Her captor scowled at her, then turned back to his spying. Emma felt a tiny surge of victory and smiled.
“Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” The familiar verse rose to bolster her spirit. She had allies. Powerful ones. Neither God nor Malachi would abandon her. One was with her now, and one was coming. She felt it in her heart of hearts. Malachi was coming for her, and when he got here, there’d be a reckoning.
The reckoning came less than an hour later.
“What’s that fella doing?” Angus shifted to a different vantage point and resituated the field glasses against his face. “He’s supposed to be leavin’ like the rest of ’em. What’s he doin’ headin’ to the church?”
“You think he plans to make a stand, Pa?” Ned glanced from Emma to his pa and back again, his forehead lined with worry.
“Be right foolish of him, but it wouldn’t cause me much trouble if he did. All I’d have to do is distract him for a few seconds, then take him down from behind. He ain’t got any backup. Saw that big fella driving the store lady’s wagon outta town a while back.”
Ned shuffled his feet through the dirt, his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. “He don’t seem like the kind to be distracted easily.”
He’s not. Emma met Ned’s gaze, tried to give him courage to make a stand of his own. But he just looked away.
“Every man can be distracted, boy. You just have to know his weakness.” Angus turned to his son and grinned with such malevolence, Emma half expected to see fangs protruding from the viper’s mouth. “We got Shaw’s weakness right here.” He nodded toward Emma. “Put a bullet in her, sling her over a saddle, and send the horse galloping into town . . . Shaw won’t be able to help himself. He’ll leave his cover to chase her down, try to save her . . .” Angus gave a snort of disgust, then twisted fully around to smile at Emma. “And that’s when I’ll shoot him in the back. He’ll never even see it comin’.”
“You animal!” Emma struggled against her bindings, desperate to get free so Angus couldn’t use her as a weapon against Malachi. She wanted to pounce on the fiend herself and scratch his eyes out for even voicing such a horrible plot.
But the ropes held fast, and all her struggling managed to accomplish was bruising her forearms and ribs while entertaining the beast. His laughter crawled over her skin like a family of scorpions, poking and stinging and making her want to weep.
“That got your back up, didn’t it, girlie? Seems you ain’t so indifferent, after all.” Angus took a step toward her, his right hand balled into a fist.
“Pa,” Ned interrupted, squinting into the distance. “Shaw ain’t climbin’ into the steeple. He’s hangin’ something from the roof. Looks like a sheet smeared with something dark in the middle.” The boy pointed toward town.
“What?” Angus stomped away from her, pushed his son out of the way, and brought his field glasses back up to his eyes. “A white sheet,” he scoffed. “The mark of surren . . .” The word died away, replaced by a string of curses. “He can’t . . . It has to be a bluff.”
“What, Pa? What’s happened?”
Angus shoved the field glasses hard into his son’s chest, then started pacing, muttering vile invectives against Malachi under his breath.
Ned held the lenses up to his eyes. “‘Found your gold. Time to trade.’”
Emma knew better than to let her triumph show while Angus tramped about in an agitated state. The man was volatile. But now he was also vulnerable. Thanks to Malachi.
Seemed the outlaw had been right—every man did have a weakness. Even Angus.
Malachi stood in the churchyard, his back against the north wall, listening to the wind whip against the sheet he’d nailed to the roof twenty minutes ago. How much longer? He scanned the landscape between the church and the river, searching for a sign, any sign, that his message had been received.
He hadn’t wanted to stumble through the woods, calling out to Angus and giving away his position and tactical advantage. All the man would have to do was shoot Mal from a covered position then search out the gold for himself. And without Mal to stand in his way, Angus would dispose of Emma with equal speed.
No, he’d needed to lure the man into the open, someplace where they would be on equal footing, someplace where he had more power to bargain for Emma’s life. So he’d borrowed a can of black paint and a brush from Tori’s store and used one of Bertie’s old sheets to create a message for Angus. One the outlaw would be sure to see . . . as long as the man had been watching the exodus of the townsfolk.