by Lisa Plumley
At another time—and with his cynical, unchanged heart—Gabriel might have believed her pleas were the means to removing him from his investigation. Now, he knew differently. He knew they came from hopes for a different kind of future between them.
They were hopes he shared, even if Megan didn’t realize it.
“You trusted me last night, Meg,” he said, gesturing for the key. “Can’t you trust me again?”
“Trust the man who says people never change? Who says believing is for fools, and he’ll have no part of it?”
He nodded.
Her eyes grew tear-filled. “I suppose you think you’ll find your facts in there,” she said, tipping her head toward the strongbox.
“That’s not why I want the key.”
Keeping her head bent, Megan fumbled with her locket. Seconds later, it split into golden halves, revealing the key inside. All along, it had been near enough to touch. She pried the key from its niche and pressed it into his palm.
“Whatever this reveals,” she said, “know that I love you, Gabriel. With all my heart and soul.”
Her solemn expression seemed to warn of some horrible discovery—proof of her guilt? Gabriel thought not. Either way, he felt too joyous over what she’d said last to linger over the question for long.
I love you, Gabriel.
Megan waited, wrists held together atop the table as though she expected the bite of his handcuffs at any instant. As always, they swung from their place on his gun belt, ready for the next of Pinkerton’s most-wanted who would wear them.
He touched them. Felt their cold metal promise of a life that was familiar and well-paid and lauded.
Then, breathing deeply, Gabriel took the biggest leap of faith in his life.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She hadn’t much time. Megan hurried through the pueblo with Mose at her side, spurred on by Gabriel’s last words to her.
Go find your father, he’d said, taking the strongbox key she’d offered. Get your money, save your shop. And trust me.
Trust him. Surely she’d been a fool to do so once, much less over and over again. Hadn’t hard experience taught her people couldn’t be counted on?
Maybe, Megan told herself firmly. But she could count on herself, on her own judgment. Matching wits with Gabriel had told her that. And she could count on her heart. Loving him made that true as well.
When Gabriel had sent her from the restaurant, with the strongbox unopened behind him, Megan had been filled with astonishment. That feeling had only doubled when she’d spied Mose waiting for her at the news depot…exactly where the Pinkerton man had said he would be.
“Your papa ain’t going to be happy about this,” Mose said morosely, galloping along beside her with his hand closed protectively over her arm. “Not happy a’tall.”
“Don’t worry, Mose. I won’t let him dismiss you.”
At least not so long as my family has rights to run Kearney Station. Lord above! How was she supposed to straighten this tangled-up mess?
Well, so long as Gabriel held the deed, her papa couldn’t gamble their home away. That was something to be thankful for, at least.
She and Mose passed through winding streets and alleyways, traveling into a neighborhood Megan was unfamiliar with. Here, the adobe houses clustered closely, and wood smoke wreathed their squat chimneys. Only the occasional horse and rider passed them, sometimes a Fort Lowell soldier—more often a vaquero looking to gamble away his cowboy’s pay.
“Joseph didn’t tell me ‘bout this so I could bring you here,” Mose muttered, guiding her around to the back entrance of one of the houses. “He’ll likely have my hide.”
“Hush, Mose. Don’t be ridiculous. You know papa would just as soon take out his anger with a fine, like he always does.”
No station hand back home was exempt from Joseph Kearney’s practice of levying fines against his men for their transgressions. The fees varied according to the severity of the deed, whether a man was caught imbibing while on duty, abusing the stagecoach teams, or—worst of all—cussing in a lady’s presence. Particularly his daughter’s.
Over the years, Megan had become adept at halting her practice of the swear words she overheard outside the bunkhouse at the sound of the slightest footfall. Her keen hearing had saved her many a coin.
“I don’t believe papa even has a fine set up for something like this anyway,” she went on, patting Mose’s hulking back. “You’ll be fine.”
Looking supremely un-reassured, he knocked on the door.
Megan crossed her fingers behind her back, unable to resist the childish talisman—or the hopes that came along with it. Please, papa. Please have at least a little money left.
However unlikely it was, she couldn’t help hoping Joseph hadn’t gambled away her entire savings. Perhaps there would be enough left to at least give the Websters a down payment on their mercantile space, provided she could wrangle a new agreement with them before their train headed east tonight.
Remembering the strongbox she’d left at Gabriel’s hand, Megan sighed. Her papa must be desperate, plain and simple. Why else would he have called to wager Kearney Station?
Murmured voices came from inside the house. Mose shuffled sideways, just as the thick wooden door creaked open.
Megan peered inside, then gasped. The woozy feeling she’d had earlier returned, forcing her to grab Mose’s arm for support. On the other side of the threshold, her papa looked up from the task he’d been diligently practicing. His gasp echoed hers.
She couldn’t have said who was more surprised. Joseph Kearney, at seeing his daughter in his secret Tucson hideaway? Or Megan, at seeing her papa in a way she had never, in a million years, expected to find him?
At the restaurant, Gabriel turned the strongbox key in his fingers. He looked at the unopened wooden box. It held the solution to his final Pinkerton investigation. He’d have wagered all he had on it. He had only to unfasten the lock, open the lid, and withdraw the papers he needed as proof.
So why hadn’t he?
Instead, he had spent the last quarter hour or more letting Megan’s parting words chase themselves through his mind. I love you, Gabriel. With all my heart and soul. Never had he heard anything so beautiful. Never had he yearned to return those words to a woman, the way he wanted to give them to Meg.
That he loved her was plain as the empty chair across the table. Only a man half-crazed with love would set free his likeliest suspect when she’d already been in his grasp.
Open the box, he told himself, twisting the key so it lay ready between his chilly fingers. Open it.
Did he fear he’d find proof of Meg’s guilt after all? Damnation, but that would be the cap he’d never wanted to his Pinkerton career. The possibility explained his reluctance with room to spare.
Gabriel looked to the restaurant’s far corner, where a potbellied stove warmed the place against September’s chill. With stunning intensity, he imagined himself opening the stove’s black iron door. Shoving the strongbox and key inside. Slamming the door on the few things that could turn his newfound dreams to ashes.
No. Tempted as he was, he’d been an operative long enough to know he could never destroy evidence. Whatever he found inside that box, Gabriel promised himself, he would see this through to the end.
Giving himself no more time to brood, he thrust the key into the lock. It turned easily. But then, why shouldn’t it? Knowing Megan, she’d probably seen to details like oiling the locks herself. He had never known a woman less likely to leave things to chance.
When he opened the lid, a jumble of papers, certificates, and ledgers met his gaze. Swiftly, Gabriel sorted through them. He moved aside the basket of fudge—giving it a bemused smile as he did so, remembering Megan’s suggestion that he open a confectioner’s shop—and stacked the station paperwork in piles on the table.
He read through the shipping manifests, running his fingers along the neatly written columns. With a mingled sense of anticipation
and dread, he turned to the page for the day of the missing shipment.
An envelope slid from between the pages. Frowning, Gabriel caught it. He raised it higher to examine it, and noticed a peculiar odor emanating from the paper. It was familiar to him, but he could not place the scent.
Gabriel sniffed. In a rush, recognition came to him. Copper sulfate. The paper smelled faintly of copper sulfate, the chemical combined with liquid mercury to cull silver from crushed mined ore…in places like Tombstone, where the stolen payroll shipment originated.
He flipped over the envelope. Still firmly sealed, it bore no signs of having been tampered with—and only two words on the face of it. Joseph Kearney. Megan must have received the envelope, likely on the same day as the manifest pages it had been pushed between, and set it aside for her father to read.
Thoughtfully, Gabriel tapped the envelope against the pages as he read the day’s entries. All seemed in order, with the exception of the specially handled payroll shipment his Pinkerton operatives had been dispatched to find. The only cargo passing between Tombstone and Tucson via Kearney Station had been listed as ordinary goods.
Gabriel slipped his knife from the sheath in his boot and slit the envelope. He withdrew the sheet of paper within, noticing again the odor of mercury. His nose wrinkled. After spending almost three months working undercover in a Nevada silver mine on a case last year, he’d grown to dislike the chemical stench and black grit surrounding the place. He wasn’t happy to have the memories revisited on him now.
The unfolded page revealed itself as the one thing Gabriel had not expected to find.
Proof. Proof not of Megan’s guilt, or her father’s—but the mine foreman who had hired the Pinkertons to find his missing payroll. In amazement, Gabriel read and re-read the letter he’d found. Written in the foreman’s own hand—script Gabriel recognized from the case file he’d read before embarking on the train to the Territory—the letter detailed the valuable shipment’s contents, and the safeguards meant to keep it protected on its journey.
It also detailed the foreman’s request that Joseph Kearney take personal responsibility for the shipment, and that he notify the foreman in writing when it passed safely through Kearney Station.
It was the absence of Kearney’s assurance, Gabriel remembered, followed by the arrival of an empty box at the shipment’s destination, that had spurred the mine foreman into hiring detectives. He’d cried foul loudly enough to garner the attention of William Pinkerton himself.
It was a remarkable hue and cry…over a box sent deliberately empty.
No one had cause to steal the shipment, Gabriel realized. With the letter he’d sent unopened, no one but the foreman himself knew of the supposedly valuable contents. And Joseph Kearney hadn’t stepped as neatly as the foreman had hoped into his plans to embezzle payroll from his employer’s mine.
Evidently, the man hadn’t realized it was not Joseph who ran Kearney Station. It was Megan.
And it was Megan’s honorable nature that had kept that incriminating envelope sealed all these weeks, inadvertently protecting her father and herself against the foreman’s plans.
Gabriel grinned. Blazes, but he loved it when a case snapped together at last.
Ordinarily, he would have traveled the seventy-odd miles between Tucson and Tombstone, and been part of the foreman’s arrest himself. But with Megan waiting for him someplace in the city, Gabriel found he had no taste for meting out justice in person. Not when there were operatives already in place at the mine, awaiting instructions that could easily be sent by wire.
Not when, for the first time in years, a better, brighter future lay ready for him to claim it. A future that included Meg, with her soft touches and teasing smiles and wily tongued mouth that begged to be kissed. A future that, just possibly, included several batches of fudge, more laughter than he could imagine, and, if only Megan would have him, a wedding to remember.
Yes, Gabriel decided, stepping into the fading sunlight to head back to the telegraph office. The future looked sweet indeed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sometime just after dawn, Megan awoke to the sound of booted footsteps passing near her resting place. With a start, she shoved herself upright. Disoriented at the feel of gritty wood beneath her, she stared at the plank porch floorboards she’d fallen asleep on. Frowning, she shifted her gaze upward, where a fancy-lettered sign swung slowly in the breeze.
Hop Kee’s Celestial Kitchen, it read. With dawning relief—and remembrance of her plans to meet Gabriel here when all was finished with her father and the Websters—Megan blinked to sweep the cobwebs from her brain. If the tightly shuttered windows of the nearby shops and the lack of people in the streets were any indication, it was still early. Very early.
Where was Gabriel?
A thunderous snort sounded beside her, nearly loud enough to rattle the windows of the restaurant at her back. Fondly, Megan looked at her father snoring peacefully on the floorboards beside her. He’d been nothing if not repentant last night when she’d caught up with him.
He’d also been holding fistfuls of money the likes of which she’d never seen.
It’s a bona-fide lucky streak, Meggie girl! papa had announced with a tremendous grin—once he’d recovered from the shock of seeing her. Just like I told Addie. I’ve never won so big in all my blasted life!
In wonder, she’d sank into a chair at the table where Joseph had been counting his winnings. She’d listened to his tales of incredible luck. She’d heard him talk of doubling, then tripling, her nest egg money.
And after Megan had explained all that had transpired while he’d been away, after papa had sheepishly agreed not to try winning an even greater fortune by wagering Kearney Station too, he had put stacks of folded bills in her lap…and bade her to keep it all.
For your dressmaker’s shop, papa had said with a rascally wink. And for a dowry, too, eh? Can’t have my girl going to her fella stone broke, now can I?
Until yesterday, Megan had no idea how quickly tears could soak through stacks of money.
A cool breeze rattled the sign again, making it swing to and fro on the slender chains anchoring it to the ramada. She peered up at it, then looked down the empty length of the street. From between the buildings came a wash of orange and gold, the harbinger of the rising sun.
Where was Gabriel?
And where were her things?
Suddenly concerned, Megan patted the porch around her. The swing of her reticule’s strap against her wrist reminded her she’d stuffed everything into her bag for safekeeping. With a sigh, she settled back against the Celestial Kitchen’s red lacquered door and pried open the drawstring.
Thank heavens. The deed to the Webster’s mercantile shop still remained tucked inside, exactly where she’d stashed it. It had taken some doing to persuade Jedediah and Prudie to sell her the space for her dressmaker’s shop. Especially since she’d pressed them relentlessly to include their entire remaining stock of pots and pans and utensils suitable for candy making.
Where was Gabriel?
Perhaps she ought to wake papa and go searching for him, Megan decided. Surely a brawny, crackerjack-smart Pinkerton man like Gabriel could take care of himself…but waiting for him was driving her crazy!
The first scrap of white drifted past her on a gust of wind, just as Megan was about to get to her feet. Snow? In Arizona Territory? Astonished at the sight, she remained still. Another bit of white floated downward, wafting slowly from someplace above her head. More followed, coming faster now.
Perplexed, Megan captured one. She rubbed it between her fingers. Paper. Why were scraps of paper floating onto Hop Kee’s porch?
She sat open-mouthed, watching the flurry of white dance and drift from the sky to the floorboards. Megan grabbed another piece. Then another. Gradually, she recognized the shapes and lines penciled on them. It was—it had been—the wanted poster of her father.
Gabriel.
“Never did like carr
ying around that wanted poster much,” he said. “Tearing it up felt like a fine thing.”
Megan looked up. Like magic, he was there at her feet—tall and strong and as solid as a dream come true. He held out his hand.
Nearly afraid to take it lest he vanish at her touch, Megan gathered her courage and put her hand in his. She rose in his grasp. Within moments, she found herself in the only place she wanted to be.
In his arms.
Gabriel smiled, just as though he felt he was where he belonged, too. Could it be? Tentatively, Megan stroked her fingers over the beginnings of his beard, and felt his smile deepen beneath her fingers.
He didn’t look like he was there to arrest her. She’d allow him that much, devilishly handsome Irishman or no. But she had to be sure. She stepped back a pace.
“Gabriel! Are you—is everything—I mean, what—”
“Shhh.” Gently, he put his fingers to her lips. “Later we’ll talk. For now, just know that it’s over. Over.”
With a loving touch, Gabriel drew her closer. Their lips touched, joining in a kiss as sweet and rich as his fudge.
No, Megan thought, bedazzled. Far sweeter. Far richer.
And she found herself still hungrier for it.
Finally, he raised his head. “Tell me…does it feel different to kiss a free man?”
“Hmmmm?”
The dratted man probably wanted her to open her eyes. Instead, she flattened her palms against the wonderfully solid warmth of his chest and leaned closer. As near as she could guess, another kiss seemed quite likely. Megan meant to be ready when it came.
“A free man,” Gabriel said instead. “That’s what took so long in getting here. The Pinkerton agency has more required forms and paperwork than you have fancy hats.”
Megan’s eyelashes fluttered. No. She would not break this dreamy spell for the sake of sparring with him. But she did go so far as to ask, “You quit? You’re not a detective anymore?”
“I’m not a detective anymore. Disappointed?”
His hands caressed her arms, then moved upward toward her shoulders. As always, his touch felt delightful. Megan felt herself sway a little closer.