Suddenly, before she could figure out exactly how desperate her plight might be, the silence was broken most dramatically. She heard the unexpected thunder of hooves, followed by what sounded like screams of terror. She was torn between gut-wrenching fear and heart-stopping anticipation. Help might be just over the horizon. Or she might be about to come face-to-face with an even more terrible fate.
She scrambled about looking for a place to hide until she could determine which it was to be, but there were none. The descriptive term wide open spaces hadn’t been applied to the West for no reason.
Listening hard, she could tell the horses were getting closer, the screams louder. Then she heard yet another noise, this one impossible to identify.
With her heart in her throat, she kept her gaze intent on the horizon until, at last, a stagecoach appeared, bouncing wildly over the rutted ground, its wheels in grave danger of ripping loose and sending the already-panicked occupants flying. The team of horses pulling it was galloping out of control, as if the very demons of hell were after them.
A stagecoach! Surely that was not possible. Abby blinked hard and looked again, certain her vision was playing another of its ridiculous, impossible tricks on her.
Unfortunately, that didn’t appear to be the case. The stagecoach, pulled by that team of terrified, runaway horses, was, in fact, bearing straight down on her. The reins flapped free. The driver slouched to one side. Clearly he would be no help at all.
As the stagecoach drew closer and closer, Abby could practically taste the dust, could practically feel her body being crushed beneath those pounding hooves.
Nearly paralyzed with fear, she pitched herself out of their path in the nick of time, oblivious to the heated ground that seared her bare skin and to the jagged rocks that left her cut and bruised. The stagecoach thundered past. It was only as it passed that she noticed that the driver’s chest was drenched with blood.
Releasing the breath she’d been holding, she closed her eyes in relief over her narrow escape, only to hear more horses pounding in her direction.
Daring a look, she detected the probable cause of the near accident. Two horsemen firing six-shooters were racing hell-for-leather after the stagecoach. A robbery! She had escaped a life of piracy, only to be caught in the middle of a damned stagecoach robbery.
Fear clogged her throat as she tried to make herself invisible against the dried ground. Unfortunately, a 110-pound woman wearing a tattered, bright red dress with a daringly low bodice tended to stand out like a sore thumb against all that desert brown.
The first two riders barreled past. But a third man on horseback swooped down, reined in his horse and eyed her with evident fascination. Dark eyes raked over her in a way that made her blood run cold. Those eyes were all she could see of a face otherwise shielded by a red bandanna. They seemed hauntingly familiar. Her heart thudded dully as she contemplated where or when she might have seen those evil eyes before.
“My, my, my, looks like I’m the one who found the secret treasure this time,” he said in a low, gravelly voice that was anything but reassuring. “If it’s not pretty little Miss Abigail from the Golden Nugget Saloon. You’re a long way from home, little song-bird.”
Abby almost laughed in his face. Her a songbird? Not likely. The choir at her church only accepted her out of a sense of Christian charity. She knew enough to keep her mouth tightly shut on the high notes. Unfortunately, this cowboy looked convinced he’d run across some saloon’s headline act. She had a hunch, too, that his Miss Abigail did not confine herself to singing at the Golden Nugget. He was already reaching for her, a lascivious glint in his eyes.
Not again, she thought in dismay. Hadn’t she been through enough for one lifetime? Or perhaps several?
Abigail struggled to her bare feet and took off running. Unfortunately the ground was burning hot, hard and littered with pebbles that might as well have been boulders. The surface was far too painful for fast progress. Still, she ran on, stumbling, her breath coming in gasps, fighting to ignore the burns and cuts to her throbbing feet.
The cowboy dismounted, a taunting smile on his face as he gave chase. With his long legs and booted feet, he had no trouble with the rough terrain. The pursuit was over almost before it began.
He snagged her around the waist and hauled her against his hard body, laughing all the while.
The laughter died as Abby scratched at his face, drawing blood.
“Hell, woman, give it a rest. There’s no point in acting like you’re some prim little innocent.”
She scraped her fingernails down his cheek again. “Let go of me, you dirty, rotten son of a bitch!”
He clasped her wrists tightly and held them above her head. Abby aimed a knee at his groin, but he dodged the blow.
“Damn, woman, settle down.”
“Never!” She twisted sharply and broke free for the space of a heartbeat, only to be hauled back into a steel embrace.
Oblivious to the pain, oblivious to everything except the need to break free, she fought and scratched. She had not come through so much in her struggle to get back home only to give up now.
An image of Riley gave her renewed strength. She could practically hear his voice encouraging her as she worked one arm loose, drew back and slugged her captor with all her might.
The blow took him by surprise and he staggered briefly, then seized her again, his expression ugly, his eyes mean.
In that instant, Abby realized that she was lost. She also knew that she would never give up, not to this terrible man, not as long as she had a single breath to spare for a
