Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1)

by Adrienne deWolfe

  "I'm a wanted man."

  "By every wedding-bell chaser in the West."

  He had the audacity to smirk. "A renegade makes a worse husband than a Ranger. I'm doing womankind a favor."

  She rolled her eyes. How many times had he used that cheesy line on some adoring belle?

  "And now your roving has brought you full circle," she accused. "You've returned to Texas. To do what? Get yourself hanged?"

  He arched a sun-gilded eyebrow. "If you keep talking sweet to me, I might get the notion you're still fond of this ol' red neck."

  Redneck, indeed. Lawmen might call him Coyote Cass, but his brain was mostly weasel.

  "You've taken a ridiculous risk by showing your face here, Cass. You need to leave Texas."

  "Oh, I get it. You figure I should high-tail it to Mexico 'cause you got yourself a fella who packs a bratwurst and a big gun."

  Smartass.

  "Are you even capable of dragging your mind out of the gutter?"

  "Sure. But what fun would that be?"

  A creaking floorboard made her jump.

  Like magic, a pistol materialized in Cass's black-gloved fist. The glint of that .38 was more than a little unnerving—and not just because he was notorious for a temper that fired as fast as his guns. At 25-years-old, Cass still didn't believe he was mortal.

  Afraid to move, afraid to breathe, she waited, counting heartbeats. Eyes like blue steel raked the shadows for eavesdroppers—or maybe bounty hunters. Cass never had answered her question about why he'd returned to Texas.

  Finally, reluctantly, he depressed the gun's hammer.

  "Are you always so jumpy these days?" she demanded, her voice quavering with relief.

  His glare didn't inspire confidence in his self-restraint. "If I have a reason."

  She imagined what that reason might be, and her stomach clenched. "Then like I said, Cass. You need to leave. Before someone else finds you here."

  Silence stretched as taut as any gallows' rope between them. She saw his chest rising and falling to the wild rhythm of applause. Tankards were thumping; boots were stomping; cries of, "More!" were shaking the oak planks of the floor. Randie's delighted laughter bubbled past the curtain. Apparently, Sadie's "stupid cowboy song" had been a smash with the sailors and conventioneers.

  "Watch your back," Cass told her quietly.

  He pinched his hat brim in farewell.

  A moment later, he'd vanished, as if a drape of shadows had dropped between them, too thick and dark for even a moonbeam to pierce. For Randie's encore, fiddlers begun sawing out The Night the Preacher Rang The Whorehouse Bell. Sadie strained her ears, but she could hear nothing else above the whoops and whistles of the seamen: not Cass's spurs, not the echo of his boots, not even the squealing of the hall door when it swung closed behind him.

  She swallowed hard.

  Fool. She cursed her lapse into sentiment. How could she have let him get under her skin, even now, when she finally had everything she wanted: the freedom to live her life as she pleased. The freedom to give her body to any man she wanted...

  Baron! Crap! I almost forgot!

  Anxious to spring her trap, she hurried toward the brothel stairs. She figured she had about 15 minutes to change her clothes before the private poker game started. Since Cass had spoiled her stage appearance, she needed to put Plan B into action: to make her first contact with Baron as a high-class beerjerker.

  The senator had invested heavily in the western expansion of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad. The Pinkertons suspected he was using the drought and its resulting range wars as a cover to dispose of inconvenient sodbusters, who'd refused to give the railroad permission to lay tracks across their fields. The suspicion had risen when a disgruntled ranch hand, whom Baron's wife had fired for "drunken hooliganism," started complaining in capitol-area saloons that folks who made an enemy of Baron disappeared.

  A week later, that same ranch hand, who'd trained horses for 22 years, got kicked in the head by his cowpony.

  No one could pin that accidental death on Baron, of course. But accidental deaths seemed to pave the way to Baron's success. He'd been appointed to his first term in the Texas Senate because his duly elected rival got stampeded by steers. In business matters, Divine Providence had interceded at least six times on Baron's behalf, getting court cases dismissed because opposing witnesses hanged themselves, or got crushed by an overturning wagon, or fell through the rotted planks of a bridge. To make matters worse, Baron served as the chairman of the senate's Criminal Justice Committee. For two years, he'd had the power to appoint and remove Rangers. Texas's elite crime-fighting force practically worked for him!

  No wonder Governor Ireland doesn't trust his own Rangers, Sadie thought grimly.

  As she began climbing the dimly lit stairwell, her scalp prickled. She couldn't have said why; no one was following her. Even so, she was relieved when she reached the comparative brightness of the second story. Over all but four bedrooms, a red lantern burned to signal the whore was working. Two of those empty rooms belonged to her and Randie. The other two were owned by shrilly laughing women, who were allowing their drunken, belching admirers a strategic grope in the hall to lure them over the threshold—if not for a rut, then for a roll to relieve them of their casino winnings.

  Sadie had witnessed this scene a thousand times. She'd lived it for eleven years after her father's murder and her mother's suicide. She didn't judge bawds for what they had to do to survive. Most of them were under the age of 17, and the vast majority of those girls died before the age of 25. Every bawd she'd ever known had been orphaned, destitute, and one meal shy of starvation before they'd wound up on the steps of a brothel.

  That's why Sadie nurtured the secret dream to help her former rival and friend, Wilma LeBeau, run a training center for "Pinkies," as female detectives were affectionately called. Sadie figured if she could save just one penniless girl from the streets, then God might relent and decide not to cast her into Satan's deepest dungeon for letting her twin sister drown.

  Wracked by the usual self-loathing, Sadie forced her chin higher as she moved down the hall. Two pairs of kohl-lined eyes blinked resentfully at her as she passed the younger girls and their slobbering Johns without her own meal ticket in tow. Under the circumstances, the hall stretched on forever—at least, it seemed that way. Fishtail skirts didn't lend themselves to speed. Nor did spiky little heels.

  But Sadie had learned at a tender age that clothing held only one value to a bawd: the degree to which it tantalized. That's why she wasn't wearing more than garters and stockings beneath her skin-tight satin.

  Relieved to duck into her bedroom, she didn't waste any time kicking off her shoes and stripping off her fishtails.

  Quick costume changes were a requisite skill for a stage performer. The orchestra had launched into a rousing version of The Drunken Sailor by the time Sadie finished strapping her holster to her thigh. She could feel the pulse of the music through her stockings.

  But the pounding of boots and tankards, below, was accompanied by a fresh gust of goosebumps, this time down her spine.

  Now what?

  With the .32 gripped expertly in her fist, she looked beneath her bed. She wrenched open the doors of her stately, Louis XIV wardrobe. She poked the bombazine draperies that rippled from the sea breeze, blowing through her window. She imagined she should be hunting for a rat or a scorpion, since she'd exhausted all the places where a grown human could hide in her 9-foot by 12-foot box.

  Then she spied a flash of light, hurtling out of an oleander bush near the building's foundation.

  It all happened so fast.

  One moment, she was peering out her window; the next moment, a smoking cylinder crashed open at her feet. Flames belched from the shattered crockery. The curtains ignited. The carpet caught fire. She stumbled backwards, choking on fumes.

  Greek Fire! Water would be useless.

  Her mind whirred into action. Wrenching a flimsy night wrap
per from her wardrobe, she stomped on boots. She planned to sound a general alarm. But when she reached her door, it wouldn't budge.

  Frantic, she rattled. She banged. She screamed. Her efforts were futile. Someone had taken the key, locking the door from the outside. Apparently, her window hadn't been an arbitrary target. Somebody wanted her dead!

  Panic gnawed at her reason. Urine. Urine would buy her time.

  She lunged for the sloshing bed pan and tossed its contents on the carpet, saturating the fibers between her and the racing wall of chemically-induced fire. She figured she had little more than two minutes to rip out the false back of her wardrobe and grab the box with her lock pick before her protective little barrier of urine was overcome.

  Pinkertons prepare for assassination attempts. The words from her Field Agent Manual pounded in her head.

  Ignoring the sparks that showered her arms, she wrenched aside the few gowns that hung in her wardrobe and ripped out the loosely nailed backboard. Frenzied groping located the hole she'd smashed into the plaster and the cracker tin she'd stuffed inside the wall. She burned her palms and fingers wrestling that metallic box from the hole, but she hardly noticed. She was too busy shoving her badge, cash, ammo, and train ticket into her trouser pockets.

  Next, she grabbed a slouch hat, scarf, and duster from the hole. She knew when she did get to the other side of the door—and hopefully, the seawall—she mustn't be recognized. Otherwise, her brush with death could get a whole lot closer.

  Gritting her teeth, she ignored the flames that roared ever closer. Perspiration made lock-picking tedious. Again and again, her slippery fingers lost their grip on the widdy. She wasted precious seconds, coughing from the smoke that burned her sinuses and stung her eyes.

  Finally, the mechanism yielded. Nearly sobbing with relief, she wrenched open the door. A scene of mass hysteria greeted her. Shrieking whores, half-dressed Johns, and cursing waiters jostled each other, pushing and gouging in their efforts to escape the floor. Both stairwells were ablaze. Apparently, the murderer hadn't wanted any witnesses to survive.

  Mace shoved his way to her side. "What the hell did you do? Light a cigarette?"

  "You know damned well I don't smoke! Someone tossed Greek Fire through my window!"

  The color drained from Mace's face. "You blew your cover," he growled, grabbing her arm and swinging her toward a darkened bedroom. "Follow evasion protocol, and get your tail out of here!"

  She wrenched her elbow from the senior agent's grasp and dragged the scarf over her nose. A little sympathy from her colleague would have been appreciated, but then, Mace had never wanted her on "his" case. The only undercover work he did willingly with a Pinkie involved a bed.

  As Sadie ducked into a street-side bedroom, Mace remained in the hall. He was shouting for folks to stay calm. To find an open window and take turns jumping into the flower bushes below. Wails of female protest greeted this suggestion, but Sadie didn't hesitate. The building was only two stories tall, and this bedroom, in particular, had a sturdy Mexican plum tree butting against its casement. She knew this fact because she'd cased every blessed inch of the casino to locate the best escape routes.

  Pinkertons can't be too careful, the manual had instructed.

  Ripping her burn-blistered palm, she nevertheless managed to shimmy down the trunk and stumble into the shadows of the privy before the first of the hurtling bodies crashed into the oleander bushes.

  "Sadie! Has anyone seen Sadie?"

  It was Cass's voice, adding to her cover problem. She shrank against the outhouse even as she recognized her ex-lover's pale gold hair in the casino's milling refugees on the lawn. He was turning his head every which way, shouting her name, searching the faces of the beerjerkers, who'd been ushered, along with the gamblers, from the building.

  Surely, Cass wasn't part of the arson conspiracy.

  Was he?

  Suddenly, her casement blew out. Flames spewed triumphantly through the hole. Orange-red reflections flickered over Cass's face, illuminating his horror as the inferno devoured her bedroom. The building shuddered. The timbers groaned.

  Cass was screaming for Cassandra McGuire now, shaking off Baron and Randie and knocking some lanky kid on his ass beside a raccoon. The Siren's bouncer entered the fray. Fists started swinging. Cass's .38 glinted in the firelight. Tito managed to wrestle the gun from Cass's fist before he knocked Cass out cold.

  Sadie exhaled a shaky breath. She forced herself to be logical. To think like a Pinkerton, not a jilted lover. Cass had coyote cunning; he survived in the world because he was a consummate liar with a flair for the dramatic. If he'd been part of the arson conspiracy, of course he would have faked his concern for her, if he'd wanted her dead.

  In any event, Tito had neutralized him. Now was her chance to flee.

  Flipping up her coat collar, she turned her back on the soaring flames. She drove her leaden legs toward Harborside Drive and the fishing wharves. Her plan was to disappear while she still had time, while the brothel refugees were too confused to notice the flight of a sloppily dressed figure with a scarf-wrapped face. Let Cass—and everyone else in that building—think Cassandra McGuire had perished in the fire.

  That way, Sadie Michelson could live to fight Baron Westerfield another day.

  Chapter 3

  Six Weeks Later

  Rocking W Ranch

  Burnett County, Texas

  "Good God. Is that gun loaded?"

  "Who wants to know?" Cass growled, but the question was rhetorical. About a minute before he'd heard a mincing stride crunch gravel on the drive, a morning breeze had blown the scent of licorice hair tonic through the open doors of the carriage house.

  "You know very well it's Pendleton!" snapped Baron's secretary.

  Cass grimaced. Pendleton Prouse was the last man he wanted to deal with while sober.

  After the brothel debacle, Cass had hired out his guns to Baron and started living in the Rocking W's bunkhouse with Collie and a passel of cowboys. Needless to say, this move had reignited his feud with Pendleton—or rather, Pendleton's feud with him.

  A fussy little man, who nursed lifelong grudges, Pendleton preferred bowties to bolos and spats to spurs. He rarely ventured into the sun, as his milky complexion could attest, and he shunned any activity more rigorous than climbing a ladder to reach the top shelf in the library. Perhaps because he huddled over Baron's ledgers from sunrise to sunset, or perhaps because Baron paid him better than all his cowpokes combined, Pendleton thought himself exceedingly important.

  "I demand an explanation, Mr. Cassidy!"

  "All right." Cass didn't bother to turn. He was too busy focusing on his task. "I'm juggling."

  "I can see that!"

  "Then why'd you ask?"

  Wisecracks. Hair-raising risks. Death-defying feats. These were Cass's salvation. Without them, he would have lost his mind—and not just because life as a regulator, with no bushwhackers to ventilate, was insanely boring. During the quieter moments on Baron's ranch, when Cass was watching the cattle graze or listening to a harmonica croon, memories of the brothel fire would inevitably creep in.

  To distract himself from his latest bout of guilt, he'd started juggling an apple, a tequila bottle, and a .45. But he knew this reckless entertainment wouldn't spare him for long. He couldn't forget how he'd failed Sadie when she'd desperately needed someone to brave the inferno and carry her to safety. Self-loathing was like a burning blade, twisting in his gut.

  Baron, Randie, and Collie had all assured him that running inside the Satin Siren would have been a suicide mission. But how was he supposed to live with himself? He'd let Tito knock him on his ass. He'd let Sadie die.

  For days, Cass had camped out in the brothel's ruins. He'd worked as a volunteer beside the investigators, frantically combing the wreckage for some trace of Sadie's corpse, sweating out his terror that he might actually find it. After a week of fruitless searching, the Fire Marshal had pronounced Sadie missing and presumed
dead. At that point, Cass had seriously considered killing someone. But who?

  Dietrich?

  Tito?

  The Fire Marshal?

  Who was responsible for Sadie's death?

  "Mister Cassidy!"

  Cass struggled with his latent rage. He kept tossing the .45 into the air.

  "Yeah, Mr. Prouse?"

  Pendleton made one of his fussy, clucking noises. "That is quite enough of your hooliganism."

  "Naw." Cass pasted on a smile. Even Pendleton didn't deserve to tangle with the demon lurking inside him today. "I'm just getting started."

  Collie snickered somewhere near the tack room. Cass could hear the boy buckling a harness onto Mrs. Westerfield's mare so the lady could drive to her Suffragette meeting. Pendleton was scheduled to accompany her, which was fitting, since tea-sipping would be part of the program. In the eight years that Cass had known Baron's secretary and sparred with him over inconsequential improprieties, like eating cheese slices from a knife, Cass had never seen Pendleton drink anything harder than jamoka.

  "Save your sass for the good citizens of the jury," Pendleton blustered. "Assuming you don't shoot your brains out before Baron can get you exonerated for killing that Ku Klux Klansman."

  "You been listening at doors again, Pendleton?"

  "How dare you!"

  "Now don't get all red and blotchy and bloat up like a puffer fish," Cass drawled. "Everyone knows you peek through keyholes."

  "I most certainly do not you... you troglodyte!"

  "What's a troglodyte?" Collie called.

  "Beats me," Cass said cheerfully.

  "I'm not surprised." Pendleton sniffed. "If it isn't a whiskey label, you haven't read it. Now holster that gun before you blow off somebody's head!"

  "Quit being such a fuddy-duddy," Collie said. "The gun isn't even loaded. Right, Cass?"

  "Reckon there's only one way to find out."

  With the speed of a striking rattler, Cass snatched the .45 from the air, drilled a bullet through a knothole, spun the gun over his finger and holstered it. By comparison, the apple and bottle dropped like molasses into his hands.