Lawman (41 page)

His eyes burned. Damn. He must have stuck
his nose too close to the overly sugared fudge again, Gabriel
reckoned. He cleared his throat and looked into her face.

The unabashed love he saw there made his
soul ache with longing.

"Do you mean that?" he croaked.

"It's stubborn you are." Megan brought her
hand to his jaw, cradling him tenderly. "I've already told you, I
only speak the truth."

Her imitation of his Irish brogue was awful.
He couldn't have cared less—not when so much of what he wanted lay
behind her words.

Briefly closing his eyes, Gabriel leaned
into the softness of her caress. "I've always liked to make candy,"
he confessed, surely shame-faced. "Especially fudge. Below one of
the—the places my father used to visit, there lived an old woman.
After seeing me waiting in the alleyway enough times—waiting to
bring my father home—eventually she let me wait inside her
house."

He leaned away from Megan, still
remembering. "It always smelled like a giant cone of sugar,
especially in the kitchen. I'd sit there at her rickety table, one
ear cocked for the sound of my father stumbling downstairs, and
listen to her rattle on about whatever she was cooking that
day."

Megan smiled. "She taught you how to make
candy?"

He shot her a disgruntled glare and folded
his arms. "If you're going to keep giving me those spoony looks of
yours, Miss Megan, then this story is finished right now."

Instantly, she adopted a somber face.

"At first, I told myself I only kept going
there because it was a damn sight warmer than outside," Gabriel
said. "But when spring came, and then summer, I had to admit the
truth."

"That you had a ferocious sweet tooth?"

"No, you cheeky lass!" He couldn't help the
smile that leapt to his face. "That I liked candy-making. T'would
be a miserable poor profession, to be sure, but—"

"Why?"

"Well, because—" At a loss for reason,
Gabriel settled for bluster. "—because I say it would be."

Megan gave him a shrewd look. "You have no
facts to support that conclusion."

"I—I—" Blazes, had she reduced him to
stammering?

"Folks in the Territory are about starved
for something sweet. I'd say they'd pay good coin for a taste of
that fudge you made yesterday."

Suspiciously, Gabriel searched her face for
signs she was mocking him. He saw none. His own logic pointed him
to the irrefutable conclusion.

She had faith in his future. Even when he
did not.

Even while hers remained at risk.

At the realization, tenderness engulfed him.
He could not have picked a finer woman to fall in love with—nor a
deeper hole to dig them both out of.

"I might have a chance to test your theory
someday, sugar," Gabriel said. "But first there's work to be done.
And barely enough time to do it in." He held his palm toward her.
"Give me the strongbox key."

"What?" Her face paled. With trembling
hands, Megan clutched her locket and stared up at him. "You don't
mean—"

"Mose said you would have one, identical to
your father's. I need it to open the strongbox with."

"But why? Why? Oh, Gabriel...everything was
so wonderful between us again, just moments ago. Can't we leave
this behind us?"

At another time—and with his cynical,
unchanged heart—Gabriel might have believed her pleas were the
means to removing him from his investigation. Now, he knew
differently. He knew they came from hopes for a different kind of
future between them.

They were hopes he shared, even if Megan
didn't realize it.

"You trusted me last night, Meg," he said,
gesturing for the key. "Can't you trust me again?"

"Trust the man who says people never change?
Who says believing is for fools, and he'll have no part of it?"

He nodded.

Her eyes grew tear-filled. "I suppose you
think you'll find your facts in there," she said, tipping her head
toward the strongbox.

"That's not why I want the key."

Keeping her head bent, Megan fumbled with
her locket. Seconds later, it split into golden halves, revealing
the key inside. All along, it had been near enough to touch. She
pried the key from its niche and pressed it into his palm.

"Whatever this reveals," she said, "know
that I love you, Gabriel. With all my heart and soul."

Her solemn expression seemed to warn of some
horrible discovery—proof of her guilt? Gabriel thought not. Either
way, he felt too joyous over what she'd said last to linger over
the question for long.

I love you, Gabriel
.

Megan waited, wrists held together atop the
table as though she expected the bite of his handcuffs at any
instant. As always, they swung from their place on his gun belt,
ready for the next of Pinkerton's most-wanted who would wear
them.

He touched them. Felt their cold metal
promise of a life that was familiar and well-paid and lauded.

Then, breathing deeply, Gabriel took the
biggest leap of faith in his life.

Chapter Twenty-Two

She hadn't much time. Megan hurried through
the
pueblo
with Mose at her side, spurred on by Gabriel's
last words to her.

Go find your father
, he'd said,
taking the strongbox key she'd offered.
Get your money, save
your shop. And trust me.

Trust him. Surely she'd been a fool to do so
once, much less over and over again. Hadn't hard experience taught
her people couldn't be counted on?

Maybe, Megan told herself firmly. But she
could count on herself, on her own judgment. Matching wits with
Gabriel had told her that. And she could count on her heart. Loving
him made that true as well.

When Gabriel had sent her from the
restaurant, with the strongbox unopened behind him, Megan had been
filled with astonishment. That feeling had only doubled when she'd
spied Mose waiting for her at the news depot...exactly where the
Pinkerton man had said he would be.

"Your papa ain't going to be happy about
this," Mose said morosely, galloping along beside her with his hand
closed protectively over her arm. "Not happy a'tall."

"Don't worry, Mose. I won't let him dismiss
you."

At least not so long as my family has
rights to run Kearney Station
. Lord above! How was she supposed
to straighten this tangled-up mess?

Well, so long as Gabriel held the deed, her
papa couldn't gamble their home away. That was something to be
thankful for, at least.

She and Mose passed through winding streets
and alleyways, traveling into a neighborhood Megan was unfamiliar
with. Here, the adobe houses clustered closely, and wood smoke
wreathed their squat chimneys. Only the occasional horse and rider
passed them, sometimes a Fort Lowell soldier—more often a
vaquero
looking to gamble away his cowboy's pay.

"Joseph didn't tell me 'bout this so I could
bring you here," Mose muttered, guiding her around to the back
entrance of one of the houses. "He'll likely have my hide."

"Hush, Mose. Don't be ridiculous. You know
papa would just as soon take out his anger with a fine, like he
always does."

No station hand back home was exempt from
Joseph Kearney's practice of levying fines against his men for
their transgressions. The fees varied according to the severity of
the deed, whether a man was caught imbibing while on duty, abusing
the stagecoach teams, or—worst of all—cussing in a lady's presence.
Particularly his daughter's.

Over the years, Megan had become adept at
halting her practice of the swear words she overheard outside the
bunkhouse at the sound of the slightest footfall. Her keen hearing
had saved her many a coin.

"I don't believe papa even has a fine set up
for something like this anyway," she went on, patting Mose's
hulking back. "You'll be fine."

Looking supremely un-reassured, he knocked
on the door.

Megan crossed her fingers behind her back,
unable to resist the childish talisman—or the hopes that came along
with it.
Please, papa. Please have at least a little money
left
.

However unlikely it was, she couldn't help
hoping Joseph hadn't gambled away her entire savings. Perhaps there
would be enough left to at least give the Websters a down payment
on their mercantile space, provided she could wrangle a new
agreement with them before their train headed east tonight.

Remembering the strongbox she'd left at
Gabriel's hand, Megan sighed. Her papa must be desperate, plain and
simple. Why else would he have called to wager Kearney Station?

Murmured voices came from inside the house.
Mose shuffled sideways, just as the thick wooden door creaked
open.

Megan peered inside, then gasped. The woozy
feeling she'd had earlier returned, forcing her to grab Mose's arm
for support. On the other side of the threshold, her papa looked up
from the task he'd been diligently practicing. His gasp echoed
hers.

She couldn't have said who was more
surprised. Joseph Kearney, at seeing his daughter in his secret
Tucson hideaway? Or Megan, at seeing her papa in a way she had
never, in a million years, expected to find him?

At the restaurant, Gabriel turned the
strongbox key in his fingers. He looked at the unopened wooden box.
It held the solution to his final Pinkerton investigation. He'd
have wagered all he had on it. He had only to unfasten the lock,
open the lid, and withdraw the papers he needed as proof.

So why hadn't he?

Instead, he had spent the last quarter hour
or more letting Megan's parting words chase themselves through his
mind.
I love you, Gabriel. With all my heart and soul
. Never
had he heard anything so beautiful. Never had he yearned to return
those words to a woman, the way he wanted to give them to Meg.

That he loved her was plain as the empty
chair across the table. Only a man half-crazed with love would set
free his likeliest suspect when she'd already been in his
grasp.

Open the box
, he told himself,
twisting the key so it lay ready between his chilly fingers.
Open it
.

Did he fear he'd find proof of Meg's guilt
after all? Damnation, but that would be the cap he'd never wanted
to his Pinkerton career. The possibility explained his reluctance
with room to spare.

Gabriel looked to the restaurant's far
corner, where a potbellied stove warmed the place against
September's chill. With stunning intensity, he imagined himself
opening the stove's black iron door. Shoving the strongbox and key
inside. Slamming the door on the few things that could turn his
newfound dreams to ashes.

No. Tempted as he was, he'd been an
operative long enough to know he could never destroy evidence.
Whatever he found inside that box, Gabriel promised himself, he
would see this through to the end.

Giving himself no more time to brood, he
thrust the key into the lock. It turned easily. But then, why
shouldn't it? Knowing Megan, she'd probably seen to details like
oiling the locks herself. He had never known a woman less likely to
leave things to chance.

When he opened the lid, a jumble of papers,
certificates, and ledgers met his gaze. Swiftly, Gabriel sorted
through them. He moved aside the basket of fudge—giving it a
bemused smile as he did so, remembering Megan's suggestion that he
open a confectioner's shop—and stacked the station paperwork in
piles on the table.

He read through the shipping manifests,
running his fingers along the neatly written columns. With a
mingled sense of anticipation and dread, he turned to the page for
the day of the missing shipment.

An envelope slid from between the pages.
Frowning, Gabriel caught it. He raised it higher to examine it, and
noticed a peculiar odor emanating from the paper. It was familiar
to him, but he could not place the scent.

Gabriel sniffed. In a rush, recognition came
to him. Copper sulfate. The paper smelled faintly of copper
sulfate, the chemical combined with liquid mercury to cull silver
from crushed mined ore...in places like Tombstone, where the stolen
payroll shipment originated.

He flipped over the envelope. Still firmly
sealed, it bore no signs of having been tampered with—and only two
words on the face of it.
Joseph Kearney
. Megan must have
received the envelope, likely on the same day as the manifest pages
it had been pushed between, and set it aside for her father to
read.

Thoughtfully, Gabriel tapped the envelope
against the pages as he read the day's entries. All seemed in
order, with the exception of the specially handled payroll shipment
his Pinkerton operatives had been dispatched to find. The only
cargo passing between Tombstone and Tucson via Kearney Station had
been listed as ordinary goods.

Gabriel slipped his knife from the sheath in
his boot and slit the envelope. He withdrew the sheet of paper
within, noticing again the odor of mercury. His nose wrinkled.
After spending almost three months working undercover in a Nevada
silver mine on a case last year, he'd grown to dislike the chemical
stench and black grit surrounding the place. He wasn't happy to
have the memories revisited on him now.

The unfolded page revealed itself as the one
thing Gabriel had not expected to find.

Proof. Proof not of Megan's guilt, or her
father's—but the mine foreman who had hired the Pinkertons to find
his missing payroll. In amazement, Gabriel read and re-read the
letter he'd found. Written in the foreman's own hand—script Gabriel
recognized from the case file he'd read before embarking on the
train to the Territory—the letter detailed the valuable shipment's
contents, and the safeguards meant to keep it protected on its
journey.

It also detailed the foreman's request that
Joseph Kearney take personal responsibility for the shipment, and
that he notify the foreman in writing when it passed safely through
Kearney Station.