Texan's Touch

TWENTY-THREE

ADAM STOOD AT the doorway of his room and stared at the circle of light around Nichole. She was dressed in black again, as she had been the night he’d first kissed her so wildly. Had it only been a few nights ago? It seemed a lifetime.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered as he moved behind her. “As beautiful as moonlight and as fiery as the sun.”

When she looked up into the mirror and saw his face, her hand glided along the short hair close against her scalp and neck. “There isn’t enough left to curl around your fingers,” she whispered.

“It doesn’t matter,” he answered as he brushed his cheek against her head.

His arms slid slowly around her waist and gently pulled her to the length of him as he closed his eyes and breathed deep of the fragrance that was only Nichole, wild and warm with passion. “I know what you are planning is the only way but I’m not sure I can let you go,” he whispered. “One morning in the sun won’t last me a lifetime. I thought we’d have tonight to talk of all that needs to be said between us.”

She turned in his embrace and framed his face in her hands. “I know,” she whispered. For a moment this morning she’d believed there might be a forever for them.

His lips brushed lightly over her cheek, not kissing, but just feeling her skin. “I’d keep you here if I could.” His jaw tightened against her cheek. “I’d stop you from going if I knew how.”

“You can’t.” She closed her eyes loving the way he seemed to breathe her in with each breath. “I have to do this. It’s the only way.”

“I know. I’d be less of a man if I bound you to me. And you’d be less my Nick if you let me. If you stayed, I’d keep you safe with my life.” He raised his hand to the back of her hair, moving his fingers down the short strands.

She could feel his heart pounding against hers and knew if he gave his life to save her, hers would end.

“You’ve never said you loved me,” she whispered, needing to hear the words no one had ever said to her.

“I don’t think about saying it. Loving you is a part of me like breathing. I knew the night we met that I’d always love you and miss you beside me even though we only had that few hours in that old run-down farmhouse together.” He hugged her, rocking her slightly from side to side. “I want to hold you forever. Freeze you against me so that no one could ever pull us apart. I’m not sure after this morning that I can let you go this time.”

“We know it’s the only way,” she whispered as he buried his face against her throat. “The others need you and Wes to protect them.”

“I’ll come after you when it’s safe,” he promised. “I’ll find you.”

Nichole laughed with tears in her eyes. “Why do all the men in my life keep saying that to me?” Kissing his ear, she promised, “I’ll find you when it’s safe. If there ever is a time such as safe. It doesn’t seem to be on my map in this life.”

Wes bumped his way around the door and into the room. He took one look at them, and said, “You’re not thinking of really letting her go, Adam? Her plan is insane. She’s staying here with us and that’s final. The sheriff is due back in a day or two. This will all get straightened out by then.”

“Someone is shooting at us now,” Nick reminded.

“We’ve enough guns to hold the whole town at bay,” Wes answered. “Eventually my men will find a way to take out the shooter. You can’t go, kid, and that’s final.”

Adam raised his head but didn’t lessen his hold on her. “We’ve talked it out. Nick thinks she should go and her chances are better alone than with one of us following trying to help. She’s got to find a sanctuary until the sheriff returns and the men are behind bars. Any faith we have in the law vanishes with our deputy around. She has to be out of harm’s way, Wes.”

“Well, I don’t like the idea of sending her out in the dark all alone,” Wes grumbled. “I’ll go with her.”

“No,” Nichole argued. “I’ve already told Adam. Both of you have to stay here and keep firing until I’m safe.”

Nichole raised her head from Adam’s shoulder. “Besides, where else would I be safe but in the night?” she asked. “You’re putting a fish back in water.”

Wes made a face, but didn’t argue anymore. Nick had a way, like no other woman, of looking at a man as though she thought herself an equal. And damned if he hadn’t started believing it. “All right. We’ll cover you.” He moved closer. “If you’ll turn loose of my brother, I’d like to show you a map I drew. It should get you to Daniel at the settlement near Dallas. I figure it will take you most of the night. If you run into trouble there’s a place about halfway there called Emery’s Post. It’s not more than an old drifter with a shack who makes his living selling half-wild horses. But he’ll help you for a price. Tell him I’ll be along in a day or two and settle up if you owe him anything.”

Wes raised an eyebrow as he saw her better in the poor light. “Cut your hair, I see.” His comment was a statement, not a judgment.

“It’s short.” She touched her head once more. “But it was getting so long I was starting to look like a woman.”

Wes laughed. “You could shave it off, kid, and this fool of a brother of mine would still look at you with cow eyes. What makes a woman beautiful is a lot more than curls and ruffles.” He looked up toward the second floor. “At least in most cases.”

Nichole reached for her hat. “It’s almost dark. I have to be going. I have to make it through the passage Nance told me about and out the shack across the street just at sunset. The shooter won’t be able to see me then.”

Wes opened his arms. “Take care, kid.” Nichole moved into his hug. “Keep an angel on your shoulder and your fist drawn till I’m there to cover your back.”

The old saying the McLain boys had never used except for a brother told Adam how dearly Wes cared for Nick.

“I’ll get everything ready while you two have a moment alone,” Wes called over his shoulder. “I don’t like the idea, but if Adam was willing to let you try it, I’ll not go against both of you. Besides, Sister Cel has told me more than once another will be watching you.”

Adam didn’t say a word. It was too late for words. He simply pulled Nichole close and held her as tightly as he could against him. For one morning of his life he’d known paradise. He’d held passion and wild beauty in his arms. For a few nights he’d slept next to someone whose heartbeat matched his own. He wanted a hundred more passion-filled mornings, thousands more days holding her, and ten thousand more nights. But if they never had them, at least he knew of their existence. And he’d go to his grave remembering every smell, every taste, every feel, every heartbeat of the little time he had with her.

Nichole pulled away. “I have to go,” she whispered. “Don’t worry about me.”

Adam couldn’t force any words past his throat. The very air he breathed was vanishing. He was suffocating. But he couldn’t say more. She read his mind, she knew his heart. She’d return, he told himself. If she didn’t, he’d find her.

When she reached the door, she turned and tried to memorize him.

“I love you,” he whispered his thoughts.

She turned unable to say the words she’d so longed for him to say. Opening the door, she melted away.

At the end of the hall, Wes handed her Adam’s medical saddlebags. “The doc wants his bag back,” he mumbled. “Rose packed food for you in it.” He saluted as he moved away in a hurry to be back at his post. They’d all agreed that if something happened and she made a sound while in the passage, or in the shack, they’d make enough noise in the house to keep the shooter busy.

“Ready?” Nance asked, proud to man a station in her escape.

“Ready.” Nichole bent and kissed him on the cheek. “Tell the others I’ll see them soon.”

Nance wiped his face as if to wipe off the kiss as he opened the trapdoor beneath the rug in the corner of the foyer. “It drops down a bit to a kind of cellar. I think the troops who stayed here used it to store supplies, but Mom never let me go down there except one time with my dad.” Nance repeated what he’d told her several times before. “Feel the wall and keep to the side and you’ll find a tunnel about my height. Follow it and you’ll come out in the cellar of the shack across the street. My dad says the cavalry built it as an escape from Indian attack. If nothing’s fallen on that trapdoor, you should be able to push it open. I haven’t been down there since I went with my dad and he carried a light, but you’ll have to go through in the dark. Adam says any light from the tunnel might show through across the street.”

“I’ll find my way.” She slipped into the trapdoor. If this worked, all the hours of listening to Nance tell of the mazes in this house would have paid off. “Thanks, General Ears.”

He saluted as he’d seen Wes do.

The drop was not far, not more than eight feet, but for a boy it must have seemed long. She hit soft dirt, uneven beneath her feet.

As Nance closed the trapdoor, the world turned black. Not night like she was used to, but total, absolute black.

She reached out and touched the soft earthen wall of the cellar. Move along the wall to an opening, she said to herself as she slowly felt her way. The room was so silent she could hear her own heart pounding. As she slid her fingers along the wall dirt dribbled off in her hand.

Something scurried behind her. Rats! She clenched her teeth, forcing herself to stay calm. Of all the animals on this earth, rats were the only ones that made her shiver. She’d face a wolf, or a bear, or even an angry porcupine before getting close to a rat.

Another movement, rattling something near her feet. Two rats. Maybe she hated them so much because they thought they owned the night.

Probably a tiny one, she thought, only traveling over broken bottles or bits of trash. The rats weren’t interested in her, she reasoned. Keep moving! Find the tunnel.

A weight scurried across the toe of her boot. Not a tiny mouse, but a long fat rat that widened as it moved until the body covered her boot and pressed against her leg.

Nichole couldn’t stand still. She twisted, kicking the varmint off her foot. It hit a wall and let out a cry, causing the floor to liquify with movement. They were everywhere. Not one or a dozen, but a hundred running past her boots, sniffing up her legs almost to the knee, pushing other rats into her shins.

She kicked again, almost losing her balance. Her hand reached out to steady her. She touched a shelf in the blackness. A moment later something ran across her fingers and jumped from the shelf. Reacting, before thinking, she stepped away and bumped into another shelf. It toppled, sending rats squealing as they fell to the floor.

Panic climbed up her spine on tiny feet. It took all her willpower not to scream or run. But if she ran, she was sure to step on one and in the blackness she might fall or they might bite through the thin leather of her boot. If she fell, they’d be all over her in victory.

She’d lost her bearing in the blackness. She no longer knew where the wall was. If she took the wrong step, she could trip and fall, or bump into something, or feel another rat. There was as great a chance of her moving away from the wall as toward it.

Nothing, not a single beam of light pointed the way. Not even a smell or sound to follow. If she made the wrong choice and fell… Oh, God, if she fell she’d die of fright.

“Help me,” she whispered to the stale air as a rat tried to climb her leg. “Help me!”

Adam and Wes were only a matter of feet above her, but with the trapdoor and rug, she knew they wouldn’t hear her cries even if she screamed. She couldn’t force herself to reach out again and try to find the wall. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t breathe in the heavy musty air.

“Help me,” she whispered in panic to no one.

Something shifted to her left. A shuffling sound unlike that a rodent would make.

“Easy, now,” someone said to her as the shuffling sound came again. “Don’t lose control of your senses. And don’t be afraid of me. I was told to help if needed.”

For a moment, she thought she was imagining a voice. Nichole forced herself to remain perfectly still, not even breathing.

“Who are you?”

Movement came again. “I’m Celestine’s brother. She said we had to help you, even if it meant my getting caught and being sent back to prison. She said I had to do what I could to see you safely away.”

“You killed a guard.” Nichole remembered the nun’s confession.

“I did. I killed the man who murdered my partner, Nance’s father.”

Nick didn’t say a word. She was trapped in a cellar with a killer and a hundred rats. There was no light to point her way. If she hoped to get out, she had to trust a murderer.

“Hold your hand out,” the voice commanded so softly she still wasn’t sure she heard it. “Stay real still, I’ll find you and see you out.”

Nick slowly raised her hand out in front of her, ready to pull back the moment she encountered anything.

“I’m not going to harm you,” the voice moved closer. “I’m only going to touch your hand.”

She breathed. The voice had anchored her in the blackness. Panic began to recede. This man in the cellar with her was making the world return and her fears move back to nightmares.

A wrinkled hand, not much larger than her own, grasped hers. “I’ll show you the way,” he whispered in a voice rusted with age. “I’ve walked this tunnel many a night. I’ve seen you travel the darkness also. Only you do good, I only want to disappear.”

Slowly, one step at a time, she followed as they moved across the room. She could still hear the rats running about, but they no longer crossed her path.

“Lower your head,” he mumbled as he pulled her down into a crouch. “The tunnel’s free of rats mostly, but when it rains the walls get muddy. Be careful of the uneven ground. My sister, Cel, will have my hide if I let anything happen to you.”

She followed as they shuffled through the tunnel slowly. A dozen questions came to mind, but she didn’t speak. This guardian angel was risking his life and his freedom to help her.

The air was a little easier to breathe as they came out of the tunnel and into what must be the cellar across the street from the boardinghouse. Here a few cracks in the trapdoor provided enough light to get a vague view of the room.

The man turned loose of her hand and slid a box between them. “All you have to do is stand on this box and push the door gently. I checked to see that it was unblocked when I heard Nance tell you about the secret passage. I guessed you’d choose this way out.”

“Thanks.” She waited, hoping he’d tell her his name. “You saved my life.”

“No,” he stepped away. “I’ve watched you in action. You would have found your own path. I just helped out a bit. We all need help now and then.”

Before she could say more, he was gone. She could hear him moving back through the tunnel, brushing the wall with his hand. The rats scurrying to get out of his path. Someday, maybe they’d meet again. She’d always remember the feel of his old hand.

Straightening her stance, she touched her Colt and took a deep breath. It was time to do what she had to do, she thought. It was sunset.