The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Everyone had to choose light or dark. Some, like Harding, chose dark to hide their own evil. Others, like Stern, just liked the dark. Like Batman. It was his natural element, the place where he belonged. He liked danger. He liked killing. There was something fascinating about watching a life slip away. Where did it go? Was there a soul in those bodies? Or was it just over? Sometimes he thought he could see the soul leave, if the life he took had been lived in the light. When the innocent died, he believed in souls, but the feeling didn’t last.

  Unlike Harding, he didn’t seek out victims, but he didn’t turn aside when circumstances delivered them to him either. It was all in the details, and someday he’d know. One way or another, he’d know.

  “Farley doesn’t have RABBIT,” he said, taking out a cigarette and lighting up to avoid seeing Harding’s histrionics.

  To his surprise, Harding said calmly, “So, what? As long as it’s gone.”

  “And if it’s offered for sale?” Stern blew a cloud of smoke in Harding’s direction, because he knew it annoyed him. “Be a pity if rumors came back to bite you on the ass.” That got a reaction from him.

  Harding headed for the decanter and slopped more into his glass. When he’d downed half of it, he aimed for the couch, stumbling slightly as the liquor went to his head. He rubbed his face. “How do we get it back? We have no idea who did it, do we?”

  “No.” Stern strolled behind the bar and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Farley says their faces were completely covered. I do have contacts in certain areas. They’ll be watching for it to come onto the market, and they’ll notify me if it does.” He stubbed out the cigarette. A tiny spiral of smoke rose from the ashtray, circling his arm like a snake. “There is another possibility.”

  “What?”

  “What if it was the same people who’ve been gas-lighting you?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Harding frowned, obviously having trouble coordinating his drink-saturated brain to grapple with the problem intelligently.

  “If they try to expose it, we can dump the whole mess onto their shoulders. Who’s to say what happened to it while it was out of our control?” Stern said.

  Harding looked startled, then smiled, lifting the glass in a mock toast. “Yeah. Who’s to say?” But before he drank, he asked, “If it is them, how do we find them?”

  Stern smiled. “If they did this to get at you, we won’t have to find them. They’ll come to us.”

  * * * *

  Phoebe stretched out amid the papers, her hands crossed behind her head, and stared at the ceiling, feeling oddly resigned. They’d tried. They’d failed. Shit happens.

  “Is it check and mate, Pathphinder?” Dewey asked. He’d stretched out beside her, but on his side, with his head resting on his hand.

  She tried to clear her thoughts, to see the board, the game, but for the first time, she couldn’t. She shook her head. “I don’t know. Pathphinder seems to be in shock.”

  “We need to fall back. Take some time to regroup. You’ve been working too hard if you can’t see the game. And we need to get the heck out of Dodge. It’s getting real hot here. Never seen the Feds try so hard to find two losers.”

  Phoebe grinned. “If you’re trying to prick my pride by calling me a loser, it’s not working.” She sat up. “But you’re right. We’ve been here too long. We need to move.”

  Without warning her flight-or-fight instinct kicked into high. She’d never been psychic, but right then, she’d swear she heard the howling hounds getting closer. She started grabbing all the papers within arm’s reach and stuffing them into a briefcase.

  Maybe Dewey heard the dogs, too. He started packing up their equipment with his usual swift efficiency. He had done this before.

  “We’ll have to split up,” he said. “I’ll write down my new beeper number for you. Your new beeper’s on the desk.”

  “That where you’ve been?”

  “That and arranging transportation for us. Something that will match our new lives.”

  Phoebe couldn’t wait to see what kind of car he thought went with Polly. Or maybe she could. “Did you ever wish you could get out of the game? Live a normal life with a little woman somewhere?”

  “Yeah.” Dewey stopped, his eyes shifting from the immediate to a distant view.

  What did he want? Or was it who? There was so little that she knew about him.

  “How did you get over it?” she asked, because it was all she could ask. The rest of his life wasn’t her business.

  He looked at her then, his gaze direct and sad. “I didn’t. We can’t. If we get over it, we risk becoming like them—like Harding and the others. We risk forgetting why we do it and just do it because we can.” He gave her a crooked grin. “It’s not like you don’t know about power and corruption.”

  “More than I want to.” It was almost funny. She’d been thinking they were into avenging wrongs, but that wasn’t the whole story. It was also about power. About taking it from those who had too much and giving it to those who had lived too long without it.

  Dewey was right. She needed to just get on with it.

  She picked up the chip. “It’s too bad…”

  “What’s too bad?” Dewey asked.

  “That we can’t get it to work.” She tossed it up in the air and caught it, then tossed it to him. He snagged it and gave her a slow grin.

  “Pathphinder?”

  * * * *

  Jake felt his mom watching him as he ate the breakfast she’d prepared for him and for Bryn—who had gulped hers and bolted out the door as if his mother’s domesticity scared her.

  He smiled. His favorite: waffles, eggs, bacon, served with screaming hot coffee and ice cold milk wasn’t meant to be bolted but enjoyed. He ate until he couldn’t manage one bite more. He pushed the plate away with a sigh of satisfaction. It didn’t cure what ailed him but did make him feel he could deal with it.

  “Thanks, Mom.” He wiped his mouth on the paper towel she handed him. “That was great.” He looked at his watch, started to rise, then made the mistake of making eye contact. He sank back into the chair. “What?”

  Her eyebrows rose.

  “I’m fine. Really.” The silence was insistent. “I’ll be fine. This is just a tough case.” He tried to get up again. Made it upright, but that was it.

  She took a drink of her coffee, then asked, “What’s her name?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. What was her name? His gut told him it was Nadine, but she’d always be Phoebe to him. He sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “How much trouble is she in?”

  “More than I can prove.” He rubbed his index finger along the edge of the paper towel, remembering how she’d made her napkin into an origami bird. Was she already flying away from him?

  “And what you can prove?”

  “Harboring. Aiding and abetting, if—” He stopped. What was her next move? How did she plan to use RABBIT? If she had it. He could see the board but not the pieces. He was playing her game in the dark.

  “If?” His mom’s voice was soft.

  “If I can find her. Her…associates tend to disappear.”

  Her hand covered his. “Which is worse, Jake? The thought of not seeing her again? Or having to arrest her when you do?”

  Jake’s smile was a miserable effort. “I wish I knew.”

  He turned toward her, into arms that circled him with comfort.

  “If it’s meant to be, it’ll work out. If it’s not, you’ll just have to find a way to get over it.”

  “And if I can’t?” He closed his eyes, felt her fingers stroke his hair.

  “Then you learn to live with it.” She framed his face with her hands. “There are joys and sorrows in this life. You can’t escape either. You do your duty and you just keep going.”

  She knew all about sorrow. She’d kept going after Dad died and kept them going, too. He managed a grin. “I know.” He looked at his watch. “And that’s what I need to do—get goin
g.”

  He gave her a last hug. “Thanks, Mom.”

  She patted his cheek. “If you do find her, I’d like to meet her. She must be something to put the squeeze on your heart.”

  “Oh, she’s something all right.” Jake rubbed the back of his neck. Boy, was she something. Something a guy didn’t get over easily. Or fast. He headed out the door, feeling a little lighter of heart. It still ached, but was no longer dragging him down. He was just getting into the truck when his cell phone shrilled a call to action.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jake? Riggs, here. Hey, man, Matt had me tracking down phone numbers of all calls made from the bar and the house. I found one you might want to have someone check out.”

  “Give me the address,” Jake said, propping the phone between shoulder and ear and grabbing his pen and notebook.

  “It’s called Smith’s. Part of a strip mall in Estes Park.” Riggs gave him the address. “I called around, tried to find out who they were or what they did and came up a total blank. Landlord doesn’t know what they do but thinks it’s something to do with computers. The name on the lease is a bogus. I called it probable cause, and a judge agreed. I got a warrant. How do you want it handled?”

  Jake sat for a moment, thinking. Logic said, assign it to someone in the Estes Park PD. No reason for Phoebe to be there. She was going forward with her game, not backtracking.

  “I’ll take it,” he said. His brain was telling him it was a waste of time, but his gut was twitching. He followed his gut and put his truck into gear. He’d pick up the warrant and head for Estes Park.

  * * * *

  Phoebe drove past Smith’s, looking for signs it was under surveillance and finding none. Okay, so they hadn’t found the number on her phone bill, yet, but they would. Then someone would come. This setup was the kind of lead that Phagan’s Fibbie/love would sell her firstborn for.

  She pulled into the rear, since the orange, green and yellow piece of shit Dewey had gotten her to drive would stand out like a sore thumb in the parking lot out front and her clothes didn’t match the car. She’d passed on the Polly clothes and hair paint for a black sheath and heels. She wished she could have passed on the car.

  Inside she started a wipe/delete on the hard drives of the VR setup in the back room where she’d planned the TelTech heist. There weren’t a lot of papers lying around, since Phagan didn’t believe in paper trails, but what there was, she fed into the shredder, all the while keeping an eye on the security monitors.

  The emergency wipe was about half done when she saw Jake’s truck pull to a stop out in front.

  FIFTEEN

  Jake had to jiggle the key the landlord had given him in the lock before the front door gave. The lock felt stiff, as if it wasn’t often used. To reinforce this impression, the door gave a protesting squeak as it swung closed behind him. Inside, the light filtering through imperfect blinds was thick with dust motes as it dimly revealed what looked like an ordinary office. A lesser desk near the front door seemed to be for reception purposes, with several desks of better quality lined up behind. Phones, computers, and filing cabinets completed the picture of a business enterprise, though there was no indication what that enterprise was supposed to be.

  He pulled on protective gloves and adjusted one set of blinds to let in more light. The air was stale, and—Jake swiped a finger across a slat—a layer of dust coated everything in sight. Did this mean it was a cold trail? The call had been made two weeks ago. He didn’t have statistics on dust accumulation, only personal experience to go by. He’d been gone from his apartment in DC for a month or more and hadn’t found this much dust when he returned.

  He walked around the reception desk and sat down. Opened a few drawers, all empty. Tried the phone. It didn’t work. The computer monitor wasn’t connected to anything, and when he touched it lightly, it fell off the desk. And bounced.

  Jake picked it up. Cardboard. Designed to fool the casual observer. Did that make this place a front, and, if so, for what? The rent wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t peanuts, either. If this was part of Phagan’s setup, what role had it played?

  Well, whatever purpose this place had served, this fake office wasn’t going to cough up anything but dust bunnies. Maybe the prize was in one of the back rooms. He got up and headed for the doorway.

  That’s when he heard a toilet flush.

  He had his gun out and was in the hallway when the door opened. Light spilled into the corridor, just short of where he stood, painting a familiar, leggy outline onto the floor at his feet. He followed it up to the source, but before his eyes got to her, his senses already knew who it was.

  Phoebe.

  “Jake? What are you doing here?” She looked genuinely surprised to see him and not at all alarmed.

  “I could ask you the same thing.” His eyes drank her in. She was wearing something black and slinky that lightly hugged her body everywhere that mattered, then stopped well above her knees, leaving plenty of leg. He didn’t know a pair of black heels could be that sexy, but there’d been a lot he didn’t know before he’d met her.

  She leaned against the jamb and crossed her legs like a teenager on the porch with her first beau.

  “Just taking care of a little business.” Her tongue traced a moist path around her lips. “And you?”

  “The same.” He heard the hoarseness in his voice and cleared it. “You…cut your hair.”

  She reached up and touched the sheared ends, something that could be uncertainty flashing in her eyes. “It’s…cooler.”

  Her eyes were deep, sad pools threatening to drown his sense of duty. Her scent turned the stale air sweet and his thoughts thick and slow.

  “It’s nice. It suits you.”

  Her smile was quick and pleased but slightly shy.

  As if to make sure no blood got to his brain, his collar turned into a noose. He tugged at it, but it didn’t help. What he needed was water. Cold water. Applied everywhere. He rubbed the back his neck, fighting for control. When he reached the point of tenuous control, as if she knew the exact moment when questions began to rise above the lust, she asked, “How did you get in? We’re closed, you know.”

  That cleared his head. He holstered the gun he’d almost forgotten he was holding. Stripped off the gloves and stuck them in his jacket pocket. “I have a warrant to search the premises.”

  Her eyebrows arched. She did surprised very well. “All you had to do was ask, Curious Jake.”

  “I didn’t think you were around to ask. I thought—”

  “What did you think?”

  “That you’d left.”

  “Without saying goodbye?” She stepped toward him. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I thought we said goodbye, at the motel the other night. It sounded like goodbye.”

  “Things aren’t always what they seem.”

  He licked his lips. “No, they aren’t.”

  She took a glove, hanging part way out of his pocket and examined it. “Afraid you’ll catch something? I promise, I’m not contagious.”

  Jake swallowed dryly as she stuffed the glove back into his pocket, real slow, as if she expected him to stop her. He knew he should stop her, but it would be easier to stop breathing.

  He didn’t decide to touch her. His hands acted on their own, sliding around the back of her neck, the short, silky ends of her hair stroking his skin as he bent toward her parted mouth. His heart jumped then settled into a hard but steady rhythm.

  It was as if he’d waited his whole life for this moment.

  Phoebe didn’t, couldn’t, close her eyes or look away. She needed to see him. See what he was feeling pass through his eyes each moment that was left to her. This time, this kiss had to last her a lifetime. There’d be no one after him. How could there be anyone but the lawman for this outlaw?

  His scent reached her before his mouth did. It filled her senses, heady and clean, like mountain air first thing in the morning. A pulse beat frantically against her hand.
The feel of his skin was a delight all its own. She could have spent the whole day just absorbing it, feeling the wonder of his skin against her.

  But her mouth, her impatient mouth had waited forever to taste his. She arched onto her toes, eager to close the last millimeter between them. Her head spun with longing as his breath mingled with hers.

  Had she thought there was anything she wouldn’t give this man, the other half of her soul? She felt surrender stealing through her body in a hot rush. Maybe she could trust him with it all… She wasn’t ready when he jerked her back and felt his bitter, betrayed gaze rake across her.

  “What are you hiding, Phoebe? What’s really going on here?”

  Her chest hurt with the need for air, for him. There was no room for thinking or even planning, only one bitter reality: she’d never know his kiss, she’d never know what it was like to be his. She closed her eyes against him. Against the longing to beg him to take her back into his arms. There was pride inside her, somewhere. She had to find it.

  He gave her no time. “This way, I think.”

  He pulled her toward the door with a faint light showing under it and shoved it open. He fumbled for and found the light switch. Saw the status of the wipe on the computer monitor. It was close to the end of the bar but not there yet.

  Without missing a beat, he found the power cord and yanked it from the wall.

  His chest heaved once, then he turned and looked at her. Her eyes were blank, neutral, as if her soul had fled to that deep, dark place where her sorrow lived. He’d done the right thing, but it didn’t feel right. He could hear his mom’s voice in his head, “You do your duty and you just keep going.”

  He looked at the row of dark monitors, saw a VR helmet and gloves lying on the desktop, several CPU towers and a couple of printers. “It looks like you could run the world from here.”

  “I almost did.”

  This wasn’t about him, but he still felt the bitter bite of betrayal, the pain of the knife burying itself in his back. He’d had no reason to trust her, certainly no right to expect anything from her except deceit, but he had. Damn it, he had.