Authors: Robin Gideon
He’d just come to this realization—that he would continue fighting, no matter what—when the blackjack deal
ers pooled their efforts and kicked simultaneously at the
grappling hook.
Hanging onto the rope, Garrett heard the hook scrape
free, and immediately he felt the tension go from the rope.
For an instant he remained suspended weightless in
midair. Then he began to descend at an alarming speed.
His hands tightened around the rope an instant before he
reached the end of the slack. With one end of it still firmly
fixed to the hotel rooftop, Garrett began swinging toward
the side of that building.
He looked at the side wall of the hotel and smiled, even though he raced toward it at a deadly pace.
Wasn’t life magnificently absurd?
Chapter Twenty-Four
It wasn’t the brick side wall of the hotel that Garrett hit.
He crashed through a second-floor window, making a
great deal of noise and ending up with more than just a
few cuts, to land on a bed—much to the surprise and
consternation of Mr. and Mrs. Ignatius Smyth, who
weren’t terribly excited about sharing the bed with each
other, much less a stranger.
“Go back to sleep. This is all just a bad dream,” Garrett told them as he hastily climbed off the bed, trying not to
step on either of the octogenarians.
Mrs. Smyth’s reaction to the intrusion was to put a pil
low over her head and babble incessantly, “Oh, God! Oh,
God!”
Mr. Smyth’s was to flay out blindly with his fists at the
unseen intruder—unseen because the hotel room was very
dark and because Mr. Smyth had no time to put his spectacles on before commencing the pugilistic defense of his
marriage bed.
Mrs. Smyth might have been more proud of her eighty-four-year-old husband’s courage had she not inexplicably pulled the pillow from her head and sat up, which put her
face directly in the path of her husband’s left fist. She
never did entirely believe Ignatius’s vow that he had not intended to give her a black eye.
Not quite believing his luck, Garrett stood at the door
and patted himself down quickly. Nothing seemed broken,
and he had very few cuts and scrapes from breaking
through the window, all things considered. He stripped off his mask and cape,
dropping them to the floor, then stepped out into the hallway just as Ignatius began apologizing for knocking his
wife half out of bed with a roundhouse left.
The hallway was deserted. He hurried to the stairway and made his way to his third-floor room. He could hear
the commotion outside in the street and also in the hotel.
Stripping off his clothes, Garrett collected all the money he’d taken from Michael Darwell’s safe and stuffed it into his briefcase.
The sizable cut along his chin was bleeding consider
ably. Several more cuts Garrett considered inconsequential.
From his traveling case, he took out his cup, shaving soap,
and brush. He dipped the brush into a pitcher of water,
quickly working up a thick lather, then dabbed the lather
inconsistently on his face. Taking his straight razor in
hand, barefoot and bare chested, he stepped out into the
hallway.
“What’s going on?” he asked as a bellhop, eyes wide with excitement, rushed down the hall.
“The Midnight Phantom robbed the Cattleman’s Paradise,
and he may be in the hotel right now!” the young man
exclaimed. He saw the red staining the white lather on
Garrett’s face. “Mister, it looks like you cut yourself pretty
bad.”
“I heard glass breaking. It startled me,” Garrett ex
plained, pleased beyond words that his alibi was now rock
solid.
“No need to worry, mister. The Phantom don’t hurt folks,
he just robs them,” the bellhop said, then continued on
his way.
* * * *
By morning, Ignatius Smyth was something of a hero to
many people in Whitetail Creek. Of course, he was also considered
a damned old fool and a liar by others, because when the Midnight Phantom’s mask and cape were found in his hotel
room, old Ignatius just couldn’t resist confessing that he—a
man of eighty-four, nearly blind and hard of hearing—was
in fact the notorious Midnight Phantom.
When some journalists printed Ignatius’s confession of
guilt, Mrs. Smyth merely rolled her eyes, one swollen and
black, heavenward.
While Deputy Dylan McKenzie was in favor of arresting Ignatius—there was the bounty to be considered, after
all—Sheriff Max Stryker was the voice of reason. He ad
ministered two shots of whiskey to Ignatius, who promptly
went to sleep on the sheriff’s couch and did not awaken
for four hours.
“Some Phantom,” the sheriff muttered disgustedly as old
Ignatius snored noisily, a look of contentment on his
sleeping countenance.
* * * *
Pamela sat on the edge of the small cot in her jail cell, her
hands folded neatly together in her lap, her eyes closed.
She was daydreaming again. Lately, she’d been doing
more and more of that in a conscious effort to keep de
pression at bay. And every time she retreated into her
mind, into her memories and fantasies, she returned to the
world she’d known when it seemed as though she and Garrett were the only two people who existed.
A serene smile spread across her lips as she sat there, slowly and steadily blocking out all the sounds filtering
in through the barred cell window. When she daydreamed
of her times with Garrett, sometimes she neither heard nor felt anything of the outside world.
But now she heard the rattle of keys then a clanking
as the outside door, the one separating the sheriff’s office
from the jail cells, was opened. For an instant, Pamela squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, hoping she could
block out Deputy McKenzie’s comments. But, unhappily,
she could not. If she had to think about the real world, she couldn’t hold onto her imaginary one.
Pamela inhaled deeply then let her breath out on a single
long sigh. Next, she knew, she would hear the deputy sug
gesting that if she showed him “a good time” in her cell, he had the power to make her life more comfortable.
Pamela had explained several times that exchanging her
comfort for his groping hands was no deal.
She wondered if she should tell Garrett about what
McKenzie had been trying to do. But then, very quickly,
she dismissed this idea. Garrett had enough problems to deal with without having to worry about something as silly as her harassment by Deputy Dylan McKenzie.
Garrett couldn’t win the case. Pamela was certain of it. The
jury would have to decide between the word of a known
troublemaker and that of a powerful family in the territory.
To make matters worse, the presiding judge was Robert
Dahlmann, whom Pamela herself had witnessed accepting a bribe
from Jonathon Darwell.
The future looked bleak, but at least Pamela had her
memories…
“Got yerself a visitor,” the deputy said, rattling the nu
merous keys on the big, round ring, which was just one
of his many annoying habits.
Pamela’s eyes widened with gratitude, and she almost
shouted out Garrett’s name. But she remained sitting and closed her eyes, very briefly this time. Garrett hadn’t been scheduled to see her. Apparently he had sensed that she needed him, so he’d come, drawn to her by forces neither
of them thoroughly understood.
“Good afternoon.” Pamela kept her tone calm, though she
was thanking God that Garrett had come to her. “I wasn’t
expecting to see you until this evening.”
“Some questions regarding your testimony yesterday
need to be cleared up.”
As Garrett waited for the deputy to unlock the cell door,
he narrowed his eyes at Pamela to examine her carefully. Nor
mally, when he arrived, she was excited to see him, but
she controlled her excitement because he’d told her that
Deputy McKenzie must never know the extent of their
attachment, must never know that they’d been lovers. Now,
sitting there with her hands folded in her lap, Pamela appeared almost drugged, as though she didn’t have a care
in the world.
Garrett stepped into the cell, waiting until the deputy
relocked the door. He gave McKenzie an annoyed look. “I want privacy with my client.” He hated to go through
the same stupid games every time he saw Pamela. “You don’t
need to stand outside the cell to protect me, so don’t say
that. And I won’t let you listen in, so don’t stick your ear just outside that door.”
The deputy curled his lips derisively. “Ain’t nobody in
town can figure out why you’re defending this gal. You ain’t making no money for it, and everybody knows she murdered Richard as pretty as you please. Hell, there’s plenty of women in town who look real close when you walk by. Why worry ’bout this one? When it comes time to vote for mayor and such, folks will remember this.”
“It’s for the jury to decide whether Pamela is guilty or innocent, for the voters to decide whether they want me
in public office.” Garrett pointed to the outside door. “Now
I insist upon privacy with my client. Please leave.”
Garrett didn’t turn to Pamela until he was absolutely certain
he was alone with her and they wouldn’t be overheard.
“Hello, Garrett,” she said when he finally turned to her. Her voice was soft, distinctly sensual, a nighttime voice
Garrett had heard before, out of place here in a jail cell. “A
pleasant surprise to see you again.”
“What’s wrong, Pamela?” Garrett sat beside her on the small
bed, slipping his arm around her shoulders. “Did the dep
uty say something to you again?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” She smiled at him, touching
his face gently with her gaze. Pamela didn’t know how many more times she would be able to look at him, so she wanted every feature, every line, every nuance of him,
embedded in her memory.
Garrett didn’t like this drastic change in her. She wasn’t angry. Every time he’d seen her at the jail before, he’d had to wait ten to fifteen minutes for her to calm down enough to discuss the case rationally. She’d needed that
much time just to vent her anger over the way Deputy
McKenzie was treating her.
“Pamela, I’m worried seeing you like this.” Garrett touched
her cheek lightly with the backs of his fingers, feeling for
a fever. This calm, passive, serene Pamela was
not
the Pamela
Bragg he’d fallen in love with.
“Now, Garrett, how many times have you told me I
mustn’t get too angry, that I accomplish nothing by letting
men like Deputy McKenzie and Jonathon Darwell rile me?”
Pamela placed a hand lightly upon Garrett’s thigh. She loved
the feel of the fine fabric of his trousers and the solidity
of the muscles beneath. For all the times she had touched
Garrett, she’d not lost even a little of the thrill of it.
“I didn’t want you grinding your teeth in rage, but I
don’t want you so accepting of your fate either.”
Pamela leaned toward him to kiss him. At first he pulled
away, still surprised and confused by this change in her.
But she would not be denied and leaned farther still until
she kissed him, though he did not really kiss her back—at
least not the way she wanted him to.