Defiant Heart by Tracey Bateman

brother and sister join the train.
    â€œWant me to go out and look for her?” Sam’s tone was carefully noncommittal, but there was just enough of a knowing shift in pitch to raise Blake’s ire, bringing him back to his senses.
    He shoveled in the last of his bacon and shot to his feet,still chewing. He swallowed down the bite with a swig of coffee. The fire hissed as he tossed the remains of his cup into embers. “I’m a wagon master, not a headmaster. I don’t have time to look after a bunch of young’uns. We best finish breaking down camp and move out.”
    He wanted to put as much distance between Hawkins and the wagon train as he could, as quickly as possible.
    Â 
    Fannie woke with a start to the nauseating combination of manure and sweet-smelling hay. The sun shone brightly through the cracks in the barn and streamed into the opening in the canvas of the wagon, where they’d spent the night. The brightness stabbed her eyelids with the familiar pain of after-beating headache. Stretching was out of the question with the pain in her sides. And her shoulder hung from her body with stubbornness, so stiff and sore that moving it nearly squeezed a cry of pain from her swollen lips. Mindful of the twins still sleeping around her, she remained silent through sheer force of will.
    Voices rose from outside the wagon. A man’s voice, mocking, menacing. Fannie’s heart raced. Had Tom already been discovered where they’d left him, tied up and gagged on the floor of his home? She took a quick glance around the wagon. Kip was just beginning to stir, and Katie’s angelic face registered deep sleep still. But Toni was gone.
    She pressed closer to the canvas flap and pulled it back barely enough so that she could see what was going on outside. Toni stood face-to-face with a man Fannie recognized as Arnold, one of George’s cronies and someone Tom hadcomplained about losing money to in more than one game of chance.
    â€œLeave them alone, Arnold. They’re just kids.” Toni’s voice quaked. Fannie knew Toni had been on the receiving end of Arnold’s brand of discipline at one time or another like the rest of George’s girls, so she understood her fear.
    Still, Fannie’s emotions lifted with relief that it was Arnold and not Tom who had found them. But in the second after that thought, she knew how dangerous their situation had become. George’s thug had beaten every fancy woman in town more than once and regularly tossed rambunctious drunkards out of George’s tavern. Regret surged through her. She should have known better than to let Toni tag along. Tom would have been too stupid and too tied up to find them anytime soon. But Arnold…how could she have not considered Arnold?
    â€œYou sayin’ you’ll come back without a fight if I let Fannie and the twins go?”
    Fannie held her breath.
    â€œThat’s right.”
    An evil chuckle filled the barn. “I don’t need your bargains. Yer comin’ back either way. And so are them young’uns. I bet ol’ Tom’ll be willin’ to pay a pretty penny to get them back.”
    Toni’s voice shrilled as she called him a foul name.
    A loud crack filled the barn as Arnold reared back and let his hand connect hard with Toni’s cheek. She hit the ground before he pulled back his hand.
    Fannie’s own body still ached from last night’s beating, but she couldn’t sit by and let Toni go through the same thing.Singed with anger, she started to reach for the flap. Giving no thought to her course of action once she came face-to-face with the thug, she could barely see through her anger. A hand on her elbow halted her. Kip pressed cold metal into her hand. Fannie’s eyes widened as she looked down at the Colt. She hadn’t even thought about them needing a gun.
    She nodded her approval to her brother just as a rat-faced man poked his head inside the