To distract himself from his latest bout of guilt, he'd started juggling an apple, a tequila bottle, and a .45. But he knew this reckless entertainment wouldn't spare him for long. He couldn't forget how he'd failed Sadie when she'd desperately needed someone to brave the inferno and carry her to safety. Self-loathing was like a burning blade, twisting in his gut.
Baron, Randie, and Collie had all assured him that running inside the Satin Siren would have been a suicide mission. But how was he supposed to live with himself? He'd let Tito knock him on his ass. He'd let Sadie die.
For days, Cass had camped out in the brothel's ruins. He'd worked as a volunteer beside the investigators, frantically combing the wreckage for some trace of Sadie's corpse, sweating out his terror that he might actually find it. After a week of fruitless searching, the Fire Marshal had pronounced Sadie missing and presumed dead. At that point, Cass had seriously considered killing someone. But who?
Dietrich?
Tito?
The Fire Marshal?
Who was responsible for Sadie's death?
"Mister Cassidy!"
Cass struggled with his latent rage. He kept tossing the .45 into the air.
"Yeah, Mr. Prouse?"
Pendleton made one of his fussy, clucking noises. "That is quite enough of your hooliganism."
"Naw." Cass pasted on a smile. Even Pendleton didn't deserve to tangle with the demon lurking inside him today. "I'm just getting started."
Collie snickered somewhere near the tack room. Cass could hear the boy buckling a harness onto Mrs. Westerfield's mare so the lady could drive to her Suffragette meeting. Pendleton was scheduled to accompany her, which was fitting, since tea-sipping would be part of the program. In the eight years that Cass had known Baron's secretary and sparred with him over inconsequential improprieties, like eating cheese slices from a knife, Cass had never seen Pendleton drink anything harder than jamoka.
"Save your sass for the good citizens of the jury," Pendleton blustered. "Assuming you don't shoot your brains out before Baron can get you exonerated for killing that Ku Klux Klansman."
"You been listening at doors again, Pendleton?"
"How dare you!"
"Now don't get all red and blotchy and bloat up like a puffer fish," Cass drawled. "Everyone knows you peek through keyholes."
"I most certainly do not you... you troglodyte!"
"What's a troglodyte?" Collie called.
"Beats me," Cass said cheerfully.
"I'm not surprised." Pendleton sniffed. "If it isn't a whiskey label, you haven't read it. Now holster that gun before you blow off somebody's head!"
"Quit being such a fuddy-duddy," Collie said. "The gun isn't even loaded. Right, Cass?"
"Reckon there's only one way to find out."
With the speed of a striking rattler, Cass snatched the .45 from the air, drilled a bullet through a knothole, spun the gun over his finger and holstered it. By comparison, the apple and bottle dropped like molasses into his hands.
"Nope." He took a bite of fruit. "No more beans in the wheel."
Pendleton was sputtering, his cheeks florid, his chest heaving. "Mr. Cassidy, you have an intellect rivaled only by doorknobs!"
Turning on his heel, Pendleton grabbed the mare's reins from Collie, booted Vandy out of the driver's seat, and "geed" the horse into the yard. Cass chuckled, watching the carriage round the corner of the Big House.
"What's the matter with you?" Collie growled, stomping across the straw like a rooster ready for a cock fight. "Pendleton was right! You could have blown off somebody's head!"
Cass took another bite of apple to swallow a fresh wave of guilt. "I was practicing a new trick shot. What's the big deal?"
"Me and Vandy don't have a hankering to meet the devil, that's what!"
Cass snorted. "As I recall, I had to wrestle a seven-foot gator to save your varmint from becoming a gulp and a memory."
"Oh, so now it's Vandy's fault Sadie's dead?"
"What does Sadie have to do with anything?"
"Everything, you lying sack of cow turds. 'Cause when you jumped into the bayou that day, and leaped onto that runaway stage coach a week later, and turned a cattle stampede all by your lonesome yesterday evening, you weren't doing it to save anybody's life. You were doing it to throw away your own!"
Cass scowled. Collie's insight was unsettling. It held a ring of truth.
"What would you know?"
"I know plenty!" Collie retorted. "You yak my ear off day and night. So if you don't quit bawling like a lost dogie and find yourself another redhead to fire up your pecker, I'm gonna wire Sera and tell her to sic the Thunderbolt Angels on your ass!"
Amusement vied with Cass's irritation. Sera, who'd been named after the Seraphim, had a warm personal relationship with angels. It came in handy when she was cussing out her exploded jars of blackberry preserves or sneaking out her bedroom window to rendezvous with Lynx. Sera was a preacher's daughter, but she'd married the Cherokee half-breed in a secret Indian ceremony in the woods long before her folks could host the official one in a church. Cass was expecting to hear any day now he was a godfather.
"You made up those Thunderbolt Angels."
"Did not." Collie hiked his chin.
"Now who's the lyin' sack of cow turds?"
Cass tossed his half-eaten apple to Vandy. The coon gleefully chased it into the sunshine, until a callous black boot crushed it under his snout.
"Hey!" Collie cried as Tito thumped into the carriage house on oversized feet. "Watch where you're walking!"
"Coons ain't got no business here."
"Says who? At least Vandy was born in this country!"
Tito dismissed the threat of Collie's fist with a baleful blink of his one good eye. But then, Collie weighed 20 pounds less than Cass, and the pirate had already proved he could deck a gunslinger.
Thanks to Tito's red kerchief, which peeked out from his Stetson, and the gold ring in his earlobe, which winked amidst wisps of coal-black hair, he didn't look anything like a cowpoke. Outfitting the whale-sized, Italian sailor with a horse had proven an amusing challenge for Baron's trail boss, partly because of Tito's size, and partly because Tito knew as much about prodding cattle as Cass knew about netting tuna.
But then, Baron hadn't hired Tito for his cutting and roping skills.
"Baron wants you," Tito said with a grunt. Most of Tito's conversations were a series of grunts. "Now."
Cass bit his tongue, damming a flood of trash talk. He was still sore about Tito flattening him in front of Baron and the rest of The Line. Cass didn't share Baron's optimism that Tito's size and demeanor would scare off assassins. As far as Cass was concerned, Tito's bulk made him a bigger bullseye for any man who could handle a gun.
"What's Baron want with us?" Collie demanded.
"Not you," Tito said with his trademark sneer. "Cassidy."
Collie bristled. "Baron hired me as his regulator too!"
"This ain't regulator business."
"So what business is it?"
"It's none-of-your-business business."
"Yeah? Well, I'll ask Baron myself."
"He don't want you. Take a hike, Squirt."
"You're not the boss of me!"
Cass intervened, grabbing the kid's arm before Collie's tongue could dig his grave. "You sure you don't have a hankering to meet the devil? Go split some logs until you cool off."
Collie's chest heaved. He knew as well as Cass did that Tito could pulverize him. Maybe that's why the boy finally muzzled his mouth. Snapping his fingers at Vandy, he stomped off with his coon, ignoring the wood pile as he stalked past.