“I’ll do that. Give Betsy and Jimmy hugs from their favorite uncle. And tell Teresa I miss her.”
Billy thumped him solidly on the back before he started down the opposite end of the alley. Trace waited a moment before he walked the other way, dreading the new job awaiting him. Sometimes it just didn’t pay to be the best con man and thief in the west.
Chapter Two
October 1903
Near Hardman, Oregon
“I positively cannot believe this is happening,” Victoria Carter murmured as a masked man waved a pistol in her direction.
“What was that, darlin’?” the outlaw drawled. Between the hat settled low over his brow and the rest of his face covered by a bandana that may have at one time been any number of hues but now resembled the color of the dust billowing around them, all she could see was a hint of brown eyes.
Brown eyes. Brown clothes. Brown hat.
Unrelenting, nondescript, detestable brown.
He and his cohorts in crime blended in with the vast, rugged landscape of eastern Oregon through which they currently traversed. One moment the stagecoach had been jostling along the road. The next, they heard shouts as the coach rattled to an abrupt halt. The stage door had been thrown open and the insufferable thief currently doing his best to frighten her swung inside.
“You say something, honey?” the outlaw questioned, leaning toward her. She caught a hint of alcohol in the air around him and couldn’t miss the way his eyes ogled her, as though he had nefarious schemes in mind.
“No, sir,” Victoria whispered, keeping her head down while surreptitiously studying every detail about the man holding up the stagecoach headed for Hardman. While he terrorized her and the other passengers inside, she could hear voices outside barking orders at the driver.
The outlaw glaring at her spoke with a southern drawl, but it sounded forced, unnatural. Victoria had spent enough time traveling throughout the South to know an authentic accent when she heard it and this bandit was far off the mark. Obviously, if he intended to disguise his voice, he ought to put more effort into it.
She cast a quick glance at the robber inside the stage as he waggled around his revolver. He divested an elderly man of his money and watch then moved on to the man’s wife, demanding she remove her earbobs along with her wedding ring. His next victim was a younger man in a finely tailored suit. While the thief was distracted, Victoria hastily unfastened a pearl brooch from the collar of her jacket and dropped it down the front of her blouse, hoping it landed inside her corset. The piece of jewelry wasn’t of great monetary value, but it had belonged to her grandmother. She would gladly surrender her reticule which held a considerable bit of money, and the ring on her finger, but she refused to give up something her grandmother and mother had once worn.
The outlaw worked his way back around to her. In the cramped quarters, he appeared to elbow and shove his way amongst the passengers with more force than necessary. Victoria pegged him for a coward and a bully, but she certainly wouldn’t verbalize her opinions. At least not with a loaded weapon pointed at her head.
“Your turn, sweet thing,” the bandit said, holding out a hand toward her. From the way his eyes crinkled around the corners, she knew he was smiling. Oh, how she would love to slap the jollity right off his face.
She hesitated to hand over her reticule, but the crook seemed at the end of his tolerance with their group. He snatched it from her, not bothering to look inside as he stuffed it inside a coat pocket, then pointed to her left hand. “You got a ring on under that glove?”
Victoria nodded and removed the glove one finger at a time. A large, square diamond caught a sunbeam streaming in the stage window and refracted it in a brilliant arc of dazzling, shimmering light.
A low whistle burst out of the criminal and he grasped her hand, studying the sparkling jewel. “Now that right there, lady, was worth all the trouble of robbin’ this stage.” He yanked on the ring, glowering at her when it didn’t budge.
“I ain’t leaving without that ring. You can take it off or I’ll whack off your finger, makes no nevermind to me. What’s it gonna be, darlin’?”
Victoria glanced down at the ring and her rapidly swelling finger. Wendell Ness forced it onto her finger more than nine years ago on the day they wed. It had been too small then, but Wendell had pushed and shoved until he got it on her finger and there it had stayed.
She should have had it cut off any number of times, had even gone twice to the jeweler’s store to have it done, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. The ring, in her opinion, was gaudy, ostentatious, and a reminder of everything she loathed about her despicable husband. Aunt Octavia claimed Victoria wore the ring as a penance for the misery Wendell inflicted upon their family.
Her aunt wasn’t entirely wrong.
However, with the threat of having her finger cut off, Victoria would willingly part with the ring.
“Time’s a wastin’, honey, and I’m pert near out of patience.” The robber maintained his hold on her hand as he leaned back and shouted out the door, “Bub, I need your knife!”
A man dressed exactly as the crook intent on claiming Victoria’s ring peered inside the stage. “What’s going on?”
“I want that ring and I’m not leaving until I get it.” The first outlaw pointed to Victoria. Even with most of his face covered, she could easily picture a snide sneer on his lips. “Cut it off.”
“I ain’t cuttin’ off her finger, you half-witted blockhead. The boss would have ten kinds of fits if we done did that.” The second outlaw reached into the stage, grabbed Victoria around the waist, and hauled her out, setting her on her feet in front of him.
An involuntary gasp rushed out of her at being handled so brusquely. The desperado had picked her up as though she weighed nothing and she’d felt hard, solid muscles beneath her hands as she reflexively grasped his arms for balance. She dropped her hands as though she held hot coals, appalled as she wondered if he was as handsome as she imagined behind the bandana hiding his face. Unlike the thief intent on taking her ring, this one wore spectacles with dark lenses that kept her from seeing the color of his eyes. The shade cast over his face by the hat kept her from being able to even see their shape. But she did notice an eyebrow raise in question as she openly gawked at him.
The sagebrush swindler lifted her hand and studied her finger. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he pulled her hand beneath his bandana and stuck her finger in his mouth. His tongue laved her finger, circling it several times. Dumbstruck by the man’s scandalous and unexpectedly intimate behavior, Victoria found it impossible to move. Goose bumps rose on her skin and her knees threatened to quake as he continued bathing her finger with his tongue.
A lightheaded feeling settled over her. For a fleeting moment, she thought she might faint, but then she felt the ring slide off. The second it did, she jerked her hand away from him, causing the bandana he wore to flutter slightly, giving her a partial glimpse of a strong chin covered in brown stubble.
He winked at her as he plucked the ring from his mouth then held it out to his fellow plunderer. “I got it, Guy. Let’s skedaddle.”
The thief who threatened to cut off her finger gave her a leering glance as he jumped out of the stage. He slapped his friend on the back, and the two of them strode around the bend in the road with two more men who’d been going through the contents of the trunks carried on top of the stage. Between them, they packed a small chest she was sure must hold money or gold.