The Touch of Fire Read online

  “Do you mind?” Annie asked quietly. “That he isn’t going to be brought to justice?”

  “Hell, yes, I mind,” he growled, then went to sit down beside her on the bed where she was resting. “For prolonging the war, I’d not only like to see him shot, I’d want to pull the trigger myself.”

  “I’m not certain I believe he didn’t know what Winslow had done.”

  “It’s possible that he sacrificed Winslow without even blinking, but on the other hand Winslow didn’t start yelling that Vanderbilt had been behind the entire scheme, so the odds are he really didn’t know. It doesn’t make much difference. He was at the root of the entire situation.”

  “No one will ever know what he did, and he’ll just continue to get richer and richer. It makes me so angry when I think what they did to you.”

  He rubbed his hand slowly over her belly. “I never would have met you if it hadn’t been for Vanderbilt’s treason. Maybe fate evens things out.” Thousands of men dead, all for one man’s greed. But if things had been different, he wouldn’t have Annie now. Maybe things just happened, maybe there was no great cosmic scale in which evil and good were carefully balanced. He had to live in the present rather than waste any more time with regrets and bitterness. He not only had Annie, he would be a father soon, an event that was already looming large in his mind. But thanks to Atwater, and Jefferson Davis, and J. P. Morgan, and most of all thanks to Annie, he was not only a free man, he was well off financially and could take care of Annie the way he wanted.

  “What will happen to Parker Winslow?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rafe said, but he had a good idea. Atwater had left the hotel without saying where he was going. Sometimes justice worked best in the dark.

  * * *

  Atwater slipped into Winslow’s residence with the stealth of a man who had a great deal of practice in getting around without attracting attention. He could make out the rich furnishings as he moved from room to room; the damn varmint had been living well while Rafe McCay had been forced to live like an animal.

  The marshal couldn’t think of the last time he’d had a friend. Not since sweet Maggie had died, probably. He’d lived a solitary life, in his support of law and order and his own pursuit of justice. But, damn it, Rafe and Annie had become his friends. They had spent long hours talking around campfires, watching each other’s backs, planning and worrying together. Things like that tended to bond people together. As a friend and as a lawman, and by his own personal code, he needed to see that justice was served.

  He found Winslow’s bedroom and entered it as silently as a shadow. It was a hard thing he had to do, and for a moment he hesitated, staring at the sleeping man in the bed. Winslow wasn’t married, so there wasn’t a missus there to be terrified out of her wits, and Atwater was glad. He thought about waking Winslow, but discarded the idea. Justice didn’t demand that the man know of his own death, only that the deed be done. Very calmly, Noah Atwater drew his pistol and evened the scales of justice.

  He was gone from the house before the servants sleeping in the attics could rouse themselves and scramble into their clothing, not certain what it was they had heard. Atwater’s face was curiously blank as he walked through the night-darkened streets, his thoughts turned inward. His execution of Winslow had been nothing less than justice, but maybe his own motivation had been more complicated than that; maybe, because of the way he felt about Rafe and Annie, there had been a bit of revenge in him, too. And maybe it was time he turned in his badge, because when other things began to matter, then he couldn’t consider himself a pure servant of the law any longer. And after what had happened to Rafe, and seeing how money and power had so successfully manipulated the system to ruin the life of an innocent man branded “outlaw,” Atwater couldn’t say he believed in the law the way he used to, even if he would always be a man of justice in his heart.

  But he was satisfied. The scales were balanced.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Atwater slammed into the ranch house, his face pale with anxiety. Rafe stepped into the hall to meet him. His own face was tense, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up.

  “Can’t find him nowheres,” Atwater growled. “What good’s a doctor if he ain’t never around when a body needs him? He’s probably curled up somewhere with a damn bottle.”

  Atwater’s assessment was probably true. The citizens of Phoenix, whose population had exploded since the first house had been built a year before, were rapidly coming to the same conclusion and turning more and more to Annie with their medical problems. That wasn’t much help to Annie, though, who was now herself in need of a doctor.

  “Keep looking,” he said. He didn’t know what else to do. Even a drunk doctor had to be better than no doctor.

  “Rafe,” Annie called from inside the bedroom. “Noah? Come in here, please.”

  Atwater looked uneasy at entering a room where a woman was in labor, but the two men went into the room Rafe had just left. Rafe went to the bed and took her hand. How could she look so normal when he was frankly terrified? But she smiled at him, and adjusted her bulk more comfortably on the mattress.

  “Forget the doctor,” she told Atwater. “Just fetch Mrs. Wickenburg. She’s had five of her own and has a good head on her shoulders; she’ll know what to do. And even if she doesn’t, I do.” She smiled at Rafe. “It’ll be all right.”

  Atwater was already leaving the ranch house at a run. Another contraction began low in Annie’s belly and she grabbed Rafe’s hands, placing them flat on her tightening abdomen so he could feel the power of his child’s efforts to be born. He turned absolutely white, but when the contraction eased Annie lay back with a smile. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she breathed.

  “Hell, no, it isn’t wonderful!” he barked. He looked sick. “You’re in pain!”

  “But our baby will be here soon. I’ve delivered babies, but obviously I’ve never experienced it from this position before. It’s really interesting; I’m learning a lot.”

  Rafe felt like tearing his hair out. “Annie, damn it, this isn’t a class in medical school.”

  “I know, darling.” She stroked his hand. “I’m sorry you’re upset, but truly, everything is perfectly fine.” She was surprised at how upset he was, but she realized she should have expected it. No expectant mother in history could have been more cosseted than she had been on the long trip across the country to Phoenix, a brand-new city with brand-new attitudes, not only by Rafe but by Atwater, too, who had resigned his job as marshal and, at Rafe’s invitation, joined them as a partner in the sprawling ranch they now owned in the Salt River Valley.

  He hadn’t wanted her to begin her medical practice until after the baby was born, but time passed slowly for her with nothing to occupy her but the increasing ripeness of her body. So far it was only women who had come to her, women with personal medical problems or their own pregnancies, and sometimes they brought their children. Most people still went to Dr. Hodges, who had an unfortunate fondness for the bottle, but several women had told her that, after her baby was born and she was able to begin a full-time practice, they intended to make certain their entire families came to her.

  She was glad it was winter, so she wasn’t having to go through labor during the intense heat. During late summer they had had to sleep out on the veranda, though the adobe ranch house was built along Spanish lines, with arches and clean open spaces, and high ceilings to alleviate the heat. She loved her new home. Everything about her new life seemed perfect. Most of all, there was Rafe. He was still impossibly stubborn and autocratic, still the lean, dangerous man with pale crystal eyes who could make most people shiver with just a look, but she knew the passion and sensuality in him, and had no doubts of the strength of his love. There had been days during the autumn when he had carried her out to a certain place where they could lie unseen, with only the great blue sky overhead and the warm earth beneath them, and they had made love naked on a blanket spread on the ground. Her