Page 19 of A Dangerous Heart (Wind River Mail-Order Brides #4)

I t was fully dark when Isaac stormed into the bunkhouse back at the main house.

He couldn’t stay at the cabin, not with the anger and frustration gnawing at him over Clare keeping secrets.

So he’d saddled up Bullet and ridden home.

Someone—Nick—stirred in the bottom bunk on the right side of the sparsely furnished room.

Isaac stomped into the room and promptly banged his knee on the corner of a chest. He bit down on the howl that threatened to escape, then stalked to the empty bunk across from his brother and tossed his bedroll onto the bare mattress.

He lowered himself onto the bunk across from Nick, his agitation coming out in steamy breaths.

He yanked a boot off. It slipped out of his hand and clunked to the floor.

Nick propped himself on his elbows and squinted in his direction.

“Wha…” His voice was slow and sleepy in the darkness.

Isaac heard a chalky scrape and saw a match flare as his brother lit the lantern on the bedside table.

“Land sakes, Isaac! What are you doing here, stomping around like a bear at a barn dance?”

“Nothing.” Isaac untied his bedroll, batted at the thing so it rolled off the end of the bunk. He jerked it up a few feet and lay down on it.

He wished Nick hadn’t lit the lantern. He felt the weight of his brother’s stare. Isaac kept his eyes on the crisscrossed ropes that held the top straw tick mattress in place. He just wanted to sleep. And forget.

He felt ache of betrayal and a weariness that had nothing to do with the lateness of the night.

“What’s the matter?” came his brother’s sleep-laden voice.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Nick ignored the coldness in his voice. “Clare and the boys all right?”

Were they all right? He closed his eyes, but a picture flashed across his mind. Clare, standing on the clearing near the path to the river, her eyes filled with tears she was too proud to shed. He should have never trusted her.

Nick let out a resigned breath. “What’d you do?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

There was a rustling from Nick’s bunk. Isaac opened his eyes to find his brother sitting on the edge of his bunk, hands clamped on the mattress at his sides, staring at him. “Last time I saw you, you were actually smiling.”

Isaac recalled the boisterous family dinner. Clare’s compassion when he’d told her about Cody. He punched those thoughts down. “I smile.”

Lie. He couldn’t produce a smile if he tried.

Nick scoffed. “How’d you mess things up with Clare?”

“Leave it alone,” he ground out as he rolled so his feet hit the floor while he reached for his bedroll. He shouldn’t have come in here. Maybe he could find some peace in the barn.

But by the time Isaac stood, Nick was already on his feet, facing him like a banty rooster spoiling for a fight, his expression grim. “Tell me,” Nick challenged.

When had his brother gotten so tall? Matched him for height. Nick had grown into a man while he’d been away.

“I said. leave. it. alone.”

Nick braced himself for a punch.

The action jarred Isaac, and he edged back so his calves hit the bunk. What was he doing? “I’m not going to hit you.”

“You want to hit something.”

He was right. Isaac turned his back, grabbed the rail of the top bunk, and leaned his face into his bent arms. He had to control his boiling emotions or risk doing something he’d regret.

Nick hovered behind him. “Isaac?—”

“Clare lied,” he blurted, the words muffled against his forearm. “About her name. Her identity.”

He closed his eyes, but the image of Clare at the moment he’d told her he was done with her kept replaying.

He clenched his fist. Couldn’t take it anymore.

Turning to face Nick, Isaac ran a hand through his hair and stared at the wide-plank floor, his throat constricting as the weight of betrayal settled in.

“I knew she was running from something, but—her father and brother are notorious outlaws. Bank thefts, stagecoach robberies, and they’ve left plenty of dead bodies along the way.”

Nick paused, letting the information settle. “How did she manage to escape? It takes more than luck to survive over two decades as outlaws. And she managed to outfox them. Downright courageous if you ask me.”

Isaac was caught off guard by that thought. He’d been focused on Clare’s betrayal, her lies and who might be following her. His own hurt feelings. He hadn’t given a passing thought to what she had survived. Or the courage it had taken to leave the life she’d known.

She and her sister-in-law had planned her escape. But it was Clare who’d had the courage to act. To risk being caught or even killed by Victor.

Nick moved to the window, his back to Isaac, and let the silence of the moonlit night seep into the room. “Guess I can understand why she did it,” he said finally, turning from the window, his expression pointed.

Isaac only grunted.

Nick bristled. “Maybe she’s not the only one running scared.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Isaac jerked his eyes to meet Nick’s level stare, tension bunching the shoulders that had barely started to relax.

“You’ve been keeping some secrets too. Distancing yourself from me, Drew, and Ed, keeping us in the dark. Haven’t breathed a word in—what’s it been now?—two years? About why you quit the Marshals.”

Isaac tensed. This again? “You can’t fix me,” he bit out. “I’m never gonna end up like Drew and Ed, with a wife and stars in my eyes.”

Nick watched him, his gaze filled with a compassion that Isaac couldn’t bear. His brothers still saw him as a hero. He’d never had the courage to tell them otherwise.

He did now. All of it flowed out of him like a rushing current. Everything. How he’d become friends with the boy and his mother and opened himself up to the thought of a family, had planned to court her once he’d finished that last assignment. And the shoot-out that’d ended in tragedy.

“I got Cody killed.”

The words came out differently than when he’d told Clare. Somehow, telling her had shifted something inside of him and the way he saw the past. Didn’t absolve him though. It was still his fault Cody had been close enough to grab.

He fell silent. In the stillness, his heartbeat pounded out the seconds in his ears. A heartbeat that reminded him that he was still alive…but Cody was dead.

He moved back to the bunk and sat down. Nick lowered to the bunk across from him, his hands clasped between his knees and his gaze pinned on Isaac’s face.

Nick didn’t look shocked or judgmental or even surprised.

“You knew.”

Nick nodded. “Read about it in the paper. Ed and Drew don’t know the details. I didn’t talk to them about it. They know the Marshals determined it was an accident though.”

Accident. A word that couldn’t encompass the enormity of what he had done.

“They didn’t fire you, did they?”

Nick already knew the answer, but Isaac told him anyway. “I couldn’t do the job anymore. I can’t fire on another person. Couldn’t even pull the trigger on the bear when David was in danger.”

Now Nick’s face showed surprise. His quick assessment showed on his face. “Clare,” he concluded.

Isaac nodded. Shame made him duck his head. He was broken. Now Nick knew the extent of it.

Nick sighed, the sound more like a shout in the silence. “I can’t help feeling that you and Clare, you both deserve a second chance. But I’m not the one who needs to give it.”

Long after Nick blew out the lantern and his steady breaths signaled he’d fallen asleep, Isaac lay in the dark, words spinning round in his head.

Accident.

Grief.

Forgive yourself.

Second chance.

Everything Nick and Clare had told him warred with what he knew to be true, or what he thought he’d known to be true all this time.

When the sun’s rays shone through the small window in the bunkhouse the next morning, he still didn’t have any answers.

* * *

“Boys! Time to get up.” Clare straightened the blankets on her cot, then moved to the fireplace and stirred the coals, placing a split log on the embers.

The floor in the loft creaked, and Eli climbed down the ladder, yawning and sleepy-eyed.

“Where’s Ben?” Her gaze lifted to the loft, waiting for the boy to appear.

“Dunno.”

“He’s not in bed up there?”

Eli stilled, his eyes widening, the sleepiness draining from his face when he saw her worry. “No.”

Clare’s stomach turned, dread knotting tight. Something was wrong. Where was Ben? “Let’s look around. He can’t have gone far.”

They checked the lean-to, the area all around the cabin and along the river. Their calls for Ben echoed over the water, but no answer returned.

Clare was back on the front stoop, preparing to widen her search, when she spotted a familiar figure on horseback. Isaac. The choking panic loosened slightly. No matter what was between them, Isaac would help find Ben.

“Ben is missing!” she called out. By the time she’d scrambled off the stoop, he’d already swung out of the saddle.

He moved in closer, his eyebrows drawing together as he studied her face.

“When I woke up this morning, he was gone. Eli and I checked everywhere—the lean-to and down by the river. We can’t find him.”

Her nervous rambling was stopped by the tightness in her chest that choked off her breath. Why had Ben run off?

Why wouldn’t he? She made for a horrible parent.

The cabin door banged. Eli jumped off the stoop, his boots sliding on the gravel. He looked as worried as she felt.

“Do you know where he went?” Isaac directed his question to Eli.

“He knocked into me in the middle of the night. Said he was cold and was gonna sleep by the fire. I didn’t hear him go out.

I woulda stopped him.” Eli’s chin wobbled a bit before he jerked his head aside and hardened his jaw, hiding his emotion from Isaac.

He turned back, blasting Isaac with a glare, arms crossed. “He didn’t wanna leave.”