Linda Castle - Heart Of The Lawman

“Promise you will rock her at night.” Marydyth’s eyes scanned the innocent face, lingering on her upturned nose and dewy soft lips. “And—and just pick her up and hold her for no reason during the day. Will you do that, Victoria?”

Rachel’s babyish cheeks were growing pink from the scuffing wind. Marydyth cursed herself for being so selfish. She had thoughtlessly begged Victoria to bring Rachel to the train depot in this weather—how she hungered for just one more minute to look at her baby. “Please help her say her prayers. Tell me that you’ll help her say her prayers, Victoria.”

“What kind of prayer would a gold digger like you know?” Victoria spit the words at Marydyth in a voice so bitter it singed the edges of Flynn’s soul to hear it. As he watched from under the protective brim of his hat, Victoria swiveled her body, forcing her shoulder between Rachel and Marydyth’s outstretched hand. The younger woman’s anxious fingers reached for the child but all she grabbed was a tuft of white rabbit fur accidentally plucked from the collar of the baby’s red velvet coat.

“Let me hold her. Please, Victoria. Let me feel her in my arms—one last time?” Marydyth begged.

Flynn unconsciously inhaled and looked heavenward. The scent of a storm was on the ocher coattails of clouds scudding from the hills.

“I wish there was sun,” Marydyth muttered. “Her curls shine like crimson-kissed gold in the sunshine.” Marydyth’s fingers managed to touch one silken curl. She leaned closer and tried to kiss the top of Rachel’s head but Victoria stepped away.

Victoria was not going to give an inch—not even today, the last time Marydyth would ever see her child.

“Before you get on that train, Marydyth, there is something I want you to take with you into the walls of Yuma. Let this be your company for the rest of your life-and I pray to God it will be a long one.” Victoria shuddered and took a deep breath, as if her hatred were about to consume her and render her mute. “I would’ve seen you hung for what you did to my boy. Hung and left for all the world to see.” Her voice cracked. “But I couldn’t do that to my only grandchild. I will raise Rachel to be a lady, but not for you. No. I will do it because she has Hollenbeck blood in her veins.”

“I know you don’t believe me, Victoria, but I loved J.C.,” Marydyth whispered.

“Loved him so much you stabbed him in the heart.” Victoria took another step backward.

Marydyth did not deny the deed.

Victoria trembled beneath the dark veil. “You are a murderess and a liar. Just think about this every night before you go to sleep in that place. I will do everything in my power to erase your mark upon this child. She will never know that her mother is the Black Widow.”

Marydyth could not hold back the strangled sob. Rachel fastened chubby, dimpled fingers over the black lace on her grandmother’s Cisele collar.

“Mama.” She gurgled.

Hot, dry tears stung Marydyth’s eyes, choked off the air in her lungs.

So, this is justice?

“Please, Victoria, tell her that I love her.”

“I’ll tell her nothing about you.” Victoria’s biting declaration carried on the grit blowing into Flynn’s eyes. He didn’t want to watch, didn’t want to listen, but he had no choice.

“Marydyth, I want you to suffer as I have suffered. Your child will be alive, but to her, you will be dead—as dead as I can make you. Nobody in Hollenbeck Corners will ever mention your name again, I’ll see to that.” The black netting on her mourning hat fluttered in the wind.

Flynn felt the current of anguish, hatred and love flowing between the trio of Hollenbeck women. It was like a tainted river that threatened to overflow its banks.

It was a pitiful thing to behold, these women tearing at each other. It was gut-wrenching and full of sorrow, and something that a man like Flynn had no belly for. His nerves felt raw. They had been that way since the trial.

He drew hard on his cigarette and wished the scene over soon.

A small crowd of people had gathered near the station. Angry murmurs and the sound of a mob made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. He crushed the stub of his cigarette into the ground with the toe of his boot.

Somebody threw a rock. It hit the side of the locomotive with a hollow ping. Flynn peeled back the edge of his coat and drew his side arm.

“Black Widow!” somebody shouted.

“Murderin’ Mary, I hope you burn in hell!” yelled another bodiless voice.

“Mrs. Hollenbeck?” he said.

Both Victoria and Marydyth turned to look at him.

How the hell did I get tangled up in this mess?

It was a bitter irony that he had been drawn into this tragedy simply because he was the only lawman available to come to the Arizona Territory.

Pitiful.

The crowd sounds grew more agitated, like a swarm of riled yellow jackets. Flynn kept his gun at waist level, his finger on the trigger.

“Ma’am, we’ve got to go,” Flynn said.

The train belched out a cloud of steam and the slithering vapor swirled around Marydyth’s skirt. The relentless wind broomed along the street, driving back the crowd with stinging pelts of sand.

Flynn turtled into the warmth of his sheepskin coat. It didn’t help. He hadn’t been able to shake the chill that had seeped into his soul when he’d heard the verdict.

For the first time in his career justice didn’t taste sweet. It tasted sour, and grew more foul each time he looked at the baby Victoria held in her arms.

It was a damn poor thing to be taking a woman to Yuma. And even worse knowing she left behind an infant.

Flynn shoved the sympathetic thoughts aside. He had no call to feel anything one way or the other about it.

He wore a badge—nothing more or less. The jury had had their say. Marydyth Hollenbeck’s fate was sealed. Nothing this side of heaven could save her from the hell that waited within the prison gates of Yuma.

The train whistle blew, which sent an icy finger trailing down Flynn’s spine.

“Ma’am.”

Marydyth’s shoulders stiffened inside the smoke-gray wool coat. Invisible fingers of wind pulled at her hat, which merely rested on her head since she wasn’t allowed a hat pin.

Flynn narrowed his eyes against the sting of blowing sand and watched her turn. No bandido or high-line rider had ever managed to stare him down, but enduring the gaze of Marydyth Hollenbeck’s red-rimmed blue eyes rattled him. His pulse ticked off the time as they stared across the mile-wide gulf between lawman and prisoner.

“It’s time,” Flynn said gruffly. “You better get on the train before this turns ugly.”

She grimaced.

Flynn kept his gun pointed into the crowd and extended his hand to help her aboard, but she jerked back. The iron manacles locked around her slender wrists clanked together in a discordant peal.

“I don’t need your help to get where I’m going. I managed it all by myself this far and I’ll see it through to the end,” she said. She grabbed hold of her skirts, climbed the steps to the train and never looked back at the jeering crowd.

Territorial Prison, Yuma.

April 1889

Marydyth fell onto her hard cot. Exhaustion and heat sapped her strength and dragged her toward sleep.

But she never rested

Night was the worst time in this place that men had named Hellhole. Night was when the specters of her past came to visit

She tossed and turned on the hard mattress, willing them to stay away for just one night.

But her guilt would not abate. Andre’s face floated before her. His eyes were hollow, dark sockets but his lips twisted into a hideous grin. Then Andre’s face shifted and changed.