30

Logan stared at the cards he’d been dealt. Three kings, a strong hand. His fingers itched to sort his cards. His mind buzzed with strategy. His heart pulsed with excitement, with the thrill of the challenge. But his soul? His soul whispered, no.

With a pang of regret for the royalty being sacrificed, Logan grimaced and laid the cards facedown on the plank table. “I’m not going to play, Hamilton.” He eyed the man across from him. “Or should I call you Mitchell?”

Hamilton’s jaw stiffened. “I don’t care what you call me,” he ground out, his lips barely moving, “so long as you pick up those cards.”

Logan sighed. “Look. This is my fault.” He leaned back and shook his head. “My ill-advised quest to reclaim a past that can’t be restored. I never should have started down this path. You were wrong to cheat. My father was wrong to wager our land. And I was wrong to harbor revenge in my heart. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and no card game is going to put any of it to rights.”

Something flickered in Hamilton’s eyes as he slowly lowered his cards to the table. “I need it put to rights.” The hoarse whisper was barely intelligible, but Logan pieced it together, and something resembling empathy stirred in his chest.

“I know what you mean.” Logan met the gaze of his nemesis and felt a kinship with him for the first time. The same ghost haunted them both. “That’s what has been driving me for seven long years. Needing to put things right. But this isn’t the way. I see that now.”

Logan blew out a breath as he contemplated what else he could possibly say. Then an idea materialized as if from vapor, slowly taking shape until he saw the story he needed to tell. Both for himself and for the man sitting across from him.

“When my dad came home from the card game that night, he ranted and raved about the man who cheated him, vowing he’d bring you up on charges for theft or fraud or whatever he could make stick. But the next day, when he took his righteous indignation to town to complain to the marshal, the lawman wouldn’t give him the time of day. None of the men who were there that night would back my father’s story, yet several were willing to testify that Rufus Fowler had been known to use his deed to lure men into deep play and then run off with their hard-earned coin. They were more than happy to see him reap some of what he had sown.

“That was what turned my father’s anger to despair—the realization that he had brought disaster upon himself.” Logan examined the memory with fresh perspective. “When he came home from town, he couldn’t look Mother in the eye. He barely spoke except to bark at me to leave him alone so he could think. The guilt must’ve worn on him. He’d always had a mercurial temperament, and when he sulked, he’d fall into deep melancholy. I suppose the depth overwhelmed him this time, and he failed to pull himself out.”

“Why’re you tellin’ me this?” Hamilton’s ashy face was drawn in tortured lines.

Logan leaned forward. “Because I want you to know that my father’s death wasn’t your fault.” He might have believed exactly the opposite for the last seven years, but that didn’t make it truth. “He made his own choices.”

Hamilton wagged his head. “He might have chosen to stampede off a cliff, but I’m the one who put the burr under his saddle. If I hadn’t rigged the—”

A distant sound, sharp yet faint, echoed behind his words. Logan swiveled toward the door.

“Was that a gunshot?” Hamilton asked.

Logan pushed to his feet and stepped into the open air beyond the cabin doorway. “Don’t know.”

Hamilton followed, both men silent.

One minute passed. Then another.

Insects buzzed. A breeze rustled the tree leaves. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then it came—three shots in quick succession. Muffled, but definitely from the west.

Eva!

Hamilton bolted past him, making a run on foot. Logan sprinted for Shamgar, thanking God his horse was still saddled and ready.

Please let her be all right. If anything happened to Eva . . . Logan clenched his jaw and mounted.

“Yah!” He swiped his heels across Shamgar’s flanks and leaned forward in the stirrups. Focus on getting to her, he ordered himself. He’d deal with whatever he found when he got there.

Shamgar slowed slightly as they neared the junction to the main road, and Logan leaned left into the turn. As he did, another shot rang out, this one much closer. So close, in fact, that a telltale whistle tickled Logan’s ear as a bullet whizzed by his head.

He lunged more deeply to the side, using Shamgar as a shield even as he urged the gelding to a greater pace. The ex-cavalry horse responded, surging forward as a second shot cracked the air.

Logan twisted his neck, trying to peer behind him for any clue to his assailant’s identity, but he saw nothing. Just brush and dirt and Shamgar’s rump. He dared not rise up any higher, even to spy the culprit. He needed the cover. If he could get to the bend in the road a few yards ahead, he’d be out of the gun’s sights.

A third shot exploded, and a slight sting arced along Logan’s right side. He hissed at the pain, even as he thanked God it had just been a crease. The shooter might not be terribly proficient at hitting a moving target, but even Shamgar couldn’t protect Logan’s back if the shooter found the right angle.

Deciding speed was more important than the shrinking cover his current position afforded, Logan pushed against the left stirrup and returned to a more natural riding position.

“Come on, old boy,” he urged, focused on the quickly approaching bend. Hunching down to make himself as small a target as possible, he raced for safety.

A fourth shot rang out. Logan flinched, but no pain slammed into him, and Shamgar didn’t stumble. In the next moment, he was around the bend, safe as long as the shooter didn’t give chase—an unlikely development, since his attacker had been shooting from the cover of scrub brush, which was too short to conceal a man on horseback.

As Logan relaxed his posture, his mind ran the odds of this incident being a coincidence. Odds that long didn’t warrant consideration. There was only one explanation for shots being fired both at the Hamilton homestead and at him.

Benson had recognized him. Or, more accurately, his horse. He had been unusually interested in Shamgar this afternoon. The pieces clicked into place. Benson had spied Logan galloping on the road, just as he must have seen him and Eva racing down to the river on Shamgar’s back the day they rescued Christie.

If Benson had beaten a straight path at a quick pace from the livery in Ben Franklin to Pecan Gap, he could have asked about Logan in town. Ascertained where he lived. What girl he’d been courting. Where she lived.

A rescued female would be much more likely to take sanctuary with the family of another female, after all, than with a bachelor in an unfinished cabin. With the slow pace Logan and Shamgar had set on the way home, Benson would have had ample time to set up an attack.

Unfortunately, while they could show he had opportunity and motive, they had no actual proof unless Seth or one of the girls had spotted him. And now that Benson knew where the women resided, their plan to wait on the ledger had to be retooled. They no longer had the luxury of time. Or anonymity.

As he steered Shamgar off the main road and down the lane that led to Eva’s house, a scrap of red fabric above the roof caught his eye as it flapped in the wind. The signal for an emergency.

A vise tightened around Logan’s gut. Not that he hadn’t already concluded the first shot he and Zacharias heard had originated here, but the removal of all doubt churned his stomach.

Logan galloped Shamgar straight into the Hamiltons’ yard without slowing. Seth would probably have a gun trained on anyone approaching, but Logan trusted him not to shoot.

“Eva!”

Was she all right? Please let her be all right.

He cut hard to the right to slow Shamgar, then dismounted from the left before his trusty mount could fully halt. His boots slammed into the ground. Reverberations shot up his legs as he quick-stepped to keep his balance.

“Eva!”

The door cracked open, and the face he loved peered out. “Logan. Hurry!” Her arm emerged, frantically waving him closer. “Get inside. There’s a crazed gunman out there somewhere.”

He pounded up the steps. “I know,” he said as she flung the door wide to grant him entrance. “He took a few shots at me on the road.”

She gasped. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” The pinch in his side didn’t count. He slammed the door closed behind him then grabbed her arms. “Are you?” He scanned her body from head to toe with a critical eye. Disheveled and dirty she might be, but all her pieces were where they belonged, thank the Lord.

Though there was one addition he hadn’t expected. A rifle. She was the one standing guard? Where was Seth?

Her lower lip trembled as she nodded. “I’m fine. But Christie . . .” A sob caught in her throat as if she’d been holding it in too long. “Oh, Logan. Someone shot her!”

He reached for her, and she came with no hesitation. The rifle fell from her hand to clatter onto the floor as she dove into his embrace. Slender arms wrapped around his waist, stinging his sore side, but he didn’t care. She was back in his arms, her beautiful face burrowing into his chest.

All the unresolved issues between them vanished as he held her to him, stroking her back and laying kisses on her hair. This was where he belonged. With her. Forever.

Footsteps pounded outside. Logan thrust Eva behind him and snatched his revolver from its holster. The scrape of metal on wood told him she’d retrieved her rifle and stood ready to meet whatever trouble was headed their way.

Logan eased the door open. “That you, Hamilton?” he called.

“Stand aside, Fowler!” Zacharias Hamilton barreled up the steps at full steam, as if intending to stampede his way inside, regardless of who or what stood in his way.

Logan pulled the door wide and shifted backward to ensure Hamilton didn’t trample his sister in his haste.

Zacharias careened to a halt, his heavy breathing filling the tense stillness of the room. His gaze immediately found Eva’s. “You all right?”

She nodded.

“Where’s Seth?” He scanned the kitchen, his urgency only slightly ameliorated by the evidence of Eva’s well-being.

“In my room, tending to Christie. She was the only one hurt. I . . .” Eva’s bottom lip quivered, but she pressed her mouth closed and willed it into submission. “I’m not sure how badly. I had to stay out here and keep watch.”

Logan holstered his revolver, then reached for the rifle she held. His eyes met hers. “Go to her. Zach and I can manage out here.”

Relief and gratitude warmed her eyes, but a hint of uncertainty flared as well when she glanced at her brother then back to him.

Logan winked at her. “We’ll behave. I promise.”

She hesitated only a moment, then bounced up on tiptoes to place a kiss on his cheek. “I love you,” she whispered before dashing off to the room that had once been his.

She loved him. He stared after her, stunned. How could she love him when she still believed he intended to harm her brother? He hadn’t had the chance to tell her about his change of heart. Yet she said she loved him. Now. In spite of everything he’d told her.

His heart swelled to near painful proportions. He didn’t deserve a woman like her—one determined to see the best in him, to bring out the best in him. He didn’t deserve her, but he’d fight to his very last breath to keep her.

And considering the threat closing in on them, he might have to do just that.

Logan turned to Hamilton, who was winded but hiding it well. He grabbed a napkin from the table and ran it over his forehead and face to clear away the sweat.

“Whoever took a shot at Miss Gilliam took a handful of shots at me as well,” Logan said casually as he pulled out a chair and took a seat. “From a spot along the road about half a mile northwest. I think it’s safe to assume this particular attack is finished for the moment. The schoolmaster’s probably halfway to Ben Franklin by now.”

“So you think it was Benson.”

Logan pivoted at Seth’s voice. The other Hamilton walked into the room, his face grim.

“How’s the girl?” Zacharias asked.

Seth blew out a heavy breath. “Christie’s fine. The bullet took a chunk out of her right arm, but we got the bleeding stopped. She might need a couple stitches though, so if you really think the coast is clear, I’d like to drive her to town and get the doc to take a look.”

Logan pushed up to his feet. “I’ll ride with you, help keep an eye out.”

“I’ll do it,” Zacharias insisted. “The girl’s living under my roof. She’s my responsibility.”

Logan glared at him. “You’ve got another girl living under your roof, and unless you prefer that I stay here alone with her, you’d best rethink your stance. Even though I doubt Benson still poses an immediate threat, there’s no way I’ll risk Eva’s safety by leaving her here alone.”

“He’s right.” Seth crossed the room to stand between his brother and Logan. “In fact, I think we should all go.”

“What?” The question emerged from Logan and Zacharias with perfect synchronicity. Zacharias scowled at Logan as if affronted by the harmony. Logan grinned. Nice to know they could agree on something from time to time.

“If the shooter was Benson,” Seth said, oblivious to the tension between the other two occupants of the room, “then he knows where Christie is. Which means she’s no longer safe here. After we visit the doc, we can stop by the church and ask the Clems to take Christie and Evangeline in for a few days. Harder to ambush them if they’re in town. Too many witnesses.”

Logan nodded. “And with the girls out of harm’s way, we can take the offensive.”

Zacharias crossed his arms over his chest. “Any idea how we’re gonna do that when we still ain’t got any proof that Benson’s the one behind this?”

“Think of it like a poker game,” Logan said, giving Zacharias a look he knew the other man would comprehend. “Our opponent’s getting impatient. Taking chances. Telegraphing his next moves. But he still thinks he’s smarter than us. So we use that overconfidence against him. Change up our game play. Do the unexpected.”

A slow smile creased Zacharias Hamilton’s face, and Logan decided that having this man as an ally was much preferable to facing him as an opponent.