"Some bastard was bathing here tonight! These drip-drops lead down yonder—"
Sadie was so busy backing around the corner, she never saw the attendant's station. Her hip slammed into it, causing a loud thump and a metallic crash.
Holy freaking crap!
Hank charged after her. She could hear his boots pounding like sledge hammers above the crashing of her heart. She fled past the first room and ducked inside the second, only to learn, to her horror, that she'd entered a billiards parlor with no window and no bolt for the door. She was trapped!
Suddenly, a familiar, Kentucky drawl groused in the hall: "Dang crazy varmint. You want to wake the dead? C'mere! Gimme that! I told you to stop washing my gloves in that green stinkin' pool."
Collie!
God bless his quick thinking.
Muffled growls reverberated through the corridor, as if the boy was wrestling Vandy for his supposedly sopping glove. Under the cover of this cacophony, Sadie heard Hank's furtive retreat and what sounded like the squealing of the sun porch door.
Collie raised his laconic baritone above Vandy's ferocious snarls. "Baron! You down this way?"
Sadie held her breath, counting five heartbeats before Baron's irritated voice boomed:
"I told you to wait outside, boy!"
"Well, dang. Blame a body for doing his job. You've been holed up in here for a coon's age. How was I supposed to know you weren't drowned?"
The scrabble of claws on terra cotta was accompanied by the steady thumping of a long, rangy stride. Tense and quivering, Sadie tightened her grip on her pistol as the boy strolled past her door. She had no doubt Collie knew she was hiding. The question was: Did Baron?
A deep grunt and the faint clinking of what might have been a belt buckle reached Sadie's straining ears.
"Hell, kid. Can't a man crap in peace?"
"Sure, Baron. But Cass told me to watch over you."
"While I'm taking a dump?"
"Aw, don't be that way. Cass thinks of you like his own Pa. He'd plug me himself if something happened to you on my watch."
"Where is Cass?" Baron demanded in grudging tones. "He's been missing ever since the recital."
"Last I saw, he was paying a call on Dr. Cuervo. And asking ol' José to cure him of redhead fever."
Their voices were fading now, along with the echo of boots in the corridor.
Silently, shakily, Sadie slumped against the door.
Kid, I owe you a lot more than a new pair of gloves.
* * *
Worried Hank might be lingering in the woods outside Aquacia, Sadie didn't dare exit the bathhouse through a door. Instead, she sneaked out the window of an assembly room, trusting a hardy live oak and a bristling row of forsythia bushes to cover her escape.
Fortunately, Cass was the one to find her, not Hank. When she threw herself into his arms, he dragged her back into the brush, a night predator intent on devouring his prey. His demanding kisses rained fire on her senses. Heat coiled in the furnace below her belly, threatening to incinerate her wiser half. She had to tear her mouth free.
"Baron will see us!"
"Baron's long gone," Cass growled, gripping her buttocks with a possessive hand and tilting her hips against his. "You could have broken your fool neck crawling through that window. Didn't I tell you to wait for me?"
"But Hank's getting away!" she gasped.
"Who?" he mumbled against her throat.
"Baron's regulator!"
Cass stiffened, raising his head to lock stares. "Come again?"
She bit her lip. Despite the thunderheads racing past the moon, and the patterns of shadow they cast across his face, Cass's upset was unmistakable.
"Didn't Collie tell you what happened?"
"No," Cass said slowly, taking a step back. "Collie and I didn't get a chance to talk. At least, not since I found him rubbing out Pancake's hoof prints. He told me Baron came here to fetch something out of his locker. When Collie saw my horse, he hid Pancake and fired shots as warning. He figured Baron would be pissed to know I wasn't watching Poppy."
"But didn't you see a man fleeing through the sun porch?"
"I was on the other side of the building," Cass said in gravelly tones. "Tell me about Hank."
Grimly, Sadie explained that Hank was a killer, whom Baron had hired in the past, and that he was itching to prove he was faster on the draw than Cass. She recounted how Hank was blackmailing Baron for some sordid deed. Then she extrapolated a bit. She added her opinion that Baron was going to expect Cass to kill people too—and maybe even face off with Hank, to end the blackmail.
Collie hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said that Cass loved Baron like a father. The only thing that Cass heard in this whole, damning tale was Baron was in danger from a hired gun.
Sadie shot her lover an exasperated look. "Baron wouldn't be in this mess if he didn't murder inconvenient sodbusters."
"That's ridiculous. Baron isn't the type you want to cross in a business deal, but that doesn't mean he murders folks."
"Baron might not pull the trigger with his own finger, but in the eyes of the law, he's just as guilty as the man who does! What if you fall out of favor with him, Cass? What if he tries to pin Hank's crimes on you? Who do you think the courts will believe? A gunslinger, who ran from a murder charge for 12 years? Or a Texas Senator?"
Cass squared his jaw and shook his head. "And if I walk through a lightning storm, I might get zapped. That doesn't mean it's going to happen."
"My God, do you need to see blood to accept the truth?"
"I'm telling you, woman, Baron didn't hire Hank! Someone else did—to kill Baron!"
"Haven't you heard a word I've said?" Sadie countered impatiently. "Hank's not going to kill his golden goose!"
"Hank was the sniper on the roof!"
"Then Hank's extorting Baron for putting him on that roof!"
"Can't you hear how crazy that sounds?"
Sadie wanted to shake him. "You weren't in the bathhouse. You didn't hear their argument. You're going to have to trust my judgment."
"Your judgment? Hell, you've been gunning for Baron ever since Galveston! You're so deep in Sterne's back pocket, you don't know which way is up. You'd do anything to save Sterne from a senate investigation—including seducing Baron right under his wife's nose! Wasn't that the original plan? Until I came along and threw a wrench in the works?"
She sucked in her breath.
His laughter was hollow. "You used to be a lot smarter, darlin'," he said bitterly. "A whole lot smarter than this."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you haven't left the whorehouse as far behind as you think."
Her hand lashed out. He caught it before it could strike his cheek.
For a long moment, they stood quivering, sucking down air, two predators ready to pounce. Thunder rumbled in the distance; lightning spat behind the crown of Cass's hat.
Finally, she yanked her wrist from his grasp.
The moon had dipped below the tree canopy. As much as Sadie would have liked to track Hank, she figured the task would be impossible now. If a storm really did unleash itself—rather than dumping the usual dry rain—then Hank would head back to town. It was only two miles away. On a night like Devil's Eve, he'd find plenty of mischief to entertain himself.
"Collie was in the bathhouse too," she bit out. "He can settle this argument."
"I'll be real interested to hear what Collie has to say."
Why would you take the word of some beardless whelp over mine!?
Cass whistled for Pancake, but she had no intention of getting cozy with her lover in his saddle. She turned on her heel and set a course for her mare.