Chapter 31
The rope around Theda’s wrists dug into her skin. Theda sat with her back against the tree they'd tied her to and kept her breathing even and her face still.
What she knew: Ransom's camp was large. Larger than she'd expected from everything Jem had told Phineas about the gang's size. Fires burned in two places, and men moved between them with ease. No one paid her any mind, except for Zachary.
He stood thirty feet away, watching her. He hadn't moved in a while.
She looked away from him and fixed her eyes on the far edge of the camp, where the dark started. She hadn't seen Jem since they'd ridden in.
A heavy weight filled her chest and crawled up her throat. Her whole body tensed with a feeling that she’d felt so long ago, when she lost Nick. Her own life didn't matter. The people back in the wagon train mattered to her.
Jem was angry her brother wouldn't trade Ansel for her, but she understood his hesitance. Handing over Ansel was just as good as turning a man over to his senseless death.
The only thing she wondered was whether, instead of Ansel, Phineas had sent her to her death?
What had Jem walked into by coming back? Was he realigning with the gang? Would he try to help her? To protect her? At what cost to her brother and the others on the wagon train?
Movement at the far side of the clearing caught her eye. Tolliver came through the gap between two tents, and behind him, Jem. Theda's breath caught. He was alive and looked well enough. There were no ropes on his wrists. He was walking freely, as if he belonged in the camp.
There was a cut above his eye, and the way he was holding his left side told her something about his ribs.
He'd fought hard, trying to protect the wagon train.
He'd been injured in the process. She wondered if Ransom cared enough about his brother to let her take a look at the injuries. Somehow, she thought not.
Jem’s eyes swept the camp until they found her.
Theda lost herself in his gaze, for a short moment, letting herself pretend that it was just the two of them, that she wasn't tied to a tree, and that the man she’d come to love wasn't a criminal.
Tolliver said something, breaking the invisible chord between them, and Theda watched as Jem walked off.
Theda pressed her cheek against the collar of Jem’s coat.
It smelled like woodsmoke and pine trees. She closed her eyes for just a moment.
Can I trust him?
She'd asked herself that question so many times in the past few days that the words had started to lose their shape. She knew what he'd been sent to do. She searched for him again, and her heart clenched.
He was so much closer to her, close enough she could just make out his voice and see the stubble on his chin. He wasn't alone. Ransom was standing right in front of him.
Ransom's voice carried across the clearing. Theda wasn't sure if he knew that she could hear.
“She turned you soft.” Ransom chuckled, almost fondly. He circled Jem slowly, hands clasped behind his back. “I always said it. Too gentle. Too much feeling.” He stopped in front of Jem. “I was right.”
Jem said nothing. She could see by the rigid look on his shoulders that he wanted to say something.
“You had potential, Josiah. Real potential.” Ransom's voice stayed easy, conversational. “You were the best lookout I ever had. Careful. Patient. Nobody read a situation the way you did.” He tilted his head. “And you threw it away for a wagon train nurse.”
“Leave her out of it. You know full well you never had me. I would have thrown it all away the day you decided to be a criminal, if I thought you’d let me walk away.”
“She's already in it.” Ransom glanced across the clearing toward Theda, then back.
“That's my point. One woman with green eyes, and you forgot ten years. How long did it take? Three weeks? Four? What were you going to do? Enjoy a few weeks then live in jail and exchange letters for the rest of your life?”
Jem's jaw tightened. He didn't answer.
“I'm going to give you one way out of this.” Ransom dropped his voice.
“One way she walks away from here alive and unhurt. Someone from that wagon train is coming at sunrise. Calloway or one of his men, with the diamonds and Crenshaw. When they ride in, you help me take care of them.” He paused.
“Then we hit the wagons. Take what we can carry and leave the rest.”
“The people?” Jem sounded so calm, it sent a shiver down Theda's back.
“Live.” Ransom held his hands out in front of him with a little shrug. “They're stranded in the mountains, yes. But they're breathing. That's generous, considering.”
“Generous,” Jem repeated the word flatly. “What about the person who comes with the diamonds?”
“There are always casualties in situations like this.” Ransom shrugged. “And for what the wagon train has cost me? Yes, I'm being generous.”
Jem looked away from him, out toward the dark edge of the camp. Theda watched his profile. The muscle is working in his jaw.
“Leave the wagon train alone.” His voice was quiet. “Take the diamonds. Take whatever you came for. But leave those people alone, Ransom. They have nothing to do with us. That was the whole point of my trailing them.
Ransom was quiet for a moment.
“That was the deal,” Ransom said. “Before you betrayed me. Before you sat at their fires and ate their food and decided their lives mattered more than mine. You don't get that deal anymore.”
“I never betrayed you.” Something came up in Jem's voice.
“Not once. I followed you for years. I did things I'm ashamed of. I looked the other way when I should have spoken up, every single time, because you were my brother and I told myself that counted for something.” He took a step forward.
“All I ever did was want something different.
That's not betrayal. That's just me finally having the spine to say so.”
The clearing went very still.
“You never knew what you were talking about. You thought you could just go out there and live normally, and get everything you wanted? I protected you; I gave you everything! How dare you say that you were loyal, when every step of the way, you’ve searched for a way to betray me.
” Ransom’s tone rose louder with each word. Theda tensed.
Men around the clearing could clearly hear what was going on, but ignored it, as if they’d dealt with it before.
“You would rather have me end up in jail for something I didn't do, rather than let me make a decision on my own!” All facade of calm was gone from Jem.
“That's not loyalty, it's just control. You know deep down, I’d never agree with your choices in life.
You knew that you couldn't buy or earn my loyalty, so you figured you'd just take it. I'm done giving it to you.”
The slap resonated through the clearing, and Theda whimpered as she saw Jem’s head jerk to the side from the blow. He staggered one step, caught himself on nothing, and stood.
Theda bit her lower lip, straining against her restraints. Tears filled her eyes as she watched.
Ransom straightened his cuff, his eyes dropping to his knuckles briefly, before they came back up to Jem.
“Are you finished?” Ransom managed with barely contained rage simmering behind his words.
Jem didn't answer. He stood, one hand coming up slowly to his jaw, blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Well?” Ransom said. “I'm waiting, Josiah. You can talk all you want about choosing a different path, but if you do, I'll just carry on my plan without you. The only way to guarantee her safety is if you do what I want you to, willingly.” Ransom sneered.
Jem’s eyes crossed the clearing for just a moment and found Theda’s. She shook her head. Small and fast, hoping Ransom didn't see it. She couldn't let him sell his soul to save her.
Jem looked back at his brother.
Theda's chest ached with the uncertainty of it. Deep down, she knew what he'd say. She'd watched him choose these people over and over, in ways large and small, since the morning he'd woken up in her wagon not knowing his own name. He was Jem, not Josiah.
Jem lifted his head. He spat blood onto the ground at his feet.
Then his chin dropped.
“All right,” he said quietly. “I'm in.”
Theda pressed her back harder against the tree and kept her face still because Zachary was still watching from across the clearing, and she would not give him anything.
Her eyes stayed on Jem.
She thought about his hands. Steady and careful, the night he'd helped her with Joe Pruitt's leg without being asked. The way he'd tucked Edmund under his coat on a cold morning before she'd even noticed the boy was shivering.
She didn't know what he was doing. But she knew those hands. She held onto that because it was all she had. He couldn't go through with what Ransom had proposed, could he? Not even to save her, she didn't want him to.
Ransom laughed.
“I knew you would.” He clapped Jem once on the shoulder.
“You know why? Because you're a coward, Josiah. Always have been.” His voice carried no heat, just certainty.
“A coward can't stand to lose someone they think they love. It makes them stupid. It makes them small.” He shook his head. “It's why you'll never get far.”
A shout came from across the camp, calling Ransom. Theda watched as the man took a step back.
Ransom glanced over his shoulder. “I'll be back.” He walked away without looking at either of them.
Theda struggled to breathe, to accept what was happening. She saw Jem start to move toward her.
He crossed the clearing fast, crouching beside her, a canteen in his hand. He lifted it to her lips without asking, and she drank. When she'd had enough, she turned her head, so he could lower it.
She looked at his lip. Split and swollen, the blood dried now to a dark line at the corner of his mouth. She wished her hands were free, so she could examine his injuries properly.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his stormy eyes full of concern, not for himself, but for her.