Page 52 of A Convenient Heart
I’m not your John.
He was a no-good coward. One who’d brought trouble to her door.
He was walking in front of the dance hall when two man-sized shadows separated from the building, jumping toward him.
Jack’s stomach plunged as he recognized Morris’s hat, though he couldn’t make out the man’s face in the darkness.
Jack reached for his gun, his anger at what had happened to Merritt spurring him on?—
But Morris didn’t wait. He slugged Jack in the stomach. Pain splintered through his insides and he doubled over.
Morris wasn’t done yet. He followed with a fist to Jack’s right cheek, making him see stars.
The memory of Merritt thrown to the ground, her tiny gasp of pain, shivered through Jack’s mind.
He roared, throwing himself at Morris. He landed a punch to the man’s face, heard a satisfying crunch.
But he hadn’t counted on being outnumbered and took an elbow to the mouth from somewhere beside him.
Jack tasted the coppery tang of blood, felt warmth slide down his chin. His arm was wrenched behind him and then trapped there as Morris leaned into Jack’s shoulders and pinned him against the door. He had a good thirty pounds on Jack, and suddenly, Jack couldn’t breathe.
The second man hovered behind Morris, his eyes narrowed. It was Burns. Jack’s worlds collided as the man smirked a twisted smile.
“Henshaw wants his five hundred bucks back, you cheater.” Morris breathed the words into Jack’s face, his breath foul with stale cigar smoke. He reeked of whiskey.
“It was two hundred,” Jack gasped with what little air he had left. “And it’s gone.”
He tried to get in a punch at Morris’s midsection, but the other man was too close, and Jack had no leverage.
Jack’s hand slipped toward the revolver in his belt.
“Watch him,” Burns growled.
Morris knocked Jack’s hand away.
“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing with the little schoolmarm,” Morris said, “but I want the money.”
Jack struggled harder, even as his breath locked in his chest made dark spots dance at the edges of his vision. “It’s gone,” he repeated.
“You got twenty-four hours to get it back,” Morris said. He shoved against Jack’s windpipe and then released him slightly. “Otherwise, your pretty schoolmarm is the one who gets roughed up.”
He shoved Jack, knocking him into the doorknob. The door gave way—maybe it had already been open—and Jack couldn’t gain his balance, as lightheaded as he was. He fell, knocking his hip, and a sharp pain shot through his elbow as he hit the ground. His hat flew off, landing somewhere in the darkness.
He struggled for breath as the two sets of footsteps faded away. Every inhale burned.
What was he going to do? They’d threatened Merritt, and Jack couldn’t get that money back.
He’d won it fair and square. No cheating involved.
But a hired gun like Morris wouldn’t care about that. He’d take out the declared debt in flesh.
And Jack couldn’t let that happen.
He pushed up to his knees, his entire side aching. He wrapped one arm around it, was close enough to one of the tables to drag himself to his feet with the other.
The clouds must’ve parted. Moonlight streamed in the open doorway, and Jack glimpsed the jagged tears through the three backdrops he and the children had so painstakingly painted.
They were shredded, as if they’d been slashed with a knife.
