Reaper's Justice Read Online Free

horse bucked. “Jehosephat needs some manners.”
    Controlling the horse with a shift of his weight and tension on the reins, Billings growled, “He’s got plenty of manners. Now settle down.”
    The last rumbled out of his chest as more sound than enunciation. Too scary to ignore.
    “I can’t.” She pulled at the hopelessly trapped material. “It’s not decent.”
    He glanced down at her leg and then back at her over his shoulder, his mouth lifting in a sardonic twist. “Lady, showing a bit of leg is the least of your worries.”

2
     
    IT WAS THE LEAST OF HER WORRIES.
    Eight hours later, sunburned, thighs chafed, frozen stiff, and tied to a tree while the men made camp, Adelaide had to agree with Billings’s earlier comment. Showing a bit of calf was no longer one of her worries. It had long since fallen off the list. She was far more concerned with freezing to death and being raped. Well, and maybe that someone would make her eat the mess they’d pulled from their dirty sacks and were calling food.
    She wanted to do nothing more than close her eyes and go to sleep, but if she did, she might not wake up. Or she might wake up to being attacked. Both options terrified her, so she forced herself to sit upright, and kept herself that way through sheer force of will. For how much longer she could maintain it, she didn’t know, but it was going to be longer than this minute and definitely through the approach of yet another of the bandits.
    It was the squint-eyed, dirty boy. He wasn’t really a boy, he just had a youthful face and one eye that wouldn’t open all the way, which gave him an absurd appearance of concentrating when she’d already established through observation that a high mental capacity wasn’t his strong suit.
    Let him walk by. Let him walk by.
    The hope wouldn’t die, even when his gaze locked with hers and a lecherous smile took up residence on his pimply face. After they’d retrieved her from the Comanche raids, her cousins had made her promise never to give up hope should she be stolen again, but they hadn’t told her how hard it was going to be to hold on to that hope in the face of overwhelming numbers of the enemy, exhaustion, and the threat of death. They hadn’t told her because they hadn’t imagined it could happen. Not with them protecting her. But two years ago she’d managed to finagle her way to town, put down roots in her bakery, and take the first baby steps out of the past because even after all these years she hadn’t given up hope that she could have the life she wanted. No. A body didn’t give up hope. They held on to the possibilities that lurked around the corner. Just as she was doing now.
    Squint-eye stopped in front of her and held out a grubby, half-eaten piece of jerky and smiled, revealing rotten teeth. “Want some?”
    Keep your head down and keep your strength up.
    Her cousin, Cole’s, words this time. He’d taught her a lot of things about fighting and survival. The number one rule was not to become weak, so when her chance for escape came, she could take it. She forced herself to smile. It felt more like a pathetic twist of her lips, but it was all she had. “Thank you.”
    Squint-eye held the jerky closer. The rank odor of his body didn’t cover the rancid odor of the meat. It was turning. Her stomach heaved as she thought she saw something moving in the jerky. The smile slipped out of her control, fading away. She forced her mouth open. She had to keep her strength up. The food was yanked away.
    “Ask me to touch your breasts and you can have some.”
    The shock of his words, their meaning, froze her. No one had ever talked to her that way. She didn’t even know men did talk to women that way. She didn’t like it. She most definitely wasn’t going to cooperate with such childish taunting. “No.”
    He waved the meat as if it were a special prize. “You’re going to get mighty hungry if you don’t learn to cooperate.”
    “Really?” She cocked