Chapter Twenty-three

Kane woke to a bright light shining in his eyes and a splash of cold water in his face. Every part of his body hurt. He tried to move, and that only made the hurt worse.

“O’Brien?” The sound of his name seemed to come from a long way off. Instinctively he tried to curl up, but couldn’t. It hurt too damn much.

“O’Brien!” His name again. Spoken with an urgency he didn’t understand. He tried to remember. Tried to think who he was and where he was.

Another splash of water, and he tried to focus. Tried to remember. And then as he did, he wished he hadn’t.

“Damn you, Mitch. Did you have to hit him so hard?”

Kane heard that, too.

“I would like to kill the son of a bitch.”

“Later,” Thompson said. Kane knew that voice now. Everything was coming back, slowly. Christ, everyone was standing in line to kill him. The state of Texas, Hildebrand, Thompson. Probably even Nicky, now that she’d had time to think about it. Nicky had the greatest right.

Thompson’s foot probed him, and he couldn’t withhold a grunt of pain. Then the light shone in his eyes again. “Get up,” Thompson said.

Kane tried. He managed to get to his knees, but he was too weak to stand without using his hands, and they were still chained behind him.

“Help him up,” Thompson said to Evers, and Kane was roughly dragged to a standing position against a wall.

He struggled to remain upright. A lantern shone in his face, blinding him so he couldn’t see Thompson’s expression.

“Who are you?” Thompson said.

“O’Brien,” Kane said.

“You’re working for the law?”

Kane tried to straighten. “Yes,” he said, offering no excuses. Any would be self-serving and make no difference to Thompson. He had to convince Thompson to send his niece and nephew away. Now. And then provoke him into killing him and leaving his body where it could be found. Just in case Nicky didn’t contact Masters. He couldn’t blame her if she didn’t. He’d been surprised as hell when she had nodded.

How many days did Davy have left? He’d lost track.

The lamp seemed to dip slightly, as if the hand holding it faltered. He sensed, rather than saw, Evers take possession of it.

“Who?” Thompson said.

“A marshal named Masters,” Kane said. There seemed no reason not to identify the bastard.

“What does he know?” Thompson cut to the most immediate problem.

Kane wondered what Nicky had told him. Not much, apparently.

“He knows most of the route to Sanctuary, and I left a clear trail for the rest of it,” Kane lied. He’d covered it damn well, and it would take Masters time. “It won’t be long, Thompson. You need to send Nicky and Robin out.”

“Why did you come back?”

Kane debated which truth to tell him. There were several of them. He knew there was probably only one Thompson would believe. “I came after Nicky. She heard something she shouldn’t have heard. I …”

“You wanted to stop her from telling me?”

Kane shook his head. “I don’t know what I wanted.” That too was a partial truth. He knew what he wanted; he just hadn’t known how to achieve it. “Just get your niece and nephew out of here,” he said. “Now.”

Kane saw Thompson move. He seemed bent over in the shadows. In a moment he straightened up again. “How?” Nat said bitterly. “It seems I can’t trust anyone.”

Kane tried to move, but it seemed only the wall was keeping him upright. He fell back against it. “Evers and you can take her.”

“We both have prices on our heads. Besides, I don’t know if we would make it out alive. Seems there are a few plans to take over Sanctuary.” Thompson suddenly swung at Kane. It was a weak blow, but full of helpless rage. “God damn you. I trusted you.”

Kane slumped against the wall.

“Why?” Thompson asked. “Why, when you could have had Sanctuary? Was it a pardon? Money?”

Kane laughed. It was a cold, ugly sound. “Not my life, and certainly not money. Hell, you offered more than the goddamn government could pay,” Kane said. “You don’t know how badly I wanted it.”

“Then why?”

Kane suddenly wanted Nat Thompson to understand. It wouldn’t affect his death sentence, nor the manner of it. He had violated Thompson’s trust and every rule in Sanctuary. There could be no pardon. He didn’t expect one. But he wanted Nicky to know. He couldn’t bear for her to think he’d betrayed her for money. “There was another man taken two weeks after my capture. He’d been trying to free me.” Kane paused, wondering whether Thompson was listening. “He was, is, the best friend I ever had. I was promised his life.”

“And yours,” Nat Thompson said harshly.

Kane didn’t say anything. He wasn’t going to reveal the real bargain. It would sound self-serving. False. Whatever credibility he had, which was damn little, would be destroyed.

Evers held the lantern closer. “You don’t believe this, do you, Nat?”

There was a long silence. “You know I’m dying,” Nat said to Kane. “Why didn’t you just wait me out?”

“Davy Carson didn’t have that long.”

“And Nicky? Were you just using her to betray me?”

Kane sighed, forcing himself to refrain from saying the truth. It had been Thompson who’d thrown them together. Over and over again. He suspected the reminder wouldn’t help. “I tried my damnedest to stay away. I never wanted her a part of this. Her or Robin. Christ, I didn’t want any part of it.”

“She’s trying to protect you,” Thompson said harshly. “Even now.”

Kane groaned. No one knew better than he the gut-wrenching sickness of having to choose between people you care about. He didn’t want her to go through that, not for him.

“Take her out of here,” he pleaded. “You and Evers can get through with your Comanches.”

“And go where?” Thompson said. “All my money’s wrapped up in Sanctuary. I don’t have long to live, and Mitch is wanted. What kind of life will they have on the run? No money? No protection?”

“Give yourself up,” Kane said. “Meet Masters. All he wants is Sanctuary. I think you can trust him to leave Nicky and Robin out of it … and I have a little money, enough for them to have a grubstake.”

Evers snorted.

Thompson didn’t say anything for several minutes, then spoke harshly, “If I left with my family, my own men would kill me. They suspect I’m sick. They might figure I’m going to the law.”

“You can’t believe him,” Evers broke in angrily. “He’s just trying to save his own skin. Maybe no one’s coming at all.”

Kane straightened. “I’m a dead man now,” he said. “I know it.”

“What about your friend?” Thompson asked.

Kane decided to gamble everything. “If Masters finds my body, he’ll release Carson. That was the deal.”

There was a long silence.

“Just why should I accommodate you that way?” Thompson finally asked. “If the Comanches take you, there’ll be damn little left.”

“I thought you might want an example, a warning to those who might try to come after … what’s yours,” Kane said. “And you don’t have anything against Carson. I’m the one who—”

“And I’m thinking now the death of your friend might be a worse punishment than your own,” Thompson said thoughtfully. “Think about that, Diablo.”

The lantern went out, casting the room into total blackness. Kane heard movement, the banging of the door shut, a bolt shoved into place. Then total blackness. He slid down to the floor.

He’d lost his gamble.

Nat Thompson managed to take the steps back to his house without help. Nicky wasn’t there, but she would have heard him enter, and he knew she would join them soon. He headed for his desk.

“I think I should take you to the bedroom.”

“The desk,” Nat managed.

Mitch helped him into the chair behind the desk, and looked at him worriedly.

“Tell Andy, Jeb, and Sam that we might be moving out,” Nat said. “Tell them to keep it to themselves.”

Mitch nodded but hesitated. “Are you all right?”

“I just need a few minutes to rest,” Nat said. “Now get out.”

He watched as Mitch left, then opened his top drawer and found a small bottle. Laudanum. He would take a few drops, enough to dull the pain. Not enough to sleep. He couldn’t afford that now. He unlocked the drawers to his desk and took out the clippings about Diablo.

A knock came at the door. Urgent. “Come in,” he said.

Nicky had washed and changed into clean clothes. Her face wasn’t splotched, but her eyes were red.

“He’s still alive,” Nat said without waiting for the question. “Sit down,” he added as he looked back down to the clippings and read them more thoroughly. One did mention a man named Carson, who had been condemned with Diablo.

As he finished, a numbness started to creep over him. He forced himself to stay alert. “Did Diablo ever mention a man named Carson to you?”

He watched her try to remember. She finally shook her head.

“Or mention a friend?”

Nicky’s eyebrows furrowed. “Why?”

“It’s important, Nicky. It might just save him.”

“Will anything save him?”

“It might,” Nat said softly. A plan was forming in his mind. “Do you really care?”

“I don’t want to,” Nicky said, bending her head. “But, Uncle Nat, I don’t want him to die.”

“Then try to remember.”

She hesitated, apparently trying to recall. “I accused him of trying to save himself. He said if that had been true he would have accepted your offer.”

Nat thought for a moment. Could O’Brien have made up that story? He had no reason to think it might make a difference. But it did make a difference. Perhaps he hadn’t been entirely wrong about the man. There had been something about him from the very beginning that had appealed to Nat, something that separated him from the others.

He closed his eyes. The laudanum was affecting his mind as well as dulling his body. He knew he didn’t have much longer, maybe not more than a few weeks the way the pain was growing. What was best for his niece and nephew? That was all that mattered.

Nat had always taken care of his younger, handsome, devil-may-care brother, ever since they were children in an orphanage. He’d loved John’s wife, and had promised both he would take care of the children. It was the one promise in his life he’d always kept.

Nicky loved Diablo. That was plain enough. She’d protected him as much as she could. It was also plain to him that Diablo loved Nicky. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come back. He wouldn’t have condemned himself by warning Nat. He’d never seen so much anguish on a man’s face as he had moments ago on Diablo’s face, and it wasn’t for himself.

There was one thing Nat prized above all else: loyalty. He and Mitch had that kind of loyalty, and he would die for Mitch, just as he would have for John. He understood that kind of loyalty, and now he understood Diablo and why he had done what he had. He wasn’t sure yet, though, whether he was going to forgive it.

“Uncle Nat?”

Nat opened his eyes. She was looking at him with undisguised worry. Worry for him. Worry for his prisoner.

“You didn’t tell me everything, did you?” he said.

A red flush flooded her cheeks. “No,” she said honestly.

“Why?”

“I couldn’t … I didn’t …”

“Nicole,” he sighed. “Your mother was like that. Once she fell in love with John, nothing else mattered. Not that he was an outlaw, not that he was on the run. Sometimes, I look at you and I see her. She was so damned pretty, so damned stubborn. She would never stay behind and take care of herself.”

“I don’t love him,” she said, her chin jutting out ominously. “How can I when …”

“When you did the same thing?” he asked softly. “You were torn between him and me, and you purposely didn’t tell me things about our Diablo. I think O’Brien was faced with the same dilemma. He was offered his friend’s life for the location of Sanctuary. I think that’s why he came after you. He did what he could for his friend, and then he was willing to face my wrath to get you away from here, you and your brother. That took guts, Nicky. He knows what happens to people who betray me. The deaths aren’t easy.”

She winced.

“He practically invited me to kill him. He wants me to leave his body where it can be found, so his friend will go free. Apparently that was part of the bargain he made with the law, that if he died in the attempt to find Sanctuary, the man named Carson would go free.”

“No,” she said with horror, then whispered, “he asked me to promise to contact a man named Masters in Gooden, begged me to tell him …”

“Tell him what?”

“How he died,” Nicky said brokenly.

Nat nodded. So O’Brien had told the truth. The pain was getting stronger again. He needed more laudanum. “I’m dying, Nicky,” he said suddenly. “I don’t have any more time, but you do. You and Robin. If I can get you out of here, make sure the law understands you had nothing to do with Sanctuary.”

Denial flickered across her face. “You can’t be …”

“I’ve known it for months,” he said. “That doc who stayed with us said it was cancer, said there wasn’t anything to be done. I thought I had longer, long enough to see you and Robin safe someplace, but it moved faster than I thought.”

“We can go someplace, find another doctor.”

“I can barely stand, Nicky. I know I’m dying, just like an old dog knows.”

“No,” she said vehemently. “We’ll find a good doctor.” The passion of her caring warmed him.

“Yes,” he corrected her gently. “I have a few weeks, maybe a month. No longer. Don’t worry. I’ve had a long life, and I’ve had you and Robin.”

Her face paled even as it continued to deny. “What are you going to do?”

“Go to the law. Give myself up. Make sure they understand you didn’t have anything to do with Sanctuary. Diablo says there’s a marshal …”

“Give yourself up?,” she asked.” I won’t let you.”

“I won’t live to hang,” Nat said. “The only thing that’s important to me now is yours and Robin’s safety. If a posse finds you here, they’ll consider you as guilty as me. And God knows what will happen if there’s a shoot-out.”

“Robin and I can leave, send a doctor.”

“You don’t understand. Thanks to Diablo, the law has a damn good idea where Sanctuary is. They could be here in another day, maybe a week, but our secrecy is gone. If my guests get even an inkling of that, they’ll kill all of us. They’ll certainly kill your Diablo.”

“You won’t?” she said in a small voice, asking for assurance.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Nat lied. “It depends on you. I need him to help us get out of here. My guests are already very jumpy, and … greedy. If I disappear with you and Robin and Mitch, they’ll know something’s wrong, and I suspect they think I have a hell of a lot more cash than I do. I don’t believe the guards will be much happier with me. Once they know Sanctuary’s finished, they’ll loot everything in sight. We might well need another gun.” He looked at her for a long moment. “Do you trust him at all?”

Nicky avoided the question. “What about Andy and Jeb?”

“Neither of them are gunhands. I’m letting them know they should get out on their own. There’s no sense for them to be taken, too.” He needed another draught of laudanum. And rest. It was nearing midnight. If they were to leave, they had to leave before dawn. He decided to give her another push. “Can we trust him to get us safely to that marshal?”

“What about Mitch?” She was still evading his question.

“Once we’re out of Sanctuary, he’ll go his way. What about Diablo?”

“I don’t know,” she said bitterly. “I just don’t know.”

“Then I’ll tell Mitch to kill him.”

“No.” The word was explosive, expelled from some deep part of her heart.

God, his belly was hurting. “Take him some water. He’ll need it. Mitch hurt him some.” Nat watched her pale. “Then give me an answer. Wake me up if I’m asleep.”

She nodded slowly and left.

Nat swallowed some more laudanum and did something he’d never done before in his life. He prayed he was right.

Nicky closed her uncle’s door, feeling that the last remnant of her world had just been shattered. Uncle Nat had looked so old, so infinitely weary.

She stopped to look in at Robin. He was asleep. The hawk was tethered on the perch Kane had made. Kane O’Brien, the traitor, the user … The man who’d taken time to save a hurt bird, who patiently taught a boy to care for it.

Can we trust him? Her uncle’s question had astounded her, not only because he was asking her advice but because he was apparently willing to give Kane another chance.

I don’t know, she had answered. And she didn’t. Her world had been rocked. Her faith. Her trust. Her love.

You did the same thing. You were torn between him and me. You didn’t tell me things about our Diablo. Uncle Nat’s gentle admonition. Had Kane endured that same agonizing choice?

Would she ever know? Really know? The hurt still ran deep. Hurt and anger and emptiness all ran together, like streaks of color in a sunset, each trailing roads in the sky before melding into one burst of color.

In the kitchen, she mechanically prepared a canteen of water and some bandages and then left for her uncle’s office—and Kane.

Mitch was sitting in the outer office, apparently guarding Kane. He was looking old, too. She had never thought of him that way before.

“Uncle Nat suggested I bring … Diablo some water,” she said hesitantly. “And I want to talk to him.”

He looked at her with sympathy. His lips, though, thinned in a hard line, and she knew Kane could expect no quarter from him. In fact, her uncle’s oddly tolerant attitude still confounded her.

“Are you sure, Little Bit?” That had been his pet name for her years ago, though he hadn’t used it since she’d turned fifteen.

She nodded.

“I’ll stay with you.”

She shook her head. “Alone,” she insisted.

He hesitated and looked at the bundle in her hands. She smiled. “I don’t have a weapon. Just a canteen and some bandages.”

Mitch looked dubious.

“Uncle Nat suggested it.”

Suspicion and doubt etched a frown in Mitch’s face.

“He told me he was dying,” Nicky said. “That he might need to use O’Brien.”

Mitch’s frown deepened, but he lit a lantern, handed it to her, then unbolted the door to the back room. “You call if you need anything,” he said.

Nicky needed a great deal. She hesitated at the door, then went inside, closing the door behind her. The light illuminated the room, and she saw him lying on the floor, his hands pinned behind him, irons circling his ankles. He blinked several times in the sudden glow of the lantern, then tried to sit.

He looked terrible. His face was discolored and swollen, and she saw a muscle move in his cheek as he struggled to sit. His eyes continued to move, trying to see beyond the bright light. She set the lantern on the floor and went over to him with the bundle.

“Kane?”

He blinked again. “Nicky?” His voice was low and disbelieving. And raspy.

“I brought you some water.”

He tried to sit straighter, and despite the anger still burning bright in her heart, she ached for him, suffered with him. She opened the canteen and offered its contents to him, holding the opening to his mouth. He drank greedily at first, then slowed. He finally withdrew his mouth from it. His eyes swept over her, traveling from her face downward over her body. She was still kneeling, fixed by those eyes.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

Nicky didn’t know what to say. He was so battered and bruised, and yet his eyes didn’t falter, didn’t look away from hers. She was the first to flinch, leaning over to take a piece of cloth from her bundle, wet it, and softly run it over his face.

“How bad did Mitch hurt you?” she asked softly.

Kane shrugged. “I probably look worse than I am.” He hesitated. “You shouldn’t have come here. Your uncle—”

“Uncle Nat suggested it,” she said.

His partly swollen eyes flew open, then closed in a kind of resignation. “I told him everything I know.”

“Your friend,” she said hesitantly. “Tell me about him.”

“He hangs in a week,” Kane said abruptly. “Maybe less. I’ve … lost track of days.”

“You must care … a lot.”

Kane shifted against the wall uncomfortably. He took his eyes off her for the first time, and they seem to fasten on a piece of the door behind her. He didn’t answer. He was slipping away from her, going someplace she couldn’t follow.

“I want to understand,” she tried again.

He finally focused back on her. Anguish twisted his face. “I do care about him, about you. Too damn much. Don’t ever think I didn’t care.” The words seemed torn from his throat.

Nicky couldn’t help it. She dropped the cloth and her fingers went to his face. Touching it. Sketching his mouth, the lines around his eyes, the scar. Soothing it. “I loved you,” she said. It was almost a whimper.

“I know,” he said. “I would have done anything to spare you this … I thought I could. Because I wanted it so damn badly, I thought I could serve two masters,” he added bitterly. “I was a fool.”

“If you’d told me—”

“And what would you have done?” he asked. “Telling you would only have given you the same damnable choice I had. I couldn’t do that to you.”

“But you did give me that kind of choice,” she whispered. “I couldn’t tell my uncle what you told me. He knows that.”

Kane cursed quietly, so quietly she couldn’t make out many of the words. She sensed their meaning, though. “And Robin, what does he know?”

“Nothing. Yet.”

A muscle throbbed in his cheek again. “Is your uncle sending you away?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said, then turned his face. “Thank you for the water. You’d better go.”

“What about you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I’m not worth worrying about. Just take care of Robin. Don’t let him … go against the law.”

“He says his hawk has learned to hunt,” she said desperately.

Kane smiled. It was a flicker of one of the early smiles she remembered. Slow and lazy and affectionate. Her heart whirled again. She warned it to stop, but it wouldn’t.

“What would you do if Uncle Nat lets you go?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why would he do that?”

“He might need your help.”

“You see what happens when I try to help.” He laughed mirthlessly. “My good intentions are the stuff of everyone’s nightmares. I’m a Jonah, Nicky. Don’t you know that yet?”

“What would you do?” she persisted.

“I would see that you were safe. I would try to see that you were safe, you and Robin.”

“And then?” She wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say. But the question hovered between them. She was asking whether there was … any chance of a future, one that included the two of them. She was revealing her heart, surrendering her pride, but she had to know.

She watched him swallow, and her heart sank. He didn’t want her. He was honest enough not to claim otherwise. Her heart broke all over again.

Something of what she felt must have shone in her face. “Nicky,” he said, almost desperately. “Davy’s pardon doesn’t include me.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“I go back to prison,” he said shortly. “Davy doesn’t go free unless I turn myself back in. I don’t have a future.”

Nicky stared at him, nonplussed. He was getting nothing out of this? He’d done it only for a friend. She’d believed he had traded Sanctuary at least in part for himself. She tried to breathe through the growing lump in her throat. But if he went back to prison … he had been sentenced to death. Surely, at least, that would be commuted. Kane’s face was saying otherwise. His features could have been carved from granite, but his eyes were filled with despair.

“I don’t understand,” she finally said.

“That was the arrangement,” he said. “One life. Davy or myself.”

“Why? Why is this man so important?”

Nicky watched as Kane tried to move again, pain flitting briefly across his face. She knew how uncomfortable he must be, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She didn’t have the keys to his irons. Or a gun. Nor could she ever bluff Mitch.

“Why?” she asked again.

He smiled. It was such a sweet, sad smile she thought her heart would break.

“I didn’t have a family, Nicky, not even what you and Robin had,” he said. “My mother died when I was born, and my father hated me from that day. Kane, he named me, and he meant it with every fiber of his Bible-loving fanaticism. He tried to beat the devil out of me every chance he had. Davy lived on the next ranch. He used to bring me food, helped me hide. One day, my father discovered him doing that, and he started beating me. Davy wasn’t much older than me, but he went after my father. He nearly died for that gallantry, and his father finally threatened mine if he ever touched Davy or me again. I honestly wonder whether I would have lived if Davy hadn’t …” His voice trailed off.

Nicky felt shudders rock her body. She put a hand on Kane’s leg, resting it there with the old trust.

After a moment, he started again, his voice halting. “My father killed himself a few months later. Davy’s family took me in and raised me as Davy’s brother. Davy married, had a son—my godson—and his folks died the year before the war started. He stayed on to manage the ranch while I enlisted in the Confederate Army. I was looking for some place to belong, I suppose. Davy had married, had a wife and son, and I needed something of my own. I thought maybe the army would provide it.”

“It didn’t?” she said.

“Don’t let anyone tell you war is adventure,” he said dryly. “It’s blood and fear and pain and more fear. You never stop being afraid. Death is so damn capricious. It doesn’t make sense why the man next to you dies and you don’t. You stop making friends. You stop wanting to belong, because that belonging hurts too damn much.”

Her hand had settled in his lap. She wished she could hold his hand, tighten her fingers around this. “You become more and more alone, because you can’t stand the loss any longer.” He swallowed. “And then it was over, and I came home, believing, thinking I would never kill again.”

She waited, her body tense. She knew he was saying these things for her, not for himself. He thought he was a dead man. He was trying to make her understand, so she wouldn’t feel so betrayed, and he was giving up the last thing he had—his pride—to do it.

“Some government agents came to Davy’s house, shortly after I arrived. They’d raised the taxes impossibly high and were going to evict him. Alex, my godson, was twelve. I’d just been telling him some glorious war stories, and … he took it in mind to raise a rifle against a deputy sheriff.

“A deputy shot him … a kid, damn it, and he was going to shoot again. I killed the bastard first. Davy was blamed as much as I. Damn it, Nicky, it was my fault, my doing. If I hadn’t filled Alex’s head with war stories, maybe he never would have reached for the rifle.”

“Alex?” she asked softly.

“He survived. The bullet went in the shoulder. But Davy and I had to go on the run. We were both pretty angry, not only at what happened to us but to others.” Kane shrugged his shoulders. “So we did what we could to balance the scales … and survive.”

“When I was taken, Davy tried to rescue me. That’s how he was captured. That deputy had died, and we were both sentenced to hang. Two days before we were to hang, a marshal showed up at the prison and offered Davy’s life in exchange for Sanctuary. I had the reputation; Davy didn’t. And then I met you and Robin, and … I wanted to take your uncle’s offer. I thought that was the answer. That’s why I went back to Masters—the marshal—to bargain for more time. I thought if they waited, then I could just hand over Sanctuary peacefully. Your uncle told me he was dying. A few months in exchange for a number of lives they would lose in trying to take it.” He stopped. “I wouldn’t have let you or Robin be hurt, Nicky. If you don’t believe anything else, believe that.”

“Did the marshal give you the time you asked for?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then your friend will die?”

He replied through clenched teeth. “Not if they find my body. That was part of the bargain. If I died in the attempt, then they would have to honor their end.”

“So that was why you wanted to come back? You knew my uncle would kill you.” She gazed at him in amazement. “But how did you imagine the authorities would find you in time?”

A very long moment passed during which he refused to meet her gaze. Then he spoke in clipped tones. “I asked your uncle to leave my body where Masters would find it. I suggested an example might be appropriate. And—”

“You asked me,” she finished.

“Long odds against either,” he said, “but they were all I had.”

She shook her head slowly. Then, leaning over, she touched her lips to his. “You’re a fool, Kane O’Brien. That posse doesn’t have any idea where Sanctuary is, does it?”

“Oh, I’m sure they have an idea,” he said. “They’ll get here eventually. I had to give Masters something. He’ll be searching this whole territory, if I know anything about men.”

Nicky was silent for a moment, the last of her anger draining away. “My uncle’s thinking about turning himself in,” she said cautiously. “He might need your help to do it.”

“With my vast experience of failure?” Kane said drily. “He needs me like a boil on his backside.”

She found herself smiling. Even giggling. But it was a nervous giggle. “I don’t think I’ll tell him that.”

He eyed her suspiciously, as if she were capable of pulling wings off a trapped fly. “He has no reason to trust me.”

“But he does,” she said gently. “For some reason he still does. Or else he thinks he doesn’t have any other choice. I told you Hildebrand planned to take over Sanctuary. Others are just waiting for a chance. They don’t know how sick Uncle Nat is, but they know something’s wrong. He can’t stay here. He has no place to go. And no time. I tried to talk him out of it. I don’t want to see him in prison, but he’s determined. He just wanted to make sure I … agreed that he could trust you.”

Kane was silent. Nicky didn’t know what he was thinking. But she had heard the anguish in his voice, the stark honesty of his words. Any lingering doubt she might have about him was outweighed by her need to believe him.

“Kane?”

He swallowed hard. She could see the movements of his throat. “Can you?” he said after a moment. “Can you trust me again?”

She hesitated, then announced evasively, “Whether I trust you or not, I can’t … stop caring.”

He moved again awkwardly. “You must,” he said. “You’re smart and brave … and beautiful. You’ll find a good, solid husband.”

“I don’t want a good, solid husband,” she said, her voice plaintive.

He smiled, a sad, wistful twist of his lips. “You just haven’t had much of a choice.”

But Nicky knew he was wrong. She remembered her uncle’s words. Your mother was like that. Once she fell in love with John, nothing else mattered.

She looked at his face, remembered the agony she’d felt when she had to choose between him and the uncle who had raised her, knew he’d felt the same agony when faced with a choice between his lifelong friend and her. He’d done his best, as she had, to choose the path that would bring the least harm to those he loved. And how could she fault him for that?

She couldn’t.

Suddenly, all her doubts—and questions—faded away. Maybe she would always hurt a little because he hadn’t chosen her above all else, that he had gambled with her trust, but she could live with that. What she couldn’t live without was him. They had to get out of this mess—all of them—somehow.

Nicky brought the canteen to Kane’s lips again, watched as he took some more water. She didn’t want to promise him anything, because she still wasn’t sure what her uncle planned. She knew, though, that one way or another Kane O’Brien was going to live. No matter what she had to do.

“I have to go,” she finally said.

His eyes searched her face intently, as if he were memorizing it, and then he gave her that devilish smile she’d seen his first day in Sanctuary. She thought then it was both devilish and devil-may-care, but now she knew better. She knew how much he cared about a great many things.

“You were a sight for sore eyes, Miss Thompson,” he said. “Thank you for that. And for the water.”

It was an attempt to make light of his situation. A gallant attempt, and Nicky thought her heart would break all over again. She didn’t want to leave him like this. Not trussed up like an animal headed for market. She hesitated. She wanted to reassure him, but she guessed now he wouldn’t accept, or believe, reassurances. And why would he? Whichever way he looked was death.

She leaned over and kissed him lightly, pressing her cheek next to his, then she rose.

And ran.