The Last Renegade (36 page)

He straightened, held out the sponge as though he were offering a gift, and smiled sheepishly. “Please?”

“Pathetic.” Raine dropped a couple of towels on the floor beside the tub and knelt. She took the sponge, wrung it out over his back, and then applied it with some vigor between his shoulder blades. “You need a shave.”

Kellen rubbed the back of one hand against his jaw. “So I do.”

Raine did not hear any enthusiasm for it. Because she considered that ultimately it was in her interest to have him clean shaven, she made the offer to do it for him. His response was a skeptical, sidelong glance. “I used to shave Adam,” she told him. “Sometimes he was feeling too poorly to do much for himself. He never complained, and I never cut him. He said I was at least as good as Mr. Stillwell and an improvement over Dave Rogers.”

“I suppose if I can’t trust you with a razor in your hand, I shouldn’t be sleeping in your bed.”

Raine’s laughter was low and husky and ever so slightly wicked. “I had not considered that, but it’s an excellent point. A pillow over your face would work as well.”

“Precisely.”

“Why
are
you sleeping in my bed?”

“I like it there.”

“Convenience?”

He shook his head. “Comfortable.”

“You mean the bed.”

“No, actually I mean you.”

Raine stopped making circles on his back. Her fingers tightened on the sponge and rivulets of water raced down his spine. “I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly comfortable person to be around.”

“Well, you probably shouldn’t rush to embrace another opinion. I was only talking about how comfortable you are to be with when you’re sleeping.”

She slapped him on the back of his head with the sponge.

“See?” he said, unperturbed. “You have a thorny kind of charm when you’re awake.”

Raine soaked the sponge and thwacked him with it again. “Finish your back,” she said, starting to rise. “I’m getting the razor.”

Kellen lay in bed on his side with Raine curled to fit the sharper angles of his frame. She
was
comfortable. Awake, she was indeed challenging, and at some point he discovered not only that he had come to admire that quality, but also that she made him better for it. She was stubborn, but then so was he. Faulting her for it left him exposed to the same accusation. She could stand up for herself, and she could also slip sideways out of a confrontation when it served her.

And then there were those qualities of character that kept her in conflict with herself. She understood that her desire for justice was compromised by the insidious nature of revenge. The vulnerability that she would not admit to chipped at her strength. She was humbled that she had to ask for help but not so prideful that she didn’t know she needed it. She had concern and consideration for others yet would deny that she was deserving of the same.

He could think of only a few occasions when she had acted with seemingly no regard for the consequences, and he was not merely a witness to them but the beneficiary as well.

She came to him without reserve or expectation. He had suspected the existence of a deep well of passion in her, but he wondered if he had been right or fair to reveal it to her. She had responded to him the first time he kissed her, not tentatively, but fully, ardently, hungrily. Had he tapped her passion or her profound sense of aloneness?

He acknowledged the selfishness of the question that pricked at him so often he expected to find blood: Had circumstance conspired to make him a convenience?

When he stepped off the train, he had been a curious but reluctant visitor to Bitter Springs. It had to be acknowledged that curiosity, while it still existed, no longer exerted the same magnetic pull, and that when he left Bitter Springs, his departure would be infinitely more reluctant than his arrival.

The Widder Berry accounted for the difference. Kellen did not need to look elsewhere for an explanation.
The Widder Berry
. The thought of how unsuited she was to that sobriquet and how convincingly she had embraced it made his wry smile turn a shade rueful. She deserved so much better.

It didn’t follow that he was the better that she deserved. Thus far, his contributions had been lying to her and lying with her. It remained to be seen which she regarded as worse, but she would be within her rights to want to see him, in the vernacular of the locals, decorating a cottonwood for it. He preferred the more grisly euphemisms for hanging such as gurgling on a rope and strangulation jig, but they all worked, and Raine had a fine, feminine grace about her, so if she suggested that he look up at the sky through cottonwood leaves, he would be honor bound to fetch the rope.

Under the blankets, Kellen ran his palm from Raine’s shoulder to her elbow. His touch was light, tender. He did not want to wake her; he wanted the reassurance that she was there. He could not recall that he had ever known that need before.

He liked her. Liked her a lot. Whether or not he loved her, was in love with her, or wanted her so much that what he had was love’s equivalent of fool’s gold, Kellen didn’t know.

He needed to be sure. He’d never convince her if he had a single doubt of his own.

Raine surprised him by laying her hand over his fingers where they rested on her shoulder. “You should be sleeping,” she whispered.

“How do you know I’m not?”

Her chuckle stayed at the back of her throat. “I can hear you thinking.”

“My thoughts are that loud?”

“When I’m trying to sleep, they are.”

“Do you know what I’m thinking?”

“No. Do you want to tell me?”

“No. Go to sleep.”

“All right.” She snuggled closer, pulled his arm around her, and threaded her fingers with his. “I fed you when I woke you. Remember that.”

Kellen pressed his smile into the soft crown of her hair. In moments she was asleep.

They made slow, sleepy love in the half-light of dawn. Neither one could ever say with certainty who began it, but it was equally true that neither one of them cared.

Sensation was heavy, but not dull. It rested on their skin like honey, made each touch languid, careful. They sought with open hands and closed eyes. The dream was soft and indistinct at the edges, but every touch created a precise center and ripples of clarity.

They spoke, murmured really. The utterances had little structure but communicated everything they should.

“There,” she said when his hand cupped her breast. “Mm. Yes. Just there.”

“And here?”

“Mm.”

Her mouth was damp, her lips faintly swollen. The kisses were drugging, long and slow and deep. Her heart beat with the same resonance in her chest. No frantic fluttering, no stutter. His pounded in precisely the same way.

“God, yes,” he whispered when her flat belly moved against him.

Her hand slipped between their bodies, found him, circled his penis with her fingers. She moved her hand along the length of it.

He clenched his jaw and grunted softly.

Small shudders rocked them to the edge of wakefulness but never pushed them over it. They shifted, cradled again, and found a sweet, unhurried rhythm when he entered her from behind.

The pleasure was in the joining, the closeness, and the shared warmth, and when it was over, they were settled by sleep and dreams that floated like liquid through their minds.

Raine knew she had overslept as soon as she heard the steady knock on the apartment door. Kellen was lying on his stomach, a pillow over his head, not under it. She could not tell if he was hiding from the interruption or had just ended up that way. Half-formed memories of making love to him flooded her, and she was uncharacteristically flustered by the time she reached the door.

“What is it?” she called as she fumbled for the key.

“Mrs. Sterling says you better come down,” Sue called back. She lowered her voice once Raine opened the door a crack. “There’s a problem with the water pressure, and she’s trying to fix breakfast for ten and she says she can’t fool with it. Walt took some letters and packages down to the station for Mr. Petit, so he’s not here to figure it out.”

Raine pressed her forehead against the doorjamb and sighed. “Very well. Tell her I’m on my way. Maybe I can get Mr. Coltrane to help.”

Sue tugged on her braids as she stood on tiptoe and tried to see over Raine’s shoulder into the room.

Raine knew precisely what she was doing. “Is there something you want to ask me, Sue?”

“Is it true what they say? Are you and Mr. Coltrane married?”

“It’s true, but how did you hear it?”

“Oh, Mr. Jones told me. I think everyone in the dining room heard him.”

Raine sighed again. “Thank you, Sue. I appreciate the warning.”

“Warning? I was going to wish you well.”

“Consider it done. Go on. Tell Mrs. Sterling I’m on my way.” She closed the door and leaned against it.

Kellen sat up in bed and called to her. “I meant to tell you last night that there’s something wrong with the water pressure.”

“You don’t say.”

“Give me a few minutes to get dressed, and I’ll poke around and see if I can figure out what the problem is.”

“You know about plumbing?”

“I know you have a tank on the roof, boilers in the cellar, and pipe in between. The toe bone’s connected to the foot bone and so on. I think I can work it out.”

“Nothing about dem bones raises my confidence.”

But as it turned out, the analogy was close to prophetic. When Kellen climbed up to the roof to measure the water level in the tank, he found Mr. Weyman’s swollen body bobbing near the surface and discovered it was one of the two leather satchels strapped to his ankles that was responsible for covering the water release valve.

The discovery of the whiskey drummer’s body was general knowledge in Bitter Springs by the time the Pennyroyal served its midday meal. Folks who did not normally take their luncheon at the hotel crowded the dining room along with the guests and regulars. Only the couple with the young children was absent from the room. The family had decided to end their respite in Bitter Springs when they heard about the tragedy and were now waiting at the station to board the next train out of town.

Sue Hage told Mrs. Sterling that she envied them, and in a rare moment of harmony, the cook did not find fault with her for saying so.

Eventually there were too many people for the dining room, and Raine opened the saloon for eating as well as drinking. Renee and Cecilia arrived to help, and Mrs. Sterling, after wondering aloud if she was expected to feed the multitude with five loaves and two fish, managed to stretch her chicken potpie and spicy chili with cornbread so that everyone was satisfied.

Deputy Dan Sugar was among the diners. He sat with Ted Rush and Mr. Webb from the bank. For once Ted did not have his own story to insert into the conversation, but he hung on
every word the deputy exchanged with the bank manager and anyone who stopped by their table to ask what Sugar planned to do next.

Mr. Weyman had suffered a blow to the side of his head, hard enough to crack his skull. Dr. Kent had been able to tell Sugar that much, but whether or not the man had still been alive when he was dropped into the tank was a matter of conjecture. The baggage tied to the drummer’s ankles suggested that Weyman may only have been unconscious and left to drown, but it also suggested that the killer merely wanted to get rid of all of the drummer’s belongings at once. People wondered aloud how many times the killer climbed the outside stairs to the roof to dispose of George Weyman and his bags.

The question that no one could answer was where had Emily Ransom been while this was happening. Already dead? Unconscious and soon to be dead? Some folks speculated that the murders were not related. Others had no patience with that thinking. Emily and Weyman disappeared on the same evening. To the gamblers among them, the odds seemed incalculable that the murders, while separate and distinct, were done by two different people.

Walt and Kellen arrived in the dining room after the crowd dwindled and only a few stragglers remained. They were as wet, disheveled, and tired as two bird dogs that had spent the morning retrieving dead ducks from a marsh pond. What they had been doing, though, was flushing the waterlines and scrubbing the tank.

Raine pointed them to one of the tables that had been cleared in the dining room. “Just sit down. Mrs. Sterling will make you both a hot meal; she is that glad to have water restored without going to the pump for it.” On her way to the kitchen, she passed Renee talking up Dick Faber and one of the Davis boys and gave her a look that said she should show the men the door and get back to work.

She expected the dining room to be cleared of every guest except Kellen and Walt when she returned, but they had been joined at their table by the young masters Cabot Theodore and Carpenter Addison.

Raine set her hands on her hips. “Rabbit. Finn. Does your granny know you’re here?”

They wriggled around in their chairs to face her. “Sure she does,” said Rabbit. “She heard about what happened from that family leaving town. They could hardly wait for the train to get here. Pap thought they might start walking to Rawlins. Anyway, Granny says we should find out what happened from the horse’s mouth. Not that you’re a horse, Mrs. Berry, but if you were, you’d be a real pretty filly.”

Finn nodded, excitement bringing him to his knees on the chair’s saddle seat. He rested his chin on the back rail. “And there’s a new guest for you at the desk. Miss Sue is seein’ to him. Name’s Mr. Mark Irvin of Cincinnati, Ohio. He’s an undertaker, so he didn’t mind at all when he heard about Mr. Weyman.”

“He’s thinking about undertaking right here in Bitter Springs,” said Rabbit.

Kellen gave Raine a dry look. “There
is
a business opportunity.”

“I don’t believe this,” Raine muttered. Her hands fell to her sides as she swung around and marched off toward the lobby.

Rabbit turned around in his chair and sat and encouraged Finn to do the same. “She don’t seem at all pleased about another guest.”

Kellen reached under the table and put a hand on Rabbit’s knee to still his swinging feet. “She’s a little out of sorts right now.”