Читать книгу Wild Card - Susan Amarillas - Страница 8

Prologue

Texas 1879

The gun fell from her hand....

The sheriffs body slipped silently to the floor.... Heart racing, Clair watched as the crimson stain on the man’s shirt grew steadily larger. With every frantic beat of her heart she backed away, one faltering step after another. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. Her mind denied the reality of the gruesome scene.

Panic overcame all other thought.

Run!

She flung open the door and slammed full force into the chest of Buck Hilliard, deputy sheriff. He grabbed her hard, his fingers digging painfully into her shoulders through the torn cotton of her dress, his steely gaze focused on the body beside the bed.

“You bitch,” he snarled. “You’ve killed him.”

“I didn’t,” she managed to say, though it was obvious to anyone, including her, that was exactly what she had done. Dimly she realized all sound in the saloon below had stopped.

“Hey,” a man’s voice called up. “Who’s shootin’ up there?”

She met the deputy’s icy blue eyes and she knew she was doomed. Every muscle in her body tensed wire tight. Blood pounded in her neck and her temples. He had her. Trial, jail...and worse.

Terror merged with a lifetime of self-preservation. “Let me go!” she ordered, struggling as she did.

He was still staring at the body when, without a word, he did just that. He let her go. She didn’t wait to ask questions. She shouldered past him and raced full-out toward the rear door, her red satin skirt hitched up around her knees.

Behind her, she heard the men clamoring up the stairs, their voices raised in question, heard the creak of door hinges as someone upstairs probably looked out. The sound of another shot increased her panic.

She glanced back quickly and didn’t see anyone. The deputy was gone—inside the room, most likely, she thought in the fleeting instant before she yanked open the back door.

Down the outside stairs she sprinted, taking them two at a time, the weathered wood creaking and flexing under each urgent step.

Run!

Escape was her only choice. They’d never believe her. Not her, not when their sheriff was dead on the floor of her room.

Down the dark alley between the buildings she fled, careful to keep in the shadows.

She lost her balance in the soft earth. Her hand slammed against the wood siding of the wall and she got a palmful of splinters for her effort.

“Where is she?” a man’s angry voice shouted from the doorway above.

There was no turning back now, no time for explanations.

“Find her!” came another’s voice. “She’s killed the sheriff.”

Like the answer to an unspoken prayer, she spotted several horses tied to a hitching rail in the street. Wild-eyed, her body shaking with fear, she plunged out into the open street.

“There she is!” a man yelled, and she turned in time to see him pointing at her from his place near the saloon doors. Lamplight shone through the windows and landed in a yellow-white square in the center of the street.

She darted through the light—no sense pretending they didn’t know where she was. Her only hope now was that damned horse.

She grabbed a fistful of mane and rein and somehow managed to swing up into the saddle.

Angry men surrounded her, pulling at her, grabbing her.

“Get away from me!” she-screamed, slapping, pushing anything she could think of.

The horse twisted and whirled like the beginning of a tornado. Clair hung on for her life.

“Murderer!” a man shouted, leaping up to clutch her arm, his fingers clamping on to her wrist.

She kicked him in the chest with her foot. Stunned, he fell back, landing in the dirt. At the same instant she drove her heels rib-cracking hard into the horse’s sides.

The animal reared up, screaming its protest—and hers, it seemed. Men scrambled clear of the flying hooves.

She spotted the opening and raced through and into the night.