Page 53 of A Dangerous Heart
It was Jack. Merritt’s husband. He sent a concerned look between Danna and Isaac. “I was just coming back from lunch at home. You look like you’re working. How can I help?”
Danna quickly filled him in, and Isaac didn’t miss the narrow-eyed look Jack sent him.
Jack’s right hand had gone to the revolver strapped at his waist. His intentional glance at Isaac’s lack of belt and weapon was enough to make Isaac flinch.
Jack and Merritt had only been married for six months, but the man had been folded into their family. Knew Isaac’s history but not why he’d left the Marshals.
Isaac felt a beat of trepidation. Was he leading the love of Merritt’s life into a situation he wouldn’t survive?
But it was too late to protest as Danna tipped her head and indicated they should keep on.
The leatherworks was empty save for a young woman behind the counter. She glanced up curiously as Danna and Isaac entered for only a moment and then ducked back outside to the boardwalk where Jack kept watch.
Chas waited at the corner of the next street up. When he caught sight of them, he tipped his hat at his wife.
“That’s the signal,” Danna murmured.
Chas motioned to the saloon. The other deputy must be inside.
“Think it’s him,” Chas said as they joined him out of sight of the swinging doors. “But you’ll want to take a look to be sure.”
“We can go through the back,” Danna said.
Chas pulled a face, muttering about how the owner wouldn’t be happy.
Isaac found himself sandwiched between Danna and her deputy husband as they moved through the small kitchen area and a hallway that led to the front bar.
Every instinct was on high alert as Isaac put his back to the wall, ready to peer through the door when Danna cracked it.
He was attuned to every sound. Soft footsteps from upstairs. Hadn’t been able to keep himself from clocking all the exits.
He almost felt like he was on the job again.
But it was the bolt of pure terror that hit when Danna reached for the door that brought reality crashing back in.
He couldn’t be the reason someone else got killed.
By the time the sun cast long shadows through the doc’s front-room windows, Ben had gone back to sleep, and Clare had wound herself up tighter than a coiled spring. She’d never been in the middle of one of Victor’s heists, but he’d often read aloud the newspaper accounts of his crimes. His voice had filled with a maniacal glee as he’d recalled the bankers they’d beaten and locked inside bank safes to suffocate. The dry-goods stores looted and ransacked while the owner sat tied to a chair at gunpoint, their livelihood destroyed. Victor’s men were cruel and degenerate.
Isaac…Her mind flashed to him carrying Ben up the cliff. What if he was out there right now, bleeding from a bullet Lyle would delight in putting in him?
What was taking so long?
As if in answer, the door eased open with a soft creak, and Isaac’s tall form stood on the threshold. Tall, strong, and alive.Her immediate urge was to run to him and throw her arms around him. Instead, she hugged her waist. Everything was so off-kilter since the wedding.
“Are you all right?” She scanned him from head to toe.
He nodded, his eyes pinned to her face.
She breathed in deeply. “And the marshal? Her deputies?”
“Everyone’s fine, Clare. But Danna needs you to come down to the jail and identify Victor’s man.”
Hattie slipped into the room.
“Hattie will sit with Ben.”
She couldn’t refuse, no matter how much she wanted to. She was enveloped in numbness as she trailed Isaac outside, down the boardwalk, and to the marshal’s office, which was apparently also the jail.
