The desperado chuckled. “Talk to me, honey. You wouldn’t deny a condemned man a last request, would you?”
She most certainly would. Murdering scum deserved no favors. “The two men you killed...their last request would’ve been to live.” There. That should put an end to this nonsense. “Montague, come along.”
She gave the dog’s neck another tug, but he may as well have been carved from granite. Even his tail went rigid. Staring at the window, he whined and cocked his head.
She glanced up…and her breath stalled.
The rake had retreated inside another man. Sweat beaded his brow, and shadows haunted the hollows beneath deep-set eyes. “The fella with the neck rag over his face…he gave me no choice.” Even his voice had changed, as though he spoke from the bottom of a dry well. “The banker—”
“He left a widow and three children.”
A grimace contorted the prisoner’s face. The cords in his neck bunched when he forced a swallow down his throat. Perhaps even murderers felt an occasional twinge of conscience.
Rubbing his temple beside a healing wound, the killer studied the window ledge as though searching for something. “Only four men. I fired once. The robber must’ve…” His fingertips stilled, and his voice nearly disappeared. “He never got off a shot.” A stunned gaze leapt to hers. “And the banker was behind me.”
“What?” The earnest shock in his eyes, his astonished tone... She flattened a palm atop Montague’s head, steadying an unexpected sway. Surely, he wasn’t suggesting—
Now, if that wasn’t absurd. Why would Roy shoot the banker?
A little rancho down near Brownsville. She chased a preposterous notion. Nobody could buy anything with proceeds from an unsuccessful robbery. Besides, officers of the law didn’t steal.
Yet…Mark had.
I don’t want you coming to the jail again.
She pushed away a ridiculous whisper in the back of her mind. Roy simply didn’t want the killer to offend her.
But… Her thoughts stumbled. Now he allowed no one inside the jailhouse, not even Henry—and Roy would applaud should someone offend Henry.
Gooseflesh swept the length of her arms.
She squinted at the man on the other side of iron bars. His unblinking gaze fixed on something in the distance, as though the café’s wall didn’t exist.
The banker was behind me.
A man facing death in three days would say anything to avoid his fate, but the blank stare… Prickles stole up the back of her neck.
What if—
She shook off the murmur of doubt. The outlaw couldn’t be telling the truth, because if he were…
…then the lawman had lied.
****
Daniel rolled away from the window and slumped against mortar and stone, jamming the heel of his hand to the bridge of his nose. When some memories returned, they didn’t sneak up on a fella—they damn near trampled him.
Only four men. Only three shots. His finger twitched against the memory of a trigger. He’d fired first, taking down the owlhoot. The second bullet creased his skull and sent him to the floor. That meant the third…
“Halverson, you cold-blooded sonofabitch.”
A widow and three children. Impotent rage better left in the past surged into Daniel’s present.
Don’t worry, Rose. You and the kids are my good luck charm.
Even the best luck played out.
The honey jar shattered when it landed at Ma’s feet. Two little girls clung to Daniel, begging for answers, as Ma fell to her knees and tried to reassemble the splinters. Never before or since had he seen a woman’s whole body cry.
Breathe, dammit. Breathe. If there were justice in Hell, his old man’s cuff held blank cards.
And if there were justice in this world… He shut his mind’s eye and swiveled back to the gap in the wall. Just beyond the bars, almost near enough to touch, the angel’s silence begged for answers, too. The halo of her hair glowed even in the gloaming, but the whitewash on the café’s clapboard held more color than her skin.
A wide, Montana-blue stare trapped him in its depths. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying.”
Not this time, but a ripple in the honey said she was. “I’ve done nothing to earn a noose.” In Injun Creek, leastways.
“Honest men don’t rob banks.”
“Neither do I. That’s a good way to get shot.”
On a startled blink, she drew back.
She wanted honesty? He hadn’t practiced the skill, but if the truth would get him out of here...
She scrutinized every inch of his face, scorching the scar on his forehead, searing his cheeks and jaw before whipping back to his eyes. Damn, that blue was a pretty color.
“You can’t expect…” The honey thinned even as the ripple grew. “Roy wouldn’t…”
Boots tromped into the far end of the alley, alternating between heavy thump and back-and-forth scrape. “Worthless mongrels, crapping all over the place.”
Daniel snatched a fistful of air. Dammit to hell. Halverson had a talent for interrupting.