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But that didn’t mean they were after her, Wes and Rune.
“Rune.” Warning and an order wrapped together in the cut of Wes’s voice.
Rune glanced over his shoulder. “I’m on it.” His hand reached under the flap of his coat pulling free a pistol and he wrenched his horse around, charging at the band of five men quickly bearing down on them.
Wes’s look swung to Laney, his dark eyes piercing her. “We ride—fast. Keep up.”
She nodded and he turned around, pressing his mount into action.
They tore along the road, Laney having to prod her mare again and again to keep up with Wes’s relentless pace. Fields, sheep, trees flying past her in a blur.
Wes jerked his horse to the right and she followed suit, but her mare balked at the speed of the turn and pulled up, stubborn.
Wes stopped his mount and circled back, his look wary on the road behind them. Her head jerked over her shoulder. Two of the five riders still thundered toward them. Rune had somehow delayed three of them. She prayed it would be enough.
Wes’s hand flung out to her, fingers waving. “Give me the box—they need to see that I have it and not you.”
Unwrapping her left hand from the leather reins, she stripped off her glove and thrust it into her pocket, her trembling fingers barely latching onto the box.
She slammed it into Wes’s palm.
With exaggerated motions he tucked it into an inner pocket of his tailcoat and tugged on his reins, setting his horse back into motion. “Follow me but then pull off into the trees before the bridge. They’ll run me down and ride past you.”
She nodded and Wes set his horse into a gallop toward the bridge.
She fluttered her reins only to have her horse stall at movement. A kick with her heel and her mare started, a trot—not a gallop.
The horse hooves rumbled on the ground behind her and she looked ahead. The bridge. The men behind her closer…closer.
Now was as good a time as any.
She jerked the reins to her right, directing the horse into the trees.
One man flew past her.
Wes had slowed on the other side of the bridge.
No. He should be riding. Fast. Away.
But he had spun his horse around.
The blackguard charged across the river at Wes, a short sword high in his hand.
Just as the man reached Wes, the tip of the blade arcing backward, ready to strike, Wes ducked and swung an arm out at the brute, knocking the man’s elbow that held the blade before it could do any damage. In the same motion, Wes’s fist landed in the man’s chest, and the brute fell from his horse.
Cold panic set into her chest.
The other brute. Where was he?
She twisted on her saddle to search the roadway.
She didn’t even have time to focus before a shadow cast over her.
The other brute was next to her, grabbing her upper arm, yanking her off her horse before she could even blink. He kicked his horse into motion and dragged her along for several strides with her arm pulled straight up, tearing in her socket.
His grip around her arm slipped and she fell to the ground, tumbling, rolling until she stopped in a mess of skirts and dirt.
Run. Run fast. She spied her horse and scrambled to her feet. Three steps and her limbs jerked forward in unison, her waist held back.
