by Jill Gregory
A strange mood had come upon Annabel. She was intensely aware of Roy Steele, of his every move, his strength, his size, his competency at all the little acts of survival out here in the wilderness.
He’s a fascinating man, and a good man, but he’s not the man for you, she told herself. Brett is—he is your destiny.
What she felt for Steele, Annabel decided, as she unfolded and arranged the blanket on the sofa, was gratitude, pure and simple. He had saved her from Willy and Curtis and Moss.
She owed him, just as he felt he owed Brett.
I must take care to remember that.
Moments later, when Steele was settled on his bedroll on the floor, and she was snuggled beneath the blanket on the sofa, Annabel struggled to a sitting position and stared at him through the flickering light.
“Thank you, Mr. Steele,” she said softly. Her low-pitched voice was filled with quiet earnestness. “I appreciate your being honest with me. I promise that I won’t doubt you again.”
“Good.”
“You’ve saved my life, and I believe with all my heart that you intend to save Brett’s.”
“Right.”
“In the morning, when we’re both refreshed, we’ll discuss our strategy.”
“Strategy?”
“Yes. Our plan. We must talk things over, figure out how we’re going to find Brett, how we’ll deal with Red Cobb, how—”
“Damn it, woman!” Exasperation exploded in his voice. “You like to talk things over more than any female I’ve ever met.”
Annabel nodded. “That’s what Mr. Clyde Perkins, Mr. Joseph Reed, and Mr. Hugh Connely used to say, too.”
“Who were they?”
“Some gentlemen who wanted to marry me.” She thought she heard a choking sound.
“Mr. Steele?”
“What happened to these gentleman?”
“I turned them down. I talked it over with them and explained why I couldn’t marry them. They were most disappointed,” she couldn’t resist adding. “But I had no choice.”
“Because you loved Brett.”
“Exactly.”
“And now the two of you are getting married. Touching.”
Well, not exactly—at least, not yet, Mr. Steele, Annabel thought sadly, but she said nothing, and only winced at the icy sarcasm in his words.
“How mighty lucky for Brett,” he continued darkly—ungallantly, Annabel felt. It was impossible to mistake his meaning.
She wondered uneasily what he would do if he knew that she only wished she were marrying Brett, that in truth she had been hired to find him. Dear heavens, it wouldn’t be very pleasant facing him when he found out that she hadn’t been perfectly honest with him. It’ll be much better if he doesn’t discover the truth for as long as possible, she concluded with a grimace.
“Good night, Miss Brannigan.”
There was a short silence. The aspens rustled outside the window and from someplace nearby a coyote howled. Another answered and then another—the night came alive with mournful wails.
“Do you think,” Annabel whispered slowly in the firelit darkness, “that since we’re going to be traveling together, you might call me Annabel? And I could call you Roy?”
“No,” Steele answered shortly. He sounded as wide awake as she. “I don’t.”
Well, that put an end to that. Fine, Mr. Steele, Annabel thought grimly. You just be that way. I couldn’t care less if you wish to be friendly or not—the only thing I need to do is find Brett. And find a telegraph office, if there is one within a hundred miles, she reflected guiltily. Mr. Stevenson would be livid if she didn’t maintain some regular contact with him. And she wanted to receive a message back, as well. She was worried about Ross McCallum—both his health and his business empire. She couldn’t help wondering how much time she had left.
Yet it was difficult to concentrate on all the problems besieging her, on all the pieces of this puzzle to be assembled and worked out. Her gaze kept shifting to the bedroll on the floor, where Roy Steele’s tall, muscular frame was stretched out, his holster beside him, his hat over his face.
She wondered what it would feel like to steal off the sofa, creep quietly over toward him, and lift that hat. To kiss his lean hard cheek while he slept. And touch his mouth, as he had touched hers.
What a peculiar notion. Annabel caught herself with a start. Why would she want to do something like that?
Because I feel sorry for him, she told herself, and nodded in the darkness. Roy Steele might be the toughest, most cold-eyed, and confident gunman she’d ever imagined, but he was also the loneliest. She couldn’t explain how, but she sensed the deep isolation beneath that harsh exterior, knew it was there and that it ran deep, bleeding all the way into his soul. She wasn’t sure how she knew, she just did. And her heart ached for him.
She shifted slightly on the sofa, taking care not to put pressure on her wound. It did no good fussing over Roy Steele, she told herself sharply as the wind rattled at the cabin windows. He wasn’t her problem. Brett was —and so was Mr. McCallum. Roy Steele, more than anyone she’d ever known, could fend for himself.
Yet sleep eluded her until a brisk rain began to fall. The plunk plunk of the raindrops on the cabin’s roof had a soothing effect—she knew somehow that the roof wouldn’t leak and the chill wind wouldn’t seep through any wall cracks because Roy Steele had built this cabin and she figured that anything he put his hand to was going to be as efficient as he was. A feeling of calmness overtook her. She drew the rough blanket up to her cheek and felt her eyes drifting shut. She was safe here, safe with Roy Steele in this snug little cabin, hidden away in the most exquisite valley on earth. For tonight, she didn’t have to worry, she didn’t have to think, or plan ...
All she had to do was sleep.
She woke in the morning to a cool cloudy day, with drizzle still dripping from a washed-out sky, and the cabin strangely silent. She glanced over at Roy Steele’s bedroll, and blinked.
He was gone. So were his bedroll and his pack. And his hat.
All gone.
Chapter 12
St. Louis
Coming here is dangerous,” Charles Derrickson whispered in urgent protest as he glanced nervously around the foyer of the McCallum house and then peered out at Lucas Johnson waiting on the porch. “Sir, it’s a foolish, wholly unnecessary risk! Why you insisted on meeting here in this house at this hour I will never under—”
“Get out of my way, Derrickson.” Johnson strolled past him placidly, smiling beneath his elegant beaver hat. Behind him, murky moonlight glowed in an inky sky, revealing the carriage that waited at the curb. Derrickson saw Johnson’s efficient right-hand man, Bartholomew, seated inside that carriage, staring out the window.
“I don’t like to be kept waiting,” Johnson murmured coolly, as he entered the black and white marble tiled hall, gently clasping his cane. “And we have important business to conduct.”
“Yes, sir. I know. But if I’m caught letting you in ...”
“Stop your chattering. I’m not the least bit interested in your fears.”
“Y-yes, sir.” Derrickson clamped his mouth shut, but his hands were trembling. He was terrified that at any moment the butler or one of the maids or the cook would appear, roused from their beds by some sixth sense that an intruder had entered the house, but all was silent as a tomb as the hall clock ticked away, revealing the hour to be nearly one o’clock in the morning. Still he cast nervous glances all about as Johnson strode through the splendid gloom of the hallway as though he owned this magnificent house himself and continued past the ornately carved hall table and huge gold-framed mirror to the carved double doors of Ross McCallum’s study.
He sailed in, took a swift perusal of the dim, handsome room lit at this hour only by a single lamp, and glanced at Derrickson with satisfaction.
“It is time;” he said calmly, as Derrickson rushed to close the doors, “to begin phase two. Do you have the signatures?”
Derrickson bobbed his head. “Yes. It was actually quite easy to get them, thanks to that drug you provided. I put it in his brandy, sir, just as you instructed.” His tone was low and anxious, and he kept his hands clasped together in hopes that Johnson would not see their trembling. He sensed instinctively that the man before him both loathed and savored other men’s weaknesses and would prey upon them like a carrion bird if given the chance. “It’s made him weak and ill, just as you said. He paid no attention when I thrust the papers before him and told him it was merely some routine contracts he was signing. Never even glanced at them.”
“Excellent.” Johnson’s eyes gleamed so maliciously in the amber lamplight that they infused his countenance with a satanic aspect. He pivoted to study the painting of Livinia McCallum that hung like a beautiful ghostly vision upon the wall. As he did so, a strange, eerily excited expression crossed his face, an expression so diabolical it made Derrickson want to cringe and hide. It was only under the direst willpower that he managed to stay rooted to the spot, watching the dashing, elegantly clad Johnson study Livinia’s portrait as though no other object existed in the room.
“Thus we can proceed,” Johnson said softly. “When the time is right, Bartholomew will have the papers delivered to Herbert Ervin. But now tell me all that has been going on. The private investigator—”
“Is a woman!” Derrickson broke in suddenly, reminded of the urgency of his news.
This at least diverted Johnson’s attention from the portrait and he swung his shrewd gaze to the other man’s sweat-sheened face. “Really? How do you know?”
“Stevenson came this afternoon to give McCallum a report. I eavesdropped outside the door—not much was new, but I did hear Stevenson say that he was sure “she” would be filing a report soon. I would have expected McCallum to have roared about a woman performing a man’s job, but he was apparently too ill from the drug. He took to his bed, and Stevenson left. I showed him out myself.”
Lucas Johnson paced to the desk, surveyed it briefly, then settled himself in the deep leather armchair behind it. “A woman,” he mused. His eyes lit with amusement. “So much the better. She’ll cause us no trouble. I’ll have Bartholomew send a telegraph message as soon as I hear from Cobb once more, alerting him to be on the watch for a female investigator. Although such caution may not even be necessary, for surely by now Cobb is closing in upon young Master Brett and finishing the job.”
Derrickson shivered at the cold taunting quality in Lucas Johnson’s voice. More than once, he had wondered what this brilliant and wealthy man had against the McCallums—why he was exerting every resource to visit such punishment upon them, but he had never had the courage to ask. And he didn’t now. He was being well paid for his role in the plot, and it was much better not to know too much. He sensed, though, that the evil obsession driving Lucas Johnson was growing more pervasive by the day. Entering the house had seemed to transform the man, unleashing an even more fervent bloodlust than Derrickson had glimpsed before. The flesh on the back of his pallid neck crawled as Johnson sneered up at the molded ceiling, his flushed face taking on a cruelly mocking aspect.
“So the mighty Ross McCallum sleeps, ill and confused, above us.” He chuckled in a low tone. “What would he say or do if he knew that I was here in his house right now, feasting my eyes upon the portrait of his dead wife, sitting in his chair, plotting the demise of his son and of all he holds dear?”
Silence fell but for the ticking of the bronze clock upon the mantle. Derrickson shifted from one foot to the other, wishing he had never become involved in any of this. But the money, he reminded himself as he waited nervously for Johnson to decide to leave. You will be a wealthy man.
That settled his stomach a bit, enough to allow him to smile as Lucas Johnson at last rose reluctantly from the green leather chair and made his way toward the door.
“You’d best ease off on the drug a bit,” Johnson warned as he paused before stepping out once more into the thick-misted night. “Otherwise McCallum will be dead before I have the satisfaction of killing him in my own special way and time. And that, my dear Charles, would make me incalculably angry.”
Derrickson gulped and nodded, his head bobbing like a puppet’s. “Yes, sir. I won’t give him another drop. I’ll do my best to see to it that he stays well until—”
“See that you do. And remember he mustn’t know anything about the Ruby Palace or anything else, not a hint, not a suspicion. He must walk into my trap of his own volition and without any warning of what is to come.”
“Certainly, sir. Of course. I perfectly understand.”
Johnson descended the steps with a jaunty twirl of his cane, and a moment later vanished inside his carriage. When the vehicle had rounded the corner, Derrickson closed the door of the mansion and leaned against it, shuddering in the dimly lit hall.
It would all be over soon.
But not soon enough to suit his tastes. The money was splendid, but he wasn’t equipped for this association with men like Johnson, Bartholomew, and Cobb. They thrived on violence, while he loathed it.
It repelled his every sensibility.
But not enough to make him wish to warn Ross McCallum or to end his own involvement in the matter. No, that would be tantamount to suicide, for then Johnson would come after him. No, no, no. And, he reassured himself as he headed up the wide staircase toward the room he had taken in the east wing of the house—the better to assist Ross McCallum during this stressful period—the tidy fortune Lucas Johnson would ultimately pay him would eventually assuage all of his guilt and his misgivings.
He smiled, thinking of luxurious travels throughout Europe, of countesses and duchesses sending him invitation cards for elegant balls, of beauteous young women fawning over him and flirting as he had seen them do time after time with Brett McCallum.
Ah yes, Derrickson decided as he reached the head of the stairs. His conscience would certainly be eased. Riches beyond measure would provide a certain cure.
Chapter 13
Fear flashed through Annabel as she stared in disbelief at the empty spot where Steele had been sleeping. Dear Lord, how could this be? She jumped up from the sofa, her heart in her throat, and ran to the door, smothering the cry of panic that sprang to her lips.
“Steele!” she shouted into the damp summer morning, but almost before she had the word out, she felt herself grabbed and yanked hard against the wall of the cabin. A strong hand clamped over her mouth.
“Not a word,” a man’s rough, deep voice growled in her ear. “Not one damned word.”
But she recognized that voice—it belonged to Roy Steele. He held her so tightly she couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn her head to look at him, but then after a moment, when he knew she would no longer scream, he released her and dragged her back inside the cabin.
“Five men on the ridge just south of Buffalo Canyon,” he told her in a curt tone. “I think they’re an outlaw band, heading here to hide out. Or else they’re just passing through. Either way, we don’t want to meet up with them if we don’t have to.”
He was already sweeping the cabin with his eyes, checking everything as his gaze darted about. “Get your gear together. We’re leaving pronto.”
She sensed the tension in him, though his manner and words were calm. In fact, he sounded so cool, so matter-of-fact, that they might have been discussing the kinds of flowers growing on the hillside, only they weren’t.
Annabel stuffed everything back into her carpetbag and hurried with him toward the door, noting how he had in a few quick movements erased all evidence of their presence in the cabin.
“Doesn’t it bother you, thinking of other people coming in here, making a mess of the place, staying as if it belonged to them?” she couldn’t help asking as he took her arm and escorted her out into the drizzle.
“I’ve got no ties to anyplace or anyone or anything,” he shot back coldly. “If someone wants to hole up here, I don’t give a damn. Now let’s go.”
He hoisted her up into the saddle and then vaulted up behind her as Annabel smoothed out her skirts. They were off before she had time to even give one last fleeting glance back at the cabin.
Somehow, she didn’t think he was being entirely truthful with her about his indifference at having strangers invade the cabin. Or maybe he wasn’t being truthful with himself. For some reason Roy Steele didn’t want to stake a claim to anything, even a place he had built with his own two hands and which he clearly loved.
They rode only a short distance before he halted Dickens beneath a bluff. The drizzle had ended, but the day was gray and damp. Steele left her there with the horses and an extra rifle, explaining that he would circle back to the cabin and erase their tracks. Before Annabel could so much as nod agreement, he had disappeared back the way they had come.
She dismounted and waited, fighting the anxiety within her by performing a swift toilette, brushing her hair and pinning it up as best she could, watching for Steele uneasily each time a twig snapped or one of the horses whickered. It seemed like hours before she saw his tall, black-clad figure come into view, approaching her with the quietly graceful, purposeful stride that characterized him.
“They’re definitely making for the cabin.” Without further preamble, he lifted her up into the saddle once more. “They must know these brakes pretty well to have found it. Or else they’ve been here before.”
“It’s lucky you happened to see them coming.”
He threw her an amused look. “Luck had nothing to do with it, Miss Brannigan. It’s common sense to scout things out when you’re in these parts. Particularly when—”
He broke off.