by Jill Gregory
The words hung heavily in the tobacco-thick air of Ross McCallum’s oak-paneled study.
Ross McCallum leaned back in his green leather chair and glowered at the somber-suited young man standing opposite him, a foot away from the massive mahogany desk. “Are you threatening me, son?”
“No! No, sir, of course not. I just mean ...” Charles Derrickson mopped his brow. He took a deep breath and studied the gray-haired giant behind the desk in trepidation. His employer was scrutinizing him as if he were a slab of bacon about to be thoroughly chewed and swallowed. Not a pleasant sensation. His fingers tightened around the ledger books as he continued. “It’s only that I’ve gone over and over the figures—all of them—and the situation is growing serious. Very serious indeed. Your setbacks in the past six months have been significant. Selling the Ruby Palace might be your last chance to shore up all the other enterprises.”
Ross McCallum puffed on his cigar and studied his earnest young man of business with a slight curl of the lip. Well-intentioned, yellow-livered young pup, he decided scornfully. Derrickson had done an admirable job these past four years, but he lacked backbone and temerity. McCallum’s dark prune-colored eyes squinted above the plume of his cigar smoke as he noted Charles Derrickson’s spindly wrists, his thinning hairline, his soft white hands clutching the heavy ledger books with the reverence of a preacher holding his Bible. “I like you Derrickson,” he growled, and stabbed the air with his fragrant cigar. “You do fine work, and I think you’re sharp as a tack. And you know nearly as much about business as I do. But, boy, I’m not planning to sell the Ruby Palace Hotel to Lucas Johnson—or to anyone else for that matter. I’m not planning to sell anything. Got that? Not the flour mills, not the bank in Kansas City, not the railroad stocks, not the boot factories, and not my shares in the McCallum and Ervin Steel Company. Not now, not ever. Have I made myself clear?”
“Perfectly, sir.” Derrickson swallowed. “Believe me, I know how upset you are about your son and how determined you are to maintain business as usual. I understand that you don’t want to hear this right now—but, sir, I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t emphasize to you that this is a golden opportunity to bring in some much-needed cash—”
“I said no!” McCallum surged to his feet like a general confronted by an errant sergeant. “Get out now and put your energies into getting the machinery repaired at the mills, and posting a reward for the scoundrels who robbed the bank. Don’t sell anything. Don’t let out a hint that we’re in trouble. We’ll ride this out and prosper yet. The McCallums always do. We don’t quit, Derrickson, you got that? McCallums stay, fight, and win.”
‘Yes, sir. I’ll do just as you say, sir. Of course you know best, sir.”
The door closed softly behind him as he slithered out. Ross scowled, stuck the cigar between his lips, and stalked to the windows overlooking the expansive emerald gardens of McCallum House. Dusk draped the hedges and the silver pond, shaded the stone-bordered flower beds, and the gleaming statuary Livinia, as a young bride, had selected to grace the garden so many years ago. But Ross McCallum saw neither the amethyst splendor of the sky, nor the spreading loveliness of the twilit gardens, nor even the noisy little squirrel perched on the lowest branch of the sycamore tree outside the window. He saw a young man with dark brown hair and blazing eyes who stood in the garden and shouted at him.
“Tell me the truth, damn it! The truth, for once in your stinking life! Tell me!”
Ross McCallum closed his eyes against that blinding, painful memory, against the anguish in his son’s face. First Cade, and now Brett, he thought. Like Livinia, they’ve both left me. I’m alone.
But he refused to feel sorry for himself. He was a McCallum. No sniveling or whining allowed. He would get Brett back, damned if he wouldn’t. Cade he knew he would never see again, not after thirteen years, but Brett ...
Ross’s chest began to hurt. Like a huge fist tightening, knuckling, squeezing ... He closed his eyes and clenched the cigar between his fingers until the spasm of pain passed. Then he staggered slowly from the window, past his desk and the side table set out with brandy decanters and glasses, and sank into the green and gold tapestry wing chair beside the fireplace. I have to keep going—no slowing down, no giving in to this damned weakness of the heart, he thought, despising his own debility, wishing he could conquer it with the same bold ruthlessness he’d used to conquer every other enemy in his life. At any cost, he had to keep his business empire running smoothly until Brett returned. All these accursed problems were mounting up alarmingly and if he wasn’t careful there wouldn’t be any McCallum empire to hand over to his son.
But I’ll be damned if I’ll sell anything, especially the Ruby Palace Hotel. That had been his first big business success, opening the door to all the rest.
I just have to concentrate on business, Ross decided, his glance coming to rest on Livinia’s portrait, which hung over the green leather sofa against the wall. Sort everything out. End this streak of bad luck.
Bad luck, was that all it was? He was not a superstitious man, but he had an eerie feeling that there was more going on here than met the eye, much more than he had hinted at to that private investigator, Everett Stevenson. Who had come to Brett with the truth and shattered all the illusions Ross had taken such pains to create during all these years? Why were so many of his businesses experiencing losses and troubles within the past six months?
If I didn’t know better I’d think I was cursed. Cursed with a punishment for what I did so many years ago. Or I’d think that Boxer himself had come back to exact vengeance on me. But Boxer is dead. Buried at the bottom of the sea. With no one ever the wiser.
And I don’t regret it, Ross McCallum thought, sitting up straighter as the pain in his chest eased to the merest flicker. That piece of scum deserved exactly what he got.
Ross took several deep breaths and glanced around the large, well-lit comfortable study, as if looking for comfort in its handsome leather and brass appointments.
Soon the Stevenson Agency will find Brett and return him to me. We’ll sit right here and share a bottle of port and talk everything over. I’ll explain. And he’ll forgive me. And together well bring the McCallum empire back up to snuff. Together we’ll show the world what the McCallums are made of.
The house was very quiet. And for just a moment he thought he heard Livinia’s frail footfalls above, and he could picture her pacing from her dressing table to her silk-curtained bed, back and forth, back and forth, with tears flowing down her pale cheeks.
Sorrow gripped him, but he fought it off. The past was dead. Livinia, Boxer, even Cade. Dead—and gone. But Brett was very much alive and he would come back.
Ross McCallum squashed his cigar in the cuspidor beside his chair and stood up, his powerful hands balling into fists. He had to focus on the businesses. On every thing he had built for his son. Because that toad-eating Derrickson was right about one thing—the losses he’d suffered in the past six months had been significant. And if he wasn’t careful, he could lose everything he’d spent his life and his sweat and his blood in building.
His gaze lifted yet again to the hauntingly beautiful portrait of Livinia, sad and elegant in her blue satin ball gown, clutching the lilies he’d given her that morning before she posed. A tremor shook his powerful shoulders. He stilled it at once. The tremor was not from pain, but from sudden, overwhelming grief as he again thought of that horrible day when Brett had confronted him and demanded to know the truth.
Oh, God, he prayed, and Ross McCallum’s lips moved stiffly over the unfamiliar words of humble appeal. Let me have the chance to explain. Keep Brett safe from Red Cobb; don’t let my son’s death be added to my account as well. I know I have much to answer for, but please, let me have another chance with my son ...
Just one. One more chance.
* * *
“There will be other chances,” Charles Derrickson said confidently as he sank into a gilded chair in the Royal Suit
e of the Empire Hotel and reached for a glass of Madeira.
“Oh, yes, there certainly will be.” Lucas Johnson strolled back and forth across the Aubusson carpet, his expensive shiny black boots making a soft thud with each step. “You keep at him, Derrickson,” Johnson instructed him slowly. “Subtly, with finesse, but don’t let up. You hear me? Wait a few days, and then try again.”
“Yes, sir, I will!”
“It’s only a matter of time,” Johnson reiterated, pausing before the white marble fireplace to down his own goblet of Madeira before continuing his deliberate circuit around the spacious parlor. “Everything will fall into place.”
He stroked his fierce brown mustache as he prowled the room with the coiled, dangerous energy that characterized him. He was a handsome man and he knew it. Tall, lean, with fire-blue eyes and proud, aristocratic features, he looked every inch the gentleman of means in his broadcloth suit and starched white cravat, with his gold watch and fob tucked neatly inside the satin pocket of his vest.
Johnson smiled with sly anticipation. Divide and conquer—an amazingly effective strategy. With Brett gone, Ross McCallum was alone, bereft and distracted. That made him weak. As weak as an old lead mule cut off from the pack, Johnson concluded. The son of a bitch had no one to turn to for support, few friends in the business community who would lift a finger—his own ruthlessness had earned him too many enemies to count—in short, Johnson decided, McCallum was ripe for the kill.
“Have you heard from Bartholomew?” Derrickson inquired.
“Oh, yes.” He broke into a wide grin, the same sensually charming, confident grin that had set countless female hearts aflutter over his forty-odd years. “A telegraph message came this morning. It’s good news. Cobb will be closing in on Brett McCallum very soon.”
“Really.”
“There is no doubt that he is in the Arizona territory,” Johnson said coolly, halting before the velvet-curtained window overlooking the street. His smooth melodic voice was filled with satisfaction. “Young Master Brett may well be dead before that private investigator Ross hired even reaches the Arizona border.” He turned from the window, the cruel smile that always frightened Derrickson twisting his lips. “With any luck, that is.”
“Yes, sir. With any luck.” But Derrickson suddenly set the wine glass down, unable to take another sip. Deceiving and outfoxing a ruthless financial giant was one thing, but killing a young man in the prime of his life was quite another. Derrickson was queasy about this aspect of the job. He was only glad it had nothing to do with his own end of things. He would take care of Ross McCallum, and Bartholomew and Cobb would handle the dirt.
Derrickson watched Johnson through uneasy eyes. Johnson seemed to vibrate with exultation. The man is pure evil, Derrickson realized suddenly. A shudder ran between his shoulder blades. He loves this little plot of his, Derrickson thought. He savors every twist and turn of it.
“What if Cobb doesn’t get to young McCallum before the private investigator starts poking around?” Derrickson ventured, afraid Johnson would notice his nervousness if he didn’t say something soon. “What if the investigator gets in the way?”
Lucas Johnson crossed to the side table and poured himself another glass of wine. The gold and ruby ring on his finger glittered in the suite’s golden lamplight as he lifted the goblet to his lips and drank.
It was a stupid question, he thought in contempt. The answer was obvious to anyone but the most jelly-spined little worm. Derrickson was good at sneaking around between the pages of his ledger books, but he was worthless in the larger arena of this private little war where any tactic was acceptable. Any tactic at all.
“If the investigator gets in the way,” Lucas Johnson murmured, his eyes electrifyingly blue above his starched white linen cravat, “then that will be too damned bad for the investigator, won’t it? Cobb has his orders. He won’t let anything get in his way.”
Evil, Derrickson thought again, quelling the instinct to rise and flee the room. Pure evil.
But he had to stay now and dance with the devil. There was no turning back. Not for him, or Johnson, or Cobb, or McCallum. Not for any of them.
It was going to be a fight to the death.
Chapter 3
Arizona Territory
“Watch your step, miss,” the curly-bearded stagecoach driver warned Annabel as he helped her to descend the rusty steps and then gave the coach door a slam. Annabel gripped her floral carpetbag and stepped down into the dust. “Welcome to Justice,” the driver muttered drily, and as she glanced swiftly around at her surroundings, she had to stifle an involuntary groan of dismay.
She found herself in a small, dirty hovel of a town lined with a dozen crudely constructed buildings: false-fronted stores, saloons, a livery stable, a lodging house, and two hotels. It was a beaten-up-looking town, dreary and dilapidated, a place of grit and tumbleweed, groveling beneath the flower-splashed foothills and mountains to the north.
Well, what did you expect, she chided herself, as her fingers closed more tightly around the strap of her carpetbag. You knew you weren’t heading for Paris or New Orleans or New York City. But if Brett wanted to lose himself out here in this great big towering Arizona territory, and more specifically, within this tiny little flea-bitten town, it surely would be a good place for him to do it.
She had been the only passenger on the stagecoach to alight at the mournful little town called Justice, and she couldn’t blame the others for wanting to travel on. Not a soul was visible in the street in either direction, unless one counted the grizzled ancient rocking and humming to himself on the broken-down porch outside the mercantile. Tumbleweed blew like torn brown lace across the road, the sky glowed a sickly rose and greenish gray hue as the May sun melted toward the horizon, and everywhere were heat, dust, unpainted wooden shacks, and horse dung.
Justice.
Despite the dismal aspect of the town, and her weariness and hunger after days of jolting stagecoach travel, a tingle of anticipation raced through her, Brett had been here in this town only a few weeks ago—he had sent his father a letter from here. And because of that, thank God, she had a place to start.
A fresh urgency had overtaken her need to find him after she had studied the file. According to Everett Stevenson’s report, Ross McCallum had told him that his son was in danger—he believed a gunfighter named Red Cobb was tracking Brett to kill him. A business acquaintance passing through Kansas City had heard local gossip that the West’s newest, youngest, deadliest gunfighter was hunting down an easterner named Brett McCallum—but no one knew why.
Those words had filled Annabel with icy dread. Why would this gunman be after Brett? He was the most affable, easygoing of men. The file had contained no further answers to that question, so Annabel had been left to worry and to wonder. As she had traveled by train and by stagecoach across the country, she’d speculated about whether Red Cobb might have some connection to whatever trouble had caused Brett’s running away from home.
Annabel dimly remembered that Brett’s older brother had run away from home when he was seventeen, only months before she had come to live with Aunt Gertie at the McCallum house. She’d never met him, never even seen a photograph of him, for Ross McCallum had forbidden even so much as the mention of his name. But Brett used to talk about him sometimes when he and Annabel played together, always wishing his brother would come home.
Now Brett, too, had run away. Annabel knew many would say that Ross McCallum’s demanding, iron-fisted tyranny had no doubt driven him to it, as it had driven his oldest son away years before. But Annabel remained mystified, for unlike those who worked for Ross McCallum or courted him in business or social circles, Brett had never been intimidated by his father. He and Ross McCallum had had a formal but harmonious relationship. Brett was too easygoing and understanding to rebel against his father the way his belligerent older brother had done. Annabel had never heard him speak a single cross word to the man who had ruled the McCallum business empire w
ith the strength of Zeus. What could have happened to cause Brett to leave as he had, without a word or a letter or a warning?
There had been an argument—Ross McCallum had admitted that much to Mr. Stevenson during their interview. But he had given no clue what it was about or even how serious it had been.
Annabel had been able to think of little besides the danger Brett was in throughout each stage of her journey. Terrified that this gunfighter, Red Cobb, would find Brett before she did, she had tossed and turned in tormented anxiety each night in her Pullman car, and when she had left the train for the stagecoach leg of the trip, she had stared out the window for long tense hours, willing the moments to pass more quickly so that she could reach Brett in time.
There was another reason for urgency, she knew, something contained at the very end of Mr. Stevenson’s report. But as her reflections turned to this additional troubling aspect of the case, the stagecoach driver interrupted her thoughts.
“You’ll want to stay at the Copper Nugget Hotel right over there beside the mercantile.” He spat a runny tobacco wad into the street. “The other hotel ain’t fit for a lady. You sure about stopping here, miss, ‘stead of going on to Winslow with the others? Justice is a rough little town.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll be fine, Mr. Perkins. Why, Justice looks perfectly charming to me,” Annabel murmured as two men crashed through the glass windows of the Thunderbolt Saloon and fought in the street, rolling atop one another, arms and legs flailing.
“I have business here, you see.” Annabel shrugged her slender shoulders and flashed him a reassuring smile. “So right now Justice is the only place I want to be.”
He tipped his hat to her respectfully. If he had any questions regarding what business a pretty and proper-speaking young woman in a serviceable gray twill traveling suit and matching bonnet had in a bleak little town like Justice, he kept them to himself. But he gave his head a shake as he clambered back up onto the box. He’d long ago given up trying to figure out most easterners and all women.