Her breath was quick and raspy. Dear God, I've committed murder! And I don't care.
Blood trickled across the sandstone from his temple, seeping into the light porous surface of the native rock that had been meticulously cut and fitted.
Hiram Nielson didn't move, didn't breathe. The silver money clip gleamed in the waning afternoon light. Allie reached for it, hesitating a moment before she touched it. What would robbery matter, in the face of murder? She'd need the money to get away.
She snatched the clip from his trousers. Hurriedly, she stepped away from him, an odd feeling of exultation filling her. A deep breath steadied her nerves.
She would need clothes – just a few. Maybe a gun to protect herself. But she must get away as quickly as possible.
Murder.
She backed toward the study door, feeling for the handle. Quickly, she wrenched it, pulling the door open and stepping into the gleaming tile floor of the high-arched entryway. She shut the door behind her, then hurried up the spiral staircase to her room.
No, no...first, the gun.
Veering from her own bedroom doorway, she ran down the hallway to the end and threw open the chamber door to the private quarters that were Hiram Nielson's alone. They were furnished with the best. Unusual trinkets from his travels and rich carpeting from his time in the eastern hemisphere as an ambassador filled the chamber. Luxurious bedding in jewel-toned colors bedecked his bed – the bed he had intended Allie to share.
She swallowed, her gorge rising. She could do this. There was no choice! She walked purposefully to the gun cabinet he kept on the west wall. The door opened with no use of a key, and Allie's gaze traveled quickly over the larger firearms of which she'd no need. A smaller pistol would do. One she could keep in her carpetbag.
The pepperbox derringer caught her eye – small and silver; ornamental, but deadly, all the same. Too delicate for a man like Hiram Nielson. It must have been Mrs. Nielson's at one time. Allie picked it up from the deep hunter green velvet where it lay, then took the box of shells that lay just beside it. She hurriedly closed the cabinet doors, then peeked out the bedroom chamber entrance into the hallway.
She made her way swiftly to her own chamber, hastily grabbing two serviceable dresses from her closet and tucking them into her bag along with some of her undergarments, her hair brush, the gun and ammunition – and, of course, the money and silver clip. Fingers shaking, she changed into her blue riding habit.
Then, she had gone down the servants' stairway, depositing her bag behind a garden bed of barrel cactus and desert roses near the back entrance. She confidently headed for the barn without a backward glance. The groom gave her a puzzled look when she asked him to saddle Reya, but he did as she asked.
She led the horse from the stables at a leisurely pace, toward the house. Drawing a deep, ragged breath, she reached behind the cactus for her bag. She tied it to the pommel and mounted, her legs nearly giving way beneath her as she swung into the saddle.
The road rose up, shimmering in the late afternoon sunlight, beckoning to her with the promise of freedom. She rode out of the gate, not knowing where she was bound.
The hacienda had never been a home. The people who had adopted her had never been real parents – she had been a servant – and an unsuspecting victim of Hiram Nielson's lustful fantasies. Tears filled her eyes at all the dreams she'd been forced to abandon. Her family, two sisters and her parents, had been massacred by the Apache. Her years at the orphanage had been hard and brittle as glass. When Brandon had left, the only spark of kinship she'd known had gone from her existence. Her adoption had proved a sham, and though she had enjoyed having such amenities as her own private bedchamber and expensive clothing, she understood, now, why those things had been provided. Not out of love for her; it was a debt she would be expected to repay in the most unimaginable way.
She had been nothing more than a servant for nearly three years; a personal nurse to her adopted mother. And now, her father had his own demands. She shook her head. She did not belong to the Nielsons, just because they'd adopted her.
Murder. She had done murder. Yet, as she remembered the glittering evil in Hiram Nielson's eyes, she could not find it within herself to feel sorrow for what she'd done, and the guilt was fast disappearing from her conscience the more miles she put between her and the garishly opulent study where it had all transpired.