I shoot first.
I’ve never fired a rifle before, but I’ve heard they are far easier to aim than six-shooters, that the long barrel allows for accuracy and precision. So when my target goes flying off his horse, I think I’ve hit him. It’s when he scrambles to his feet that I realize his horse has bucked him in a panic; as he tugs the reins to steady the steed, I realize he is not hurt in the slightest.
The door bangs open behind me, and Kate stumbles from the bedroom, Mutt on her heels. The Rose Kid’s door blows open next.
“They’re here?” he gasps, snatching his effects from the table. “They found us?”
Kate grabs her rifle from me and cranks the lever. She takes aim as if it is her nature, as though the Winchester is an extension of her limbs. Her eyes narrow with focus, her finger quivers as it reaches for the trigger. But then her gaze jerks up, and she pulls the barrel from the window port.
“Don’t shoot!” she shouts, lunging at Reece. He’s at the second window, pistol also aimed. She knocks his weapon aside, then throws open the door.
“Kate!” he shouts after her.
But she’s already running, her feet moving faster than I ever imagined she could with that giant belly. She stumbles once but remains upright, her hands clutching the skirt of her nightgown as she flies.
“Jesse!”
The man’s running now, too, the horse forgotten.
“Kate? Kate!”
They collide beside the reservoir, and for a moment I cannot tell where she ends and he begins. In the darkness, they are a single unit, their hands tangled in each other’s hair, their fronts pressed together, their voices a jumble of relieved gasps. When they finally break apart, they stand there staring at each other and I’m struck through with a feeling of awe. At how the world can be falling apart and yet, somehow, there are moments like this. Moments that are nothing but good and whole and warm, where all the darkness in the world seems distant, as if it cannot touch us, or at least as if it cannot touch the likes of them.
“Thank God you missed,” Kate says to me.
“Had it been trouble, missing ain’t an option.” The Rose Kid glances my way. “I’ll teach you the rifle come first light. You should know how to shoot it.”
We’re all sitting around the table, the lanterns lit now that we’ve established there is no threat. Jesse Colton clenches a cup of hot tea, but his eyes never leave Kate. They’re golden in color, a contrast to the rest of him. Dark hair is visible now that he’s removed his hat, frost from the cold clings to his equally dark beard, and his skin is still tanned from the summer months.
“You weren’t supposed to be back for weeks,” Kate says.
“Benny postponed the last job on account of the northern territories getting slammed. They ain’t seen a break in snow since November, and he told the buyer it was either get the beef to Colorado come spring or get the whole herd killed on the plains now.” Jesse takes a quick sip of the tea and looks back at Kate, serious. “I know I agreed to this plan ages ago, but when I cleared the rise and saw that noose swinging, I damn near fell from the saddle. I ain’t never been so scared in my whole life. The house was completely ransacked. Hoofprints everywhere out front, blood on the kitchen floor. I’m sorry I came creeping up in the night, but I thought maybe you were brought here ’gainst yer will. Or worse, you were already gone and they hung the noose to lead me into a trap. There was just so much blood, Kate. What the hell happened?”
“They found us,” she says, plain as day.
“How many?”
“Three. One got away. That’s why I had to leave. You weren’t followed?”
“Nah. I watched the house a bit before I went for a closer look. How the devil did they find us? We ain’t had a slip. We been doing the same thing for ten years.”
“’Parently Luther Rose’s been looking for his brother’s killer for ages, and Reece followed a rumor to me.”
“Reece?” He follows Kate’s gaze across the table. She’d forgone formal introductions in the panic, and Jesse now acknowledges our presence for the first time. He squints as he takes in the Rose Kid, and the moment he puts it all together, his eyes somehow manage to go even narrower.
Jesse lurches to his feet, drawing a Remington from his belt. The Rose Kid jumps up too, his chair toppling back as he draws his pistol.
“I know who you are,” Jesse Colton says, his eyes burning with hatred. “Yer the Rose Kid.”
“Jesse, can we talk for a minute?” Kate urges.
“Christ, Kate. Tell me you didn’t know this when you spared him.”
“In private,” she snarls.
“Tell me you didn’t—”
“Now!”
She steps around the table and moves between the guns. Jesse lowers his weapon immediately. The Rose Kid pulls his back too.
Kate pushes the door to the bedroom open, and Jesse, grumbling, stalks inside.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
* * *
Reece
“We been through this a million times,” Jesse hollers from the bedroom, so loud it ain’t hard to hear him through the thin door. “Our shadows come riding back into our lives, and we shoot ’em in the skull. We shoot ’em and don’t hesitate!”
“I know what we discussed,” Kate says, dry.
“Then why the hell is that bit of scum standing in what’s supposed to be our haven?”
“’Cus he killed two Rose Riders,” she snaps. “I were in a pinch, and he killed ’em both. Prolly woulda got the third, too, but I took a bad shot and the bastard got away.”
There’s a pause as Jesse works over this new information. I don’t got nothing but a view of the door’s rugged wood grain, and yet I can picture him on the other side. Besides a beard he’s got that he didn’t have when I met him three years earlier, he ain’t changed much. Only reason I can think he didn’t recognize me straightaway is that three years changes a kid more than it changes a man. I’ve filled out since that day at the Lloyds’, gained a few inches, have the makings of a stubbled beard myself, since I ain’t shaved since before that botched train job.
“He’s still the Rose Kid,” Jesse says after a pause. “You can’t trust him, not no matter who he put a bullet in.”
“He’s got the mark on his forearm, Jesse. A half-finished rose. Same as my father and yer brother.”
“’Cept it ain’t the same! Will had a finished rose, and he’s dead, Kate. Dead! Same with yer father. That rose carving don’t mean nothing if’n it’s only half finished and the bastard wearing it is still riding with the gang.”
“He ain’t, though. That’s what I’m saying. I think the Kid’s been in a bad place these past few years, and he finally got a chance to run. That he ain’t harmed me or Charlotte, ’specially when he’s had plenty of time to do so, only proves it further.”
“Charlotte were . . .”
“In the coach he stole from Wickenburg,” Kate finishes. “She came to me looking for the name of my gunslinger.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Course not.”