Chapter 11
When I came within twenty yards, he turned.
Too late.
I raised my revolver.
“Don’t.”
He looked at the gun.
Then at me.
Even in the firelight, I could see his smile.
“So,” he said. “The cripple bites.”
I had been called worse.
“Walk away.”
“You don’t understand what she is.”
“I understand she doesn’t want to go with you.”
“You have known her two days.”
“Long enough.”
“She lies.”
“So do you.”
His smile thinned.
“You think this is nobility, Mercer? You think protecting her makes you some sort of hero?”
“No.”
I cocked the revolver.
“I think it makes me a man with a gun pointed at you.”
His eyes shifted past me toward the cabin.
That was when I heard the second man.
Snow crushed behind me.
I started to turn.
A blow struck the back of my head.
The world went black.
The Woman Who Came Through My Door
PART 3 - The Woman Who Came Through My Door t1
PART 3: What Cora Had Been Running From
I woke with blood in my mouth.
For a moment I thought I was back beside the frozen creek the previous winter.
Snow beneath my cheek.
Cold inside my bones.
Unable to move properly.
Then I heard a man say, “He’s awake.”
Memory returned.
Cora.
The cabin.
Fire.
Vane.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying beside the burning shed with my wrists bound behind me.
A man I had not seen before stood over me.
Broad shoulders.
Heavy beard.
A hired hand, judging by the way he kept looking toward Vane for instructions.
So Vane had not come alone.
Cora had been right.
That irritated me almost as much as being tied up.
Elias stood ten feet away.
He had removed his hat.
He was younger than I had expected.
Maybe thirty.
Clean-shaven.
Expensive coat.
The sort of face people trusted because it had never been forced to show what lived underneath.
“You should have listened,” he said.
I spat blood into the snow.
“You should talk less.”
His hired man kicked me in the ribs.
Pain exploded through my side.
“Enough,” Elias said.
The man stepped back.
Elias crouched.
“You are not my enemy, Mercer.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“You are an inconvenience.”
“That hurts my feelings.”
His expression tightened.
Good.
I liked him better when the politeness cracked.
He leaned closer.
“Call her outside.”
“No.”