***
Blake drove as fast as he could, skidding across the crushed granite roads and checking his rear view mirror to be sure he hadn’t been followed. He drove as far as he thought he could then slid into a field surrounded by huge rocks.
“Darcy,” he croaked, his voice breaking on her name as he jumped from the car and moved to the prostrate woman in the back seat. “I’m so sorry honey,” he moaned pulling a kerchief from his pocket and pressing it into her reopened wound. “I didn’t have a choice. If I hadn’t done this…”
Darcy’s blood stained hand touched his lips as her eyes fluttered open. “You did good Turnip,” she whispered, her voice weak. “They would have killed both of us.”
Blake shook his head, his heart threatening to break. He didn’t’ know how the woman laying there bleeding all over the white cushions of the car could be so calm. With great care, he pulled the hole in her dress apart then pressed the kerchief into her side. The ragged scar, his uncle had worked so hard to heal now pulsed with crimson blood. Darcy hissed with pain but didn’t cry out as Blake struggled to get the bleeding under control. It seemed like an eternity before he felt it was safe to wrap the wound in tight bandages and continue along the road. He hadn’t meant to re-open the wound so much when he’d fired his shot wide, but he needed it to look convincing.
“I’ll get you someplace safe,” he whispered, leaning down and kissing her brow. “Then it’s time to put an end to this whole thing. We know who is behind this notorious gang and we’re going to put them all away for good.”
Darcy smiled weakly as her eyes fluttered closed once more. She had done something good with her life. She had made amends for the sins of her past. She could now rest in peace.
***
“You had better be right about this,” a terse Marshal Beckett snapped at Blake as the task force loaded up and raced toward the mountain strong hold. “If you’re wrong, we’ll all be exposed and probably fired to boot.”
“I swear it’s true,” Blake snapped as he clutched the rifle in his hands as the big truck raced toward the hang out, a beast hunting its prey. “This has been a rough job Beckett and I hope we’ll put an end to it now.”
Blake’s mind turned back to Darcy, her precious life hanging in the balance as he rushed to the hide out once more. She had never blamed him, never accused him, for what he had done. She had played her role well and now was in the hands of the police surgeon. “God save her,” he pleaded, gaining a sharp look from the man who had recruited him for this job.
The hideout looked empty as they skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust as the sun slipped behind the hills.
A shout and the sharp snap of a pistol shot was evidence enough that the hideout was still occupied, but would they be too late?
The men pouring from the transport returned fire, advancing as a burly man twisted toppling from a rock by the door.
In seconds they had raced through the grotto crashing through the door of the hideout, guns blazing.
Blake caught a glimpse of Pierce diving under a table where a shot from one of the officers send money scattering to the floor in a tinkle of glass and coins.
Beckett motioned the other men to fan out searching every corner as a man jumped through a door pistol popping and was shot down in a loud blast of return fire.
The sound of shooting, the crash of doors, the tinkle of shattered glass filled the space as acrid gun smoke threatened to choke them all.
Blake dodged to the right as a bullet whipped past his head and dove for Pierce who was crawling to a low door along the wall.
“Stop right there,” Blake barked as the man twisted toward him, pushing to his feet and slamming into the younger man. Pierce’s greater bulk crushed Blake to the wall and he grappled with the gangster, trying to get the upper hand.
“You,” Pierce spat, his dark eyes crazed with desperation, recognition and hate. “You’ll hang along with me. You’ll hang for killing Darcy in cold blood.” His mad cackle prickled along Blake’s skin like blades of ice but he grabbed at Pierce trying to bring him down.
Pierce thrust his arms outward, breaking Blake’s grip, but the lawman swung a fist, connecting with the man’s nose as blood blossomed. His other hand grasped for Pierce’s right hand where a tiny derringer suddenly appeared.
“Darcy isn’t dead,” Blake snapped, his hand chopping toward Pierce’s wrist. The bark of the tiny gun made both men jump, and Blake staggered backward his back hitting the wall as he looked down at the blood spraying from his ruined leg.
Pierce smiled, a gruesome grin through a curtain of blood and lifted the little pistol for the killing shot.
Blake felt his heart stutter as he saw his fate. He was going to die and a sudden calm seemed to wash over him. He knew this could happen. He had accepted this eventuality and knew that he had lived his short life with his heart in God’s hand. If he went now, he only prayed that Darcy would live.
The crack of a pistol shot made Blake close his eyes as he waited for the pain of the killing shot to register as he began a slow slide down the wall.
The thump of something heavy landing next to him made his eyes snap open and Blake blinked in shock at the still form of Pierce lying on the stone floor, in a pool of blood.
“You alive boy?” Beckett’s voice filled his brain and Blake looked down at his chest to see that he had
