A single card floats free, landing face-down on the table. Rose stares at it, perplexed.
Will reaches forward, hesitant and confused-like, even though he planted it. He flips the card, revealing another ace. Its suit matches the diamond I already got in my hand.
Rose’s face sours so fast, it’s like he’s a different person. Those blue eyes don’t look like heaven no more. They look like ice and steel, like a demon ready to pounce. He knows it ain’t him who cheated. He knows it, and yet everyone else don’t. He’s ready to kill, ready to carve another rose into the forehead of whichever player conned him.
“I’ll take back the money you won from me,” the man to my right says. “Right now.”
“I ain’t given you nothing,” Rose says. “I been set up.”
“You chiseled us,” says Hancock’s clerk.
“She did!” Rose says, pointing my way. “If I knew I had an ace in my boots, I’d’ve played it this hand, gone with a full house loaded with three bullets, not two. It’s her who’s chiseling.”
“We all been here the whole time,” Will says. “She ain’t done nothing but lose most of her hands and get lucky this once. But you? Two full houses in a row? And another two earlier in the evening. What are the odds?”
“Yeah, what are the odds?” the man to my right repeats. “I think you owe us some money.”
“Or else?”
“Or else I’m shooting you and taking it back.”
“Not if I shoot you first.”
Rose snatches up his pistol and sends a bullet into the man’s chest. Then he turns on me. I dive to the side just before his gun flares, and in the time it takes me to hit the floor, the saloon erupts with gunfire.
Chapter Twelve
I throw my hands over my head and crawl beneath a nearby table for shelter.
’Long the far wall, one of the Riders knocks a lamp onto the floor. The glass shatters, and when the flames find spilled whiskey, it sparks to life and snakes through the saloon. The place goes ablaze like hay.
“Will!” I shout. “Jesse!”
A body smacks the floor beside me, and I find myself staring into the lifeless eyes of the Hancock’s clerk. Jesus, he’s dead. Everything’s gone to hell. This weren’t the plan, weren’t how it was gonna unfold.
“Jesse!” I try again.
But there’s smoke everywhere. Fire raging. My skin’s so hot, I think it might blister and peel clean off. Someone’s shouting for me. One of the Colton brothers, I’m sure, but I can’t see nothing, and all I can imagine is my father yelling my name as Rose beat him senseless. Calling for help as he was heaved high. Praying I’d show up from the creek to save him before his air stole out.
But I failed. I failed him then, and I’m failing him again now.
Waylan Rose were right before me, his chest a table’s-width away, and I didn’t put a bullet in him.
I pull my Colt from beneath my dress and squint through the smoke. The poker table’s overturned, and though the wood’s going up in flames it ain’t caught the journal yet. It’s just lying there ’longside the abandoned cards and scattered chips. I scramble for it, and right when my fingers close over the leather, Rose comes marching through the fire like a devil unable to burn. He kicks me so hard, I go end over end. I manage to keep hold of the journal, but my pistol bounces free, clattering outta reach. As I come to a harsh stop, the sleeve of Evelyn’s dress catches on the floorboards, ripping to expose my bad shoulder. Rose sees the bandage, and his blue eyes blaze.
“I knew it,” he roars over the flames. “Yer the same scum who shot my men!”
“And you hanged my father,” I says, cringing through the pain. “We ain’t even close to even.”
He laughs—a deep, vicious cackle—and trains his gun on me. No, not his gun—Pa’s. My father’s Colt is gonna be what ends my life. Or maybe Rose’ll take a knife to my skin first.
“And for a moment, I actually believed you a bounty hunter,” he says.
Outta the corner of my eye, I spot my gun beneath a burning table. I reach for it, stretch. My fingers graze the barrel. Rose just thinks I’m trying to crawl to safety ’cus a flaming chair between us has filled the place with smoke.
Come on, just a little farther.
“Consider this a favor, girl,” he says. “I’m ending yer suffering before you realize just how black that journal is. I’ll even make it nice and quick, ’stead of stringing you up like yer Pa.”
He cocks his weapon.
Aims.
And then, ’gainst all odds, he pauses. Confusion ripples over his features.
My fingers close over the steel of my pistol. I turn and shoot.
The gunshot is just another crack in the already roaring saloon. Rose grabs at his shoulder, cursing and hollering, but I don’t wait to see much else. Scrambling to my feet, I fire blindly over my shoulder and dive for a table the flames ain’t found yet. With a shove, I overturn it, then crouch down behind the surface so it shields me like a wall.
Through the smoke, I risk a glance back Rose’s way. He’s cringing—at the strength of the flames, the pain from my bullet—but his eyes are scanning the room for me. How’d I manage to even clip him? I know he’s the faster shot, am certain he could’ve left me dead. It’s like he hesitated, like he changed his mind. It don’t make a lick of sense.
I duck back behind the table and try to steady my breathing. When I look again, Rose ain’t there.
Cursing, I push to my feet and dart for the door.
A series of shots rings out, chasing at my heels, and I’m forced to turn away from the exit and head deeper into the saloon. I race past the bar, beyond the stairwell leading to the loft, where the air-hungry flames are snapping fierce, and into a narrow hall. Maybe there’s a rear exit, another way out.
“Jesse?” I shout again through the smoke. “Will?”
“Help!” someone calls back.
But it ain’t the Coltons. It’s a female.
“In here!”
I move toward her voice, choking on smoke, and find a door—or what once was one. Now it’s just a blazing frame. Through the tongues of fire, I can see her crouched and cowering a few steps down. The Apache. Only, she don’t look so much like an Apache anymore, but just a scared girl.
This stairwell must lead to the cellar. She prolly ran in there for shelter when the shooting broke out, only now she ain’t gonna do nothing but burn if she don’t abandon post.
“Come on!” I shout to her, waving. “Run through it.”
She shakes her head, frantic.
I reach an arm for her and snatch it back almost immediately. It’s blazing stronger than hellfire.
“There ain’t another way,” I says.
She moves toward the flames, staggers away, tries again. The flames beat her back each time, and the hallway’s getting hotter and smokier by the minute. Bullets are still flying back in the saloon, some sounding like they’re coming my way.
I glance back to the Apache. I ain’t never seen eyes so wide and desperate. But the journal’s gonna burn if I don’t run. I’m gonna burn.
“I’m sorry,” I says.