Desperate Hearts by Alexis Harrington Read Free Book Online Page A

down. Jace could not tell who had shot him. He
might have, or it could have been the boy.
    When the air began to clear, McIntyre lay
howling and swearing on the floor. He gripped his shattered,
bleeding right hand.
    “ You son of a bitch! Look
what you did to me!” he yelped, adding to the chaos.
    The racket scraped Jace’s nerves. He kicked
Mclntyre’s boot. “Shut up that goddamned caterwauling!”
    Jace whirled and saw that Kyle was down,
too. He sat slumped against the rough counter, his face white, and
his eyes blank and staring. He still gripped his gun with tight
fingers but he didn’t move. Jace dropped to a crouch next to him
and grabbed his shoulder. He looked dead.
    “ Kid! Damn it to hell, kid,
why didn’t you get out of the way?” he demanded.
    Slowly, the boy turned his
head to look at him. "My name is Kyle ," he muttered.
    Relieved, Jace almost laughed. “Where are
you hit?”
    “ My arm, I think.” He
looked down his left shoulder at his upper arm where a bullet
ripped his coat. “It’s burning like fire.” His eyes drifted closed
for a moment, and a sheen of sweat broke out on his thin
face.
    Jace considered the sleeve that was growing
soaked with blood and shook his head. “Where’s the doc in this
town?” he shouted to the shop clerk.
    From the depths behind the counter, the
clerk replied, “We don’t have one anymore. He got killed in a card
game last year.” His voice shook so much, Jace had trouble
understanding him.
    He made a noise of impatient disgust. He
thoroughly regretted ever stopping in this place. It seemed like
his mistakes were compounding by the day. “It figures. All right,
then,” he said, and hauled Kyle to his feet. “I’ll see to
this.”
    He put an arm around the boy’s waist to keep
him upright, and was struck again by how slight he was.
    “ I can walk,” Kyle
protested, and pulled away. Swaying, he rested against the wall and
cradled his injured arm at the elbow.
    Jace leaned over to look behind the counter.
“Come out of there—it’s all over,” he snapped at the clerk. Even
Kyle had more guts than he did. “I want some bandages and a bottle
of whiskey.”
    The store had no bandages, but the rattled
clerk produced a package of a dozen new linen handkerchiefs and a
dusty bottle of expensive rye that had obviously been in stock for
years.
    While Jace tied up Kyle’s arm with a
temporary bandage, McIntyre finally stopped yowling long enough to
regain his feet.
    “ You’ll pay for this, you
bastard!" he vowed as he staggered out the door
    Jace wanted to get out of Cord just in case
Lem lost interest in the proceedings at the saloon and decided to
come looking for his partner.
    “ Can you ride?” he asked
Kyle. He didn’t like the kid’s pasty color.
    The boy nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of
here.”
    “ Right.”
    * * *
    They left town at a gallop, but when no one
followed they slowed to a trot.
    Jace broke with their established custom and
rode next to Kyla. She could feel his eyes on her but she couldn’t
turn to look at him. She was too drowsy and exhausted—it took all
of her concentration to stay in her saddle. The landscape of
endless beige dotted with scrub zoomed in and out of focus, and the
horizon bounced around as if it were not attached to the earth.
Juniper’s gait made her arm throb; it felt like a thousand hot
knives were stabbing it. She was chilled everywhere else, though,
and beginning to tremble with the cold. If she’d had tears, she
wouldn’t be able to stop them. But she had none.
    Jace said if they were lucky, she had only a
flesh wound, that the bullet had plowed a deep furrow in her arm
but had not lodged. That way, he told her, he wouldn’t have to dig
the lead out with a knife.
    Shot. She’d been shot. She considered it
with numb surprise that would probably sharpen after the shock wore
off. Seldom in her life had she known such fear as when that
filthy, louse-ridden McIntyre pointed his gun at her. Now