by Robin Gideon
Was Pamela waiting for a declaration of love? And if he gave it, would he be telling the truth or giving in to avoid another testy confrontation with her?
“Do you see any guards?” she whispered. “I don’t.”
Garrett brought his mind back to the problems at hand, cursing himself for letting his thoughts wander. Kneeling in the darkness near the small group of buildings that Jonathon Darwell had erected in Tula Valley, he scanned the shadows once more for sentries.
“I think the way is clear,” he decided. “We want to stay as far from the saloon as possible. It sounds pretty dead in there, but you never know when someone might stagger out.”
Pamela looked at the buildings once more, squinting to see the structures better in the darkness. Darwell had built a small saloon, where the liquor served was of poor quality, often watered down, and always overpriced. The general store in which customers paid way too much for a sack of flour for the benefit of not having to travel all the way into Whitetail Creek. Another shack occasionally used as a bordello, whenever Richard Darwell convinced some hard-up prostitute to give him half her profits and to bestow sexual favors upon him, a blacksmith shop usually without a smith, and a dentist’s office that doubled as a veterinarian’s and undertaker’s office. All three jobs were now done by a man who’d been a fine doctor until a nose for laudanum had dulled his intellect and his skills, causing a woman to die needlessly in childbirth. He had made a hasty departure from St. Louis only minutes before an enraged mob had decided to lynch him in the town square. Not much was expected of him anymore, and that was the way the doctor liked it.
The saloon was the only building in which lamps burned, and the night breeze carried the sounds of a card game in progress.
Garrett got to his feet and started the final approach to the general store. Pamela adjusted her mask one more time, made sure that her bandanna—she’d opted to do without the old hat—was in place to hide her blonde hair, and then wrapped her cape around herself as she followed Garrett.
As they moved swiftly and silently through the night, Pamela sensed an unidentifiable change in herself, a change she was almost immediately shocked when understanding hit. By putting on the cape and mask, she was hiding her identity, not only from those people who might recognize her, but also from herself. Yes, behind the mask she was no longer Pamela Bragg. The Midnight Phantom? No, that was Garrett. But she wasn’t Pamela. She felt different, bolder somehow, freed by the anonymity the mask gave her.
As they crept closer and closer to the general store, a part of her seemed to be expanding, her courage and confidence building with each step. She was hiding, to be sure, but by hiding behind the mask, she was also setting free something within herself that she’d always kept hidden, even from herself.
They stalked past quarters built for Darwell’s low-paid hands before arriving at the darkened rear doors of the general store.
“Where does Billy Quinn live?” Garrett asked.
“I think upstairs,” Pamela whispered, standing close beside him and leaning against the drafty, poorly made, two-story building. “Sometimes, after he closes the store, he goes to the saloon. If he drinks enough to pass out, then he stays there and Darwell takes a night’s wages from his pay.”
“Wages?”
“The saloon is also a hotel, sort of. If you drink enough to pass out, you can sleep on a cot. Darwell charges dearly for the privilege.”
With each passing minute, Garrett was discovering just exactly how far removed he was from the real victims of Jonathon Darwell, the people with whom he’d always felt such an affinity. The idea of sleeping on a cot in a saloon was so foreign to him as to be unimaginable.
The doors and windows of the store were locked and barred, and there was no exterior stairway for escape should the ramshackle building catch fire. Poor Billy Quinn, Garrett decided, in the event of a late-night fire.
“How did you plan on getting in?” Garrett asked.
Pamela grinned beneath the mask. “I hadn’t thought it through that far. I figured I’d think of something once I got here and checked it out.”
Garrett shook his head, though he couldn’t help smiling. For most of his life he’d calculated every move, every step necessary to achieve his goals successfully. Then along came Pamela. With her, he was an entirely different person, more spontaneous, quicker to smile, more inclined to live his life rather than run it like a carefully monitored business enterprise.
“Well, you’re here, so start thinking, unless you want to wait until morning for Quinn to unlock the doors for us.”
Pamela stepped away from Garrett and began inspecting the doors and windows.
In the near-total silence of the night, she was thinking of ways to enter the building, and discarding every idea almost as quickly as it came to mind, when the off-key singing of an Irish ballad drifted along on the night air, getting slowly and steadily louder.
Pamela rushed to Garrett, and together they moved away from the general store and into the shadows. She saw the singing came from Billy Quinn, who was weaving and stumbling his way down the single dusty street, holding a whiskey bottle in his right hand. Occasionally, he paused to swig deeply. She saw he was on the very edge of falling into an alcoholic stupor.
“And to think we were afraid he’d see us,” Garrett muttered in disgust after Pamela had identified Quinn. “He couldn’t see his own shoes much less us.”
Garrett and Pamela crouched behind the horse trough, even though it didn’t seem likely Billy Quinn would notice them.
Quinn staggered to the rear door of the general store then fished around in his pocket for the key. A full minute later, he stuck the key into the lock, and after nearly another minute, he figured out which way to turn it. Garrett, meanwhile, was muttering disgustedly.
Garrett’s unflagging contempt for violence—except in rare desperate circumstances—kept him from rushing forward and clubbing Quinn from behind. A hard jab to the back of the head and the sot would be sleeping on the floor of his store with only a lump and a headache to show for it in the morning.
“Look at that idiot,” Garrett growled under his breath.
Quinn, in a simultaneous attempt to put his key in his pocket, drink from his whiskey bottle, and enter the store, dropped his key in the dirt. When he bent over to pick it up, he hit his head against the door, staggered back several steps, and then dropped the whiskey. Prioritizing his desires, Quinn went immediately for the bottle, groping in the moonlight for it. By the time he’d recovered the whiskey and had it to his lips, he’d completely forgotten about the key.
Quinn stumbled through the door and closed it behind him. Garrett heard confused grunting as he staggered through the store. Eventually, a lamp was lit upstairs in Quinn’s small living quarters.
“I’ll give you two to one odds he didn’t lock the door,” Garrett whispered.
“I thought you weren’t a gambling man.”
“I’m not. But I like to guess the odds against me just the same.”
Pamela got to her feet and slipped quickly through the night to the door. Her heart was pounding as she wrapped the cape around herself and then turned the doorknob slowly. The door, on poorly aligned hinges, creaked but opened rather easily with little pressure.
When Garrett had joined her, he took her hand and together they entered the general store. They closed the door behind them in case someone came to check on whether Quinn had made it back or not, though that would probably never happen.
Taking Pamela by the shoulders, Garrett brought her close to lean down and whisper in her ear. “We’d better wait a couple minutes until we’re certain he’s sleeping it off.”
Pamela nodded, saying nothing, feeling the heady exhilaration of once again being where she shouldn’t be. The element of risk always heightened her awareness of her surroundings and herself. It accented the heat of Garrett’s hands upon her shoulders, his nearness, his limitless allure. Suddenly, the separation and celibacy brought
an ache to the marrow of her bones. She felt Garrett’s nearness in her pussy, the tingling an irrefutable signal that his allure was as powerful as ever.
“As long as we’ve got time to kill,” she whispered, slipping her hands inside Garrett’s jacket, circling his waist. She ran her fingertips lightly up and down his spine, lovingly massaging the muscles on either side, feeling them pulse as she touched him.
“You’re a very wicked woman,” Garrett whispered a moment before his lips closed down over hers.
Pamela closed her eyes, luxuriating in the highly sensual kiss. She pressed her breasts insistently against his chest, which never failed to heighten her excitement. Her nipples tightened and became more sensitive to contact.
This time, it was she who first explored his mouth with her tongue, insisting that he open his lips wider. The mask and cape that would hide her identity from others now hid her inhibitions from herself, leaving her free to do whatever she wanted, to be bold and demanding in her sexual appetites.
She grasped the hand Garrett rested on her hip. “I love the way you kiss,” she whispered. Then she moved his hand to her breast, her fingers forcing his to tighten over the taut mound. Though she repressed all sounds of pleasure, reminding herself to remain as silent as possible, her excitement was growing stronger and more insistent with each passing second.
She kissed Garrett again, her tongue dancing against his, as she continued to hold her hand over his so she could revel in the heat and strength of his palm against her breast. She took pleasure in her own forcefulness, in her newfound willingness to be demanding when it came to having Garrett satisfy the sensual cravings he’d first aroused in her.
In the middle of this delicious kiss, feeling her passion building, Pamela fully experienced her own desire for perhaps the very first time. A heat was rising within her, the lips of her pussy were becoming moist and swollen with excitement, and the pulse of her heartbeat throbbed in her clit. She was an experienced woman now, knowledgeable as to what was happening with her body, no longer confused or frightened by her excitement, by the passion that before had mystified her.
Would she dare make love with Garrett right then and there? The danger of exposure, of being caught by Billy Quinn, would add to the excitement. But as Pamela kissed Garrett’s throat, nipping lightly at his flesh with her teeth, she had to admit that the chances of Quinn waking from his alcoholic stupor were remote, at best. There really wasn’t much danger there.
And if she didn’t stop kissing Garrett very soon, she would not allow him to stop kissing her until he had quenched her passion.
She took a half step away from him, looking up into his face. Her skin felt as though he was touching her everywhere, running a thousand feathery fingers over her from head to toe. Even her scalp tingled with the building passion.
“Phantom, when we get home…” Pamela said, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“When we get home, what then?” he replied, a self-assured half smile curling his lips and making Pamela want to kiss him once again.
“Do you have to make a game out of everything?” she asked.
“I like to play. Now tell me, what’s going to happen when we get home?”
This was a small play for power on Garrett’s part, and Pamela rather enjoyed it. They were both powerful people. With Garrett, there was always something going on just beneath the surface of every conversation, and in this moment, she sensed that his desire equaled her own.
Emboldened by the anonymity the mask and cape gave her, Pamela decided to find out exactly how far this new, dynamic persona could take her.
“Let me give you a hint,” she said, taking his hand by the wrist.
She moved even closer to him once again, bringing his hand to the juncture of her thighs. The pressure of his fingers and palm against her pussy brought a flood tide of heat and cream through her senses and to her pink lips. Her eyelids fluttered briefly as delicious feelings slithered through her.
With little effort, and without shedding even a single article of clothing, Pamela was quite certain she could reach a climax from Garrett’s caresses, just as she had that first night when she’d attempted to break into Jonathon Darwell’s mansion.
When Garrett began to move his hand, Pamela tightened her fingers around his wrist. The simple pressure of his hand against her pussy, even through her drawers and Levi’s, was about as much as she could sanely accept.
“That should give you something to think about,” she said after a moment, finding it difficult to speak clearly. Her heart was racing.
She pushed Garrett’s hand away, fully aware of how she had teased him. She also anticipated the delicious thrills that would be hers once the evening had come to a close and she and Garrett were safely ensconced in her cozy little cabin.
“Back to business,” Garrett said with equal measures of determination and despair. “But suddenly I’m really not in the mood for business. I don’t suppose you’d have any notion as to why my trousers are suddenly so damned tight.”
Pamela looked at his bulging trousers and nearly reached out for him.
“Oh my, you always respond,” she said a bit breathlessly.
They checked the ground floor of the general store first. Scraps of paper lay scattered around an empty cash drawer at the front. One slip read Sack of Flour. Beside that was a set of initials. Garrett crumpled the paper up and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
It became apparent from notes they found that Billy Quinn was, at best, marginally literate, and that his bookkeeping was appalling. He had no filing system, per se. Apparently people came to the store when they needed something and charged it when they didn’t have the cash to buy what they needed. So they went into debt to Darwell’s General Store, and once they’d gotten in, they never got out. Ironically, this moneymaking operation, while having a devastating effect upon the people living near Tula Valley was, Garrett knew from his experience with Darwell’s business matters, quite an insignificant contributor to Darwell’s wealth.
“We’ve got to go upstairs,” Garrett said after some time spent on unproductive searching. “There are only fragments of information down here, not what we really need.”
He found the way to the stairs and took each step slowly and carefully, annoyed by the creaking beneath his weight. With every breath he hoped that Billy Quinn would be dead to the world. Though Garrett did not draw the revolver from its holster, he kept his right hand on the butt.
The door to Billy’s living quarters was ajar. It consisted of a tiny room, crowded with supplies to be brought down to the general store as needed. Also crammed in this little room were a washbasin, pitcher, clothes rack—though judging from the looks of the clothes he was sleeping in, he’d been wearing them quite some time without the benefit of laundering—and a flat-topped desk. Upon closer inspection, Garrett discovered the desk was simply a door placed on two sawhorses. Upon this were a single kerosene lamp, a pen and ink set, a stack of slips of paper weighted down with a rock the size of a man’s fist, and a leather-bound ledger.
Even from across the room, Garrett determined this last to be a book of quality, the kind printed and bound in San Francisco. He used several ledgers just like this to record the operations of Randolph Ranch and its various business enterprises.
“Look at that,” Garrett muttered.
Pamela followed the direction of his disgusted glare to Billy Quinn lying on a cot, his shirt mostly unbuttoned, his trousers half open, one suspender strap on and one off, one boot on and one off, his mouth gaping open, his arms flayed out. He was passed out cold as a man could be and still be alive.
“To think we were worried he might hear us,” Garrett growled in an almost conversational tone.
“Well, it isn’t exactly like we wasted our time,” Pamela replied a little defensively. She didn’t want anything negative said about her bold behavior with him earlier. Her confidence was rising steadily with each passing day, and with each time she and Garrett shar
ed their sensuality. Still, insecurity was never far from the surface.
Garrett heard the ragged edge to her tone and smiled reassuringly. “No, it wasn’t wasted at all.” Much as he wanted to reassure Pamela, he also wanted to do the deed they’d set out to do and then get out of the general store. Even if Billy Quinn was dead-drunk, neither Garrett nor Pamela knew enough about the way business was done at the store to have any assurances that someone else wouldn’t show up at any minute.
Garrett took the thick ledger book out of the room then knelt near the head of the stairs. From a shirt pocket he withdrew several stick matches. With his thumbnail, he struck one.
“This is what we’ve been looking for,” Garrett said, running his finger down a column of figures to point to the name “Matthews.”
He briefly studied the ledger. Judging from the legibility of the handwriting and from the misspellings, Billy Quinn simply stood behind the counter at the general store during the day, scribbling down customers’ purchases. And then, at regular intervals, Michael Darwell would show up at the store and transfer all the information from the slips to the master ledger.
The Darwells weren’t making a fortune off this, but they were making too much profit from unfortunate people.
“Did you get all the slips you could find?” Garrett asked Pamela as they knelt at the head of the stairway.
“Everything that had anything written on it. I didn’t really pay much attention to what was on them.”
“Just as well,” Garrett said, a slow burning anger building inside him. He shook out the match.
Tossing all the slips of paper they’d found into the ledger, he closed it and tucked the book under his arm. “I’m so mad at myself I could scream. I didn’t know a thing about this operation. I always think I’m so damned smart, but I’m really not.” He shook his head in disgust. “Let’s get out of here. It smells of fresh drink and old sweat.”