Autumn Sage Read online

  Autumn Sage

  This marshal will protect his witness from everything—including his own wounded soul.

  * * *

  US Marshal Sebastian Spencer is as coldly determined as the criminals he tracks. He’s spent years perfecting his iron control because when he unbends, things break and people bleed. But no one has ever tempted him to unbend as much as the witness in his latest case: a woman he could never think of having.

  * * *

  Isabel Moreno wants her life back, though that’s impossible when the outlaw who attacked her remains on the loose. She agrees to help with the hunt for the fugitive, even though the marshal is the most unsettling, and intriguing, man she’s ever met.

  * * *

  When more than just one outlaw threatens Isabel, Sebastian must keep her closer than ever, closer than he’s let any woman come—and the most dangerous threat of all might be to their hearts.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Genevieve Turner

  ISBN: 978-0-9906298-2-5

  Digital Version 1.0

  Cover photographs © Hot Damn Stock | hotdamnstock.com and Creative Travel Projects | shutterstock.com

  All rights reserved.

  For K—my middle child, who feels deeply and is often misunderstood, just like Isabel

  Chapter One

  San Jacinto Mountains, California

  Autumn, 1898

  US Marshal Sebastian Spencer watched the man across from him fidget—and waited. Waited for that flutter of hands like the last flicker of a butterfly’s wings before it succumbed—that sign that his subject was fully focused on Sebastian, rather than his own anxiety.

  There it was. A tight clasp of the arms of the chair, one last shift in his seat, then a release of his hands and a relaxing of his shoulders.

  Mr. Jace Merrill was ready.

  Sebastian waited one moment more, raising a finger to the marshal’s badge pinned to his breast. Ostensibly the motion was to adjust it, but in reality it was a reminder of the difference in position between himself and his subject. This wasn’t an official interrogation, but Sebastian always preferred to keep the upper hand.

  “The sheriff ought to be here soon,” Merrill offered.

  Perfect. Merrill was volunteering words without prompting. Silences unsettled most people—they needed to fill that void with something, anything. The voids that Sebastian created, either due to his heft or stillness—or his innate nature—were especially unsettling to others.

  Keep quiet long enough and they’d sing like birds in the end.

  After catching the three a.m. mail train from Los Angeles, followed by a jarring ride up the mountain, Sebastian’s temper should have been thin. A lesser man’s would have been. But Sebastian’s temper was commanded by himself, not circumstance.

  He flicked a glance around the back room of the blacksmith’s shop. “How often is the sheriff here in Cabrillo?” he asked.

  Likely not often, if the sheriff had to use this as an office when he was in town.

  “We’ve seen him twice since he was appointed,” Merrill answered. “With Sheriff Obregon wounded and the outlaw on the loose, the new sheriff could show more interest in catching the man.” The words curdled as they came off Merrill’s tongue.

  “And your sister-in-law wounded as well,” Sebastian offered neutrally. “How is she?”

  Tension stitched through the set of Merrill’s shoulders. “Isabel? She’s…”

  Sebastian let the silence continue, at ease in it.

  “She can speak again,” Merrill finished.

  Odd choice there. A more direct probe was needed. “She must be overset after such an attack.”

  “Overset?” Merrrill’s laugh was leaden. “No, not Isabel. Angry might best describe her. You’ll see when you meet her.” A pause. “I have to tell you, the entire town is angry. We can’t find this bastard and the new sheriff has no interest in doing it himself. If anyone besides a lawman captures him…”

  Sebastian sighed inwardly. Vigilantism would not be tolerated. This outlaw was going back to Los Angeles intact. Judge Bannister would accept nothing less. Justice would accept nothing less.

  Therefore neither would Sebastian.

  “If anyone besides a lawman captures him, he will be immediately brought to me,” Sebastian warned. “Please ensure that anyone… angry about the situation understands that.” He paused, then said pointedly, “Your father will make certain any vigilantism is punished.”

  Merrill leaned away, eyes narrowing, jaw tightening. “Is he coming here?”

  Interesting. Although Merrill had reached out to Judge Bannister, it seemed that the thirteen-year estrangement between the two wasn’t to be repaired.

  “No.” Sebastian studied Merrill closely. Merrill was very much a younger version of his father—dark hair, blue eyes, rather stern set to his mouth. But a looser, freer version of Judge Bannister. As if Merrill had found contentment in his long years outside of his father’s shadow.

  Merrill didn’t remember Sebastian, but Sebastian remembered Merrill. Merrill had been William Bannister, Jr. then, fifteen years ago in Los Angeles. Judge Bannister had dragged young Willliam to Sebastian’s father’s funeral, where Bannister had wept at the loss of his fellow defender of justice.

  Sebastian hadn’t wept. Not then, not ever for the late Judge Spencer.

  His impression of Merrill had been one of youthful sullenness, so it was no surprise the boy had run away from home two years later.

  It was a surprise that he’d surfaced in this little mountain town. His first contact with his father had been to request aid in apprehending the man who’d attacked his sister-in-law and her fiancé—the Deputy Sheriff for the area.

  Judge Bannister had ranted over the reappearance of his son, raged over Merrill’s choice of wife—such things that Sebastian wouldn’t repeat to the lady’s husband, things about her heritage and her people unflattering in the extreme—but once he’d seen the outlaw named in his son’s letter, his response to the request could be nothing but affirmative.

  Cole McCade. Yes, a marshal would certainly have to be sent for him. One Judge Bannister could trust completely, both to get the job done and to be discreet about the entanglement of son and judge and outlaw.

  And so Sebastian was sent to Cabrillo.

  “Good,” Merrill said, the strength of it emphasizing how far away he wished his father.

  Sebastian returned to the situation at hand, tugging his cuff a hair back into place.

  “You were one of the first ones to find them after the attack, weren’t you?” he asked briskly, the better to pull Merrill’s attention away from Judge Bannister.

  “Yes.” Merrill’s focus sharpened on him once more. “It was three weeks ago. Catarina—my wife—we were… talking, when we heard the shots.”

  Talking. They’d been arguing, more like. Newly married and arguing—that was a new wrinkle. Estrangements between father and son, husband and wife—such things marred a person’s inclination toward truthfulness.

  Sebastian disliked wrinkles.

  “Señor Moreno—my father-in-law—and Felipe, the foreman, and I went to investigate.” A shaky breath left him. Clearly, the man was unused to the aftereffects of violence. “We found them maybe a half mile out of town. Sheriff Obregon was bleeding from a belly wound—we didn’t expect him to live. There were two dead outlaws and signs of a third. A trail of blood led to the high country.” He shook his head. “We searched and searched, all of us, and never
could find him.”

  Not surprising. These men weren’t trained to bring in a fugitive. They knew the country they were searching, but hunting a man was very different from hunting stray steers. Especially a man the likes of Cole McCade, who had years of experience evading the law. At least, if the rumors whispered about him were true.

  “And your sister-in-law? Miss Moreno?” Sebastian reminded him.

  Merrill colored and dropped his head a fraction. “She was in the brush, insensible. The one who got away, he’d dragged her there. Her clothes were… mussed.” He pointed to his neck. “Her throat had livid prints.”

  The embarrassment at having to confess this crawled across the man’s skin.

  “You were the one who found her?”

  The other man nodded, without elaborating on what else he might have noticed about the wounded woman.

  Merrill had said she wasn’t overset—she was angry. Given the discomfort itching through Merrill’s frame, Sebastian wondered if he ought to ask the next, obvious question.

  No, he’d save it for the sheriff. Asking a man if he thought his sister-in-law had been raped would be taking this interview too far.

  “How long did you pursue McCade?” Surely they hadn’t been searching all this time.

  Merrill’s unease slid into frustration. “A week. It was all we could afford—we all have stock to send to the stockyards in the valley. My father-in-law and I are already behind.”

  Of course. In a rural area, fall was the time to prepare for winter. If one didn’t, one died. Sebastian hardly took note of the seasons himself, there being no need in Los Angeles.

  “Well, I’m here now,” he assured the other man.

  Assurance was not what crossed Merrill’s face—it was suspicion. “My father sent you solely because I asked, did he?”

  So Merrill didn’t recognize the McCade name. He’d no idea why Sebastian had really been sent.

  The judge had never admitted the reasons directly—he’d given Sebastian a speech about justice being served, with no mention of the political rivalry that had stewed for years between him and Cole McCade’s father. Even Judge Bannister didn’t dare speak of such things within the hallowed walls of a courthouse.

  Sebastian didn’t give a fig for the unspoken political aspects—a man had gunned down a sheriff and attacked a woman. He had to be brought in. Powerful father or no.

  “Your father wouldn’t want a dangerous man running free,” he answered, “escaping the judgment of the law.”

  And if bringing in Cole McCade and having him stand trial for attempted murder ruined the political hopes of his father, Edwin McCade, so much the better.

  Merrill didn’t need to know any of that. The judge had chosen Sebastian for his silences as much as his tracking skills.

  Before Merrill could press the issue further, the door opened to reveal a man with pale, thinning hair, wearing a careless aspect as he entered the room, a badge pinned to his wrinkled shirtfront.

  Sebastian rose to shake his hand, the man’s grip as lazy as his demeanor.

  “Sheriff Williams,” the man said in introduction. “You must be the marshal.” Insolent and overfamiliar.

  If Sebastian allowed himself to dislike anyone, he’d dislike this man, with his sloppy manners and clothes. Thank goodness he’d eradicated such weaknesses from his nature.

  “Merrill, you can go now,” Williams tossed over his shoulder. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Merrill sent the sheriff a sour look, which the other man missed, nodded to Sebastian, and was gone. No doubt off to spread the word of Sebastian’s arrival. Hopefully he would include Sebastian’s warning about forming a lynch mob.

  Williams sat at the desk and began pushing around some papers. He might have been looking for something, but his movements were too purposeless.

  “While I am glad to have you here,” Williams began, “you likely wasted a trip up the mountain.” He continued to shuffle the papers.

  The silence stretched, but Williams wasn’t a master of it like Sebastian was. The sheriff wouldn’t stop moving, wouldn’t allow the stillness to grow.

  Amateur.

  “Did I?” Sebastian asked, right before he sensed Williams preparing to speak again. He’d show Williams that he would set the pace.

  “You’ll have a hell of time catching him,” Williams said. “It’s been three weeks since the attack. Who knows where he is now?” He shrugged.

  You ought to know.

  Sebastian had once successfully tracked a man using a six-month-old lead. But he wasn’t one to boast. “I’ll do my best.”

  Of course, he’d tracked that man to Sacramento—tracking a man through a city was easier. Each brush with a fellow human left a lingering imprint that could be sought out with proper questioning.

  In this wild terrain, whatever memories the mountains might hold would be unknown to anything human.

  “They ought to have sent the man who brought in Lashlan.” The sheriff chuckled, which he wouldn’t have done had he actually met Lashlan. “I bet that son of bitch could capture anyone.”

  “That was me,” Sebastian said levelly.

  “Oh.” The sheriff’s eyes went wide, the indolence leaving his frame. “I heard that was a six-hour gun battle.”

  “Five,” Sebastian corrected.

  “You waited him out for five hours?”

  “I recited poetry to pass the time.” And some spiritual exercises and choice bits of Seneca—he hadn’t spent the hours in idleness. “May I see your report?”

  Williams located the report beneath a stack of papers—the third such stack he’d searched.

  What was Williams doing? That report—this entire case—ought to have been foremost in the man’s mind and papers. And why wasn’t any of this filed properly? No wonder the townspeople were annoyed with him.

  Sebastian read through it quickly, never letting his frustration at the contents burn higher than a flicker.

  Nothing that he hadn’t learned from two minutes’ conversation with Jace Merrill.

  Useless. He set it aside.

  “Do you want me to write out a copy of that?” Williams offered.

  “No. When was the last time you interviewed Sheriff Obregon?”

  “Oh, right after I was appointed, about a week and half ago. He can’t hardly talk—gut shot, you know—so it was pointless.”

  “You haven’t been back?”

  “There’s no need.” Williams looked surprised at such a suggestion.

  There was every need. Which the sheriff ought to know.

  “Miss Moreno?” Sebastian let his finger tap the arm of his chair once, hard. “I assume you’ve interviewed her as well?”

  “Oh, I talked to her.” Williams rubbed at his forehead as if a headache had come on. “Frigid isn’t near cold enough to describe her. She behaved like we were in a boxing match. She can talk better than Obregon—but she certainly didn’t want to.”

  Interesting. He wondered if that was because Williams bungled the interview—or if she were naturally difficult.

  “Angry might best describe her.”

  A sheriff so wounded he couldn’t speak and a witness so angry she wouldn’t—that promised difficulties.

  Sebastian couldn’t heal the sheriff’s wounds, but he knew exactly what to do with irrational, unrelenting anger: smother it with frigid calm.

  A possible excuse for the lady’s anger remained, one the sheriff hadn’t mentioned. The one Sebastian hadn’t wanted to ask Merrill about.

  “This wasn’t in your report,” Sebastian said, “but I must ask: Was she raped?”

  He didn’t quail at the word—he didn’t quail at anything anymore.

  “She said no,” Williams replied, “but that’s likely just missishness. I asked her several times, trying to get her to be honest, but she always said no.”

  “Several times?” Sebastian might not quail at the word, but he wouldn’t have used it several times when questioning a victim
.

  “Yes,” Williams answered. “She had to have been. Although why she won’t admit it, I don’t know.” The man appeared completely insensible of his own boorishness. Or of how admitting such a thing might affect a lady. “Perhaps she’s worried the news will get out. But the whole town knows.”

  Or perhaps you got her back up with your clumsy questioning.

  That would be a mystery to solve once he met the frigid Miss Moreno.

  “I see,” he replied, hoping to put an end to the subject.

  Williams leaned in, imparting a confidence between them. “This town—there’s a serious vigilante element. The sheriff before Obregon was murdered. Now that Obregon’s been hurt, they’re tetchy. Ready to be set off by the slightest spark.” He shook his head. “Although, what were they expecting? They put a Negro behind a sheriff’s star and he gets killed, so they put a greaser behind the next one—and he gets shot. Ought to have had a white man from the very beginning.”

  Like yourself? Sebastian refrained from pointing out that the marshal here was half-greaser, as Williams so charmingly put it.

  “I’d like to stamp out any troublemaking,” Williams went on. But it wasn’t righteousness holding the muscles of his face taut—it was fear.

  The sheriff had no control over matters and he was frightened.

  “I’ll deal with any mobs that form,” he assured Williams. Better than you ever could. “First, I have to find this outlaw.”

  “Of course,” the sheriff said. He tilted his head consideringly, a kind of dumb cunning coming to his eyes. “You know, you don’t move.”

  As if Sebastian were a statue Williams was studying.

  “What?” Sebastian heard his voice drop in register, only just kept his internal flinch from transfiguring into true emotion.

  “You don’t fidget,” Williams explained. “You hardly seem to breathe.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t intentional on Sebastian’s part—it was required, a stretch of time needed to keep hold of his self-control. Perhaps Williams saw more than he gave him credit for.