The Lawman's Bride (Harlequin Historical Series)

by Cheryl St. John

  She had remembered several names of people she had helped Garrett swindle. Her messages asked for descriptions of the con artists. She was sending the law in Denver a request for information about the couple wanted for killing the man in the gaming hall. She also asked them to send wanted posters on the next train, and to deliver the package directly to City Marshal Clay Connor.

  This was it. A chance to make her most important choice. A choice to do the right thing. Now all she had to do was wait. And pray Garrett didn’t send for her before she had the proof she needed.

  Clay stopped by the Arcade twice without seeing Sophie. He’d normally eaten at the lunch counter, until he’d taken an interest in her and changed his routine to sit in the dining hall. It was rare that he didn’t glimpse her during the noon hour. On Wednesday he deliberately came by midafternoon between trains.

  “Have you seen Sophie?” he asked Emma Spearman.

  An odd look came over her face and she glanced behind him, then to the side. “No. Um. I haven’t.”

  Clay turned his gaze toward another waitress. “Maybe someone else knows where she is.”

  “She’s not here.”

  He turned at Amanda Pettyjohn’s voice. “Day off during the week?”

  “She was dismissed on Monday morning.”

  And she hadn’t contacted him? Concern rolled over him. She must be crushed. This job meant so much to her. “What happened?”

  “She took a high and mighty attitude with the managers,” the girl said, shifting a stack of tablecloths in her arms. “I don’t know who she is anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Amanda gestured for him to follow her out of earshot. “She told me she knew Mr. Morgan before she came here. That he followed her. We argued. I don’t understand why she said that. She was hoping to scare me away from him. She has you—she doesn’t need any more beaus.”

  Clay digested that odd piece of information and shook his head without a reply.

  “Then when she was leaving, she told us she never really had a family in Pennsylvania. That she made it all up to get this job.”

  She’d told him the same thing. Clay’s head swam with all the conflicting stories. “Where is she now?”

  “I have no idea. She said she’d be in Newton for a while.”

  Clay walked away from the Arcade wondering what to believe. Anger blotted out the confusion. He mounted his horse and started checking hotels.

  He found her registered at the Enterprise, the sixth place he checked. He rapped his knuckles against the smooth cherrywood door and waited with a knot in his chest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Who is it?” Her voice on the other side of the wood barrier.

  “Me.”

  A key turned in the lock and the door opened. The sight of her took his breath away. She wore a dark blue skirt. Her white ruffled blouse was sprigged with tiny blue flowers. She’d fashioned her hair in a loose upsweep he’d never seen her wear before, soft and flattering to her delicate features.

  “Clay,” she said simply.

  She backed up to allow him room to enter, closing the door behind him.

  He looked around, noticing womanish fripperies. The hinged wooden box on the bureau. The room held the scent of a recently smoked cigar. He looked at her. “What happened?”

  “I was dismissed.”

  “For what?”

  “An accumulation of things as you might guess. I’ve been a pain in Mrs. Winters’s backside since I first took the position.” She didn’t sound the least bit disturbed over losing her livelihood. “It’s for the best.”

  “I could talk to Harrison. Straighten things out.”

  “No. I don’t want that. I’m going to do just fine.”

  He wanted to touch her. The memory of their day together was fresh and vivid on his heart. She’d been so open.

  She was still so achingly beautiful, but she seemed so different. There was a harder edge to her as though she’d closed up, pulled away. The transformation didn’t sit well with him. “Amanda told me what you said to her.”

  Sophie met his gaze without flinching. “Which part?”

  “That you knew Monte Morgan before comin’ to Newton. That he followed you here. That true?”

  She look him square in the eye. “I’m never going to lie to you again.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What—?” The things she’d revealed to him finally whirled into place. His blood thrummed in his veins. “My God. He’s the one. He’s the man who bought you and forced himself on you.”

  She moved in front of him in an instant, as though she feared he’d run from the room.

  Images of the man’s face and long-fingered hands made Clay sick. The man who’d mistreated Sophie had a name and a face now. “He’s mine.”

  “No!” She grabbed his forearms and held on in a fierce grip. “Not like this. Not in a confrontation. Not in public. Not where he has a chance to get away if he suspects you know. Not while he still has the opportunity to kill you or me or Amanda.”

  “I’m not lettin’ him get away with it.”

  “But you couldn’t prove it. He’d lie. I know him. He’d make me out to be a whore. He would lay the blame on me, claim he rescued me, treated me like a daughter. He’d say I got us chased out of every town. People will believe him because he’s convincing. Trust me, Clay. Not like this.”

  Trust her?

  “There’s more to this story. More to pin on him than his mistreatment of a young girl. I can prove it if you’ll let me. We can see him hang for murder.”

  She had his full attention now. “Murder?”

  “Everything I told you the other day is the truth. I will never lie to you again, I swear to that. But I still didn’t tell you everything. There’s more. A whole lot more. It’s ugly, and it’s going to implicate me right along with him.”

  “Damn, woman!” He took off his hat and threw it across the room.

  “I’m so sorry, Clay. Sorry you had to be involved. Sorry Amanda got caught in the middle. I can make it right if you give me a chance.”

  Clay took several steps back and forth in the confines of the room. The window was open to the sun and the breeze, the curtain billowing against the sill. How could things look so normal when nothing was as it seemed? How could a woman be so beautiful and have such dark secrets?

  His gut instinct had been to tear out of here and kill Morgan with his bare hands. That would have been a critical mistake, and Sophie had been right to block him. He needed all the facts, and apparently Morgan wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

  Without another word, he pulled out the spindly chair from the writing desk and perched on the seat.

  Sophie clenched her hands together and paced at the end of the bed. “I told you before how he paid for my education. Everything always had to be the best. The best tutors, the best seamstresses, the finest hotels, the most extravagant meals. In his mind it’s all owed him.

  “His family lost their land and home during the war. He thinks his birthright was stolen from him. Everyone owes him for that. Especially me. I’m an investment.”

  Clay couldn’t speak, and he wondered how she could. How she could talk of this without tearing her hair or clothing or railing against the unfairness of life. She was as calm and in control as she always seemed.

  “When he felt I was ready, he began tutoring me in his craft. I was rewarded for succeeding and punished for failure. I learned quickly.”

  Clay didn’t ask what that craft was, but the question was a giant in the room. He didn’t have to wait.

  “He’s a con man. A good one. High class, nothing petty. I was coached to use people’s greed against them. And no doubt about it, people are greedy and selfish. He was right about that. Those were the only people I interacted with. It became a game to create a cunning plan and value the beauty of it. Executing the scheme was treated as an art.”

  “I’ve see
n his kind,” Clay told her. “Maybe not con men as high class, but I know his type.”

  “I was a prisoner, Clay. I was a tool he bought to help him trick people. He trained me to be an extension of him. The more time that passed and the more cons we accomplished, the clearer it became to me. I was a possession. He used me to gain people’s confidence so he could take their money.

  “When I was young, he had a favorite scheme. I’d leave a violin with a business owner, saying I had an errand where I couldn’t take it and tell him that I’d be back that afternoon. Garrett would then go into that establishment, see the violin and tell the owner it was valuable. Garrett offered him a huge amount of money. The man couldn’t sell it to him, so Garrett would promise to come back in case I didn’t return for it. When I did return the store owner would offer to buy the instrument from me for about half the supposed value. I’d sell him a worthless violin for two or three thousand dollars and we’d be on our way.”

  Clay shook his head. “Takin’ advantage of the man’s greed?”

  “It’s awful, I know. Those people had families at home. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep at night thinking of the money we’d taken from their wives and children.”

  She stopped and seemed to study the grain of the polished wood floor. “I told you I tried to get away once.”

  “And he found you.”

  “Things were worse after that, and I was afraid to risk another change. The schemes involved just enough seduction to lure the men into the web. He held the power to make my life even more miserable. But I planned. And I waited. All I needed was the perfect opportunity. He never knew what I was thinking because I’m—I was a master at deception. I was the perfect accomplice, exactly the person he’d trained me to be. A puppet.”

  Clay remembered her words. I submitted. I survived. He didn’t want to believe what she was telling him, but why would she make up a story that implicated herself?

  “We’re wanted in at least six states,” she told him. “I’m a fugitive.”

  He jerked his attention to her face. Her lovely serene face. She said it as though she was telling him the time of day. He’d never seen her shed a tear now that he thought of it. Not even when she’d told him he wouldn’t be the first.

  A flash of regret crossed her features just then however, and he prepared himself for the next admission. With a swish of silken petticoats she moved to the bureau and took out a slim leather case. She opened it to reveal a set of peculiar tools. “I picked the lock on your jail and stole the wanted papers with our pictures. I knew that DeWeise fellow was sleeping in the rear because I heard him snoring.”

  Clay got to his feet slowly. “Did you…set the fire?”

  “No! I swear I didn’t. I had those papers in my pocket and was already to the next block when I heard a sound and turned to discover the flames. I’d seen your dog. I knew DeWeise was in there, too. No one was coming, so I ran back and let the man out. The cell keys were right on top of the stack of papers. I grabbed them, unlocked it, and he took off. I had to find the dog and drag him out.”

  Clay rubbed his chin in thought. “The hell.”

  “I couldn’t risk you or one of the others seeing those papers, so I broke in and took them. But I swear the fire was not my doing.”

  She went back to the bureau, replaced the tool set and withdrew a stack of small papers. He recognized them as Western Union missives.

  “These will prove what I’ve been telling you. They’re telegrams from places where we’re wanted. The descriptions differ somewhat because of the disguises, but I can show you those, too.”

  She knelt in front of a trunk set against one wall and opened the lid. He didn’t know whether to read the telegrams or look at the pile of wigs and makeup and padded clothing she produced. His head was a jumble of unwanted information.

  Finally he thumbed through the telegrams. They all had one thing in common, the approximate age and heights of two people, a man and woman who were wanted for various con schemes. Hair color, dress, mustaches, beauty marks were all obviously changeable.

  There were recurring names mentioned as well. Most often Joseph Richardson and Gabriella Dumont. “You called him Garrett. His name’s Joseph Richardson?”

  “No more than mine is Gabriella Dumont. It’s what he named me. It’s what he calls me. We used other names, too. Plenty of them.” She turned from the pile of costumes and got to her feet. “His name is Tek Garrett. Today’s train is delivering a set of wanted posters to you at the jail. You’ll find drawings that will identify us.”

  Not knowing what he was hoping to see, he studied her expression.

  “Both of us.”

  He let that soak in.

  “He can’t suspect that I’ve told you—that you know. He’s hired a gunman.” She touched her lip, then brought her hand down to twine with the other in an uncharacteristic move. “To kill you,” she finished.

  For the first time a crack in her composure opened, and he sensed her fear. He supposed the thought of a hired gun terrified her, but Clay’d had a gun aimed at his heart before, and the news didn’t shake him.

  “He’s contacted me and used Amanda in the threat. He believes I’m going along with his plan to pay back the money I took from him.”

  Clay sat back down. “Had a feelin’ there was more.”

  “I told you I was waiting for an opportunity. It came one night in Denver. We were setting up some wealthy cattlemen for a scam. They’d been playing cards nights on end.”

  “Garrett does card game swindles?”

  “Nothing that small. Playing cards with the marks is his way to get into their good graces. He puts on a display of having plenty of cash and works at just breaking even.

  “This night we’d gone to a hotel dining room for a late supper. I was there to soften up the mark. One of the men kept irritating Garrett. He’d been an irritant in the plan ever since we’d been working the scheme. This night Garrett lost his temper and went a little crazy. He shot the man straight in the chest—killed him outright.

  “The whole place broke out in confusion. Someone grabbed for Garrett, and I saw my chance. I snatched the satchel with the money and ran.

  “He must have escaped shortly behind me, because he wasn’t caught. It was too risky for him to come looking for me though. I disguised myself as a young miner and caught a ride out of town.”

  “You’re wanted for the same shooting?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ll have a trial. You’ll get to tell your story.”

  “Who would believe me, Clay?”

  He rested his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands to stare at the floor. He didn’t even know if he believed her anymore. She’d told so many lies. How much had she played him already? For what gain?

  “I’m not denying my part. And I did pay back some of the money. I used nearly all that I took that night to return to people we’d swindled. Family men mostly. I was trying to clear my conscience. They didn’t deserve to lose what was theirs. I didn’t deserve to have it.

  “That’s why he’s so mad now. I don’t have the money. He said if I didn’t work it off he’d hurt you…or Amanda. I played along. He has a plan and he’ll send word when I’m to do my part.”

  She seemed so detached from what she was saying, as though there wasn’t anything of importance at stake. He knew different. “What’s his plan?”

  “It’s a cattleman he’s had in his sights. He knows exactly how much the man is worth, where his cash is, his weaknesses, and then he sends me in as the setup.”

  “What’s your part?”

  “I’ll tell you, but I want you to go along with it, Clay.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to catch Garrett at it. I want him to know I set him up. I want to see his face and know I had the last word.” She moved forward, almost reached for him, then drew her hands back. “I know you don’t owe me anything. Not after the way I lied to you and pretended to be someone I’m not. Y
ou probably don’t think you can trust me, but I’m not trying to get out of anything, I swear to you.

  “I’ll pay my time just like I deserve. You can watch me so that I don’t try to leave. You can assign your deputies to watch me. I’m going to play along just like I’m his pawn again. As soon as I hear from him I’ll get word to you. And when Garrett comes to exact his blackmail, you’ll catch him red-handed.

  “If I’m going to sit in a jail cell for years, I want to know that he had to face the fact that he didn’t own me after all.”

  Finally a flicker of emotion crossed her features. Enough for him to know how important this was, enough to sense her desperation. Clay couldn’t think about her locked in a jail cell. But even though her position in all this wasn’t her fault, he was angry. Why his town? Why him?

  “If I was to go along with this…how does it work?”

  “I keep the gentleman company, skillfully reel him in.”

  Clay didn’t like the idea at all. “Seduce him?”

  “I invite him to my hotel room. Leave the door unlocked.”

  Not one damned bit.

  “I get naked—”

  “The hell you will.”

  “Okay, I’m supposed to get naked, and then I signal Garrett by turning the light off and on, then opening the window. Garrett barges in with a witness. The mark has to hide his indiscretion from his wife and family, so he pays through the nose. We take the cash and disappear.”

  Clay scratched his chin. “I suppose I could be right here waiting for him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have a couple o’ deputies in the next room.”

  “Yes.”

  “You would have all your clothes on.”

  “Yes.”

  It wasn’t a bad plan at all. But he stared at her, feeling like he’d never even met her before. “This is crazy. Are you using me, too? Is this what Sunday was all about? Softening me up to help you?”

  Her expression couldn’t have shown more shock if he’d grabbed her by the neck and squeezed. She placed a hand on her breast as though it was caving in.