Reaper's Justice by Sarah McCarty Read Free Book Online Page B

soothed by his “You made the decision.”
    “You didn’t give me all the information I needed.” A glance over her shoulder showed the guy’s jaw was set and his eyebrow cocked.
    “Yet you made the decision anyway and now trouble’s come calling.”
    Trouble? She didn’t need any more trouble. She said so.
    He shrugged. “No one really cares.”
    She cared.
    He turned the horse around so it faced the way they’d come.
    She looked back over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”
    “He’d only run us down.”
    A man who could run down a horse? She swallowed. “Who is he ?”
    Billings’s hand on the top of her head turned hers. In front of them, at the edge of the woods, stood something—someone—tall, big, and bulky. Menacing. Every horrible tale she’d been told of the demons and monsters that lived in the hills flooded her mind.

4
     
    “HELLO, ISAIAH,” BILLINGS SAID.
    At least this demon had a name.
    The only response was a grunt that didn’t cross the line from beast to man. Adelaide rubbed her thumb over her worry stone, taking comfort from the smooth, rhythmic motion. Closing her eyes, she imagined she was home in her bed with its crisp white sheets, white-and-yellow-checked quilt, and fluffy pillows. She imagined she was warm and cozy under the covers. Safe.
    “You’ve come looking for this, I suppose?” Billings’s hand in her hair snapped her eyes open. With a tug, he tipped her head back.
    A growl rumbled out of the gloom and the figure took a step forward.
    It was a man, she could see that now. Tall, broad shouldered, and unkempt. His hair was long and wavy, brown touched by sun at the ends swept back over his shoulders and anchored there by his dark Stetson. His beard was thick. Dark clothes covered his body down to his black boots, but nothing could hide the power beneath. Something gleamed dully in his hand. A knife? A gun? Whatever it was didn’t matter. It was always the man holding the weapon who radiated the threat.
    As she studied Isaiah, Adelaide had the absurd thought that everything about him was a shadow. But then he took another step forward, and she took back the thought. He was substantial and she knew him. She’d seen him flitting away from her back door a time or two. A shiver that had nothing to do with cold went down her spine.
    Reaper . An icy rivulet of rain slid down under Adelaide’s hair, following her spine. It was bad. It was cold but no colder than the chill that shook her at the term. They were both Reapers. Isaiah was one of those strange men who had moved into the area last year after the end of the War. No, last year right before the War had been declared over. Shadowy figures whom the townsfolk feared and to whom they attributed all wrongs since they’d first noticed their arrival. She had, too, at first, but her own past had made her conscious of how rumor could distort fact. As time went on, she’d noticed that the number of wrongs had gone down since the Reapers had taken up residence in the hills. So when she’d seen the man hanging around outside her door, she’d started leaving out baked goods for him, the ones that hadn’t sold. It seemed such a paltry thing to do, she’d do the same for a stray dog, but she’d been compelled to do it.
    The War Between the States had been horrible to read about, but until the men had started to come home at its end, she’d never been able to appreciate the depth of the horror. So many of the men who’d come back to Montana after the War were broken, shadows of what they’d been. Some were missing limbs. Some missing their minds. Some both. Some had been heroes for the South. Some for the North. But when they rode home, it was hard to see beyond the shattered looks to the heroism.
    Then the Reapers had come. Men the townspeople rarely saw but who patrolled the perimeter of their valley. Silent guardians who had yet to ask for anything in return except to be left alone. Who was to say the Reapers were