Just another reason to question Poppy's sanity.
"I have to agree, you'd make the perfect governor's wife," Sadie lied in velvet tones. "Too bad all your plans revolve around Baron. And his health is failing."
"Baron was as healthy as a bull until you started sucking the life out of him!"
So Poppy felt spurned and decided it was payback time? Sadie was beginning to feel sorry for Randie, who'd actually had to live this nightmare. "Let me guess. You hired a henchman—somebody who doesn't have half your brains—to get rid of me at the Siren."
"I wouldn't say that," taunted a cold, cruel Midwestern accent.
Sadie sucked in her breath. Hank!
Shrouded by shadow, the outlaw leaned his shoulder against a porch pillar, a can of kerosene waiting by his boots. A match flared in the darkness. His cigarette tip brightened. When the tiny flame plummeted from his fingertips, Sadie's eyes widened. The match landed dangerously close to the kerosene... only to be rubbed out by the killer's boot toe.
She loosed a ragged breath. It was gratifying to know Hank didn't intend to torch the whole yard.
"So you're the one who hurled Greek Fire through my window," she deduced grimly. "Now that was a brilliant plan.
Too bad it went awry," she added for Poppy's benefit. "Despite all your efforts, someone found out you've been forging Baron's signature. Someone knows you've been paying assassins to get rid of his rivals. All this time, Baron has been turning a blind eye, pretending not to see—until he started getting blackmailed. Until he started fearing for his life. That's the real reason why Baron hired Cass, isn't it? To protect you and him from Hank?"
"Ridiculous," Poppy snapped. "Hank's family. Not that it's any business of yours."
"I can fend for myself, auntie."
"Of course you can, dear boy. Don't you have some corpses to cremate?"
"I thought I'd torch them all at once." Hank grinned. "Saves matches."
Sadie's scalp prickled. "Anyone I know?" she demanded with less asperity than she'd intended.
"You might say that."
He thrust his hips forward. Lightning illuminated the pair of walnut-inlaid gun butts, strapped to his hip.
Sadie's heart iced. She would have recognized that double-holstered rig anywhere.
"I don't believe it! Where's Cass?"
"They don't call me The Ventilator for nothing."
No! Sadie choked back tears. She wanted to scream. Or vomit. Or better yet, send Hank to hell.
Keep your wits about you, Sadie. You're not out of this mess yet. Think of Jazi. Save Jazi. Then you can rip off the bastard's balls...
Sadie steeled herself against her fury. Every nerve felt like it was being licked by demon fire, but she kept her teeth firmly clenched to silence the primal roar of grief. Sucking down breath after shuddering breath, she furtively touched the mechanism that operated the pistol under her cuff. The yard was nearly dark. Collie probably couldn't see Poppy in her black robe, and he didn't have a good angle to shoot Hank. Sadie couldn't count on the boy for help. That meant she would have to be smart enough, fast enough, to take out two gunmen.
She let a smoke bomb roll into her other palm.
What the hell is keeping Wright and his posse?
"What I still don't understand," she said hoarsely, stalling for time, "is why you've waited so long to teach Baron his lesson. After all, he's had other women. Lots of women."
"But you're his favorite."
"Me?" Sadie did her best to look surprised.
"Don't play dumb with me, whore. You talked him into re-writing his will. You tricked him into naming your spawn as his heir!"
Sadie supposed this wouldn't be a good time to spill the beans that Jazi wasn't really Baron's daughter.
"Baron has been on edge, that's all." Sadie struggled to put a soothing note in her voice. "He thinks someone's trying to kill him." And with good reason, apparently! "I'm sure if you sat down with him and had a heart-to-heart talk—"
"How dare you give me marriage advice, bitch! For 20 years, I've stood beside my husband! He was nothing until I taught him how to read and write the law. But then he threatened to put me in an asylum. Me! When I was finally in the family way. When I was going to have our little Barry... "
Poppy's voice broke.
Sadie tasted bile as she guessed the outcome of that confrontation. "He hit you, didn't he?" she prompted more gently. "And you miscarried."
Poppy made a small inhuman sound, like the whimper of a whipped puppy. "He never shared my bed again... "
The more agitated Poppy got, the more her gun hand quaked.
"...He wouldn't let me have another baby."
Now the six-shooter's muzzle was bobbing erratically in her fist.
"He didn't want my babies, because you gave him one, strumpet! It's all your fault that Baron doesn't love me anymore!"
Holy crap, Sadie thought. She's going to fire!
"Poppy Westerfield!" It was Randie's voice, pitched high in nigh hysteria. She'd emerged from the woods and was waving her white sleeves like a windmill. The tactic was a crazy, brazen, courageous thing to do—the best diversion she could possibly create while her .38 was out of firing range. "Satan himself couldn't keep me from you!"
Sadie took full advantage of the distraction. She threw the smoke bomb at Poppy's feet and drilled a bullet into Hank's right arm—hopefully, his gun arm.
"Run, Sadie!" she shouted at Randie in an effort to confuse Poppy further.
Poppy staggered backwards, blinded by black, sulfurous plumes. "Hank!" she screamed between coughs. "Hank, there are two of them!"
Above the outlaw's blood-curdling howls of pain, a gunshot rang out. Sadie had barely taken three steps when Poppy's bullet hit her in the back. She "oomphed," pitching forward onto rock-hard earth. Her momentum sent her somersaulting down the hill. She crashed hip-first into a tombstone, her temples pounding, her face pointed at the sky. For an endless moment, she couldn't move. She couldn't breathe.
That's when all hell broke loose.
"Randie!" The cry of anguish was masculine.
Sadie's ears were ringing. A full moon was spinning through the storm over her head. As if she were peering through a fuzzy telescope, she watched horses gallop past. She heard bullets whining through the air. A man with waxed mustachios was wrestling a woman with a black hood and poppy-colored hair for a gun. Further away, like a tiny speck on rippled glass, she saw a blond man in a pitch-colored Stetson charging up the hill.
Then some helpful person was hauling her to her feet. Dragging her up by her collar. Clamping an arm as bendable as steel over her breasts.
Still too winded to speak, she wheezed in protest as iron fingers bit into her scalp, yanking her head backwards against a granite shoulder. Pinpricks of light danced inside her brain. She thought she might pass out. Then the stench of sulfur jolted her senses. A red-hot gun muzzle jammed into the tender flesh beneath her chin. She yelped.
"Think you can beat me, Cassidy?" a sneering, Midwestern accent panted in her ear.
An ominous click reverberated through the bones of her jaw.
"Let's see how fast you can really draw, Lucifire."
Chapter 23
Cass forced himself to halt his charge up the hill, his muscles screaming, his heart in an uproar.
When a gunman used a woman as a shield, it was worse than a crime. It was an abomination. But the stakes in this showdown had risen astronomically the moment Cass realized the gunman was The Ventilator.