I climbed the back steps, avoiding memories of the night I’d skulked up the back staircase at Rilla’s, the whorehouse where I’d lived after arriving in Howardsville. I’d been on a mission that night, along with Axton and Cole, to save Patricia from the Yancys; we hadn’t saved her that particular night and I prayed that this time was different, that she and Cole were indeed safely away from harm. My vision swam with dizzy fatigue as I closed the bedroom door, not bothering to light a lantern.
None of you are safe from harm, not so long as Fallon is alive.
In the gray gloom I unbuttoned my blouse and shed my corset, skirt, and underskirts with disturbing realizations undulating across my mind. A full moon had long since set, drawing its bright radiance behind the horizon. Nude, I leaned over my side of the bed in search of my nightgown and clunked my shin on its wooden frame.
“Ouch. Dammit.”
“Not a sound.” He materialized from the shadows, closing in behind me before I could draw my next breath, let alone scream for help. “I’ll cut you from ear to ear.”
I believed his every word, blinking rapidly, adrenaline sharpening my senses before panic could obliterate them. Fallon wrapped his left arm below my breasts, maintaining an unbreakable hold; he clutched a knife in the opposite hand, its blade poised under my left ear, just where my jawbone met my skull. The metal felt obscenely warm against my skin, as if he’d already used it to spill blood tonight. His breath thundered hot against the side of my face; he stayed close so I couldn’t buck his hold, his hips against my backside. He was hard. I could feel it through his pants and my stomach lurched; I tasted bile, sour and acidic.
“Ruthann. I told you we’d meet again. You knew I was here waiting, didn’t you? Your heart is beating so fast.” He spoke with a lover’s tone and my horror multiplied, scattering my focus. Did he intend rape before killing me? I heard the muted voices of the men in the kitchen downstairs. I couldn’t risk calling out but maybe I could knock something over…a crash to draw their attention. My wide eyes darted in a frantic circuit of the room, seeking options; no weapons, the door on the far side of the bed.
“You make one sound before I order it and your blood will paint this floor. Do you hear me, you little fucking whore?” He shifted almost seamlessly between an unnatural calm and seething rage, far more frightening than one versus the other. When I didn’t at once respond, Fallon rotated the knife so the pointed tip created a burning pinprick in the flesh beneath my ear. He spared a second to sweep his thumb down the side of my neck, showing me the dark smear of my own blood before swiping the wetness across my lower lip. “Nod if you understand.”
I nodded, once, twice; two jerking bobs of my head.
Mouth at my ear, he hissed, “Tell me how Malcolm Carter knew to warn you. I know it was him, I saw the bastard’s message from Muscatine. Who is the woman?”
I tried to shake my head, to indicate I didn’t know what he meant.
“Tell me.”
I could not force sound past the boulder of fear in my chest.
“How the fuck did he know? Who is the woman? Tell me or I will kill you and everyone in this fucking house.”
If I die, my baby dies…
Oh God, don’t let him hurt the baby…
Fallon gripped my right breast as he spoke softly in my ear, the pendulum of his voice swinging back to eerie calm, a man boasting his own accomplishments. “No matter. Malcolm and his whore are as good as dead by now. By my reckoning, Vole and Turnbull caught up with him earlier this very day. I told them to kill the woman but hold off killing Carter, if they could manage it. He’s a slippery bastard, you see, and I want the privilege of killing him.”
Something overrode the sound of my panicked breaths – that of Marshall’s footsteps advancing on the stairs. Fallon felt my muscles go rigid with agony and whispered, “Make a sound and he dies first.” Swift and effortless, an action completed a thousand times, Fallon sheathed his knife and drew his gun, pressing the small barrel to my temple just as the door swung inward.
“Are you awake, sweetheart? Ax said you came to bed.” Having come from the lantern-lighted kitchen, Marshall’s eyes hadn’t yet adjusted; he propped his rifle on the floor, letting it lean against the dresser as he spoke.
A choking whimper wrenched free of my lips and Fallon increased the pressure at all points of contact on my body.
Marshall froze, eyes locked on the unimaginable – his naked, pregnant wife with a gun to her head.
“Not a word. Shut the door, Rawley.”
Marshall obeyed, not removing his gaze from us. He was in what amounted to his calm before the storm – calculating, honing, preparing. If Fallon made even the slightest wrong move there would be nothing left to identify as human once Marshall finished with him. I held perfectly still, watching Marshall. If Fallon’s life was directly threatened I knew he would vanish, a sort of self-defense mechanism with which he was equipped. Part of me expected to feel the pull of time at any second, dragging me out of this moment just as it had the winter night when my Buick crashed on I94 – but perhaps the threat was not yet pronounced enough.
“Toss that piece to the bed,” Fallon commanded. “Slow, or she’s dead. You go for that rifle and she’s dead.”
I watched as Marshall unbuckled his gun belt and pitched it gently to the surface of the mattress. “Let Ruthann go and I’ll do anything you want.”
I heard the rampant distress just under
