Chapter Seven
Shit. The sound of a horse running toward them sent panic down Jessie’s spine.
Great. No weapons, Gray had discovered her identity, and she was the prisoner of a known criminal and possible murderer. She wasn’t sure who she was hoping would find them. Bounty hunters couldn”t be trusted and were sometimes worse than gunslingers.
She had learned just how many bounty hunters were after the pair of them while she was searching for them. She’d bumped into a substantial number on her search, so she knew several of them were not far behind her.
A man on a black horse rode up, alone. At least it was just one man. When he got close enough, she could easily see he bore a striking resemblance to Gray, with his sharp jawline and well-toned body. A hat partially concealed his face, blocking the rising sun. His eyes were piercing, as if he could see right through her to the very core of who she was. He wore a gun belt low on his hips that carried two revolvers. Both handles of his revolvers were worn, a product of the countless duels he must have been in. And the countless lives he must have taken. He approached them with a confidence that lacked fear or caution.
It was Luke.
Her heart beat faster in a mixture of apprehension and excitement at Luke’s presence. She had been mostly positive Gray wouldn’t hurt her because he wasn’t wanted for harming anyone. Luke Hammond, however, was wanted for murder, so there was no possible way she could trust him. Yet now she had an opportunity to bring them both in, if she was smart.
Luke brought his horse to a stop in front of them and grinned. She was surprised by the way his smile transformed him from a ruthless gunslinger to a charming young man. He didn’t look like someone who could kill anyone in cold blood. The transformation was so strong, the resemblance to Gray had ended. Gray’s smile was cocky and self-assured. Luke’s reached his eyes in genuine happiness at seeing Gray.
Looking between Gray and Jessie, he gave a low whistle as he jumped down off his horse. He smacked his brother in the arm playfully. Gray embraced his brother fully, relief evident on his face.
“Well, look at this!” Luke stood between them, grinning widely as his eyes bounced back and forth between them a few times before landing on his brother. “I thought you’d been kidnapped or murdered, and here I find you with a woman!” He looked over at Jessie and winked, causing her to frown.
Maybe the resemblance was there after all. Both of them were arrogant. Her stomach burned with anger, but she masked it with cool indifference.
“Next time, let me know, instead of making me chase you around the countryside thinking you’d been murdered,” Luke said, his attention turning back to his brother.
These two seemed very different from one another. She expected Luke to be serious, rude, and abrasive. But he came across as almost aloof to the danger they were in, joking about Gray running off with a woman. He didn’t appear worried, even though he’d apparently believed his brother had been murdered.
He had tracked them down easily, which made her frown deepen. She’d used a lot of effort to cover their tracks when she caught Gray. How had he found them so quickly?
Gray gave Luke a half smile. “You had it right the first time. She is a bounty hunter, not someone I’ve ‘run off’ with.” He gestured back to Jessie, and pointed at her hands, bound in front of her.
Luke gaped at her, trying to assess how serious his brother was.
“You’re kidding,” he said, looking her up and down in disapproval.
She felt the familiar heat rise to her face and had the urge to slug him. She would take great pleasure in turning Luke Hammond in for the reward money, and watching Gray suffer because of it.
“Nope.” Gray looked back at her and shrugged.
“Not a good one, it appears. But I guess that explains why she’s wearing pants.”
She lifted her chin in defiance. “Good enough to have gotten him this far.”
Luke’s grin widened, and he looked back between Gray and Jessie again in a way she didn’t appreciate.
“But not good enough to bring us in,” Gray said.
There was nothing she could do since she was outnumbered. She clenched her jaw and replied, “We will see about that. Or maybe I have you both where I want you. The bounty is on Luke Hammond, after all. And here he is.”
Gray’s smile slowly faded, which made Jessie feel a little better. Luke, however, still found the whole situation amusing based on the grin. She had a feeling, though, his boyish charms were a distraction from the danger that lurked beneath the surface.
“Even if that is so, it’s going to be kind of hard to do anything since you’re tied up,” Gray quipped.
She looked down at her bindings and frowned again. If she could somehow bring them both in, she’d get the money and be done with it. And now she had a chance to figure out if they were both guilty, since Gray still insisted his brother had nothing to do with the murder of that man.
They seemed to forget about her for a second as they turned toward each other.
“Learn anything in town?” Gray asked his brother.
“Nothing useful.” Luke tied his horse up to a tree nearby, his movements jerky and rough. He looked a little disheveled, as if he’d ridden a long distance without stopping, possibly to catch up to them. She took a little satisfaction in knowing it must not have been too easy to find them.
“It seems like he was in Bozeman few days ago. So at least we are getting closer to him.” Luke sat down by the unlit fire and took off his hat, moving it between his fingers like it was a nervous habit. “Maybe having to stop in every town to ask all these bounty hunters to come after us has slowed him down a bit. If we’re lucky, maybe it’ll bite him in the ass and allow us to catch him.”
Gray grimaced, and Jessie wondered if he didn’t believe what Luke was saying, or if he was annoyed that they’d missed the man they were chasing again. Were they after the person who Gray had mentioned earlier? The one Luke was after so they could retire? Or were they after someone who put a bounty on them? Maybe they were the same person.
“Who was in Bozeman?” she asked.
They both looked at her again, but neither answered her question.
“Maybe,” Gray said to his brother, ignoring her. “We need to catch him before he moves on. If he was there a few days ago, we are close. Do you know where he’s going?”
Luke shook his head, and Gray swore under his breath.
“You’re going about your search all wrong,” she chimed in. Finding this man couldn’t be that hard. It hadn’t taken her long to find them, after all, and she”d found them before anyone else had. She was good at finding people who didn’t want to be found.
She wasn’t the best tracker, but knew others who could track a person solely from broken branches in the woods, something she’d never been able to do. She’d tried, but had failed miserably. She preferred to gather information about her targets through her network of other bounty hunters, and through town gossip. She’d discovered people in town were comfortable telling a ‘kid’ anything. Sometimes things they wouldn’t tell a grown man.
Gray took a deep breath and held it in as he stared at her with dead eyes. He clearly didn’t appreciate her eavesdropping on their conversation.
Luke tilted his head to the side, cupping his elbow in one hand and tapping his chin with the other. His eyes perked up, waiting for her to say more.
“You don’t even know how we are searching.” Gray’s tone was short and clipped as he tried to dismiss her from the conversation again. He turned his back to her and faced Luke.
If he didn’t want her in the discussion, she wanted to be in it even more.
“I’ve been searching for people, rather successfully I might add, for several years now. The best thing I learned in my time as a bounty hunter is that you can’t go around chasing someone, or you’ll always be chasing them.”
Gray faced her again, scoffed, and rolled his eyes so far that it was a miracle they didn’t roll up into the back of his head. “Right, so how are you bringing people in if you aren’t trying to find them? Are you just hoping you stumble upon them or that they magically come to you? We know a thing or two about finding people.”
A pressure built up in her chest as she thought of how fun it would be to prove him wrong. He was so annoying and condescending. She caught herself clenching her jaw and reminded herself to stop. She was going to lose all her teeth by the time she took the two brothers in at this rate.
As if she was trying to calm a small child, she softly said, “I’m sure you know a thing or two about finding people. But if you want to find this guy, you need to stop chasing him. You need to predict his next move and meet him there.” She took pleasure at the immediate frown that covered Gray’s face. “It’s how I found you, after all,” she rubbed in.
Luke’s face lit up with possibility, transforming him into the charming man he’d been earlier. He snapped his fingers and pointed at Gray. “Of course! We are idiots. Why didn’t we think of that?”
She gave Gray a smug look. If they did as she suggested, then they could catch him. If she was lucky, they’d bring her along and she could turn them in without having to chase them all over the countryside. She just had to convince them that having her around was worth the danger it would put them in.
To add insult to injury and further aggravate Gray, she added, “It sounds like he’s running around asking a lot of bounty hunters to get in on this chase for him. So if he’s a few days out from here and was just in town, where would he go next?”
They looked at each other and shrugged.
“Well, well, well. Looks like my expertise is needed after all,” she said in a singsong voice. “If he’s running around looking for bounty hunters, then ask yourself: Who is nearby? If you’re on the run, you should probably keep closer tabs on where people are who are out to get you.”
Since she had been around Bozeman for coming up on six months now, she had made it a point to keep tabs on everyone in the area. She’d learned that having a network of other professionals was helpful. She exchanged information with those who went after the more dangerous bounties, and they gave her information they had on anyone she was interested in. It was quite useful.
Luke leaned back, sizing her up. “Austin Butch. I heard he’s in Virginia City. If I were going to go around and ask nearby gunslingers to join in, he’d be the next one I’d find.”
A week back, Jessie heard that Austin Butch had been hanging around Bozeman for the past few months. Sometimes he was hired by the law to find criminals, and sometimes he was the criminal. Ruthless at tracking, and known for not taking any chances, he had made a name for himself as one of the most notorious gunslingers in the West.
Jessie had learned to avoid him at all costs. Butch would kill anyone in cold blood if it meant he could earn money. When a bounty said, “Alive or dead,” Butch killed them just to make it easier on himself. Death followed him everywhere he went, and his cruelty was unmatched.
“Great. Just what we need. Butch.” Gray’s voice was clipped.
She tensed, curious if they had ever worked with Butch. Anyone who associated with him was not trustworthy.
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“We’ve run into him a time or two,” said Gray.
Luke and Gray exchanged pained looks. It must not have been pleasant. She relaxed a little at that revelation.
“Well, if you want to avoid him, I suggest you take me with you. I can talk to Butch for you.” The idea of talking to Butch made her skin crawl, but if she could stay close to Luke and Gray, she’d have a greater chance of capturing them.
Gray snorted and shook his head. “As if, Red.”
Luke grinned as he dusted his hat on his knee. “Actually,” he started, “I don’t think that’s a bad idea.”
“It’s a horrible idea,” Gray said harshly, raising his voice. He jabbed his finger in Jessie”s direction, and she flinched. “You want to bring along a bounty hunter who wants to turn us in? You must be out of your mind.”
Most normal people would have ended the conversation there. Being Gray’s brother, though, probably meant Luke had special privileges to argue with him.
“Not really. The bounty hunters are looking for two people, not three. If they see us with her, it’ll throw suspicion off us. She can talk to the people we can’t. We shouldn’t approach Butch ourselves. If he sees us watching him, we are done for.”
Gray shook his head.
She couldn’t help but catch that Luke said “her,” and she felt the need to correct him before he thought she was going to go into town dressed as a woman. She couldn’t do that.
“Wait,” she protested. “If I’m going with you, I’m not going dressed as a girl.”
If they were going to have her dress like a woman, it was in her best interest not to go with them. She’d rather have to chase them down again than risk being recognized.
Gray looked at her and cocked an eyebrow at her protests. Shit. He was going to make her do it, now that he knew she didn’t want to. Payback for her digging in on him.
“Why don’t you want to dress as a woman in town?” he asked, giving her another once-over.
Luke looked between the two of them. “Very interesting,” he said.
“That’s none of your business,” she snapped.
“Guess it’s a good thing you don’t have a choice in the matter, isn’t it?” Gray purred.
Luke let out a loud “Whoop!” as he picked her up around the waist and spun her around. She let out a cry of surprise, unable to defend herself. Since her hands were tied up, she had to let it happen.
Gray snapped, “Set her down!” But Luke’s grin never left his face. Luke looked at him.
“Want her all to yourself, huh? Guess I’ll let you have this one. I say we keep her around.” He swatted her on the back, hard, knocking the breath out of her. “She’s pretty useful!”
“Let’s get to moving.” Gray didn’t acknowledge his brother’s comment that she was useful. Typical man, never wanting to admit that a woman was better than they were at something. “We can decide what to do with her later. For now, let’s go find Butch.”