“We’ll get up and dressed before sunrise, and after that, you have to do everything I tell you, do you hear me? You can’t waver for one minute. And don’t be afraid of Cole. He’s a little rough-looking, but he’s a damn good man. He knows where to take you when you get out of here.”
Annie picked up a biscuit. “But what about you?”
“I’ll be with you if things go right. I’m just telling you that no matter what happens…no matter what…you keep going with Cole. I promised your mother I’d get you home, and I’ll damn well do it. In four or five days you’ll be back home in Denver.”
She shook her head. “But what if they kill you like they did that other man?”
Jake smiled sadly. “Sweetheart, I’ve lived a long life. Things have happened to me that should have killed me a long time ago. Believe me, dying won’t be such a bad thing.”
“But you have to go home to Sadie Mae. She’ll cry if you don’t come home. And what about your wife?”
Jake closed his eyes and looked away. Randy. He’d promised her he’d make it back. “My wife has been through all those bad times right alongside of me, Annie. She knows I’m ready to meet the Good Lord, if that’s how this ends up. She has my son and daughter and all those grandchildren to love her and take care of her. And she knows she and I will be together again, someplace better than anywhere here on earth. Of course, that depends on if God takes me in. He just might order me out of heaven.”
Annie shook her head. “No, He won’t. You’re helping me. He’ll remember that. He’ll let you go home to your wife and to Sadie Mae.”
Jake rose, wondering how he’d make it through this night without losing his mind. “I guess that’s for Him to know and for us to find out, isn’t it?”
“I guess.” She ate a little more of the biscuit. “You really love your wife, don’t you?”
Jake walked to a window that faced north. He carefully peeked through the curtains. Colorado seemed so far away. “Yeah, I really love my wife, Annie.”
“I’m not scared of you anymore.”
“Good.” Jake watched one of the whores walking with Luis. He was laughing. Jake quickly closed the curtain and remained turned away. “Annie, I get really angry inside sometimes at men like Luis Estava, and sometimes it shows in my eyes. I don’t want you to be afraid of that, okay? Sometimes I scare my own family when I get like this. Things have happened in my life that…It just brings out a rage in me, but never at good people, so don’t be worried when I get that way.” He started undressing, and Annie looked away as she ate the second biscuit.
“It’s okay,” she told him.
Such innocence. How did a man take advantage of something like that, like what his father did to Santana?
Jake stripped down to his underwear and hung his gun belt on the bedpost on his side of the bed. “If anybody comes to that door later, you scoot under the covers. Act like you’re crying, make them think something went on in here. They can’t think otherwise for one minute, understand? I can’t stress that enough.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jake propped some pillows against the headboard and crawled into bed but remained sitting up against the pillows. “I don’t intend to sleep much. I’m too worked up, and I don’t trust those men outside the door.”
Annie scooted back into bed and curled into a ball again, facing away from him. “You’re a nice man, Mr. Harkner.”
Jake snickered and lit yet another cigarette to help keep himself calm. “Call me Jake, and no, I’m not a nice man at all. Even my wife says that sometimes. I like to embarrass her, and when I do, she just frowns and says, ‘Jake, you are a mean man.’ Even my daughter says that sometimes. And my son has been known to call me a mean, stubborn sonofabitch.”
“They don’t really mean it, I’ll bet.”
Jake took a long drag on the cigarette. “Come morning, you’ll find out how not nice I can be, Annie. Speaking of which, I want to be sure you understand what will happen.” He explained again what he intended to do, wanting to be damn sure she was ready for the morning. “I wanted to buy you outright, which would have made things easier,” he told her, “but they already sold you to someone else. They will expect me to leave alone in the morning, but I’m not leaving here without you. And the worst thing you can do is hesitate, Annie. Hesitating could cost me my life and maybe Cole’s as well, and leave you a prisoner here. I’m sending you out that window in the morning, and you’re going to run to Cole, and he’s leaving with you. We’ll have the element of surprise on our side, as well as sleepy guards who won’t be expecting what I have in mind. I’ll stay here and create some havoc of my own to take their attention away.”