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“Wait a minute.” Cindy gave him a narrow-eyed look. “She’s not your wife?”
Suzanna ignored her. “I’m not going to date you, Marcus. You hit me in the face hard enough to leave a mark, and I then left town. I thought you were clever enough to get the hint of what my intentions were. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Cindy turned and faced Marcus, growing concern etched on her face. “But I only helped you because I thought your ‘wife’ was going to hurt my friend.”
Marcus lifted a hand to Cindy’s face. He brushed a thumb along her cheek. “I must thank you for helping me find Suzanna.”
“I only did that because I thought you were already married to her.”
Suzanna pushed out a sigh. She stood up and walked to the door of the cell. Being trapped inside made her nervous. Even though she hated to leave Nathan’s side. “He lied to you. He’s only here because I broke up with him.”
Marcus laughed. “You’re so naïve and foolish, Suzanna. That’s not the reason I tracked you here. I wouldn’t soil myself with someone like you, unless I had an incredibly good reason.”
She glared at him. Her fury was complete. “Then what do you want?”
A sinister grin surfaced, and in a quietly dead tone, he said, “Retribution.” He then backhanded her so fast, she saw stars before she ever saw his arm move. Her head rocked back with the momentum of his strike. She fell hard against the bars, knocking the back of her skull into a horizontal piece of metal hard enough to make her black out instantly for an undetermined length of time.
When her eyes opened again, she was slumped on the floor outside the three jail cells. Marcus had shut the door of the cell she and Nathan had been inside together.
Cindy was doubled over. Suzanna watched as a drop of blood fell from her mouth to her shirt, as Marcus shoved her into the next open jail cell beside the one he’d just deposited Nathan in. He was still sprawled on the floor, not moving. She dearly hoped he was still breathing.
“Nathan!” Suzanna called out. “Nathan! Can you hear me?” Suzanna managed to stand up, sort of, but her legs wobbled, threatening to collapse if she so much as tested a single step for her capacity to travel.
“Why are you doing this? I can’t believe I helped you.” Cindy sounded very frightened. She’d just learned the hard way, as Suzanna had, that Marcus wasn’t the man he seemed to be initially.
Marcus ignored Cindy’s heartfelt pleas of regret and muscled Suzanna out of the jail cell area and into the main part of the sheriff’s office. He pushed her out of the front door, down the wooden sidewalk headed toward the opposite end of the main street, and away from the front of the park entrance.
Her head throbbed like a son of a bitch. “Where are you taking me?” she finally asked as they passed opposite of the saloon.
“To the church at the end of town. I have a surprise all planned for you.”
Suzanna hoped he didn’t expect to get married. Was that the going rate for retribution? After breaking up with him in a message, and turning him down for further dates in the future, she warranted a life sentence in unwanted matrimony?
She stumbled down the wooden walkway past all of Old West Town’s charming storefronts headed to the little white clapboard church at the far end of town. They stepped down into the dusty street. Instead of going up the well-worn wooden steps, Marcus steered her toward the side of the building.
“Where are we going?” Suzanna was still weak in the knees. The fast pace he’d kept while moving through the town hadn’t helped her gain any strength.
“I told you already. I have a surprise for you.” He wrenched her arm and yanked her along faster toward the back of the church and the small cemetery she knew resided back there.
Suzanna hadn’t really been paying attention to her surroundings in lieu of keeping conscious and on her feet, but all of a sudden, she noticed an alarming thing.
Marcus carried a shovel in his other hand. That was likely what he’d bashed Nathan’s head with back at the jail. Was he about to kill her and bury her alive? Had he already dug the grave that would be her final resting place? Suffocating beneath the earth was the only other death she feared. She stopped moving, planting her heels firmly in the hard scrabble dirt next to the path they travelled along.
