Alana (24 page)

He saw a long blade flash in the man’s hand as he slowly went toward Rafe’s bedroom doorway. The small man stopped at the doorway, listening to the sounds within the bedroom. Then he started into the room.

Chaco bent quickly. When he stood again, the knife strapped to his calf was in his hand. Silently, as if stalking an animal, Chaco opened the door and went into Rafe’s suite.

It was not Alana, Chaco’s intuition told him, but Rafe that this man was after.

Rafe
stood near the bed, upon which lay the suit for his meeting later today. Although his mind raced with thoughts of Alana, he understood that he had to banish them and concentrate on today’s business meeting with the consortium, scheduled for noon at the Wellington Club. Allison preferred to conduct almost all his business from there.

Rafe had to be extremely careful. The least slip with the members of the consortium could spell his doom. Every word and thought controlled until they accepted him and welcomed him into their company. Then he could learn all the details of their business schemes before exposing and destroying them.

Shaking his head, Rafe forced himself to move. After dressing and having a light breakfast, he and Alana were planning to look over Alana’s new residence. Then Rafe would go to the meeting with Allison.

As he took off his shirt, a floorboard creaked behind him. The hairs on the back of his neck rose; he spun around quickly.

Before he could fully react, a small man charged at him, a knife in his right hand. Rafe’s mind turned to ice even as he started to bring his arm up to deflect the blow. With a terrible clarity, he knew he was too late.

The man’s arm was high, the blade ready to strike. Just before the blade reached him, Chaco sped into the room and lunged at the smaller man. An instant before the blade met Rafe’s skin, Chaco hit the man from the side. Knocked off balance, the attacker reeled past Rafe; the flashing knife sliced the empty air inches from his shoulder.

Reacting instinctively, Rafe spun on the attacker, his hand locking onto the man’s right wrist, twisting it painfully in an effort to force him to drop the blade.

A half second later, Chaco’s knife was at the man’s throat. The attacker, realizing he had been defeated, released his knife.

With his teeth clenched together, Rafe glared into the ferret-like face of his would-be assassin. Chaco stood at the man’s side, his face expressionless as always, his knife pricking the first layer of skin on the attacker’s neck.

Hearing a startled gasp from the doorway, Rafe turned to see Alana staring wide-eyed at him, her hand pressed to the base of her throat. “What–”

Rafe shook his head once. “I don’t know–yet!” Turning back to his attacker, he stared at the man for several seconds. A single muscle in his cheek ticked with the rage that was growing stronger with every second that passed.

“Why?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

The man shook his head stubbornly.

Rafe glanced at Chaco.

Chaco smiled. He pushed the knife tip a fraction deeper into the man’s neck. A trickle of blood seeped from the broken skin. As it ran into his shirt, the attacker’s small eyes shifted nervously.

“Why?” repeating the question in the same husky whisper, Rafe controlled his anger while he held the killer’s eyes.

“I was paid to kill you,” he admitted.

“Why?” Rafe repeated one more time.

Chaco tensed visibly, and the man looked alarmed.

“I don’t know why. My job was to kill you,” the man stated boldly.

Rafe glanced at Alana. Her face was ghostly white; her hand still rested at the base of her throat. He saw, too, the way her breasts rose and fell in the aftermath of fright.

A sheet of ice descended within his mind. “Who paid you to kill me?”

“A man.” Even as the attacker spoke, Chaco pressed the point into his neck again. “That’s all I know!” the attacker shouted.

“No, that’s all you’re saying, not all you know,” Rafe stated matter-of-factly. “I want to know who paid you.”

Even with Chaco’s knife tasting, the man’s blood, he managed to shake his head, “Kill me.”

Rafe studied the man’s face and sensed that the man was not being brave; rather, he was frightened. Obviously, he preferred death to facing whoever had sent him. “You don’t think we’ll kill you, do you?”

The man’s small eyes, still nervous, stared boldly at him. Although he didn’t speak, Rafe read the reply on his face.

Rafe’s features expressed only sorrow at the man’s words. “You’re leaving me no choice. After all,” he said in a falsely sympathetic tone, “for all I know, you came here to murder me for some reason of your own. Without knowing someone really did hire you, how can I be sure you won’t try to kill me again?”

“Let me go,” the man offered, “and I won’t be back.”

Rafe knew he was telling the truth by the fear on his face. Rafe also started to read something else in the assassin’s eyes–the knowledge that he was not the type of man just to kill someone. But to learn who’d hired the man to kill him, Rafe would have to make the man more afraid of him than of anyone else. “Who paid you to kill me?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“I–I can’t–” The man seemed to gain a modicum of control over his fear. He stood straighter and looked into Rafe’s eyes. “You won’t kill me,” he stated confidently.

Rafe’s full smile did not reach his suddenly rock-hard eyes. “Chaco, take him into the back hallway. Kill him!”

Without a backward glance at the man, Rafe walked to Alana, took her elbow firmly, and started them out of the room. He gave a quick shake of his head at Alana’s forming protest. Before they had taken two steps, the man’s frantic cry reached him. “Wait!”

Rafe’s hand tightened on Alana’s arm, but he continued to walk, ignoring the man’s plea.

“Benjamin Corsell,” the ferret-like assassin shouted in a high-pitched voice.

Spinning, Rafe riveted the man with an unyielding stare. “I don’t know anyone named Benjamin Corsell. Chaco,” he commanded. “Take him–”

“Wait! I–I’m not supposed to know this,” the man said rapidly, his eyes shifting between Chaco’s knife and Rafe’s face. “Corsell hired me to kill you. He did! But Corsell is–he’s James Allison’s bodyguard.”

With Rafe’s loud exhale, Chaco’s arm relaxed, but his knife stayed near the man’s neck.

Rafe came back into the bedroom and looked quickly around for something to use to tie up the man. Thick drapery cords held the drapes on the large window back, and Rafe knew they would serve his purpose well. After pulling them free, he returned to his attacker and bound the man’s wrists. As he worked, his rage continued to grow. He thought of his sister and of what Allison and the consortium had done to her. He pictured in his mind the ruined timbers of his once-magnificent home. The anger that had been so much a part of his life in the last years screamed to be set free.

Only when he had finished tying the man’s wrists and had found some slight control over himself did he look at Alana. “Today,” he said in a deadly calm voice, “James Allison will pay for all he’s done to me.”

Alana stared at Rafe and saw a stranger in the place of the man she loved. His eyes blazed with rage, and his muscles tightly knotted. In that instant, she knew she had to stop him. “What are you going to do?”

Rafe laughed; his lips formed a taut, pale line. “First I’m going to get dressed,” he told her logically, “and then I’m going to pay Allison a visit.”

“Rafe–” she whispered, but he had already turned to Chaco. “Take him into the sitting room. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” As he dressed, Alana went to the bed and sat on its edge. She watched every movement he made, but when he went to the large dresser and picked up the pistol, checked its load, and slipped the pistol into his waistband, Alana’s heart almost stopped. Her skin turned cold and damp with fear. When he put on his jacket and turned to her, she rose and went to him, her mind working frantically.

He held her securely, and his eyes softened momentarily, when they caressed her face. “It’s almost over.”

“I’m frightened, Rafe,” Alana whispered, voicing her fear aloud. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to face James Allison, but not as Richard Sutcliff.”

“Rafe,” she began, pulling free from his arms, “don’t do it this way. Go to the–”

“Law?” Rafe asked, finishing her words for her. His eyes hardened again. “Oh, I plan to do just that, Alana, but not until I’m finished with him myself. I need to look him in the eye and let him see his future in mine.”

“Is that why you’re bringing a gun with you?” she challenged.

Rafe didn’t answer and, by the set of his face, she knew he would not. “How do you know where he is? He could be anywhere. Rafe, wait until you can choose the time and place,” she argued, trying to use logic to persuade him.

“I know exactly where he is,” Rafe stated, his voice still calm.

Too calm, Alana realized. The full impact of his deadly rage struck her ominously, sending chills along her spine as she took account of this side of the man she loved. She knew that his anger was as much a part of him as was his strength and his ability to love, yet this insight did little to ease her fear.

When Rafe went into the sitting room, Alana was at his side. Chaco stood next to the paid killer, his knife still in his hand. Grabbing the man by his shirt, Rafe started them both toward the door.

“Rafe, please,” Alana cried in vain.

Stopping, Rafe looked at Alana and saw the fear and love that covered her beautiful features. His need for vengeance would not let him bend to her words. “I’ve spent a year and a half working for this. I won’t stop now, Alana; it must be done.”

Alana straightened her shoulders and met his blazing eyes with her own determined ones. “Then I’m going with you, Rafael Montgomery!” she stated, remembering all the months that he had been away from her.

Rafe held fast. “To the Wellington Club? It’s not possible, Alana,” he said, pausing for a moment as he looked at her, “I’ve already lost Elizabeth to this madman. I will not lose you!

Lock the doors when I’ve gone. Chaco, stay alert.” He turned back to his prisoner and started again.

“No!” Alana’s single word had the effect of a gunshot. Rafe froze at the hardness the word carried to him. Turning slowly, he looked into the diamond-like depths of her eyes.

Alana’s heart beat furiously, but she refused to back down. “I will not let you go there alone! If you won’t take me, then you’ll damned well take Chaco!”

Rafe held Alana’s fiery glare. Suddenly he sensed how important Alana’s words were for her and for them. Their love pulsed in the air between them, reminding him of all they had already gone through. The rage that had gripped him so mercilessly released its control over him, and he began to think rationally for the first time since the attacker had come at him. Slowly the knotted tendons in his neck relaxed. “All right.”

“What is the Wellington Club?” Alana asked, her thoughts still racing like lightning, her fear of losing Rafe once again strengthening her resolve.

“Allison’s private club. He conducts most of his business there.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Alana pointed one slim finger at the assassin.

Rafe glanced at him, taking in the man’s rough, baggy pants and shirt. “I guess we’ll turn him over to the authorities.”

“No!” the man shouted frantically. Rafe saw a new kind of fear settle on his features.

“You belong in jail,” Rafe told him.

“No,” the man pleaded, “you don’t understand. They–-they control the jails and the police. I’ll be dead by tonight.”

As Rafe digested this new information, another thought rose in his mind–a plan that would be even better than his original.

“What’s your name?”

“Murphy. Mike Murphy.”

“Do you have family?”

Murphy’s face hardened instantly. He didn’t speak.

Tension sprang into the air as the two men stared at each other. “I can help you, Murphy, if you help me,” Rafe said, his voice friendlier, believable.

“I got to think of my family. Do you think I’d be doing this if I didn’t have a family to feed? These are poor times, mister. Money’s scarce for them that ain’t got any.”

“If you help me,” Rafe said, “I have a job for you.”

“If I help you, they’ll kill me. What good will that be to my family?”

“Allison won’t know where you’ll be. I promise you that.”

“Allison will know. Them people he owns will know.”

“Sign a confession, and I’ll have you on the first ship for California. You and your family. You’ll work for me, and Allison will never find you.”

Murphy’s face showed both fear and hope. But Rafe saw the underlying distrust still on the man’s features.

“No more threats, Murphy. Do as I ask, and I’ll make sure you and your family are safe. Don’t make me turn you over to the authorities.”

“All I have to do is sign a confession?” he asked doubtfully.

“And testify at Allison’s trial. But I’ll make sure you’re protected.”

“What kinda job?”

“My partner will work that out. It’ll be at our mining company. You’ll make good money.”

Murphy was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. “But if you go to Allison today, he’ll know I talked.”

“That’s my problem, not yours,” Rafe told him. “After you sign those papers, we’ll get your family and put you up in a hotel where Allison will never think to look for you. You’ll have money and passage west. Agreed?”

Murphy stared at Rafe and, after he read the truth in Rafe’s eyes, he spoke. “Agreed.”