Drew (The Cowboys) (9 page)

“Why don’t you take him outside on the back of the last car?” someone suggested. “Then, if you don’t like his answers, you can just push him off. If they find him later, it’ll look like he went sleepwalking and fell off the end of the train.”

They were all sticking together. If that hard-faced Indian decided to gut him right here, somebody would probably offer to wash the blood out of the sheets.

“Let me get my pants on.”

“Leave them off,” Drew said. “Then if we push you off the train, our story will add up.”

As Cole threw back the covers and got out of his bunk, he ruminated on the speed with which this assignment had gone wrong. He hadn’t expected it to be easy, but neither had he expected to find his neck in a noose quite so soon. If he’d kept his mind on business—searching Drew’s trunks for possible clues to her involvement in the robberies—he’d have been gone before anyone saw him. Instead he’d become preoccupied with thinking up new tricks. Now he was in big trouble. One false move, and he might not live to think up any more.

“If you need help getting him to talk, let me know.”

That from an ex-lion tamer. Cole guessed the man would offer to see if the big cats liked Cole Benton steaks and cutlets. Cole had a sinking feeling they’d like them very much.

He felt the flush of embarrassment and a stab of anger as he was paraded in his underwear through several cars and out the door of the last one. A small porchlike extension with a metal railing formed the end of the car. Cole held his breath until the wind shifted and the soot and cinders from the train’s engine drifted away. Then he relaxed and took a deep breath of cold night air.

He would have been able to enjoy the fresh air a great deal more if he’d been out here under different circumstances. A midnight assignation with Drew ranked high on his list of choices. She might be a thief, but she sure was a pretty one. Besides, if she liked and trusted him, she’d be more willing to take him into her confidence.

He could forget the trust part. He didn’t need to see her expression to know it looked grim and angry. That pretty well took care of her liking him as well.

“Now, let’s hear your tale,” Drew said.

“It had better be good,” Zeke said. Hawk grunted his agreement.

“Like I said,” Cole began, “I was just going through the crates with all the stuff for your stunts. I thought about asking, but you were so anxious to get rid of me I decided it would be better to just go ahead and look.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Candles.”

“Candles?”

“He’s lying,” Zeke said. “I say we cut his throat and throw his body over the rail.”

“That’s the trick I was telling you about,” Cole said, hoping Drew wasn’t quite as bloodthirsty as her adopted brothers. “I don’t have any candles or holders. I was going to have to buy all that stuff first thing tomorrow if I couldn’t find something I could use.”

“How would I use candles in the act?” Drew asked.

She was still angry, obviously not ready to trust him, but there was a chance he could make her believe him.

“It’s something I saw once in New York,” he said, knowing immediately she’d think he was comparing her to New York showmen. He was counting on her determination to be the best to overcome her anger. “You light a bunch of candles and shoot out the flame without knocking over the candles.”

“That’s easy as shooting dead ducks for Drew,” Zeke said.

“Maybe, but the audience won’t know that. It looks very impressive to have those lights go out one by one without being able to see anything do it. If it’s all that easy, we can add it to the act tonight and start working on something else to put in later.”

“Like what?”

It was just like Drew to want to know everything now. He hadn’t even thought of what he could do next. He’d been too busy trying to figure out how he was going to worm his way into Drew’s confidence.

“I’m still working on the candle trick,” he said. “There are a lot of ways to do it, with the candles in a candelabra, in a row, even a revolving table. Think you could do that?”

“What’s the next trick you have in mind?” Drew asked.

He didn’t have to see her expression to hear the suspicion in her voice.

“I hadn’t worked out which would be best to begin with, but I was thinking maybe you could shoot lying down.”

“Shooting lying down is not much,” Hawk said. “Anybody who’s ever been in a gunfight has done that.”

“Lying on their back, their head hanging down, shooting at something they’re looking at upside down?” Cole asked.

“That might be interesting,” Hawk admitted.

Cole had kept his eye on Drew the whole time. The cold steel of the gun barrel pressed against his stomach was not a comforting feeling. He was relieved to feel the pressure lessen, then disappear altogether. Drew might not believe him yet, but she was thinking about it.

“I guess I shouldn’t have gone through that crate without asking you first,” Cole said, trying to sound apologetic without sounding so much like a yellow-belly he’d choke on the words. “I really thought we were partners, that you trusted me.” He tried to sound just a little bit hurt. “I have been doing everything I can to think of ways to make our act more interesting.”

“It’s
my
act,” Drew said, “and you’d better not forget it again. As for looking through the props, do that before we pack up. I won’t be very happy if you forget to put something back and I have to cancel a trick. I’m not on very long, so I need to get in all the tricks I can while I have the crowd’s attention.”

She believed him, or at least she couldn’t come up with a really good reason not to believe him. But Cole wasn’t about to get careless again. He knew he wouldn’t get a second chance.

“That all you going to do?” Zeke asked. “Tell him not to leave stuff lying on the floor?”

“What do you want me to do?” Drew asked.

“Let me and Hawk have him for a few minutes. We’ll teach him to forget to ask before he goes through a lady’s trunk.”

Cole figured Drew would be more successful in getting her brothers to leave his skin in one piece, so he kept his mouth shut. Zeke looked ready to take him apart. Hawk’s expression was harder to read, but Cole had no doubt his thoughts were running along the same lines. Besides, he
had
gone through Drew’s personal trunks. He thought he’d put everything back exactly as he’d found it, but you could never be sure with a woman.

A man would throw everything into a trunk and worry about what it looked like when he got where he was going. A woman would spend five times as long making certain everything was packed just right so it wouldn’t crease. Then the first thing she’d do when she arrived would be iron everything and hang it up. Drew didn’t strike him as overly domestic, but she always looked neat.

“He’s a fool, but that’s not his fault,” Drew said. “If you want to blame anybody for having to put up with him, blame Earl. He’s the one who hired him. You can blame yourselves, too, for thinking he added life to my act.”

Zeke and Hawk didn’t look happy, but it was clear they were used to doing what Drew wanted. Cole got the feeling just about everybody did what Drew wanted. He shivered violently and realized he was cold. Now that he wasn’t expecting to be gutted any minute, his adrenaline had stopped pumping and his blood had cooled off. He was standing on the back of a train on a cold September night in nothing but his long johns.

“Let him go back inside,” Drew said, “before he freezes to death and we have to get rid of his body. Besides, he does keep coming up with good ideas. We can keep him around until he runs dry. Then we can pitch him from the train, preferably when we’re crossing a river.”

The woman was all heart. He decided to get back to his bed before she could change her mind. When the captain had explained his assignment, he hadn’t bothered to mention that Drew came with her own personal bodyguards and support team. Cole hadn’t been prepared for that, but he’d better get prepared. Next time they were going to want blood.

And Cole was certain that, one way or the other, there would be a next time.

But as he settled back into his bed and felt his body begin to warm, his feet begin to feel more like they belonged to him instead of being two blocks of ice, his concern shifted back to Drew. He hadn’t known exactly what he was looking for when he went through her trunks. He wasn’t foolish enough to expect to find masks neatly packed away ready for use the next time they were going to commit robbery.

To his relief, he’d found nothing. The captain hadn’t said they knew she was guilty, just that she seemed the most likely suspect. Cole was to check her out and report back. There wouldn’t be any difficulty when he reported he couldn’t find any evidence to prove she was involved with the robberies. He couldn’t produce any evidence to prove she
wasn’t
connected with the robberies, but he had a good intuitive grasp of character. Everything he sensed about Drew told him she wasn’t the kind of person to commit robberies.

But his feelings went further than simply being relieved. He wanted to stop looking now because he was afraid sometime in the future he might come across some evidence he couldn’t ignore. He didn’t want Drew to get off scot-free if she was guilty, but he didn’t want to be the one to find the proof.

Yet it was even more than that. He didn’t want her to be guilty, or to be caught even if she were. All day, after he’d decided he would go through her luggage, he’d been running scenarios though his mind in which he talked her out of committing any more robberies, into giving back the money she’d taken, into going to one of the western territories, where she’d be effectively out of the reach of the law.

This wasn’t like him. While serving as a Texas Ranger, he hadn’t been involved in any kind of dishonesty. Doing anything to help Drew escape the consequences of her actions would not only be dishonest, it would be against the oath he’d taken as a federal agent.

He couldn’t figure out what it was about this woman that worked so powerfully on him. She wasn’t beautiful, though she was pretty enough to satisfy any reasonable man. She certainly hadn’t gone out of her way to make herself agreeable to him. It wasn’t her moral character—he had never known show people to have very high morals. Were Zeke and Hawk really her adopted brothers?

If not, he didn’t want to think about what kind of intimacy that implied.

He didn’t know what had gotten into him. Maybe it came from trying to catch a female criminal. He could only assume it went against some part of his training as a Southern gentleman. It was a shame that when he left home he hadn’t left all that brainwashing behind.

It was foolish to let himself be influenced by the fact that Drew was a woman. He was a strong-minded man. At least he had been until now. He could put aside his personal feelings and do the job. That was what the captain had expected when he gave Cole the assignment. Success would mean promotion, and further proof he’d been right to walk away from his family’s expectations.

Meridian, Illinois

Drew was forced to concede that Cole had a natural talent for the theatrical, a real feel for what an audience would find exciting or intriguing. Maybe drifters had to have the ability to see the entertainment value in virtually any situation. After all, if they failed to be amusing, people would stop supporting them and they’d have to actually be responsible, maybe even take a job.

“We’d better hope there’s not too much wind tonight,” Cole was saying. “It’ll blow the candles out.”

“I could always shoot the match out of your hand,” she said.

“Let’s stick with the candles for now.”

He probably didn’t think she was good enough to keep from hitting him. That piqued her vanity, but she decided to let it pass. He’d only been officially part of the show for two days. He’d have plenty of opportunity to learn to appreciate the extent of her skill with guns, and her willingness to practice to make herself even better. But he seemed determined to do everything he could to make her act the most sensational in the Wild West Show.

Why?

She didn’t have an answer to that question, and it bothered her. She didn’t like it when she didn’t understand things around her, what people were doing, their motives. She took people as she found them. The old regulars in the show were her favorites. They were just what they seemed—honest, hardworking, friendly—and they loved being with the show. They wouldn’t consider any other kind of life.

But none of that applied to Cole Benton. He would drift from one place to another using his handsome face and pleasing manner to ease his way. At some point, before his physical charms faded completely, he’d probably sweet-talk some rich widow into marrying him, and be set for life. He’d probably take advantage of her trust, cheat on her from time to time, spend too much of her money, but Drew had no doubt that she’d feel she got a fair return on her investment. Cole Benton looked like just the man to make any woman think having him to herself—even if only part of the time—was worth almost any price.

“Get those candles ready,” Drew called. “Zeke and I can’t wait here all morning.”

“In a minute.”

She didn’t like to be unoccupied. All kinds of unwelcome thoughts thrust themselves on her, like what she’d been thinking a minute before. She couldn’t recall when she’d ever speculated about any man as she had about Cole. He was exactly the kind of man she despised. Yet now she couldn’t stop thinking about him, wondering about his past, his present motives, what he’d do in the future. She didn’t like that. It wasn’t like her.