“Stilson,” Catherine replied. “He asked me about you yesterday and then again today.”
“What’s he want?”
“I don’t know, Nick. Now that you’ve cooled off a bit, you can go see for yourself what he wants. After all we’ve been through, we don’t need any trouble with the law. You’ve been working so hard lately, I hardly even get a chance to see you.”
Hearing the genuine concern in Catherine’s voice cut right down to the center of Nick’s soul. When he looked into her face and found her smiling hopefully at him, he wrapped an arm around her and drew her in close. After giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, he nestled his face in her hair and kept it there.
“You don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to,” he said. “You might even be better off somewhere else.”
“So you keep telling me. But I just don’t listen. Does that make me stupid or gullible?”
Nick laughed and held onto her even tighter. “It makes you the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Then don’t be so quick to invite me to leave.”
“After what happened to Van Meter, I’ve been thinking…” Nick sucked in a breath. “Maybe I should make an honest woman out of you.”
“Too late for that,” she scoffed.
“I’m serious. We got married so quickly that it hardly seemed to happen. We should have a bigger ceremony. Maybe even throw a party.”
“You’ve had your chance, Nicolai Graves. Besides, I may not be ready to go through all that fuss just so we can come back to the same home and live the same way we have been living.” Placing her hand against his cheek, she added, “Our life is just fine. Don’t think for one moment that I consider it to be otherwise. I would like to wear our rings, though.”
“I know,” Nick said as he winced to himself. “It’s just that I’m barely able to draw any attention to myself anymore. The sort of men that have come after me would start looking for you the minute they spotted that ring on my finger. I just can’t bear the thought of that happening.”
“I’d risk it.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “And now that that’s settled, how about getting back to my first question? What are we going to do with Mister Van Meter and that sweet little boy of his?”
“The night of that fire might have been the worst of it, but it wasn’t the end. Those killers are moving along to their next job as we speak. Believe that.”
“How do you know for certain?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve had some experience in these matters,” Nick said.
“I haven’t forgotten. Whatever you did in the past, you weren’t half as bad as those men who killed Joseph’s family.”
Nick’s face may have been pointed in Catherine’s direction, but he wasn’t seeing her anymore. His eyes took on a faraway look as his ears filled with the gunshots and screams from his memories. “We were killers,” he said softly. “One’s just as bad as another.”
Blinking, Nick snapped himself back to the present. He walked around to the back of the wagon and ran his hands along its gritty floor. “We were a gang just like those killers at the Van Meter place.”
“You’re not like those men, Nick,” Catherine said vehemently. “Not anymore.”
“Maybe you don’t want to think about me that way. Actually, I’d be grateful if you didn’t. Still, I could tell what they were doing, Catherine, just like it was something my gang might have done back when I was a dumb-shit kid. They were there to leave their mark. It’s not the first time anyone’s done such a thing.”
When she heard those words, Catherine rubbed his back as if she’d gotten a real good idea of what particular ghosts were haunting Nick at the moment. The muscles under his skin grew taut. “You weren’t the only gang out there, you know. Not every death from those times falls on your shoulders.”
He nodded but didn’t look at her.
“They found what they were after and left,” Catherine said. “They almost killed him with that shot to his head, so there’s no reason for them to come back.”
“You’re right. Joseph and his boy are both damn lucky to have survived that night. After that, they should be able to pull through just about anything.”
“So would you mind if I brought the doctor over here tomorrow?”
“Give it a few more days,” Nick replied. “Something tells me we should wait until we know those men are long gone. I’ll feel much better once I go and have a word with the sheriff. After that, I should be able to figure out if he knew about what was headed for that ranch.”
“Why would Sheriff Stilson be in on a thing like that?”
Nick laughed under his breath. “You’d be surprised. I don’t know how, but things could get worse if we’re not careful.”
“You’re worrying so much,” Catherine whispered into his ear. “I haven’t even seen you for more than an hour or two at a stretch since you brought those two back here. Little Sammy even missed you.”
That brought a grin to Nick’s face. “You should have seen how he latched onto me when I found him. I thought he might tear my leg off.” His grin quickly faded as his eyes narrowed into fiery slits. “I should have stopped this before that boy lost his mother and sister. Before Joseph lost his daughter and wife.”
Catherine glared at him with an intensity in her eyes that brought Nick back from the dark place he was headed. “You did the best you could, Nick. You risked your life to save those two. What happened wasn’t your fault, so stop griping about it. In fact, you did more than anyone else around here.”
“I only hope it was enough.”
ELEVEN
Nick rode into town the next day earlier than usual. The sky was still dark, but it was so close to dawn that he could feel it in the air. After arriving at his shop, he unhitched Kazys and filled the horse’s trough. From there, it was a series of little tasks that were so engrained in him that he barely even had to think to do them. That was a good thing, because there were plenty of other matters to occupy his mind.
First and foremost, he struggled with the notion of opening his parlor while wearing a gun under his long black jacket. The holster was as weathered as his own skin and moved like a part of his body with every step. And even though he’d worn that gun for the last several years, he felt its weight now more than ever.
Oddly enough, Catherine hadn’t been the one to get him to stop wearing the gun during business hours. After everything they’d been through together, she took comfort from knowing he wasn’t at anyone’s mercy just on account of pleasing a few customers. Nick saw the move to California as a fresh start in more ways than one. Earnestly plying his trade instead of hiding behind it was just the beginning.
Nick pulled open the curtains of his front window, straightened his display and took a vase from its small stand. He placed fresh flowers in it as usual and put it back in its normal spot behind the samples of his carving and masonry work. At that moment, having the gun at his side seemed almost ridiculous.
Nick looked around the small parlor and made sure it was ready to open. There wasn’t a service planned, so the chairs in the largest of the rooms were not set up and the large rectangular table at the back of the room was empty, apart from a clean white cloth.
A smaller room filled with glass-topped counters was close to the front entranceway. Nick went in there to dust off the counters and take a quick count of the merchandise inside them. Beneath the glass was a wide variety of wares ranging from picture frames and samples of invitations to small Bibles, each roughly the size of a cigarette case. Nick walked behind a counter, opened it up and removed one of them. He tucked it into an inner pocket and headed for the front door.
Nick stepped out of the parlor and locked the door behind him. A few locals were walking along the street, and one of them nodded in Nick’s direction. Nick returned the gesture, while making sure his jacket didn’t open far enough to reveal the holster strapped around his waist. Taking his time to soak in the morning air, he rounded the corner and kept walking until he arrived at Sheriff Stilson’s office.
