Thirty

“You’re surrounded. Got no place to run,” Gentry yelled from the darkness. “Send out Marley Rose and I’ll spare the rest of you.”

“Like hell,” Roan murmured.

Marley clasped her hand over her mouth to silence her cry and pressed her face against Roan’s shirt. Ice invaded her bones, and she couldn’t stop shivering. They’d sent Jessie and the kids deeper into the house and dragged Wes Douglas into a closet and locked it. Judd was guarding the top floor.

After extinguishing every light, Marley and Roan huddled on the floor beneath the broken kitchen window. Her rifle was empty, and so was the extra pistol she’d found on the shelf next to the boxes of cartridges.

Empty casings and glass littered the floor. Any other time, her need for tidiness would kick in, but at the moment, she didn’t mind the mess.

Cold air blew the curtains out like ghostly shapes above her head.

Each time Gentry or one of the others yelled, she jerked. He terrified her worse than any monster, and the evil coming from him reminded her of an army of fanged, ravenous beasts with drooling mouths. With every passing minute, they inched closer to her.

Even now, she could feel their rough hands grabbing, pulling, dragging. They were going to get her, and no one could stop them.

Roan tightened his arms around her and kissed her temple, evidently sensing her thoughts. “He’ll have to kill me first.”

“I can’t let that happen.” Marley raised her head and met his shadowed gaze. “I can end this and save you and the others. I can’t let him kill Mama and the children.”

His answer came hard and fast. “Don’t even think about giving yourself up.”

“Is there any other way? Just answer me that.”

He searched her eyes. “I’ll think of something. But I’m not letting you walk out that door. Even if you did, he’d still slaughter everyone. He doesn’t intend to let any of us live—not even the babies.”

The contents of Marley’s stomach tried to rise. She sagged against him, knowing he spoke the truth. And that was why she stayed put—that and the fear of facing the rotten man whose blood ran through her veins. He’d already made clear his plans, and they terrified her. To be sold to someone to be used however he so desired made her more determined not to willingly face that pain and depravity.

Not yet. She felt like a coward, but she just couldn’t.

A slim chance remained that help would arrive or one of the ranch hands could free himself and the others—if they were alive. No one in the house knew the answer to that.

“If dawn would just come so we can see.” The night seemed a month long, and it wasn’t over yet. “It seems an eternity ago that we made love and talked about marriage. Did that truly happen? Did I lie naked in your arms, awash with unbelievable pleasure?”

“You did, and I took great joy in making love to you. When this is over and we’re married, we may spend days in bed at a time.” A crooked half smile curved his mouth. “What else can I do with a sex-starved woman?”

She appreciated his attempt to take her mind off their predicament, but nothing could. A noise outside alerted them. Roan raised his head for a cautious look. Propping his rifle on the windowsill, he fired.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Someone moving around. I think I might’ve hit him.”

Although the rifle and pistol were empty, she refused to turn them loose. If she had to, she could hopefully bludgeon and disable an attacker with them.

Where were her father, the sheriff, and their men? Did they lie dead somewhere as well?

It seemed that they were the only people left alive in the entire world. Just them and Gentry’s band of killers, waiting out this siege.

In another part of the house, the boom of a rifle shattered the silence—one, and then a second one. The noose around them tightened with every passing second.

No one had to tell her that Gentry and his men crept closer and closer.

She held the ability to save them. The thought refused to leave, despite Roan’s arguments to the contrary. She wished she was brave enough to walk out and meet her painful fate.

As she tried to dredge up slim hope, the faint cry of one of the triplets drifted up through the wood floor. The darling was probably hungry, or it could be Edith who was sick, burning with fever. But they didn’t dare expose the hidden trapdoor to the room under the kitchen. She said a prayer that the babe would go back to sleep. Maybe Matt would rock the infant. The kid was a wonder sometimes, far too old for his age.

A sudden burst of gunfire rent the air, but the sound was different, echoing more distantly, as though the shooter wasn’t aiming for the house. Had help arrived? She thought she’d go crazy not knowing what was happening.

The baby quieted. She was grateful.

Time dragged with nothing more to mark it but her heartbeat thrumming loudly in her ears.

“You got fifteen minutes to come out,” Gentry yelled. “Then we’re torching the house and burning everyone inside.”

White-hot terror enveloped Marley. “What are we going to do?” she whispered. “Mama and the children—I can’t let them die.”

“A lot can happen in fifteen minutes. Dawn will come soon. The sky shows signs of lightening a little.”

“Are you sure?” Marley scrambled to peer over the windowsill. The faint glimmer on the horizon almost seemed a mirage, but she knew it wasn’t. The coming daylight was going to be their time limit. Gentry was running out of darkness in which to do his dirty work.

While she looked out, she saw small, dark shapes running this way and that all over the compound. “Roan, what kind of animals are those?”

“They look like…cats.”

“Granny Jack’s cats. They must’ve gotten loose.”

“Or someone let them out,” Roan said. “It had to have been the old woman.”

“She’s alive.” Marley grinned. “I don’t know what she’s planning, but she has something in mind.”

For so many hours, they’d had little to bring a ray of hope. That Granny had survived made everything better.

“Maybe she’s freed the men and they’ll work toward us, hopefully eliminating any threat. Those shots a bit ago puzzled me, but if we’re lucky, then it was her.” Roan raised his rifle. “I lost count of my shots. I have to be down to the last cartridges.”

“We’ve emptied the boxes, Roan. All we have left are what’s in the rifles.” What would they do when those ran out? She didn’t want to consider the possibility.

He took a cartridge from his shirt pocket and handed it to Marley. “I saved one for you. Just in case you need it. I don’t know how this is going to end.”

She could hear how he struggled to keep his voice even—and he was losing. Her throat clogged with tears. Roan was the strongest person she knew, and if he was getting ready to die, she knew they really had no hope.

He cleared his throat. “If you have to use the bullet, I’ll be dead.”

Tears blurred her vision. “I can’t think about us dying this way. You’re the love I never thought I’d find. In the short time I’ve known you, my whole life has changed.” Her voice broke. “I’m glad we made love. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that.”

Firelight flickered through the window. She raised to peer out and sheer terror froze her .

“You could’ve saved them, Marley Rose. You always were a worthless child. Everything is too late now. Their blood is on your hands.” Will Gentry stood with legs braced apart, holding a torch. Flames rose high into the dark morning. His words chilled the very marrow of her bones.

Similar torches dotted the blackness around him. Stark horror settled in her chest, stilling her breath.

Marley’s fingers dug into Roan’s arm. “He’s really going to do it. He’s going to burn everyone alive.”

She thought of the babies down in the cellar who hadn’t had a chance to see what life was about. Of Matt, her mother, and the other children.

Only one person could save them—her. But to do it, she’d have to dance with the devil.

Was she brave enough?

Marley trembled and peered out the window again at the man she feared worse than death. She watched the light flicker across his bone-thin face and glitter in his frightening eyes.

Sucking in a ragged breath, she got to her feet and stuck the empty pistol into her pocket.

Her voice was as brittle as ice. “I’m coming out. You wanted me, you got me.”