Page 56 of Heart on the Line

“Here we go.” And with a flex of his biceps, he lifted her slightly to the right and snagged her bindings on a vacant hook. He stepped back to inspect his handiwork and gave a nod of approval.

Her feet still touched the floor—barely—and the wall offered a bit of support, but the hook kept her arms immobilized.

So much for reaching her derringer.

“Now, Miss Mallory, let’s get down to business, shall we?” He stripped out of his coat, hung it neatly on a second hook about two feet to her left, then rolled up his sleeves.

While he fiddled with his clothes, Grace fiddled with her ropes. She raised up on her tiptoes to try to unhook herself, but her arms were already too extended. The inch she gained made no difference. She tugged downward, testing the strength of the hook, but it was anchored to the wall. It didn’t so much as wiggle.

“Writhing around like that will only tire you, Grace. If you want down, all you have to do is answer my question. Where are the documents?”

She ceased her struggling, realizing he was right. Even if she somehow managed to get herself free of the hook, she’d not get any farther, not with him less than three feet away. “I already told you that I don’t know. Nothing has changed.” She eyed him warily. “Torturing me won’t work, because I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

His hand flew up to cover his heart, and he staggered back a mocking step. “You wound me, Grace. Torture? How uncivilized. I’m a businessman, not a monster. We’re simply here to negotiate a deal. You have the books—the real books—that your father removed from my employer’s library. I wish to acquire them.”

He extracted a very long, very pointed hunting knife from a sheath at his belt. He stepped close to her, lifted the blade between their faces, and ran his thumb along the sharpened edge. Then his left hand came toward her face. She cringed, tried to pull away, but he didn’t touch her skin. Instead he captured a piece of hair that had fallen free of its pins. He stretched the tress out in front of her, lifted the knife, and sliced off a lock with a single twist of his wrist. He held the severed hair between his thumb and forefinger, then rubbed it until it scattered strand by strand onto the floor.

He lifted his icy gaze to hers, that smug smile still curving his lips. “You’ll give me what I want, Grace. There’s no question about that. All we have left to haggle over is the price to be paid.” He lifted the knife again, examined the blade, then pointed the tip at the tender spot beneath her chin.

Grace’s pulse thundered in her veins. She lifted her chin away from the sharp point and blinked terrified tears from her eyes. He couldn’t kill her, not if he wanted the information she held. Yet as a warm droplet of what could only be blood ran slowly down the front of her throat, she found little comfort in that logic.

“The price is up to you, sweetheart,” her captor taunted, his grip on the blade steady. Inescapable. “The longer you hold out, the higher the cost.”

28

Amos sat atop his borrowed horse, a borrowed gun belt around his waist, and a borrowed revolver in a holster that made his thigh itch. He’d never carried a gun. In Denison there’d been no need. In fact, the businessmen of the community frowned upon such behavior and bemoaned the presence of uncivilized ranch hands who insisted on riding into town armed. Amos had supported the ordinance banning weapons within the city limits and felt a bit hypocritical wearing one now. But this wasn’t Denison, and with Grace in Lockhart’s hands, civility was the last thing on Amos’s mind.

“Well?” Amos tossed out as soon as Malachi Shaw rode within shouting distance, though the frown on the marshal’s face boded ill.

Shaw reined in his dun gelding and leaned forward in the saddle. “No clear path. An equal number of tracks lead north and south. I looked for deeper prints, knowing they’d be riding double, but the ground is so hard, all the markings look the same. If I were to guess, I’d say south toward Seymour. It’s smaller than Wichita Falls and closer to Harper’s Station, but he could have just as easily taken the road north. I can’t be sure.”

“Then we need to split up.” Amos knew the marshal wouldn’t like it, but it was the best option. He wasn’t about to trust Grace’s safety to guesswork or gut instinct. “I’ll head south.”

“I’ll go with you.” Shaw gave him a hard look, promising retribution if Amos argued.

Amos gave a single, hard nod.

“Good.” Shaw eyed the large man at the rear of the party seated on a black elephant. Well, in truth it was a horse, but the massive creature looked like it carried a healthy dose of pachyderm blood in its veins. “Ben, you go north,” the marshal delegated.

The freighter nudged his monster horse forward and pulled a pair of folded papers from his front pocket. After unfolding each one and giving them a quick glance, he handed the top one to Shaw. “Tori gave me the lists she keeps of all the farmers and ranchers in the area whom we’ve approached about our delivery service. I’ve put stars by the names of the folks I think Lockhart would be most likely to target. Bachelor residences and smaller families with unmarried daughters or discontented wives who might prove susceptible to Lockhart’s charm.”

“Thanks.” Shaw scanned the list then refolded it and stuffed it inside his vest. “A narrowed search will save valuable time.”

But it could also cause them to miss Grace entirely if their assumptions about Lockhart’s patterns were inaccurate. Amos would rather leave no stone unturned, but the more time he wasted looking in the wrong places, the more time Grace spent at Lockhart’s mercy. And Lockhart had no mercy.

Amos nudged the dappled mare Shaw’s wife had loaned him and trotted to the junction site. He turned the horse south, then urged her into a canter, trusting the marshal to catch up.

He tried to comfort himself with the fact that they were tackling the problem intelligently. Culling their search options, like striking unnecessary words from a long telegram. Smart. Efficient.

But if they cut the wrong name from the list, Grace would pay a hefty price.

“Arms sore?”

Grace glared at Dunbar. He sat in front of her on the milking stool, enjoying a plate of roasted chicken, carrots, greens, and cornbread slathered with butter. He’d offered the second plate to her in exchange for the information he sought. She’d refused, of course, which led to him dumping the contents onto the barn floor in front of her and grinding the delicious-smelling food into the straw with the heel of his boot.

He pointed a fork toward the hook above her head. “I can let you down whenever you’re ready. Just say the word.”

The temptation was growing harder to combat. Her shoulders screamed for relief from their unnatural position. She’d lost feeling in her hands thirty minutes ago, about the time her lower back started throbbing.