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  “Thank you, Johnson, for bringing her to me so quickly.” He nodded to the other man.

  “My pleasure.”

  Charlotte froze in place, outrage stiffening her spine. The town’s mayor knew of Simmons’s depraved tastes? Would willingly assist him? She turned to confront the cur and fight for safety.

  “Say the word if there’s anything else you want.” Johnson raised his hand to Simmons, who lifted his glass in an answering salute.

  “You—you bastards!” Charlotte spluttered.

  “You Northern bitch!” Johnson mocked. He laughed, every note rich with satisfaction. “Don’t worry. Your adventure won’t last long, only a few days. After that, if you’re still alive, one of our local madams is willing to take you on as one of her girls.”

  “A common whore? Like hell.” Outrage banished the chill from Charlotte’s skin. Safety be damned. She’d die before she’d have anything to do with Simmons.

  “You see? You’ll do very well—you already have the language.” Johnson clucked his tongue at her, joy dancing through his eyes.

  Why did he want to see her destroyed? Did he hate her? Did it matter when the jaws were closing on the trap? She needed to save her life.

  “Remember our bargain, Simmons.” Johnson’s voice was sharp and confident, as if he counted off markers on a poker table.

  “Of course. You’ll have your charter.”

  Charter? That sounded official and important enough for Johnson to put aside any morals he might have.

  Dread crawled down Charlotte’s spine. Could she reach the hallway without being caught? Probably not, but what did she have to lose?

  Johnson slammed shut the other bedroom’s door in her face before she could reach it.

  She opened her mouth to scream.

  “Miss Moreland.” Simmons’s fingers dug into her arms tighter than manacles.

  She flinched then stilled. She would not give him the satisfaction of cringing, no matter how great the pain.

  “How kind of you to allow me to renew our acquaintance,” he crooned.

  “A few words in a gambling saloon do not make you my friend.” She squirmed and tried to yank herself away from him. His foul odor brushed the nape of her neck in a sickening combination of liquor, rank sweat, and cheap tobacco.

  “You will be.” He yanked her closer to him.

  She ground her boot heel into the flimsy carpet to anchor herself. He wrenched her around again until she faced him. Agony shot through her shoulders.

  Greed, slimy as his reputation, gleamed in his eyes. He stared at her avidly and his gaze stripped every inch of clothing from her. His hand lifted to peel back her jacket and she slapped him.

  He backhanded her carelessly. She staggered and her eyes blurred for a moment. Blood’s salty warmth trickled down her jaw. She brushed her fingers along her throat and crimson stained her knuckles.

  How much harm had he done? How much more would he do?

  “You’re even prettier when you fight, little lady.” He licked his lips. “You’ll look real fine under me at the end.”

  She stared at him, even more horrified than before. Why would he want to rape her? Surely his money could purchase somebody willing.

  He reached for her dress’s neckline.

  “I’ll scream,” she warned him through a throat grown tight with terror. “Somebody will help me.”

  “Do so and I’ll enjoy listening.” He skimmed his finger across the delicate lace and her pulse skidded. “Nobody will come.”

  “There are still some decent men left in Wolf Laurel,” she assured him.

  Surely there had to be somebody even in the wickedest town in Colorado. But the hotel manager must have known what was planned, since he’d assigned the rooms. Yet he’d run away when he knew she’d be coming in here and didn’t warn her. She’d have to protect herself.

  “Silly little pigeon.” Simmons snickered. “Everybody here either works for Johnson or is terrified of him.”

  He slid two filthy fingers inside her neckline and started to pull it down.

  Charlotte brought her knee up sharply in a move learned long ago at the North Boston Soldiers’ Rest Home. Hard bone, only slightly muffled by cloth, slammed between Simmons’s legs and into his privates.

  He doubled over and shrieked like a woman.

  Nobody responded.

  The sick feeling in Charlotte’s stomach intensified. She truly was alone.

  She clenched her two hands together into a fist, then neatly clubbed her attacker on the back of his head. He collapsed onto the floor at her feet, with only the faintest stirring of his chest to indicate life.

  Her stomach lurched hard into her throat and she clutched her palm over her mouth. No matter what she’d seen before, she’d never dealt violence to another individual. The feel of Simmons’s hair, the sharpness of his skull dropping out from under her hand . . . The absolute limpness of his body in that first instant, like a fish tossed onto ice in a shop window . . .

  Her stomach heaved again. A lifetime’s training insisted that nobody should have to deal out such violence, no matter what the provocation. In Boston, the police would have answered her summons.

  His previous victims would no doubt mourn his continued survival but she didn’t have the time. Simmons had left other women with faces sliced into ribbons, or dying amid blood-soaked sheets. The hotel manager had run rather than help her. The town’s mayor had forced her into Simmons’s arms. She could only look to herself for help, no matter how ugly the deed.

  Now she needed to escape. But where?

  Another hotel? That wouldn’t be far enough. Johnson was the mayor and he would probably find her, then snatch her away. This was the best hotel, the only one considered safe enough for a woman traveling alone. She didn’t even have a recommendation for another one, only a boardinghouse “if she wanted to sit up all night with a gun.”

  She’d never gambled with her physical safety and this was no time to start, when the penalty for a mistake was rape by Simmons. She had to leave town.

  She needed to catch the last stagecoach out of Wolf Laurel before Johnson discovered what had happened.

  The fastest, quietest way to reach the depot was to go from the gambling saloon in the Silver King’s lower level, then through the Hair Trigger Palace to the stage depot across the street.

  Unfortunately, that meant passing through the wickedest establishment in Colorado without being spotted by Johnson’s best friend, who owned the place.

  Charlotte closed her eyes and willed herself to stop shaking. Then she opened the door to her room, grabbed her carpetbag, and started running.

  Chapter 3

  Justin Talbot stepped out onto Wolf Laurel’s main street from his own piece of heaven, Hair Trigger Palace. Last time he’d been out here, Ace Moreland had cut his dreams down faster than a shotgun blast.

  A cold wind promptly investigated him and the first snowflakes drifted onto his broad-brimmed black hat. If he stayed outside very long, he’d need better boots to handle the freezing mud. Not that matters usually took long with the Aspen Kid.

  “Aspen!” Justin called, careful to keep his voice well below a shout. Even so, pedestrians within earshot turned to glance at him, then slipped into the nearest building like cats finding their fireside before a rainstorm.

  The smaller man slowly turned around in front of the stage depot. The black window shade smacked the Closed sign against the glass.

  “Talbot,” Aspen acknowledged. His hands dropped to his thighs and hovered inches away from his guns. Even from this distance, he reeked of expensive whiskey and cheap perfume. He should have stopped buying drinks after he’d lost his horse.

  “Got a dealer lying flat on the floor who can’t wake up. Care to explain that?” Justin asked.

  “Nothing to talk about.” The Aspen Kid shrugged, his brilliant red neckerchief sliding like sunset over his dark blue shirt. “I took my winnings and left. If your dealer got in the way, that�
�s his problem.”

  “Aspen.” Justin’s drawl deepened to a dark purr. At that note in his voice, the few remaining pedestrians scattered and all but ran for the nearest door.

  “The last time I saw my dealer, he was dealing cards for your game. You must understand that I view any affront to one of my men as an insult to myself.”

  Aspen fluffed out his coat like a bantam cock parading his tail feathers but paid no heed to the sky overhead. The storm clouds already hid the eastern pass with its stage road into Wolf Laurel. Snow must be falling there, with more to the west where the skies were darker on the higher mountains.

  “He was clumsy and didn’t know how to handle my action,” the careless newcomer insisted, his fingers twitching cloth into place over his leather gun belt and cartridge case.

  “What do you mean?” Justin kept his hands in the open, where they couldn’t provoke a nervous, drunken gambler into starting something irrevocable. Hours of daily practice had taught them exactly where his guns were. He didn’t need to flex his fingers to prepare, like an Eastern dude aching to display his measly skill and too green to realize how much he tempted his enemies.

  “I play for the highest stakes”—Justin doubted that, considering who’d sat down at the Hair Trigger’s tables before Aspen—“and that dealer kept too much of it for the house. When I challenged him, his answers were unsatisfactory.”

  “Perhaps you should reconsider your last statement, sir.” The fine notes of South Carolina aristocracy settled deeper into Justin’s voice on the last syllable. Just like his father, damn it.

  He eased forward to block the path to the livery stable and any hope of the stagecoach.

  A new gust of wind raced past the Hair Trigger Palace’s solid brick stability and sank its cold, dry claws into his cheeks. Justin automatically adjusted his stance for what it told him a bullet would have to traverse. He’d long since stopped arguing with fellow property holders about how they didn’t protect themselves and their employees against fire and wind.

  The Aspen Kid fell back before him but counterattacked verbally. “The bastard cheated!”

  “Are you saying that my dealer, in my house, was dishonest ?”

  Bill, my best dealer who’s lying on the floor covered in enough blood to paint a dozen Red Indians for war? Bill Tyler, the Methodist deacon who’s married with three kids? Never.

  Justin’s fingertips ached for his Colt’s triggers but he held them away.

  “Yes!” Aspen’s shout rang through the street and he glared at Justin.

  “Then I am dishonest, since it was my house.” Justin’s voice was very soft. The wintry world was crystal-clear now, since it was composed of only the Kid’s eyes and hands. Life would be much simpler if Aspen gave a different answer—but that would mean the fool admitting he’d been dishonorable.

  “Apologize now, Aspen, or I’ll run you out of Wolf Laurel like the lying dog you are.” Justin kept his hands out in the open, an honest man’s distance from his beloved Navy Colts. They were as reliable as the woman who’d given them to him almost fifteen years ago. His pulse was steady, even though the old familiar knot in his stomach ached like a cannonball.

  Aspen hesitated, his eyes narrowed on his opponent.

  A gust of wind brushed his coat against his leg and coins clanked musically in his pocket.

  Jealousy blurred through the other man’s eyes.

  Justin eased his fingers closer to his hips, and his guns.

  “Everybody knows Wolf Laurel’s mayor only keeps the Palace around,” Aspen said, his lip curled in a mocking snarl, “because it’s the fastest way to make more money. And he don’t care how he gets it—skimming it off the top of a crooked poker table makes greenbacks smell sweet as a silver mine. He’s just as dishonest as his stinking partner.”

  The Aspen Kid’s gun blazed forward from his holster, pointed straight at Justin’s heart—just before the Southerner’s Colt deliberately thundered into action.

  Aspen choked and clapped his hand to his chest. Anger burned through his eyes.

  A hot wind roared past Justin’s left sleeve, but he ignored it and kept his gun at the ready.

  Crimson seeped through the other man’s fingers and Aspen glared at his opponent. Horror flashed in his eyes an instant before his knees sagged like broken straw. He fell face-down, in a crumpled heap as void of movement as a barren field.

  Justin holstered his weapon, his stomach knotted into the same roiling octopus it always assumed after he killed a man. Mother’s gift had saved him once again.

  Now to clean up the mess and go back to what passed for life. Someday flowers would bloom in his life more often than gunfire and young ladies would take his arm instead of giving him the cut direct.

  A woman barreled into his back, all running feet and acres of skirt twisting between his legs to trip him up. Feathers brushed the nape of his neck like spring’s first blossoms.

  He lost his balance and tumbled toward the ground. Only bull-wrestling skills that he’d learned rounding up wild cattle in the Pecos River bottoms saved them both from rolling through the street’s frozen mud. As it was, he wound up cursing viciously, with an armful of unfamiliar female clasped to his chest and his knee thrust between hers.

  She was tall, slender yet curved in all the right ways to make his skin hum in anticipation. Scents of lavender and Castile soap teased his brain. He quickly glanced down to survey his catch but a black velvet bonnet, fashionably trimmed with ribbons and feathers, allowed him no more than a glimpse of creamy skin and a stubborn jaw.

  “Excuse me for disturbing you, sir!” A husky voice snatched his breath away, strong as a jab to his ribs.

  He’d heard that voice once before, in Denver under a springtime moon, when every rich note had shredded his wits faster than the finest brandy. Even Merlin’s beloved sorceress, released from those legendary ice caves, couldn’t be as lovely. Since then, he’d chased news of her like a bloodhound quartering a barren field.

  Justin’s heartbeat skittered for the first time that day.

  She slipped out of his suddenly lax grip but skidded, unable to find solid footing on the treacherous ground. He caught her again, careful not to hurt her arms.

  “Unhand me, sir.” Blue eyes, brighter than any hope of heaven, blazed into his and ungloved hands pushed at his shoulders. “I must catch the next stage.”

  She’d cut him down, right here, with an imperious look from those same eyes less than an hour earlier, as if he was a loathesome criminal. “Ace Moreland?”

  Purest terror flashed across her beautiful face, to be quickly replaced by arrogance. If he hadn’t been holding her and watching her closely, he’d never have seen the dread. She jerked her head in reluctant agreement.

  What the hell was she doing on the street again? What was she running from? Couldn’t be the Pinkerton’s agents who some bastard back East had sent to sniff out her trail across the Rockies.

  None of those buzzards roosted in Wolf Laurel. He could still smell them easily, after hunting them down during the War.

  He leashed his hungers tighter than the buckles holding his guns to his belt and loosened his grip on her.

  Damn it all to hell, blood was matted on the tips of her blond hair. Somebody would pay for that. In their own blood, once he found the bastard.

  His pulse settled into a slow, steady, eager battle rhythm that his first cavalry commander would have applauded.

  Townsfolk sprouted along the boardwalk to watch them, like winter wheat avidly seeking the false spring’s sunlight. More trotted down the alleys in fools’ ever-present search for entertainment.

  Brooks, the town undertaker, threw a tarp over the Aspen Kid’s remains, then scratched a few lines in his notebook, his small frame fading from sight behind a burst of falling snow. Far too many businessmen had profitably learned that anyone killed in the Hair Trigger Palace—or by Justin—received a proper burial at his expense.

  Moreland’s gaze searched his fe
atures and recognition burned bright as a Colt’s muzzle blast. She sucked in a short, harsh breath. “Talbot.”

  His name on her lips sounded like a church bell in a cemetery. He hurried to lay down words to erase those echoes before she could spook and start running again.

  “Justin Talbot, ma’am, very much at your service.” He bowed formally to her, as his mother had taught him.

  “Like hell you are.” Bitter knowledge, mixed with dread, filled her words. But she curtsied and acknowledged him with a quick brush of her fingertips across his hand.

  Praise the Lord, she’d accepted him this much.

  A door opened and slammed shut behind them with a dull thud, not the solid thwack! of good wood greeting honest brick.

  “Thank God, Talbot, I knew you’d catch the bitch for me.” Johnson’s nasal drawl ripped through the gathering crowd.

  Moreland’s mouth tightened to a thin, terrified line in a white face.

  What the hell is going on?

  Justin pulled her close against his hip, wrapped his arm around her, and turned to face his long-time saddle-partner.

  She twitched against him and dropped an inch, clearly ready to duck underneath his grasp. He promptly sharpened his elbow around her like a vise and tugged her even tighter against him. A snowflake couldn’t have passed between them.

  She harrumphed under her breath.

  “Afternoon, Johnson.” He kept his voice civil and his grip snug on Moreland. “What brings you out in this weather?”

  What the devil was that Georgia native doing outside in shirtsleeves? He loathed foul weather. For him to greet a snowstorm in anything other than a buffalo coat and beaver hat meant there was serious trouble afoot.

  “Hand her over and I’ll head back inside.” The shorter but equally strong man crossed his arms over his fancy vest and stomped his feet in their thin dress boots. “She can apologize to Simmons up in his room.”

  Simmons? That slimy weasel, who’s throttled more women than he has fingers to count them?