When The Heart Beckons (6 page)

Annabel heard a sudden sharp hiss of
breath.

“Maybe this will trigger a memory,” Steele
said softly. And peering around the corner of the horse stalls,
Annabel saw that Steele was now pointing his gun at the
blacksmith’s head. “I’m going to count to three.”

“You’re bluffing!”

“One ...”

“What ... what do you want with him?”

“Two ...”

“Steele, damn you, no!”

“Three ...”

“He headed for Eagle Gulch!”

Steele nodded. “What kind of horse did he
buy?”

“What? Oh.” In the pale orange glow of the
twin kerosene lanterns hanging on the wall, Annabel saw the young
blacksmith grimace. Sweat glistened on his round, fleshy face. “A
sorrel gelding,” he muttered in frustration. “Good stock.”

Steele holstered the gun in one swift, fluid
movement. “Much obliged. But there’s one more thing. Don’t tell
anyone else where McCallum has gone.”

Chatham shook his head in bewilderment. “You
mean someone else is tracking him besides you?”

“Could be. So if anyone
asks—
anyone
—give a false answer, my friend, or I’ll come
back and kill you myself before you even know I’m there.”

“I won’t ... say a word,” the blacksmith
croaked.

Steele, after regarding him intently for a
moment, turned on his heel and stalked from the stable.

Annabel waited, pressing back against the
stall. She heard the blacksmith return to work, swearing under his
breath, and then she eased her way to the rear door and out once
more into the quickly falling dusk.

But as she rounded the corner of the
building, heading back toward the hotel, she suddenly collided with
a rock-hard wall of sheer male muscle looming directly before
her.

“Ma’am.” The harshness of Roy Steele’s voice
raised gooseflesh on her arms. She tried to answer in kind.

“Mr. Steele.”

“You know my name.”

For the second time since she’d met him,
Annabel felt the hot blush warming her cheeks, but she recovered
smoothly. “Why, yes, the clerk at the hotel mentioned it. May I
pass, please?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Mr. Steele ...”

“You’re not going anywhere until you answer
a question. Why are you following me?”

“Following you? Mr. Steele, you obviously
have an exaggerated sense of your power over women. I assure you I
am not ...”

“You are.”

She shook her head and let a light laugh
trill from her lips. “Well. If you aren’t the vainest man I’ve ever
met. Merely because I happen to find myself in the same vicinity as
you twice in one day—to my own regret, I assure you ...”

Icy fury clamped down over his implacable
features. “Stop prattling. Answer my question or I’ll ...”

“You’ll what? Shoot me? Oh, heavens, I am
quite shaking in my boots!”

Annabel was amazed at her own audacity.
Truth be told, she was shaking in her boots; her knees rattled
quite humiliatingly beneath her serviceable traveling skirt. But
she kept her face schooled into an expression of outraged scorn. If
there was one thing she hated, it was a bully, and Roy Steele was
nothing but a bully, she assured herself.

A bully who looked as if he would like to
wring her neck. He reached out one hand and for an agonizing second
Annabel thought he was really going to choke her, but he only
gripped her by the shoulder. “If you weren’t following me, lady,
what the hell are you doing in this alley? A little while ago, I
saw you behind me on Main Street, pretending to look in a shop
window.”

“You’re quite mad, Mr. Steele.
Quite
mad. And if you don’t let me go this very instant
...”

“Steele! Freeze!”

A voice like hell’s own thunder roared
through the alley. Annabel and Steele both spun toward it.

Annabel’s eyes widened at the sight before
her. Good God, not one, but two vicious-looking gunmen glared at
them from less than twenty feet away.

They must be outlaws—or gunfighters, Annabel
guessed, fighting back a rush of faintness. Her heart was banging
against the wall of her chest like an Indian war drum. She’d never
seen such dirty, unkempt, savage-looking men.

Unshaven, their faces pockmarked and tough
as buffalo hide beneath their stringy brown hair, they looked like
the type of men who would as soon wring a cat’s neck as pet it.
They both wore long greasy yellow dusters over dirt-stained pants
and cracked boots that were torn and splattered with mud. One man
was taller than the other, with even tinier, beadier eyes. Annabel
noted in alarm that his gun was drawn and pointed straight at Roy
Steele. The other man had a long mustache and a scar looping from
his cheek down across his pointed chin. They bore a startling
resemblance to each other: the same long gangly build, the same
flat, squashed noses, the same aura of evil radiating from them,
right down to the expression of leering hatred on their faces.

“Who are they?” she whispered to Steele,
swallowing past the lump of fear in her throat.

“The Hart brothers. Outlaws. Reckon they
mean to kill me.”

“In that case, I think I’ll be going,” she
murmured, but as she took one tentative step away from him, the
taller gunman fired off a shot that scattered pebbles near her
feet.

“Don’t neither of you move none!” he
ordered. His brother spat into the dirt and grinned at Steele.

“Steele, you son of a bitch, I’m gonna blow
your damned head off.”

“Or else I will!” his brother vowed.

The gunfighter answered with a cool laugh.
“You reckon so, Les?”

Annabel could scarcely believe her ears.
There was no mistaking the icy nonchalance in Steele’s voice.
Peeking over at him, she saw that there was no fear on his face.
Not a trace of it. Only a sneer of contempt. She drew in a deep
breath though her lungs were tight with fear. Glancing at the other
two men, her heart sank. The hatred on their faces had hardened
with his cool words and arrogant demeanor.
Steele
, she
thought and it was almost a prayer breathed in the late afternoon
stillness,
you’d better be good. Damned good
.

“Y
ou kin wipe that
smug look off your face, Steele, ‘cause we got you now, and you
know it,” Mustache crowed with glee. “You knew we’d get you for
killing Jesse. Wal, your time has come. You’re going to hell where
you belong.”

Steele kept his gaze riveted on the men, but
spoke to Annabel in a calm, offhand tone. “I’d get out of here if I
were you.”

“H-how do you suggest I do that?”

“Run.”

Run. Run away and leave him there to face
these cutthroats alone. Well, why not? He certainly seemed able to
take care of himself, and he was hardly her concern. Yet Annabel
hated the idea of dashing away like a scared rabbit before these
two ugly lumps of vermin. “I never run, Mr. Steele,” she murmured,
her gaze fixed warily on the Hart brothers all the while. “It’s so
undignified ...”

“You little fool. This isn’t a parlor game.
Run.”

Les waved his gun. “What’re you talkin’ to
your lady friend fer? Pay attention, you low-down bastard—you’re
about to die!”

Steele let out another low, cold laugh. The
sound of it chilled Annabel’s blood. “Does this female look like
any lady friend of mine, Les? Hell, I don’t even know this woman.
And I don’t want to. Get her out of here so the three of us can
settle this.”

“Mebbe she’d like to watch. How ‘bout it,
little lady? You want to watch this hombre die?”

“I’d much rather have a cup of tea at the
hotel,” she confessed, trying to smile though her lips felt like
cardboard. “And I’d like to ask your permission to go there right
now and do just that—but first I feel I must point out to you that
two against one is hardly fair odds, gentlemen. And you might not
realize this, Mr., er, Les, but you already have your gun drawn!
That’s not a typical gun duel, not at all, from everything I’ve
seen and read. Why, you’ll go to jail.”

Mustache shoved his hat back on his head.
“Not if there ain’t no witnesses.”

The implication of this remark made Annabel
swallow hard. “I admire you for thinking ahead,” she managed
faintly, “but perhaps you gentlemen could just discuss this first
...”

“No more talk.” Les Hart suddenly went tense
with readiness, his eyes razoring in on Steele once more. “Steele,
you never shoulda killed our brother.”

“We’ve been waiting a long time to git you,
and we’re not goin’ to wait a minute more,” Mustache growled. “I
jest wanted to see the look on your face and now ...”

“Watch out! Behind you!” Annabel shouted,
her arm lifting to point and instinctively the two men jerked
around.

At the same moment Roy Steele knocked her to
the ground.

Then the street exploded in a thunderous,
violent blur.

Gunshots rent the air, dust and smoke
billowed, blood erupted. Annabel, face down in the dust, heard
herself screaming.

She stopped at last, jamming a dirty fist
into her mouth and lifting her head to stare in disbelief at the
bloody tableau.

The Hart brothers sprawled dead in the
alley. At least one was dead, she amended, gulping down the sick
nausea that rose in her throat. The other still twitched in a
grotesquely horrible little dance. After what seemed like endless
seconds, his elbows and knees went still and the gurgling in his
throat stopped.

Roy Steele stood calmly, feet planted apart,
surveying the scene. He looked as cool and remote as a glacier. His
gaze flickered to her, his black eyes gleaming above the wisp of
blue smoke that curled upward from his Colt .45.

“I
told
you to run.”

Dear God. Annabel shuddered and felt a
dizzying weakness shoot through her. She fought it off with an
effort and struggled to her knees. But as she gazed in horror at
Steele’s harsh face and saw the utter coldness there, a coldness
that was bleaker than death, dread pierced her.

This man, this cold-blooded gunslinger who
had killed two men with blinding efficiency and now stood calmly
looking over their bodies without a trace of emotion, this man was
after Brett.

He would kill Brett as surely as he had
killed the Hart brothers. Unless she stopped him.

A crowd appeared out of nowhere. Men ran
toward them, one of them wearing a badge that glinted out beneath
his vest. And then the crowd surrounded all three men and Roy
Steele was swallowed up in their midst.

“It’s the Hart brothers!” someone gasped. “I
saw them, Joe, they were going to shoot this fellow and the woman
in cold blood!”

Annabel felt strong arms helping her to her
feet. “You all right, ma’am?” the light-haired man with the badge
asked.

She nodded, mumbled something, and he turned
his attention away from her. “Seems like a clear-cut case of
self-defense, Mr. Steele, according to what Seth just said,” she
heard the sheriff intone as he let her go and strode toward the
bodies. He hunkered down and studied first Mustache and then Les.
Steele waited impassively, his black eyes flickering without
interest over the whispering crowd.

Annabel didn’t wait for more. She turned and
staggered away, escaping around the corner of the building. There
she paused, clutching the rough wood wall with both hands to stay
upright. Thankfully, no one had noticed her leave amidst the hubbub
in the alley.

At the hotel, she tried to appear more
tranquil than she felt as she asked for a room. Once upstairs, with
the door locked and her carpetbag resting on the white-and-green
quilted bed, she paced back and forth reliving in her mind all that
had happened.

An image of the Hart brothers—filthy and
cruel—swam before her mind’s eye. She pushed it away. She couldn’t
bear to think about them, or about the gunfight, or the blood in
the street ...

When she was younger and would scamper
unnoticed about the McCallum house, Annabel would now and again
hear Ross McCallum bellow that he needed a drink when he was
particularly upset or angry about something, and at the time she
hadn’t understood why, but now as she paced around her room she
felt the urge for the first time in her life to consume strong
spirits. Turmoil roiled through her. She’d nearly been killed. If
not for Roy Steele, she
would
have been killed.

Don’t think about it anymore
, she
instructed herself as the memories churned through her like flashes
of nightmare.
Think about Brett. Think about your assignment.
Think about what you’re going to do next.

She wished she could calm down, that her
feet could stop this endless pacing over the creaking floorboards
of the dingy little room, that her heart would stop racing.

Think about Brett
.

Her performance so far had been dismal, she
decided, her fingers knotted together before her as she walked back
and forth. Roy Steele had spotted her straightaway. He’d known he
was being followed, and if the Hart brothers hadn’t interrupted,
heaven knows what he would have done to her to find out why.

But on the other hand, Annabel conceded
fairly, she had managed to gain some very valuable information by
eavesdropping at the blacksmith’s shop.
One
, she reviewed
mentally, soothing herself by listing her thoughts in an orderly
fashion,
you now know that Brett was headed toward Eagle
Gulch—that’s a lead, an important one. Two, you know that Roy
Steele is pursuing him
.

But was Steele in cahoots with Red Cobb, or
was he after Brett for his own nefarious reasons?

She chewed her lip as she wheeled about and
started across the floor once again. Either way, she would have to
be smarter and quicker than Mr. Roy Steele. Somehow she would have
to find Brett first.

Annabel stopped pacing and stared unseeingly
at the faded watercolor on the peeling, yellow painted wall. Brett
was a strong and healthy young man, and as she remembered, a good
shot with a pistol—he had been the one who secretly taught
her
how to shoot, matter of fact—but he would be no match
for Roy Steele, Annabel knew. None at all.