The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

It didn’t matter what they’d done to him; he couldn’t let them touch her. “You have to go,” he told her, trying to pull his head away from the gentle touch of her hands. “And you gotta go now. It isn’t safe here. Jot Gunter’s here, and the Jefferson Guard is too.”

“It’s worse than that,” Esta said, already working on his ropes while Maggie pulled some salve from her pouch. “They’re working together—the Guard and the Syndicate. We saw men wearing the Guard’s medallions just now on the grounds.”

North batted away Maggie’s fussing. “Even more reason for you to get out of here right now.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” Maggie told him, her voice shot through with steel.

North tried to focus on her with the eye that wasn’t swelling shut. All he wanted to do was look at her, because whatever danger they might be in—whatever might happen next—she’d come back for him. That had to mean something. “I shouldn’t be glad that you’re here.…”

Maggie’s eyes softened a little. “I never should’ve let you walk out that door.”

Something loosened in North’s chest. “I never should’ve asked you to choose.”

“There are things I have to tell you—”

“You can tell me later,” North told Maggie. “Right now you have to get out of here. When they dumped me here, they were talking about some kind of raid. You have to leave before you get caught up in it. Esta, you have to take her and—”

“We’re not leaving without you,” Esta said. “But you’re right. We do have to get moving. George is working on distracting your guards, but he’s not going to be able to hold their attention for long. Can you walk?”

“George?” North was trying to keep up. “How could you possibly know George?”

“He found us when we were outside Pickett’s tent,” Maggie explained. “When he told us they’d taken you—” Her voice broke before she could finish.

“Mags?” North reached up to cup her face gently with his hands. “Come on, sweetheart. Don’t you go crying over me. I’m fine.” He’d be a lot better when she was safe.

She lifted her glasses enough so that she could wipe the tears from her eyes; then, with a sniff, she looked at him, serious as she’d ever been. “I didn’t mean it, you know. I want that life you were talking about. I want to find a place where we can start over. I want all of it, and I’d do anything to have it—”

“It’s okay, Mags,” he said. “We’re going to figure this out.”

“Did you manage to give Pickett the serum?” Esta asked as she worked on the ropes.

North met Maggie’s eyes and saw hope burning there so bright it nearly blinded him. How was he supposed to tell her?

“Well?” Esta asked when he didn’t immediately answer. “Is the dagger here, or—”

“It’s gone,” North said, the frustration of the discovery still churning in his belly. “Pickett hasn’t had the piece for more than a year.” He tossed the ropes off his legs and tried to get to his feet, but his right ankle screamed under his weight.

“Did he say what he did with it?” Maggie asked. She glanced at Esta with some silent meaning that North didn’t understand.

“He sold it a while back.…” North explained what he’d learned from the cowboy. Pickett hadn’t wanted to part with the piece, but he wasn’t given much of a choice when he’d been approached by a young white businessman from out east. The way Pickett told it, he was given the choice to sell the dagger to the guy for a pittance, or the guy would have him arrested for stealing it.

Pickett had known his word wouldn’t mean anything against the easterner’s, considering the colors of their respective skins. He’d wanted to do right by the old friend who’d sent it to him for safekeeping, but he hadn’t been able to see how spending his life in prison was going to help anyone.

“Did Pickett get the guy’s name?” Esta asked.

North frowned. “Some New Yorker. John or Jack something.”

“Jack?” Esta asked, her voice going oddly hollow. “Tell me it wasn’t Jack Grew.”

“That might be it,” North said.

“Jack Grew isn’t ‘some New Yorker,’ ” Esta told them. “He’s the one in St. Louis who attacked Harte. He also happens to be here. In Denver—we saw him coming out of Pickett’s tent a few minutes ago.”

Every inch of North’s body felt like it had been battered and bruised, but his mind was clear and his determination steady. “If this Jack Grew character is here, then we can get the dagger from him.”

But Maggie shook her head. “No, Jericho.”

“Yes, Mags. Don’t you see? We have another shot at getting an artifact, just like you wanted,” he said. Now that she’d come back for him, there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to keep her. “Let me do this—for you.”

“Jericho, look at you.” Maggie’s voice broke again, and she pressed her lips together, pausing to collect herself before she went on. “None of this ever would have happened if I’d listened to you earlier. You and I could be on a train to somewhere safe, a place where no one knows us and no one is looking for us. You were right. We could have gone off and spent whatever time we had together. Instead, we’re here, with you beaten and bruised near to death. When I think about what could’ve happened—” Her voice broke.

The tears were welling in her eyes, and all North wanted was to make them stop.

“What if I hadn’t run into George?” Maggie asked. “You might have disappeared tonight, and I would never have known what happened to you. And for what? Nothing. Because I’m chasing a dream that isn’t even mine. It hasn’t been mine for some time.” She wiped her eyes and looked straight at him. “When you walked into my life, that was it for me, Jericho Northwood. The only dream I’m going to chase now is the