my mother managed to raise someone so obscenely stupid.”

“I get it.” Dean shut his mouth again while the girl deposited a glass of whiskey before him. Not much selection, apparently. All the men scattered at the tables, most of them in the rough working clothes of ranchers and miners, had the same glasses of amber liquid before them. When he’d paid his quarter and she’d left, he turned back to Andrew, who was watching the room with a studied air of unconcern. “I was wrong.”

Andrew cupped a hand about his ear. “What was that? Could you say that again?”

Annoyance twitched his eyes and made his jaw go taut. “You heard me.”

“Of course I did,” Andrew said with a grin. “But I do love hearing it. You always were a stubborn git, even when you were barely out of leading strings.”

“And you were always a sanctimonious prick.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was wrong about damn near everything. Running after Annie died and staying gone so long. Most everything I did in that time—except killing Whitson. I won’t take that back, not for anything.”

He closed his eyes and waited for the all-consuming rage that usually washed over him. There was nothing. Maggie had done that. She’d woken him up to the fact that life was worth living and he simply didn’t have the time to allow anger to rule him. He had much better things to be doing. “But I was also wrong about how I’ve treated Maggie, and especially for handing her over to that bastard.”

A hand smacked Dean’s back, making him flinch. “I’m damned proud of you, brother,” Andrew said. “Must have been quite the surgical procedure, removing your head from your ass like that.”

A surprising chuckle burst out of him. Until lately, Maggie had been the only one who’d managed to make him laugh. Another gift she’d given him, only for him to throw it back in her face. “It happened a bit more swiftly than one would expect. And was all the more painful for how far up there I’d been wedged.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Andrew replied, matching actions to words as he threw back his entire glass without even a wince. “So. What do you plan to do about it?”

Dean, for one, wasn’t particularly interested in drinking his alcohol. With all the guilt and misery churning in his gut, adding whiskey to the mix didn’t seem wise. “My head up my ass? It’s already out, I do believe.”

“True.” Andrew winked at the serving girl, who came trotting over with another round of drinks. He’d never understood how his brother tossed around such open affection for the female species. Dean had always been much more of a one-woman man. When he lost that woman, he’d been unmanned by his despair, too afraid to try again. Unlike Andrew, who slipped from woman to woman with ease.

Andrew smiled at the girl and accepted the glass of whiskey. This one he let go without a smack, either on the cheek or the ass. “But I’m talking about someone else who’s wedged in a bit of a tight place, thanks to you.”

“Maggie.” He twirled his glass, finally noting how highly polished the tabletop was. He could nearly see his haggard eyes in the reflection.

“That would be the one.”

“I have a plan.”

“Praise the Lord!” Andrew leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. “Do tell.”

He edged the bag over to Andrew with the side of his foot. “In there.”

Quizzical concern darkening his eyes, his brother leaned over and flipped open the top flap of the bag. Inside, half a dozen brown cylinders nestled together. Andrew released a low whistle through his teeth. “Saints be damned,” he said, so quietly that Dean had to bend closer to hear him. “That’s enough to blow twenty feet into bedrock.”

Dean shrugged. He’d gotten all the dynamite he could lay his hands on. He’d been to two different mines and the assay office before he’d stolen enough. He’d figured it was better to have too much than to only be able to fluff a little dust around. “You in?”

“You ain’t considered asking Masterson pretty please to let her out?”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “And how well do you think that’d go over? All things considered.”

“Good point.” Andrew leaned back in his seat again and narrowed his eyes. “What are your plans for afterwards?”

Agitation made him drum his fingers across the table. “Don’t have any.” The answer didn’t sit well on his tongue, but then he was on the cusp of turning his entire world upside down. Not much past getting Maggie out seemed important.

“I’m not surprised.” Andrew’s features darkened with concern. “Then we free Maggie from jail and spirit you two out of town. There’s lots of room to get lost in the West.”

Dean skirted that question, simply shaking his head. “We’ll figure that out when we come to it. First, we’ve got to bust her out. I’m thinking round about midnight.”

For a long moment, Andrew watched him with a heaviness that felt particularly uncomfortable. But then he was back to the brother Dean knew, smiling and grinning. “I’ve always preferred mischief in the witching hour.”

Even though night had fallen a long, dark stretch ago, there was no chance Maggie would be able to sleep. Her hands still shook with rage and she watched the barred door of the jail with a wary eye. Mahouly was on guard and something about the way he watched her set her skin to crawling. He was supposed to be sitting in the front office of the jail, but every fifteen minutes, he’d stroll on back to the cells and peer in at her. Like she was going anywhere through three-foot-thick adobe walls.

Her limbs vibrated with useless energy. The cell, while clean and neat, was only six feet by seven. With the bunk, there wasn’t even room to get a good pace on. The one tiny window on the far side from the door faced the narrow alley between the jail and the mercantile. All Maggie could see through it was ocher-colored stucco and a bare two inches of deep black sky. One sparkling star. That was it. She lay down on the narrow cot and stretched her legs out.

Despite having spent the last six hours trying to decide, she couldn’t pick whom she’d like to kill first. Masterson for betraying his long association with her father and backing her into this corner? Mahouly for taking such obvious enjoyment in her imprisoned state? Her father for losing all his money in such ill thought out ventures?

No. The man she’d like to do injury to the most would be Dean. He wasn’t as caught up in their little drama as everyone else; he’d shown himself to be not half the man she’d thought him.

She sighed. Was that his fault, though? He’d warned her all along not to get her expectations too high. And she’d done it anyway.

If there was any blame to be passed around, the majority of it was headed her way. She’d made so many foolhardy decisions over the last weeks she could hardly keep track. They’d continued when she’d tried her damnedest to sock Masterson one in the nose after Dean had walked away. Masterson had made a snide comment about her father missing out on seeing her go to jail and Maggie lost her mind, trying to attack him despite his small phalanx of guards. Almost to a one, her bad decisions had started when she’d discovered her father was dying. It was past time to settle her brain and learn to think ahead.

Pity she wouldn’t have much chance for that in the territorial prison.

Worse than that, even knowing precisely what type of bastard Dean was, she couldn’t seem to make herself regret the intimate time they’d spent together. Though he might be too afraid to stand up for the right thing, she knew how he’d looked at her when she was in his arms. As if she were something precious, that would disappear any moment. She supposed she had, at that, though he’d been the one to throw away what they could have made together.

“Maggie. Maggie, over here.”

She barely noticed the soft voice, lost in her memories of Dean’s kiss.

“Maggie, get your ass over here!” the voice hissed.

She sat bolt upright and slapped her hands flat on the woolen blanket at her hips. “What in the name…” That hadn’t been Mahouly, that’s for sure. His leering grin wasn’t looking in at the door, and he hadn’t been at all compelled to whisper when he’d delighted in reporting conditions at the Yuma Prison. He’d been an inmate there, not a guard.

Dean waited at the window. Her heart stuttered stupidly in her chest.

She slipped off the cot and stood, wrapping her fingers around the cool iron bars. The trembling that had pestered her the whole night had flown away. “What are you doing here? I’d think the future sheriff would come in the front door to laugh at a prisoner.”

He folded his hands over hers. His warm fingers traced soft patterns on her knuckles. “I’d never laugh at you, Maggie. Never.”

Her traitorous heart thumped faster at his gentle tone, and she melted deep in her belly at the warmth in his pale eyes. But she kept her mouth twisted tight and didn’t allow a speck of her weakness to show. “No, I don’t suppose you would. Not much point when you’re walking away like a dad-gummed coward.” Still, she kept her voice low and only hissed her words. Despite her anger, she shouldn’t like to see him and Mahouly get into it. Not because she feared for Dean, but because she knew he’d rather not be on the outside of the law anymore. And since Masterson had apparently deputized Mahouly in her father’s absence, that’s exactly where Dean would be.

A wry smile curved his mouth. “I deserve that. I know I do. And once we get you out of here, you’ll have plenty of time to yell at me.”

“What?” she squawked. Her fingers twitched on the bars, and he stroked a thumb across the base of her wrist, where her pulse fluttered. He hushed her with a soft noise. She had to take a deep breath and shake the cobwebs from her head before she could go on. “How in the world do you plan to do that?”

His smile burst into a full grin and she went a little light-headed. God, how this man managed to turn her inside out.

He cupped her jaw. “I’m going to blow the walls.”

“You’ve plumb lost your mind.”

He pulled her forward and brushed a fast kiss across her lips, just when she’d almost begun to get her heartbeat under control. “That might be. It sure might be.”

Heavy footsteps echoed down the jail’s tile-lined hallway. Her eyes went wide and she snatched her hands away from the bars, even as she waved at him. “Down,” she whispered. “Get down.”

She dropped to a seat and pushed her hair back out of her face, praying Mahouly wouldn’t be able to see her ridiculous excitement.

But it wasn’t Mahouly who appeared. It was Linkers. She swallowed, rubbing her tongue across the desert-dry roof of her mouth.

Linkers rested his arms across the gray bars of the cell door. He looked much the worse for wear. A deep purple bruise circled his right eye, and his lip was split and swollen. “Hello there, Maggie.”

She refused to give him the respect of a polite greeting. Leaning back against the wall, she folded her arms across her chest like she had all the time in the world. It had the added benefit of concealing her bosom from his hungry gaze. Masterson, like the bastard he was, had refused to allow her privacy to change into a proper dress. While she’d been quite comfortable in her male clothing out on the trail, it felt different in town. Like she was more exposed.

“Nothing to say?” His tongue darted out to probe against the red seam in his bottom lip. “You had plenty to say to me before.”

“Telling you how much I hate you would be a waste of good air.”

“You might try being nice to me. I wouldn’t ask for nothing you haven’t already given up.”

Her stomach roiled at the thought. “I’d be dead and buried four days before I let you touch me.”

His beady eyes flashed and his smile looked particularly rat-like as his tongue darted out yet again. “Now that ain’t right. You were sure willing to let Collier touch you for a chance at freedom.”

“That’s not what happened,” she snapped, before she had time to reconsider the words. She needed to make him leave, not enter into a dialogue.

“Sure looked it to me. Collier didn’t hesitate to string you up same as me when you turned up sour to him, now did he?” His narrow chest puffed out. “Play nice and Mr. Masterson will spring you for me.”

Her bitter laugh burned her throat. “You’re nothing more than a lapdog to him.”

“You’re wrong,” he snapped. His face went red and a thick vein popped out on his forehead.

She schooled her face into a dismissive mask of amusement. “Is that right?” Raising her hand, she made a show of picking at her nails. “Then I tell you what. Run along and ask Masterson to release me. You get me out of here and somewhere I can take a long, hot bath and I’ll be as sweet as clover honey.”

His eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “You’re lying, ain’t you?”

She aimed a brilliant smile his way. “You’ll never know, will you? Because the likelihood of Masterson doing your bidding is on the same order of Fresh Springs getting a foot of snow in July.”