Chapter Thirty-Three
The rope bit into Grace’s wrists every time she twisted.
Whoever had tied the knot—the skinny one, the one who smelled like a wet dog left in a closet—had pulled it sailor-tight.
She’d been working at it for hours, rolling her wrists in small circles, hunting for slack.
Her fingers had gone half-numb; that tingly, dead feeling like sitting on your own hand too long.
The rag in her mouth tasted like coal oil. Every breath through it coated the back of her throat thick enough to gag on, so she stopped breathing through it. Nose instead. Slow. Steady. The way she’d breathed through the bad nights in the tenement when the walls closed in.
Fifty dollars. She’d walked in here with fifty dollars and Mormor’s brooch pinned to her collar and some half-baked notion that a girl from the slums could talk down a man who’d been running criminals since before she’d lost her milk teeth.
Ace had taken the money, pocketed her grandmother’s brooch like it meant nothing—just yanked it free, tossed it onto his crate—and had his boys tie her up while he went back to picking his teeth.
Stupid. Jonah had called her brave. Ace had called her stupid. Ace had had the better take on the situation.
Now he sat on the crate beside her, close enough that his knee pressed against her hip.
He’d pulled the knife from his belt about an hour ago—a folding knife with a bone handle and a blade nicked and dark along the edge—and rested the flat of it against her ribs casually, like a man resting his hand on a fence rail.
Every few minutes, he’d shift the blade an inch, just to remind her it was there, and the steel would catch a strip of light through the wall gaps and flash cold against her dress.
Then Logan filled the doorway with the Winchester leveled at Ace’s chest.
Oh, thank God. Thank God.
Her eyes burned. He’d come. Even after yesterday. Even after the trenches, the ‘you knew’ comment—he’d come.
“Get away from her.”
“Easy, Cowboy.” Ace tilted the knife blade so it caught the light. “You can put a bullet through me from there, for sure. But this hand’s got a mind of its own when I get surprised. Might twitch.”
Logan’s eyes dropped to the knife. His jaw locked.
The Winchester stayed up, aimed squarely at Ace’s head, but his trigger finger eased off the guard.
He could definitely make the shot; Grace had seen him do it before, but a dead man’s hand could still jerk, and the blade sat three inches from her lung.
“Ain’t nobody gotta get hurt here.” Ace rolled the splinter between his teeth with his free hand. “Your wife walked in on her own. Wavin’ money around, talkin’ about leavin’ your family alone. Real brave. Stupid as a bag of hammers, but brave.”
“What do you want, Pike?”
“Same thing I’ve always wanted. What Dawson buried on your land.
” Ace shrugged with the free shoulder. “Your wife’s fifty dollars is in my pocket.
The silver your boy stole for me is in my saddlebag.
And come tomorrow, me and my boys are ridin’ back to that ranch to dig every square foot till I find the rest. Could take a day. Could take a month.”
The garden. He meant the garden. Her tomatoes, her pole beans, the trellises Logan had helped her build on that Tuesday afternoon when Rafe had heckled from the porch, and Logan had told the dirty joke, and she’d laughed hard enough to scare the chickens.
All of it, already torn up once, and this man meant to do it again.
“You already tore my place apart,” Logan said. “Didn’t find a damn thing.”
“Didn’t dig deep enough. Won’t make that mistake twice.”
“And Grace?”
“Insurance.” Ace pressed the flat of the blade a fraction harder. Grace sucked air through her nose. “You or that useless brother of hers get in my way, she pays the price.”
Grace’s gut clenched.
He’d said it so casually… like breaking a woman ranked somewhere between chores and breakfast. For all that she’d grown up around men like this—dock bosses, the ward runners, men who measured people in what they could take from them—no one had ever been this relaxed when talking about murder.
“You lay that blade on her—”
“Already layin’ it.” Ace grinned with the gaps in his teeth. “She bites, by the way. You oughta know that about your wife.”
Damn right she’d bitten him. Gotten a mouthful of dirty coat sleeve and the taste of tobacco and cheap whiskey for her trouble, but she’d left marks.
Four crescent-shaped welts, right through the fabric.
Ace had rolled his sleeve up to inspect them, and the sight had given her something warm to hold onto during the cold hours that followed.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen.” Logan’s voice went low. “You’re gonna take that knife off my wife. You’re gonna hand back her money. And then you’re gonna get on those horses and ride till I can’t see your dust.”
“Or what? You shoot me and hope this blade don’t slip?” Ace chuckled. “Nah. You ain’t gonna risk that. I can see it in your face.”
The two goons flanked the front of the room, one on each side of the door Logan had come through. The skinny one gripped his knife. The other held a pistol in his lap, aimed nowhere in particular.
Mason stood just inside the doorway on Logan’s left, training a rifle on the goon with the pistol. Jonah hovered behind them both with his fists balled at his sides, locking his one good eye on Ace.
“Tough spot you’re in, Cowboy.” Ace tilted his head. “Can’t shoot. Can’t rush me. That Winchester’s about as useful as a—”
Jonah moved.
He came past Logan like a bull through a rotten gate, head down, shoulder dropped, straight at Ace. No strategy. No plan. Just a body launched at the man who’d, apparently, owned him since Mulberry Street.
Logan’s eyes widened. “Jonah, NO—”
But the angle saved her. Jonah hit Ace from the left—the opposite side from the knife—driving his shoulder into Ace’s ribs and knocking him sideways off the crate and away from Grace. The blade swung wide, scraping across the wall instead of her ribs.
Ace caught himself, shoved Jonah off, and drove his knee into his gut. Jonah folded. Hit the dirt wheezing.
Her brother. Her stupid, reckless, brave, lying, loyal, infuriating brother who’d starved himself so she could eat, sold her to a criminal, and then taken a beating trying to protect her garden.
On the floor getting the air kicked out of him because he couldn’t keep his temper for more than five minutes.
But he’d knocked Ace away from her. That mattered. That mattered more than anything.
The goons scrambled. The skinny one lunged at Mason. The one with the pistol aimed at Logan, but Logan shot faster. The Winchester stock cracked. The bullet bit right through the man’s forearm, and the pistol fell from his grip.
Mason grappled with the knife man against the makeshift table.
The planks buckled, one sawhorse snapped, and then the whole thing collapsed into splintered wood.
Then Thomas burst through the back wall—literally through it, shoulders first—right into the goon scrambling for his dropped pistol. Tackled him flat.
Grace pulled.
She yanked with everything her wrists could give. The knot shifted. Half an inch. But the loop around her right wrist loosened just enough to fold her thumb flat against her palm—double-jointed, always had been, Jonah used to make her do it at parties as a kid because people shrieked—
Her right hand slid free.
The relief hit her wrists first, blood rushed back like stepping into hot water after a cold night.
She clawed the rag out of her mouth. Air hit her tongue, real air, not filtered through coal oil.
She spat the taste out, or tried to, as the chemical tang had soaked into her gums and the back of her throat, where it would probably sit for days.
Ace turned.
Two strides. He grabbed her arm above the elbow hard enough to grind bone, fingers digging in, dragging her sideways.
Her shoulder wrenched, shooting fire straight into her neck.
She swung with her free fist. Connected with his jaw—not hard, her fingers still tingled too much—but enough to snap his head sideways.
The impact jarred up her arm into the wrenched shoulder.
It was worth it, though—the look on his face alone. Obviously, nobody had hit Ace Pike and meant it in a good long while.
“You little—”
“Let go of me, you rotten son of a—”
He pressed the knife against her neck. “Stop squirmin’.”
“DON’T TOUCH HER!”
Logan aimed the Winchester at Ace again, as Mason and Thomas restrained his two goons. But Ace, still holding the knife against Grace’s neck, pulled a pistol out of his belt with his free hand and aimed it at Logan’s chest.
“Well, looks like we’re in a bit of a pickle.” Ace chuckled. “Eh, Cowboy?”
Grace froze.
Logan couldn’t shoot. Not with that knife against her neck, and everyone here knew it.
However, Ace couldn’t shoot either. Mason had a rifle too, and Ace had no way of knowing whether Mason would gun him down if he killed his brother, Grace be damned.
Mason wouldn’t, of course, not with Grace’s life still in danger.
It was only a matter of time before Ace figured that out, too.
I have to do something.
But what?
Ace had that knife pretty deep into her skin; the damn thing would draw blood if he pressed it further. Plus, she could startle him into shooting if she made a sudden movement.
Damn it.
“Put the rifle down, Cowboy.”
Jonah moved on the floor.
Slowly, carefully, he shifted from his crumpled position and rolled to his side, drawing his knees under him.
Grace clenched her teeth. This could turn out ugly.
If Grace could see Jonah, Ace could see Jonah.
But Ace stared at Logan. Good. If he’d dismissed Jonah as a threat, they might actually make it out of this alive.
It made sense, though. In New York, a man you knocked down knew better than to get back up. That had been the rule on Mulberry Street, in the Fourth Ward, in every alley where the boss hit you once to remind you of your place.
Poor Jonah would’ve spent… what… eleven years learning to stay down.
Well, now, he stood up.
As quietly as a cat. Honestly, this explained why he’d made it as a pickpocket on Fourth Ward.
Anyone louder would’ve been caught or killed long ago.
But not Jonah. No, he closed the distance in three silent steps and wrapped both arms around Ace from behind—locking one around the gun arm and the other around the knife—and lifted the shorter man clean off the ground.
Ace screamed. Grace fell back with a gasp and pressed her hands against her neck as Jonah’s hand dripped blood where his skin met the edge of the knife.
It’d worked!
Ace thrashed. His boots kicked at the air. The bowler hat tumbled off his head into the dirt. Without it, he looked smaller. Just a short, red-faced, gap-toothed man dangling six inches off the ground with his hair plastered to his forehead in greasy strings.
“You ungrateful little—I made you! I took you off the street when you was starvin’. I put food in your belly, I gave you—”
“You gave me a stolen watch and a guilty conscience.” Jonah’s arms tightened. “You gave me eleven years of lookin’ over my shoulder. You gave me nightmares about a blind man on Fulton Street sayin’ ‘God bless you, son’ while I lifted his pocket.”
Ace’s legs swung harder. “I’ll kill you, boy. I’ll kill you and your sister and that whole—”
“No. You won’t.” Jonah shifted his grip, locking Ace’s gun arm tighter against his side. “You wanna know why? ‘cause you’re five foot five and you weigh about as much as a wet saddle, and the only power you ever had come from scarin’ kids who didn’t know better.”
Grace’s throat closed up.
Jonah had taken beatings for her before.
Starved for her. Brought home money he wouldn’t explain and smiled when she asked too many questions.
Every ounce of fight Jonah had, he’d spent on keeping her fed, keeping her warm, and keeping her ignorant of the price.
And now he had Ace Pike six inches off the ground, looking him dead in his gap-toothed mouth, and his arms weren’t shaking.
Grace’s eyes watered.
Good for you, Jonah…
“I was fourteen, Ace.” Jonah’s jaw pressed against the top of Ace’s head, pinning him still.
“Fourteen years old, standin’ outside your flophouse with my ribs showin’ through my shirt.
And you smiled at me. You put your hand on my shoulder, and you said, ‘I’ll take care of you, son.
’ And I believed you because my papa had just died with blisters on his throat and I needed somebody—anybody—to say those words. ”
Ace’s thrashing slowed. His boots swung once more, then hung still.
“But you didn’t take care of me. You used me. Same way you used every kid who walked through that door hungry and scared. Same way you tried to use my sister.”
“It’s a fortune, you stupid—”
“It’s dirt.” Jonah squeezed until Ace wheezed. “It’s dirt and rocks and whatever’s left of a dead man’s greed, and it ain’t worth one hair on her head.”
Grace smiled as she cried.
“We’re done, Ace.” Jonah lowered him until his boots touched the ground, but kept his arms locked. “You’re done threatenin’ my sister. You’re done diggin’ up their land. You’re done with me. Eleven years, and I’m tellin’ you right now—you’re done.”
The fight drained out of Ace. His shoulders sagged. His legs buckled. Jonah held him upright like a sack of grain.
Logan ran up to Grace in four strides, stepping over the collapsed table, and took her arm. “You all right?”
“I’m fine. I—”
“Don’t say a thing.” He hugged her. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
She leaned into him. Her cheekbone throbbed, her wrists burned raw, and her shoulder ached deep in the socket. But his heartbeat hammered through his shirt fast enough to count, and the warmth of him bled through the fabric into her skin.
He turned back to Ace.
“Jonah, Thomas, tie ’em up. All of ’em. Hands and feet.” His grip on her waist tightened. “We’re takin’ ’em to the sheriff.”