Cowboy Grace SS

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  She made herself smile. “Mr. Delamore, if I stole a dime from the casino, I’d be instantly fired. There are cameras everywhere.”

  “I mean your former job, Ms. Mackie. A lot of money is missing from your office.”

  “I don’t have an office.” His use of her former name made her hands clammy. What had Michael done?

  “Do you deny that you’re Grace Mackie?”

  “I don’t acknowledge or deny anything. When did this become an inquisition, Mr. Delamore? I thought men liked their sex uncomplicated. You seem to be a unique member of your species.”

  This time he smiled. “Of course we like our sex uncomplicated. That’s why we’re having this discussion this morning.”

  “If we’d had it last night, there wouldn’t be a this morning.”

  “That’s my point.” He downed the last of his orange juice. “And thank you for the acknowledgement, Ms. Mackie.”

  “It wasn’t an acknowledgement,” she said. “I don’t like to sleep with men who think me guilty of something.”

  “Embezzlement,” he said gently, using the same tone he had used in bed. This time, it made her bristle.

  “I haven’t stolen anything.”

  “New house, new name, new town, mysterious disappearance.”

  The chill she had felt earlier grew. She stood and wrapped her robe tightly around her waist. “I don’t know what you think you know, Mr. Delamore, but I believe it’s time for you to leave.”

  He didn’t move. “We’re not done.”

  “Oh, yes, we are.”

  “It would be a lot easier if you told me where the money was, Grace.”

  “Do you always get paid for sex, Mr. Delamore?” she asked.

  He studied her for a moment. “Don’t play games with me, honey.”

  “Why not?” she asked. “You seem to enjoy them.”

  He shoved his plate away as if it had offended him. Apparently this morning wasn’t going the way he wanted it to either. “I’m just telling you what I know.”

  “And I’m just asking you to leave. It was fun, Travis. But it certainly wasn’t worth this.”

  He stood and slipped his wallet back into his pocket. “You’ll hear from me again.”

  “This isn’t high school,” she said, following him to the door. “I won’t be offended if you fail to call.”

  “No,” he said as he stepped into the dry desert air. “You probably won’t be offended. But you will be curious. This is just the beginning, Grace.”

  “One person’s beginning is another person’s ending,” she said as she closed and locked the door behind him.

  ***

  The worst thing she could do, she knew, was panic. So she made herself clean up the kitchen as if she didn’t have a care in the world, and she left the curtains open so that he could see if he wanted to. Then she went to the shower, making it a long and hot. She tried to scrub all the traces of him off of her.

  For the first time in her life, she felt cheap.

  Embezzlement. Something had happened, something Michael was blaming on her. It would be easy enough, she supposed. She had disappeared. That looked suspicious enough. The new name, the new car, the new town, all of that added to the suspicion.

  What had Michael done? And why?

  She got out of the shower and toweled herself off. She was tempted to call Michael, but she certainly couldn’t do it from the house. If she used her cell, the call would be traceable too. And if she went to a pay phone, she would attract even more suspicion. She had to consider that Travis Delamore was following her, spying on her.

  In fact, she had to consider that he had been doing that for some time.

  She went over all of their conversation, looking for clues, mistakes she might have made. She had told him very little, but he had asked a lot. Strangely — or perhaps not so strangely any more — all of their conversations had been about money.

  Carole would have been proud of her. Grace had finally let her libido get the better of her. Alex would have been disgusted, reminding her that men couldn’t be trusted.

  What could he do to her besides cast suspicion? He was right. Without the money, he had nothing. And she had a job, no criminal record, and no suspicious investments.

  But if he continued to follow her, she could go after him. The bartender had seen them leave her favorite bar together. She had an innocent face, she’d been living here for a year, got promoted, was well-liked by her employer. Delamore had obviously flirted with her while he played poker the night before, and the casino had cameras.

  They probably had records of all the times he had watched her before she noticed him.

  It wouldn’t take much to make a stalking charge. That would get her an injunction in the least, and it might scare him off.

  Then she could find out why he was so sure he had something on her. Then she could find out what it was Michael had done.

  ***

  The newly remodeled ladies room on the third floor of the casino had twenty stalls and a lounge complete with smoking room. It had once been a small restroom, but the reconstruction had taken out the nearby men’s room and replaced it with more stalls. The row of pay phones in the middle stayed, as a convenience to the customers.

  Delamore wouldn’t know that she called from those pay phones. No one would know.

  She started using the third floor ladies room on her break and more than once had picked up the receiver on the third phone and dialed most of her old office number. She’d always stop before she hit the last digit, though. Her intuition told her that calling Michael would be wrong.

  What if Delamore had a trace on Michael’s line? What if the police did?

  A week after her encounter with Delamore, a week in which she used the third floor ladies room more times than she could count, she suddenly realized what was wrong. Delamore didn’t have anything on her except suspicion. He had clearly found her — that hadn’t been hard, since she really hadn’t been hiding from anyone — and he had probably checked her bank records for the money he assumed she had embezzled from her former clients. But the money she had gotten from the sale of the business was still in that hidden numbered account — and would stay there.

  Her native caution had served her well once again.

  She had nothing to hide. It didn’t matter what some good-looking skip trace thought. Her life in Racine was in the past. A part of her past that she couldn’t avoid, any more than she could avoid the scar on her breast — the scar that Delamore had clearly used to identify her, the bastard. But past was past, and until it hurt her present, she wasn’t going to worry about it.

  So she stopped making pilgrimages to the third floor women’s room, and gradually, her worries over Delamore faded. She didn’t see him for a week, and she assumed — wrongly — that it was all over.

  ***

  He sat next to her at the bar as if he had been doing it every day for years. He ordered a whiskey neat, and another “for the lady,” just like men in her fantasies used to do. When he looked at her and smiled, she realized that the look didn’t reach his eyes.

  Maybe it never had.

  “Miss me, darlin’?” he asked.

  She picked up her purse, took out a five to cover her drink, and started to leave. He grabbed her wrist. His fingers were warm and dry, their touch no longer gentle. A shiver started in her back, but she willed the feeling away.

  “Let go of me,” she said.

  “Now, Gracie, I think you should listen to what I have to say.”

  “Let go of me,” she said in that same measured tone, “or I will scream so loud that everyone in the place will hear.”

  “Screams don’t frighten me, doll.”

  “Maybe the police do. Believe me, hon, I will press charges.”

  His smile was slow and wide, but that flat look was in his eyes again, the one that told her he had all the cards. “I’m sure they’ll be impressed,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket with his free hand.
“But I do believe a warrant trumps a tight grip on the arm.”

  He set a piece of paper down on the bar itself. The bartender, wiping away the remains of another customer’s mess, glanced her way as if he were keeping an eye on her.

  She didn’t touch the paper, but she didn’t shake Delamore’s hand off her arm, either. She wasn’t quite sure what to do.

  He picked up the paper, shook it open, and she saw the strange bold-faced print of a legal document, her former name in the middle. “Tell you what, Gracie. How about we finish the talk we started the other morning in one of those dark, quiet booths over there?”

  She was still staring at the paper, trying to comprehend it. It looked official enough. But then, she’d never seen a warrant for anyone’s arrest before. She had only heard of them.

  She had never imagined she’d see her own name on one.

  She let Delamore led her to a booth at the far end of the bar. He slid across the plastic, trying to pull her in beside him, but this time, she shook him off. She sat across from him, perched on the seat with her feet in the aisle, purse clutched on her lap. Flee position, Alex used to call it. You Might Be a Loser and I Reserve the Right to Find Someone Else, was Carole’s name for it.

  “If I bring you back to Wisconsin,” he said, “I get a few thousand bucks. What it don’t say on my card is that I’m a bounty hunter.”

  “What an exciting life you must lead,” Grace said dryly.

  He smiled. The look chilled her. She was beginning to wonder how she had ever found him attractive. “It’s got its perks.”

  It was at that moment she decided she hated him. He would forever refer to her as a perk of the job, not as someone who had given herself to him freely, someone who had enjoyed the moment as much as he had.

  All that gentleness in his fingers, all those murmured endearments. Lies.

  She hated lies.

  “But,” he was saying, “I see a way to make a little more money here. I don’t think you’re a real threat to society. And you’re a lot of fun, more fun than I would’ve expected, given how you lived before you moved here.”

  The bartender came over, his bar towel over his arm. “Want anything?”

  He was speaking to her. He hadn’t even looked at Delamore. The bartender was making sure she was all right.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said. “Can you check back in five minutes?”

  “Sure thing.” This time he did look at Delamore, who grinned at him. The bartender shot him a warning glare.

  “Wow,” Delamore said as the bartender moved out of earshot. “You have a defender.”

  “You keep getting off track,” Grace said.

  Delamore shrugged. “I like talking to you.”

  “Well, I find talking with you rather dull.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t think so a few days ago.”

  “As I recall,” she said, “we didn’t do a lot talking.”

  His smile softened. “That’s my memory too.”

  She clutched her purse tighter. It always looked so glamorous in the movies, finding the right person, having a night of great sex. And even if he rode off into the sunset never to be seen again, everything still had a glow of perfection to it.

  Not the bits of sleaze, the hardness in his expression, the sense that what he wanted from her was something she couldn’t give.

  “You know, the papers said that Michael Holden went into your old office, and put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Then the police, after finding the body, discovered that most of the money your clients had entrusted to your firm had disappeared.”

  She couldn’t suppress the small whimper of shock that rose in her throat.

  Delamore noted it and his eyes brightened. “Now, you tell me what happened.”

  She had no idea. She had none at all. But she couldn’t tell Delamore that. She didn’t even know if the story was true.

  It sounded true. But Delamore had lied before. For all she knew he was some kind of con man, out to get her because he smelled money.

  He was watching her, his eyes glittering. She could barely control her expression. She needed to get away.

  She stood, still clutching her purse like a school girl.

  “Planning to leave? I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” His voice had turned cold. A shiver ran down her spine, but she didn’t move, just stared down at him unable to turn away.

  “One call,” he said softly, “and you’ll get picked up by the Nevada police. You should sit down and hear what I have to say.”

  Her hands were shaking. She sat, feeling trapped. He had finally hooked her, even though she hadn’t said a word.

  He leaned forward. “Now listen to me, darling. I know you got the money. I been working this one a long time, and I dug up the records. Michael closed all those accounts right after you disappeared. That’s not a coincidence.”

  Her mouth was dry. She wanted to swallow, but couldn’t.

  “’Member our talk about money? One of those first nights, here in this bar?”

  She was staring at him, her eyes wide and dry as if she’d been driving and staring at the road for hours. It felt like she had forgotten to blink.

  “I told you I don’t need much, and that’s true. But I’m getting tired of dragging people back to their parole officers or for their court date, or finding husbands who’d skipped out on their families and then getting paid five grand or two grand. Then people question your expenses, like you don’t got a right to spend a night in a motel or eat three squares. Or they demand to know why you took so danged long to find someone who’d been hiding so good no cop could find them.”

  His voice was so soft she had to strain to hear it. In spite of herself, she leaned forward.

  “I’m forty-five years old, doll,” he said. “And I’m getting tired. You got one pretty little scar. Did you notice all the ones I got? On the job. Yours is the first case in a while where I didn’t get a beating.” Then he grinned. “At least, not a painful one.”

  She flushed, and her fingers tightened on the purse. Her hands were beginning to hurt. Part of her, a part she’d never heard from before, wanted to take that purse and club him in the face. But she didn’t move. If she moved, she would lose any control she had.

  “So,” he said, “here’s the deal. I like you. I didn’t expect to, but I do. You’re a pretty little thing, and smart as a whip, and this is probably going to be the only crime you’ll ever commit, because you’re one of those girls who just knows better, aren’t you?”

  She held her head rigidly, careful so that he wouldn’t take the most subtle movement for a nod.

  “And I think you got a damn fine deal here. The house is nice — lots of light — and the town obviously suits you. I met those friends of yours, the ball-buster and the one who thinks she’s God’s Gift to Men, and I gotta say it’s clear why you left.”

  Her nails dug into the leather. Pain shot through the tender skin at the top of her fingers.

  “I really don’t wanna ruin your life. It’s time I make a change in mine. You give me fifty grand, and I’ll bury everything I found about you.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars?” Her voice was raspy with tension. “For the first payment?”

  His eyes sparkled. “One-time deal.”

  She snorted. She knew better. Blackmailers never worked like that.

  “And maybe I’ll stick around. Get to know you a little better. I could fall in love with that house myself.”

  “Could you?” she asked, amazed at the dry tone she’d managed to maintain.

  “Sure.” He grinned. That had been the look that had made her go weak less than a week ago. Now it sent a chill through her. “You and me, we had something.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “A one-night stand.”

  He laughed. “It could be more than that, darlin’. It took you long enough, but you might’ve just found Mr. Right.”

  “Seems to me you were the one who was searching.”
She stood. He didn’t protest, and she was glad. She had to leave. If she stayed any longer, she’d say something she would regret.

  She tucked her purse under her arm. “I assume the drink’s on you,” she said, and then she walked away.

  He didn’t follow her — at least not right away. And she drove in circles before going home, watching for his car behind hers, thinking about everything he had said. Thinking about her break, her freedom, the things she had done to create a new life.

  The things that now made her look guilty of a crime she hadn’t committed.

  ***

  She didn’t sleep, of course. She couldn’t. Her mind was too full — and her bed was no longer a private place. He’d been there, and some of him remained, a shadow, a laugh. After an hour of tossing and turning, she moved to the guest room and sat on the edge of the brand new unused mattress, clutching a blanket and thinking.

  It was time to find out what had happened. Delamore knew who she was. She couldn’t pretend any more. But he wasn’t ready to turn her in. That gave her a little time.

  She took a shower, made herself a pot of coffee, and a sandwich which she ate slowly. Then she went to her office, sat down in front of her computer and hesitated. The moment she logged on was the moment that all her movements could be traced. The moment she couldn’t turn back from.

  But she could testify to the conversation she’d had with Delamore, and the bartender would back her up. She wouldn’t be able to hide her own identity should the police come for her, and so there was no reason to lie. She would simply say that she was concerned about her former business partner. She wanted to know if any of what Delamore told her was true.

  It wouldn’t seem like a confession to anyone but him.

  She logged on, and used a search engine to find the news.

  It didn’t take her long. Amazing how many newspapers were on-line. Michael’s death created quite a scandal in Racine, and the pictures of her office — the bloody mess still visible inside — were enough to make the ham on rye that she’d had a few moments ago turn in her stomach.

  Michael. He’d been a good accountant. Thorough, exacting. Nervous. Always so nervous, afraid of making any kind of mistake.