Twilight

“I don’t give a hoot what my husband does, Sheriff. Then again, perhaps it would be prudent of me if I did so from now on. After all, was it not my husband who hired that...that...gunslinger to protect our ranch from those loathsome farmers and cattle rustlers? A common criminal, he is, born of this vast wasteland, and descended upon us all to reap the rewards of dishonest endeavor.”

“Er...why, yes, ma’am, I suppose he is that, now, ain’t he? But Rance Logan’s been known statewide, even up near Denver way, fer his expert shot. I heard rumor he run shotgun guard fer the Wells Fargo line’s gold shipments back east at one time. Even ‘fore that, weren’t no other gun to be had fer the price. Still ain’t, what with Black Jack up ‘n’ vanished like a scared coon. Nobody’d mess with Logan, I tell ya. I even heard tell he were one o’ them decorated Union soldiers. Hell, nobody’d blame yer husband fer hirin’ him, ma’am, ’specially with them rustlers and farmers up ‘n’ stealin’ all yer grazin’ land. Ye need a man like Logan te tend to them folks, ma’am.” The clang of spittle meeting with cuspidor filtered through the dusty hall. “Yep. But ain’t no tellin’ when them loner sorts’ll snap an’ just go off an’ murder an innocent man fer no good reason. Been givin’ ol’ Cameron a time of it, I hear, disobeyin’ an’ whatnot.”

Abigail Spotz sniffed. “That’s my husband’s business, Sheriff, not mine. Now, if you please, I believe there is a body lying just outside your front door here. Perhaps you’d best dispose of it before the crows do. I’ll be just a moment with Mr. Logan.”

Rance could almost hear Gage’s overlong nails scratching the hair on the back of his neck. “I don’ know, ma’am. Leavin’ Cameron Spotz’s wife in a jail with an outlaw like Logan...kinda makes me all nervous. Ma’am, yer husband would hang me hisself if somethin’ happened to ya.”

“I suppose he would have to now, wouldn’t he?” Abigail Spotz paused. “Suppose I just sit right here until you return from your tidying-up out there. Even Rance Logan wouldn’t be capable of harming me at this distance.”

Another clang echoed from the cuspidor. “All right now, ma’am, if ya promise te jest set down here.”

“Take your time, Sheriff, and do bury the poor man. It’s hotter than blazes today.”

Not two moments after the jailhouse door banged shut on its hinges, Abigail Spotz’s skirts rustled down the hall. She paused just as she reached Rance’s cell. Beneath the swaying fringe of her plumed hat, her dark eyes widened as they moved over him. “God, look at you,” she whispered.

“Morning, Mrs. Spotz.” Rance forced the words from his dust-clogged throat. “A fine day for a hanging.”

Abigail Spotz pressed a white-gloved hand to the lace at her throat and paled considerably, despite the flash in her eyes. “Even as we speak, my husband is securing the hemp to that twisted old tree on Boot Hill. They’ll be here for you within the hour.”

Rance felt his teeth bare in a feral smile, an inept testament to the rage igniting within him. “And how is your husband, ma’am?”

“Don’t call me that, Rance. No matter what my husband might have done to you, you know I was no part of it.”

“He bought the jury, Abigail. He bought Gage and every last witness he could find to see me thrown into this jail. The judge had no choice but to hang me. I’m inclined to believe, ma’am, that your husband wants me dead.”

Abigail closed her eyes as if weighing her decision, then spun about and yanked a brass key ring from a hook upon the wall. Rance watched her trembling hands attempting to shove key after key into the cell padlock. “You disobeyed him, Rance.” A strangled cry escaped her when the keys fell to the dirt floor with a clang. She sank to her knees and plunged her pristine white-gloved hands into the dust to retrieve the ring.

Rance studied her bent head, the streaks of gray generously marring the deep chestnut hue. Her shoulders were narrow, slightly stooped, growing more stooped with each day she endured beneath Cameron Spotz’s hand.

You disobeyed him.

“You’re right.” Rance felt his lips twisting snidely. “I refused to murder innocent farmers who had rightfully settled on grazing land, their land. That’s a sorry excuse for framing a man for cold-blooded murder and seeing him hanged.”

“Not for Cameron it isn’t. You were his paid gun. Cameron sees no farther than that. And he intended to make you pay for disobeying.” A rare youthful smile spread across her features when at last one key swung the cell door wide. She took three steps, then skidded in the dust, eyes blinking, suddenly refusing to meet his. She looked almost young somehow, as if her covert mission here had wiped clean all traces of the bitterness that had seemed so much a part of her. Gone were the deep lines at the corners of her mouth, the shadows beneath her eyes, the telltale strain in her neck. Abigail Spotz must have been a beauty when Cameron enslaved her as his wife twenty years before.

“Try the small key on the shackles,” Rance said hoarsely, his throat working against the bile burning in his throat. Paid gun... As notorious, as ruthless and cold-blooded as they come. A man known only for his prowess with a gun. A man with a past both murky and riddled with speculation, a past he refused to acknowledge or refute, and thus a man feared by many, perhaps too many, who would suffer little remorse at lining their pockets to see him hanged. An odd distinction indeed for a man in a town like Wichita, which teemed with every sort of unsavory character. A town that the powerful Cameron Spotz all but owned. He’d proven it today.

“There’s more to it,” he said. “There has to be.”

“Don’t think on it,” Abigail said quickly, stepping a pace back when his shackles fell cleanly to the floor. Her gaze traveled a fidgety path to his as he flexed the stiffness from his arms and hands. “Y-your horse is picketed about a quarter mile back of the jail. He gave me a time of it, but we managed.” She slipped one hand into her folded silk-and-lace parasol and withdrew a shiny black six-gun that shook in her small hand. “I found this among your things.”

Rance wrapped his fingers around the weapon, feeling the solitary comfort only heavy cold steel could provide him. He shoved the pistol into his waistband. “I could kill him, you know. You’ve given me the means, Abigail, and I’ve got more than ample reason. For what he’s done to me, to those innocent farmers, to you— I could do it, Abigail. You’d be free of him.”

As if intent upon ignoring him, she rummaged in the folds of the parasol. “Here.” She shoved a worn wide-brimmed black hat at him. “Take this. You’ll need it under the hot sun. Oh...and this.”

The leather pouch she produced weighed heavily in his palm, the coins inside tinkling softly. A small fortune, no doubt. “Abigail, I don’t need your money.”

Again, she stuck her head into the parasol, ignoring the pouch in his outstretched hand. “You might want to shave that long beard of yours and cut your hair. You look like some sort of half-breed. Besides, Cameron will make certain your wanted posters are spread thick from here to New York and San Francisco. Oh, and change your name.”

“Abigail, listen, dammit.”

“Stop.” She held up a trembling hand, her eyes, so knowing, so wistful, suddenly shining. “Please...for heaven’s sake don’t get all gallant on me, Rance Logan. I—I don’t believe I could bear it. You see, some part of me, a very big, very shameful part of me, has been desperately wishing since the moment you stepped foot on our ranch that I was fifteen years younger...and that you were the sort to dally with other men’s wives. If you were, if I were, I believe I would go with you, even if you didn’t ask me.”

Rance crushed the hat in one fist. “I owe you my life, Abigail.”

“Somehow I think you might have managed an escape without me.”

“Let me take you somewhere.”

She shook her head and seemed to force a wavering smile. “Cameron would find me. Besides, I’ve my children here.” Her narrow chest rose and fell beneath expensive lace. “And they’re still young. You see, I am simply doing my duty as a law-abiding citizen who doesn’t wish to see an innocent man hang. No, I wasn’t in Buffalo Kate’s saloon last night. And I don’t even know the man you killed. But I do know you, Rance. I know that somewhere deep down, under all that grime, under all your wounds, lurks a gentleman. And gentlemen don’t kill, except in self-defense. I’m merely freeing you, Rance. Your life is your own to save.”

Their eyes met, and something tore at Rance’s soul. Gratitude, fierce and completely foreign. He couldn’t remember anyone ever doing something for him that he hadn’t somehow paid for. His fingers reached for hers, yet she chose to ignore him as she bent and hoisted the discarded manacles. After shoving the shackles at him, she turned about and clasped her hands behind her back. “Put those awful things on my wrists, Rance, then lock me in here. And I suppose you should gag me, as well, if this is to look dastardly and cruel. After all, women have a tendency to scream in situations such as this, don’t they?”

Rance felt the weight of the chains in his fist. “Why do you stay with him, Abigail? Take the children with you somewhere. Anything has to be better than—”

“Stop.” She choked the word out, her head dipping. “Please, don’t speak of it. I’m his wife.”

“You’re afraid of him.”

“And what if I am? He’s still the father of my children. The only man I’ve ever known. I know it’s difficult for men to understand that sort of thing, but we women...we have so very few choices in this life. And what few we have are decided for us by men. Now hurry, Rance. The sheriff is sure to come, and Cameron with him.”

“Come with me, Abigail. We’ll go south, into Oklahoma. Or I’ll take you east, to—”

“No. Please, I don’t want to know where you’re going. Just go alone. You’ll have a fighting chance. Saddled with me... Good heavens, I’ve spent the last twenty years in all the relative comfort money can buy in this godforsaken town. I haven’t been on a horse since before I married Cameron. Some bounty hunter would catch us before we even made Dodge City, and then Cameron would probably kill us both. Now, dammit, put those chains on me, or I will start screaming.”

So he did, shackling her narrow white wrists to the iron bars and stuffing a gag into her mouth. By the time Gage returned to the jail with Cameron Spotz and found a hysterical Abigail blubbering about that outlaw Rance Logan overpowering her and managing his escape, Rance had disappeared into the barren Kansas prairie, with Frank Wynne’s gold locket and chain stuffed deep in one pocket.

Chapter One

Twilight, Kansas

June 1882

Jessica Wynne knew she should have worn her gloves, the freshly bleached and pressed white gardening gloves she’d folded neatly in the top drawer of the pine bureau in the sunny corner of her kitchen. Sadie McGlue would never have forgotten her gardening gloves—were Sadie McGlue ever given to gardening, that is. No, indeed, Sadie McGlue, of the New England McGlues—were there others?—would have surely remembered to encase her smooth, lily-white hands in two pairs of gloves before allowing her fingers to venture anywhere near dirt. Sadie McGlue would have remembered her gloves because Sadie McGlue had very little else to ponder except for the harmful effects of sun and Kansas dirt upon her tender skin and meticulously manicured nails. Then again, Sadie McGlue would never have been found on her knees in a strawberry patch on the hottest of June afternoons, up to her elbows in bone-dry Kansas dirt.

This was because Sadie McGlue had both a New England fortune and a husband to care for her. Sadie McGlue had no children to tend to and no farm to manage all on her own. Sadie McGlue also happened to live on Maple Street, the widest, longest, shadiest street in all of Twilight, in a freshly painted white two-story wooden house with black shutters and flower-filled white window boxes made of the same imported southern Missouri wood as the house. Sadie McGlue bought her strawberries at the local market with all the rest of the upper-crust folks from Maple Street. Jessica’s strawberries. And Jessica’s beets and preserves.

Jessica shifted to another strawberry plant, ignoring the ache spreading through her lower back. Just as she ignored the sun beating upon her bonneted head and the exposed back of her neck, where her frayed collar gapped. Just as she ignored the dirt accumulating beneath her nails and the browning of the skin on the backs of her hands. Dry. The dirt sifted through her fingers, then vanished with the next hot breeze. Too dry for so early in the season. If only the frigid winds of the past winter had been accompanied by a blizzard or two, her crop would have flourished through the summer on water stored in the ground after the thaw. Then again, as it was, she’d barely survived the cold. And talk was already circulating of the snowy, even colder winter to come. Not for the first time, she wondered if she could live through another four months of howling wind and bone-shattering cold with her sanity intact, not to mention the roof and the barn.

With a gentleness she deemed only children and plants worthy of, she sank her fingers deep into the soil around one withering stalk and envisioned the pails of water she would need to haul from the well to this field. If she didn’t, if the sky remained as clear and blue from horizon to horizon, the air as hot and unforgiving, she would have no strawberries for women like Sadie McGlue to serve in fine porcelain bowls to their lady friends after church on Sundays and tea on Thursdays. There would be no strawberry preserves to sell this year, and therefore no new dairy cow, no new birch broom from New England, no additional stock of precious fuel for the winter months, and certainly no new horse to hitch to the broken-down buckboard wagon that had gathered a year’s worth of dust in the barn. And that lovely blue-gray dress with the scalloped lace collar would still be in the window at Ledbetter’s General Store long after she became Mrs. Avram Halsey in a few months’ time.

Odd that she should even waste a thought on that dress when the farm was in need of so much. Just because she’d spotted the thing in the window and briefly indulged herself in thoughts of walking down the chapel aisle on Avram’s arm, wearing that lovely dress, surely didn’t make it more important than a new dairy cow. Yet, some utterly pagan part of her soul, the part entirely unsuitable for a minister’s daughter, truly believed a woman deserved such a dress when venturing into marriage for a second time.

She sat back upon her heels and swept her forearm over her brow, uncaring of the dirt smudges she left upon her cheeks. Then, instinctively, with no thought whatsoever, just as she’d done every two minutes or so since she’d ventured into the field, she glanced toward the gray stone farmhouse and the backyard just visible through the flapping row of white sheets she’d hung out to dry.

Gray...just like the sun-baked landscape here, as if the house were born of the same dry, barren earth. Her gaze probed the gray and immediately found her son, Christian, where she’d left him, half concealed behind the tall cottonwood her own father had planted some twenty-two years before, on the day she was born, when the house was made of sod, not stone. The sunlight caught Christian’s round, blond head. It was just like his father’s, yet somehow intensely vulnerable. So unlike his father’s.

Stray blond tendrils tossed wildly by the wind blocked her view for a moment, and she stuffed them into her bonnet as she struggled to her feet. Yes, there he was, only he wasn’t playing beneath that tree, as she’d instructed him. He was shaking his head, vigorously, as though talking to someone, and he was backing away from...