The Last Renegade (42 page)

“It’s Clay,” she said softly. “My God, it’s Clay.”

“You’re certain? Not Eli? Not Isaac?”

“This is Clay.” She looked up. “Show me the others.”

Kellen shuffled the photographs. He kept his palm over Emily’s body and showed her the second picture. When she nodded, satisfied with what she saw, he showed her the third. He gave her another minute to study it before he turned all the photographs over.

“Do you believe that it’s Clay?” Raine asked.

“Yes. I thought I could make out his mustache. I didn’t want to influence you. With the Burdicks looking as much alike as they do, we need to be sure.”

“Ask Walt,” Raine said. “Cover up the bottom half of the picture so he can’t possibly understand what he’s looking at and ask him.”

“First thing tomorrow morning.” He sat and stretched his legs. In moments he was slouched, his hands folded in front of him, tapping his thumbs as he thought.

Raine recognized the signs of deep contemplation. She pushed photographs out of the way so she could sit on the table and used the seat of the chair as a stool for her feet. Her own thoughts were tumbling and spinning so fast that she couldn’t grasp one to examine. The implications of Clay Burdick being at the site of Emily’s murder overwhelmed her. It was beyond comprehension that the town would support another trial with a Burdick standing accused of a crime.

Raine closed her eyes and pressed her thumb and forefinger against the bridge of her nose. “Mr. Petit told someone about these photographs,” she said finally. “Is that what you’re thinking?”

At the sound of her weary voice, Kellen looked up. “Do you want me to get you a headache powder?”

“No.” Smiling a little crookedly, Raine let her hand fall away from her face. “But thank you. What I need is to hear your voice.”

Kellen stopped tapping his thumbs and reached for her hand. “Come here.” When Raine scooted closer, he turned her ninety degrees so she was facing him. She had to place her feet on his chair on either side of his thighs. He looked up at her. “Mr. Petit definitely told someone about these,” he said. “We’re of one mind on that. I can’t decide if he was foolish enough to tell Clay Burdick or if he merely told someone he thought he could trust.”

“Mr. Reasoner, you mean.”

“Or Mr. Jones. They had something in common. They were both trying to get onto Burdick land. Petit could have thought that the photographs were his ticket. He might have shared that with Jones. If it was Jones or Reasoner, then I think it’s safe to say that Petit was betrayed.”

“What about the rest of the photographs that Petit had of Emily?”

“Didn’t I hear Walt mention that he delivered some packages to the station for Mr. Petit?”

Raine nodded. “I’d forgotten. Maybe that’s why they’re not here.” She frowned, thinking. “I believe that Clay murdered Emily. I don’t imagine anything changing my mind about that,
especially with Rabbit and Finn being able to place his horse behind the hotel the night that Emily and Mr. Weyman disappeared, but I don’t understand how he was able to place your cuff link near her body. How did he come by it in the first place?”

Kellen’s eyes shifted focus briefly, straying to a point past Raine’s shoulder before they came back to her. He sighed. “There’s no good way to say this,” he told her. “There are two explanations that occur to me. The first is one that you and I dismissed, namely that Emily stole the cuff link and had it with her when she was murdered. The second is that someone else put it there, and that, I’m afraid, presents far too many complications and coincidences. The simplest answer is probably the most likely. I’m sorry, Raine, but I think it was Emily who took it.”

“Why?”

“Again, the simplest answer. She wanted to make Clay jealous.”

Raine had been leaning forward, engaged in the conversation. Now she jerked back, her spine as straight as a flagpole. “No. Emily did not have anything to do with Clay. She wouldn’t go near him if she had a choice. She hated him for what he helped his brother do to Ellen.”

“Emily the flirt? The girl who couldn’t help herself when she was around men? Isn’t it possible that she avoided Clay to divert suspicion? She liked you, Raine. She had to know that not only would you be concerned if she admitted that there was something going on between her and Clay, but that you would also be hurt. She might have been afraid you would tell her parents.”

“I would have.” Raine’s eyes grew troubled. A crease appeared between her eyebrows. She spoke softly, more to herself than to Kellen. “I would have had to.”

“I understand. So did Emily.”

“Oh, God.”

“Don’t tell yourself that you should have known. You couldn’t have. I saw she avoided him in the saloon, and I never suspected another motive for it. The fact that you knew her so
well made it more difficult, not easier, to see what was happening.” He gave her time to take in what he was telling her before he spoke again. “You said something this morning at the lake that’s been niggling at me. About Emily.”

Raine frowned, touching her chest. “I said something?”

He nodded. “You said that you knew I’d been writing home because Emily told you she’d posted my letters to the station.”

“Oh, that. Yes. I remember telling you.”

“It got past me at the time. I suppose that’s why it’s been sitting at the back of my mind waiting for me to bring it forward. Raine, I never gave Emily letters to take to the station for me. I always gave them to Walt.”

“But I’m sure it was Emily who…oh, I see. Walt gave them to her.”

“He’s as susceptible to a pretty woman’s wiles as the rest of us. Emily probably made it seem as if she was doing him a favor. You and I both know that Nat Church was killed because someone knew why he was coming to Bitter Springs. I suspected that it was Mr. Collins who was reading all of the correspondence between you and Church and reporting it to the Burdicks, but I was wrong. It was Emily, and she was doing it for Clay.”

“I gave all my letters to Walt,” she said. “I thought it was as safe as taking them to the station myself. Walt can’t read very well.”

“I know. He told me when I offered him one of the dime novels. I promised I would read it to him.”

Raine could not speak for the sudden swelling in her throat, and when tears hovered against her eyelashes, she did not swipe at them.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Kellen.

She shrugged helplessly as her face crumpled.

Kellen reached for her and drew her off the table and onto his lap. He let her tuck her face in the curve of his neck. Her arms went around his shoulders. “You shouldn’t look at me like that. I don’t deserve it, Raine. I can’t hang the moon for you. It doesn’t matter that I want to. I can’t. I’m not who you think I am.”

She sucked in a breath that made her shudder. “I know who you are,” she whispered. “You’re the man I love.”

Kellen closed his eyes, rubbed his cheek against her hair. “God, but I hope you mean that.”

Raine used the sleeve of her robe to dab at her eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know about you,” she said.

“I read the letters you wrote to Nat Church.”

“You did?”

“He gave them to me. They’re in my bag.”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?” When he simply shrugged, she let it go. “Did Mr. Church use them to convince you to come to Bitter Springs?”

“No. He used them to convince me to stay.”

Raine lifted her head and regarded Kellen with suspicion. “
When
did you read them?”

Kellen opened his eyes. He did not avoid her and replied frankly, “Shortly after I arrived. He gave them to me before he died, Raine. I think he wanted me to know you. He had an obligation, and it was important to him that you were not abandoned. He was an honorable man. When I read your letters, I understood why he agreed to come to Bitter Springs. Accepting your terms would have been a mere formality. He was prepared to help you when he boarded the train.”

Raine felt the ache of tears again. “I wish we had met.” She pressed the crushed handkerchief against her eyes, then her nose when she sniffled. “I haven’t forgotten about setting a stone for him.”

“Neither have I. We’ll do it.”

“Do you suppose it was Clay who killed him? I always thought that whoever murdered Emily must have also killed Nat Church because a knife was used against both of them.”

“The murders were very different. Whoever used the knife on Nat Church was careful, cold, and deliberate. The murderer struck quickly and disappeared. He had probably moved on before Church even knew he’d been stabbed.”

Raine glanced at the overturned photographs. “There was nothing careful or cold about Emily’s murder. I’m not sure any longer that it was deliberate. Everything about it was…” She
bit her lower lip, thinking. “Everything about it was
hot
. What was done to Emily was done in a rage. He lingered afterward, I think, because he didn’t know what to do. Perhaps he was even surprised by what he’d done.”

Kellen’s eyebrows lifted. “I don’t disagree with you, but you remember you’re talking about Clay Burdick, don’t you?”

“I remember. I’m trying to understand what happened. I can’t think when I’m in a rage of my own, and it would be so very easy to summon that kind of terrible anger right now.”

“All right.” He squeezed her shoulders lightly. “Then help me understand how Mr. Weyman figures into all of this. I’m confident he was killed because he was in the wrong place that night. I can imagine that he might have witnessed something going on between Emily and Clay that moved him to interfere. That would have been reason enough for Clay to kill him.”

“What is it that you don’t understand?”

“It doesn’t seem likely that Clay would bother to go to Weyman’s room to clean it out. So how did Mr. Weyman’s bags end up with him in the water tank?”

“Oh, that. There’s a surprisingly simple explanation. I think Mr. Weyman was running out on me.”

“Running out? You mean he was trying to avoid paying his bill?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because it only just occurred to me. I do the books for the saloon regularly, but I only squared the hotel accounts the other day. I thought Sue took his last payment. She thought Walt did. It took some time to get to the bottom of it. I think he might have used the last of his funds to pay back a gambling debt to Jack Clifton. There was some talk about him owing money before he disappeared, but I didn’t think much of it. There’s always card money owed to someone.”

“So Weyman was running out, bags in hand. Bad luck, bad timing, he surprises Clay Burdick in the alley. He sees Clay with Emily, or maybe Emily wasn’t even there yet, but seeing Clay is a problem for both men. Clay doesn’t want anyone to know he’s in town, and Weyman doesn’t want anyone to know he’s
ducking the bill. Clay solves the problem by coercing Weyman up the outside stairs to the roof, killing him, and disposing of the body and bags in the water tank. Rabbit and Finn probably saw Phantom while Clay was on the roof. They said they didn’t see anyone else, so it seems more likely that Emily was not around yet.”

“Or,” said Raine, “she was already trussed and tucked away.”

Raine turned restlessly in her sleep, waking Kellen when she jammed a knee against his groin. Grunting softly, he slipped his hand between what was important to him and her knee and gingerly eased Raine away. She flung an arm sideways, which he deflected with his palm. Before she tried to kick or clobber him again, Kellen turned her over so all of her weapons were pointed in the opposite direction. He slipped his arm around her waist, not to secure her, but to anchor himself.

Before he met Raine, he thought of himself as something of an explorer, an adventurer perhaps, a traveling man, not searching for a particular thing but searching for meaningful things. He never once thought he was adrift. Now he wondered again if he hadn’t been exactly that. How else to explain that he felt settled when he was with her?

Raine settled him. The revelation was that he had no intention of fighting it. He
wanted
to be with her. It was his choice, and it felt profoundly right. He loved her. It astonished him that it had ever been a question in his mind. What had once seemed outside his experience was now the whole of it. If he had opened himself to the possibility of love, he might have recognized the
first stirrings when he read her letters. He had respected her then, admired her courage and resolve, saw qualities of compassion and thoughtfulness in her writing that made him want to know the woman, but he hadn’t been thinking about love.

He had been thinking about what she wanted, and if he could fill those scuffed brown boots with the tarnished silver spurs. Whether Raine understood it or not, whether she could admit it or not, when she went looking for a hired gun, she hadn’t really gone looking for the man on the train with the marshal’s badge and the shoes that were polished to a military shine. She had gone looking for the renegade hero in the dime novels. Her practical sensibilities had lost some ground to her romantic ones.

The irony, Kellen thought, was that he only had himself to blame.

He brushed his lips against her hair. “I do love you.”

She whispered back, “Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”

He didn’t. Couldn’t, just then. He made love to her instead. Slowly. Carefully. Taking his time to appreciate all the parts he loved. The faint blue webbing at the backs of her wrists. The soft underside of her jaw. The sweet curve of her bottom. He tasted her, sipping the skin at the base of her neck as though it were a delicacy. He made her moan, made her whimper, and he liked the sounds she made, even the ones that never made it past her throat but stayed there when her breath hitched.

He was gentle until she asked him not to be. The restlessness that accompanied her into sleep now guided her lovemaking. She wanted her hands on him, to feel him under her. She needed to touch and be touched, to know a firm hand. She told him that, bringing his palm to her breast and pressing it hard against her skin. She loved his mouth on her, but she wanted his teeth.