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But as ice water poured through Anna’s veins, she didn’t think Juanita was lying at all.
Chapter Twenty-One
Included in this letter are all the details of your travel. I am awaiting your arrival with great anticipation.
All Daniel could think was that he’d nearly lost Anna, and she’d never marry him now. His heart was in his throat at how close she’d come to eating the stew. But he had to get control of this situation. He put his hands on his mother’s shoulders. “Madre, you need to sit down.”
Mrs. Werner shrugged him off, but Rafael caught her arm and led her to his chair. For now she was letting him, but Daniel didn’t trust her cooperation. He needed to get Anna out of his mother’s sight.
“Why would she try to poison me?” demanded Anna. Her eyes were wide.
“I not poison you, pssh,” Mrs. Werner said. “Juanita is loco girl.”
“Don’t touch that bowl,” said the lawyer. “There are tests that can be done on what is left in there to see if it is poisoned.”
“Maybe Juanita jealous and she try to fix the blame on me. Why would I poison my Rafael’s bride?” said the older woman.
Anna seemed transfixed by Mrs. Werner. Then she swung her gaze away from his mother and onto him. “Is it because I found the land deed and your father’s will?”
Mrs. Werner shot out of the chair and had one knee on the table. Rafael grabbed her and yanked her down. Then he clasped his chest and coughed.
She began spewing in Spanish about Anna ruining everything.
“Shut up,” said Rafael.
Daniel pressed down on his mother’s shoulders, holding her in the chair. “Juanita, get Anna to her room and help her get cleaned up.”
“No,” said Anna.
“Please, baby, you agitate her.”
“I agitate her?” Anna turned fierce and shoved away from Juanita.
The girl looked helpless as she tried to catch Anna again.
“Miss O’Malley, she just tried to kill you. Would you go barricade yourself in your room with that rifle you have until we get her arrested?” said Rafael.
“You want her shoot another one of us. Maybe she shoot us all.” Mrs. Werner twisted and thrashed.
Rafael collapsed into a chair, looking wan. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand.
Anna stared at him, her own mouth falling open. Then she looked at Daniel, her eyes huge in her white face. Even her lips seemed to bleed of color. She put her hand up in the air sideways, like an artist might to block out what he didn’t want to see.
He didn’t look away, but he knew she’d finally recognized him from the robbery. Daniel’s heart sank to the floor.
“It was you. And you.” She took another step backward as her expression crumpled. “Not your damn cousins.”
“Anna.”
She backed to the door and, with her hand behind her, wrenched it open. “You lied to me. Everything you’ve ever said has been a lie.”
“Not everything.”
Then she turned and ran out the front, taking his heart and soul with her.
“Good riddance,” said Mrs. Werner.
He turned, ready to rip her limb from limb. She was about as good a mother as a fish that fed on its own babies.
Rafael stepped between them, looking exhausted. “Juanita, go get a rope from the storeroom.” He patted Daniel’s shoulder and then turned toward the lawyer. “Would you fetch the sheriff for us?”
“As a witness to the crime, I can’t be her lawyer.”
Juanita skidded back into the room with a long coil of rope.
Mrs. Werner tried to get out of the chair, but Rafael held her down while Juanita looped the rope around the older woman and the chair.
Mrs. Werner screamed and rocked the chair.
“She’s gone too far this time, Rafe,” Daniel told him as a slow rage built in him.
Rafael shook his head. “No, she went too far when she poisoned your father. This time she just got caught.”
Daniel’s ears rung as he shook all over.
“I’ll handle this, Daniel,” said Rafe. “Like I should have years ago. You just go get your bride.”
* * *
Anna stumbled through the grass, tears making it hard for her to pick out her path. Oh, God, she’d fallen in love with a stagecoach robber.
He’d deceived her, made her feel bad for lying in her letters, all the while they’d been the banditos. She’d known they were hiding something. Now all the pieces seemed to slide seamlessly into place, and she wondered that she hadn’t realized sooner.
But she’d believed Daniel. A new wash of pain flowed through her.
Rafael was the man she’d shot, and Daniel had been the one who lassoed the outrider.
They must have been concealing Rafael while he healed. In fact, the first time she’d talked to him, he’d seemed weak, breathless. She’d thought him drunk, but it must have been the injury. Then next time he hadn’t been much better. The extra bowl for lunch must have been his that one day. She’d known. She just never found the proof, and then Daniel’s story about the cousins had seemed so plausible.
But she’d had so many clues. The way Rafael had smelled like blood, the locked door to his room...
“Anna!”
Daniel’s voice went through her and made her shudder. She picked up her skirts and ran faster.
“Anna, wait.” His voice was closer.
She looked over her shoulder. He was only a couple hundred feet behind her and closing fast.
“You can’t outrun me to Stockton.”
Was she headed toward Stockton? She hadn’t thought beyond getting out of that madhouse. “Go away.”
“Anna, please.”
Her side knit with a stabbing pain. She pressed against it and ran a few paces before she dropped to a walk.
“I need to talk to you,” Daniel said.
“Leave. Me. Alone.”
He settled into a walk beside her. For a few minutes they just went along in silence, until she felt stupid. “What?”
“Stockton is that way,” he said, pointing.
“I don’t believe you. You’d lie sooner than you’d tell the truth.” She didn’t look in his direction, but he seemed to fill all corners of her vision.
His dark hair caught the sun in flashes of blue. His long legs shortened their stride to match hers. His long-fingered hands curled and unfurled as if he wanted to grab her but wouldn’t.
“When you hit the San Joaquin River, you’ll need to follow it north to hit town.”
“Fine, you can go back now. I’m sure I’ll find it eventually.”
“Anna, I’m sorry. I never wanted to lie to you.”
She didn’t answer. His apology was too little, too late.
They continued along stride for stride.
“Don’t you want to know why?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
Three steps later, he started explaining anyway. “Rafael stole my gun out of my scabbard. I was following him to get him to give it back when he said he just wanted to see you. I wasn’t going to be part of stopping the stage, but when the outrider shot at him, I had to do something. He’s my brother. I couldn’t just let him be gunned down. No matter how much he deserved it.”
So that was why Rafael had been looking at her so peculiarly.
“If I had known what he was going to do, I would have lassoed him and hog-tied him.”
She didn’t want an explanation to soften her anger. “You lied to me again and again.”
“What was I supposed to do, Anna? He’s my brother, and I didn’t want to see him hanged for a robbery that wasn’t really a robbery. And because he shot back when they shot at him.”
The outrider had shot first. Anna continued walking. She didn’t want to soften toward Daniel. She wasn’t ready to forgive his deceiving her. “Don’t you have some grapes to pick?”
“I don’t care if they rot—just please come back with me. It wasn’t a lie when I said I loved you. It wasn’t a lie when I said I wanted to marry you.”
“Oh, sure, and then your mother kills me and you don’t have to mean it anymore.”
He gasped and stopped walking.
He had warned her his mother was loco. But she shouldn’t have said what she said. He seemed genuine in what he felt about her.
Anna continued on. When she’d gone ten feet and he hadn’t resumed his place by her side, she turned and looked at him. He looked as bleak as a man could look. He’d folded his arms and just watched her.
A sliver of heat cut through the cold, bottomless well of pain she seemed to be trapped in. She remembered his hands on her body, his mouth on her lips, their legs twined together.
She didn’t want to think about that now. She turned around and resumed walking. The rolling valley stretched out in front of her, miles and miles of empty grassland. She had nowhere in particular to go. Her pace slowed until she just trudged forward.
