Much like her shoes, nothing she wore truly fit. He hadn’t noticed at first, and he suspected no one would were they not up close and given the opportunity to do so.
Now that he had her next to him, he could see the pains she had taken to make herself fit into this costume. The bodice was not a good fit, though he suspected that was not exactly a punishable offense by her employer. If anything, he would have preferred his girls all but spill out of their garments.
Her skirt was a bit too short. Her shoes, too large. Even the feather in her hair, one dyed a garish shade of red, was inserted into her mass of dark curls at a precarious angle. It drooped rather awkwardly, threatening to fall free at any moment.
Not only was she unaccustomed to this mode of dress, but she had done so in a hurry. This was not her costume.
Either it was her first day on the job, or this was not her job at all. If that were the case, what was she doing here?
Why was she doing it with him?
Relax. Control yourself. He had a tendency to let his imagination run wild when he ought to be at his most analytical. It was a weakness which he had believed to have trained himself out of, it had been one of his top concerns in his early days at the agency. Look at the facts at hand, do not draw too many wild conclusions. One wild conclusion led to the next, and the next, until an agent found himself as far from the truth of the matter as night from day.
“I didn’t wish to make you uncomfortable,” he murmured by way of apology.
She raised her head, showering upon him a sunny smile, albeit one with an edge. “Not at all,” she replied.
Now he recognized the flirtatious young woman he had met in Baltimore. The sudden change in her was enough to make him question whether that persona was nothing more than a façade. Something she could switch on and off.
There were two glasses before them, he finally noticed, though he was unaware of when the barkeep had left them. He suspected this was how they plied men with liquor, leave it for them, trust that they would eventually wish to refresh themselves, then watch as they ordered another. And another.
Mason lifted one of the two short glasses and tipped it in Rachel’s direction. “Won’t you join me for a drink?” he asked, doing his best to sound congenial and relaxed. No matter what sort of game she was playing, he must make it appear as though she had him fooled.
Her hesitation was clear, her eyes darting back and forth beneath lowered brows as if she searched for a way out of the situation. He very much got the sense that she had already taken things farther than she had planned, and had no notion of how to proceed. “I do not often like to join my new friends in drink.”
“And why not?” He looked about them, taking note of no fewer than three young women in similar dress sharing drinks with their customers. “The others appear to be enjoying themselves. Perhaps a drink might loosen you up a bit, make you a little more likely to believe me good company.”
“I already consider you good company, and I am enjoying myself.” If that were true, he would not much like seeing her when she was unhappy, nervous, or in pain.
“Well, I find it easier to enjoy myself even more after having taken a drink.” He raised the glass to his mouth, watching her intently all the while. Her fingers worked the edge of her glass, turning it around and around in place without lifting it from the bar.
The moment the amber concoction reached his lips and passed between them, he knew he had nothing to fear. It was so watered-down that a man with his constitution and his tolerance would have to imbibe at least a dozen or more such drinks to begin feeling intoxicated.
“Come now,” he teased. Was he truly teasing her? Even in such a dire situation, was he pushing her? Testing her? Seeing how far she was willing to go to keep this charade in motion?
She cleared her throat. She squared her shoulders. A look of determination came over her face, turning it into something hard and nearly unrecognizable. The same hunger he had first noticed upon her approach had returned and was stronger than ever.
She had something else in mind.
“What I would prefer,” she purred, “is your company in a somewhat more private location.” Her gaze traveled up the stairs set along the far wall, then further up toward the rooms which all businesses such as what she alluded to took place.
Rooms which customers were technically and legally not supposed to visit. These rooms were, on paper, reserved for the girls who made their living at the saloon. Rooms in which they could dress, refresh themselves, rest.
Was hearing her correctly? Was she inviting him upstairs to one of those rooms? There could be no other explanation.
“You… want to go upstairs?”
How she blushed. The natural color of her embarrassment showed darker even than the rouge on her cheeks. Nonetheless, she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered, the hand which gripped the still-full glass tightening until he feared she would shatter it. “That is precisely what I had in mind.”
Ordinarily, were she truly one of these girls, he would have refused and might even have left the establishment.
Now, he considered it. He did more than consider it. He suspected she had landed upon a fitting solution.
Yes, he needed to get her alone if there was any hope of explaining his true purpose in Carson City.
“That sounds all right, then. I would like to see what your establishment offers upstairs.”
While satisfaction glowed from behind her hazel eyes, she blushed more fervently than ever, and now, she began to tremble. “You have no idea how much that pleases me,” she murmured, though her body betrayed her by contradicting her words.
“Lead the way.” He slid from his stool, prepared to follow her.
She was in a terrible rush, nearly running through the crowded first floor, weaving between the packed tables with her head down all the while. She had none of the brassy, brazen confidence of the other girls. Whether or not their confidence was put on, he would never know, though he suspected it was. He suspected this was all nothing but a shiny, attractive false front.
Once again, his experience with the agency would not allow him to be fooled.
They climbed the stairs, coming to a narrow hall lined on both sides by wooden doors. One looked just the same as another, with nothing to set them apart. She walked slowly, deliberately, until they reached the fourth door on their right.
It was this door which she opened, revealing a rather depressing site. A bed barely large enough for two people to lie in without one or both of them hanging partly off, a stand on which sat a basin and pitcher. A plain mirror hung on the wall above the basin, nothing like one of the gilded, gleaming things he had seen mounted on the walls downstairs.
This room, like the others, was not decorated with beauty in mind. Not even the cheap, flashy sort of beauty he’d already observed.
This room had other purposes.
“Won’t you have a seat?” She went to the window, drawing closed the heavy, dusty drapes. This plunged the room into darkness, and for one heart-clenching moment he thought she might actually intend to do what was normally done here. Was he that wrong about her?
Rather than follow instructions, he remained standing, though he now removed his hat. “I believe there is something we must set straight first.”
“Is there?” She remained near the window, her back to him. “And just what is that?”
“You asked downstairs after the nature of my business here in Carson City,” he began. He turned his hat in his hands, his fingers moving around the brim. What was this? Nerves? Since when did he allow nerves to get the better of him? He had infiltrated some of the most dangerous groups up and down the eastern seaboard.
Yet here he was, no better than a young man alone in a room with a woman for the first time. His tongue tied, while beads of sweat began making themselves known along the back of his neck, beneath his starched collar.
“I did. Though I suspect I know more than you think I do.”
&nb
sp; His eyes widened. “What do you mean?” Did he dare hope she remembered him? And why did he hope? Why didn’t matter so much whether she remembered him or not?
She spun in place, and an instant he understood what she had been doing with her back to him all that time. She had been taking hold of a pistol.
A pistol which she now leveled at him, its muzzle aimed somewhere around his midsection.
He dropped his hat on the bed, holding his hands before him in a gesture of placation. “I mean you no harm—”
He had no chance to continue.
Not before the gun went off.
8
It was like something out of a nightmare.
While she had been determined to do this all along, it was one thing to know there was no choice but to shoot a man and another to actually do the shooting.
It was one thing to know a man would bleed, but another to watch him bleed.
No matter how dangerous the man in question was. No matter how she knew in the very marrow of her bones that such action was necessary, the results of the action still turned her stomach and set her to trembling harder than ever.
There was no time for squeamishness.
Smoke curled up from the pistol, filling her nose with the acrid smell.
The Tall Man’s hand covered his shoulder, where a patch of red spread over white linen shirt front and into his tan coat. His mouth fell open, his eyes meeting hers. Shock, pain, disbelief. All of summed up in one plaintive stare.
There was no time. Men and perhaps even women would flood the room and moments. She had to act quickly.
The man fell onto the bed, crushing his hat in the process while he rolled onto his back, she tore the feather from her hair and shook her curls loose. She tore open her bodice, shredding the lace and satin. She even went so far as to slap herself, just as hard as she could. Stars danced before her eyes, but she welcomed this. It meant she had done the job right.
“What have you done?” His voice was both pained and breathless, his neck craned as he raised his eyes to meet hers. He was in agony, sweat already pouring off him. The wound was dangerously close to his heart.
She was glad of it. She hoped he bled to death, but not without experiencing a great deal of pain first.
She advanced, still aiming the pistol at him in case he decided to attack. “You don’t think I know who you are? You don’t think I know what you came here to do?”
“You have it all wrong.” He shook his head, one blood-covered hand moving down to the inside pocket of his coat. The hand trembled, likely from pain and shock. “Look in my pocket. There’s a badge. I was not here to hurt you. I was here to help you.”
She thrust her hand into his pocket and withdrew the badge of which he spoke. Mason Murphy. McKendrick Detective Agency. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “That’s me,” he gasped, then groaned.
Feet banged along the stairs, down the hall. Toward her.
His eyes slid closed, the blood still spreading, now staining the bed.
She dropped the badge, shaking until her teeth chattered. “No. No, no, no!” How could she have been so wrong?
The door flew open, and she found herself face-to-face with her brother-in-law.
He took in the sight of the man on the bed.
Then, he looked at her.
And did a double take.
“Rachel?” he gasped, incredulous. “What have you done?”
“I…” She looked at the man. She looked at Rance. “I don’t know.”
“You’re holding the pistol in your hand.” In an instant, the gun was no longer in her possession, but rather in his. He tucked it into the waistband of his dungarees, then called out down the hall. “Get the doctor!”
He looked at Rachel before turning his attention to the bleeding man, bending over him and pressing two fingers to the side of his neck. “What are you doing here? Why are you dressed the way you are?”
Rachel looked down, now fully aware of her shameful state of undress, coupled with the way she had further exposed her bosom by tearing the bodice apart. She made a feeble attempt at covering herself with her hands. “My clothing is in another room—” she began, hopeful.
Her hope didn’t last long. “I can’t let you go get it. I can’t let you out of this room, sister-in-law or not.” Rance glanced up at her while his hands worked the buttons of Mason’s shirt. If his name truly was Mason. Was the badge even real? “If I didn’t smell the gunpowder, I would swear this was a dream. It makes no sense.”
It made no sense to her, either.
The only way she could survive the crippling guilt she’d suffered upon reading that badge was to tell herself it was all a lie. The badge wasn’t real, he might have stolen it from a legitimate detective. Some way to make his search for her seem on the up and up. People were more willing to answer questions when they saw a badge.
Or was she simply lying to herself? Had she shot an innocent man?
“Is he…?” Rachel cowered in the corner, covering herself, watching in horror as the man’s life slipped away with each pump of his heart.
Rance shook his head, his hands already covered in the man’s blood. “I don’t know. Shot through the shoulder. Did he try to hurt you?” His voice was tight when he asked the question, the mark of a man dreading what he might hear.
It was clear that her charade had been convincing, or that she had at least found a way to convey the point she had tried to make. That he had tried to have his way with her against her wishes.
And she had had no choice but to shoot.
Only that plan didn’t seem as foolproof now, after the fact, as it had before.
Namely, because she had not imagined someone from her life finding her in this condition. She would now have to explain why she was displayed so, why she was at the saloon. Why she had not told anyone of her plan before she attempted to enact it.
She could say none of this to him—not that he had the time to listen at present, too busy trying to save a man’s life to care for the specifics of why she’d acted so. “I—I thought he was going to hurt me—” she began, but he cut her off.
“We need a doctor. What on earth is taking him so long?” Rance got up from the bed, going to the open door.
From her vantage point, Rachel could see several of the girls gathered out in the hall, including Lorna, who looked on with the same wide eyes, the same shock expression, as the others. The poor girl probably feared Rachel bringing her into this.
It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
“Excuse me, pardon me, let me through.” A well-dressed middle-aged man appeared, leather bag in hand. He removed his hat, tossing it aside. While rolling up his sleeves, he took one look at Rachel and one look at the bleeding man and seemed to assess the situation in the blink of an eye.
The fact that he assumed she was one of the girls who worked downstairs set her face to burn with shame, no matter that she knew the truth of the situation. Just the thought of anyone assuming her to be that sort of woman caused her no end of embarrassment.
“Get him stretched out on the bed,” the doctor barked, and Rance did as he asked. “No pillows beneath his head. I want him lying flat. Open the drapes so I can have some light, then bring the oil lamp nearer the bed. I’ll need towels, and boiling water for my instruments.”
One of the girls in the hall called out this last bit of instruction while Rance did what he could and Rachel merely cowered, her horror growing as she watched this unfold.
Did she want him to survive, or did she want him to die?
It all depended on who he truly was, she surmised.
With the doctor now looking over the wounded man, Rance had nothing to do but turn his full attention to Rachel. He stood quite close to her, leaning in slightly until his mouth was near her ear. “You know there is only so much I can do for you in this situation,” he murmured, one eye always on the situation across the room. “I can’t let you get away with this, not until we know all th
e facts. I’m so sorry.”
Rachel began to tremble harder than ever. What did he mean? She pulled back, searching his face for answers. He looked grim, grimmer than she had seen him in months of their acquaintance. “You mean…?”
He nodded with a deep frown. “You’re going to have to come with me.”
Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open in surprise. “But… but I was only acting in self-defense.”
“And what were you doing here, to begin with?”
She opened her mouth, eager to explain, but snapped it shut an instant later when she thought over what a confession would mean. No, there was still no explaining, not here. Not in public, where anyone could hear.
She looked down at the floor, ashamed. “I can’t tell you that.”
Rance grumbled, muttering a curse under his breath. “Where have I heard that before? Don’t tell me it runs in the family, because I am not certain I can handle another such situation. Why you girls find it so difficult to tell the truth to a lawman, I will never know.”
“This is nothing like my sister’s case,” Rachel whispered. “Nothing at all.”
Rance looked her up and down, then averted his eyes and cleared his throat. “Well, you’re right about that,” he replied with a wry chuckle.
She flushed more furiously than ever, straining to hold the bodice closed. Would her shame ever end?
“What else do you need, Dr. Hawthorne?” Mr. Lawrence hurried into the room, holding a stack of towels in one arm and a kettle of steaming water in the other. He turned, looking over his shoulder at the girls who still watched from the hall. “Why are you all standing about? You have work to do. The men downstairs are in need of companionship, and if they leave on account of having lost it…”
This was enough to spur the girls into action, sending them scattering and hurrying toward the stairs. Only Lorna lingered, chewing her lip and looking over the scene. Rachel supposed she owed her extra for what it would take to have her costume repaired.
Mr. Lawrence wrung his hands, shaking his head. “I have never had something like this happened here before. The man is a stranger, new to town. I have certainly never seen him.”
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