Lawman (17 page)

She cleared her throat against the tears
threatening to choke off her voice, and added, as fiercely as she
could, "So what do you have to say to that, agent Winter?"

In response, Gabriel reached across the
table. He slipped his hand inside his suit coat—the same suit coat
still wrapped warmly around her shoulders—and wormed his fingers
around the inside pocket sewn within. Megan went dead-still, partly
fearing the brush of his fingers against her, and partly
anticipating it. A moment later, he took out a men's linen
handkerchief.

He gave it to her, then stood. "I'd say it's
too bad I didn't come here on tax day." He watched her from his
position beside the table, looking darker than ever before—and
twice as immovable. "I'd have found your father already, and not
wasted all this time talking."

Shock made her fingers clench on the
handkerchief he'd offered. "
What
?"

"You heard me." Hard as carved marble, he
put on his hat and held out his hand to help her from her chair.
"Dry your eyes. We're leaving. I have a job to do."

Megan stared at his outstretched hand,
feeling like slapping it away. Always gentlemanly, Gabriel Winter
was—even while twisting the knife into her heart. Battered with
sudden despair, she closed her eyes at the realization of what his
behavior meant.

Her ploy hadn't worked. Hadn't softened him,
hadn't taken an ounce from the freight-wagon's weight of cynicism
he carried, hadn't furthered her cause in the least. She'd revealed
one of her most cherished memories to him...and somehow, had
hardened the Pinkerton man against her still further. What was she
supposed to do now?

Gabriel wasn't waiting for her to decide.
With an impatient exhalation of breath, he tugged her to her
feet.

"Take heart, sugar," he said, oblivious to
the twisted handkerchief Megan hurled at his chest. "When your papa
gets there, maybe you can paste up stars in the jailhouse for
him."

Chapter Ten

He should have sent McMarlin, Gabriel
decided later that evening, instead of leaving him at the hotel to
guard Megan Kearney.

To be sure, Carlotta Roma's house on Maiden
Lane was one his old friend would appreciate. He could easily
picture Tom on one of the parlor's two red velvet settees, with a
cigar clamped between his teeth, one fist full of whiskey and
another full of money to buy up time with the ladies of the
house.

That time did not come cheaply. Already,
Gabriel had gone through a considerable quantity of the money he'd
left the Cosmopolitan Hotel with, and so far he'd only spoken with
two-thirds of the ladies in question. At this rate, he'd sooner be
wiring the Pinkerton office in Chicago for more money than he would
be learning anything new about Joseph Kearney's whereabouts.

Wearily, he passed his hand over his face.
The motion temporarily blotted out the colorful image of the
fancied-up painted lady seated beside him. Unfortunately, it did
nothing to diminish the powerful effect of her lavender perfume.
The scent of it filled the air between them, so strong his eyes
fairly watered.

"Then you know the man I'm speaking of?"
Gabriel asked her, more than ready to have their business
concluded. "You've seen him here before?"

The woman, Elsa, twirled her fingers through
her unbound blond hair and giggled. "Can't rightly say, darlin'. I
have lots and lots of visitors, you know."

"I'm sure you do." For her benefit, he
produced a smile. "Doña Carlotta told me you were one of her most
popular ladies. Looking at you now, a man could certainly see
why."

Her answering giggle should have stolen some
of Gabriel's reluctance to cajole her into telling him what he
needed to know about Kearney. It did not.

He hated this part of his work, plain and
simple. Hated the deception it needed to succeed, the subterfuge
called for to drag out secrets from reluctant witnesses. He'd told
Doña Carlotta he was a man seeking an old partner—Joseph Kearney—to
buy out his interest in a joint business venture. From all
appearances, the madam had believed him.

Most likely, all her 'ladies' believed him,
too, including Elsa. But Gabriel could take no pride in his
skillful under-cover work, and he had no heart for charming yet
another woman—this one only a girl. Behind her rouged-and-powdered
features, low-cut gown, and string of gaudy paste jewels, Elsa
couldn't have been more than a sweet-faced girl of fifteen years.
Too young for working on her back. Too young for being misled by
the likes of a Pinkerton man on a case.

Setting aside his bottle of ginger beer,
Gabriel withdrew his wallet from his inside coat pocket. "I find it
takes some folks a little longer than others to remember the kinds
of details I need to know," he said. "I'd be obliged if you'd sit
with me a while and think on it, Elsa."

"All right." Agreeably, she struck a new
pose atop the settee's worn red velvet. With a hopeful air, she
glanced at the clock on the mantel of the cold, ash-strewn marble
fireplace beside them. "Miz Carlotta said you paid for ten minutes,
so I reckon you ought to get all of them."

"Kindly put. I can see you're a woman who
takes customer satisfaction seriously."

"I do." She took money seriously, too. As
he'd expected, Elsa's gaze fixed on his wallet. "All my customers
are satisfied," she assured him. "'Cepting maybe the ones who get
too drunk to see the deed done proper, if you follow my meaning.
But that won't be a problem with you, just drinking ginger beer and
all. You a teetotaler, mister?"

"No."
Just a man with a job to do, and a
clear head needed to do it with
. "Just a man wanting to avoid
those problems you talked about."

He winked. She giggled. The girlish sound of
her laughter made him want to shove all the money he had at her, if
only she'd quit working at Doña Carlotta's house—an urge about as
allover impossible as the one he felt to quit working as an
agent.

Working with the Pinkertons was all he'd
ever known, all he really knew how to do. Gabriel had never planned
for anything else. He'd never needed to.

Winter brings in the right man at the
right time
.

It should have been enough. Suddenly, it
wasn't.

But he couldn't let it go.

Christ, no matter what it took, he would
leave a clean record behind him. He'd start over someplace new,
with something better than an operative's lonely life to look
forward to. Just as soon as he found Joseph Kearney, and the proof
he needed to document his case.

Elsa scooted closer, draping her arm along
the settee's carved cherrywood backrest. In her fingers, she
dangled Gabriel's discarded bottle of ginger beer.

"In that case," she said, letting her hand
travel suggestively up and down the bottle neck, "maybe I can
'courage you to stay a little longer. Sounds like you've got a
theory what needs testing out."

Despite himself, he smiled at her ingenuity.
It took a certain quantity of brass to approach a man like that,
whether paid up-front for the task or not. "Another night,
perhaps," he said. "Right now, I need to know if you've seen my
friend, Mr. Kearney. It's mighty important that I find him."

Disappointment softened the rouge-reddened
line of her mouth. Elsa raised her head, gazing about the parlor as
though her answer might be found written on the fancy gray flocked
wallpaper and ornate painted moldings.

"I don't recall if I've seen him or not,"
she said, taking a sullen slug from his ginger beer bottle. "So
many fellas come in and outta here...."

One of them was Joseph Kearney, if the hints
he'd gleaned from Hop Kee's cook at the
Celestial Kitchen
could be believed. His visit there after leaving Megan in
McMarlin's care at their hotel had been more productive than he'd
expected. Turned out, Gabriel had remembered far more of the
Mandarin Chinese tongue than he'd expected.

Evidently, growing up in the shadows of
opium dens had conveyed its share of lasting advantages on him.

He gazed at Elsa, taking in her crossed arms
and willow-tree posture. With a woman like this, answers came only
one way.

"Let's see if I can improve your memory," he
said.

She gave him a suspicious look. Upon
remembering what he held in his hands, though, the girl suddenly
found the gumption to sit a little straighter. "I reckon my memory
could use a little poke in the right direction, at that."

"I don't doubt it could."

Gabriel unfolded his wallet, absently noting
the warmth it carried from being in his pocket. The same warmth
must have been present earlier, too, he realized, struck by the
knowledge that when he'd wrapped his coat around Megan to keep away
the chill, the creased leather in his hands had spent the better
part of an hour exactly where he'd thought about being.

Nestled up against the curvy warmth of her
bosom.

His fingers stilled on the money he'd begun
counting. Had she bewitched him, that he could sit an arm's length
away from a desirable, readily available woman, and still be
thinking of Megan?

Hell, no. He'd never cared much for bedding
prostitutes, was all. Meeting Megan Kearney, with all her
quick-stepping ways and sassy mouth and starched-over curves, had
not a damned thing to do with it.

Gabriel stood, hat in hand. He threw a
quantity of folded money on the low table fronting the settee, then
added a card with the name of another agent at the hotel. "Leave a
message for me here if you recall anything."

Overhead, the parlor's cut-glass chandelier
chimed on a breath of wind, drawing Gabriel from his thoughts—and
firming his resolve to have this finished. He'd had all he wanted
of tracking and searching...and battling with hard-headed women, at
least for today.

From the front of Carlotta's house came the
swoosh of a door opening on the surprisingly cool Territorial
night. The tinny strains of a piano playing nearby grew louder,
rising over the ever-present drone of cicadas. A mule brayed
nearby, a dog's howl joined the chorus, and then the door closed.
The room grew quiet again.

By the time he looked back at Elsa, she'd
already snatched up the money. Lips moving, she silently counted
the bills he'd left, then stared up at him. "If this don't point my
memory in the right direction, I don't know what will."

"See that it does."

The girl smiled and tucked the money into
her bodice, sending another wave of lavender fumes upward.

Scent that strong ought to be outlawed,
Gabriel thought. He refused to compare it to the subtler fragrances
of roses and spice that Megan's skin carried, or to the faintly
antiseptic tinge that overlaid those scents. He refused to
contemplate the cockeyed pride he'd felt in identifying that smell,
so uniquely hers, as the starch Miss Megan used on her crisp,
high-necked dress.

And all fragrance aside, he refused to
remember the shattered look on her face when he'd stared up at her
China stars and pretended to feel nothing. When he'd told her he
would have used her piece of little-girl's heaven to capture her
father quicker.

Heavy-hearted, Gabriel put on his hat and
went into the night. The next leg of his search lay only a few
houses down Maiden Lane, past a home-sized brewery, a saloon, and a
store advertising notions, patent medicines, and 'lady's things.'
Staring at the partly shadowed gilt sign, he wondered if those
'lady's things' included colognes and such.

If they did, he ought to stop on the way and
buy Megan a bottle of lavender perfume. To be sure, they would both
be better off if she used it.

By the time Gabriel rounded the alleyway
corner leading to the back side of the Cosmopolitan Hotel, most of
the lamplight inside the looming two-story building had been
extinguished. Moonlight cast his shadow on the rough adobe wall
beside him, and a musty-scented autumn breeze stirred his clothes
as he walked on silent feet to inspect the rear of the hotel.

He couldn't shake the feeling of being
followed. It had stuck with him all up and down Maiden Lane, inside
a half-dozen brothels and out, and all the way to the stables a
half-mile distant where he'd boarded his horse before coming here.
The nagging feeling of being pursued was one a man didn't
ignore.

Not if he wanted to stay alive.

Gabriel did.

Long practice had taught him a pinch of
caution was worth double its effort in surprises avoided. With that
in mind, and the force of habit setting his feet on a path around
the hotel's grounds, he traveled the alleyway parallel to the
hotel's rear.

Instinct kept him alert, and sharpened all
the night sounds around him. Mice scuttled from one dark corner to
the next, and the breeze pushed pages from a discarded
Arizona
Citizen
across the wagon wheel-rutted dirt pathway. Overhead,
the windmills that creaked incessantly to bring water to the
presidio
competed with the strains of distant saloon music
and Spanish singing from the streets beyond.

He wished he had a whiskey. He wished he had
a great hunk of saltwater taffy, to finish off the night with
something sweet. He wished he had a soft bed waiting, piled high
with enough pillows that a man could truly rest his bones without
feeling like he was about to plummet clean through the mattress and
onto the floor. He wished he had a woman in that bed waiting for
him...a woman with lush brown hair and eyes shining with the
reflections of a thousand cut-tin stars.

Or maybe eighty-nine.

Damnation. Thoughts like these would get him
killed for sure.

Gabriel quickened his step, knowing he'd be
better served to wish for something simpler. An answer to his case,
a hard-certain lead to Kearney's whereabouts...reason enough to
sing, like those
troubadours
he'd heard before. Maybe the
first two would lead to the third, and he'd be able to leave the
Pinkerton life behind him without regrets—and without an unsolved
case on his record.