Only My Love (46 page)

After four days of testimony and two days of deliberation the verdict was returned. Houston was found guilty on all counts of robbery. He was cleared on the murder charges of the
Chronicle
employees and the attempted murder of Ethan and Michael. Sentencing for the robberies alone would see him in prison for forty years, but the prosecution had been seeking the death penalty.

When the verdict was read Houston reacted as if he had won, as indeed Ethan felt that he had. On his way out of the courtroom, surrounded by guards, Houston swiveled his head in Ethan's direction and smiled. It was full of promise, full of threat. Ethan bore it without blinking. He didn't react at all until he saw Houston seek out Michael. It was the expression in Houston's obsidian eyes that made Ethan's blood run cold, but it was his wink that nearly raised Ethan out of his seat. He looked back three rows at Michael. Her head was bent. He couldn't tell if she had seen Houston's suggestive leer or not. It was certain that Drew had. The reporter was staring after Houston while his hand flew across his notepad.

The circumstances of the death of Mr. Kelly were never introduced at Detra's trial. If the jury had read any of the accounts in the newspaper, or if they knew her father had been a druggist, they gave no indication of it. In Judge Tucker's courtroom she was strictly on trial for her part in planning the robberies. Ethan provided the main testimony against her. Michael's story came strictly from what she had heard at the door as the robbery for No. 486 was being planned. Detra's attorney provided plenty of people, including Kitty Long, who supported her business-like acumen in running the saloon and her fairness in dealing with employees. Miners from Madison bore witness to the fact that she was well thought of in the mining town and honest with the games she ran in the saloon. The twelve man jury liked her as well and they were not convinced she was as critical to the planning as Ethan would have had them believe. She was, after all, only a woman. They found her guilty but the honorable Judge Tucker only gave her two years.

Ben, Happy, and Jake were tried together. Ben and Jake received the same sentence as Houston. Happy, on the strength of Michael's testimony that he had admitted his guilt in the deaths of the
Chronicle
staffers, was sentenced to hang.

Michael did not attend the public hanging three days later. When they cut Happy McAllister down, Michael was somewhere between St. Louis and Pittsburgh, headed home.

Chapter 13

John MacKenzie Worth swiveled in his large leather armchair as the door to his office opened. The deep burgundy leather held the aroma of cigar smoke. It was the way he liked it, even before he'd given them up seven months earlier. He'd bargained with God for the safe return of his daughter. His wife thought he'd finally given them up for her. In deference to years of Nina's nagging, he let her believe it. Now Nina was encouraging him to get rid of the chair. He was holding firm there.

Jay Mac's secretary entered the office filled with self-importance, his demeanor as stiff as his blackened mustache. "Your two o'clock appointment is here," he said. "He's brought someone with him."

"Show them in, Wilson." He looked beyond the secretary's shoulder and saw two men approaching the office's threshold. "Never mind. They've found their own way." He stood up, came around his desk, and dismissed Wilson while holding out a hand to his visitors.

They both looked bone weary, stiff from days and nights of train travel to which neither was accustomed. They did not have the appearance of men who tolerated confinement, much less enjoyed it.

Ethan Stone found his hand taken firmly in Jay Mac's. The older man looked him squarely in the eye and studied him long and hard. Jay Mac's face remained impassive. Here was the man, Ethan thought, who taught Michael how to play poker. Ethan relished the idea of sitting across a table from Jay Mac some day himself, just to see who bluffed better and who folded first.

On this occasion Ethan gave the round to Jay Mac. It was impossible not to look into the face of Michael's father and not see Michael. Ethan knew for a moment he had actually flinched from the directness of Jay Mac's implacable green eyes.

John MacKenzie Worth was several inches shorter than Ethan but it was something Ethan noticed only as Jay Mac was turning away. Michael's father was slender and there was an aura of authority and power that lent him a stature that didn't physically exist. He had a head of thick dark blonde hair, turning to ash at the temples. Threads of the same lighter color sprinkled his side whiskers and mustache. His face was a trifle broader than Michael's but they shared the same seriously set mouth. Unlike his daughter, Jay Mac's spectacles were kept in the breast pocket of his jacket when he wasn't wearing them.

"This is Jarret Sullivan," Ethan said when Jay Mac greeted the man who had accompanied him. "I've asked him to help. We go back a few years together, since the Express days."

Jarret shook Jay Mac's hand. He was as tall as Ethan, slightly broader in the shoulders, but leaner overall. Long-limbed, he held himself loosely, so that he appeared lithe rather than powerful. There was a sense of calm surrounding him, a lazy watchfulness that made him seem more relaxed than he actually was. A faint lift of one corner of his mouth signaled Jarret's sometimes cynical, sometimes genuine, amusement of what went on around him. He was never as removed from events as his remote, dark blue eyes seemed to indicate.

The deep sapphire eyes were a startling feature in a face that was tanned and weathered by the sun. The sharply cut jaw and patrician nose gave him the arrogant air of a blue blood. The beard stubble on his chin and jaw made him look dangerous. His hair was dark blond, too long at the nape for New York fashion, but somehow suited to him.

"Sullivan?" asked Jay Mac, finishing his assessment. "That's an Irish name, isn't it?"

Jarret had little patience for Jay Mac sizing him up, but in deference to Ethan he made an attempt to answer politely, in a credible Irish brogue, keeping his disdain in check. "County Wexford on me da's side."

Jay Mac chuckled, removing his hand. He indicated the chairs in front of his desk and asked Ethan and Jarret to be seated. He stood, leaning back on the edge of his desk, and lifted the black lacquered box of cigars beside him. Raising the lid, he offered them to his guests. "I gave them up myself," he said. "But I wouldn't mind smelling one burning. I don't think that would be going back on my promise."

Ethan passed but Jarret took one. "Promise?" Ethan asked.

Jay Mac closed the lid, clipped and lit Jarret's cigar. "I made a bargain to stop smoking if God returned my daughter safely." He missed Ethan's start of surprise as he vicariously enjoyed Jarret's second hand smoke. After a moment he straightened, sighed, and went around the desk to his chair. He sat down and gave Ethan his full attention. "I got your telegram five days ago," he said. "It seemed to me God was going back on His word. I never said as much to Moira or Mary Francis. They'd be sorely disappointed to hear me talk that way, but it's what I've been thinking. Tell me, Mr. Stone, how much danger is my daughter really in?"

Ethan glanced at Jarret who was stretched out comfortably in his chair, his long legs crossed at the ankles, giving every evidence that he was enjoying his cigar. Ethan couldn't affect such calm. There was tension in every line of his body. It was an effort to remain seated when what he wanted to do was pace the floor. His only concession to the agitation was to lean forward in his chair. "If I didn't believe that Houston and Detra would come looking for her, I wouldn't have wired you or come here myself," he said. He hadn't heard from Michael since she left Denver. There had been no letters or telegrams, nothing to indicate that she ever wanted to see him again. "Michael will need protection. I don't believe for a minute that Houston and Dee will slip away quietly and live the rest of their lives in anonymity. If you'd seen the look Houston gave Michael as he was being led away after sentencing, you wouldn't believe it either."

Jay Mac picked up the letter opener on his desk and tapped the flat of it lightly against his palm. Those who knew him well would have recognized the agitation and anger in the gesture. "I didn't want her testifying at their trials," he said with an edge of sharpness in his tone. "That should have been your job alone."

"She would have been subpoenaed," Ethan told him. "She was a witness to almost everything."

"I have you to thank for that, don't I?" He slapped the letter opener a little harder against his skin. "And if you don't think I could have kept her from testifying, you're seriously underestimating my influence."

"You couldn't have bought me, Mr. Worth." Ethan's blue-gray eyes did not waver from the railroad tycoon's. John MacKenzie Worth was one of the hundred most powerful men in the country and at this moment it mattered nothing at all to Ethan. "I don't want your money."

This time it was Jay Mac who looked away. He tossed the letter opener on the desk. It skittered across the surface and spun like a compass needle before it fell still. "I was just blowing off steam."

The admission was nearly an apology. Either seemed surprising coming from Jay Mac Worth. Ethan nodded once, accepting it. "You never tried any bribery at all, did you?"

"My daughter knows me too well. She warned me not to do it. Warned me, not asked me. Michael would cut off her right hand before she
asked
me to do anything for her. She insisted on testifying; said it was her privilege and her right. Stopping her would have meant losing her, Mr. Stone, and that's the one thing I won't have. Michael and I don't always see things the same, but God knows, I love her."

Ethan didn't doubt that. Very briefly there had been the sheen of tears in Jay Mac's eyes as he spoke. It would have been clear to the meanest intelligence that Jay Mac loved his daughter. "I've come to make certain she stays safe, Mr. Worth. You and I are not at cross purposes here."

Jay Mac relaxed slightly. He leaned back in his chair, breathed the pungent aroma of Jarret's cigar smoke drifting in his direction, and met Ethan's direct gaze again. "Your telegram was short on details. There's been nothing in the local papers about the escape. Even the
Chronicle
didn't pick up the story."

"I asked Logan Marshall not to run it," Ethan said. "I thought it would be too alarming for Michael to learn about it that way. It was better that she hear it from you. You've told her, haven't you?"

Jay Mac nodded. "Her and her sisters and her mother. They all had a right to know. And they all had questions I couldn't answer."

Jarret picked up a small pewter tray and knocked a little ash off the glowing tip of his cigar. "Detra Kelly had the help of a guard at the woman's prison. Apparently she seduced him." Jarret's lazy grin deepened. "Dee's a good looker but I don't think it hurt that she promised a sizable share of the robbery money that's never been recovered."

"I didn't even hear about her escape until she aided Houston in his," Ethan said. "That was ten days ago. I wired a message to you as soon as I learned of it. Ben was injured in the escape attempt. He took a nasty fall in the quarry where they were digging. Jake was killed. One report says that Houston took a bullet in his leg, but it apparently didn't slow him much. Dee managed to get him away. They've eluded every search party sent after them."

"Ethan and I split from the main posse and tracked them as far as St. Louis," Jarret said. "I lost them then. The trail went cold."

"New names?" Jay Mac asked. "Disguises?"

"That's a pretty safe bet," Ethan said. "We wouldn't waste time trying to follow them at that point. We needed to get ahead of them."

"Do you think you have?"

"I don't know. Houston and Dee could already be in New York and I doubt we'll find them first. Have you acted on my suggestions in the telegram?"

"Moved my family out, you mean?" Jay Mac asked. Incredulity was clear in the expression. "Mr. Stone, I couldn't have moved Moira and my daughters out of the city this week with anything less than the 7th cavalry. And they're not stationed where I can get them." He put on his spectacles, took his watch out of his pocket and glanced at the time. "Ninety minutes from now my daughter is getting married. They've been planning and carrying on for months now. The news of Nate Houston's escape made them pause for all of a second. They went right back to choosing flowers for the church and arguing about the menu for the reception. Took their cue from Michael, they did, and when she wasn't concerned, they weren't concerned. Or at least pretended not to be."