Code of the Wolf

The other woman advanced on Jacob, knife in hand.

Jacob held his ground.

“You won’t hurt me,” he said.

Serenity’s eyes were clouded with the blindness of grief, but he could see the battle roaring inside her. She had no desire to threaten him, but she saw no other choice.

She didn’t trust the law to take care of Leroy. She didn’t trust Jacob to finish what he’d started. And maybe she blamed herself for Bonnie’s death, for not taking better care of her people.

That was something Jacob understood. When he’d first set out to track Ruth’s murderers—killers who had taken pains to leave obvious evidence of their identities—the trail had already gone cold and he hadn’t known where they’d taken refuge. He’d thought his need to kill them outright would never fade, no matter how long he searched.

But it had. He’d seen the pit opening up in front of him and had stepped back just in time. He’d found the Code. It had restored his sanity and given him new purpose. Serenity didn’t have the Code, or anything like it, to make her path clear.

And he knew there was something darker behind her need for violent retribution.

Zora moved closer to Jacob, her gaze never leaving his. She knew just how dangerous he could be. He knew he could overpower her, but she or Serenity might get hurt in the struggle.

That was a risk he didn’t want to take. He would go along for now, but he wouldn’t make any promises he couldn’t keep.

“All right,” he said. “You mind if I get dressed?”

Serenity blinked, as if she hadn’t noticed his state of undress until that moment. She flushed and gestured with the rifle. With Zora right behind him, Jacob returned to his pile of clothes and, ignoring his long johns, pulled on his trousers, careful to avoid the knives he’d dropped a few feet away. Zora gathered them up and pushed the sheaths into her belt.

“You’ll carry Leroy out of the arroyo,” Serenity said to him. “I’ll stay with you while Zora gathers the horses.”

“Leroy’s hurt pretty bad,” Jacob said. “We’d better bind him up, or he’s likely to bleed to death before we get him to the house.”

“Can you do it?” she asked.

Jacob nodded and knelt to tear strips of cloth from the cleanest parts of the dead men’s shirts. Serenity watched intently while he pulled Leroy into a sitting position and bound his shoulder. The outlaw groaned but remained only half-conscious. When he was finished, Jacob hauled Leroy to his feet.

“That way,” Serenity said, gesturing east. She followed Jacob as he carried Leroy past the huddled, frightened horses along and out of the arroyo. Jacob rolled Leroy off his shoulders and waited until Zora drove the gang’s horses up behind them. She led one of them to Jacob.

“Put him up,” Serenity said.

Leroy groaned as Jacob heaved him into the saddle. Serenity threw Jacob a length of rope. He tied Leroy’s hands to the saddle horn and his feet into the stirrups. Zora set off for the rocks where Jacob had left his own horse and brought the gelding back, along with Serenity’s mount and two other horses he assumed were hers and Bonnie’s. Then she went back into the arroyo. She returned with Bonnie cradled in her arms. Serenity slumped, her head bowed in inconsolable misery.

Jacob knew that if he planned to make an escape and take Leroy with him, this was the time. Zora couldn’t come after him now, and Serenity was too lost in her grief to stop him. She probably couldn’t hit him with a bullet even if she were standing right next to him.

But Jacob couldn’t seem to move. Zora gently laid Bonnie on the ground, rising swiftly to face Jacob again as she cut a length of rope from the coil tied to her saddle. Her intention was obvious. Jacob held his hands out before him, and Zora began to bind his wrists. She knew he could snap the ropes if he set his mind to it, but she wasn’t going to make it easy.

Averting her eyes, Serenity moved to unbuckle the cinches from two of the outlaws’ horses, then swung the saddles over the bare backs of her mount and Jacob’s. When she was finished securing the tack, she stepped back and looked from Bonnie to Jacob. He knew she was wondering how to get Bonnie back to the house when she and Zora needed their hands free to keep him and Leroy under guard.

The words came out of his mouth before he had time to think.

“I’ll take her,” he said.

Zora’s eyes narrowed.

Serenity released a ragged breath.

“Why should I trust you?” she asked. “Maybe you only want us to untie your hands. You could…you could use Bonnie to make us let you go.”

Her accusation was more painful to Jacob than any wound he’d suffered since Leroy’s gang had ambushed him. “I wouldn’t do that, Miss Campbell,” he said stiffly. “I would never desecrate the dead that way, least of all Miss Maguire.”