Maybe she wasn’t pretty, exactly, he thought. There was nothing wrong with her. She just wasn’t his type of woman.

Wes groaned. He was wasting far too much time thinking about something that didn’t matter at all. The only thing that should be on his mind was getting her to Brady, then finding the treasure as fast as he could. If Vincent was right and other men were looking for it, they might have given up trying to find the map and gone down there planning to rip every stone out of the floor. It would only be a matter of time before they found the tunnel.

His groan woke her.

Allie blinked and jumped at the sight of him beside her. Like an animal alert at the moment of waking, she was several feet away before he could react.

‘‘Now hold on.’’ Wes raised his hands. ‘‘Don’t go running off again.’’

She moved a step back. ‘‘You’re angry?’’

‘‘Because you ran?’’ Wes shook his head. ‘‘You got a right to go where you want. I don’t own you, Allie.’’ He had to smile-she’d finally decided to talk to him.

Allie watched him closely. Her eyes darted from her shoes to him. She knew she couldn’t grab them without him being able to reach her. ‘‘I lost your horse.’’

‘‘There are other horses.’’ He watched her closely.

‘‘And your saddle.’’

‘‘It was Adam’s saddle.’’ Wes smiled as though he’d told a joke.

Tilting her head, she studied him. ‘‘Then why did you follow me?’’

Wes made no effort to reach for her. ‘‘Because,’’ he began, ‘‘we have to talk.’’

‘‘We are talking.’’ She’d already said more to him in the past two minutes than she’d said to another human being in five years.

‘‘We have to talk about you.’’ Wes pulled the letter from his pocket. ‘‘I received this-’’

‘‘I know.’’ She might be quiet, but she was not deaf. She’d heard everything Vincent and Wes had talked about last night.

Wes glanced up at her. ‘‘Don’t you realize this could be your family?’’

‘‘I have no family.’’

‘‘But-’’

‘‘They all died. I saw their bodies piled like wood to burn.’’ Allie lowered her head. She didn’t like to think about the way the camp had looked after the raid. When she brought the image to mind, she could still smell the odor of burning flesh.

Long-buried memories flooded back. The sounds of screams and gunfire. The taste of terror in her mouth as her mother pushed her away, telling her to run for the trees. Her mother then grabbed the baby and ran for the shelter. Black smoke billowed from the barn, as if a great storm was being born there and would spread over the whole world.

‘‘There’s a sheriff forty miles south of here who thinks you might still have a grandmother alive.’’

Allie remembered no grandmother.

‘‘You’ve got to give it a try.’’

He said no more, but Allie heard the words as clear as if he’d spoken them aloud.I can’t go on worrying about you.

She lifted her chin. ‘‘I’ll go,’’ she said. ‘‘But I won’t promise to stay.’’

‘‘Fair enough.’’ Wes stood. ‘‘I’ll go round up your horse.’’


By nightfall, they were in the small settlement of Brady, Texas. The huddle of houses and stores could hardly be called a town. A mercantile, a six-table cafe with a chalkboard menu outside, a blacksmith with livery stable, a three-story hotel with a saloon in the back half of its first floor, and several houses.

Some people didn’t consider a place a town until it had a courthouse or newspaper or bank, but Wes always thought the difference lay in the presence of a barbershop. Once a place had a shop, he knew folks were settling in. His reasoning wasn’t based on the fact that the barbershop was a meeting place to exchange information, as well as take a bath, get a shave, or have a tooth pulled. He’d decided, by observation, that when men start shaving regularly, it’s usually due to females. And once women are settled into a place, it’s only a matter of time before there are schools and churches, banks and newspapers. A town.

Brady hadn’t yet become a town, but from the looks of things, it was only a matter of time.

If he’d been alone, Wes would have stayed with the horses in the livery for a quarter, but he couldn’t do that with Allie along. The little money he’d picked up from a stash he always left at Adam’s would be gone fast with hotel prices and double meals.

He paid the two bits for the horses’ care and walked across the street to the hotel with Allie at his heels. She hid behind him as he ordered a room and asked to have a bath brought up.

The hotel owner told him the only room fit for a lady was on the third floor and, due to its size, cost twice as much as any of the others.

Wes groaned and took the room. When he climbed the stairs, he was relieved to find the accommodations much nicer than expected.

‘‘Not bad. At least we’ll be comfortable tonight.’’ He tossed his saddlebag on the nearest of two small beds and turned to face Allie.

She stood just inside the doorway, her face ghostly white. Her hands knotted the fabric of her dress on either side.

‘‘What is it?’’ Wes reached out to touch her shoulder.

Allie jerked away, backing as far as she could into the corner.

‘‘Allie, talk to me.’’ He knew if he took a step toward her, he’d only frighten her more. She was in that private hell of hers where everything was threatening and everyone was an enemy.

Her huge blue eyes stared at him with a terror in them so deep he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t kill her.

Wes glanced around the room. There was nothing frightening. The room was almost totally white, from bed covers to curtains. The floors had been scrubbed recently, and the water in the pitcher looked fresh. Even the chamber pot beneath the first bed looked to have been cleaned.

Wes backed toward the windows and sat down in the room’s only chair, a rocker made with most of the bark left on the wood. ‘‘I’m no good at this,’’ he mumbled to himself.

He leaned back and rested his head, closing his eyes, blocking out her suffering. ‘‘Allie, I’m a hard man who’s spent most of my life fighting one way or the other. You need a man like Daniel with faith enough to help you or Adam with his soft, easy way of healing.’’

He heard the movement of her dress and the slight swish of a blade clearing leather. She’d drawn her knife. After all the nights they’d spent together, she still didn’t trust him. Did she think he’d traveled over half of Texas, waiting until he reachedthishotel, to kill her?

Wes tried again. ‘‘Allie, there is nothing to be afraid of here. We’re just in a hotel. There’s even a lock on the door, which is more than I can say for a few of the hotels I’ve been in since coming to Texas.’’

He folded his hands. ‘‘How about I leave you to take your bath? The desk clerk downstairs said I could probably find the sheriff who sent me the letter in the saloon.’’

She didn’t move or answer him. He really didn’t expect her to.

A maid tapped on the door then entered with two pails of water. The woman was clean and neatly dressed, but there was a hardness about her. A hatred of life that ran bone deep. A boy of about twelve followed with a small hip tub. She glanced from Allie to Wes, but she’d seen far too much to comment.

The boy set the tub down with a thud. Before the noise stopped echoing around the room, the woman backhanded him hard. He didn’t react, not a sound, as he turned and left the room. The woman followed him out without saying anything to Wes or Allie.

Wes glanced at Allie and saw a reaction to the cruelty in her eyes. He gave her time to speak, but, as always, she didn’t say a word.

‘‘Well.’’ Wes stood, not knowing how to comfort her. ‘‘I’ll leave you. Enjoy your…’’

The sudden panic in her eyes made him forget to finish his sentence.

‘‘D-don’t go!’’ she stammered.

‘‘But…’’ Wes watched her closely, realizing her terror was not aimed at him. ‘‘Do you want to go with me to meet the sheriff? Allie, what frightens you so?’’

She gulped down her fear. ‘‘I hate hotels.’’

Wes took a deep breath and smiled. Fear of hotels seemed a much smaller problem than the thought that she might have suddenly gone insane and planned to kill him in his sleep. He relaxed. At least he wasn’t the one who sparked her fears.

‘‘You’ve nothing to fear here. I’ll lock you in.’’

He’d said the wrong thing. She was backing away again. It took Wes a moment to realize what he’d said.

‘‘No, I didn’t mean what you think. I only meant we can lock the door so that no one will disturb you while you bathe.’’

‘‘No.’’ Allie shook her head violently, making her mass of hair fly around her. ‘‘I will not stay here. I hate this place.’’

Wes tried to reason. ‘‘But you love taking a bath. How about you take a bath and I’ll wait for you? When you’re finished, we’ll go down and look for the sheriff together.’’

Allie nodded.

Wes moved toward the door. ‘‘I’ll be right outside.’’

She darted, beating him to the opening. ‘‘No! Stay. I don’t want to be in this place alone.’’

Wes didn’t understand, but he was too tired to argue. He pulled the rocker to face the window and sat down with his back to the tub. ‘‘Let me know when you’re finished.’’

To his surprise, he heard her knife slip back into her boot. He pulled the last thin cigar from the silver box in his breast pocket and lit it.

As he rocked back and forth, he thought he’d had some crazy things happen to him in his lifetime, but being forced at knifepoint to stay in a hotel room while a woman takes a bath had never been one of them. Until now.

He leaned back as he took a long draw on his last cigar, enjoying the sounds of her bathing just behind him.


Allie watched his back as she removed her clothes. He had been right about the bath. If she took a bath every day for the rest of her life, she’d never feel clean enough. But he’d been wrong to come to the hotel. Allie couldn’t tell him, but she knew about hotels. They were places of evil where she’d been locked in a room. Deep into the night, the devil walked the hallways of hotels.