Free After Sundown by Shelly Thacker Page A

heels. “What have you decided to do?”

Chapter 4

    A nightmare. She had been swept up in a nightmare . The dose of laudanum Mrs. Owens had given Annie helped dull the stabbing pain in her ribs and made breathing easier—but it didn’t relieve the sick feeling of panic in her stomach.
    And the haze of the drug seeping through her veins only brought her memories of this room more vividly to life. They whirled around her, like ghosts.
    The feel of the hard, smooth examining table beneath her. The flickering lamplight. The odors of rubbing alcohol and smelling salts. The sound of distant voices.
    She closed her eyes. Tried to shut it all out. Couldn’t escape the echoes of her own words, pleading.
    My baby... not me... save the baby...
    Annie sobbed, the sound scratchy and thin. Her throat had gone dry. She lifted her head, glanced into the dark corners, frightened by a dizzying sense that the images were more than memories, that they were happening now. The walls seemed to move, tumbling toward her, the ceiling closing in to crush her. “Mrs. Owens...”
    But Mrs. Owens wasn’t here. She had left Annie to rest, after bandaging her sprained ankle and buttoning up her dress.
    Annie sank back down on the table, whimpering softly. She was alone, with the heavy steel manacles around her wrists. And the memories. The sounds and smells and other fragments of time floated through the numbing fog of laudanum.
    One image was of a dark silhouette standing above her on a hill, aiming a pistol at her in the fading light of day. She stared up the barrel of that gun and held her last breath and waited for the end. The end of all the pain, all the horror she felt at what she had done.
    Only it didn’t end.
    She kept waiting for the gunshot that never came. He had changed his mind. Why had he changed his mind?
    She turned her head toward the door of the examining room, remembering the lawman’s expression when he had stormed in right after she’d been awakened by the smelling salts.
    James’s brother . The one who had left Missouri years ago. Lucas. He didn’t look anything like James. Didn’t talk or act anything like James. She had sat there feeling mortified and naked and defenseless, and Lucas McKenna had stared at her—not with the hatred and anger she had seen earlier in those gold-flecked green eyes, but with a feeling that unsettled her even more.
    A feeling she had seen often when men glanced her way on the streets of St. Charles: a volatile mix of cool disdain... and heated desire.
    And what did he have planned for her now?
    The door opened and again Annie had the unnerving sensation that a moment torn from the past was happening in the present. She tried to sit up, wincing, bracing herself—but it wasn’t the black-haired, rough-looking lawman this time.
    Only Dr. Holt entered the room.
    “How do you feel?” He returned to her side, speaking in the same quiet, gentle way he always addressed her. “Is the laudanum helping?”
    He looked down at her with concern as he checked her pulse, whispering a curse when the handcuffs got in the way.
    Annie shook her head. “I... want to get... out of here.”
    “Mrs. Smi— I mean, Miss—”
    “Annie.” She couldn’t meet his gaze. “It’s... Annie.”
    “Annie,” he said, no condemnation or reproach in his voice as he used her real name for the first time. “I wasn’t lying about what I told the marshal out there.” He inclined his head toward the door. “The laudanum may’ve eased your pain some, but those cracked ribs are serious. If you try to escape before they heal, you could—”
    “I didn’t mean out... of town.” Her vision suddenly swam with tears. “Out of... this room . Please .”
    Understanding finally dawned on his face. “Of course. I’m a fool. God Almighty, we shouldn’t have left you in here all alone.”
    He slid one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees and picked her up, gingerly, as if she might shatter in his