by Cameron Judd
Kenton said, “If I had known you were trying to find me, I would have made it easier for you.”
She smiled at him again. “I finally was able to trace you to Texas, where you had gone to work on a story. When I got there, I had no more money, no food. Since coming to the United States I have worked when I could, and where I could, to keep myself alive. I thought sometimes about actually advertising to hear from you, but still feared Paul Kevington. He had the means to travel to this country very easily, and given that I knew him to be a murderer, he had the motive to do so, as well. So I kept myself hidden.
“In Texas I worked in the household of a wealthy rancher. It was good work, and I was tired of traveling and hiding, and stayed longer than I intended. Meanwhile I continued to read the Illustrated American, and to attempt to find a pattern in your movements. I had grown more confident that Paul Kevington had not followed me from England after all, and that I was safe from him.
“And then, one day, he was there. He was mounted on a horse, on a hillside, watching the ranch.
“I panicked. I realized how determined he was to find me, how great a threat I was to his very existence as long as I remained alive. At first I couldn’t guess how he had managed to track me to such an obscure place. Then I realized he had simply used the same logic I had. He knew that I would seek to find my real father, and so he tracked the famous Brady Kenton to Texas, knowing I would not be far behind.
“The very day after I saw Paul on that hillside, I heard that there had been trouble of some sort near the Mexican border. Some Texas Rangers had gotten involved in a fight with someone who was described as an Englishman. I knew it had to be Paul. A Ranger was killed in the fight, shot in the back. Another was wounded.
“My fear of Paul only increased. He was a madman! I had to leave right away. I took my little bit of money, my few possessions, and fled, not really sure where I was going. For quite some time, I remained on the move, taking jobs here and there to survive, sometimes, I admit, resorting to theft when I was hungry. I lost track of you, couldn’t follow you. This was probably good, because it made it virtually impossible for Paul to track me in turn. I began to hope again that I had escaped him.
“Then, I read in the Illustrated American about your great adventure in Montana involving the fireball that fell from the sky. Suddenly, everywhere I went, I heard people talking about that story, and about you. And I heard someone say that you were seeking a wife whom everyone said was dead, but who you believed was still alive.
“When I heard that, I had all the more reason to find you, knowing I could give you the answers you wanted. I began tracking you again, hoping that Paul had given up and gone back to England.”
CHAPTER 29
RACHEL continued her narrative. “This time, though, it proved even harder to track you. I would hear that you were at one place, working on a story, only to find when I arrived there that you had unexpectedly moved on.” She hesitated, then continued: “I hope you forgive me, Mr. Kenton, but people were saying unflattering things about you in some of these places, saying you were distracted, haphazard, uncaring about your work. Some attributed it to bad habits … overdrinking, if I may say it straight out … while others said you were distracted by your quest for your wife.”
“Both evaluations are true,” Kenton said with brutal honesty. “My professional behavior over the past year has been anything but exemplary, as Alex Gunnison would certainly confirm to you. I have been obsessed with looking for Victoria, and I have been too quick to seek comfort in a bottle. I’m a far from perfect man, Rachel.”
“I would expect nothing different, Mr. Kenton. As it has been taught to me, only one perfect man has ever walked this earth.”
Kenton smiled. “Indeed.”
She went on. “Suddenly, I found your clearest track yet: an announcement that you were to be a speaker at a special celebration in Leadville, Colorado. I was thrilled, but also frightened. The announcement was widely published. Paul Kevington would surely see it, too. By then, I had picked up evidence he was following me once more. Knowing he would go to Leadville was almost enough to make me stay away, but in the end the chance to find you was too irresistible. I went to Leadville, hoping that I could find you before Paul found me.
“But when I reached Leadville, you were not there. Your partner, Mr. Gunnison, was speaking in your place. And indeed Paul had followed me. Scared, desperate, nearly starved, I sought out Mr. Gunnison in hopes that he could protect me and take me to you. He hardly knew what to make of me, but he was very kind, and gave me shelter and food. Then, while he was away briefly from his hotel room, Paul found me. He attacked me in the hotel hallway. I fought him, and managed to escape. I hid, then slipped onto a train and escaped Leadville. Mr. Gunnison had told me that you had come to Denver. So I came here to find you … and now I have.”
Kenton reached out and gently touched her hand. “Indeed you have. And I’m glad. I believe your story. Gunnison told me things about you, things that had been told to him by a man I am now sure was Paul Kevington in the guise of a Texas Ranger. He said you had committed murder in England and killed a family in Texas, and that you would kill me if you got the chance. But I don’t believe that. There is no falsehood in what you have said to me. I’m sure of it.”
“I have told you the full and absolute truth,” she replied firmly. “I am no murderer. The only murderer is Paul Kevington himself. He is the man who murdered my mother in England. And there was no murder in Texas except his killing of the Ranger.”
Kenton suddenly turned his head and raised his hand, signaling for silence. He had heard a noise around the back of the shed. Rachel heard it, as well. Kenton felt her surge of fear like an electrification of the atmosphere around him.
“Who could it be?” she whispered.
Kenton again signaled for her to be quiet. He rose silently, and crept back toward the source of the sound …
An explosion of activity ensued. Someone scrambled wildly away, making abundant noise. Kenton scrambled, as well, but not in time to catch whoever it had been. He caught a faint glimpse of someone vanishing into the night.
Rachel was on her feet. “Was it him? Was it Paul?” Her voice was tight with terror.
“No, I don’t think it was,” Kenton replied. “Kevington wouldn’t run. Kevington, I think, would take this opportunity to deal with the problem you—and now I—pose to him.”
“Then who?”
“Probably just a vagrant. Such types tend to hang about rail yards.”
“Did he hear my story? Why did he run? What will he do?”
Kenton shrugged. “I don’t know, and it probably doesn’t matter. The thing for us now is to get on a train. Look there. I think I see an opportunity for us.”
He pointed toward a train that had slowly circled into the station yard during the latter part of Rachel’s narrative. One of the sliding cargo doors on one of the freight cars was slightly ajar. And at the moment no one was positioned in the rail yard to allow them to see that side of the train. If Kenton and Rachel could move swiftly enough, and if they could avoid drawing the attention of anyone in the locomotive or on the caboose, they could get aboard and hide themselves.
“Now?” Rachel asked.
“Now,” Kenton replied.
They left their hiding place, and advanced swiftly across the dark rail yard toward the open door of the freight car.
* * *
Gunnison had never been so worried about Brady Kenton, and that was saying a lot, because over the years he had grown expert in worrying about the man. This time he felt a sense of guilt, as well. He had left Rachel Frye, a woman about whose murderous tendencies he had been clearly warned, alone in Kenton’s room. Now she and Kenton were both gone, and there was blood everywhere in the room.
Maybe she had stabbed him and dragged off his body. Maybe he had staggered off on his own, badly wounded and bleeding. In either case the thing to do now was to find help, even from the very police
Kenton had fled. Kenton’s life might depend on it.
Out of breath from running, Gunnison finally arrived at the police station. There was still much activity going on about it, the search for Kenton still under way. Gunnison rushed toward the door.
The door opened when he was within a few feet of it. He jerked to a halt as Frank Turner emerged, slapping his big hat onto his head with a vigor that suggested he was not in a good mood.
He seemed surprised to see Gunnison. “Back so soon?” he asked. “I was just headed for that barroom to wait for you, and get out of this sorry place.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward the station interior behind him.
“Mr. Turner, let me pass,” Gunnison said. “I need to see a policeman. I think Brady Kenton may be badly hurt, or worse.”
“Hurt? How so?”
Though he considered shoving past Frank Turner to go inside, Gunnison quickly related what happened: the dark and empty room, the blood on the floor.
“Wait,” Turner said. “Let me go with you. I can be of more help to you than any man you’ll find on this police force here, and that’s not bragging, just telling the truth.”
“No offense, Ranger Turner,” Gunnison said, “but I think I need an official policeman for this one.”
“If you want help from someone who’s more concerned about doing things right than harrassing folks he don’t like, then I’m your man, not anybody inside that building.” Frank Turner said this so forcefully that the words bore weight. He looked Gunnison squarely in the eye. “Take me to this room. If there’s tracking to be done, I can outtrack any man within the bounds of the city, and once again it’s not bragging, just telling the facts as they are.”
Gunnison hesitated, stammering something vague.
“Listen to me,” Turner pressed. “My cousin in there cares not a whit about Brady Kenton, about you, or about anything but using the law to his own ends and for his own satisfaction. He’s been ranting and going on about all the trouble he intends to bring on Kenton, whom he hates as a ‘Lincolnite.’ The great war never ended for my cousin, you see. If you allow Henry Turner to search for your friend, you’re not likely to see him found alive.”
That was enough to persuade Gunnison. “Let’s go,” he said.
He and Frank Turner headed back in the direction Gunnison had come, Gunnison all but running, Turner doing his best to keep up on his limping leg.
CHAPTER 30
IN a dirty, dank-smelling hotel room, Paul Kevington, dressed as a Texas Ranger, strode back and forth.
He was a worried man. He had come here from Leadville, certain that he must finally lay his hands on Rachel Frye, or perhaps lose his chance forever. He had come so close in Leadville! She had been literally within his grasp there in the hallway outside Alex Gunnison’s hotel room, and yet she had gotten away. He still couldn’t believe she had managed to do so. It was infuriating, and downright embarrassing.
Now that he was in Denver, he wasn’t so sure he was going to find her at all. This was a sizable city, full of places a clever person could hide, and Rachel Frye was clever. He had to admit that much. It was no small feat that she had managed to evade him this long. The mere act of fleeing to the United States had shown her savvy; had she stayed in England he would long ago have tracked her down and taken care of her.
Sometimes he wondered if she was more clever than he. He had an aggravating history of making mistakes where she was concerned. The first had been to fall in love with her, back before he knew their true relation to one another. What a twisted joke of fate that had been! It made him angry. And even though he knew it was illogical, he blamed her for it.
He also blamed her for having caught him in the act of murder. That one incident had sealed her fate. She had to die; he could not afford to leave alive a witness to his crime.
The murder of the meddlesome priest and the pregnant servant girl had not been his first killing. The first had occurred when he was only fifteen years old. The victim had been a vagrant, an annoying, drunken, bad-smelling, trespassing vagabond who had made a mistake of stumbling across Paul Gunnison as he rode on a remote portion of his father’s estate on an unusually boring afternoon. In those days Paul had been enamored of archery; he had with him his bow and arrow. The idea of using a human being as a target had come to him in a rush, not anything he had planned, not anything he had fantasized about. But the power of the idea, once arisen, had been compelling, and after the vagabond managed to insult and annoy him, he carried it out without hesitation.
It had fascinated him to watch the old man die. Hiding the body, aware that any error on his part could destroy him, had given him a heady feeling like he’d never before experienced.
He had known when the act was finished that he had to do it again. In a life full of luxury but without challenges, where nothing he desired was withheld from him, it was fulfilling beyond description to have found a game worth playing, one in which the stakes were high, and real.
So he had killed again, then again, before he ever even touched the priest and the servant girl. He had not committed those killings merely for a thrill, of course. The priest had died for what he knew, and for being meddlesome; Jenny had died because Paul Kevington had no desire to be a father, and he had to be rid of both her and the unwanted life in her.
If only Rachel Frye hadn’t seen him kill her! It wouldn’t have been necessary to destroy her mother for fear Rachel had told her what she’d seen. It would not have been necessary to launch this great transcontinental chase.
Not that the chase didn’t have its own inherent rewards. He found it gratifying and darkly empowering to realize that another human lived in terror of him, and watched for him as a sleepless child in a dark room watches for ghosts that can appear without warning. It was also fulfilling to pursue this chase on his own steam. His father, suspicious of his crimes, had cut him off financially. Paul Kevington had had to provide his own means of support as he chased Rachel Frye. The means by which he’d done it, he thought, were quite clever. His own creative skills had provided him the means to support himself while he continued the chase.
But what if she had managed to escape him for good? What if she returned to England, and revealed what he had done? What if she found Brady Kenton, and Kenton exposed him through his journalism?
Paul Kevington needed a drink. Time to hit the streets, get hold of a bottle, and calm his nerves a bit.
A sudden rapping on his door startled him, causing him to reach for his pistol.
“Who’s there?” he said, taking care to speak in that perfect imitation of a Texas accent that had helped disguise his British origins here in America.
“It’s me … Crane.”
“Don’t believe I know a Crane.”
“You remember! I’m the man from the rail yard.”
Kevington did remember. Crane was a local no-good who lived in a shack within view of most of the rail yard. Kevington had stumbled across him by chance right after he arrived in Denver, and had offered him money to report to him if he should cross the path of a vagrant Englishwoman. The rail yard had seemed a likely place for Rachel Frye to make an appearance; he knew she traveled by train sometimes.
Kevington reholstered his pistol and opened the door. He wrinkled his nose as Crane’s earthy and unwashed pungency preceded him into the room.
“You’ve seen her?” Kevington asked in perfect faux Texan.
“Yes, sir. Not more than fifteen minutes ago. But if you want to catch her you’ll have to hurry, because I believe she and the man with her are getting ready to slip out of the city.”
“Who is the man with her?”
Crane arched one brow and looked sideways at Kevington, saying nothing. The message was clear.
Kevington dug bills from beneath his vest and stuffed them into Crane’s hand.
Crane smiled haughtily. “Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Best.”
“Tell me what you saw, damn you!” Kevington snapped. For a moment, he
forgot to maintain his Texan accent, and Crane looked surprised as he heard the English inflections in Kevington’s voice. Kevington noticed that look, and if Crane’s fate hadn’t been determined until now, it was as of that moment.
“I don’t know who the man is. He’s a tall fellow, strong kind of build, fine-looking sort of gent. Grayish kind of beard and hair. I didn’t know him, but he looked kind of familiar.”
Kevington swore beneath his breath. He knew who it was: a man whose visage seemed familiar to almost every American because it was present in each edition of America’s most popular magazine.
Rachel, that miserable cow, had found Brady Kenton.
CHAPTER 31
KENTON and Rachel stood inside the dark freight car long enough to let their eyes adjust to the diminished light. The car was about three-quarters full of assorted boxes, crates, and burlap sacks filled with grain or feed of some sort.
“I was thrown out of a railroad car like this back in Texas,” Rachel said. “Do you know if the railroad detectives in Denver are very vigilant?”
“No, and therefore we must presume they will be,” Kenton said. “I think the best plan for us is to get over in that corner there.” He pointed toward the back of the car. “You can hide back there with minimal chance of being caught. I don’t think many railroad detectives would bother to crawl over that many crates on the slim chance some vagabond has made a nest in a corner.”
Kenton boosted Rachel onto the stack of crates. She crawled across the top, and looked over into the space Kenton proposed as their hiding place. “The space is fairly small.”
“Go ahead and take that spot,” Kenton said. “I’ll hide out here where I can keep an eye on the rail yard through the door. That way, if anyone is caught, it will be me alone.”
“Don’t talk about getting caught. After searching this long for you, I don’t want to be separated from you again.”
