Free Home by Nightfall by Alexis Harrington

him.
    “You might not be looking for advice, but I’ll tell you this. If Susannah means even half of what I think she means to you, I’d give Riley a battle that he won’t win.”
    He remembered the picture of Susannah kneeling beside Riley, lame and disoriented on the floor at dinner, and the tears shimmering in her eyes. He dropped his hand to the table. “Can we talk about something else?”
    “Sure.” She stubbed out the Lucky Strike in a saucer. “How are my boys?”
    That was only a slightly better subject, given the circumstances. “Pretty good. A little confused about Riley, especially Wade. But their studies are going well enough, and they’re growing fast. Susannah takes good care of them.”
    Em gazed out the window beyond the overcast sky, but he suspected she wasn’t looking at the jungle of weeds and wild roses that helped hide her house from the road. He knew it was hard on her—Josh and Wade had been told she was in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Colorado, and that Tanner was their uncle and guardian. Another woman was raising them. But Em believed that was better than having them know the truth about her. Once a month, Tanner stopped by to give her a progress report about them. He’d never told anyone, not even Susannah, the real story. “Have you heard anything about their father lately?”
    She turned her head and gave him a sharp look. “That good-for-nothing Lambert? Robbing those dead bodies before he buried them was a low-down thing to do. I can’t be sure if it’s the worst he’s done, but Whit told me the judge didn’t give him the sentence that Whit had hoped for.”
    Tanner frowned. “He won’t come back here—”
    “A body wouldn’t think so. But you know that Lambert, he’s as dumb as a sack of doorknobs. Nothing sinks into that thick skull and I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts nosing around again. I had my fill of him years ago. All the jewelry and stuff he took—I don’t know how it got back to the rightful owners. Well, I know some of it didn’t. After that influenza epidemic, some families were wiped out altogether. Whit just keeps it in his office safe in case distant relatives turn up someday. Whit said if Lambert shows his mug around these parts, he’ll make him wish he was still in jail. At least he has no legal claim to me. I divorced him and the papers come through a few months ago.”
    Tanner had had his own brush with Bert Bauer years earlier when he’d swindled Tanner out of his last dime with a phony cattle deal in Parkridge. Bauer, mean little shit that he was, had terrorized Em and the kids. One night Tanner had discovered her wandering the streets with her toddlers, a cardboard suitcase, and a broken cheekbone. Flat broke, he’d offered his protection to them all. But Em didn’t think he should be saddled down with the wife of a man who’d cheated him. She’d asked him only to see after her boys.
    “How’s Whit doing? I haven’t seen him for a while.”
    Em dropped her gaze to her lap and a self-conscious little smile let her dimples show. For a moment, the years fell away from her face and she looked like a girl. “He’s ever so…fine.”
    Mildly amused and a bit touched, Tanner arched an eyebrow. “So it’s like that, is it?”
    “What? Well, of course I see him from time to time. It’s nice that he watches out for me. It’s pretty deserted up here.” She nodded toward the loaded shotgun she kept beside the door. “I’m a decent shot, but that’s all that stands between me and some manwith a mind made up. Most of them around here know he’s a friend of mine, and it helps keep the riffraff away.” Not always, though. One day during the turmoil of the epidemic, Bauer had come here and threatened her, and she’d fired that shotgun over his head. When tall, frost-haired Gannon, with his big mustache and a voice like distant thunder, had taken Bauer into custody, he’d shaken him like a terrier with a rat. Some of the witnesses