The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Not that Phoebe had spent any time looking at Bryn. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Jake. It was interesting to see him in this light, even if it was waning with the day. Black was definitely his color, she decided with a sigh, right up there with tight jeans, tees and soft flannel. The Fibbie didn’t realize Phoebe didn’t want to run away. Life was going to separate her from Jake soon enough. Jake would go back to catching bad guys, and Phoebe would go to jail without passing go or collecting any money. Probably minus the harmonica, too.

  “She’s not so bad,” Dewey said, interrupting her descent into the angst zone. “Not her fault she has to do her job.”

  Something in his voice, an odd note of defensiveness, distracted her attention from Jake. She looked at him and found him gazing at Bryn in a decidedly wistful way. A decidedly lustful way. Surely he didn’t have the hots for her, too…

  It was as if someone took the blinders off her brain and let her see the years, not the way Phagan had wanted her to see it, but the way they were. Phagan was Dewey. Or Dewey was Phagan.

  Her first reaction was to be pissed. Didn’t he trust her? She ought to kick his ass, except it looked like Bryn was going to do it for her. Anger faded. They were both going to be punished by the Feds for their sins. They didn’t need to punish each other. Not that she was going to pass up the opportunity to yank his chain a bit.

  “I guess she’s not so bad.”

  Dewey twitched, then looked at her, wariness replacing sick-puppy in his eyes. “Phagan seems to think so.” He shuffled his feet like a small boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “To each his own.” Phoebe gave him a bland smile, but it didn’t last. It seemed neither one of them was going to get what they wanted. “Sorry about all this. Not my best plan.”

  With a jangle of chains, Dewey crossed his arms and leaned against the side of the van. “I figure the worst we’ll get is a couple million hours of community service.”

  “In what reality?” She frowned. “You weren’t planning to put Phagan on the table to save my ass, were you? Because I won’t let you.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith.” His chains rattled as he adjusted his tie. “Here they come. Let me do the talking.”

  “Dewey…”

  “Trust me.” His eyes reminded her they’d done this same scene all those years ago. “Full circle, girl. Let me close the last, little bit.”

  “Dewey, I can’t—”

  “Just…trust me. I promise, it will be all right. For you. For Kerry Anne. Even for me. Promise you’ll let me handle this?”

  The last thing she meant to do was nod, but she did. She’d been giving in to Dewey for a long time. She was going to stop now?

  Long gold rays from the setting sun stretched across the parking lot to light Jake and Bryn’s way toward Phoebe and Dewey Hyatt. It wasn’t over, Jake knew, not by a long shot. Phoebe was up to her beautiful eyes in deep stuff, and as far as he could tell, the only way out was over Phagan’s hide—something she’d already made very clear wouldn’t happen.

  The light was wrong to see their faces, but their body language was serious. When Hyatt put his arm around Phoebe, Jake’s gut clenched. What if he had imagined the attraction? Or she’d been playing him for a fool? What if—

  Jake stepped into partial shadow and saw Phoebe’s eyes. He felt her gaze pierce his soul and he knew she hadn’t been playing him—but she hadn’t any more hope of a happy ending than he did.

  Bryn halted in front of them, her hands on her hips. “Are you ready to play ‘Let’s-Make-A-Deal,’ kids?”

  * * * *

  Dewey could have been uncomfortable. Bryn sat on one side of him. Jake Kirby was on the other. They were both looking at him as if they thought they could cut their way into his head just by staring. He could have been freaked by it, but truth was, he was happy to have Bryn looking at him, happy to be in the same room with her under any circumstances.

  She looked cute in her little black jump suit. He’d follow her to hell and back, and not just because she had a great butt. Too bad she wanted to kick his to hell and leave him there. After he gave her Phagan.

  It was an interesting problem. He could easily give her Phagan, and he’d do it in a heartbeat if he thought it would get him what he wanted. Dewey Hyatt had room to negotiate. Phagan—well she’d put him in a box and throw the key into the middle of the ocean. Then do the dance of joy.

  It might, he admitted, have been a bad idea to kick her anthill so often. She was at full swarm right now. Cute, but ready to bite.

  He saw her and Kirby look at each other. Saw her give him a slight nod. So Kirby was taking the lead. That was probably good. Bryn had a hasty temper. The marshal seemed able to keep his cool—when Phoebe wasn’t around.

  The marshal looked at him, his gaze almost penetrating enough to make him squirm.

  “You’re in serious need of a deal, Hyatt,” he said. “Problem is, you’ve only got one thing we want.”

  “Phagan,” Bryn said, an odd note to her voice Dewey hadn’t heard before.

  “You don’t want RABBIT?” He feigned surprise.

  “We know its crap. Phoebe told me,” Jake said.

  “Well, it was crap when we took it,” Dewey admitted. “A serious setback at first. But you can’t keep a good thief down.” He gave Bryn a cheeky grin and watched color run up her face.

  “Are you saying…” Jake pulled his attention away from Bryn.

  “I got it working?” Dewey leaned back in his chair. “Yes, sir. And I figure, if you won’t deal, the military will. It’s a truly sweet little item.”

  That got their attention. Was that relief in Bryn’s baby blues? A tiny crack in the iron lady’s defenses? Dewey waited for a long beat, then said, “I think I’m ready to play ‘Let’s-Make-A-Deal’ if you are?”

  He thought Bryn choked, but she covered it up with a cough. She was fast on her pointed heels.

  * * * *

  It seemed to Phoebe that she’d been in the tiny interrogation room for hours, but, once again, she had no way to clock the passing time. Unlike the one she’d been in before, this room didn’t have a one-way window or mirror. Just a sliding panel over a barred window in the door and another barred window to the outside world. Maybe, she wondered, it’s the one they put people in when they planned to kick their butt.

  She tried sitting down, tried pacing, considered banging on the door, but she had a little pride left, so she settled for leaning against the grubby wall and staring through the bars at the even grubbier alley and the tiny patch of night sky showing between two tall buildings. The ice pack had lost its chill, so she tossed it onto the table.

  Full circle. The past had met the present. Her dead were at peace. Now only the future remained to be sorted out, though it seemed obvious what was ahead for her. It was kind of ironic that Harding had escaped the incarceration now waiting for her and Dewey. She’d always meant for him to do time, to be as powerless as the people he’d hurt, to feel the full horror of what he’d dished out.

  Stern had thought she was looking for revenge, but it had always been about justice—the difference between night and day. She’d spent her time in the night. There were times when she’d fantasized about killing Harding, even torturing him to death. She’d lost her taste for that long before her little visit to his warehouse of horrors. She felt a sense of peace, knowing this. Harding had shaped her life, but she’d never become him. She lived in the day, not the night.

  Jake opened the door and stood watching her, remembering the first night he’d seen her. She seemed so far away now he didn’t know what to do, or even who she was. Phoebe or Nadine? Or someone else now that her quest was over?

  “I don’t know what to call you.”

  She turned. “Retired?” Her grin was pure Phoebe.

  Relief almost took out his knees. He needed to see Phoebe. Needed some of Phoebe to hang around. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  She grabbed the back of the chair. Jake di
dn’t know why, but it seemed important what she did next. She hesitated, then pulled it out and sat down. Her gaze was steady, her expression neutral and oddly distant as she looked up at him, as if there were a barrier between them.

  “What happens now?”

  Jake sat down, too, spreading his hands on the battered tabletop to keep from reaching out for her. She seemed so fragile, sitting there waiting for the storm to break over her head, and yet strong, too. Submissive, yet not. Her strength was gathered in close, her spirit braced and ready for whatever would come. She knew she would endure. She knew she would survive. She’d learned how the hard way.

  She amazed him. And she scared the hell out of him, because he wanted her to need him, as much he needed her. Could she? She’d been alone so long, would she know how? Did she even want to try?

  “We’re working out the details of the deal,” Jake said. “That was quite the bombshell Hyatt dropped.” Did she tense? Why? “I take it you didn’t know he’d gotten RABBIT to run?”

  “No. I thought—”

  “He’d have to give up Phagan?”

  “I hoped he wouldn’t,” Phoebe admitted. Her eyelashes covered her expression. “Were people pretty upset?”

  Jake grinned. “Just between you and me? I think Bryn was a little relieved.”

  Her lashes lifted at that. Her smile spread across her face like the sun rising over a mountain. The sight of it stole his wits. She’d smiled before, but, he realized, she’d always held something back. This one held nothing back.

  “Cool.” The smile faded, but the warmth lingered. “So he gets his suspended sentence and the million hours of community service?”

  Jake didn’t answer, because he wasn’t sure he could keep the edge out of his voice. Hyatt had so many years with Phoebe, years of intimacy. He knew things about her Jake never would.

  He realized she was looking at him, a tiny frown between her brows and a question in her eyes. “He was more concerned about what would happen to you, though I suspect he’ll get whatever he wants from the military.” He hesitated. “He cares about you.”

  “I have been fortunate in my friends.” Her voice turned very Southern. “And the kindness of strangers.”

  He chuckled, feeling the tightness in his gut ease. The past was the past. It was her future he was interested in.

  “I was able to get you temporarily released into my custody,” he said. “If that’s not acceptable, I can make other arrangements for you. It’s your choice.” When she didn’t immediately respond, he added, “You can’t go back to Estes Park yet, not until the deal is worked out.” He hesitated, then added, “I called my mom. She’s making up the guestroom for you. If you want it.”

  “Your mom?” Her eyes opened wide, and for the first time she looked alarmed.

  “She told me that when I found you she wanted to meet you.” He grinned. “I always try to do what my Mom says.”

  She smiled back, but the alarm didn’t fade from her eyes.

  “I can also offer a personal meeting with an honest-to-goodness romance writer as an extra incentive. My sister-in-law is Dani Gwynne, and she’s eager to meet you, too. On the downside, well, you’ve already met my brothers.”

  Phoebe looked down at her hands, realized she was twisting them in her lap. Just because he was taking her home to meet his family didn’t, couldn’t, mean anything. Put your hope back in the box and lock it up, girl.

  “Do they know I’m a thief?” Jake’s hand covered hers, and she realized it was what she’d been waiting for. Delight coursed up her arm and heat. Her libido was obviously easy to please.

  “You’re not a thief.” Jake sounded defensive. “You’re—”

  “A thief. A person who conspired to steal things.”

  “It’s what you were, not what you are.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And, yes, they know. They’re fine with it, okay?”

  “Okay.” But it wasn’t. They weren’t fine with it. She could tell he was worried about what they’d do. Maybe not his mom, though Phoebe couldn’t figure out why the woman wouldn’t be frantic. For sure his brothers would be upset. They’d know what associating with her could do to his career.

  What was that scripture? Charity never faileth. It seeketh not its own. It seemed she was learning all her lessons about love on the fly. She loved Jake, but while her love wouldn’t fail, it also wouldn’t seek its own. If she had to break her own heart, she would not suck Jake into the morass of her bad choices.

  “Give me a few minutes to get your paper work done and we’ll go.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Phoebe woke late the next morning, surprised and a little unsettled by how deeply she’d slept. Normally, when she woke with her nerves jumping like beans, she’d jog to clear her thoughts and settle down, but she wasn’t sure she could leave. What were the rules of being in Jake’s custody?

  She stretched and sighed, then sat up and looked around. She’d been too tired last night to do more than absorb the fact that Jake looked like his mother and that Debra Kirby was a kind person who was worried about her son.

  The room she’d shown Phoebe to was cheerful and neat. It could even be called quaint. The furniture was western and rustic, the curtains white lace. The wall by the bed was a family photo album of the-Kirby-boys-grow-up. Jake was easy to identify, because his hair was lighter than his brothers’ and his smile hadn’t changed much over the years.

  Seeing the pictures put him in a different context, made her realize what a small part of his life she was. A minute or two in years of experiences. It wasn’t just the law and the unlawful part. In the time it took him to go to the prom with a pretty blonde and receive his high school diploma, she’d begun and ended a marriage. He’d attended college and graduated with honors while she’d refined her grand-larceny skills—when she wasn’t buying booze for the bar or shaking her booty in smoky honky-tonks across the country.

  Forget Venus and Mars, she and Jake inhabited different galaxies.

  Usually she tried to avoid normal people, normal lives, because they only reminded her how screwed up her life was. She shouldn’t have come here. Shouldn’t have given in to the temptation. This wasn’t a house. It was a home, a place where people who loved each other lived and laughed and helped each other through their hard times.

  Which made it not like any house she’d ever been in.

  The differences went way beyond the comfy furniture and cheery curtains at the windows. Her furniture wasn’t quite as nice as Debra Kirby’s, but that wasn’t what made this a home. No, it was the way the house felt, the way she felt being in it.

  Her house gave nothing away. It shut out. It hid from.

  This place, this room, was wide open, welcoming. Even to a thief.

  Debra had left a thick yellow towel and washcloth on the wooden rocking chair. Also an unopened toothbrush and a new tube of toothpaste. Fresh flowers on the dresser. A dish of candy and a couple of romance novels on the nightstand. One a Dani Gwynne, the other a Kelly Kerwin.

  Such small things, but each one said, “You’re our guest.” We want you to be comfortable while you’re here.

  She couldn’t remember ever being a guest. She felt like an alien who’d wandered out of her galaxy. Company manners, baby, she could almost hear her former Junior League mama say, her voice a drunken slur.

  Did she even remember what company manners were? Their family standards, and social position, had been sliding long before Montgomery Justice appeared on the horizon.

  She pushed her covers back and slid out of bed, her feet settling on a rag rug put there to protect bare feet from the chill of hardwood floors. When she stood up, she noticed a suitcase sitting on a small chest. Inside were clothes from her house, her life as Phoebe. Jake must have arranged for them.

  Her chest felt tight and kind of hurt, where there’d been no feeling at all for so long. She rubbed her chest, but it still hurt. A lump formed in her throat and tried to turn into…tears?

  No
way. She didn’t cry. Sure as shooting, she was not going down those stairs and facing Jake and his family with red eyes. She would not use tears to sue for pity or acceptance.

  She’d go down looking—she picked up a pair of shorts—like a bar slut. There was nothing in the case, or in Phoebe’s life, that went with this house. Nothing in either even remotely normal. Maybe she’d just stay upstairs.

  She dropped the shorts. Who was she trying to fool anyway? A change of clothes wouldn’t make her any less a thief, wouldn’t change what she was or what she’d done. It sure wouldn’t bridge the space and time that separated her from Jake. She should have stayed in jail. At least there she could see the bars, knew her place and what to expect.

  There were two windows in this corner guestroom—no bars, but there might as well have been. Her past still had her trapped, cornered. She abandoned the suitcase for a window, choosing the one looking out on the backyard.

  A mature garden occupied one corner, its formerly neat rows overrun by nature’s abundance. Flowers circled the fence with cheerful abandon, and a tall cottonwood provided shade for a cozy wooden deck. Among the leaves of the cottonwood, she could see the weathered remnants of a tree house. It wasn’t hard to imagine this yard peopled with small boys, two dark, one light. Or Jake’s son…

  Don’t go there.

  She heard a car door slam and turned to the other window. It gave her a glimpse of a small piece of the street. Enough to see Matt and Luke emerge from a car with a woman she presumed was Matt’s wife, the romance writer. Phoebe liked the look of her. She was what her mama used to call a lady. Kind face, nice smile. Matt wore a thunder cloud face. Luke looked more worried, than angry.