No Other Will Do (Ladies of Harper's Station #1)(43)
She rushed outside and leaned over the boardwalk railing. “Malachi. Are you all . . .”
His hat brim lifted, and her words died. She’d never seen such anger in his eyes. Such a hard, glittering determination. His jaw ticked as he flicked the mare’s lead line around the hitching post and stomped up the café’s stairs.
“Inside,” he growled as he tromped past, leaving her gaping slack-jawed after him.
He’d never snapped orders at her before. Yet, their lives had never been in imminent danger before, either.
And truth to tell, deep inside, there was a part of her that sagged in relief at his taking charge. Just for a little while. These were still her ladies, her colony, but being responsible for their protection when she was facing an enemy she didn’t understand and a fight she didn’t know how to win had eroded her confidence until she was little more than a pile of ruins. Her pillar might continue to stand stalwartly in the wind, yet without roof and walls, it offered little shelter against the storm.
Malachi offered shelter. Strength. Protection. For all of them. So she trailed after him without a word and moved to stand next to Tori near the window at the back of the room.
“I apologize for my tardiness, ladies,” he said, nodding at Maybelle and Claire, who ducked through the doorway just as he turned to face the gathering. Not waiting for them to find a seat, he plunged ahead. “But I have some information that you’ll want to hear.”
“Did ya find where them scallywags are holed up?” Betty’s question boomed through the room. “My rig’s hitched and ready. I’ll gladly go fetch Sheriff Tabor.”
Several of the ladies murmured assent, looking to one another with bright eyes filled with hope.
“I found evidence of two different camps,” Malachi said, his deep voice rumbling with an authority that hushed the ladies at once and drew all attention to him. “Neither of which has been used in at least a week.”
Emma didn’t like the grim set of his mouth or the way his gaze found hers and seemed to impale her against the back wall, as if she should understand the significance of a pair of abandoned campsites. Straightening away from the wall, she raised her chin. Emma hated to admit ignorance, but this was no time to protect her pride. Protecting her ladies came first.
She took a breath. “What, exactly, does that mean?”
“It means,” Mal said, “that the man is smart. He’s moving his camp from place to place so he can’t be pinned down. It also means he’s been here a while. Most likely quite a while, planning, preparing . . . watching.”
An icy shiver danced over Emma’s skin. How long had he been out there? Watching. Plotting. Growing impatient.
“Unfortunately, the outlaws had too big a lead for me to catch up to them.” He was focused on the seated females now, most likely searching their faces for a reaction to his news that the men had gotten away. Emma wanted to probe them, too, so she left Tori and meandered up along the edge of the room, keeping her back to the side wall. Profiles gave little away, though, and she didn’t dare make her intentions too obvious.
“Once I got to the river,” Mal continued, “there was no sign of them, either to the east or west. I combed the banks on both sides looking for fresh tracks. Found nothing but a single track on the west side. Which means they probably split up, and one is better at disguising his tracks than the other.”
Emma watched the women on her list. Claire fidgeted in her seat. Flora stared at her lap. Helen reached for Katie’s hand and squeezed it. All acted nervous, but none stood out. Not in a room where stress and anxiety hovered over the crowd like a swarm of angry bees.
A movement to Emma’s right brought her head around. Tori. Emma released a breath. Her friend had come up beside her while she’d been scrutinizing the seated ladies. She gave Emma a penetrating look, one that promised there would be questions to answer later, then turned to face the front. “Could there be more men out there that we haven’t seen yet? Until today we’ve assumed the threat came from a single man. Now we’ve seen two.”
That muscle in Malachi’s jaw ticked again. “I can’t say with certainty, but I don’t believe there are more. The camps I found were small and spread out. If there were more men, the individual camps would be clumped together to enhance communication, not half a mile apart. No, I think we’re looking at a small operation, but a savvy one. The fact that the man revealed the ace up his sleeve—a second man—means we’re running out of time.”
“Running out of time before what?” Betty demanded.
Malachi scowled, ran a hand over his face. “Before he decides he needs more than scare tactics to get what he wants.”
A murmur arose in the room as the ladies turned to one another in shared concern, but Malachi’s sharp voice cut them off with all the efficiency of a butcher’s cleaver taking off a squawking chicken’s head. “Stop!”
All tongues froze. All eyes zeroed in on the man at the front of the room.
“You don’t have time to chatter and fret. Not if we’re going to make a stand. Today he came after me, foolishly believing I was his only threat.” Mal’s hard gaze scoured each face in the room, then came to rest on Emma. “He was wrong.”
Emma sucked in a breath, her heart fluttering in a way that had nothing to do with fear.