I thought it was time I posted a JaSam fic.

Rated: M

Disclaimer: I don't own them, I just like writing about them

Summary: AU JaSam Historical Fic

Wanted: dead or Alive...That's the bounty on Jason Morgan's head after brutal murder of his friend and his family. Fleeing Texas, Jason Morgan returns home to Redemption, Wyoming hoping to find peace from the nightmares that follow him.

Discovering a son he never knew, and living down the deadly reputation that follows him, Jason struggles to find the man his mother raised though his soul isn't ready to heal. Then he meets Sam McCall, the woman who just might be the key to his salvation.

If he can manage to clear his name and stay alive...

Dead Or Alive

by: Danigirl

Prologue

Truth.

It hit him like a bullet in the chest, hot and searing bringing with it the blazing edge of terror. The first genuine emotion he'd felt in more than ten years.

Knowledge.

He was going to be too late.

He didn't need the thick black billowing smoke rising up into the sky to tell him. Even as he leaned forward in the saddle urging Jilly, his roan mustang, faster it would change nothing. Dust kicked up around the swiftly galloping hooves, the rhythmic pattern matching the hammering of his heart.

"Come on, girl," he begged, noting the flicker of an ear as if in acknowledgement of his plea. For days they rode together seeking out the threat that he had been hired to bring to an end. Word had arrived at the ranch that the Matos brothers had come out of hiding near the border. He and Sonny had talked it over, there were plenty of men at the ranch and Sonny felt it safe for him to ride out. There had been a sinking feeling in his gut the morning he left, but Sonny had assured him that everything would be fine.

He had rode away, watching Lily on the porch holding their newborn daughter Adella, while Michael stood with his father trying to be strong and brave like Sonny. His friends. People he hadn't expected to care about during his employment here. It was supposed to just be another job. A few weeks fending off rustlers, using his gun and his name to protect the Corinthos family. Only they had wormed their way into his life, and weeks turned into months and this place had seemed like home for a while.

Now both man and horse were exhausted as they raced back, chasing a rising sun that would prove elusive, but he would ask this of the horse that had been his companion for many years.

Though he knew deep to the depths of his cold blooded soul that it was too late.

The burning structures finally came upon the horizon. They were almost specks in the distance but he knew the damage was catastrophic. With each step they grew closer and the desperate nightmare became reality. If only he had been a day earlier. If only he had found that last bastard and put a bullet into him sooner.

He would have discovered the remaining Matos brother was on his way back to the Diamond C and that his friend and employer Sonny Corinthos was in trouble. Javier Matos was the deadliest of all four Matos brothers and he had turned his back on that rabid animal for one second too long.

Tugging on the reigns brought the horse to a halt in the middle of the utter devastation. The house, the barns, everything was gutted and burning down or smoldering from the final embers of the flames that had yet to be extinguished. Bodies, the men that Sonny had hired, fallen where bullets had ended their lives. Some of them still had loose grips on the guns in their hands. Loyal to the very end.

Feelings he had thought long gone began to swim behind his eyes. It wasn't the thick smoke making his eyes burn. It wasn't the smoke closing his throat, making it hard to breathe, making his chest so tight that each beat of his heart ached. It wasn't the stench of death that choked him.

Without even realizing, he had dismounted, leaden legs pulling him toward the main house, demanding he bear witness to yet another failure.

That's when he saw the flimsy white material.

So out of place in this scene of death, it's purity stained by the smear of dirt and the obscene red stain of blood, he could do nothing but stare at it. Oblivious to everything, the residual rumbles of flame, of tinder breaking and falling to the ground, even the roar of the blood rushing in his ears. All he could do was stare at that flapping white.

The image blurring with the past.

Blood.

Death.

Her soft brown eyes staring sightlessly up at him as warm blood pulsed from the horrific wound gaping in her chest. The sounds of weeping around him, his own voice broken as he called out to her, helpless and unwilling to accept that she was gone. All his fault. He should have been here protecting her and now she was dead and it was all his fault.

Something, Jilly's neigh perhaps, jerked him out of the past, making him shake his head to clear it. Had he learned nothing over these years? Anyone who ever tried to get close to him, ended up paying for that mistake.

It all started with Robin. Sweet gentle Robin who had loved him and he had loved with an innocence that he hadn't known he possessed. Now she was gone, and nothing would bring her back. Nothing could make her senseless death right. Not even hunting down the bastards that had murdered her and killing them all could change the fact that it was his fault she was dead.

Neither could all the men he'd killed over the years, the barren life he led, the exile from everything he'd ever once held close to his heart. His now empty, cold heart. Nothing could change it. He was dead inside. Now Sonny and his family, who had taken him in and tried to make him one of their own, had paid for trusting him.

And as he looked at Lily's nightgown flutter in the dawn breeze, he was reminded that death followed him everywhere.

It was only a matter of time until death finally caught him and exacted its due.