“Five to date.”
“I’ve seen a few Wanted posters,” Damian mentioned. Actually, the file he’d been given was full of them. “Don’t most posters offer the reward dead or alive?”
“If you’re asking how many of them lowlifes I’ve killed, the answer is none—at least not yet. I’ve caused a few wounds, though. And one of those five has an appointment with the hangman, so he’ll likely be meeting his maker before the new year.”
“They take you seriously, these hardened criminals?” Damian ventured to inquire.
The subtle grin appeared again, the one that wasn’t quite a grin. “Rarely,” the kid admitted. “But they do take this seriously.”
The gun seemed to materialize in his hand, there in the blink of an eye. Obviously, he’d already had it palmed under that poncho, and Damian just hadn’t noticed him bring it out in the open.
“Yes, well, guns have a way of getting one’s attention,” Damian allowed.
That was the most he would concede, though. The boy was just too young to have done the deeds he was laying claim to. Even if he were a few years older, Damian would have had doubts. But then, children did tend to boast of grand deeds to impress their peers, easy enough to do when proof wasn’t available or required.
However, Damian wisely kept his eye on that gun until it was put away again. Handing the coffee cup back got the weapon back into its holster so the kid could pour a cup for himself.
“Do you live around here?” Damian asked next.
“No.”
“Does anyone live around here?”
The emphasis Damian used produced a chuckle from Kid, and like his previous laughter, it had a strangely sensual note to it that was quite jarring, coming from a young boy. If Damian didn’t know better, and wasn’t staring directly at the lad, he would be thinking right about then that a woman had snuck into the camp when he wasn’t looking. But then the kid had what was commonly termed “pretty-boy” looks more suited to a female, so it was no wonder Damian was having these weird notions.
Damian pushed those musings aside when his host pointed out, “Well, you’re kind of off the beaten track out here, Mr. Rutledge.”
“No kidding,” Damian said dryly; then, after a moment’s thought: “But you know where we are, I hope?”
A curt nod. “About a day or two south of Coffeyville, I reckon.”
The name of the town didn’t ring a bell. All Damian knew was that wasn’t where he’d been headed, so perhaps the stage had taken him farther south than he’d realized before it crashed, and he’d traveled even farther on foot than intended, passing his destination altogether.
“Is that the closest town?”
“Don’t know if it is or isn’t. This isn’t my neck of the woods.”
“What are you doing out here, then?”
“I’ve got business up in Coffeyville, least I hope to have.”
The kid didn’t volunteer any more. Damian was beginning to suspect he didn’t like all these questions, his answers were so brief. Damian, on the other hand, enjoyed conversation, even if it was more of the interrogative sort, so until he was told to mind his own business…
“I’d like to think I haven’t been running around in circles. Are we at least near a road?”
A slow shake of the head. “I tend to avoid roads as much as I can. You run into less folks that way, and I happen to like traveling alone.”
That was blunt enough to bring some color to Damian’s cheeks. “I’m sorry to have intruded, but I really am lost out here.”
“How’d that happen?” Kid asked. “Your horse take off on you?”
It was there in his tone if not in the question that the boy figured Damian was too incompetent to ride or keep a horse. Understandably, Damian’s voice was a bit tight as he replied, “No, I was traveling by stagecoach. And before you ask if I fell off of it and got left behind—”
“Now, hold on, mister,” Kid interrupted. “You got no call to take offense at a simple question, specially when you’ve been asking so many of your own. You walked into my camp, you didn’t ride in. It was a logical assumption that either your horse came up lame or you got thrown and he took off. Folks who take the stage don’t usually end up on foot.”
Damian sighed. Kid was right, it was a logical deduction. And his headache was returning. He wasn’t going to apologize yet again, though, not when his own assumption was likely dead on the mark as well.
“The stagecoach I was on was fired upon,” Damian said. “The driver tried to make a run for it, but ended up crashing the coach. I was knocked out in the crash. When I woke up that night, the driver was gone, the horses were gone, and my pockets and my bag had been emptied.”
The lad perked up considerably. “Stage robbers in this area? When did this happen?”
“The day before yesterday.”
A huge sigh of disappointment. “They’re likely long gone by now.”
Damian frowned. “I would imagine so. You would prefer they weren’t?”
“Wells Fargo pays real well for the apprehension of stage robbers. And running into faces that tend to get plastered on Wanted posters beats the hell out of hunting them down when they don’t want to be found.”
Damian humored his companion. “Yes, I suppose that would make your job easier.”
“Easier, no, just quicker. Actually, I consider run-ins something like a bonus, unexpected but welcome. Now it’s your turn, Mr. Rutledge. What brings you West?”
“What makes you assume I’m from the East?”
A very definite grin as those light brown eyes—almost amber in the firelight—moved over Damian again from top to bottom. “A wild guess.”
Damian scowled. Kid chuckled, then said casually, “You on one of them tour-the-country-type trips you Easterners seem to enjoy?”
Damian was annoyed enough to say, “No, I’m on my way to Texas to kill a man.”
Chapter 4
I’m on my way to Texas to kill a man.
Having said it brought it all back vividly, that night nearly six months ago in the spring, the night Damian’s world had fallen apart. Everything had gone right that day: the hothouse flowers delivered to Winnifred shortly before Damian arrived to pick her up, the engagement ring he’d had designed finished that morning. They had even reached the restaurant on time, for once the heavy New York City traffic not interfering with his time schedule. And the dinner had been superb. Perfect. As soon as he took Winnifred home, he was going to ask the big question.
Her father had already approved the match. His father had been delighted. They made a perfect couple, he the heir to Rutledge Imports, she the heir to C. W. & L. Company. It wouldn’t be just a marriage, but a joining of the two largest import companies in the city.
Then Sergeant Johnson of the Twenty-first Precinct had shown up at their table as they were having dessert. The somber policeman had requested a few private words with Damian. They had walked out to the lobby. By the time they finished talking, Damian was in shock.
He wasn’t sure if he’d asked the sergeant to see that Winnifred got home safely. He had raced to the offices of Rutledge Imports. The lights were all ablaze.
The office was usually closed by five o’clock in the afternoon, but occasionally one or another of the employees stayed late to catch up on paperwork, including Damian’s father…though rarely that late. Even the cleaning crew was usually finished by that time of night. But the only people working there when Damian arrived were members of the New York City Police Department.
The body was still hanging from the flagpole in the large, high-ceilinged office. There were two ornate flagpoles, one on each side of the door. Every July, for the entire month, an American flag was hung from each of them. Throughout the rest of the year, the poles supported an assortment of hanging plants. The plants on one pole had been tossed aside, leaving dirt and broken leaves on the cream-colored carpet, and, that night, had supported the body instead.
If the walls
weren’t made of brick, a body that size couldn’t have hung there, dangling some six inches above the floor. But no, those poles were made of steel and reinforced in the brick, so they would never sag. Two hundred pounds hanging from one of them, and it hadn’t bent at all.
So close to the floor, yet so far away. Shoes might have made a difference, might have allowed the body to get support on tiptoe, at least for a little while, but the feet were bare. Yet the arms weren’t restrained either. Those powerful arms could have easily reached the flagpole to keep the pressure of that single rope off the neck. The chair, too, that had been placed just under the flagpole, was still standing there; it hadn’t been kicked over, was still within reach.
“Cut him down.”
No one had heard Damian. Three men had tried to stop him from entering the office, until they heard who he was. The men in the office were too busy sifting through what they deemed evidence to pay attention to a choked voice. Damian had to shout to be heard.
“Cut him down!”
That got their attention, and one uniformed officer blustered indignantly, “Who the hell are you?”
Damian still hadn’t taken his eyes off the body. “I’m his son.”
He had heard several mutterings of sympathy as they cut Damian Rutledge II down, pointless, meaningless words that had barely penetrated his shock. His father was dead, the only person on the face of the earth whom he really and truly cared about. He had no other relatives.
His mother had divorced his father when Damian was still a child, and had gone off to marry her lover. Damian had never seen her again and had no desire to. She had been, and would remain, dead in his heart. But his father…
Winnifred didn’t count either. He’d planned to marry her, but he didn’t love her. He had hoped that they would get along splendidly. After all, he could find no fault with her. She was beautiful, refined, and she would make a fine mother for the children they would have. But in truth, she was little more than a stranger. But his father…
“…obvious suicide,” he had heard next, then: “There’s even a note.” And the “note” had been shoved in front of Damian’s face.
When he was able to focus on the words, he read, “I tried to get over it, Damian, but I can’t. Forgive me.”
He had snatched the note out of the policeman’s hand and read it again…and again. It looked like his father’s writing, if a bit shaky. The note also looked like it had been stuffed into something—a pocket, or a fist.
“Where did you get this?” he’d asked.
“On the desk—in the center of it, actually. Hard to miss.”
“There is fresh stationery in that desk,” Damian had pointed out. “Why would this note be crumpled if it was written just before…?”
He’d been unable to finish the sentence. The policeman merely shrugged.
But another suggested, “He could have been carrying that note around for days while he made up his mind.”
“And brought his own rope, too? That rope didn’t come from this office.”
“Then obviously he did bring it along” was the easy reply. “Look, Mr. Rutledge, I know it ain’t easy to accept when someone you know takes his own life like this, but it happens. Do you know what it was that he couldn’t get over, as the note says?”
“No. My father didn’t have any reason to kill himself,” Damian had insisted.
“Well…looks like he felt differently.”
Damian’s eyes had turned a wintery gray, pale as shadowed snow. “You’re just going to accept that as fact?” he demanded. “You’re not even going to look into the possibility that he was murdered?”
“Murdered?” The policeman had been condescending. “There’s easier and much quicker ways to kill yourself than dangling from a rope. Know how long it takes to actually die from hanging? It ain’t quick unless the neck snaps, and his didn’t. And there’s easier and much quicker ways for murder to be done than by hanging.”
“Unless you want it to look like suicide.”
“A bullet in the head would have done the trick if that were the case. Look, do you see any signs of struggle here? And there is nothing to indicate that your father’s hands had been tied so he couldn’t prevent the hanging. How many men do you think it would take to hang a man his size if he didn’t want to be hung? One or two wouldn’t have managed it. Three or more? Why? What motive? Did your father keep money here? Anything of value missing that you can see? Did he have any enemies who hated him enough to kill him?”
The answers were No and No and No, but Damian hadn’t bothered to say so. The policemen had drawn their conclusions based on the evidence at hand. He couldn’t blame them for settling for the obvious explanation. Why should they dig any deeper just on his say-so when they could finish their paperwork on this crime and go on to the next one? Trying to convince them that this was a crime that needed further investigation would be a waste of his time and theirs.
Still, he had tried. He’d spent two more hours trying, until the coroner had shown up and each one of the policemen had come up with an excuse to leave. Sure, they’d look into it, they had assured him, but he hadn’t believed it for a minute. A sop for the grieving relative. At that point they would have said anything just to get out of there.
It had been midnight before Damian had entered the town house he shared with his father. It was a huge, old mansion, too big for just the two of them, which was why Damian had never moved out when he had come of age. He and his father had lived there companionably, neither getting in the other’s way, yet both accessible when one of them felt like having conversation.
He had looked at his home that night and found it…empty. Never again would he share breakfast with his father before they left for the office. Never again would he find his father in his study, or in the library late of an evening, where they read and discussed the classics. Never again would they talk business over dinner. Never again…
The wealth of tears he had been holding back came then and wouldn’t stop. Damian hadn’t made it up to his room first, but there weren’t any servants about at that late hour to witness his lapse from his usual stern rigidity. He had poured a glass of the brandy that was kept on his bureau for when he had trouble sleeping, although he’d been too choked up to actually drink it.
The only thought in his mind had been that he would find out what had really happened, because he would never accept that his father had ended his own life. There was no evidence to the contrary, no sign of struggle, yet Damian knew his father had been murdered. He knew his father too well; they had been too close.
Damian Senior wasn’t a man who prevaricated or attempted pretense. He never lied, because he gave himself away anytime he tried. So if something had been so terribly wrong, if something had made him despair, Damian would have known about it.
Yet they had been planning a wedding. There had even been talk of remodeling the west wing of the house for more privacy if Damian wanted to bring his wife here to live. And Damian’s father had been looking forward to having grandchildren to spoil.
Besides all that, Damian Senior had been genuinely happy with his life. He had no desire to ever marry again. He was perfectly content with the mistress he kept. He was wealthy in his own right, but had also inherited a large fortune. And he loved the business that he ran, which had been founded by his own father, Damian I, and which he had since expanded very successfully. He’d had everything to live for.
But someone had felt otherwise. “Forgive me”? No, those weren’t his father’s words. There was nothing to forgive his father for. But there was much to avenge…
Damian now pushed the memories aside. The detective he’d hired had found him the answers he wanted. Yes, he’d come West to kill a man, the man who’d killed his father. But having said so didn’t seem to surprise the boy sitting near him.
Kid simply asked, “Just for the hell of it, or you got a reason to kill this man?”
“A very good reason.”
&
nbsp; “You a bounty hunter, too?”
“Hardly. This is a personal matter.”
Damian would have explained if asked, but he wasn’t. His companion merely nodded. If he was at all curious, he certainly didn’t give any indication. An unusual lad, to be sure. Most boys that age were brimming with questions, but he’d asked only a few, and those with not much interest. Not that it mattered.
“I think I’ll take that bath, then turn in,” Damian said, standing up.
Kid pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “It’s down the bank there. I’ll be turning in myself, so try not to make too much noise when you come back up.”
Damian nodded, grabbed his bag, and headed down the hill. Behind him, he heard, “And watch out for snakes,” then a chuckle that had him gritting his teeth. Damned kid. And he was going to be stuck with him for another day or so?
Chapter 5
The smell of coffee woke Damian, but he didn’t stir from his uncomfortable bed on the hard ground. He felt like he hadn’t slept more than an hour or two. That was quite possible. Cracking his eyes a bit showed a sky still filled with stars, though there was a lighter blue cast to the east, where the sun would be making its appearance. But then, he hadn’t managed to get right to sleep last night either, despite his exhaustion. So it was little wonder that he didn’t feel rested this morning.
It wasn’t the first time that the events of his father’s death and what followed had kept Damian from sleeping. His rage was always close to the surface, a constant companion these past six months. He relived those powerful emotions so often, the frustration, the disbelief, and finally his resolve to see justice done.
After his experience with the police, he had hired his own detectives, and they had been quick and thorough. The small cafe across the street from Rutledge Imports had been open that night, but business had been slow. The one waiter who had been working had noticed two burly men leaving the Rutledge offices, noticed them because they looked so out of place. And he happened to be an amateur artist. For a small fee, he’d drawn sketches of both men from memory.