The Last Outlaw(36)

Gretta tried to think straight. She’d been so sure her Annie would have a much better life raised in a Christian home. She grasped her stomach, pacing. “I…I don’t understand! Annie was such a good girl, so beautiful and sweet…at least from the few times I got close enough to see her.”

“She was.” Loretta blew her nose again. “Ma’am, girls change at her age. They start noticing boys, and in this case…this man was so handsome and charming. Even people in church liked him.”

Gretta met her gaze again. “I find it hard to believe your church actually accepted this man into their congregation, knowing nothing more about him.”

Loretta stepped closer. “That’s how charming Luis was, Miss MacBain.”

Gretta put a hand to her head, trying to think. “Is there any chance he was sincere? That he really will make a good life for her?”

Loretta looked away, strands of hair falling from under her small straw bonnet and from the bun at the base of her neck. “I prayed for that when he first started wooing her. But when I stood up to him one night and asked him his real intentions…” She looked at Gretta again. “Ma’am, you know men, but we women… I think we all have that instinct, you know? When we’re a little older, I mean. An instinct for that look in a man’s eyes, when they’re being honest and honorable, and when they aren’t. He looked at me in a way that actually frightened me. We were standing there in my kitchen alone, and for one quick moment I feared for my life. I can’t explain it, but—”

“I’ve seen that look!” Gretta interrupted, pacing again, her fists clenched. “Too many times!”

“I just knew…the way he looked at me…that he had bad intentions for Annie. But nothing I said to her after that would convince her. She’d become totally infatuated with Luis, and she told me I was just an old widow who was jealous she had a man in her life and I didn’t. She even accused me of wanting Luis for myself because he was older!” Loretta turned away and broke into tears again. “I’m supposed to be her mother. That’s what she believes, yet she talked so mean to me. I couldn’t believe how she’d changed. I think Luis… I think he’d been giving her something…maybe some kind of drug, and she fell for his compliments about her beauty.” She blew her nose again. “And she is beautiful, Miss MacBain, like you.”

Gretta swallowed back tears. “I’m not so beautiful anymore, Mrs. Sellers, but thank you. At thirty-one, I’m considered a used-up whore.” She noticed Loretta hold her stomach and turn away again. “I’m sorry, but those are the cold, hard facts. I’ve accepted my life, Mrs. Sellers, but I wanted so much better for Annie.”

Loretta covered her eyes. “I’ve failed you.”

“No, you haven’t. Things happen in life we can’t control, Mrs. Sellers. You didn’t expect that devil to come along when he did and move in on an opportunity to woo a foolish young girl away from everything she’d known.” She walked over and touched the woman’s shoulder. “I’m damn sorry about your husband, and about this. I’m glad you did what you did for my baby, Mrs. Sellers. You loved her like your own. And you took good care of her.” She blinked back tears. “God knows I couldn’t have raised her. No innocent little girl should grow up knowing her mother is a…prostitute. I did what I thought was best for her, and what’s happened now is no one’s fault.”

“I just don’t know what to do.” The woman’s shoulders shook. “The law wouldn’t go after her. They won’t go into Mexico. I did find a man who said he’d try to find her.”

“Who? Has he left yet?”

“I gave him a picture and paid him two hundred dollars. His name is Jesse Valencia. He speaks Mexican and he used to be a sheriff in some town in Mexico. He bills himself as someone who can help people here find anyone. There have been a lot of kidnappings.”

“So he figured, rather than get the rotten pay he gets in Mexico to go after these kidnappers, he’d come here to America and make a lot better money doing the same thing.”

Loretta nodded. “Something like that. He has an office in Denver.”

“I’m not sure I trust he’ll really try to find her.”

“He’s all the hope I have. And I’ve already paid him. All we can do now is wait and pray.”

Gretta paced again, feeling sick inside, hoping Mister Jessie Valencia wasn’t just taking money for nothing. “And what if he comes back without her—or doesn’t come back at all?”