Catch Me (19 page)

She paused in shuffling the pages. “I don’t understand.”

His smile was rueful and nothing like the open grin she remembered from the first time she’d demonstrated the running horse-mount Robert taught her. Mother had still been alive, her belly swelling with the baby they’d all anticipated too much, and Father had hooked his arm around her shoulders as they watched at the corral fence. Mother had laughed and clapped her hands. Father had simply smiled, but it had been enough. She’d felt his approval all the way down to her toes. What she wouldn’t do to feel that carefree again.

“A long time ago, I made a very bad decision.”

She shook her head and grabbed his wrist. “I don’t believe it.”

“Please, child.” He entwined hand with hers, giving comfort. “Let me tell this. It needs to be done.”

Her throat clenched when she swallowed. For all she’d pushed for answers, perhaps she didn’t want them after all. Not if it seemed to be taking Father apart at the seams. But she nodded anyway, like the good daughter she’d always been. “As you wish, Father.”

He patted her hand. “Masterson came to me with a plan not long after your mother died. He wanted Fresh Springs to grow, but that couldn’t happen so long as the Wailins Gang was terrorizing the area.”

She shook her head and sank back on her heels, drawing her hand away from him. She didn’t want to know where this was going. Not at all.

“Masterson knew how to get to me, that was certain. He said if our town grew, we would have a doctor. Your mother wouldn’t have died if we’d had one. I could prevent that in the future.” His eyes went cloudy as he looked past her, into the past. “But more than that, I was so angry then. I’d lived a good life. Been the best husband I could. The best father.”

“You were.” She snatched his hand again, pressed it between hers. Anything to make Father actually see her. “You were the best father a girl could hope for.”

At least she wrenched a smile from him, though it was wan and thin. “I’m glad you thought so. But that only seemed to make it worse. All the years I’d spent doing the best I could, only to have your mother taken from us. I wanted to do something. Change myself. Hurt someone…So when Willheim suggested we contact the gang and offer them safe haven, as well as a supply of rifles meant for the Indian wars, to entice them to leave Fresh Springs alone…I said yes.”

“Oh, Father,” she breathed.

Disappointment and disgust waged war in her chest with understanding and sadness. She’d also been destroyed when Mother died. If she’d been offered a chance to make it better, who knows what she would have done. To save her father, she’d robbed a bank, so it wasn’t as if she’d miles of moral high ground to stand on. But still, for her father to have fallen so far and offered immunity to a pack of killers…

She wanted to cry, but she held the tears back. They’d help no one now, much less Dean, who Masterson still controlled. She looked back down at the papers she’d dropped to the dirty floor. Perhaps there was some way to use them to their advantage, if only they carried proof of Masterson’s deeds.

“It wasn’t until your brother’s death that I realized what a mistake I’d made. We’d gone out to the gang’s hideout. There was a shootout, that much is true. But it was against a bounty hunter who’d found word of where Wailins and his group were hiding. And Robert was killed…” His voice broke and he blinked his red, weary eyes. “After that, I tried to make amends, but it was too late. There was no easy way out without incriminating myself. I told Masterson that I wanted out. He said he’d kill you, but not before breaking at least four of your bones. I couldn’t cotton the thought of harm to you, not at any cost. One by one, I singled out each member of the gang and tipped sheriffs and bounty hunters to their whereabouts. They were cut down like dogs, and I was glad for it.”

He heaved a gasping breath and shifted in his seat. “Still, there was no way I could get Willheim. I visited James Wailins the day he was to be hanged, and he wrote out that confession. Found out Masterson was even worse than I thought too. He took dirty money from the Wailins.” He waved to the papers. “But those incriminated me as much as Willheim. And I know it marks me as a small, petty man but I couldn’t stomach the thought of you knowing what I’d done and how much I’d taken from you. It was enough to know I had a way to keep the bastard away from you. And it was over. Finally.”

A sob broke free of its own will, but Maggie choked it off as quickly as she could. “It’s all right, Father. I—I—” She couldn’t quite make herself say she forgave him.

He seemed to understand, that sad, dejected smile twisting his lips again. He patted her shoulder. “I know, child. I know.” He pulled himself together and looked at her with new energy. “But I’m ready now. It’s the right thing to do. If confession of my misdeeds can help solve this situation, so be it. I’d intended to use them to blackmail Masterson into releasing you. I’ll do the same for this man of yours.”

Heat burned across her cheekbones and the tips of her ears. Maybe. Maybe he could be hers, if they could both shake free of the past long enough to take a chance. “I don’t know, Father. I’ve a much better plan than blackmail.”

At least the jail didn’t stink.

Dean dropped his head against the rough wall of the cell—this one across the hall from the one that he and Andrew had blown to smithereens. A fist-wide crack ran through the ceiling across one corner, but the place seemed otherwise sound and he supposed they hadn’t had anywhere else to put him. Masterson had compensated by shackling Dean at both the ankles and wrists and chaining him to the barred door.

He shifted the wrist manacles higher on his stomach. The get-up certainly made getting comfortable difficult. If he pulled on the wrist cuffs, his legs were stretched taut and vice versa. He supposed that was half the point. Masterson had been frothing mad when he’d shown up at the rubble of Maggie’s cell. His lips had flattened and his face had been nigh on purple when he’d given the order that Dean was under arrest for aiding and abetting a fugitive. Dean had just grinned from his position under Mahouly’s boot and given thanks that Maggie was free and on her way to safety.

Through the door at the front of his cell, he had a direct view of the mangled remains of what had been Maggie’s cell. The far wall was gone and Masterson’s third goon now stood watch with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. A raw, animalistic enjoyment thrilled him, that he’d put Masterson out to such an extent.

Dean slid up on the narrow cot, only to be yanked short by the clattering chain. He cussed under his breath as he tried vainly to ease his tightly wound shoulders. Maybe he should move to the floor before the door.

He leaned over to look. It had to be one of the finest jails he’d ever seen. The cot was cheaply made but clean and only a thin layer of dust covered the tiled floor. Still, he didn’t much feel like giving up the scant padding of the cot in exchange for relief for his shoulders.

He rattled the chains with a kick. This pretty much fell under the last damned place he wanted to end up again.

He regretted nothing.

A little maneuvering let him withdraw Maggie’s photograph from the inside breast pocket of his coat. The tintype was a little worse for wear after the last month’s adventure, with water staining the edges. But her fine features and mischievous smile were as clear as ever. He should have known he was sunk when he’d been unable to stop carrying her picture, even after he’d caught her.

The door to the cells slammed and footsteps clomped across the tiles.

Dean stood up, unwilling to be caught in the awkward position demanded by his bonds, and shoved the picture back in its hiding spot. He moved near the door, the better to have more room. He looked down at the three-inch-thick iron coiled around his wrists. Right. Because he could get so much done, trapped like this.

The owner of the footsteps marched assuredly into view. Masterson, naturally.

Dean leaned his elbows on the bars of the door. “Hello there, Masterson. How are things going out there among the free?” He injected as much insouciance as he was capable of into his voice, for the pure fun of needling the other man.

It seemed to work. Masterson came to a halt, his face a rather unappealing shade of red. He gripped his lapel and rolled back on his heels. “Do you know, Collier, I had you investigated before I approached you with my original offer.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I shouldn’t have expected any different.”

“Hmm.” Furrows carved the older man’s brow. The lines around his eyes seemed to have gotten deeper in the past few weeks since Dean had met him in the jail in Ruby. The observation didn’t evoke much sympathy. If Masterson had had a tough time of it, that was nothing compared to the tortuous hell Maggie and Dean had been through—that
he’d
put them through, if he were to be honest.

Masterson paced a few steps, only to return as quickly as he’d walked away. He pointed a finger and wagged it. “There was nothing in your past that hinted at this…this insolence, nor did I find any warning that you’d be such a disappointment.”

He managed to forebear the impulse to roll his eyes. “I’m sure it deeply saddens me to have been any sort of disappointment.”

The man missed Dean’s true meaning, because he folded his arms and nodded somberly. “Yes, yes. I really thought this plan would work out and you would be a suitable addition to Fresh Springs.”

“As it happens, I thought I would be too.” He shook his head. He’d latched onto the idea of living and working in Fresh Springs, hadn’t he? But it seemed fate had other plans for him. He’d be a man on the edge awhile longer. “But things don’t always work out the way we’d like, now do they?”

Masterson intertwined his hands and tapped his index fingers together. Cocking his head, he looked off into the distance. “As a matter of fact, they generally do. For me, at least.” He smiled and Dean’s blood ran cold. The man had something up his sleeve. “Occasionally I have to go to greater lengths than I’d expected to ensure that things run smoothly, that much is true.”

Dean narrowed his eyes and stood up straight, stepping away from the door. “What are you implying?”

“Trials are such messy things, aren’t they? Assuring oneself of the judge’s inclinations of course can impose some measure of clarity, but nothing is guaranteed. We’ve so recently established that, haven’t we?” He stroked his salt and pepper beard.

Dean growled as anger ratcheted him up to a buzzing tension. “Why don’t you stop posturing and spit it out?”

“I can’t let you go to trial.” Masterson shook his head, looking like a kindly grandfather sorrowfully refusing a piece of peppermint candy to his grandchild. “Who knows what kind of sordid business will come out?”

The man obviously suffered a swollen ego that put his reasoning beyond that of a normal man. For all Dean’s lack of regret with regards to breaking Maggie out, he had to admit he’d been feeling a smidge wistful over the lost opportunity to regain the part of himself he’d lost long ago. But under Masterson’s smug gaze, he realized that sweet feeling rushing through him was relief.

If nothing else, Maggie would never let him develop such an inflated and overbearing sense of his own importance. If he found it within himself to reach for a future with her.

And if he managed to somehow avoid being shipped off to Yuma.

“Look, Masterson, I don’t know any ‘sordid details’ about you. Really, I don’t.” Life might be easier if he did, or at least had proof to go along with supposition. “So why don’t you and I declare this a draw? You let me out, I’ll slip out of town. We’ll pretend none of this ever happened.”

“You really aren’t the man I thought you were if you believe I’m willing to do that.”

Dean shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”

“I suppose.” Masterson paced toward the disheveled remains of Maggie’s cell, then flipped open his watch. “No, I’ve another solution that I think will be much more favorable for me. In fact, I believe they’re on their way.”

“What in God’s name are you talking…”

But Dean trailed off. In the distance, he heard raised voices and shouts. There seemed to be quite a lot of them. A mob-level amount, as a matter of fact. He stretched out his chain as far as it would go, trying to peer through the open gash in the far wall. All he saw—all he
still
saw, despite his straining up on his toes—was the same stucco wall he’d been staring at for hours and the back of the guard’s head. Who had suddenly stood up straight and turned an evil, smug grin over his shoulder to nod at Masterson as the voices got louder.

Oh, shit.

He wrapped his hands around the cool iron of the door, the better to ground himself. He’d be no use to himself if his head was a swirling panic. “What exactly do you have planned, Masterson?” He gritted the words through a jaw gone tight with pure, unabashed fear.

He clicked his watch shut and slipped it back in his pocket. “Why, I’m about to have you lynched.” His smile was wide and full of unalloyed joy. “And then, once Mahouly and Linkers are no longer needed to guard you, I’m going to send them off to kill Maggie Bullock.”

Dean snarled and shook the bars hard enough they rattled. Any vestige of fear was gone, replaced by a raw-edged fury that clouded his vision dark gray. “You son of a bitch,” he snarled.

“Now, now.” Masterson wagged his finger. “There’s no call for that. Really, we ought to part as boon companions. In fact, I should thank you. Getting the townspeople riled up was much easier when I had such a dramatic event to point to.” He tipped an imaginary hat and nodded to Dean.

Dean lowered his head. All he could think about was wrapping his hands around the man’s throat and squeezing. He needed to think of a way out of this. But fuck. Fuck all. There was nothing. Even now, the voices drew near enough that they must be right outside.

Five men appeared at the gaping wall, rifles pointed at the guard, who dropped his weapon and raised his hands. He didn’t even put up a token resistance.

The door to the cells swung open and a second later the space was filled with sweaty, irate men. They all yelled and jeered over each other, until one stepped forward out of the mass. Tall and unhealthily slender, he was dressed in homespun work clothes and had no weapon. Instead, he carried his hat in his hands before his belly.

“Mr. Masterson, we must insist you give up the prisoner.”

Masterson cleared his throat, as if he were giving an oration. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. As one of the pillars of this community, in no way can I condone lawlessness.”

Dean slammed his fists against the bars. He roared. He couldn’t be the only one who saw how phony the man was, could he?

It seemed he was, because another man stepped forward brandishing an over and under rifle. “It’s lawlessness we mean to stop, sir. Can’t have his cronies busting him out.”

Masterson capitulated, pulling a ring of keys from his pocket and tossing them to one of the rabble before making a show of raising his hands above his head.

“Goddamn it, don’t do this,” Dean growled.

He banged his chains, trying to get some attention. All he got was the negative kind. The unarmed man unlocked the door. Dean backed away as far as he could. His damn tether to the bars kept him from going far. One of the men slammed the butt of his rifle into Dean’s stomach. Pain thudded through his gut. He thought for a moment he’d be sick, but he pushed it away. He refused to be cowed. He stood upright.

The one man who’d shown up to the party without a rifle fitted the key to Dean’s wrists. His face was lined with somber worry. Dean watched the man’s bowed head and the clean white part of his slicked-down brown hair.

“What’s your name?” Dean asked. If he were going to be hanged, he deserved to know at least one name of his executioners.

The man’s gaze flicked up to Dean’s and betrayed a nervousness in its flicker. “Henry Navarro.”

“Henry, this is wrong.” He talked as fast as he could, hoping a personal appeal might spare his neck a stretching. “Wait for the judge. If he orders me hanged, that’s one thing. I’ll step quietly onto the scaffold. But this ain’t right. You know it.”

Navarro knelt to unlock the ankle cuffs. “You and yours might not let the judge have a chance. We can’t risk you breaking out of jail.”

“I swear, no one’s coming for me.” If God were good, Andrew would have Maggie miles gone by now. And with the way he’d lived for the past five years, no one else on the whole round planet would give two bits for him, except maybe his mother. If Andrew had a bit of sense in his head, he’d never tell Ma how this had all shaken out. “I’ll stay in jail. I swear it.”

Another rifle butt slammed into his lower back, biting into his kidney. He grunted as he swayed away from the hurt. All that got him was a fist to the jaw, seemingly out of nowhere. “Shut your mouth, you damned criminal,” roared an anonymous voice.

He couldn’t even pick out his attackers through the mass of bodies swarming him and the stinging pain that clouded his vision. Someone yelled for a rope and it was passed up, already knotted in a hangman’s noose.

His insides turned into one solid block of ice. For all that he’d been chasing death since Annie’s killing, he hadn’t thought it would come this way. A shootout, standing in an empty street in some tiny town, face to face with his killer, sure. Or he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d had his throat slit in the night by some lowdown criminal angry to have been hauled off to jail.

Dean never would have guessed he’d be strung from the nearest tree, his toes dancing in the air.

Oh, Jesus. This wasn’t right.

More than that, he didn’t want to die. Not anymore. Not when he’d be leaving Maggie and her smart mouth and huge heart behind. Not when she’d be all alone after her father died.

He started to fight when they tried to put the noose over his head. He couldn’t help it, though he’d have rather gone out stoic and taken his fate like a man. He struck out with fists and kicks and slammed heads together. But it was no use. They swarmed him. Punches flew at him from all sides. Someone kicked out his knees. He fell into a man who only pushed him back upright to take more abuse. Blows rained down on him. They slammed him to the ground. His face pressed into the cold tile.

Every bit of him ached. One by one his arms were yanked behind him. Someone else sat on his legs. He bucked and writhed, but there was no shaking five men.

They slipped the noose over his head.