Caden's Vow. Sarah McCarty

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СКАЧАТЬ looked around. She didn’t recognize where she was. She didn’t recognize where she was going. Didn’t know how long she’d been drifting in her mind. Long enough for the sun to come up and the woods to change to clearing, but that didn’t tell her much.

      “Where did you bring us?” she asked Worthless. He sat down and flopped his wrinkles at her. Some help he was. She backed Flower away from the edge. “At least it’s pretty.”

      And it was. Hell’s Eight was up high on the cliffs where it was sparse and the environment was harsh, but down here things had a lusher feel. More like home. There weren’t so many sharp edges to the landscape. It rolled more than cut and grass grew around rocks and summer flowers sprouted along hillsides and leaves filtered sunlight. It would be a wonderful place to stop and picnic if she weren’t lost.

      “What are we going to do?” she asked the hound. He stood on his hind legs and pawed at her foot. Leather creaked as she leaned down and petted his head. Worthless wagged his tail, his expression blissful as she scratched behind his ear. Clearly, he shared none of her concern. And why would he? He was used to hunting with Hell’s Eight. For sure Tracker wouldn’t be lost. Neither would Caden, Tucker or Caine. They knew this country like the back of their hands, whereas she... She sighed. She only knew how to create pictures in her mind.

      She made a note of another one of her needs. She truly needed to learn how to find her way around the wilderness. The next time she brought it up with the men, she wouldn’t be fobbed off with a ruffle of her hair and the statement that there was no need, the way Sam had done. Hell’s Eight’s protection or not, she needed her own skills.

      She didn’t want to be watched out for. Protectors came and went. She’d had a lot of protectors over the years. Protectors had a way of losing interest, and when they did, she was always alone again and left to her own devices. At that point her choice was to rely on herself or to find another. With no skills to sustain her, there really was no choice. But she didn’t want a protector anymore. She just wanted herself. She wanted to be like the men of Hell’s Eight, like the women of Hell’s Eight. She wanted to be able to look trouble in the eye and knock its teeth out.

      She flexed her fingers, made a fist and tried to imagine what the face of trouble would look like, but it always came at her in so many different forms it was hard to pick just one to punch. Like now, trouble tended to be a sneaky bastard. She was lost. Her current trouble was as simple and as complex as that. She tried to remember all she’d heard about Fei’s mine. The stories were wild and exciting on one level, like something out of a storybook. But it hadn’t been a fairy tale. Shadow had lived it with Fei. When Maddie listened to them tell the story, all she could think of was the expression of confidence in Fei’s face as she talked about how she’d handled things. Maddie wanted to be that confident. She wanted people to look at her and know that she could handle things. She wanted Caden to look at her like that. She wanted to know it herself.

      She remembered the talk about the climb, how hard it was to get up the side of the cliff to the mine, which meant it was high. Her options in trails that were rideable were either to go back the way she came, to travel along the right side of the mountain or to take the steep drop down.

      With her heart in her throat, she turned the mare to the path along the side of the mountain. The sun was rising on her right, clearing the mountain. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, wrong or right. She didn’t even know if that was east or west. How could she be so ignorant about such important details? Of course, growing up in town, it was never important which way the sun came up. On Hell’s Eight she’d never been left alone; always someone guarded her. Another form of protection that had not served her.

      She urged Flower forward. The one thing she hated about being “here” so much was the uncertainty of the emotions that always ate at her. In her make-believe world, it was calm. It was peaceful. There were never any wild swings of emotion. No fear. No hate. No pain. No sadness. Just calm summer days by the pond or maybe an evening at a social where she’d dance with handsome gentlemen who treated her with respect and thought she was lovely. She shook her head. Sometimes she wondered if she’d known going with Tracker had meant that she would be “here” so much and what being “here” meant if she wouldn’t have done it. She shook her head again as the birds sang in her ear and the horse’s hooves clopped along the path. Maybe not. Her make-believe world hadn’t been as satisfying even back then, and it’d been harder and harder to hold on to her peaceful feeling. Maybe losing the ability to pretend would have happened anyway and instead of being safe at Hell’s Eight, she would have just been in...

      She sighed as the path turned around the hill. It’d been so much easier as a child to pretend. So much easier to shirk the responsibility of living. Until the day when a customer had stabbed her friend Hilda. Maddie moaned in her mind, remembering the horror of the blood, of putting her hands over the wounds, of trying to stop the pulsing flow, her only friend’s blood gushing over her hands in a steady stream. No matter which wounds she covered, no matter how quickly she covered them, she couldn’t stop the blood. All she could do was sit there and listen to Hilda gasp and groan as her life was ripped from her by an act of senseless violence, while around them the brothel girls and their customers went about their business. All because Hilda hadn’t undressed fast enough. Maddie bit her lip as sobs welled as fresh today as they were back then. Hilda had deserved better. It’d been so unfair. So wrong. Long after Hilda had stopped breathing, Maddie had been trying to clean up the blood, as if cleaning up the evidence would bring her back. But there’d been no bringing her back, no forgetting the words Hilda had whispered to her. I was going to...

      It’d been a game they played. When they got enough money, they were going to buy a house. When they met a nice man, they were going to have a home and children. When they saved enough, they were going to travel the world and live high. And Hilda hadn’t gotten to do anything except spread her legs for the dirty men who paid the money.

      I was going to.

      Maddie had closed her eyes, those words hanging in her heart. It’d been in that spilt second that Tracker had come into the saloon, and in that split second she’d found the courage to jump on his offer. And now here she was, in the middle of nowhere on an adventure chasing her life and completely lost. Somehow her escape wasn’t turning out the way she wanted. But then again, it wasn’t as if she’d gotten any of it right.

      At first she’d thought Hell’s Eight would be everything she needed—a nice house, cleaning, cooking, baking but no bedding. She really didn’t like bedding and no one there expected her to. And at first living there had been nice, really nice, but somehow it hadn’t been enough. In the past couple months, she’d been consumed with the same restlessness she so often sensed in Caden. A need for...just something. She needed more than safety. She needed her own dreams. Her own life.

      Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t even see the riders coming at her around the corner until she almost ran into them. Flower tossed her head, whapping Maddie on the chin. Stars shot between her eyes. Four riders pulled up in front of her, two abreast on the trail. Flower stepped back a quick two steps. Maddie would have taken six. They were a hard-looking bunch. Their clothes were dirty from the trail, whiskers sprouted on their cheeks, and they all had guns strapped to their thighs, but they weren’t unfamiliar. She didn’t know who they were, but they didn’t look any different from any of the saddle bums who’d frequented the Red Velvet Slipper looking for companionship. The look they were casting over her didn’t feel any different, either. It was the type of look men gave her when they came into the saloon parlor, hot and hungry, seeing her as a body, not a person, wanting her as a vessel, not a companion. Her stomach heaved the way it always did, and her mind rebelled the way it always did, but the pretend wouldn’t come. And she was left staring at them and the reality of what was likely about to happen.

      “Well, what do we have here?” the older man on the right asked, pushing his СКАЧАТЬ