Free A Match of Wits by Jen Turano

Watson?”
    “What do you want with Agatha, and how did you learn her name?” Drusilla asked.
    “Everyone was only too willing to talk about the odd lady journalist who rode into town. I watched her drive away fromthe hotel with you, Mr. Beckett, and, well, sadly for her, the last person I need to leave alive is a journalist.”
    “She’s not here,” Zayne said. “Miss Watson and I suffered a slight misunderstanding on the ride over, and I’m afraid she got annoyed with me and jumped off the wagon. She’s probably back at the hotel by now.”
    “You’re hardly the type of gentleman to leave a lady on her own out here in the wild, Mr. Beckett, and besides, I watched her climb up the mountain.” Mary’s voice got considerably louder. “We know you’re here, Miss Watson. You might as well come out of hiding and save all of us a great deal of trouble.”
    Agatha took a second to consider her options. If she showed herself, she’d lose any hint of a surprise attack, but if she didn’t . . .
    “We don’t have time for this, Mary,” one of the other ladies snapped. “And it doesn’t matter if she comes out or not. Once we dynamite the place, no one will be left alive to identify us, and we’ll finally be able to collect that fee we’ve been promised for—”
    “Shut up,” Mary snarled. “Miss Watson, if you don’t stop this game immediately, I’m going to start shooting your friends, starting with the lady who tried to kill me. It really was a shame when her gun jammed, depriving her of my death.”
    Agatha took a small step forward but tripped on something and fell to her knees, ripping her trousers in the process. Pushing upright, she glanced down and smiled when her gaze settled on Zayne’s fuse line, a line that just happened to be attached to . . . dynamite.
    Plucking it off the ground, she straightened, but before she could consider how to proceed, squeals split the air.
    “Oh no, not Matilda,” she whispered as the squeals changedto threatening-sounding grunts, something Matilda seemed to do right before she was getting ready to charge.
    “Stupid pig, stop trying to bite me,” Mary shrieked before another shot sounded and Matilda’s grunts turned to terrified whimpers.
    Agatha rushed into the room. “Stop shooting,” she yelled, dropping the fuse line to the floor as she aimed her pistol at the woman who was chasing after Matilda.
    The woman stopped chasing Matilda, which allowed the pig to disappear behind a large crate that seemed to be filled with dynamite. Swinging her pistol around to face Agatha, the woman had the audacity to smile. “Ah, Miss Watson, I presume?”
    “Indeed, and you must be Mary.”
    “But of course I am,” Mary agreed. “And now, since we’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way, I’m going to have to insist you drop that little weapon of yours and place your hands over your head.”
    “I don’t think I’m going to do that, Mary,” Agatha drawled as she glanced to the right and found Zayne, Mr. Blackheart, and Drusilla being held at gunpoint by another lady, one who looked remarkably mean. She looked back to Mary. “The only thing standing between me, my friends, and death is this pistol, so you and I are going to have to come to some type of compromise.”
    Mary considered her for a long moment and then smiled again. “Shoot her, Jessie.”
    Agatha dropped to the ground right as another pistol went off. Rolling to her side, she squeezed the trigger and her pistol fired, but instead of hitting the woman who’d just tried to kill her, her shot went wide and hit a lantern attached to a heavy beam. Kerosene went everywhere, followed immediately byflames, and some of those flames were heading directly for the fuse line she’d dropped, while others were traveling toward the crate filled with dynamite.
    “Run,” she yelled as she scrambled to her feet.
    No one seemed to need any prodding.
    Mary and her girls rushed from the tunnel first, without