Beauty and the Bounty Hunter (19 page)

A boy ran out of the livery as Alexi slid to the ground with Cat in his arms. “Doctor,” he snapped.

The kid pointed to the middle of the boardwalk. “Next to the sheriff.”

“Of course he is.” He shifted Cat, doing his best to keep her face covered. Though no one should recognize her in this state, it was best to remain careful. Finding a coin in his pocket, he tossed it to the boy. “Rub him down; give him—”

“I know how to take care of a horse, mister,” the kid interrupted, the curl of his lips and the narrowing of his eyes on the overworked animal saying without words,
Even if you don’t.
As he deserved that, Alexi moved on.

He wanted to run down the boardwalk, knocking folks out of his way, into the mud that swirled in the street if need be, but he’d already made enough of an entrance. People would talk. He wanted them to forget him, forget Cat, soon after they left.

If
they left.

Alexi tightened his lips and did his best to appear inconspicuous. Unfortunately, it was already too late for that.

A man leaned against a building up ahead. The sun sparking off the star perched upon his narrow chest revealed his identity even before Alexi saw the roughly carved
SHERRIF
sign nailed above the door.

“Trouble?” he murmured as Alexi approached.

“Wife’s taken sick. Heard there was a doctor in Freedom.”

“Sick,” the man repeated, his dark eyes appearing almost black beneath the shadow of his sweat-stained hat.

“Sick,” Alexi stated firmly.

The sheriff straightened, and Alexi tensed, managing, barely, not to skitter away like an unbroken horse. His fingers must have clenched too tightly on Cat, because she moaned—the sound both agonized and obviously female. Was she awake and playing her part? The tightness in his chest eased with that hope.

“Let me help.” The sheriff stepped past Alexi, covering the short distance to a door labeled
DOCTER
by the same inept hand that had carved
SHERRIF
. He walked in, calling, “Doc!”

Alexi would have preferred to do this without an audience, but he didn’t have time to argue. He entered just as a man with hair as dark as his own but eyes as gray as the Confederacy shoved aside the curtain that separated the front receiving area from the back doctoring area. His gaze went to Alexi and stayed there.

“Doc.” The sheriff glanced between the two men. “Gent’s wife is sick.”

The doctor’s eyes never left Alexi’s. He appeared tired and drawn, but these days, who didn’t?

“Guess you’d best bring her in,” he murmured.

Alexi forced himself to look at the lawman. “Obliged.”

“Hope she’s better soon.” The sheriff’s gaze dropped, then narrowed. Alexi glanced down to discover the blanket had slid free of Cat’s face. She was so pale, she appeared dead. “What did you say was wrong with her?”

“Don’t know.” Alexi turned away. “That’s why I’m here.”

He held his breath as he waited for the sheriff to accuse him of something or get the hell out. At last the door closed, and Alexi released that breath. “Gone?”

“He is,” the doctor answered. “Though considering your lie, he’ll be back.”

“Lie?” How could he know just by the sight of them that Cat was not Alexi’s wife?

The doctor reached out, and Alexi flinched, causing him to laugh. The sound sliced along Alexi’s frayed nerves like the knife in his pocket across Cat’s puckered flesh. But instead of punching Alexi in his already punched nose, the man took the trailing corner of the blanket between his fingers.

“You said she was
sick
.” He lifted, revealing the blood that had seeped through the cloth.

Alexi cursed, glancing at the door, half expecting the sheriff to already be there with reinforcements.

“Fedya.”

Alexi sighed. That single word, filled with scorn, took him straight back to places he did not want to be. But what had he expected when coming here?

“Ethan.” Alexi faced the man, sounding as tired and beaten as he felt.

“Where is Mikey?” Ethan asked, a hint of the Irish seeping into his voice, as it always did when he was exhausted or overly upset.

“Can we do this later? She’s—”

“Where. Is. He?” The scorn was gone; pure hatred had burned it away.

“He’s safe.”

“Not with you?”

“Not now.”

“He’s still—?”

“Yes,” Alexi interrupted, sadness added to the exhaustion and the defeat.

“How did you find me?”

Alexi didn’t answer. Instead, he moved forward. “She needs help.”

“You think I’m going to help you?”

“Not me.” Alexi sounded calm, but his heart pounded so very fast. He stopped walking, and Cat’s feet bumped against Ethan, who refused to step out of the way.

“Who is she to you?”

“No one,” Alexi said. He had hurt the most important person in Ethan’s life. He could not let the man know that Cat was the most important person in his. Certainly Ethan was a doctor, but he had also been a soldier. He knew as much about violence and vengeance as Alexi did.

“The sheriff said she was your wife.”

“I had to tell him something.”

“Heaven forbid it was the truth,” Ethan muttered.

“Didn’t you take an oath, Dr. Walsh?”

Ethan gave a long, resigned sigh. “Bring her through.”

Alexi followed him beyond the curtain and into the back room. He set Cat on a high, long table. She remained limp, eyes closed. Alexi lowered the blanket past her neck, down her chest and belly; ignoring the travesty of the wound, he set his fingertips against her flushed skin.

“Cover her, Fedya!”

Alexi ground his teeth. He hated that name. But it was the only one that Ethan knew. He dropped the ragged cloth onto the floor. “She’s too hot.”

Ethan snatched the covering and spread it over Cat once more. “If she’s no one to you, then you don’t need to see her naked.”

True enough, but the heat of her skin worried him so. He’d never known anyone to be that hot and live.

The doctor slid the blanket down only enough to reveal her wound and no farther. “She’s been shot.”

“Really?” Alexi asked dryly.

“You said she was nothing to you.”

“I said she was no one.” His voice had gone quite cool.

“Then why did you shoot her?”

The chill spread through Alexi’s chest. “You think that everyone who comes near me winds up with a bullet in them?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You’re telling me you’re not responsible for this woman being shot?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I knew it!” Triumph punctuated every word.

“Are you going to help her, Ethan? Or are you going to question me until she expires upon your table?”

Ethan’s face tightened. He would like nothing better than to refuse, but at his core Ethan was a healer, and he couldn’t. “Tell me everything from when she was injured until this minute.” His tone was now all business with a tinge of concern. Any hint of an Irish accent had disappeared.

“She was shot in Indian Territory,” Alexi began. “A Cherokee village. The women there packed the wound with something brown.”

“I’d like to know what they used.”

“Grass. Leaves. Dirt. Take your pick. Whatever it was, it didn’t work. When I arrived, she had a fever. She asked me to—” Alexi paused, swallowed, cleared his throat. “Dig the bullet out.”

“They left it in?” Before Alexi could respond, the doctor continued: “That explains the fever.”

“Explain it to me.”

“Foreign objects cause suppuration. Remember?”

Alexi nodded. How could he ever forget?

“It’s my theory,” the doctor continued, “that the body knows there’s something within that should not be and begins to reject it. Removal is imperative.”

“So I did something right.”

“I’m sure it was an accident,” Ethan muttered. “Then what happened?”

“Her fever became worse. She went into paroxysms.”

“How did you stop them?”

“Jumped in a stream.”

Ethan stared at Cat, mouth pursed. “And then?”

“We came here.”

“Did you clean the wound? The instrument?”

“A Cherokee woman purified the blade with fire. I don’t know what they did with the wound.”

“Obviously not enough.” Ethan leaned in close and sniffed—once, twice—before straightening. “Definitely suppuration. Can lead to gangrene.”

“But I removed the foreign object.”

“Not soon enough.”

Alexi’s chest ached. “Can you save her?”

The doctor didn’t answer at first, and the ache in Alexi’s chest began to burn. Then Ethan let out a huff of breath. “Your damnable luck holds again.”

“Luck,” Alexi repeated and began to laugh. “You have a strange idea of luck.”

“Nearly as strange as your idea of friendship.”

Alexi’s laughter faded. With a withering glance in his direction, the doctor continued. “After the war I went to Scotland, trained with Professor Lister. He believes infections come from miasmas in the air. Impurities,” Ethan clarified. “I use carbolic acid to clean wounds, instruments, my hands. I spray it into the air. Because I use this procedure, suppuration rarely occurs in my patients.”

“What if it does?”

“Dr. Lister has had great success by washing the injury with the solution.”

“You want to put acid in an open wound?”

“No.”

“You just said—”

“I don’t want to, but I’m going to.”

“And if I disagree?”

“I’ll give you a few moments to say good-bye.”

“
Arschloch,
” Alexi muttered.

“
Ag fuck tu’,
” Ethan returned.

If it weren’t for Cat dying in front of him and the fact that Ethan despised him for killing his brother, it would feel just like the good old days.

In prison.

“Do you have any laudanum?” Alexi asked.

“Some. But, as laudanum can
cause
paroxysms, she can’t have any until after the procedure. She’ll need to remain still.”

“If you give her enough of it, she will.”

“If I give her enough of it, she won’t ever move again.” Ethan disappeared through the curtain.

Alexi returned his attention to Cat.

“You can open your eyes now,” he said.

A
lexi leaned against the wall, looking older than Cat had ever seen him look, making her wonder just how old he was. She’d thought he was near her own twenty-six. But the lines around his mouth, the dark circles beneath his eyes—no, those were remnants of his broken nose. Still, he appeared ten years past what she’d believed him to be. He was filthy, unshaven. He didn’t look like Alexi Romanov at all.

“How long have you been awake?” he asked.

“Long enough.” She considered him. “This wasn’t your fault.”

“No?”

“As you’ve been telling me all along, I can’t wait to die.”

“I didn’t need to help you.” At her confused frown, he spread his hands. “My guns.”

“I stole them, Alexi. I deserved whatever I got.”

“
Aingeal mianach
,” he murmured. “You did not deserve this.”

She wasn’t going to argue. She knew what she deserved.

“What does that mean?” she asked. “
Aing—
”

He interrupted before she could finish. “Idiot and moron,” he said.

Cat’s lips twitched

“He lies.” The doctor had returned.

Ethan Walsh possessed inky black hair that curled long against his neck, as if he’d forgotten, or perhaps not cared enough, to cut it. He seemed pale, despite his olive skin, and his gray eyes sparkled, though not with humor or happiness. There was something familiar about them, but her head ached too much to decipher what.

“If you’ve been in his presence for more than a minute”—Dr. Walsh lifted a brow—“conscious, then you know about his forked tongue already.”

“I like his tongue just fine,” Cat said.

“Most women do.”

She experienced a sudden urge to punch him. If he hadn’t been juggling several sharp instruments with a bottle of acid, and if she hadn’t feared that sitting up would only cause her to fall down, Cat might have.

“
Aingeal mianach
doesn’t mean idiot and moron,” the doctor continued.

Cat glanced at Alexi. His lips curved, but his eyes had gone flat and deadly. When he looked at most men like that, they went silent. The doctor kept right on talking.

“It means
angel mine
.” He set his instruments and the acid on a nearby empty table, then turned. “He obviously likes your tongue too.”

“Alexi,” she began, unsure if she meant to tell him to pummel this guy, or ask how many other translations he’d lied about, but the doctor interrupted.

“Alexi?” Walsh snapped. “You have the nerve to use that name?”

Cat blinked. Not that she’d ever believed Alexi was his name, but—

“Among others,” Alexi answered.

“And who’s she?” Walsh faced the instruments and rearranged them. “Katya?”

Alexi came away from the wall so fast Cat barely saw him move. The doctor, who’d been foolish enough to
present Alexi with his back, never saw him at all. He did feel the blade at his neck. Considering the trickle of blood that ran down, he couldn’t help it.

“She is no one,” Alexi said quietly. “As soon as you fix what is wrong, she will leave and you will forget she was ever here. Do you understand?”

“Haven’t changed a bit, have you?” the doctor asked.

Alexi lifted the knife from the doctor’s throat and stepped away. If Cat had any strength left, she would have strangled Walsh for the expression of resignation on Alexi’s face alone.

Ethan turned, gaze narrowing on Alexi’s weapon. “That looks like a Chinese coolie knife.”

“Perhaps because it is.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“From a Chinaman.”

“I doubt any Chinaman would just give you his knife.”

“His cards were bad.” Alexi lifted one shoulder. “He had little choice.”

“Did you cheat?”

“Don’t I always?”

“Could we get this over with?” Cat asked. Obviously they knew each other, and she planned to discover why, where, and how. But not now. Now her skin felt on fire, and her shoulder ached so badly she was dizzy with it.