Victoria felt Gina slump beside her. Had she fainted? She turned quickly to help her and found that Gina had buried her face in her backpack. The man in charge pointed behind her. “Sir, release the lady and sit down.”
Marty’s hand clenched painfully on her shoulder before opening. She cast an anxious glance over her shoulder and saw Marty sit back. The turquoise of his eyes seemed to be overlaid by a yellow sheen. She looked quickly at Colby. His face was hard and set. Across the aisle, Ray looked only mildly interested, but his eyes glowed with that same odd yellow sheen. Victoria swallowed and turned back to the front.
The man in charge walked down the center aisle to where she sat. He gave Gina a bland smile. “Miss Todd. Your father has been worried about you.”
Gina raised a pale face. “My father is dead,” she said flatly.
He paid no attention to her words. “Your mother is anxious to see you. Please accompany Corporal Lundgren to our vehicle.”
“Lieutenant Mott,” Gina began, but trailed off when his face didn’t change expression. With a sigh, she stood up.
Behind them, Colby growled. Gina shook her head at him. “It’s okay,” she said dully. “I should have known they would catch up with me eventually.” Her gaze returned to the man in charge, and her mouth curved in a bitter imitation of amusement. “No need to chain me up. I’ll come peacefully.”
Colby growled again and this time it wasn’t a human growl. Victoria turned her head to see a shimmer of heat. Colby’s wolf was coming out and Victoria could guarantee he wouldn’t be happy.
The wolf never had a chance to be happy or unhappy. Just as the wolf began to solidify, one of the soldiers in the aisle raised his rifle.
“No!” shouted Gina.
Victoria, closer to the soldier, sprang to put herself between the soldier and her cousin. Too late. The report of the bullet was deafening inside the train car. Fiery hot pain burned her side. At the same moment, a thud and crunch sounded behind her, and the howl of the wolf was agonized. A second shot cut off the howl. Gina lunged toward the aisle, struggling to get past Victoria.
“Stop,” she shouted. “For God’s sake!”
With one hand clamped against the pain in her side, Victoria looked behind her and saw the wolf twisted at an impossible angle over the seat, blood painted in an arc over the window. “Colby,” she whispered. And then more loudly, “Colby! Colby!”
He didn’t move. Even his furred ribcage didn’t move. Victoria ignored her side and lunged over the seat to touch Colby. Nothing. “He’s dead.” It came out low and hard, grief and rage bound up with disbelief.
Renee shouted something Victoria didn’t catch, and then fell into muffled sobs. Another set of sobs joined her, tinged with hysteria. Anna McGrath, Victoria decided.
The lieutenant’s face finally showed something. Anger. “Points, take that fool out and execute him. He fired without an order, and injured a woman. Hastings, we need your med kit.” In a gentler tone, he said to Victoria, “I deeply regret that you have been injured, ma’am. Please sit down and allow Corporal Hastings to see your wound.”
What wound? Victoria lifted her hand from her hand and saw it covered with blood. Feeling ridiculously woozy, Victoria slid back into her seat. She glanced back at Marty. His face looked slightly different than it usually did. If his cat came out, would they shoot him too? His lip pulled up in a feline snarl as his yellow-green eyes went from Colby’s body to her.
“I’m okay, Marty. It’s nothing. Is Colby dead? Is he really dead?” She begged him with her eyes to deny it.
He nodded wordlessly, his face becoming even more feline.
Colby. One of the most annoying of her Alpha cousins, and so dear. What would Uncle Taye do? Aunt Carla? Victoria forced tears back. No crying in front of the enemy. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she told Marty.
What she meant was: don’t turn into a cat. She jumped in her seat when a shot sounded outside. Had they really shot that man? Gina climbed carefully past her. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered miserably. After a quick glance at the seats behind them, she left the train, followed by one of the soldiers. The lieutenant stepped closer to where Marty was and stared. At him? At Colby’s wolf’s body? What was going on behind that cool, smooth face?
The medical soldier reached for the buttons on Victoria’s blouse. She slapped his hands sharply. “Hey, not in front of an audience.”
The lieutenant nodded. “Remove the men from the train,” he ordered.
One by one, the delegates and their escorts filed past her, soldiers following. Brother Saul and his boys marched past with disturbingly smug expressions on their faces. Marty seemed to be making a real effort to remain calm.
“I am the lady’s husband,” he said.
The lieutenant shook his head. “Outside.” He jerked his chin at Ray. “You too.”
Victoria heard claws puncture the seat back.
“It will be okay, Marty,” Victoria said, pretending confidence. “Please, we don’t want any trouble.” She used her eyes to indicate Colby. “Okay?”
She could see reluctance in every stiff line of his body as he stood up. “I love you,” he murmured, and stepped into the aisle.
Ray followed him. There was no one on the train now except for Victoria, Renee, Anna, the lieutenant, the medic, and one last soldier. While the medic unbuttoned her blouse, the lieutenant turned to Renee. He indicated Colby’s broken body with a sweep of his hand.
“Did you know him?”
Victoria could see over the medic’s bent head that Renee’s face was wet with tears, but stony. “You murdered him. You murdered him.”
“I regret it, ma’am. My man fired unlawfully. Do I assume correctly that he was one of the Indian wolf men?”
“Lakota Wolf Clan, moron,” snapped Victoria.
“Vic,” said Renee warningly. “Didn’t you just say we didn’t want any trouble?”
“Ouch!” Victoria glared down at the medic who must be using hellfire to clean out the wound on her side. Or maybe it was just alcohol. “Sorry,” she told the lieutenant insincerely, and went on with utter sincerity. “I wouldn’t want to be you when the Clan finds out what you’ve done.”
The lieutenant smiled at her. “You are also a member of the clan?”
She didn’t like that smile. “Eyes up here,” she snapped, pointing at her forehead. He hadn’t actually been looking at her bare chest, and even if he had, there was little to see because her brassiere covered all the important parts. She shoved back the memory of Marty’s eyes when he’d watched this same bra come off last night. “And you better believe it.”
“And you?” he asked Renee.
“Yes.”
The lieutenant directed his smile at Anna, who was still sobbing almost soundlessly. “Who is your father, young lady?”
Renee pulled the girl close. “This is my niece,” she answered quickly.
The lieutenant’s smile grew. “Then I don’t think I need to worry about the Clan, do I? With the three of you as hostages, your wolf men won’t dare to cause trouble.”
Furious, helpless, Victoria glared down at the medic. “Aren’t you done yet?”
“Nearly,” he said cheerfully. “The bullet burned a groove along your ribs but didn’t crack or nick any. You have a nice layer of fat that protected you. You have a lovely …” With a quick look at the lieutenant, he cleared his throat. “We just need to make sure it’s good and clean so you won’t get an infection.”
Victoria gritted her teeth. “Fine. Hurry up.”
Renee looked up at the lieutenant. “It’s bad enough that you killed Colby. If anything happens to us, they will kill you. Slowly.”
“So keeping you alive and well is in my best interests.”
Victoria hated that smile. She wanted to wipe it away.
The lieutenant spread his hands. “But we have no intention of harming you or any woman. President Todd is very clear on that. That is the reason I had the shooter executed. He fired without an order which would have earned him strict disciplinary action, but the fact that he wounded a woman is what required his death. You are safe with us.”
The medic wound strips of cotton around her torso to hold a pad in place over the wound. Victoria waited until he finished. “Thank you,” she said.
He began putting things into his canvas bag. It was neatly organized with rolls of cotton on one side and scalpels and syringes on another. “No problem. Always glad to help a lady.”
She turned from him and stood to face the lieutenant. It pleased her to notice that he was two inches shorter than she was.
Renee stood up too. “Now what?”
“Now you return with us to President Todd’s camp. He will decide what should be done with you.”
Anna clung to her. “I want my daddy,” she wailed.
Renee gave her a pat. “There, there. The clan will come for us.” She held lieutenant’s eyes defiantly. “They’ll be here within the day.”
“Oh, I think it will take longer than that for them to get word of where you are.” The lieutenant leaned over and knocked on the window. He made elaborate hand signs to whoever was out there, and stood back up to smile at Renee. “Since I can’t have your men reporting back to your wolf pack …” He trailed off with a shrug.
A barrage of gunshots sounded from outside the window.
“… I guess we’ll just have to dispose of them.”
Victoria leaped across the aisle to the window, pushing him out of her way. Her heart stopped when she saw bodies lying on the ground, some still twitching and writhing, but the two with golden hair covered in blood didn’t move. “Marty! Oh, God. Marty!”
She whirled to race out of the train car and found the lieutenant standing in her way. Rage swelled up in her at the sight of his smug smile. “You killed him. You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch!”
Propelled by grief and rage, her fist swung in a right hook and landed right in the middle of his smile. He fell back, collided with a seat and tumbled into the center aisle. The blood welling from his lip was red like the blood in Marty’s hair. But there wasn’t enough of it. She scrambled after him, wanting revenge more than she wanted air to breathe.
“I’m going to kill you,” she promised.
A jabbing pain in her butt distracted her. The medic stood behind her with a syringe in his hand. The third soldier leaped to pin her arms to her sides. Her recently bandaged wound shrieked with pain, so she shrieked too. Anna cowered behind Renee, who was kicking the fallen man energetically at the ribs. He rolled away and staggered to his feet.
“I’m going to kill you. I’m gonna kill you all.” Victoria struggled frantically, but her strength was draining away. How could that happen so quickly? Didn’t it take a while for whatever drug she’d been injected with to act? But everything from the moment the train stopped had happened so quickly. She raised bleary eyes to the medic. “What did you do to me?”
He stood wordlessly, holding the syringe.
Her fingers were going numb. Her lips didn’t move properly. “Drugged me. Righ? Drug. Drugged. Me. Sonbitch.”
“I’m sorry. Sit down, ma’am,” the medic suggested compassionately.
She did, but only so that she didn’t fall ignominiously on her face in front of the evil lieutenant. She stared at him, trying to hold her head steady. His lip was bleeding freely, swelling satisfactorily. “No more smiling for you for a while,” she gloated. Maybe that’s what she said. She wasn’t quite sure it came out clearly, so she focused all her effort on the next words. “Kill you. Soon,” she vowed, and gave up the struggle against darkness.
Something hurt. In the dark behind her closed eyelids, Victoria let that thought seep into her consciousness. After a space of time that might have been minutes or hours, she connected the pain to herself, specifically to her side. What had happened? Where was she? What was that droning rumbling noise?
Pain. She’d been shot … Colby! She jolted into consciousness. She was lying on her back in a dim room that rattled. A vehicle, she realized, like the bus. Above her was rough canvas, dull gold in color, stretched over supports. She was on the floor with her head propped up on someone’s knee. Renee leaned over her. There were two men sitting on a bench attached to the sides of the vehicle. Anna McGrath sat on the bench attached to the opposite side of the bus, arms folded over her narrow chest, shoulders hunched. The men wore uniforms.
Full memory rushed over her. Marty. She tried to sit up, but her heart was heavy. Like an anchor, it held her to the floor. The burning ache in her side was nothing compared to the agony in her chest.
“Marty,” she croaked.
“Shh,” said Renee, smoothing her hair. “Poor Vic. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” She hummed a familiar Lakota lullaby, still stroking Victoria’s hair.
Almost forgetting her heartache for a moment, Victoria stared at Renee. Aunt Renee wasn’t the type to croon lullabies and call people sweetheart. And now she was singing softly.
“Go to sleep, beautiful girl,” Renee murmured in Lakota. “The wind sighs in the grass, the night is good. Your man lives. The night is good, beautiful girl.”
Victoria had grown up speaking Lakota as much as English, so she understood the words. She just wasn’t sure she believed those words. Renee wasn’t fluent in Lakota. Was she messing up the words of the old song? No, after more than twenty-five years of marriage to Hawk, she knew enough to get by. This was a lullaby she had sung to her babies. Your man lives. Could it be true? Victoria’s hand shot out to grab Renee’s wrist. “He lives?”
“Shh, go to sleep, beautiful girl, men watch, men hear, beautiful girl.”
Victoria eased her grip and turned her head to look at the soldiers on the bench. One was the medic who had treated her. And drugged her. She put that to the back of her mind and looked at them with an expression she hoped looked sad and helpless.
“I’m thirsty,” she said in as pitiful a voice as she could manage. “And I hurt.”
The medic opened the bag beside him. “I have some pain reliever. Jack, give her your canteen.”
Victoria carefully sat up with Renee’s help. The floor of the vehicle was filthy and the only reason she wasn’t dirty was that a wool blanket had been laid down for her. She shifted to the bench beside Anna and accepted the pills and canteen. She hadn’t been lying about being thirsty and in pain. Renee settled beside her. Victoria wanted to ask her why she thought Marty was alive. Could it be true? She waited a minute until the road smoothed a little and drank the pills down quickly. She handed the canteen back to the other soldier with a murmured thank you before turning to lay her head on Renee’s shoulder.
“Where is he?” she asked in Lakota. “What about Ray? Colby?”
The answer might have been too complex for Renee’s basic Lakota. The faint shadow of the old scar on the side of her face pulled when she frowned. She took up the soothing lullaby again. “Your man remains where he fell, beautiful girl,” she chanted. “As we rode away, I saw him roll over. The wind moves through the grass, it is good.”
She nodded to the back of the truck where Victoria now saw a small opening. Through it, she saw grassland obscured by a haze of dust, and the outline of another vehicle traveling behind them. Marty had rolled over after he was shot. That didn’t guarantee that he was alive now, but it gave her hope. “Ray?”
“Nothing, the night is good.”
“Colby?”
The song faltered for a moment, before Renee picked it up again. “Carried away, your male relative, by the travois of his enemy, beautiful girl. The night is good, beautiful girl.”
What did that mean? Colby had been carried away by the enemy on a travois? A travois was three lodge poles lashed together in a roughly triangular shape with canvas stretched between them. They were attached to a horse and dragged behind. That’s what the clan used to carry their goods when they moved from one camping place to another. Would this vehicle translate as a travois? Colby must be in the vehicle behind them. Or another vehicle if there were more. Was he alive? And what about Ray?
“Go to sleep, beautiful girl,” Renee went on. “Be like the bird who appears weak to lure prey to her. Quiet as wind in the grass. It is good, beautiful girl. Keep secret things secret, the night is good, beautiful girl.”
Those words didn’t quite fit the rhythm of the song, but Victoria acknowledged the wisdom in them. Let those murderers think she was weak. Keeping Marty’s possible survival secret was the right thing to do, but it would look odd if she didn’t ask about him. She fixed the medic and his companion with a pathetic stare.
“Where is my husband? What happened to him?” she asked, letting the buried tears well. “And Colby and Ray?”
The soldiers glanced at each other. The medic said, “The president will explain it all to you. We’ll be back to camp within thirty minutes.”
Aunt Renee cleared her throat. “I saw Colby’s body loaded up into the back of another truck. Why on earth would you take his dead body and leave the others laying on the ground where you shot them?”
The soldiers looked at one another again and this time Jack answered. “I’m sorry, ma’am, you’ll need to speak with President Todd about that.”
Victoria could think of only one reason for them to bring Colby’s body. “You’re going to dissect him.” Horror swam with rage in her gut. “That’s sick.”
“The president has a scientific mind.” The medic busied himself closing his medical bag. “He likes to know how things work, and a werewolf is not something you see every day.”
Victoria stifled a bitterly sarcastic comment. Renee was right. Women who appeared weak and helpless would have the advantage of surprise if an opportunity to escape came. She let her head drop into her hands and cried noisy tears which were only half faked. Marty might be alive, but he might be dead too. Alone, without medical help, what chance did he have? Ray? No mention of him moving, so he must be dead. Patia was waiting for his return, but that would never happen. Colby’s dead wolf body had been brought along so he could be cut up. All that was enough to make anyone cry.
She was looking forward to meeting the president face-to-face. He would pay for every drop of grief and misery he had caused the Lakota Wolf Clan. Before she was done with him, he would wish he had never been born. Then she’d let her dad and other male relatives at him. Just that thought was almost enough to make her smile. Almost.