McCrory's Lady (47 page)

      
Colin swore beneath his breath. “What the hell, I'm going to be branded a criminal anyway when Barker gets through. I might as well pay him back in kind.”

      
Ed Phibbs' eyes gleamed with a sudden smug devilment. “Capital! I knew I could count on you!”

      
“I can hardly let a lone female like you go off half cocked—or worse yet, you might manage to cock that damnable antique,” he replied testily.

      
“Win Barker usually works until ten or eleven in his upstairs office. We can hide in the vacant store across the street and watch for him to leave, then slip to the back door.”

      
“He always posts a guard.”

      
Ed brandished the crowbar in one bony fist. “This is for more than prying open doors. I’ll just cosh him lightly.”

      
Colin rolled his eyes heavenward. “You'll do nothing of the sort, woman! I'll handle the guard.” He paused suspiciously. “I thought you said you could pick locks?”

      
“Well, sometimes if the skeleton key won't jiggle just so, using less finesse and more muscle is required,” she confessed.

      
He scowled. “You planned this whole thing—getting me to go along with your crazy scheme.”

      
“Come, Colin. You know there is no other way. Now, let us press on. It's after nine already...”

* * * *

      
By the time Wolf and Eden reached the Palace Hotel, they were covered with dust and their horses were lathered and exhausted. “I'll take the horses to the stable and see they're rubbed down. You rouse your father and Maggie and give them Lamp's books,” Wolf instructed, not liking her pallor as he handed her the ledger from his saddlebag. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

      
She was worried about his haggard appearance, as well. He had wrapped a bandana around the worst cut on his left arm and was smeared with so much blood she was still uncertain how much of it was Lazlo's and how much his own. “Be careful, Wolf.” She took the ledger from him and tiptoed up to brush a kiss on his lips.

      
He waited until she was safely inside, then remounted and headed to Leatherwood's livery. There was certainly no sense in letting anyone at Jeb Settler's stables know he was back in Tucson. Settler would run headlong to Barker with the news.

      
Eden talked with the night clerk, who was really one of the Mexican porters Hiram Jenkins hired to fill in when he went to bed early. “I'm Mr. McCrory's daughter and I've come to Tucson with an emergency message for my father. Would you please show me to his suite? My father and stepmother won't mind being awakened, I assure you.”

      
The youth's eyes grew round with consternation. He himself had taken the beautiful senora's luggage to the stage depot and watched her leave with the gambler for Yuma.
Don
Colin had not returned to the hotel except to send for a change of clothes earlier that night. “I will show you to their rooms,
Señorita,
” he said nervously, deciding that if the
rico's
daughter wanted an explanation, she could wake up Hiram Jenkins to get it.

      
When no amount of knocking on the outer door produced an answer, Eden became concerned. “Surely Maggie is here even if Father has gone out,” she said worriedly.

      
The clerk produced his master key from the large ring at his belt. “I will unlock the door,
Señorita
McCrory. Perhaps, they have left you a message, eh?”

      
When she entered the parlor, Eden saw two heavy white envelopes propped up on the desk, with her name on one and Colin's on the other. A tremor of dread washed over her as she gave the young man a coin and sent him on his way. She set down Lamp's ledger and stared at the envelopes.

      
Wolf will be along soon. He'll know what to do.
Reluctantly she picked up the envelope addressed to her and opened it with shaking hands, then sat down on the settee to read:

My dearest Eden,

      
I would not have the courage to write this if your future was not secure with Wolf, and if your father was not better off without me—

      
Eden dropped the letter onto her lap as dread squeezed her heart. Maggie had left them! She scrubbed her fists into her eyes, fighting tears, then continued reading the long, painfully composed letter of farewell from the woman she had come to love as her own mother.

      
When Wolf knocked, Eden ran and opened the door with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Eden, darling, what is it?” He enfolded her in his arms as his eyes swept the empty room. “Where are your father and Maggie?”

      
“I don't know where Father is, but Maggie's gone.” She swallowed her tears and haltingly explained Maggie's painful decision to leave Colin. “She loves him so much that she's willing to give him up to keep her past from harming his reputation. Oh, Wolf, we have to find him! He has to go after her and bring her back. See—here's the letter she left for him. He hasn't returned to read it yet.”

      
Wolf loosened her fingers from his shirt lapels and held her hands, cold and balled into tight fists, between his large warm ones. “I'll find Colin. If he's being blackmailed by Barker, he might be anywhere.”

      
“I'll go, too. We can search—”

      
“No,” he interrupted firmly. “He's probably in a bar somewhere, drowning his troubles after he and Maggie had a fight.” In fact, there were far more sinister possibilities, but Wolf had no intention of frightening Eden by mentioning them. “You're exhausted. You spent days helping the doc at the reservation, then riding with me hell-bent to Prescott and now here. Not to mention a couple of brushes with death in the process—you need to rest.”

      
When she tried to protest, he silenced her by placing his fingertips gently over her lips. “No. I don't want to worry about you being attacked by Barker's men while I'm looking for Colin. Stay here, Eden.” His eyes riveted her, willing her to acquiesce. “You're too tired to think straight.”

      
“And you're bleeding! You've been through even more than I have. That awful fight with Lazlo.” She shuddered and threw her arms around him.

      
Wolf reached down and swept her into his arms, then carried her into the bedroom. He laid her gently on the large bed and sat by her side after pulling a coverlet over her. “I know you're too upset to sleep, but just rest. If anything happened to you, I don't know what I'd do.”

      
She was tired, oh so very bone weary. The fatigue made her eyelids heavy. Her eyes burned and every muscle in her body throbbed like a toothache. “Bring Father back here, Wolf. He has to read Maggie's letter. Surely, it'll drive some sense into him. He can't let her go!”

      
“When a good woman loves a man, he's ten times a fool if he lets her go,” Wolf said, brushing a soft lock of pale hair from her cheek. He bent down and kissed her tenderly. “We'll get everything straightened out.”

      
He stood up and slipped from the room as Eden fought sleep, too drained to protest further. The ledger lay on the desk where Eden had placed it. He took the wrapped bundle and slid it inside a drawer. Win Barker and his cohorts would have to wait. There was a more important matter to be attended to first. Cursing Colin McCrory for his mule-headed Scots pride, Wolf set out in search of him.

* * * *

      
Win Barker sat behind his desk, staring at the telegram. Lazlo was dead and that breed gunman was on his way to Tucson to give McCrory Lamp's incriminating records. What should he do? One hour earlier, another wire had arrived all the way from Washington. His agent back East had just learned that a complete investigation was being instituted in the Bureau of Indian Affairs by Secretary of the Interior Schurz. That idiot Potkin must have inadvertently given out some damning information about conditions on White Mountain Reservation. Even if Barker blasted McCrory out of the water by revealing his past as a scalper, it would not save the ring. Their days of lucrative contracts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Army were numbered.

      
As if that were not enough, he had made a deadly enemy in Colin McCrory, especially when the Scot learned of their bungled attempt to kill his daughter. “McCrory will come gunning for me in revenge—or to keep me from telling about his past. And he'll have that breed with him!”

      
Barker cursed furiously, mopping the sour sweat from his brow onto a grimy handkerchief. Damn that bastard from Prescott, sitting all safe and secure. Win Barker took all the chances and dealt with the riffraff and cutthroat killers while the politician manipulated things from behind the scenes. “No one even knows who he is!”

      
Trembling with fear and fury, he stood up, looking wildly around the messy office. Ledgers and papers lay scattered everywhere. Maybe, the best thing would be to pack up all the cash he had on hand and hightail it for Mexico—or New Orleans. He had a good amount of money in the wall safe and lots more in the bank. He could arrange to have it transferred from Tucson to wherever he decided it was safest to resettle.

      
But what of the records—the accounts, bills of sale for reservation cattle, requisitions for food and blankets? Frantically, he started to stack the books and papers into piles. “I'll burn them before I go. That's what.

      
Maybe for a little while everyone will think I died in the fire,” he muttered to himself as he built a pyramid of documents on his desk.

      
“What a superb idea, Win. But why disappoint Colin McCrory by only pretending to die? Why not give him—and all the other Apache-loving fools in Washington—a dead ringleader?”

      
As the figure materialized from the shadows in the hallway, Win Barker dropped a fistful of papers and dived for his desk drawer where he kept his Navy Colt.

Chapter Twenty-One

      
Outside in the alley behind the huge mercantile, Colin and Ed watched a shadowy figure open the back door with a key and slip furtively inside. They waited a few minutes, then followed silently. Just inside the door, Colin nearly tripped over the body of Barker's guard. He knelt, using the dim light streaming in from the alley to check the fallen man. “He's dead,” he whispered. “His skull's been caved in.”

      
Ed stepped gingerly over the corpse and followed Colin into the dark interior. The crowded warehouse was littered with boxes and crates of every size and description. The killer had lit a kerosene lamp and made his way through the labyrinth. Ed stumbled on a keg before Colin could grab her.

      
“Ouch,” she hissed. “I'd better light my candle. We saw his lamp move upstairs.”

      
“All right. Light it.” Colin had his gun drawn and ready. “Something about this whole situation is definitely not right. Whoever that was, he might just be your unknown man from the legislature.”

      
“What would he be doing in Tucson now?” Ed speculated, shielding the candle's flickering glow. They made their way toward the low rumble of voices emanating from upstairs. Sounds of a struggle quickly ensued. The solid thud of a body hitting the floor was followed by the rustling of papers and the sounds of something splashing.

      
“What do you suppose is going on?” Ed asked.

      
Colin squeezed her arm to silence her. “Wait here,” he commanded, reaching for the candle.

      
Ed jerked her hand back, causing the hot wax to splash across her fingers. She let the candle fall with a muffled gasp of pain and they were cast in sudden darkness. “I'm coming with you,” she whispered.

      
Knowing it was useless to try to stop her, Colin shoved her behind him and began to ascend the creaking stairs. The sounds coming from the office had stopped completely now. Fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled in warning as Colin reached the top stair. Ed almost collided with him when he paused. He cursed silently, then took a cautious step toward the lighted office.

      
Barker was sitting in his big chair, apparently looking out the front window. The lamplight reflected the pink sheen of his sweaty scalp between his thinning gray hair. His body was turned in profile, slumped at an awkward angle. Was he dead? Where was the intruder? Colin did not step into the room. Warning bells went off in his mind as the pungent smell of kerosene wafted out into the hall. Barker made a low groan and stirred in the chair, but before Colin could decide whether to approach the door or not, the sound of a shotgun being cocked at his right side made him freeze.

      
“That will be quite far enough. I thought I heard someone downstairs, and since I knew the guard was dead, I hoped the intruder might be you. Drop the gun, McCrory. This handsome little piece will take out your unlikely companion right along with you.” He had a sawed-off Greener .10 gauge shotgun pointed at them.

      
Colin could scarcely believe his ears. “So at last we learn who Barker's cohort in the legislature is.” He dropped his gun as the man in the darkness motioned him and Ed into Barker's office.

      
Edward Stanley materialized from the shadows. The cold smile on his smooth face did not extend to his dark, calculating eyes. Hard eyes. “It would seem there will be two more fatalities in the fire. Such a tragedy.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “This will tie up all the loose ends. I heard you had been snooping around the capital asking questions, Miss Phibbs. Now you turn up here with McCrory.”