Free Beauty and the Bounty Hunter by Lori Austin Page A

head. He wasn’t going back in.
    “I’ll meet you in Brooks,” he said, a town so close to the Missouri/Kansas border Alexi wasn’t sure to which state it belonged. They had passed through not long ago, and Alexi had thought it would be a good place to perform a particular dodge. Right now, he really needed one. Only when he was pretending to be someone else could Alexi forget who he had been.
    “Brooks,” Mikhail repeated; then his face brightened. “I remember.”
    “Good.” Alexi mounted his horse, saddled and waiting as promised, and galloped out of camp.
    When the thunder of hooves rose from outside, Cat cursed and bolted for the exit. She emerged just in time to watch the dust kicked up by the horse fade away on the evening wind.
    “Where’s the fire?” Cat murmured.
    “Ain’t no fire, Miss Cathy.” Mikhail sniffed—once, twice—then shook his head. “None a’tall.”
    “Where’s he going?”
    “We’ll catch up.” Mikhail patted her with a huge yet gentle hand. “Don’t worry. I can follow a field mouse ’cross the prairie in a cyclone. Even Alexi can’t get away from me.”
    Cat considered climbing into her wagon and striking out on her own. But that would mean leaving Mikhail alone. She wasn’t sure she could do that. And Alexi—damn him—knew it.
    “Here’s your boots, Miss Cathy. I cleaned ’em.”Mikhail’s face crumpled. “But they wouldn’t shine up nohow.”
    She accepted the footwear. “The shine went out of these a long time ago, Mikhail.” The shine had gone out of a lot of things a long time ago.
    Cat shoved her feet into her boots, then crossed to the wagon, but her horses weren’t in the traces. Instead, they stood saddled and packed a few feet away.
    “What’s going on?” she asked just as Mikhail pulled the center pole of the tent. The canvas descended through the night like the wings of a great white bird.
    Mikhail stepped free an instant before he would have been trapped beneath, then began to yank up the stakes. Cat followed, collecting them. “We’re leaving the wagons?”
    “Have to. Alexi took a horse.”
    “You’d already saddled and packed them before he took one,” she pointed out.
    Mikhail grinned. “You’re so smart, Miss Cathy.”
    Cat narrowed her eyes. Alexi had obviously told him to saddle the horses, leave the wagons, and tell her as little as possible. What was he up to?
    “We can’t travel with wagons now that the law knows about ’em.” Mikhail handed her the last stake.
    “You said the posse wasn’t coming back.”
    “Not now.” He began to fold the tent into smaller and smaller lengths. “But later…” He stood, lifting the thick canvas into his arms as if it were no heavier than the swaddled child it resembled. “Who knows? Might not be that posse who comes. Could be another from a town we can’t hardly recall. You know Alexi.”
    She did. He changed modes of travel as often as he changed clothes. It was why he was still alive, free, and plying his trade. When people went looking for him, he was no longer the man they had seen.
    “’Sides…” Mikhail continued as he strode toward the pack animal. “For the dodge we’re gonna do next, we need to split up.”
    “Dodge?” She hurried after him. “What are you talking about?”
    He secured the tent to the horse. “Alexi’s doin’ the advance.”
    “Advance,” Cat repeated with a very bad feeling.
    Mikhail cast her an indulgent glance. “You ain’t been gone that long that ye fergot, did ya?” He patted her hand. “’S okay. I kin explain. Alexi goes into town afore us. Finds out what we need to know so’s we can do the dodge.”
    “I never agreed to that.”
    Confusion flickered in his gray eyes. “You said you’d travel with us.”
    “That’s right.
Travel.
To Denver City.”
    “But…but…the dodge is what we do.”
    Cat tilted her head. “How long have you been doing it?”
    “Long’s I can recall.”
    “Just you and