When The Heart Beckons (9 page)

Let it go
, he told himself.
What does it matter, if she’s lying or not? You’re leaving here
in the morning and going somewhere she’d never be able to follow.
Whatever underhanded scheme this beautiful little bitch might have,
it won’t matter anymore by tomorrow. You’ll never see her again.
Let it go. Let
her
go.

For a moment he thought she could actually
read his thoughts, for she suddenly tugged her wrist free. To his
own surprise, he let her. He watched motionless as she began to
inch her way toward the door. In the sunset light that bathed
Lily’s lush room, her hair was the color of burnished pennies. What
would it look like if it wasn’t wound up so tight, he wondered, and
then coldly stopped himself from this line of thinking. He must be
going loco.

“It’s obvious this arrangement isn’t going
to work out,” she was murmuring. “So I won’t disturb you further.
Please forget about my proposition, Mr. Steele. I’m sure I’ll find
some other protector who will respect the seriousness of my
situation ...”

She really was something, he thought, his
eyes fixed intently on her as she edged ever closer to the door,
talking all the while. Lovely as a prairie flower, and she sure
looked innocent, but if there was one thing he had learned over the
years it was that few people, especially women, were quite what
they seemed.

He let her get all the way to the door and
begin to open it before he moved. Then he lunged swiftly, shoving
the door shut and holding it there with one powerful shoulder.

“Your name.”

“I ... beg your pardon?”

“I want to know your name.”

“It’s ... Annabel ... Annabel
Brannigan.”

“Well, Miss Annabel Brannigan, I don’t buy
your story. Not for one damned minute. But I’m going to let you
walk out of here in one piece under a certain condition.”

“Mr. Steele, I feel I must tell you that you
are hands down the most rude and vile man it has ever been my
misfortune to meet ...”

“More rude and vile than that scoundrel who
supposedly swindled you and tried to kill you?” he demanded
swiftly.

Annabel caught her breath. “Second only to
him,” she flung out.

“Do you want to hear the condition or
not?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“None at all.”

“Well, then?” She stifled the impulse to
snipe at him further. Her only goal now was to escape Roy Steele’s
relentless questions and the confines of this room—and then to
somehow come up with a way she could continue tracking Brett’s
movements without attracting Steele’s notice.

“Stay out of my way.” Steele’s eyes bored
into her. “I don’t want to see you sniffing around again like a
little dog looking for its master. Don’t trail me, don’t watch for
me, don’t ask about me—don’t even glance at me if I happen to run
into you again before I leave this two-bit town. Is that
clear?”

She forced the words out from between
tightly clenched lips.

“Perfectly.”

He nodded, and opened the door for her. She
started toward it, but froze at his next words. “And one more
thing.”

“What is it?”

“If some hombre is really after you, go find
yourself a sheriff and get some help from the law. Men like me,
we’re not cut out to play nursemaid to little girls still wet
behind the ears. Next time, you could land in worse trouble than
the kind you found yourself in tonight.” His eyes raked her from
head to toe and he finished in a low, cool drawl. “I’d hate to see
that happen.”

“Oh, I’ll just bet you would, Mr. Steele,”
Annabel retorted. She flushed as his eyes met hers with a mocking
glint.

“May I go now?”

“Yep.”

She spun away from him and stamped out of
the room. To her fury, she heard him chuckle as the door clicked
shut behind her.

Oh, so I’ve amused you, have I?
she
fumed as she stalked down the stairs and across the little corridor
toward the back door. Uproarious laughter rushed out from the main
room of the saloon. She glanced over and saw Lily sitting on a tall
stool at the bar, pouring whiskey for two young cowpokes. They were
ogling her like a pair of moonstruck calves.

Annabel scowled. She doubted much more time
would pass before the woman returned upstairs to Roy Steele and
they continued with whatever they’d been about to do before Annabel
had interrupted them. And Annabel had a very good idea what that
might be. Thinking about it brought scarlet color to her already
flushed cheeks. She slammed the door of the Hot Pepper Saloon on
her way out and marched back to her hotel.

Well, while Mr. Roy Steele was otherwise
engaged, she would be free to do some more sleuthing—unhampered and
uninterrupted.

“I want a bath,” she informed the clerk as
she stormed into the lobby. “Kindly send a chambermaid to my room
with hot water immediately, if you please.”

And so, less than a quarter of an hour
later, a stocky, dimpled young woman named Polly Groves was pouring
steaming buckets of water into a bathtub behind a screen in
Annabel’s room. And Annabel stuck a photograph of Brett under the
girl’s nose and asked her if she’d ever seen this young man
before.

“Yes, ma’am, he stayed here a whole
week.”

Annabel nearly dropped the photograph into
the tub. “
He did?
”

The girl bobbed her head and set the bucket
down on the floor.

“Sure as snakes crawl. Who could forget a
handsome feller like that? And he was a real gentleman, too. So
polite and refined-like. Even when he was drunk.”

“Drunk?” Annabel stared at her. “Brett was
drunk
?”

“Most every afternoon and evening.” Polly
shrugged. “But he was nice as can be. Now most men when they get
drunk, they get kinda mean, or low-down rude at least. You know
what I mean. They say things that’d make you blush.” The girl
handed Annabel a thick white towel. “But Mr. McCallum wasn’t that
way atall.”

Drunk
Annabel frowned. She’d never
once known Brett to overindulge in liquor. He was naturally
good-natured and high-spirited, and had the most moderate habits of
anyone she’d ever known. She couldn’t even imagine him in an
intoxicated state. Something must be very wrong, she decided, her
eyes clouding with fresh concern.

“Did he say where he was going after he left
Eagle Gulch?”

“Why? Is he a friend of yours?”

“Yes, a very good friend, and I must find
him. Polly, this is very important.”

The girl nodded and pushed a few straggles
of raisin-brown hair back from her perspiring brow. “Well, matter
of fact, he did say something to me,” she conceded. “Like I told
that other fellow who asked, Mr. McCallum passed me in the hall the
day he left Eagle Gulch. I was sweeping the stairs and I remember
moving aside for him to go down—and he said, ‘Polly, I hope the
girls in the rest of the territory are as pretty and sweet as the
ones here in Eagle Gulch.’ ”

The chambermaid dimpled with pleasure at the
memory. “It stuck in my mind because I kept thinkin’ how nice it
was that he remembered my name. A lot of the customers here—even
the ones who stay for weeks at a time—don’t even bother to find out
my name, much less remember it ...”

“What did you mean when you said you told
this to ‘that other fellow who asked’?” Annabel interrupted. “Who?
Who else asked you about Brett McCallum?”

She found herself clenching the folds of her
riding skirt between her fingers as she waited for Polly’s
answer.

The girl watched her uncertainly, obviously
noting Annabel’s tension. “There was this man,” she said, “he came
here to the hotel, oh, about a week ago. And
he
asked me
some questions about Mr. McCallum, too. But he didn’t have a
photograph or anything,” she added, “he just said he owed Mr.
McCallum some money, and he wanted to pay it to him and ...”

“What did he look like? What was his name?
Do you know anything at all about him?”

Polly pursed her lips, thinking. “He was an
easterner,” she offered. “A thin fellow, with spectacles on his
nose—and he wore one of them fancy bowler hats. Mr.
Bartholomew—that was his name! He didn’t seem like the type who’d
be pards with a gunfighter like Red Cobb, but ...”

Annabel felt her heart freeze. She grasped
the girl’s arm, her fingers taut. “What’s this about Red Cobb?”

“Well, he passes through Eagle Gulch now and
again, and so I know what he looks like—he’s young and right
handsome, matter of fact—doesn’t look like a killer at all but ...
to get to the point, the fellow who asked me about Mr. McCallum had
supper downstairs two or three times with Red Cobb. What’s the
matter?”

“N-nothing. I’m just trying to sort this
out.” Annabel paced across the room, stared out the window, then
whirled back to the girl. “Did Mr. McCallum say anything else to
you—mention any town, or any person —did he mention someone he
might be meeting or visiting?”

Polly shook her head and picked up the empty
buckets from the floor. “No, ma’am, all he said was what I told
you. Is he all right? You seem awful worried about him.”

“I-I have news for him—and his family isn’t
exactly sure where to find him.”

“Now that’s a powerful shame. I wish I could
be more help. But ...” She stared at Annabel doubtfully. “How are
you
going to find him? Excuse me, ma’am, but you don’t
exactly look like someone who knows the Arizona territory too well.
Ever been here before?”

“No, but don’t worry about that, Polly. I’ll
find him. And before anyone else does either.”

“Are you in love with him?” Polly blurted,
then flushed, shifting in embarrassment from one foot to the other.
“ ‘Scuse, me, I shouldn’t ought to have said that, but I can see
from the way you’re so upset that you care for him—can’t blame you
none either, him bein’ so handsome and so nice.” She gave a short,
wistful little laugh. “I could’ve fallen in love with him real easy
myself, given half a chance.”

“Yes, Brett is wonderful,” Annabel said
softly. Her heart swelled suddenly with emotions, and she gazed
down at the photograph in her hands. “I do love him, it’s true,”
she admitted. “And that’s why I’m going to find him.”

“Good luck to you.” Polly took one last
glance at the photograph before turning away with her buckets.

“Thank you, Polly.”

When the girl was gone, Annabel stripped off
her dusty clothes and sank into the steaming tub, but her mind
could not stop racing. Despite the soothing warmth of the water or
the perfume of her favorite lavender-scented soap which she’d
brought with her from St. Louis, she couldn’t slow the whirling
turmoil inside her.

At first when Polly had told her about the
thin bespectacled easterner inquiring after Brett, she’d thought
that perhaps it was an investigator from another agency, that Ross
McCallum had hired two companies to search for his son, deducing
that whoever found Brett first would be entitled to the fee. That
would be just like him. But how did Red Cobb fit in?

She was stumped. And worse, she had an
uneasy feeling about this. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but
she sensed that this Bartholomew was not employed by Ross McCallum,
that he and Red Cobb were working together to find Brett—and for
some sinister purpose of their own.

And they had a good head start on her—at
least a week. By now they might have found him. By now he might be
... dead.

No. Don’t think like that. Brett is
alive. He has to be. His father needs him and I need him—and he
will be found
, she told herself.
He’ll be found alive and
well
.

But where?

Unfortunately, she was fresh out of leads.
His trail ended here.

Unless ...

Unless Roy Steele knew more than she did.
Unless the clerk downstairs or someone who worked at one of the
other hotels had given Steele the information he wanted before he
ordered them not to tell anyone else, as he had done with the
blacksmith in Justice.

I’d bet Mama’s amber necklet he knows
exactly where to look next
, Annabel thought, sitting up in the
tub with a whoosh of soapy water that cascaded over the sides.

She shivered all over despite the steaming
water as she realized what she might have to do. Steele had warned
her not to follow him again, warned her to stay out of his way. But
she might have no choice.

If she couldn’t get answers from anyone else
in Eagle Gulch, if he had effectively silenced everyone who might
shed light on Brett’s trail, then there was only one thing left to
do. When Steele left Eagle Gulch to go after Brett, she would have
to be right behind him.

And this time, Annabel thought, crossing her
arms across her cool, shivering skin, if she wanted to save her
neck, she’d have to make sure she did not get caught.

M
erciless sunshine
poured down from a hot cobalt sky, baking Annabel’s perspiring skin
until she felt like a limp, glazed, and oft-basted turkey. Her
throat was so parched she could barely swallow, yet she dared not
stop to drink from her canteen or rest her horse. If she did,
Steele might get too far ahead of her and then she would be
hopelessly lost out here in the pine-scented ridges and gullies
along the Mogollon Rim.

She had never felt so alone, so small and
utterly vulnerable. Admit it, she told herself with a gulp as she
ducked beneath the low-hanging branch of a pine. So
frightened
.

This had been a harebrained idea right from
the start. Following Steele. It was madness. If she lost him, she
would be as good as dead. And if she ventured too close and he
realized that she was following him ...

Annabel didn’t want to think about what he
would do to her then.

What had Lily said?
Don’t shoot her in
my bedroom
.