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Chapter One
Josie
Rope grazes, tightens, sears into my wrists. Sweat drips onto my forehead, rolling off the nose of the man whose meaty hands are securing the bonds tight around my extremities.
“Let me go.”
I say the words half-heartedly, knowing they’re expected, and knowing just as well that they won’t do a damn thing. The man who is double checking and double tying everything won’t listen to pleas for mercy. He has the cold, detached gaze of a creature who doesn’t feel. His eyes flicker over me like a lizard’s tongue, roaming my body, but coming back to focus on my face and my own gaze. He wants to see the panic. The pain. The blood.
People call him crazy, but he’s something worse. Every second man and woman in this place is crazy. It helps, sometimes, to lose your mind. I’m struggling to keep my wits about me right now, hoping I can think my way out of this.
His eyes find mine again and I see in his gaze that to him, I’m not a woman about to die. I have far less significance than that. I am a fly, about to have her wings plucked off.
“Or at least do something original. Tying me to the train tracks is a bad idea.”
“Mouthy,” he says, his teeth gritted and yellowed. He stinks of sour cabbage and the pickled slug beer which he drinks morning, noon, and night. “Why’s it a bad idea?”
“Because everybody knows that heroes come and rescue ladies tied to train tracks. It’s practically cliche. Now you’ve tied me up, there’s probably dozens of heroes riding hard to get to me now.”
I hope there’s one. Please. God. Just one.
“Some things are classics for a reason,” he says. “But nobody is rescuing you. It’s going to be hotter than sin soon enough. You’ll start to cook right where you lie. Train’ll be a mercy for you. Quick. Loud, but quick.”
I rack my brains for something to say, as if there’s some combination of words that might stop this from happening to me, but words are useless now. Sass won’t do nothin’ for me. Now I think about it, I don’t know if it ever has.
“Beg me for mercy.”
“What?”
“Beg me, for mercy.” I hear the unmistakeable clicking of a gun being cocked. The barrel of a gun is pressed up underneath my chin. I should let him pull the trigger. It would make this so much easier. But he’s not going to let this happen easy. That would spoil his fun. He’s bending over me, his shadow shielding me from the nearly noon day sun.
“Mercy?”
“Naw, girl. Beg. Cry pretty tears for me. I know you got ‘em inside you.”
I sigh inwardly and force myself to at least say the words, though placating psychotic men has never gotten me anywhere before. “Could you please not kill me?”
“That’s not begging.”
“There’s no point begging. You’re never going to let me live. You need me dead.”
“So beg for death then. I don’t care what you beg for, as long as you do.” He leans in and I can smell every part of him. His sweat. The cologne he dabbed on this morning, souring against his skin. I can smell the iron tang of the blood at the base of his teeth where his gums give way to rot. He is coming apart from the inside out, a walking sack of sick diseased with something contracted from saloon girls.
“Please…”
The more I try, the flatter I sound. It’s not that I’m not afraid. It’s that fear has left me cold. He tells me the heat of the day is coming for me, but I don’t feel it.
“You aren’t begging, girl,” he growls. “This whole time I’ve had you, you haven’t begged once. I think I should teach you to beg before the end.”
In the distance, a whistle sounds, a jaunty little toot toot!
He shakes his head, his eyes flashing with disappointment. “But I think you’re out of time. Can’t be here when Mr Train gets here, can I? Don’t worry. I’ll be watching. You’ll be a very pretty stain.”
I’ve known from the moment he took me that he was going to kill me. There was no way out of this alive, but I’ve got a feeling this isn’t the end. It can’t be. My story cannot end here in this dusty desert.
“Let me go,” I say as outrage flashes through me. “Or I’ll kill you.”
He throws back his head and laughs, a rasping, hacking attempt at experiencing humor. “You’re about to die, and you think threatening me is going to help? You have to be the most stupid girl I’ve ever encountered. The others at least knew what to do when I put them on their knees.”
The others are dead. I’m not.
Toot toooot!
Yet.
Orion
It’s hot as hell and twice as filthy. My saddle bags are filled with stolen bullion, and my ears are ringing from the aftermath of weapons being discharged way too close to my head. There’s a smile on my face and dammit, I’d even go so far as to say a song in my heart. These are the sorts of days an outlaw lives for. A big score and a clean escape. It doesn’t get any better than this.
