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I was hurrying toward the Sheriff's office, intent on speaking to Daniel, when suddenly Preston stepped onto the sidewalk, blocking my path. "My, my, my...how very low the haughty one has fallen," he said in amusement, his eyes sweeping my figure up and down in an insulting fashion. "If you will excuse me, I have business to attend to." I fixed him with my coldest stare. "And to think I once considered you a suitable candidate to be my wife," he mused, with pretended chagrin. "The only lady in Colorado who was truly worthy of my fervent admiration and the Lodge name..." "You overstep yourself, sir." I met his gaze unflinchingly. "Perhaps a common MURDERER would be more to your liking?" he taunted. "That might well be, Mr. Lodge--if I knew one--as compared to Bostonian bankers." I gave up any attempt at civility. "You have had us all fooled, haven't you, my dear?" he sneered. "Walking around with your nose in the air, masked in a cloak of gentility and good breeding...leading us on a merry chase with that illusion of lily-white purity. And all the while what you were actually looking for was something--shall we say--a little more base? You might ask Myra for pointers in that area. Being his former favorite whore, I'm quite certain that she is extremely well versed in whatever perversions are most pleasing to your new paramour." "Get out of my way," I ordered levelly. "Yet...a woman like you--one who is capable of freezing a man to death with one look if she wants--may well turn into quite the hot little hellcat in bed," he said suggestively, his tongue darting out to quickly wet his lips as his eyes dropped to my bosom. "The prim and proper schoolmarm and our local whore-master... The only place that the two of you could possibly have anything at all in common is underneath the sheets." "You, sir, are a sickening, arrogant TOAD!" I hissed, turning on my heel and heading toward the light in Michaela's clinic. Without bothering with more than a perfunctory knock, I flung the door open, almost colliding with Sully. At the sight of his familiar smile the control that I had managed to exert in order to get the animals fed and myself into work came completely to an end. He opened his arms and wrapped them around me--instinctively understanding that what I needed most at that moment was the gentle comfort of a friend. I sobbed until I could cry no more, and only then did he lift my chin and look into my face. "Guess ya heard about Hank." "He didn't do it, Sully," I whispered brokenly, my throat raw from tears. "Please, believe me. He couldn't have." "Accordin' to Daniel, he did." "Daniel is wrong." "Whoever cut Walker's throat knew how to do it without him makin' a sound. And Hank's more'n a fair hand with a skinner." "So are you." I drew in a shaky breath. "But that doesn't make you a cold-blooded killer." "Lotta folks around here are sayin' what happened is no worse'n what those two deserved. Maybe Hank thought he had good reason." "Regardless of what Walker did or didn't deserve, Hank had nothing to do with it. He wasn't even in town last night." "You sound awful sure 'bout that." His gaze searched mine. "I am." "Hank was with you?" "From around four o'clock until sometime after two this morning," I confessed. "Them times you just said--you know that for a fact?" "The clock struck two when we were on my front porch, saying goodnight, and before he left he took care of Storm and bedded her down... It had to have been close to 2:30 by the time that he even started back toward town." "Tell Daniel that, it might get Hank offa the hook, but it's gonna make trouble for you, when word gets around," he warned quietly. "There is a great deal more at stake here than a job or even my reputation." I squared my shoulders. "People can think whatever they want--and the Council can fire me, if they choose. It honestly doesn't matter." "Let's go talk to Daniel. He oughta be gettin' to work right about now." As predictable as clockwork, the tall blond sheriff was striding down the street from Grace's Cafe to his office at 7:30. We waited while he unlocked the door, then hung his hat on a peg, exposing a scalp laceration that had required several stitches and a large bruise on his forehead. While Sully inquired after his health, my eyes involuntarily went to the floor of an open cell where the strong scent of ammonia gave evidence that someone had attempted to scrub away the dark bloodstains that further marred the battered wood. For a moment my mind held a vivid image of the man who had held Myra at gunpoint lying there, his life rapidly draining out of him. "Caitlyn's got information you need to know." Sully's voice brought my thoughts abruptly back to the reason for my first-ever look at the inside of a jail. "Have a seat, Miss McShane." Daniel waved at one of the two cane-bottomed chairs on the opposite side of his desk. I sat on the edge of the chair, glancing nervously at Sully, who nodded in encouragement. After taking a sip of the bitter coffee that Daniel had poured for the three of us, I drew in a deep breath and exhaled. "You're looking for the wrong man," I said flatly. "Hank Lawson didn't kill anybody." "With all due respect, ma'am, I disagree." "I don't know exactly what happened here--or at what time--but Hank was waiting for me when I got home from school yesterday, and he didn't leave again until roughly 2:30 this morning. If Walker was killed before 3:00--at the earliest--then you can positively rule out Mr. Lawson as one of your suspects." "You can vouch for Hank's whereabouts between 11:00 and midnight last night?" The sheriff leaned forward slightly, his face showing the strain of a long and sleepless night. "The two of us were together for several hours past midnight-- waiting for the rain to stop." "You'd testify to that in a Court of Law?" "Yes, I would," I answered firmly. "I'm findin' yer story real hard to believe, considering the facts." He frowned, tipping his chair back onto two legs and rocking slightly. "If you are telling me that Cole Walker died between 11:00 and 12:00, then 'the facts' are that Hank was miles away from Colorado Springs when the murder happened." I tried to keep a rein on my temper. "Whoever killed your prisoner, it most definitely wasn't him." "The man who knocked me out was something better'n six feet tall and blond. Only caught a glimpse of him outta the corner of my eye, but I'm real sure about that." "Hank is far from being the only man around here who fits that description, including you," I objected, taking another swallow of the foul-tasting brew to wet my dry throat. "What about Mr. Lodge? It was his bank that was robbed." "Walker got his throat slit. Doubt a city slicker like Preston even cuts up his own steak with a knife." "Right after the Walkers were apprehended Mr. Lodge came back into town boasting about how 'exhilarating' it was to revenge yourself on someone 'who had done you a personal injury," I stated flatly. "He told me that Doyle Walker might very well cheat the hangman. You have at least as much reason to consider Mr. Lodge as you do Hank." "Takes more'n luck to slip up behind me and knock me out--kill one man and get another one clean outta here without bein' noticed." Daniel shook his head. "Man spent his whole life in a bank ain't got that kinda gumption or the skills it'd take to do it." "Preston shot and killed Noah McBride," Sully corrected his assumption. "Got his leg caught inna trap while we was out lookin' for him--cut it down to the bone. Ended up bein' half-dead from infection by the time we found McBride--but he was set on bein' the one brought him down, and he did. Thinks he's got somethin' to prove, Preston don't know how or when to quit." "If it'd been a gun, maybe--but a knife don't fit." Daniel shook his head. "I can't see him bein' willing to get in that close. Or dirty his hands." "Why would whoever did this take Doyle Walker with him?" I wondered aloud. "Why not kill them both right here?" "Ma'am, when I find Hank I'm planning on askin' him that very same question." "He won't know the answer to it any more than I do," I responded quietly. "You're barking up the wrong tree." "Where is Lawson?" Daniel studied me closely. "I don't know." "You sure about that?" "I'm quite sure." "I got me a feelin' maybe you do." "Are you calling me a liar, sir?" I lifted my chin as I returned his stare. "You wouldn't be the first woman who lied to protect her man," Daniel declared bluntly. "Who covered up for him." "I have no doubt that's true. Michaela lied to protect Sully. YOU lied and covered up for him, even though it meant violating your oath of office. Perhaps I would have done the same thing in your position--I honestly don't know." I felt myself beginning to lose the struggle to remain calm. "Fortunately, there's no need for me to ever find that out--because it's true, Hank was with me." "Seems like for a man with nothin' to hide, he's makin' himself real scarce." Daniel looked at me over his cup of coffee. "Went over to the Gold Nugget to have a talk with Lawson 'bout an hour after it happened and nobody remembered seein' him in the saloon all night. Checked his room when I went to breakfast, and his bed still hadn't been slept in." "Not tryin' to tell you your business--but Cait's got too much to lose, not to be tellin' the truth," Sully interjected quietly. "An' what you just said pretty well backs her up." "Not necessarily." The legs of Daniel's chair slammed back down to the floor as he leaned toward me. "Hank fits the description. He had reason. And it wouldn't be the first time he's decided to take justice into his own hands. Happens on a regular basis with him. Got a gut-feeling he's guilty." "Then yer still plannin' on chargin' him with murder?" Sully met the Sheriff's gaze. "Only alibi he's got is a lady who admits to havin' feelings for him." Daniel stood in dismissal. "Nothin' she's had to say was enough to change my mind." "And nothing will," I flared, getting to my feet and glaring up at this man who towered over me. "Will it, Sheriff Simon? Hank was right. Nothing that anybody says will convince you that he's not guilty. Even if Jesus Christ Himself walked in here and swore to it on the Bible, you would still refuse to believe Him, wouldn't you? You came waltzing in here with your holier-than-thou attitude, throwing money around and acting like this town's savior, and somehow you managed to convince people that you deserved to be sheriff instead of Hank. You convinced them that he wasn't fit for the job, even though he was the one who had been risking his life all along, acting as Matthew's deputy. Hank wasn't moral enough to be a lawman, but it wasn't Hank who was lying and sneaking around, breaking the law, and hungering for his best friend's wife. Perhaps you can hide it from Sully, but I've seen the way that you look at Michaela Quinn, and you can't hide it from me. You act so damned pious--but deep down inside you are as corrupt as any prisoner who has ever been housed in this jail. The day can't come soon enough for me when you ride out of Colorado Springs the same way that you rode in!" "Cait--let's go." Sully firmly wrapped his arm around my waist and half-drug me from the sheriff's office. "What did you do that for?" I spluttered, when he released me on the sidewalk in front of the clinic. "I was just getting started!" "That's what I was afraid of." "I'm not lying, Sully." Tears flooded my vision. "I know," he reassured me gently. "But it won't help matters any for you to be goin' tooth and nail at Daniel." "How many times had Hank been arrested before he ran against Mr. Simon for sheriff? How many times has it happened since? Simon's had it in for Hank from the minute that he started strutting around town with that stupid five-cent badge pinned to his chest!" "Daniel's convinced that Hank's the one who hit him from behind last night. That don't mean we can't change his mind." "What it means is that he will waste all of his time hunting Hank down instead of looking for the person who actually killed Cole Walker," I opined angrily. "What it means is that he doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of finding out the truth--not that he wants to! If it had been any other man in town but Hank, Daniel would have taken my word that I could vouch for him. Anybody. But when it comes to Hank, he's not in the least interested in justice. He feels threatened by Hank, so he wants him gone. Permanently. There is not a male around here who Sheriff Simon doesn't compete with on some level, including you, and he has no intention of coming in second best. No matter what it takes to do it, he's out to win." "Could tell you hadn't taken much to Daniel, even before you told Michaela to quit trying to fix the two of you up," he admitted. "That is putting it too mildly." I glared across the street at the closed door of the sheriff's office. "Right now I would like to shove that big old pea-brained ox facedown into the nastiest pile of fresh horse manure that I could find--then stand on his head and let him smother in it! The nerve of him, calling me a liar!" "He never came out and said the word." "And you're the last one who ought to be taking up for him, too," I firmly rebuked Sully. "Every word that I said in there was gospel truth. Maybe you're too grateful to Daniel for not turning you in to see it, but that man fully intends to worm his way into Michaela's heart. If he was half as good as he pretends to be, or any kind of friend to you at all, he would be long gone. The truth is that as soon as he heard you were 'dead', he came high-tailing it back to Colorado Springs, thinking to move in on your 'widow.' Mike did fine on her own for years. Why would she need him--someone who she barely knew and was uncomfortable with-- coming here to comfort and advise her? Matthew's grown, if she needed a man to lean on! It's pretty clear to me that the only reason that slimy bastard in there came sniffing around was to try and crawl underneath Michaela's skirt!" "Daniel's like family. I go back further with him than with anybody else I know," he reminded me. "I'm not worried about any feelings he has for Michaela." "Maybe you ought to be." I narrowed my gaze and looked him in the eyes. "People change. I don't know what he used to be like--but in my opinion he's a dirty, lowdown rattlesnake. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him." "A few weeks ago you were claiming to feel the same way about Hank." "That was different." I fought back another wave of tears. "I hated having lost my heart to Hank Lawson, when it seemed that nothing could possibly ever come of it. The last thing that I wanted or needed was to be hopelessly in love with a stubborn, aggravating jackass! But I loved him anyway--and after we finally got together I figured out that every single man alive is probably like that--including you and Daddy--until the right woman comes along and you decide that you want her more than you want to keep on acting like six kinds of fool!" "I'd always heard Southern girls are raised not to speak their mind." There was the ghost of a grin at the corners of Sully's mouth. "You must be makin' up now for lost time." Opening the clinic door he led me inside, where Mike was sitting at her desk writing in a patient's chart. She looked up, seeing my red eyes and flushed face, and slowly closed the folder before getting to her feet. "I'm sorry. I know how much this hurts." "Hank is innocent." "I certainly hope so," she soothed. "You might as well hear this now as later. He was with me when that murder took place. There is absolutely no possibility of him being guilty of what Daniel says that he did." "You were with Hank last night?" She looked distressed. "Thank God that I was, considering that our 'honorable' sheriff is bound and determined to charge him with murder," I said grimly. "But after our talk I thought that..." "Mike, if I learned nothing else from living through four years of pure hell, I learned that life is uncertain." I met her gaze. "You never know when someone that you love will be taken from you with no warning... and nothing is worth the loss of that time together that you could have had. When it's gone, it can never be replaced. I'm not willing to give Hank up. Not for this job, nor for any other job. Not for any reason. The feelings that I have for him are every bit as deep and as strong as yours are for Sully." "You really love him that much?" Her own eyes brimmed over with tears." More than I can ever begin to tell you," I admitted softly. "I'm going to marry Hank. He's asked, and I've said yes." "It's hard for me to imagine--you--with him." "Someday--hopefully--it won't be." "You know where he is?" Sully studied my face. "I told Daniel the truth. I don't know. A few hours ago I offered to go with Hank anywhere that he wanted to go--to leave everything that I own behind and never look back. I was willing to go without even saying goodbye to the two of you. But he wouldn't let me. Not with Daniel getting ready to put out Wanted posters." "Caitlyn, you gotta promise that if Hank weakens and comes back for you, you won't go," Sully requested urgently. "There'll be lawmen on the lookout for him soon--an' more'n a few bounty hunters, hopin' to claim a reward. If you're with him, Hank'll have his mind on ways to make things easier for you. That's when a man's likely to make a mistake that can get him killed--an' you, too." "If anything happens to Hank, Daniel Simon is as good as dead... because as God is my witness, if it's the last thing that I ever do, I'll kill him for it," I vowed flatly. "Caitlyn!" Mike recoiled in horror. "We all have a place where we'll cross that line," I charged. "Even you." "This is your anger talking." Michaela shook her head. "You could never deliberately take the life of another human being, and neither could I." "If it came down to a choice between Katie and someone else, you would kill if you had to in order to protect your child. Any mother would. It's human nature. You wouldn't hesitate for one second." "Hank is not a child." "So what you're saying is that if someone was trying to kill Sully, you wouldn't intervene? That even if you had a gun in your hand, you would simply stand there and let it happen?" "Just simmer down." Sully frowned. "Stead of you two fussin' over what you'd do 'bout things hopefully are never gonna happen, we need to be figurin' out how to convince Daniel he's lookin' for the wrong man." "How can you convince a man whose mind is closed to anything other than whatever 'evidence' might support his own version of the truth?" I asked dully. "Hank warned me that Daniel wouldn't believe me, but I thought that even if it wasn't what he wanted to hear, all I would have to do was go to the sheriff, admit that the two of us had been together into the wee hours of morning, and then this whole farce would be over." "Now we know it ain't gonna be that easy." Sully leaned back against the wall. "What's next?" "Perhaps I should have a talk with Daniel?" Mike offered. "When Hank is in good health the fact that both Walkers outweigh him by 40 to 60 pounds might be insignificant, since Hank is all muscle and they both run to fat, but this soon after surgery he's still weak and in pain. It's something that he's going to be reminded of constantly, each time that he moves. No matter what the provocation might be, it's most unlikely that Hank would initiate any type of physical altercation until he heals a bit more. At the moment the idea of taking on three men would probably seem ludicrous to him, if it even crossed his mind." "Can't hurt to try," Sully acknowledged. "But Daniel's pretty set on Hank bein' the one he saw. I'll take a look around--see if there's anything I can turn up might make a difference." "I'm late." I glanced at the watch pinned to my breast. "I have to get over to the school." "Do you think that you're up to it?" Michaela inquired fretfully. "No." I sighed. "But it's not going to be any better, sitting around wondering where Hank is and what he's doing...whether or not he's safe. Who knows how long that this could go on?" "You're well aware that I don't approve--that I think you deserve someone much better than Hank--but that doesn't mean that I won't stand beside you through this." Mike hugged me. I nodded, unable to answer without crying, and picked up my things from her desk. "I'll probably come back by later." "How about you let me walk you to class?" Sully suggested. "I would like that." I remembered Preston's attitude when we had met on the street. As we were walking up the hill Sully stopped abruptly, laying one hand on my arm. "What you said in the clinic--I know you meant every word of it. I know, 'cause I got the same kinda thing inside o' me. Just so you understand, as much as you mean to Michaela and me--I owe Daniel." "Just so you understand, I'm not looking for your blessings nor anyone else's. Right now Hank is alone out there somewhere, about to become a target for anyone who wants to take a shot at him, when he had absolutely nothing to do with this murder. If he dies, Daniel will have the blood of an innocent man on his hands--and I will gladly spend Eternity in Hell to make him pay for it." |
