Into the Light (27 page)

“Of course not. He’s just an old man who’d rather eke out a living cleaning out stables instead of cleaning up vomit in some saloon.”

“And what happens to his living if you inherit?”

Trey opened his mouth to give the easy answer, then considered. “It goes away. I’d sell everything, the ranch piece by piece to people like you. Raising cattle on the dry lands to the west is one thing, wasting rich farmland with good water on cow pasture is another.”

“So Herman has cause, or he may be in love with your mother,” Sutton said, holding up a hand before Trey could leap to an indignant defense, “or your sister.”

“He can’t be that stupid. My father is no older than you, and he’s healthy. There’s no reason for anyone to worry about what’s going to happen when he dies when it’s twenty, thirty years away.”

“Accidents happen. Someone’s trying to see you never reach thirty. Maybe after you, they’ll decide your father’s been around long enough, not that he hasn’t.”

“It’s crazy, all of it.”

“It is, but crazy people don’t always look crazy. I didn’t know the regular hands on the ranch well, but Herman never struck me as a man I’d want at my back in a tight spot. He had a mean streak with a horse.”

“He did? I never saw that.” Trey thought about Irene, a gentle little mare, corralled with a bunch of horses half again her size, of Herman’s attempts to hurry the boss’s son on his way before he found out what Lenny was up to with the puppies. He didn’t like where those thoughts led. “I suppose he wouldn’t let me see that side of him.”

“Not unless he saw some of the same in you.”

“He’d have to hide it from my father too then. Much as you don’t like him, and I don’t admire him, my father has no use for meanness for its own sake. He wouldn’t stand for someone abusing livestock or even the ranch dogs for that matter, and he wouldn’t stand for one of his hands shirking or giving me a hard time. I knew he’d back me on firing Lenny, even when I was walking out.”

“Lenny?”

“The hand I took the puppies from. I had to whack him across the legs with the cane, and if he were still in town, he’d top my list, but he took a train west a few days after he got here and had one leg in a cast when he did it. I can’t see how he’d have the money to pay someone else to come after me or why he’d want to. He’s one who would come after me himself.”

“Probably so, and I guess you’re thinking of a trap.”

“I am.”

“Can’t be both bait and hunter.”

“No, I was waiting until Jamie Lenahan got back to town.”

“When is he due back?”

“Next week. I think his brother-in-law will help, so will Peter, Peter Richmond.”

“Good. The more, the better our chances. Right now I need to get Norah and Ginny home and explain to my boy I’ll be gone a few days, but next week I can spend a few days hunting.” Sutton drained his glass, rose, and started for the door.

“Caleb. Don’t tell Deborah.”

“You tell your woman what you want to. I tell mine anything that concerns her. And you call me Cal. Caleb is for Norah and the girls.”

“Cal Sutton is the man who had my mother so frightened she packed me and my sister up and took us to Tennessee for months. He walked into our house with a gun and hung bodies in front of the windows. I hated Cal Sutton most of my life. I think I could be friends with Caleb.”

Sutton stared off as if seeing a different time and place. “I always felt bad about you and your sister, but war is war.” He focused back on Trey. “If you have trouble with Cal, wrap your mouth around Mr. Sutton until you marry her. After that at least you’ll be family.”

Trey waited until Sutton was out of sight, trickled a little more whiskey in his glass, and hefted it in the air. “My woman,” he said and gave in to laughter.

T
REY MOVED FROM
the new First Street Hotel to the old Hubbell Hotel located only three blocks from the office. The building had been renovated since the days it was shunned as a filthy last resort plagued by blood-sucking insects, but it still suffered in comparison with Jamie’s old room.

Instead of fresh blue paint, blotchy gray coated the walls. No pleasant scent of floor wax floated through the air here. Cigar smoke dominated, but the underlying scent was of unwashed men.

Accommodations in Alaska would be worse, Trey reminded himself. He walked to the office morning and evening, sticking so close to the buildings no sharpshooter could get an angle on him from a rooftop on his side of the street. He set out at times when the streets were busy and blended in when he could.

For the first time he saw an advantage to his father’s short stature. His own head stuck all too far above most of the people on the street.

Restless and pacing through the office, he accomplished little in spite of being at the desk every day. Deborah noticed, of course. After much internal debate, he told her the truth.

“You’re going to let someone shoot at you so Caleb can shoot him?” she said, eyes wide with horror.

“No, we’re going to let someone
try
to shoot me, or I suppose attack some other way. It’s only a three-block field. Jamie will be back any day. He and Nolan will help. Peter’s going to help. We’re not going to kill anybody. The idea is to catch him and find out who hired him.”

“Trey, please, please. If anything happens to you.... I can live without you, but I don’t want to. Changing your name isn’t so terrible. I did it. Judith and Miriam too, even though Miriam was too little to care. When we came to live with Uncle Jason and Aunt Emma, it just happened. No one ever said our name again. Judith and Miriam wrote it when they married, to be sure it was legal, but no one ever says — my father’s name was Whales. Abel Whales.”

Her face had paled, the big dark eyes glistened with unshed tears. He wanted to give in, wanted to give her anything and everything he could. If only in his years of drifting he hadn’t known men who always faded away when trouble came. He’d seen what running did to a man, and he suspected what losing her family would do to a woman — his woman.

“You want me to change my name so you don’t have to be Mrs. Van Cleve,” he teased, unable to keep from reaching out, catching the bead of a tear with his thumb. She came to him, fit in against him as if she’d done it a hundred times before. He folded her in his arms, whispered with his lips against her temple. “Nothing will happen to me. We’ll be careful. This fellow isn’t a very good assassin, you know.”

“Your luck can’t last forever.”

“Luck? You are supposed to tremble with admiration for my fighting skills.”

She tipped her head up at him. “You shouldn’t have to fight to stay alive.”

Words weren’t reassuring her, and she was relaxed in his arms. Her scent was light and fresh, like the spring breezes that would sweep out the last traces of winter in April and May. She had to feel the effect she was having on him, but he felt no resistance or withdrawal. Giving way to temptation, he closed his mouth over hers, unable to be as careful or gentle as the first time, wanting to possess and devour.

She kissed him back, yielded to the pressure of his tongue along her lips. Her arms wound around his neck and tightened as if she’d never let go. She followed his lead, made a soft sound in her throat when he coaxed her tongue far enough to him to suck....

The bell on the door jingled. “Ahem.” Jamie’s voice was full of laughter. “Why don’t you do that closer to the window so everyone passing by can see better.”

Trey’s willing woman disappeared. Arms flailing, feet pedaling, she twisted away, a lovely pink suffusing her face as he watched.

“I need to go to the mill this morning anyway. William says they’ve installed new equipment that will move sacks without the men having to do so much lifting.”

“You’re not going to the mill by yourself,” Trey said. “That’s a story for me to cover.”

“You can’t go. The equipment won’t be new any more by the time you can go.”

“I don’t care. Get your brother-in-law to describe it to you in detail tonight over supper, but stay away from the mill unless he takes you there and brings you back.”

The pink on her cheeks had brightened to red. “Fine. Just fine. I’ll go see the Mayor. As if I haven’t heard enough about paving streets and sewage disposal to last a lifetime.”

She nodded at Jamie, grabbed her coat from its peg, and zipped out the door with it half on.

“If you’d spent more time toying with ladies in the past, you’d have learned better than to give orders like that,” Jamie said. “Gets their dander up every time.”

Trey turned to Jamie, who looked like an advertisement for a successful businessman in a knee-length tailored gray coat, a black derby tilted at a jaunty angle on his dark hair.

“We were doing fine until you showed up. If you could see so well through the window, you could have had the decency to go have a cup of coffee somewhere and come back later.”

“That’s a fine greeting. Would you prefer Mrs. Tindell to be the one seeing such a performance through your window? I’ve saved you from yourself.”

“Save me like that one more time, and you won’t receive a wedding invitation.”

“Do you heathens send wedding invitations to the best man?”

“I haven’t a clue.” With Deborah no longer in sight to keep his total focus, Trey noticed the vehicle parked outside in the street. “Is that one of them? Criminy, it is just a horseless carriage, isn’t it? It looks just like my buggy, but without shafts.”

“It’s superior to your buggy in every way. That is a Columbia Runabout and can be yours for a mere nine hundred and fifty dollars. Come take a look.”

“And how much did it cost you?”

“Seven fifty,” Jamie said with a grin, “but we had to pay the railroad to get it here. Don’t forget that.”

Trey followed Jamie outside, giving no more than a passing thought to what kind of target he’d make in the street. He was tired of worrying about it. If Jamie wasn’t exaggerating, this contraption could move at speeds up to fifteen miles an hour. A man who had fumbled killing with a pipe and knife probably couldn’t hit a moving target with a gun.

He’d hear about the trip and the new vehicles, take his first automobile ride, and fill Jamie in on the plan to catch the would-be killer. By the time Deborah returned, she might be amenable to another kiss or two, this time safely out of sight in the back room.

D
EBORAH PUSHED OPEN
the heavy wooden door and left the thick air of the flour mill behind. How did men work all day in that atmosphere? William’s office was bearable, but down where the grain was ground, the sacks filled? She had thought the sound of the press churning out the
Herald
in the back room once a week too noisy. Now she knew — the presses and the machines on the farm barely whispered.

Turning up her collar against the bitter March wind, she looked around for a place to sit and wait for William. He had been as unhappy as Trey that she’d come here alone and insisted she wait until he could give her a ride home. In truth she was happy to wait. In spite of her lovely new Christmas boots, walking back and forth over most of the town day after day was taking a toll on her feet.

Here in front of the massive stone building, the sounds of machinery, men shouting, and wagons coming and going sounded faint. Unable to find anything else, she sat on the low brick wall that separated the yard from the visitors’ drive. Her bottom would get cold, but she didn’t want to go back inside. Now that her notebook and mind were crammed with details that would make an excellent story, she wanted to think.

There had to be a way to make Trey give up this dangerous plan. There had to be a way to make him leave Hubbell. Agreeing to marry him had been an abject failure. She admitted to herself the thought of living without him was unbearable, but so was the thought of living with him knowing he was unhappy because she was — as she was.

The door opened, and William hurried down the walk without a coat. “I’m sorry, but I need to deal with a situation that’s arisen. Come back inside and warm up. I won’t be long.”

Deborah rose, unwilling to return inside, but not eager to walk a mile across town either. Movement out on the road caught her eye. She watched in wonder as a buggy with no horse rolled up the drive toward them.

“Truly a horseless carriage,” she said to William in delight.

“Is that Van Cleve’s Irish friend?”

Deborah pretended not to hear any disapproval in the question. “It is.”

The vehicle stopped in front of them, and Jamie Lenahan jumped down. After Deborah made introductions, he said, “Trey asked if I’d demonstrate a Columbia Runabout to his best reporter by giving her a ride back to the office.”

“Oh, I’d like that.” She turned to William. “Thank you so much for showing me the mill and offering me a ride, but I’ll go with Mr. Lenahan. Do go back inside, William. Judith will never forgive me if you contract pneumonia standing out here without a coat.”

She couldn’t tell if William’s unhappy look had more to do with the cold turning his ears red and his lips blue or reluctance to leave her with Mr. Lenahan.

“Is this thing safe?” he asked, giving the vehicle a critical look.

“Safer than horses,” Lenahan said. “I’ve driven one hundreds of miles now without a single mishap.”

William continued to frown, but he helped Deborah to the automobile’s seat, gave Lenahan one more stern look, and returned inside.

“Trey didn’t really send you, did he?” Deborah said as the door closed behind William.

“Of course not. I have spent my adult years studying the workings of the female mind, but Trey is an innocent. It would never occur to him that after he told you not to come here, that’s the first thing you did.”

“I don’t know why not. It’s not like he listened to me when I begged him to give up this stupid plan he has to act as human bait and rely on you and your brother-in-law to keep him alive.”

“And your killer cousin, don’t forget him.”

“Caleb is probably the only one who possibly could keep anyone safe. What kind of shot are you?”