Something Blue

Chapter 39

Katherine

Gabe will kill me.

That thought ran on repeat in her mind during the long days she spent at the Tuckers' kitchen table, her ribs bound up and a pot of black sludge coffee at her hand, mapsand sketches spread out on the table before her.

It was all she could think while she sat in a stool and let Amelia trim the long, distinctive sweep of her golden curls until they gathered about her shoulders in a manageable mop.

Gabe will kill me.

It tormented her as she stood out back with Josh and fired bullet after bullet, first impacting high and to the left, then low and to the right, and finally dead center; as her confidence grew and a thick red callus developed on her trigger finger and the air was filled with the metallic plink of her rounds striking the cans.

It kept her up at night, curled beneath soft sheets and staring at the ceiling with Isobel safe in her arms. Every night, Isobel cried herself to sleep, begging Katherine to take her back to her pa. Damn him for making her do this—hold their weeping, inconsolable daughter and feign a peace that was so, so far from the rage that baked her heart from within and the determination that made her fingers tingle with anticipated retribution.

Gabe will kill me.

By Friday night, the thought was a steady hum in her ears as she sat for one last meal at the Tuckers' kitchen table, cleared now of the maps and the evidence of their plans. She didn't have much appetite, but she forced herself to eat. Aside from an ache in her side and a few fading green bruises, her body had healed from the trauma she had suffered.

Her heart, however...

She ate heartily, and then saw Isobel onto the wagon that would carry her out of town, under cover of darkness and a fleet of guards, led by Josh and Amelia themselves. Then she went upstairs and packed her bag with a stoic, steady, machine-like efficiency.

Sometime past nine, she pulled on the trousers Amelia had altered to mask the curve of her hips, and a worn old shirt that Josh had worn as a boy. She pushed her feet into scuffed leather boots, strapping Gabe's knife to her calf beneath the leg of her pants and buckling his gun around her waist. She tucked what remained of her hair beneath a wide-brimmed hat, and then stood in the mirror, surveying herself from all sides.

She could pass for a boy...

Melissa saw her off, with a stoic expression and a powerful, lingering hug while the horse Josh had loaned her huffed and shuffled behind her.

"Are you sure?" she asked as she stepped away. It was not the first time she'd asked, and she wasn't sure if her friend's response would even matter, but she had to give her the chance. Her actions would likely affect her family..

"It was our idea," Melissa said, squeezing her arm. "Remember?"

It had been, but the second Melissa had sat down on the edge of Gabe's bed an hour after his arrest and started grumbling about men with their twisted sense of honor and self-sacrifice, making unsound decisions in the name of protecting their women, Katherine had made it her own.

Gabe will kill me.

God, she hoped so. Because if he killed her, that meant he was alive to do it.

It was half past ten when she waved farewell to her dearest friend and swung up into the saddle. Damn, though, if it wasn't easier in trousers than in skirts. Even the split riding skirts she'd taken to wearing when she lived with the Tuckers were an encumbrance compared to the comfort of trousers.