Love’s Sweet Revenge(78)

The look in Jake’s eyes terrified Arlis so badly that she suddenly fainted. Harley caught her as she went down amid more gasps.

“You’ll pay for this, Harkner!” Harley told him as he laid his sister out on the floor. “What you did to that man over there was nothing short of an execution!” He rose, facing Jake with a cocky look on his face.

Jake walked closer, pressing the gun against Harley’s cheek as more people gasped and a couple of women screamed. “He shot my son! Lloyd wasn’t wearing a gun. And Holt was prepared to fire again! Was I supposed to stand and watch him murder my son?”

“You illegally carried a gun to this event, and you used it to deliberately blow a man’s brains out when you already had him down!” Harley answered weakly, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“Get one thing straight, Wicks,” Jake sneered. “I am never without a gun! And when I think it’s right to use it, I’ll use it!” He shoved the man backward, using the barrel of his gun still pressed to Harley’s cheek. Wicks stumbled and fell on his rump. “Now,” Jake told him, “I’m going up to Lloyd, and you’d better pray he doesn’t die, because if he does, you’ll see a side of me that hasn’t shown itself in thirty years, except when Mike Holt and about eighteen other men kidnapped my daughter back in Oklahoma! A lot of men died the day I found her, and I’ll kill again if anyone comes to that room to try to take me out of there! Got that?”

Wicks nervously rubbed at a sore cheek. “I’ll leave you alone…for now. But I may well arrest you for taking the law into your own hands…again.”

Jake coldly stared him down, then turned and walked out of the room to find his son.

Randy stood at the balcony outside Lloyd’s room. The doors to the ballroom below were open, and she’d heard every word Jake had said. She knew he meant them. She watched him storm across the lobby and head up the stairs, his .44 still in his hand. When he reached Lloyd’s room, he looked at Randy, and at that moment, she didn’t know him. He stood there with blood staining the front of his shirt as it flowed down his chest from the shoulder wound, but he didn’t seem to care. Randy realized he was too angry and devastated to even notice the pain.

“Come into the room with me,” he said gruffly, “and lock the door behind you.” He turned away and went into Lloyd’s room. Randy followed, not sure whom to mourn the most: her son…or her husband.

* * *

Jeff Trubridge looked over the top of his spectacles to see his secretary standing in front of him, holding a piece of paper. Jeff recognized the yellow note as a wire.

“I think you need to see this,” the young man told him.

Frowning, Jeff took the wire and read it.

Lloyd Harkner shot in cold blood at a cattlemen’s ball in Denver. Might not live. Jake Harkner took down the shooter, Mike Holt, with a shot point blank to the forehead. In spite of warrants for his arrest, Harkner is holed up in a hotel room with his son and doctors.

It was signed by Liam Davis, a fellow reporter for a Denver newspaper called The Evening Post.

“Oh my God,” Jeff exclaimed softly. “Not Lloyd! Not Lloyd!” A lump rose in his throat, and he fought tears.

“A picture came through also,” his secretary told him. He handed Jeff a picture of Jake holding a gun on someone. “That’s a Denver prosecutor,” the man explained. “They say Jake is holed up in Lloyd’s room at the Brown Palace and is threatening to shoot anyone who tries to come and arrest him.”

Jeff closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Get me Attorney Peter Brown on the phone, will you?” he finally asked. “I think we need to go to Denver.” He paused, his shoulders jerking in a sob. “Jake is going to need some legal help, and I want to be there if”—his voice caught in his throat—“if his son dies.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man answered.

This is going to kill Jake, Jeff thought. He’ll never survive if Lloyd dies. He couldn’t help the sudden tears. He’d never admired a man more than he admired Jake Harkner. Lloyd, too. And Randy. Poor Randy!

Memories flooded over him like a waterfall. He’d never seen a father and son who were closer than Jake and Lloyd Harkner. He didn’t need to wonder what this was doing to Jake…to the whole family.

“Attorney Brown is on the phone, sir,” his secretary told him. “Over at my desk.”

Jeff was surprised at how weak his legs suddenly felt when he stood up. He had to hold on to the desk for a moment before walking over to the phone. He picked up the base in his left hand and put the horn of the phone to his ear. “Peter?”