Wanted Read Online Free Page A

kill Nick?”
    â€œLet’s just say his chances will be a lot better if you cooperate.”
    Morgan saw acceptance settle in her eyes. But not surrender. She had simply weighed the odds and folded on this one hand, hoping she would have a stronger hand on the next go-around. He warned himself not to underestimate her. Not now, not in the future.
    She opened her mouth, allowed him to place the ball of cloth in it, and then bind it with a strip of fabric from Nick’s shirt. He took her arm, leading her out of the cabin into the woods behind it. He found a likely tree, strong but not too thick, and forced her to sit, first tying her ankles together and then her already bound wrists to the tree.
    For the first time Morgan sensed fear in her—and it wasn’t for herself. He couldn’t guarantee that he would take her brother alive and he wouldn’t make a promise he might not be able to keep.
    It all depended on Braden now.
    Lori frantically tried to undo the strip of cloth that tethered her to the tree. She’d already worked at the gag and given up, telling herself not to panic.
    She hated the man who had forced this upon her, had made her obey him. But she hadn’t doubted for a moment his threat to shoot Nick. One look at those cold blue eyes, and she had believed. Dear God, she had believed. The Ranger’s eyes were hard and merciless in a way that she had seen before in lawmen.
    She’d run into two kinds of lawmen: the corrupt ones and the ones who wore righteousness like a cloak. She detested both.
    If only Nick survived the day, she could find a way to free him. No way could this bastard take her brother all the way to Texas, not with her on his trail, not if she could get word to Papa and Andy and Daniel Webster, her papa’s best friend.
    All that would be unnecessary, though, if she could free herself and warn Nick. But the knots that the Ranger had tied so easily wouldn’t give. The more she tried, the more secure they became.
    She leaned back against the tree, trying to think. Could her muffled attempts to warn her brother be heard? Or should she just wait until she could take the lawman unaware? Dr. Braden’s Medicine Show had once employed a trick shooter as a prime attraction, and both she and Nick had practiced with him. Nick had been twenty, she only ten, but she’d had good eyes and a natural talent for it, and her budding skill had made her a prime attraction with the show. She had continued practicing over the years, for self-defense and simply because she enjoyed target shooting, doing something she excelled at.
    The Ranger knew her name. She only hoped he didn’t know some of the rather unusual talents she had, that both she and Nick had.
    She thought only fleetingly of his similarities to Nick. They had startled her at first. She had tried to keep her surprise to herself, not wanting to give anything away to a man she instinctively knew would use any weakness. But the familiarity had been unsettling. The color of the deep-set eyes, the facial structure, the wide mouth. She wondered if the Ranger’s beard hid the same indentation in the chin that Nick had.
    She tried the bonds again, tensing her wrists, feeling the cloth cut into her flesh. The Ranger had handcuffs with him; when he hadn’t put them on her, she’d immediately realized he was saving them for her brother.
    She couldn’t bear the thought of Nick going to jail, or worse, being hanged. The Braden family had never had much money—their father usually ended up giving away what little they brought in—but they’d always had one another, a deep affection and loyalty binding them firmly together. There had never been any neighbors or friends, because the Bradens constantly moved from one town to another. Only Daniel Webster, a dwarf who had a giant’s heart, and an occasional entertainer often down on his luck, had been taken in and accepted as part of the