Devil in Texas(6)

Then she spied a flash of light, hurtling out of an oleander bush near the building's foundation.

It all happened so fast.

One moment, she was peering out her window; the next moment, a smoking cylinder crashed open at her feet. Flames belched from the shattered crockery. The curtains ignited. The carpet caught fire. She stumbled backwards, choking on fumes.

Greek Fire! Water would be useless.

Her mind whirred into action. Wrenching a flimsy night wrapper from her wardrobe, she stomped on boots. She planned to sound a general alarm. But when she reached her door, it wouldn't budge.

Frantic, she rattled. She banged. She screamed. Her efforts were futile. Someone had taken the key, locking the door from the outside. Apparently, her window hadn't been an arbitrary target. Somebody wanted her dead!

Panic gnawed at her reason. Urine. Urine would buy her time.

She lunged for the sloshing bed pan and tossed its contents on the carpet, saturating the fibers between her and the racing wall of chemically-induced fire. She figured she had little more than two minutes to rip out the false back of her wardrobe and grab the box with her lock pick before her protective little barrier of urine was overcome.

Pinkertons prepare for assassination attempts. The words from her Field Agent Manual pounded in her head.

Ignoring the sparks that showered her arms, she wrenched aside the few gowns that hung in her wardrobe and ripped out the loosely nailed backboard. Frenzied groping located the hole she'd smashed into the plaster and the cracker tin she'd stuffed inside the wall. She burned her palms and fingers wrestling that metallic box from the hole, but she hardly noticed. She was too busy shoving her badge, cash, ammo, and train ticket into her trouser pockets.

Next, she grabbed a slouch hat, scarf, and duster from the hole. She knew when she did get to the other side of the door—and hopefully, the seawall—she mustn't be recognized. Otherwise, her brush with death could get a whole lot closer.

Gritting her teeth, she ignored the flames that roared ever closer. Perspiration made lock-picking tedious. Again and again, her slippery fingers lost their grip on the widdy. She wasted precious seconds, coughing from the smoke that burned her sinuses and stung her eyes.

Finally, the mechanism yielded. Nearly sobbing with relief, she wrenched open the door. A scene of mass hysteria greeted her. Shrieking whores, half-dressed Johns, and cursing waiters jostled each other, pushing and gouging in their efforts to escape the floor. Both stairwells were ablaze. Apparently, the murderer hadn't wanted any witnesses to survive.

Mace shoved his way to her side. "What the hell did you do? Light a cigarette?"

"You know damned well I don't smoke! Someone tossed Greek Fire through my window!"

The color drained from Mace's face. "You blew your cover," he growled, grabbing her arm and swinging her toward a darkened bedroom. "Follow evasion protocol, and get your tail out of here!"

She wrenched her elbow from the senior agent's grasp and dragged the scarf over her nose. A little sympathy from her colleague would have been appreciated, but then, Mace had never wanted her on "his" case. The only undercover work he did willingly with a Pinkie involved a bed.

As Sadie ducked into a street-side bedroom, Mace remained in the hall. He was shouting for folks to stay calm. To find an open window and take turns jumping into the flower bushes below. Wails of female protest greeted this suggestion, but Sadie didn't hesitate. The building was only two stories tall, and this bedroom, in particular, had a sturdy Mexican plum tree butting against its casement. She knew this fact because she'd cased every blessed inch of the casino to locate the best escape routes.

Pinkertons can't be too careful, the manual had instructed.

Ripping her burn-blistered palm, she nevertheless managed to shimmy down the trunk and stumble into the shadows of the privy before the first of the hurtling bodies crashed into the oleander bushes.

"Sadie! Has anyone seen Sadie?"

It was Cass's voice, adding to her cover problem. She shrank against the outhouse even as she recognized her ex-lover's pale gold hair in the casino's milling refugees on the lawn. He was turning his head every which way, shouting her name, searching the faces of the beerjerkers, who'd been ushered, along with the gamblers, from the building.

Surely, Cass wasn't part of the arson conspiracy.

Was he?

Suddenly, her casement blew out. Flames spewed triumphantly through the hole. Orange-red reflections flickered over Cass's face, illuminating his horror as the inferno devoured her bedroom. The building shuddered. The timbers groaned.

Cass was screaming for Cassandra McGuire now, shaking off Baron and Randie and knocking some lanky kid on his ass beside a raccoon. The Siren's bouncer entered the fray. Fists started swinging. Cass's .38 glinted in the firelight. Tito managed to wrestle the gun from Cass's fist before he knocked Cass out cold.

Sadie exhaled a shaky breath. She forced herself to be logical. To think like a Pinkerton, not a jilted lover. Cass had coyote cunning; he survived in the world because he was a consummate liar with a flair for the dramatic. If he'd been part of the arson conspiracy, of course he would have faked his concern for her, if he'd wanted her dead.

In any event, Tito had neutralized him. Now was her chance to flee.

Flipping up her coat collar, she turned her back on the soaring flames. She drove her leaden legs toward Harborside Drive and the fishing wharves. Her plan was to disappear while she still had time, while the brothel refugees were too confused to notice the flight of a sloppily dressed figure with a scarf-wrapped face. Let Cass—and everyone else in that building—think Cassandra McGuire had perished in the fire.

That way, Sadie Michelson could live to fight Baron Westerfield another day.





Chapter 3



Six Weeks Later

Rocking W Ranch

Burnett County, Texas

"Good God. Is that gun loaded?"

"Who wants to know?" Cass growled, but the question was rhetorical. About a minute before he'd heard a mincing stride crunch gravel on the drive, a morning breeze had blown the scent of licorice hair tonic through the open doors of the carriage house.

"You know very well it's Pendleton!" snapped Baron's secretary.

Cass grimaced. Pendleton Prouse was the last man he wanted to deal with while sober.

After the brothel debacle, Cass had hired out his guns to Baron and started living in the Rocking W's bunkhouse with Collie and a passel of cowboys. Needless to say, this move had reignited his feud with Pendleton—or rather, Pendleton's feud with him.

A fussy little man, who nursed lifelong grudges, Pendleton preferred bowties to bolos and spats to spurs. He rarely ventured into the sun, as his milky complexion could attest, and he shunned any activity more rigorous than climbing a ladder to reach the top shelf in the library. Perhaps because he huddled over Baron's ledgers from sunrise to sunset, or perhaps because Baron paid him better than all his cowpokes combined, Pendleton thought himself exceedingly important.

"I demand an explanation, Mr. Cassidy!"

"All right." Cass didn't bother to turn. He was too busy focusing on his task. "I'm juggling."

"I can see that!"

"Then why'd you ask?"

Wisecracks. Hair-raising risks. Death-defying feats. These were Cass's salvation. Without them, he would have lost his mind—and not just because life as a regulator, with no bushwhackers to ventilate, was insanely boring. During the quieter moments on Baron's ranch, when Cass was watching the cattle graze or listening to a harmonica croon, memories of the brothel fire would inevitably creep in.