Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1) (15 page)

The cold edge of Poppy's voice froze Sadie's feet two paces from the door.

"I will have your name."

Sadie figured a real maid would have been terrified of a senator's wife. She hung her head and wrung her hands. "Mrs. Dalrymple, ma'am. I'm real sorry about the lozenges, ma'am. I don't want to lose my job—"

"Shut up. Get out. And close the door behind you."

Bitch.

Sadie held onto her temper long enough to bob a curtsey and obey. Turning with a vengeance, she ducked into Pendleton's room.

* * *

As the sun sank behind the mansions of Silk Stocking Row, Cass shared a smoke with Gator on the steps of Wilma's back porch, where he was secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of Sadie.

Fraternizing with the enemy.
That's what Pa would have called it. Not that Gator was an enemy, exactly. Cass had spent many an enjoyable evening in Dodge, helping Gator and Cottonmouth beat the stuffing out of reprobates, who'd tried to stiff Wilma's girls. Cass had never cared about the color of a man's skin; his best friend was half Cherokee, after all. Cass considered the Mulattos his
compadres,
too, even though they came from the Bayou, spoke a different language, and exasperated the bejabbers out of him every time they lied to cover up for Sadie.

But Cass could charm the rattle off a rattler. Biding his time, he blew smoke, flicked ash, and yakked about things of importance to Gator: barbecued armadillo, Cajun snake fry, and alligator wrestling.

"I thought I counted a few more fangs on that string around your neck," Cass observed when Gator finished spinning his yarn.

"Gators are good eating," the Mulatto drawled in his thick, bayou-bred accent. "Like coons. Where's your little buddy? I'm hungry."

Cass chuckled, shaking his head. Cotton was the prim and prickly twin. Gator was the cut-up. If one could believe Gator, he'd just won his 12th consecutive alligator wrestling tournament. Cass secretly wondered if there really was a contest. Over the years, he'd begun to suspect that Gator just liked to dive into swamps and beat the tar out of unsuspecting alligators, who'd been minding their own business, snoozing in the sun.

"Collie's guarding Baron, if he knows what's good for him," Cass said. "A sniper took potshots at us in the Square yesterday. But I reckon you read all about that in the
Dispatch."

Gator grunted, sucking his smoke. Wilma had taught the twins to read—and how to shoot, come to think of it. After she'd found the desperately hungry, 8-year-old orphans lying unconscious on her compost pile, she'd nursed them back to health from their bout with yellow fever. Nowadays, at the wise old age of 27, they were ardent believers in
gris-gris,
dream messages, and Ancestral curses.

"I know you hear things," Cass prompted.

"Moi?"
Gator grinned, flashing startling, white teeth. "I am deaf and mute."

"Then you see things," Cass said dryly.

"I see and know nothing," Gator assured him merrily.

Cass sighed. At this rate, they'd be trading windies all night. "Look, Gator. I know Wilma keeps her clientele confidential. I'm not asking you to betray her trust. All I'm asking is, have you heard anything that might help me identify this vigilante granger before he tries to kill again?"

Gator's coffee-colored eyes were turned toward the horizon. He seemed to be considering the question. "Many newcomers arrive with the railroad," he said carefully.

"Lampasas's vigilante granger problem started long before the railroad boom."

Gator shrugged. "Not all newcomers are devoted to the sod
.
"

Cass frowned. So Gator
had
heard something!

"Texas Jack? Pink Higgins? Clay Allison?" Cass rattled off the names of gunfighters who were supposed to be at-large in Texas.

"Not in
this
establishment," Gator said flatly. "But snakes tend to go underground. A wise coyote might lie in wait at a watering hole. Even vipers need to drink."

Cass wasn't surprised by this answer. "You got an address?"

"Look where the sun sets."

Western Avenue.
Cass nodded grimly. "Anything else I should know?"

The ghost of a smile touched Gator's lips. "You may find your viper isn't as hungry for beef as you think."

That was news. Cass cocked his head. "Care to explain?"

"Just a hunch,
mon ami."

"I'll settle for a hunch."

Gator blew a long, leisurely spiral of smoke. It drifted toward the scarlet sage bush at the side of the porch.

"Beached whales make easy prey," he advised finally.

Now Cass was getting impatient. He was about to tell Gator he was done playing guessing games, when the last, lingering rays of the sun glanced off something black and shiny under the sage.

A shoe!

Cass narrowed his gaze. He was preparing to drop his .38 from his wrist to his fist, but a tiny gasp stayed his hand. Cornflower-blue eyes blinked anxiously at him through the explosion of red flowers. He could just barely make out a nose full of freckles, yellow sausage curls, and a rag doll. Then the child ducked beneath the rustling leaves.

"Mice," Gator said drolly. "They are such curious creatures."

Cass's dimples peeked. No wonder Gator was talking in riddles! He'd been aware of the wide-eyed innocent, who probably lived somewhere in the neighborhood.

"No doubt the mice are attracted by all the corn in your tall tales," Cass retorted, rubbing out his cigarette.

Since Gator had said all he was going to say, Cass rose, slapping the dust from his backside. That's when the hairs on the nape of his neck prickled like his coyote namesake's. He glanced up, spying a busty redhead peeking at him through the lace of a third-story window.

Sadie?

He sucked in his breath. His heart thumped against his ribs.

Suddenly, a traitorous memory sneaked inside his head—a memory of another twilight. Another westward-looking

window...

She'd been freckled, auburn, and fiery, like the setting sun. The ivory silk of her nigh transparent night wrapper had done little to disguise the taut nipples on her pert young breasts. At 12 years old, he had never laid eyes on a half-naked girl. She was exotic. Dangerous.

He guessed her to be about 15 years old. She perched on the brothel window sill, sucking cream off of strawberries and smiling lusciously down at him as he craned back his head to gawk at her from the gutter. In his ratty straw hat, patched overalls, and dusty bare feet, he couldn't believe this golden-eyed goddess had noticed him at all. He looked over his shoulder to make sure some other fella wasn't waving at her from Pilot Grove's saloon.

"What's your name?" she called in her husky, older-than-her-years voice.

"Billy." He doffed his hat and held it over his racing heart. Pretty girls never talked to him, least of all,
older
pretty girls. A sharecropper's son was too poor to get noticed by the persnickety, fairer sex. "What's your name?"

Her dimples peeked in the most tantalizing way. "I'll give you three guesses. If you guess right, you can sample my berries."

In his innocence, he hadn't known her real meaning. But he
had
known he wanted to please her. For some reason, pleasing this red-haired Aphrodite had become even more important than scrambling up a tree trunk or diving into a root cellar.

So he ignored the baying of Farmer Hinckley's hounds. He could hear them tracking his scent from the cornfield that he'd just raided. The dogs were old and fat. He was young and smitten.

"
Lucera
is my guess," he improvised grandly. "In Spanish, the name means heavenly body."

She looked pleased. "Close enough," she purred. "You win the berries."

"I do?" His face burned like a firecracker—and not just because he'd sprinted a quarter mile under a blazing, summer sun to outrun Hinckley's shotgun.

That's when he remembered his bedraggled appearance. Dismayed, he glanced down his length at his fraying hand-me-downs. His sun-blackened forearms were coated with scratches and dusty rivulets of sweat. He'd spent the afternoon stealing his dinner—the first dinner he'd had in three days. Corn silk trailed from the satchel on his back and the bib pocket of his overalls. His mama, God rest her soul, had taught him never to accept a dinner invitation from a lady without bringing the hostess a gift. But all he had to give Lucera were some ratty old ears of maize that the crows had found too tough to gnaw.

Suddenly, he remembered the marble in his pocket. His prized shooter had won him a fishing pole yesterday, but the trout had refused to bite. He dug the milky quartz out of his trousers. In the long rays of the setting sun, the marble's pearlescent center flashed with rainbows.

"I have something for you too," he said shyly. "See? A shooting star that fell to earth."

"How lovely." Amusement warmed those golden tiger eyes. "But I can see that prize is special to you, Billy. Are you sure you want to give it away? To someone like me?"

He opened his mouth, but a man's shrill, outraged bellow cut off his answer.

"Cassidy!"
The sounds of baying had grown perilously closer. "I'll skin you alive and feed your carcass to my hounds, you thieving White Trash!"

Mortified, Cass turned his gaze back to Lucera, his lovely Lucera, who'd overheard the ugly truth about him: he was worthless.
Less
than worthless. He expected her to wrinkle her pert, freckled nose in revulsion. He expected her to slam the shutters and send him away, like all the other pretty girls in town would have done.

But to his utter mystification, she came to his rescue. She waved him urgently toward the rear of the brothel. "Hurry, Billy! I know a place where you can hide... "

Cass's heart was still racing as his awareness spiraled back to the present. He turned his eyes toward Wilma's third story. His red-headed voyeur hadn't moved from the window. He tried to identify the face, veiled behind the lace curtain. She was dressed in nothing more than a corset. The prominent mounds of her breasts were milky white.

Cass hid his disappointment. Sadie's breasts were freckled.

Tipping his Stetson, he pasted on a roguish grin and winked at his voyeur.

She hastily grabbed the cord and drew the heavier curtains.

Strange.
Bawds were usually more flirtatious.

"I see Wilma has a new redhead," he drawled.

"But not for you," Gator retorted pleasantly.

"Says who?"

The Cajun chuckled, standing and rubbing out his smoke. "Ah,
l'amour.
It tangles the tongue and muddies the mind."

"You're so full of crap."

Gator winked.
"Bon chance, mon ami.
I hope you catch your snake in the grass."

I will,
Cass thought darkly, watching Gator retreat inside the house. He didn't usually go looking for showdowns, but he wasn't afraid of a challenge. He was confident in his gun-fighting skill. He would have pitted his quickdraw against any killer in Texas.

Any
renegade
killer, he corrected himself grimly. John Wesley Hardin and Hank Sharpe were safely in jail. With any luck, they'd rot there.

Reluctantly, Cass raised his eyes once more to the brothel's third story. Like a naughty smile, the golden sickle of a harvest moon was rising behind the chimney. He couldn't help but wonder if Sadie really was in one of those dimly lit rooms. The hour was just after 7 p.m. The grangers' dinner was over at the Grand Park Hotel. That meant Sadie was free to do what she did best after the sun went down: smolder like the devil's daughter in some other man's bed.

Against his will, Cass found himself recalling the slow, predatory approach of his lover as she prowled through moonlight and shadow. Sadie liked to wear sinfully transparent temptations that were strung together with fewer stitches than a buttonhole. When she moved, ebony-silk rosettes would flutter in a hide-and-seek pattern across her more fascinating freckled places.

God.
The things they used to do in that Dodge City brothel four years ago. His loins throbbed at the memory. Sadie had come a long way since their first lusty romp in Pilot Grove. She'd learned how to flash those tawny eyes, curve those blood-red lips, and rumble deep in her throat, reducing a civilized man to his most primitive urges. And that was
before
she stroked a perfectly lacquered finger across his burning flesh.

Cass drew a shuddering breath. He forced himself to turn his back on the window, to gather his horse's reins and spur Pancake away from Sadie's memory.

Damn her, anyway. She'd betrayed him to the Rangers. She couldn't be trusted. She'd made that painfully clear last night—again. They were finished.
He
was finished. So why was he torturing himself? Hell, there were other redheads in the world!

As if to torment him, a vision of Poppy Westerfield sneaked inside his mind.

Cass grimaced. He wasn't looking forward to facing his boss's wife when he reached the hotel. In fact, he took the long way to Hancock Park, uncertain how to deliver his bad news: the maid whom Poppy had sent him to investigate had vanished as thoroughly as yesterday's sniper.