There's No Place Like Rhodes (Book 2)

Back to Old Habits

It was feeling like Arthur had gone back in time. Here he found himself once again, locked up in a goddamned cell after a bar fight. Hell, he half expected Hosea to waltz in, brandy bottle in hand as a peace offering, ready to charm the policeman into letting him go and scold him afterwards for being such an idiot.

But Hosea was never coming to bust him out again. He ain't got no one close enough to do that these days except Charlotte.

Arthur was a complete fool when it came to her. He wanted to protect her, but he knew she was stubborn, more than him sometimes. Why the hell had he thought growling and snapping at her would work? That showing his ugly side for a moment would frighten her off? It hadn't worked in the past and it didn't work this time neither.

He'd startled her, sure, but then a certain resolution had settled over her features and he ain't had the words to stop her after that.

Shit, he hoped she weren't out there getting herself into trouble over him. If she was wise, she'd gone straight back to saloon and stayed in the room 'til morning. But he knew her better than that. Charlotte loved him, didn't make sense why.

Goddammit. What the hell had he been thinking? He'd just sacrificed his quiet life with Charlotte to help out Karen, who hadn't seemed too grateful over it.

Karen...

Arthur sighed. She'd slipped his mind, not only these months, but in the time there'd still been a gang to go back to. He'd tried to help Karen at camp after Tilly's warning, but she'd been one person too many for him to keep track of once he got involved with all that shit in the end with Dutch.

He suspected she'd turned fully to drink because of Sean's passing and maybe...maybe she just couldn't get off it. Despite that reasoning, they'd all lost people, friends. Arthur understood her pain, but she had to get herself out of it first. After that, he didn't know.

The worst of it was, Karen still could be a lost cause and he'd thrown away his last chance of normality for good.

Arthur lifted his head as he heard a train whistle. The sound of it had his spirits plunging. He and Charlotte were supposed to have been on that train.

An hour later, as the sun's rays glared through the windows, Officer Pitts woke up from the bed across the room. He stretched, put on his boots and hat and made his way over to the desk.

Pitts glanced at the place where Arthur's poster had been hanging before Charlotte snatched it and frowned, likely realizing something was missing, but not knowing what.

Arthur sat up on the cot. "Hey, buddy, you wanna let me out now? I didn't kill no one." This time.

"I can't put my finger on it. I know you. I know I do." Pitts scratched chin and threw a question at him. "You ain't one of Ike Scalding's bounty hunters, are you?"

Them boys that planned on taking Sean in before he, Javier and Charles got involved. "Thought all of them was dead."

Pitts narrowed his eyes. "You weren't part of old O'Driscoll's gang, were you?"

"No." The accusation offended Arthur, but the bastard was getting warmer.

Pitts snapped his fingers. "I know!"

Arthur straightened, but tried not to react much more than that as Pitts opened a drawer in his desk and shuffled some papers around. When he turned around again, he was clutching another goddamn bounty poster.

It was an older notice than the one Charlotte had stolen. This one had been put out after he, Karen and Javier had held up the Bank of Arizona, in Tucson. Years before Blackwater. Damn. How had one reached so far east before he even got here? And how many of them posters were there in the world?