Love on the Range (Brothers in Arms #3)(67)

And she knew he was right. It was time. It was past time.

She settled in beside him and whispered, “I’ve had plenty of time to think, and I know it would be wrong to marry you.”

“Before you start . . .” Wyatt slid an arm across her shoulders and pulled her close to kiss her. His lips were cold. His nose brushed hers and she shivered, but a nice kind of shiver.

When the kiss ended, Wyatt said, “I expect something awful happened to you. I want you to know it’s not going to change a thing.”

She wished desperately that she could believe him. But she couldn’t. “It will change everything when your wife is hanged for murder.”



“Where are you taking us?” Win had never been out this way before. It was the most rugged country she’d ever seen.

“Shut up.”

Uncle Randall was a worthless excuse for a relative, but Win didn’t say so because she didn’t trust him not to hit her, and she needed to think clearly and be strong enough to fight when her time came.

Information might be useful later though. “What were you in the Jeffers school for? If my father killed your parents, why did you all go?”

“We had no one to watch out for us. We’d all been in trouble. So when Oliver went, they scraped together this and that little crime and just pitched me and Clovis in with him.”

“This and that little crime?” Win said it but didn’t expect an answer. And she didn’t get one.

Instead, Randall went on with his story as if it were a fond memory. “Killing Ma and Pa, Oliver set us up on easy street with that. The school gave us the only education we’d had, fed us, and kept us warm in winter and dry in the rainy season. Ma and Pa’s house hadn’t done that.”

“And only at the price of your parents’ lives,” Win said. Again she spoke mostly to herself, but this time Randall slid the hand he had around her waist to her opposite arm and twisted it.

“Ouch, stop.” She deliberately said it loud enough her father could hear. She was curious what he’d do.

“Leave my girl alone, Randy. She’ll be easier to tote along if she’s not hurt.”

Randall loosened his grip with a cruel laugh. “The girl’s never had a switch taken to her. She’s got a mean mouth, and I don’t like it.”

“Might not be too late to teach her some manners.” Pa’s eyes met Win’s, and there was only evil. “I’ve a mind to take her along with us. She can do the cooking. Be a proper daughter now that she’s a widowed lady.”

Ignoring those words to keep herself from crying, Win looked at Rachel. Unconscious this whole time. It struck Win suddenly how unlikely that was. Yes, she was exhausted. Only just up from a week in bed, and during that time, she’d eaten and drank only what sips they could urge down her. It made sense she was weak to the point of collapse. A normal woman would be. But Rachel was tough. The type of woman to carry a knife in her boot and maybe worse.

The type of woman to dig deep and stay conscious, and also perhaps to feign unconsciousness, waiting for her chance to fight.

Win faced forward so no one would see that suspicion—and hope—on her face.

With or without Rachel, Win planned to fight these men who had hurt Kevin.

God, please, please, please let him be alive.

She very much hoped it was with Rachel, but Win would fight nonetheless.

The horses were slowing. Win suspected it was because they were tired. But she also noticed the wide trail into the rough country had narrowed and was climbing.

She was watching intently, wondering if a spot in the trail would take all Randall’s attention, and she’d have her chance to leap from the horse and vanish into the woods.

She saw a bird fly high overhead. It looked like a pigeon. After a few minutes, she saw another, flying in that same straight-arrow direction. Trying not to draw attention to herself, she quietly waited and saw a third one.

Then no more.

Strange, but she wasn’t sure why. Maybe the way the birds flew hard and fast straight east. But it wasn’t uncommon for birds to fly in a straight line, was it? But three of them spaced out like that?

And pigeons? She’d seen some roosting in the barn at the RHR, but she couldn’t remember seeing one out in the wild. Where did pigeons roost out here? But it stood to reason that they did.

Dismissing it, she hung on and waited for her chance.





Twenty-Eight




Falcon slipped through the woods to the back of the house, Sheriff Corly close behind. Just as he came around from the west, McCall came from the east.

Their eyes met, and John’s narrowed, but he didn’t say a thing. The need to be silent won the day.

The back of the ramshackle cabin was close enough to the woods that there wouldn’t be a long line of footprints. Falcon figured he could smooth them out without much trouble.

Falcon found a few bare spots blown clear of snow. Lightly, he covered the distance to the back of the house and heard fluttering and cooing from inside.

John came up behind him. Falcon glanced back and saw that John had stepped in the same spots as Falcon, less of a trail to cover. The sheriff came last and was covering their tracks with decent skill.

“We found more pigeons.” Falcon smiled at John, who nodded.

They went into a small back entry, just a little wider than the door. A small slit in the east wall let the pigeons in. There were neatly built coops here, a smaller set of only four coops, but otherwise they were like the coops at Hawkins’s house. There were two pigeons inside. And two more coops with their doors open.