When The Heart Beckons (4 page)

“Tell me the truth, damn it! The truth, for
once in your stinking life! Tell me!”

Ross McCallum closed his eyes against that
blinding, painful memory, against the anguish in his son’s face.
First Cade, and now Brett
, he thought.
Like Livinia,
they’ve both left me. I’m alone.

But he refused to feel sorry for himself. He
was a McCallum. No sniveling or whining allowed. He would get Brett
back, damned if he wouldn’t. Cade he knew he would never see again,
not after thirteen years, but Brett ...

Ross’s chest began to hurt. Like a huge fist
tightening, knuckling, squeezing ... He closed his eyes and
clenched the cigar between his fingers until the spasm of pain
passed. Then he staggered slowly from the window, past his desk and
the side table set out with brandy decanters and glasses, and sank
into the green and gold tapestry wing chair beside the fireplace.
I have to keep going—no slowing down, no giving in to this
damned weakness of the heart
, he thought, despising his own
debility, wishing he could conquer it with the same bold
ruthlessness he’d used to conquer every other enemy in his life. At
any cost, he had to keep his business empire running smoothly until
Brett returned. All these accursed problems were mounting up
alarmingly and if he wasn’t careful there wouldn’t be any McCallum
empire to hand over to his son.

But I’ll be damned if I’ll sell
anything, especially the Ruby Palace Hotel
. That had been his
first big business success, opening the door to all the rest.

I just have to concentrate on
business
, Ross decided, his glance coming to rest on Livinia’s
portrait, which hung over the green leather sofa against the wall.
Sort everything out. End this streak of bad luck.

Bad luck, was that all it was? He was not a
superstitious man, but he had an eerie feeling that there was more
going on here than met the eye, much more than he had hinted at to
that private investigator, Everett Stevenson. Who had come to Brett
with the truth and shattered all the illusions Ross had taken such
pains to create during all these years? Why were so many of his
businesses experiencing losses and troubles within the past six
months?

If I didn’t know better I’d think I was
cursed. Cursed with a punishment for what I did so many years ago.
Or I’d think that Boxer himself had come back to exact vengeance on
me. But Boxer is dead. Buried at the bottom of the sea. With no one
ever the wiser.

And I don’t regret it
, Ross
McCallum thought, sitting up straighter as the pain in his chest
eased to the merest flicker. That piece of scum deserved exactly
what he got.

Ross took several deep breaths and glanced
around the large, well-lit comfortable study, as if looking for
comfort in its handsome leather and brass appointments.

Soon the Stevenson Agency will find
Brett and return him to me. We’ll sit right here and share a bottle
of port and talk everything over. I’ll explain. And he’ll forgive
me. And together well bring the McCallum empire back up to snuff.
Together we’ll show the world what the McCallums are made
of.

The house was very quiet. And for just a
moment he thought he heard Livinia’s frail footfalls above, and he
could picture her pacing from her dressing table to her
silk-curtained bed, back and forth, back and forth, with tears
flowing down her pale cheeks.

Sorrow gripped him, but he fought it off.
The past was dead. Livinia, Boxer, even Cade. Dead—and gone. But
Brett was very much alive and he
would
come back.

Ross McCallum squashed his cigar in the
cuspidor beside his chair and stood up, his powerful hands balling
into fists. He had to focus on the businesses. On every thing he
had built for his son. Because that toad-eating Derrickson was
right about one thing—the losses he’d suffered in the past six
months had been significant. And if he wasn’t careful, he could
lose everything he’d spent his life and his sweat and his blood in
building.

His gaze lifted yet again to the hauntingly
beautiful portrait of Livinia, sad and elegant in her blue satin
ball gown, clutching the lilies he’d given her that morning before
she posed. A tremor shook his powerful shoulders. He stilled it at
once. The tremor was not from pain, but from sudden, overwhelming
grief as he again thought of that horrible day when Brett had
confronted him and demanded to know the truth.

Oh, God
, he prayed, and Ross
McCallum’s lips moved stiffly over the unfamiliar words of humble
appeal.
Let me have the chance to explain. Keep Brett safe from
Red Cobb; don’t let my son’s death be added to my account as well.
I know I have much to answer for, but please, let me have another
chance with my son
...

Just one. One more chance.

* * *

“There will be other chances,” Charles
Derrickson said confidently as he sank into a gilded chair in the
Royal Suite of the Empire Hotel and reached for a glass of
Madeira.

“Oh, yes, there certainly will be.” Lucas
Johnson strolled back and forth across the Aubusson carpet, his
expensive shiny black boots making a soft thud with each step. “You
keep at him, Derrickson,” Johnson instructed him slowly. “Subtly,
with finesse, but don’t let up. You hear me? Wait a few days, and
then try again.”

“Yes, sir, I will!”

“It’s only a matter of time,” Johnson
reiterated, pausing before the white marble fireplace to down his
own goblet of Madeira before continuing his deliberate circuit
around the spacious parlor. “Everything will fall into place.”

He stroked his fierce brown mustache as he
prowled the room with the coiled, dangerous energy that
characterized him. He was a handsome man and he knew it. Tall,
lean, with fire-blue eyes and proud, aristocratic features, he
looked every inch the gentleman of means in his broadcloth suit and
starched white cravat, with his gold watch and fob tucked neatly
inside the satin pocket of his vest.

Johnson smiled with sly anticipation. Divide
and conquer—an amazingly effective strategy. With Brett gone, Ross
McCallum was alone, bereft and distracted. That made him weak. As
weak as an old lead mule cut off from the pack, Johnson concluded.
The son of a bitch had no one to turn to for support, few friends
in the business community who would lift a finger—his own
ruthlessness had earned him too many enemies to count—in short,
Johnson decided, McCallum was ripe for the kill.

“Have you heard from Bartholomew?”
Derrickson inquired.

“Oh, yes.” He broke into a wide grin, the
same sensually charming, confident grin that had set countless
female hearts aflutter over his forty-odd years. “A telegraph
message came this morning. It’s good news. Cobb will be closing in
on Brett McCallum very soon.”

“Really.”

“There is no doubt that he is in the Arizona
territory,” Johnson said coolly, halting before the
velvet-curtained window overlooking the street. His smooth melodic
voice was filled with satisfaction. “Young Master Brett may well be
dead before that private investigator Ross hired even reaches the
Arizona border.” He turned from the window, the cruel smile that
always frightened Derrickson twisting his lips. “With any luck,
that is.”

“Yes, sir. With any luck.” But Derrickson
suddenly set the wine glass down, unable to take another sip.
Deceiving and outfoxing a ruthless financial giant was one thing,
but killing a young man in the prime of his life was quite another.
Derrickson was queasy about this aspect of the job. He was only
glad it had nothing to do with his own end of things. He would take
care of Ross McCallum, and Bartholomew and Cobb would handle the
dirt.

Derrickson watched Johnson through uneasy
eyes. Johnson seemed to vibrate with exultation.
The man is
pure evil
, Derrickson realized suddenly. A shudder ran between
his shoulder blades.
He loves this little plot of his
,
Derrickson thought.
He savors every twist and turn of
it
.

“What if Cobb doesn’t get to young McCallum
before the private investigator starts poking around?” Derrickson
ventured, afraid Johnson would notice his nervousness if he didn’t
say something soon. “What if the investigator gets in the way?”

Lucas Johnson crossed to the side table and
poured himself another glass of wine. The gold and ruby ring on his
finger glittered in the suite’s golden lamplight as he lifted the
goblet to his lips and drank.

It was a stupid question, he thought in
contempt. The answer was obvious to anyone but the most
jelly-spined little worm. Derrickson was good at sneaking around
between the pages of his ledger books, but he was worthless in the
larger arena of this private little war where any tactic was
acceptable. Any tactic at all.

“If the investigator gets in the way,” Lucas
Johnson murmured, his eyes electrifyingly blue above his starched
white linen cravat, “then that will be too damned bad for the
investigator, won’t it? Cobb has his orders. He won’t let anything
get in his way.”

Evil
, Derrickson thought again,
quelling the instinct to rise and flee the room.
Pure
evil
.

But he had to stay now and dance with the
devil. There was no turning back. Not for him, or Johnson, or Cobb,
or McCallum. Not for any of them.

It was going to be a fight to the death.

Arizona Territory

“W
atch your step,
miss,” the curly-bearded stagecoach driver warned Annabel as he
helped her to descend the rusty steps and then gave the coach door
a slam. Annabel gripped her floral carpetbag and stepped down into
the dust. “Welcome to Justice,” the driver muttered drily, and as
she glanced swiftly around at her surroundings, she had to stifle
an involuntary groan of dismay.

She found herself in a small, dirty hovel of
a town lined with a dozen crudely constructed buildings:
false-fronted stores, saloons, a livery stable, a lodging house,
and two hotels. It was a beaten-up-looking town, dreary and
dilapidated, a place of grit and tumbleweed, groveling beneath the
flower-splashed foothills and mountains to the north.

Well, what did you expect
, she
chided herself, as her fingers closed more tightly around the strap
of her carpetbag.
You knew you weren’t heading for Paris or New
Orleans or New York City
. But if Brett wanted to lose himself
out here in this great big towering Arizona territory, and more
specifically, within this tiny little flea-bitten town, it surely
would be a good place for him to do it.

She had been the only passenger on the
stagecoach to alight at the mournful little town called Justice,
and she couldn’t blame the others for wanting to travel on. Not a
soul was visible in the street in either direction, unless one
counted the grizzled ancient rocking and humming to himself on the
broken-down porch outside the mercantile. Tumbleweed blew like torn
brown lace across the road, the sky glowed a sickly rose and
greenish gray hue as the May sun melted toward the horizon, and
everywhere were heat, dust, unpainted wooden shacks, and horse
dung.

Justice.

Despite the dismal aspect of the town, and
her weariness and hunger after days of jolting stagecoach travel, a
tingle of anticipation raced through her, Brett had been here in
this town only a few weeks ago—he had sent his father a letter from
here. And because of that, thank God, she had a place to start.

A fresh urgency had overtaken her need to
find him after she had studied the file. According to Everett
Stevenson’s report, Ross McCallum had told him that his son was in
danger—he believed a gunfighter named Red Cobb was tracking Brett
to kill him. A business acquaintance passing through Kansas City
had heard local gossip that the West’s newest, youngest, deadliest
gunfighter was hunting down an easterner named Brett McCallum—but
no one knew why.

Those words had filled Annabel with icy
dread. Why would this gunman be after Brett? He was the most
affable, easygoing of men. The file had contained no further
answers to that question, so Annabel had been left to worry and to
wonder. As she had traveled by train and by stagecoach across the
country, she’d speculated about whether Red Cobb might have some
connection to whatever trouble had caused Brett’s running away from
home.

Annabel dimly remembered that Brett’s older
brother had run away from home when he was seventeen, only months
before she had come to live with Aunt Gertie at the McCallum house.
She’d never met him, never even seen a photograph of him, for Ross
McCallum had forbidden even so much as the mention of his name. But
Brett used to talk about him sometimes when he and Annabel played
together, always wishing his brother would come home.

Now Brett, too, had run away. Annabel knew
many would say that Ross McCallum’s demanding, iron-fisted tyranny
had no doubt driven him to it, as it had driven his oldest son away
years before. But Annabel remained mystified, for unlike those who
worked for Ross McCallum or courted him in business or social
circles, Brett had never been intimidated by his father. He and
Ross McCallum had had a formal but harmonious relationship. Brett
was too easygoing and understanding to rebel against his father the
way his belligerent older brother had done. Annabel had never heard
him speak a single cross word to the man who had ruled the McCallum
business empire with the strength of Zeus. What could have happened
to cause Brett to leave as he had, without a word or a letter or a
warning?

There had been an argument—Ross McCallum had
admitted that much to Mr. Stevenson during their interview. But he
had given no clue what it was about or even how serious it had
been.