21

The following morning, Kate walked out of the house and into the backyard, carrying the birdcage with both hands. It was time.

The raven’s wing was healed, and there was no reason to keep the bird caged up any longer. She set the cage on the ground next to the large sycamore where she’d found the injured bird.

From behind the fence, Taffy, Blondie, and Mutt watched her with wagging tails, no doubt hoping for a treat.

Dropping to her knees, she unlatched the steel door. Perched on the wooden bar, the raven cocked its head but made no effort to escape.

“You aren’t making it any easier on me.” Once she had taken someone or something under her wing, it was hard to let go. This wasn’t only true of animals and people. She also held on to past hurts and losses. Now, she had something else to hold on to—the memory of Brett’s kiss.

It wasn’t just that he’d kissed her. Nor that she had willingly kissed him back. No, it was far more worrisome than that. She felt that something had shifted inside her. The protective shell around her heart—so carefully cultivated in early childhood—had cracked open and was in terrible danger of falling away altogether.

Frank wasn’t one to dig beneath the surface. He took everything at face value. Never once had he pressed her to bare her soul or reveal the secret depths of her heart.

She’d sensed that wouldn’t be true of Brett. At times, she felt like his probing eyes could see right through her, and that’s what worried her. Having lost both parents at a tender age, she lived in fear of losing those closest to her. That’s why she always kept a part of herself in reserve—locked away. A part she hoped to protect from pain or loss. A part that no one had been allowed to touch.

Until now.

Until Brett.

And that scared her. Scared her more than words could say.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a distant squawk, and she shaded her eyes and looked up. A black bird circled overhead. Wings spread wide, its shadow flitted over the ground.

Blackie responded with caws of his own and hopped down from the perch.

She tapped the side of the cage. “That a friend of yours?” Blackie fluttered his wings. It took several more taps before the raven flew out of the cage and landed on the grass a short distance away.

The bird in the sky kept circling, its cries growing more insistent. At long last, Blackie lifted his wings and flew to the top of the tree. He then rose into the sky to join the other raven, and the two flew off together.

Hating to see the raven go, Kate watched until the winged duo was out of sight. Sighing, she stood and reached for the empty cage. If only the memory of Brett’s kiss could be so easily released.

* * *

Following a restless night, Brett mounted his horse and headed in the direction of the church. He hardly noticed the brightly shining sun, the vivid blue sky, the splash of bright colors spilling out of resident flower boxes.

He felt like a cad. A despicable, two-timing cad. What had he been thinking? It was bad enough that he had crazy, mixed-up feelings for Kate Denver, but to act on them was inexcusable.

If only she’d not looked so beguiling last night, so absolutely enticing. So utterly fetching. So completely desirable. He’d watched her pull the taffy into long strings and imagined how those same fingers would feel in his hair. On his skin.

The sugar on her lips had nearly driven him wild with wanting to know if her mouth tasted as sweet. The blazing-red color of her tangled locks had made him long to run his hands through every shiny strand.

Never had he fought so hard to resist temptation. Never had he failed so miserably.

God forgive me. Stealing someone away from another was wrong. That he knew from personal experience. His brother had stolen Deborah Freeman from him. Snatched her right from beneath his nose. Never would he forget the pain of rejection and betrayal. Never could he do to another what his brother had done to him.

Foster, even with all his faults, was basically a good man. A hard-working man. He didn’t deserve that kind of fate.

Brett’s only hope was to finish his business in Haywire as quickly as possible and leave town. That might not be such a far-fetched idea. If he was right about why the local robberies occurred only on Thursdays, the Ghost Riders’ days could be numbered.

If he was wrong, it was back to square one, and that’s what worried him. He couldn’t afford to stay in Haywire a moment longer than necessary. Not after what had happened last night. What was bound to happen again if he didn’t watch his step.

Groaning, he pressed his heels against his horse’s flanks, but trying to outrun the memory of Kate’s sweet lips was a losing battle.

It was with great relief that he reached the church. Maybe now he could concentrate on work. After dismounting and tethering his horse, he checked the church doors. They were locked, and there was no sign of the minister. Brett circled the building and found nothing that indicated a basement or cellar, and that was a puzzle. If the church had been used as an Underground Railroad station, where had the fugitive slaves hidden?

He walked around the church a second time, poking the ground with a stick on the chance he’d missed a cellar door hidden by foliage or soil. But there was nothing.

Turning with a sigh, Brett walked back to his horse. A low birdcall drew his gaze skyward. A buzzard flew in ever-widening circles overhead, wings raised in a V, its lonely cry spreading across the land. Oddly, it sounded like the cry of his lonely heart.

After watching the bird for a moment, something occurred to him, and he ran back to hunt for the stick he’d tossed away. Finding it, he proceeded to walk around the church. With each completed circle, he moved outward a couple of feet at a time. He was a good twenty or thirty feet from the church when the probing tip of his stick hit something hollow.

He dropped to his haunches and brushed away the foliage, revealing a wooden door. He lifted the rusty handle, and the heavy hatch door opened with a squeak of its hinges. He gaped at the hole in the ground. A ramp led downward.

“Well, what do you know?” Buzzards were thought to be a bad omen, but in this case, Lady Luck seemed to be smiling down on him.

Brett could think of only one reason for the lack of stairs: horses.

He started down the ramp. Reaching the bottom, he pulled out a box of safety matches. Striking one, he spotted a lantern hanging from a granite wall and lit it.

The light revealed a large underground room, the ceiling reinforced with rafters and the walls with chicken wire. So this was where the fugitive slaves had found shelter.

Unless he missed his guess, it was also where the Ghost Riders hid out. To those giving chase, it would indeed seem as if the outlaws had vanished in midair. The cavern door was well hidden and hard to find. A closer look at the ground revealed bristle marks from a broom used to hide tracks. Even he had walked right by the hatch door and failed to notice it on his earlier visit to the church.

He checked all four dirt walls. It turned out that the only way in and out of the room was by the ramp.

The grotto was void of anything except the trash littering the floor. The empty whiskey bottles, cigarette butts, and a playing card suggested how the outlaws kept themselves occupied while waiting for the coast to clear.

The cavern solved one problem but not the other. He now knew how the outlaw gang had managed to escape capture, but he was no closer to knowing their identities. That meant having to wait until the next holdup.

Just as he turned to leave, something caught his eye. A slip of paper. He stooped to pick it up and immediately recognized Kate’s flowery script. It read:

He who knows the road can ride at full trot.

Arching an eyebrow, he tucked the scrap of paper into his vest pocket. It seemed that all roads led back to the candy shop, and that worried him.