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  “ENJOYING YOURSELF, MISS LAWLESS?”

  “No.”

  His answer, a chuckling snort, brought heat to Jacey’s cheeks. But that warmth was nothing as to what slipped over her skin when he sent her a raw look that said he saw past her bravado, a look that said he’d peered into her soul. Completely unnerved, Jacey could only watch as he raised her hand to his mouth, cupped open her palm, and kissed it with a whole lot of slick daring.

  Simple reflexes reacting to the foreign sensation jerked Jacey’s hand. Zant’s grip tightened. Trapped, caught in his web, she submitted. With a sinking feeling, knowing just how forbidden this one man was to her, she admitted to herself that she didn’t want to pull away. A shallow, bated breath escaped her in a whisper. “What … are you doing?”

  Zant angled his heavy-lidded, black-eyed gaze up to her face. His strong, handsome features suddenly seemed all masculine angles and planes. “You tell me, Jacey. What am I doing?”

  Jacey flicked her gaze down to her hand in his. “You’re kissing me.”

  “Uh-uh.” He let go of her hand and, with his hand now cupping the back of her head, he pulled her to him. “Now I’m kissing you.”

  The Lawless Women trilogy is dedicated to the memory of Jimmie H. Deal, Sr., my beloved father who passed away on December 24, 1995.

  PROLOGUE

  “That thieving, no-good polecat will pay. I swear he will. I’ll find him, whoever he is. And with my boot on his neck, with my name being the last words he hears, and with Papa’s gun in my hand, he’ll die. No one steals from me. He’ll die, and I’ll be glad. Do you hear me, Glory? I’ll be glad.”

  Hannah’s letter fisted in her hand, Jacey paced her ranch home’s great room. With every turn that brought Glory into view, she glared her anger at her younger sister. “I know I promised Hannah I’d stay here with you and Biddy while she’s in Boston. And I have for the last month. But this letter”—she shook it—“this letter changes everything. Tomorrow, I ride for Tucson.”

  Jacey watched as Glory’s green eyes filled with tears. Here it comes, she sighed. Sure enough, Glory put a hand to her mouth and shook her head. “Please don’t go, Jacey. If you leave, I won’t have any family here. None.”

  “Oh, for—Quit your crying. I have to go. Besides, you won’t be alone. Biddy’s here. And Smiley and the men are back from the cattle drive.”

  Glory nodded and swiped at her eyes. “I know all that. But Jacey, first Mama and Papa are … murdered. And then Hannah leaves for Boston. And now you’re going to Tucson. What am I supposed to do?”

  For a long moment, Jacey stared levelly at her sister. “I don’t know, Glory. You’re a grown woman now. You tell me what you’re supposed to do.”

  Glory’s pouting doll-face only made Jacey more impatient. Mama’d babied the nineteen-year-old girl until she couldn’t do a thing for herself. That perfect little form, her auburn hair, her wide green eyes, and her helpless pose always got her what she wanted. Well, not now. Times were different. Mama and Papa were gone. Glory’d just have to get tough to survive. Starting now. “Glory, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. But I’m leaving tomorrow, and I have plans to make. I don’t have time to stand here holding your hand.”

  When Glory’s pouting frown only deepened, Jacey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Shaking her head, feeling her heavy black braid swing with her movement, she fought for calm. “Try to understand. I have to do this. It’s killing me to sit here, Glory. I should’ve gone to Boston with Hannah. She’s all alone with those murdering Wilton-Humeses.” Jacey pounded her fist into her other palm. “Those rich, uppity snakes-in-the-grass. Mama’s own family. And then to have her and Papa killed … And what do I do about it? I sit here like a clucking hen on a nest. Well, I can’t do it anymore. I’ll go crazy.”

  Glory’s tears dried instantly. Her face darkened with … could it be? … anger. “I’d rather you go crazy here than go get yourself killed over a missing keepsake and a piece of spur. That’s all you really have, Jacey. A piece of silver spur and a sliver of wood frame from Great-grandmother Ardis’s portrait. With nothing more than that, you’re going to race off to Tucson?”

  Astonished at Glory’s tirade, Jacey could almost smile at this first sign of gumption from the family’s youngest. But she didn’t dare. Not in this instance. So, with slow, measured steps, her booted feet scuffing across the wood floor, she advanced on Glory. “You’re danged right I am. This piece of spur”—she held up the spikelike rowel she’d just strung through the silver chain around her neck—“is an exact match with Papa’s. And I should know. Which one of us three girls spent the most time listening to his stories of his outlaw days? Who’s held and admired his silver spurs maybe a thousand times? Me, Glory.”

  She paused to allow that to sink in before going on. “And now this broken-off rowel turns up here. In our house. It’s not off Papa’s. I’ve got his up in my room. So it’s got to belong to someone else in the Lawless gang. And where are those men still? In Tucson. So, that’s where I’m headed.”

  Again, she paused, staring at Glory. “The same son of a gun who left his spur calling card also took that portrait. You know he did. We—you and me, not ten minutes ago—searched Mama’s room and didn’t find it. And where were you when I tripped over that rug by the fireplace and came up with these things tangled together? Wasn’t that you standing next to me? So, how’d they get there, Glory? Was there a fight? If so, who was in it, and why? All I’ve got is questions. You got any answers?”

  Glory’s chin came up a notch. “No, I don’t. But what does it all prove? Please—just once, Jacey—think before you go off half-cocked. Read Hannah’s letter again. It’s just a passing notion that makes her even mention Mama’s keepsake. She’s not asking you to look for clues. All she wrote was she saw the original portrait at Cloister Point. And it started her thinking … where was Mama’s copy?”

  With her last words, Glory’s face darkened. She spun around, fisting her hands at her sides. Her voice choked with emotion. “For God’s sake, Jacey, Hannah was only curious. Nothing more. Why can’t you let it go?”

  “Let it go?” Jacey stalked over to her sister and spun her around. “I cannot believe we read the same letter. Don’t you get it, Glory? The portrait is gone. And it’s the only thing missing from … that day. Why is that, do you suppose? I’ll tell you why—because someone from the old gang came here and stole that keepsake. The spur proves who it was. Trust me, this is no coincidence. It happened the same day, Glory. It had to have, because we were gone only that one night.”

  Jacey searched Glory’s eyes for understanding. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about why? I know I am. I’ve got to go to Tucson—to find out the why of it. And mark my words, I’ll get my keepsake back and make some sorry old outlaw pay with his life for ever taking it in the first place.”

  Glory’s frown creased her br
ow. “I understand how you feel, Jacey. I do. No one knows better than me what that little oil painting meant to Mama. And I know what it means to you. I do remember her saying that when she died, she wanted you to have it. But you can’t—”

  “I can’t what? Get back what’s rightfully mine? That little oil painting, as you call it, is of the only Wilton-Humes that Mama gave a fig about. And she wanted me to have it, Glory. Me.” Jacey swallowed around the sudden constriction in her throat. “She said I have Ardis’s spunk. Her fire. Mama loved that old woman, and I reminded her of her.”

  Jacey’s face worked with the depth of her emotion. When she could safely speak again, she went on. “But now, she and Papa have been taken from us. There’s not a blamed thing I can do to bring them back, but I can sure as shooting get back her keepsake. And I will. It’s mine now. So whoever took it, stole it from me.” Her chest rising and falling in the deep, even breaths of firm conviction, Jacey awaited her sister’s response.

  For long moments, Glory stared at her. Then, without a word, she stepped around Jacey, who turned to watch her go. Head erect, her bearing queenly, Glory walked across the big comfortable room that retained the memory of the Lawless girls’ childhood laughter and tears. When she reached the stairs and put her foot on the first riser, then laid her hand on the railing, she finally turned to face Jacey.

  “You are trying to bring Mama and Papa back, Jacey. That’s what this is all about, even if you won’t admit it. But I know you—you’re still going to try. Once you set your mind to something, no one and nothing—not God, and not reasoning—can stop you. So, go. And don’t worry about me or Biddy or the ranch. Like you said, I have to grow up.”

  Tears stood again in Glory’s eyes, and then spilled unheeded down her steadily pinkening cheeks. “But don’t expect me to see you off tomorrow. Don’t expect me to wave as you ride off to what could be your death, and not some sorry old outlaw’s.” She glared for a moment and then added, “I, for one, have had enough of death.”

  With that, she ascended the stairs. Jacey watched her all the way up, but not once did Glory hesitate or look back. When she was out of sight, when her footfalls no longer echoed upstairs in the hallway, and a door could be heard closing, Jacey looked down at her hand, at her older sister’s now crumpled letter. Dry-eyed, she lifted her gaze to the impassive stairway, set against the great room’s far wall.

  She relaxed her fist. Hannah’s letter fluttered to the floor. Jacey then clasped the jagged piece of spur on her chain. She gripped it so tightly that its edges cut into her palm.

  * * *

  The next morning, in the middle of a blustery October in 1873, Jacey raced away from the Lawless spread out in No Man’s Land. She urged Knight into a thundering gallop. His black mane and tail flying, his neck stretched out, the gelding’s muscled body sped over the familiar terrain in long, ground-covering strides. Jacey tautened the reins, twisting them around her hands as she hunched forward in her saddle to ride low over her mount’s neck.

  Farther and farther away his thudding hooves carried her, farther from the safety of the ranch. From Glory and Biddy. From the hill out back of the house. From the weeks-old graves and white crosses there. From her grief and her broken heart.

  Knight’s coarse mane whipped across Jacey’s face and stung her cheeks. When her gelding capped the hillock that would give her a last view of her home, she reined her laboring mount to a halt. Straightening in the saddle, she turned him in a tight circle, controlling him with her knees and the reins until she could see her home. As she swept her gaze over the shallow valley, her only thought was … if things didn’t work out the way she hoped in Tucson, she may not see this piece of land or what was left of her family ever again.

  Blanking her mind to such notions, Jacey settled her gaze on the Lawless cattle ranch, situated deep in the desolate and windswept plains west of the Cherokee Strip. She picked out people made tiny by distance, but people no less precious to her, even if she never could find the words to tell them so.

  There stood Glory. She’d said she wouldn’t see her off. But she had at the last minute. Next to her was Biddy. The two stood on the verandah. Tiny, alone, and staring after her, they waved. Jacey raised her hand in a final farewell. A twinge of guilt pricked at her and brought her hand down.

  She had to do this. Didn’t anyone else besides her realize that? She had to. With her anger and grief all knotted up in her soul, Jacey reasoned that if she didn’t do this one thing, if she didn’t right this one wrong, then she couldn’t call herself the daughter of J. C. Lawless, the most notorious outlaw in the West in his day.

  Papa. Jacey’s throat worked convulsively. I’ll find him, Papa, and I’ll take his life, and I’ll get Mama’s precious keepsake back. I know you’d do the same thing for her if you were alive. She coughed hard and scrubbed her sleeve under her nose. That infernal dry wind was blowing the dust around. Always made her tear up something fierce.

  Fighting the … prairie dust, Jacey blinked wetly. Not accomplishing a danged thing sitting here. But still, she sat there, not turning Knight, not urging the black horse toward the trail that led to Tucson.

  Just then, she saw Biddy hug Glory. Jacey’s chin quivered. She was going to miss her sister. And too, their old nanny’s lectures to her about her cussing and about how she never acted like a lady. Biddy always said that she and Mama’d done the best they could with such a tomboyish child. Always carrying on about how Jacey should wear a dress and act like the lady she was raised to be.

  A lady. From under the brim of her black felt slouch hat, Jacey looked down at her split riding skirt, loose blouse, leather vest, and boots. Papa’s Colt nested in its holster low on her hip. A beaded knife sheath, encasing a long, thin blade, snugly encompassed her right thigh. And her thick black braid trailed past her waist. Be a lady. Ha. Where she was headed, being a lady could get her killed.

  Jacey thought of the long, lonely trip ahead of her to Tucson in the Arizona Territory. She steeled her resolve by pressing her thumb against her left middle finger and rubbing over its pad in slow circles. She’d pricked this finger for the blood oath with her sisters on the day they buried their parents. The wound in her finger, unlike the one in her heart of hearts, was healed.

  Jacey saw again herself and Hannah and Glory making the simple pact, promising that the cold-blooded murderers would pay. With their lives. Hannah’d see to her end of the bargain in Boston, where she went with her evidence to confront Mama’s family. And as for her?

  Jacey turned Knight, urging him down the far slope of the hill. As for her—Jacey Catherine—the one most like Papa, the one named after him—she was riding for Tucson. Papa’s old stronghold.

  And when she got there, somebody was going to die.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “For J. C. Lawless. For Catherine Lawless. Vengeance.”

  Like stones, Hannah’s remembered words pelted Jacey’s spirit. Trail-worn and saddle-weary, she pulled herself upright when, rounding the pass in the Santa Catalina Mountains, Tucson took shape down on the desert floor.

  As Knight continued his plodding pace alongside a caravan of wagons, Jacey let out the breath she felt she’d been holding all the way here. There it was. Tucson. The city that’d been a Lawless Gang refuge over twenty-five years ago. The city where Papa’d kidnapped Mama for ransom, but had instead fallen in love with the Boston debutante and married her. He’d even, over the protests of his gang, returned the ransom money to her family.

  “Vengeance.” That one word had sustained Jacey all the way from No Man’s Land to the Arizona Territory. And now, here was Tucson, the city that harbored men who had some answering to do. And answer they would—to her, the daughter of J. C. Lawless. They’d find no refuge in Tucson now. Not so long as there was breath in her body.

  She’d come a long, hard way for answers. Every mile imprinted itself in her bones. From home, she’d ridden over the waterless Cimarron Cutoff and connected with the long lines of wagons
on the Santa Fe Trail. After resting a day in the adobe town of Santa Fe, she’d set off on Cooke’s Route, which meandered southward alongside the Rio Grande. Then, northwest of El Paso, she’d finally joined up with the California-bound folks taking the Apache Pass on the Gila Trail.

  And she’d ridden that trail all the way to Tucson. Jacey’s dusty clothes and slumping spirit testifed to the weeks of hard trudging, weeks of low prairies and high mountains, and weeks of rain or relentless sun that she’d lived through just to get here. They were weeks of danger, weeks of wariness. Weeks of mourning for Mama and Papa. But finally, they were at an end. Except for the mourning. That would never end.

  Jacey reined in Knight, off to one side of the trail. Several wagons passed her, a few folks called out their good-byes. Jacey waved a hand in farewell, at once grateful for their company and grateful for their leave-taking. From here on out, she needed to be unknown. When her big black gelding shifted his weight and pawed the sandy desert ground, Jacey smoothed a hand over his withers.

  “You hankering to ride into Tucson, Knight? Well, let’s look it over and see what we’re in for,” she crooned softly to him.

  Lifting her black felt hat and rubbing her sleeve across her sweating forehead, Jacey made an assessing sweep of the village below her. There was the army fort folks’d spoken of. Fort Lowell, they’d called it. Wasn’t much to see. Mostly just wood sheds. Moving her gaze on, she focused on Tucson’s cluster of adobe buildings that squatted staunchly in the afternoon’s hot sun, their dried-mud roofs blending with the surrounding desert. Jacey then made a sweep of the narrow, twisting streets below her and dismissed them as not looking much different from Santa Fe’s.

  She next looked to the south, spotting a starkly white mission church. Like those she’d seen in Santa Fe. Shifting her gaze back northward, back to Tucson, she focused on impressive stands of huge cacti—those saguaros Papa’d always talked about. Like sentinels with their arms raised in challenge, they stood protectively around the city.