CHAPTER 21

For a moment, everything was frozen.

Then Kenton brought up his own derringer, ready to use it, but McCurden swung his pistol and knocked it from Kenton’s hand. It clattered across the floor.

Kenton was astonished, also embarrassed. Being outmaneuvered by this younger and swifter man made him feel old and clumsy.

Livingston lunged at McCurden as he whipped the gun at Kenton, but again McCurden was too fast. He swung the pistol back and struck Livingston on the temple, very hard. Livingston let out a grunt and fell to his knees. McCurden brought up his foot and kicked Livingston in the forehead with his heel. The blow was tremendously powerful, knocking Livingston backward.

“No more!” Kenton said. “No more! You’ll kill him!”

“Damn right,” McCurden answered. And he kicked Livingston again, on the side of the head.

Kenton threw himself at him, but McCurden dodged, then whipped him with the pistol. Kenton stumbled to the left, fell.

Victoria’s voice came from upstairs. “Brady? What’s happening?”

McCurden was kicking Livingston yet again. Then he reached under his vest and came out with a knife.

“No!” Kenton shouted. He scrambled to his feet.

McCurden tried to stab Livingston, but Kenton knocked him off balance just in time. The blade missed.

McCurden was limber and quick, however, and managed not to fall. He danced over Livingston’s crumpled form and turned.

Kenton did not care at this point what happened to him. He had to stop McCurden at any cost, to keep him from getting to Victoria upstairs.

“Brady?” she called, her voice full of alarm. “Brady, what’s happening?”

McCurden took two steps back, steadying himself. He raised the pistol and aimed it at Kenton.

“Freeze! Don’t move an inch, you bastard! I’ll kill you right here, then go up and kill her!”

Kenton could not find his voice. He stared at McCurden, eyes glaring with hate.

“But first, I kill him.” And swiftly he raised the blade again, came down with his full body, and stabbed Livingston in the side. He left the blade where it stuck and was up again in a flash, laughing.

Livingston made a faint sound, moved a little, then was still. Kenton could tell from the sound of Livingston’s last exhaled breath that he would not draw in another.

“I’ll kill you,” Kenton said, hardly able to comprehend what had just happened. “Whatever it takes, I’ll kill you.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll never have that opportunity. If anyone else dies here tonight, it will be you. Because I don’t really need you, Kenton. It’s the woman upstairs that I’m after.”

“Kevington sent you.”

“He did. But it’s not Kevington I’m concerned about. I’m doing this for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Kevington wants that woman back, Kenton. You don’t know how bad he wants her back. He’s hired agents, manhunters, a whole spiderweb of people looking everywhere you might be, following everyone you might try to contact … but it’s me who found you. I’m the lucky one.”

“I’ll not let Kevington have her back. It won’t happen.”

“It’s not up to you.”

“How did you find me?”

“Never mind how I found you. The point is, I did. And as you can see”—he kicked Livingston’s body—“there’s nothing I won’t do to get what I want.”

“However much Kevington has paid you, I’ll pay more.”

“Kevington hasn’t paid me yet. And believe me, even he has no idea how high the price is going to be.”

Kenton understood. “You’re double-crossing him. You’re going to hold Victoria hostage!”

“You’re a smart man, Kenton. Smart enough to figure that out, smart enough to have faked your own death, smart enough to have found your wife, smart enough to have stolen her away. But you’ve reached the end of wisdom. This is my game from now on.”

Victoria appeared above, walking out of her room slowly, looking down over the balcony railing. She grew pale when she saw Livingston lying unmoving on the floor.

“Well, greetings, my lady!” McCurden called up. “It’s indeed a pleasure!”

“Go back in your room, Victoria,” Kenton said. “This is a dangerous man.… He’s killed Jack.”

McCurden laughed as Victoria withdrew quickly, the door closing behind her.

McCurden’s smile went away. “You and me are going upstairs, Kenton. Your wife is going to tie you up, and then I’ll tie her up, and then we’ll wait for Dr. Kevington to arrive. He’s already been wired.”

“You’ll not take her away from me. I’ve gone too far to get her, and waited too long.”

“Too bad that none of that matters anymore, Kenton. Now move. Upstairs.”

Kenton had to obey. He backed away, eye on the derringer on the floor, but McCurden chuckled and shook his head. “Forget it, Kenton. Keep in mind that I’m not required to keep you alive at all. All I need is Victoria. Though I’m thinking that Kevington might be willing to pay a nice bonus if he got you, alive, thrown into the bargain. I’m sure he’d enjoy disposing of you in his own way, slowly and painfully.”

Kenton, fighting a fury that threatened to make him lose control, headed up the stairs. Everything seemed surreal. Only minutes before, Kenton had been seated, talking over plans with Livingston, feeling pleased at the prospect of a safer location for Victoria. Now Livingston was dead, he was hostage, and Victoria was cowering in her room, moments away from being a hostage herself.

Unless she wasn’t cowering, but doing what Kenton hoped she was.…

They reached the door. Victoria had locked it, which annoyed McCurden. He kept his pistol leveled on Kenton while he stepped back and rammed the door hard with his heel, once, twice. The latch smashed apart, the door swinging open.

“Damn you, woman, I’ll tie you all the tighter for that!”

These were his final words. Victoria was standing just inside the door, with the sawed-off shotgun that Livingston had given her for protection, just in case, in her hands.

She had never fired a shotgun before and squeezed down hard on the triggers, setting off both barrels at once. The recoil slammed her backward as the impact of the shot striking his chest sent McCurden flying in the other direction, out against the railing, over which he pitched and plunged to the floor, where he landed in a bloody heap.

Kenton rushed in and gathered up Victoria, who was stunned and bleeding slightly from the forehead. The shotgun had struck her there when it bucked up.

“Are you all right, Victoria? Dear God.…”

“Is he…”

“Oh, yes. Very much so.”

She closed her eyes. He helped her scoot back against the wall, where she sat weakly, breathing hard.

Kenton went out to the railing and looked over at the two bodies below. He hoped against hope to see Livingston move, alive after all, but he did not.

But amazingly, McCurden did move, just a little. And his eyes opened, looking up at Kenton, an expression of disbelief on his face.

“I suppose you aren’t quite as smart as you thought you were, Mr. McCurden,” Kenton said.

McCurden’s lips moved, but nothing passed them except blood. Kenton was looking into McCurden’s eyes as they went cold and glazed and life departed.

Kenton went back to his wife and held her.

“What now?” she asked. “Will someone come?”

“I don’t know. It depends on whether anyone heard the shotgun go off.”

“Who was he?”

“He was hired by David Kevington. And Kevington is on his way here, he said.”

“Oh, Brady, we have to leave!”

“We have to go to the law, Victoria.”

“No, Brady. I’m too afraid.”

“Things have changed now. There are dead men.”

“No, Brady. Take me away from here. Don’t take me to the law!”

“Victoria…”

“Please, I beg you! I’ve killed a man.… What if they don’t believe what we tell them? I’m afraid of what the law will do. David always told me that if I left him, the law would be on his side … the law would bring me back to him.”

“Victoria, I have no choice. We must go to the law. Men are dead here.”

She began to cry. “They’ll call me a murderer, Brady. They’ll take me away from you.”

“But if we run, Victoria, it will only make it all the worse.”

“But nobody knows we’re here, Brady. Nobody knows it but us.”

“The man you shot to death tonight knew. And he said that Kevington is coming, so Kevington knows.…” Kenton quit talking. Kevington is coming.

Kenton would not argue further with her. The law would become involved, now that men had been killed. But perhaps it could happen later, not now. And perhaps he and Victoria could somehow escape detection. When Victoria’s “resurrection” was finally known to the world, Kenton didn’t want her name associated with a fatal shooting, even one as justified as this.

“What if David is already here, in town?”

“Surely he isn’t.” But Kenton could not be sure.

“The man was going to have us wait for him. David may be closer than we know. I want to go, Brady. I want to get away from here. But is there a place we can go?”

Kenton could not deny her plea. He would not go to the law. They would gather the meager possessions they had with them, take food from Livingston’s pantry, stock up on weapons and ammunition, and wipe out any traces that would indicate Victoria’s presence here. They would try to arrange the setting to make it appear that Livingston and McCurden had killed each other. A good investigator would be able to detect otherwise, but it was not likely that a little town like this one would have a good investigator.

“Yes, Victoria. There is a place we can go, if we can find it. A little empty town called Caylee, over the mountain. There is a good place to hide there; Jack told me about it just tonight.”

They had to hurry; the sound of the shotgun blast would have been audible outside the house. Kenton hoped the isolation of the house had kept the shot from being heard all the way down in town, but he couldn’t assume it had.

Kenton wrapped his arms around his wife, and she all but collapsed in his embrace. He was overwhelmed by a sense of protectiveness and a desire to do what she wished.

“When will we leave, Brady?”

“Tonight. Right now. I’ll gather food and supplies and see what kind of horseflesh is in Jack’s stable.”

“Poor Jack!” she said, voice tightening. “Poor, poor Jack!”

“He was good to us, Victoria. He helped us when few others could have. And I’ll be sorry for the rest of my days that us coming to him here brought him such misfortune.”