“What was that about?” Blake asked. “She doesn’t seem to like Pierce very much.”
“She doesn’t,” Darcy agreed. “Pierce collected her son, just like me. Put him to work running liquor and other things. He got caught. Pierce met his family at the trial, not that he really cared what happened to the boy, but he was there to see that Fred didn’t talk. He told the Withers that he would see to it that the boy was watched over in prison if they would run this outpost for him. What else could they do?”
The stew turned sour on Blake’s tongue and he dropped his spoon back into the bowl. “What if they had refused?”
“Fred would probably have died in the first week at the pen. He’s always been small, slender and sensitive like. Apparently, Pierce saw to it that he was housed with a big man that could keep him safe.”
Blake dropped his hand over Darcy’s feeling the chill of her fingers under his palm. “I’ll see what I can do about getting him out,” he whispered. “I can’t promise, but if he’ll turn evidence along with us…”
Darcy wrapped her pale fingers around his rugged hand and squeezed. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
***
Darcy rolled over on her pallet of blankets and gazed out the window. The small house was quiet as the Withers had turned in. Below the house, in the depths of the earth, she knew that other men were still busy preparing bottles for shipment, and that cars, trucks, and wagons would be arriving to pick up and deliver what they had prepared.
Behind her near the door Blake slept, his breathing soft and even in the still of the night.
Not for the first time, Darcy wondered how she had gotten herself into this mess.
The moon above was bright and full of light, but the shadows still lingered spreading across the room like a creeping vine. It had been those shadows, shattered by the glow of bright lights, and fancy things, that had pulled Darcy into this life. Now her only hope of escape was to bring down the gang with Blake or to lose the battle for life.
Closing her eyes she remembered her time on the Broken J, the place was filled to overflowing with love and life and her mind turned back to her own family.
Her brothers had once been jovial souls, but over time, life had stolen that light from their eyes. Still there had been love, a quiet kind of love, hidden beneath the gloom of her former home.
Perhaps in time she would be able to go back there. To face her parents and other kin, and see if they would accept or reject whom she had become. Darcy wasn’t proud of her life, or where it had led.
At first the glamour, money, and promise of her heart’s desires had filled her with joy and laughter, but as the reality of life had slipped in, Darcy had come to understand that all that glittered wasn’t gold. She had been given everything she had desired, money, clothing, jewelry, yet she was no happier than she had been on that little dirt farm in the middle of the prairie.
What was the true secret to happiness? What did she need to do to find peace and joy? It was all so elusive, like trying to capture the glimmer of sunlight on water.
Blake stirred in his sleep and something in Darcy’s heart turned over as well. If only she had met a man like that when she landed in the big city instead of Pierce, but the past was the past, and all she could hope for was a chance to start again. Perhaps she could find a little shop and make a living by selling pretty things or take on charity work to help atone for her sins.
As her heart grew heavy with the knowledge that she had no chance at a normal life, Darcy’s eyes slipped closed and she dropped into a troubled sleep.
Chapter 20
The heavily rutted road made travel slow as Blake maneuvered the shiny car over the dirt track headed toward the hideout he had sought for so long.
“It’s kind’a pretty out here,” Darcy spoke for the first time since they had taken the long drive up the mountain from Laramie. “It’s different than the lower plains.”
“It is a beautiful place,” Blake agreed. “I’m always surprised at the boulders and massive rock formations in this area.”
“You’ve been here before?”
Blake chuckled running a hand over the scar along his brow. “Not that long ago actually,” he grinned. “I never did find the hideout, but I got close.”
Darcy studied the man quietly understanding. “You could have been killed?”
“According to my mother, it’s a wonder I lived to this age, as many scrapes as I got myself into as a kid.”
Darcy laughed, her dark eyes sparking at the thought of the serious Blake as a child. She had gotten a glimpse of the real man beneath the polished veneer when they were at the ranch, but could barely imagine him as a boy.
“I guess when it comes down to it any of us could be gone in an instant. The Bible says that the old must die, but the young do die, so I guess we should all just do the best we can while we’re here.”
Darcy turned away as guilt filled her with a sick feeling. She had certainly not done her best. Would her actions now wipe away the sins of the past? Her hand trailed, absently, to her side and the mostly healed bullet wound. She could have died that day. She should have died that day, but somehow she had been given a second chance. If she could pull this off and help Blake bring the violent gang to justice, perhaps then she would be able to make things
