built. Recently he’d cleaned up the weeds and underbrush with the idea of asking Jesse and his family if they’d like to live there. All of that seemed forsaken with what Jenkins now planned.
Jenkins rode up behind the cabin, dismounted, and tied his horse to a pine. Casey started to swing her leg over the saddle, but he pulled her to the ground onto a patch of prickly thistles. She waited for him to empty his revolver into her, but that would have been too easy.
“Didn’t I tell ya not to ever leave me?” Jenkins bent to her face. His foul breath reminded her of a hundred other times he’d come after her. “Were you fool enough to think I’d never catch up with you? I don’t ever give up, Casey girl.”
“I guess I knew it. Expected it.” How stupid I’ve been. I shouldn’t have stopped running.
Morgan, I haven’t told you in so very long how much I love you.
Jenkins yanked her from where she’d fallen and dragged her to the front of the cabin. Forcing her to her feet, he grabbed her waist and limped inside. Even with his bad leg, his strength was something to be reckoned with. Fighting him would only make matters worse. Those nightmares screamed against her senses. He slammed the door shut, and the cabin shook. Shadows from the overhanging trees intensified her fear of what Morgan would find. She blinked and searched for a way to defend herself.
As though Jenkins knew her thoughts, he pinned her arms behind her. White-hot pain shot up her fingers to her shoulders. He wrapped rawhide around her wrists until it cut into her flesh. All the while he cursed. Casey understood his game. She refused to give in to any semblance of anguish that would spur him on to inflict more agony. He shoved her onto a chair and reached for a nearly empty bottle of liquor on the table.
“Casey girl.” He swayed with the effects of the alcohol. “We’ve got us a reunion—you, me, and Andrews. But I ain’t killin’ you now. Not until he shows up. Why, we’ve got ourselves a party.” He took a gulp from the bottle. “Been resting and drinking all mornin’, thinking how I was going to make you pay for all the trouble you’ve caused me. I should have sold you to Rose since you couldn’t handle one night there. You always were uppity.” He sneered. “And I loved you, too. I’d have given you anything you wanted. But you lit out.”
He took another swallow. “Purdy dresses. A ranch in Mexico. Anything. But I wasn’t good enough for you.”
Jenkins paced across the wooden floor. She calculated how fast she could get to the door before he caught her.
“Let me tell you about the things I learned about making folks pay,” he said. “There’s a heap of fun we’re gonna have with a knife and a little fire. But most of it will wait for Andrews. That man has bad luck when it comes to women.”
Panic ripped across her mind. Living meant enduring his threats. His torture . . . or whatever he chose to do to her.
“Do you remember all the promises I made you? Do I have to remind you? I’m a man of my word, Casey girl. You’ll see. I’m going to take care of you and Andrews together. Seems fittin’, doesn’t it? And that no-count brother of yours is miles away.”
With each threat, he lifted the bottle and drank until he sent it crashing to the floor. Bits of glass splintered about the room. She held her breath and understood that the shards fueled his mind for what he planned to do next.
Jenkins’s eyes narrowed, and his laugh grew louder. He moved her way. As long as his garbled, deranged shouts of insanity spun around her, she had time to think. The ranch hands saw what happened. They’d help Grant and send word to town for the doctor and Ben and Morgan. Watching Jenkins swerve and bump into the side of the cabin, she prayed he would pass out.
I can’t even fight back. If only I could get away long enough to make a run for it.
She tried to work her hands free, but the rawhide knots only tightened. Casey clung to a prayer for deliverance as soundly as she clung to life.
She heard a horse. A rider? A man called out. She strained her ears and tried to move. That voice. Tim.