The Last Renegade Read Free Page B

“Mother of God,” he muttered, looking back at Kellen. “This man’s been gutted. Who did this?”
    “He says he doesn’t know.”
    “Anything you can do, Doctor?”
    “Put this away.” Hitchens held out the unused portion of bandage to Kellen. “Take out the smallest syringe and give it to me.”
    Kellen followed the instructions, eventually taking the doctor’s place beside Mr. Church and using his hand to keep the man’s guts from spilling onto his lap. Hitchens wiped blood from his fingers and then filled the syringe from a vial of clear fluid that he extracted from the bottom of his bag.
    Kellen saw both resignation and determination on the doctor’s face. It wasn’t so different from what he observed in the man who wanted to be Nat Church.
    “Morphine?” asked Kellen.
    The doctor didn’t answer. Without a word of warning or apology, he plunged the point of the syringe into his patient’s thigh.
    There was only waiting after that. Nat Church eventually closed his eyes. He slept. He died. And none of those who stood as witness to his end had an explanation for it.
    They agreed that the bloody tin star the doctor found pinned to Nat Church’s vest might account for some part of the answer. Kellen Coltrane was left to wonder what accounted for the rest of it.

Chapter One
    Bitter Springs, Wyoming Territory
    Lorraine Berry wondered about the man arriving today. Allowing her thoughts to drift into the great unknown of possibilities and unforeseen consequences was as close to daydreaming as she ever got. The work facing her was considerable, and she was too practical to stray from it for long. Besides, she had deliberated at length, sometimes out loud, and she had done it for weeks before she began the correspondence with the gun for hire.
    It had been a risk writing to him, but at the time it seemed that not writing was the greater risk. It troubled her that she no longer had the same firm sense that she’d made the better choice. Of course, it could be that if she’d done nothing, she would still be plagued by niggling doubt, and then she would have lost the opportunity to hire him. In spite of the fact that she answered
his
notice, Raine could not imagine that a man with his specialized talent was ever without work for long. In fact, Raine had supplied more information about her circumstances than he revealed about his own. Somehow this madeher feel more comfortable about the arrangement, as though he were choosing her, not the other way around, and that he could be better trusted because of it.
    It was not until his last letter that she learned who he was, and then because she requested it. He never signed his previous correspondence, so it showed a certain amount of confidence in her when he finally shared his name.
    Best regards, Nat Church.
    Raine looked up from arranging bottles behind the mahogany bar and caught her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. Her wry smile was mocking, which was exactly as it should be. Nat Church? She might have ended their arrangement if he had penned that at the outset.
    It wasn’t that she believed it was his real name; it merely troubled her because it demonstrated a singular lack of imagination. Now if he had signed his name as Aaron Burr or John Wilkes Booth, that would have hinted at wit, however dark and ghoulish.
    Raine’s self-mocking smile deepened as she addressed her reflection. “You are most assuredly twisted, Raine Berry.” She raised a hand to her hair. “Look at you. When exactly was it that the cat dragged you over the backyard fence?” One of her tortoiseshell combs had lost its moorings and was no longer serving the intended purpose of keeping her hair close to her head. When she was still a young girl and knew every sort of thing was possible, she held fast to the notion that her dreadful carroty curls could be tamed. As a woman full grown, she knew better and accepted as marginal consolation that sometime between four and twenty-four the