Lawman (2 page)

Historical Romances
The Honor-Bound Gambler
(2012)
Weddings
Under a Western Sky (2012)
(anthology w/Elizabeth Lane
and Kate Welsh)
The Bride Raffle
(2011)
Wanton
in the West (2011)
Mail-Order
Groom (2010)
Hallowe'en Husbands
(2008)
(anthology w/Denise Lynn and Christine
Merrill)
The Rascal
(2006)
The
Scoundrel (2006)
The
Matchmaker (2003)
The Drifter
(2002)
Lawman
(1999)
Outlaw
(1999)

Paranormal
Romance
My Favorite Witch
(2009)

Time-Travel
Romances
Timeless Winter
(1999)
(anthology w/Sandra Davidson and Kathryn
Hockett)
Timeless Spring
(1999)
(anthology w/Sandra Davidson and Cynthia
Thomason)

LAWMAN

by

Lisa Plumley

Chapter One

September 1882

Near Tucson, Arizona Territory

If she could just get her corset stays
pulled tightly enough, Megan Kearney figured she had an awfully
good chance of achieving her dreams.

They were pretty big dreams, she'd be the
first to admit. But a girl raised in the lonely, sprawling
territory of Arizona, with cactus wrens for playmates, a summertime
cot beneath the stars for a cradle, and the hum of cicadas for a
lullaby had to have something sweet to look forward to. For Megan,
it was the chance to own her own dressmaker's shop in town. The
chance to create beauty out of calico and lace and imagination. The
chance to finally be safe and secure in a world of her own
making.

After years of planning and saving, her
opportunity had arrived—if she could only get into her best Sunday
dress and get out there to meet it.

"Drat those
bizcochitos
of yours,
Addie," she muttered, putting her hands to her waist. She stepped
closer to the cast-off stagecoach strongbox she used as her
bedroom's bureau and frowned into the looking glass propped atop
it. "How am I supposed to make that dress fit now?"

Addie's gaze met hers in the mirror. "Don't
ask me. I ain't the one who crammed all those goodies in your
mouth."

"I couldn't help it. I was worried about
this meeting." Sighing, Megan made herself stand up straighter.
"Besides, you're the one who made the cookies. That's practically
the same thing. They were so good, I was fairly compelled to eat
them."

"That's a fine piece of logic." Grinning,
Addie wrapped Megan's corset laces more securely around her
capable, sturdy hands. "Why don't you try that on Mr. Webster, and
see what he says about selling you his shop?"

"Don't be silly. It was difficult enough
convincing him to deed me the alleyway rights and living space that
go along with his mercantile. I hardly intend to discuss
bizcochitos
with a person like that."

"You go on talking that way, and you'll
scare him off selling you the store altogether," Addie warned. "How
many times have I got to tell you? Men don't like ladies who talk
like a book."

Megan sighed. "I suppose you're right. A
pretty dress probably is the best strategy."

"Ain't no supposin' about it. You listen to
me, and I'll steer you right." Nodding, Addie took up the slack in
the corset laces. "Now suck in your breath and quit your yappin',
else you'll be walking into that fancy meetin' of yours wearing
that old calico over there."

Megan eyed the faded pink dress draped
tiredly over the coverlet on her bed. It looked worse than a
station hand's britches after a day of drinking and carousing at
the bullfights in the
presidio
. She'd never impress Mr.
Jedediah Webster and his wife if she were wearing that old thing.
She put a hand to her belly and breathed in as hard as she
could.

"How's this?" she croaked, trying to peer
over her shoulder. All she could see was Addie's gray-haired head,
but judging by the way her curls waggled, she was getting ready for
a vigorous tug.

"Perfect."
Yank
.

The rest of Megan's breath left her in a
whoosh. Oh, well—the meeting would probably be a short one, anyway.
Breathing deeply was only necessary if a body was asleep or getting
ready to holler about something. She stuck both hands onto the
cool, prickly adobe wall beside the looking glass and got ready for
the next pull.

Yank
. "Ouch!"

Why had she ever eaten all those
bizcochitos
? And whatever had possessed her to sew her new
dress with an inch smaller waistline?

Vanity
, she admitted to herself.
Plain and simple
. She wanted to impress the eastern-born,
city-bred Websters with her seamstress' ability and sense of style.
She knew they saw her as a desert country bumpkin—one whose nest
egg of savings they were happy to take in exchange for their
mercantile building, but a bumpkin, nonetheless. Everybody of
consequence in town felt the same.

But not for long
, Megan vowed as
Addie tied up her stays and helped her button up her corset cover.
She got on the rest of her underthings, then carefully lifted her
new brown worsted gown from the bed. High-necked and shaped with
room for an elaborate bustle, it was trimmed with black braid and
jet buttons in the height of fashion.

Megan smoothed her cheek along the expensive
fabric, smiling at the notion of having her own shop filled with
similar fancy dresses, each one her own personal creation. Ladies
would come from miles to own a dress like the ones she designed. A
Megan Kearney original. After her dreams came true, she'd be as
sophisticated as any easterner, and twice as successful.

She would've bet her entire nest egg savings
on it, and planned to...just as soon as the Websters arrived.

He'd tracked criminals to sorrier, more
decrepit places—but Gabriel Winter had never tailed one to anyplace
more flat-out unusual than Kearney Station.

From his ridge-top vantage point behind a
stand of September-dried creosote bushes, he raised his spyglass
and looked over the station again. Amidst the scrub brush and cacti
and mud that made up the central station yard, its flat-roofed,
whitewashed adobe buildings clustered around each other for
protection. A thorny
ocotillo
-rib fence wound between them,
tall as the station hands working the grounds.

None were armed. To the left, one heavyset
man led a pair of sorrel mares from the stables, and other hands
carried equipment to and from a storage area nearby. Their voices
carried to Gabriel's hiding place, borne on the same wind that
carried the tang of mesquite wood smoke across
arroyo
and
flatland.

None of that was unusual. But the lengths of
jade green, blue, and yellow fabric woven decoratively between the
fence ribs like ladies' hair ribbons were. The borders of flowers
painted above the doorways were. So were the potted cacti arranged
along the archways of the Spanish-style
zaguán
that
connected the main stage station with the outbuilding behind
it.

Most of all, so were the pennants. From
holders beside the rough planked doorways, the bright-colored flags
snapped in the sunrise breeze, surprising as jewels on a mule.

Definitely a woman's touch.

Gabriel lowered his spyglass and slid it
shut, smiling in spite of himself. Beauty was hard to come by in
the Territory—hard to come by in life. It had been too long since
he'd admired anything for its form, instead of its substance.
Instead of the facts it hid or revealed.

The pursuit of truth could do that to a man,
he figured. Especially a man who lived in the world of hunter and
hunted, lost and found. For a minute, those painted flowers and
flourishes held his imagination like nothing had in longer than he
could remember.

Then Tom McMarlin crawled up beside him from
the other end of the ridge, and Gabriel's mind snapped back to the
task at hand.

Tracking his quarry.

"Doesn't look too damned prosperous, does
it?" McMarlin muttered, parting a portion of the creosote barrier
to squint toward the station. "If old man Kearney really did nab
that loot, I'd say he's already pulled foot from here and hied out
for greener pastures."

"Maybe." Gabriel rolled onto his back and
slugged some water from his canteen. He wished it was coffee.
Almost a week spent reading reconnaissance reports on the train
between Chicago and Tucson had prepared him for the case—but not
for the dew-damp, cold, rocky soil he'd spent sunrise on. Beneath
his traveling clothes, he felt chilled to the bone.

Frowning, he wiped his mouth and screwed on
the canteen cap. "But as usual, McMarlin, you're only seeing the
outside."

"What the hell else am I supposed to see?
We're
on
the blasted outside." He scratched a match into
flame and lit a cheroot, blowing a plume of smoke toward the
station. "And that place looks one step away from dilapidation,
geegaws or no."

"It's old. Not falling apart." Gabriel
handed over the spyglass. "See how the whitewash looks thicker in
spots? It's been redone, year after year. The roofs look solid. The
grounds are cleared so the stage gets through faster—it doesn't
stay that way without work."

McMarlin grunted and snapped the glass shut.
"So? It ain't like their stables don't stink."

"Actually, they don't. Not like they would
without so many hands keeping things mucked out. And all those men
aren't working for free."

"No, they're working for a crook."

"Alleged crook."

"Alleged, my ass, you damned stickler,"
McMarlin said, grinning around a mouthful of cigar. "You think
Joseph Kearney is as guilty as I do, or you wouldn't be here."

Gabriel grinned back at him. After years of
working Pinkerton cases together, Tom McMarlin was like an older
brother to him—and knew him about as well.

"Maybe. Point is, this place is more
prosperous than it looks. More prosperous than you thought at first
sight." He sat up and stuffed his canteen and spyglass into his
worn saddlebag. Then he passed his hand over his face and looked at
McMarlin again. "You're not looking deep enough on this case—or I
wouldn't
have
to be here."

McMarlin grimaced, grinding his cheroot into
the rocks. He left the stub where it lay. "Is that what Pinkerton
told you?"

"It's what I know."

A simple stagecoach robbery like this one
should have been solved within days. McMarlin should've already had
wanted posters up and a solid mark on his suspect's trail. Hell, he
should've had the damned knuck in custody already. Instead, Gabriel
suspected he'd spent half his assignment time whoring in Tucson and
the rest of it with a bottle of whiskey in hand.

McMarlin belly crawled back down the ridge
side opposite the stage station. "You don't know your head from a
horse's behind. No matter what old man Pinkerton thinks."

Gabriel almost smiled. Truth be told, part
of him wanted to shuck the damned 'no-fail' reputation Allan
Pinkerton had bestowed on him after his first few successful cases.
Winter brings in the right man at the right time
. What
started as praise had become an obligation, one harder to uphold
for the thirty-two year old man he'd become than the cocky, twenty
year old kid who'd earned it.

"You just keep dogging my steps, McMarlin."
Grinning, he snatched up the discarded cigar stub—evidence they
didn't need to leave behind of their presence there—and then
followed his partner belly first down the slope. "Maybe someday
you'll get a legend of your own."

McMarlin snorted, bending to brush the dust
from his fancy suit pants. Then he straightened and adjusted his
tie. "I already got me a legend, with them painted ladies down on
Maiden Lane. That's all the reputation I want, boy-o."

"Keep on like you are, then," Gabriel said,
hefting his saddle bag over his shoulder for the trek to the
arroyo
bank where he'd picketed his horse. He scanned the
ridge one last time to make sure their presence there wouldn't be
detected later. "That's the only reputation you'll have."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Damn
. "Nothing."

He turned toward the valley behind them,
where a hazy strip of green showed the location of the
arroyo
, and started walking. McMarlin's hand stopped him
within two steps.

"S'there something I ought to know,
boy-o?"

Gabriel looked at him, seeing for the first
time in a long time the differences between them. McMarlin was
getting on in years. Gray lightened his sandy, close-clipped hair
and beard, and the paunch beneath his expensive suit only showed
how little field work he did these days. Typically, he'd dressed
like a banker, armed himself like an outlaw...and gotten so
comfortable in his place with the agency, he'd forgotten it could
all vanish in an instant.

William Pinkerton, head agent in Chicago,
was close as kicking to giving McMarlin some enforced time off. The
letter proving it was in Gabriel's saddlebag, wrapped in oilcloth
along with the rest of the papers documenting the road agent they'd
been hired to bring in. Officially, McMarlin was free to leave, and
Gabriel was the head man on the case.

But standing beneath an Arizona Territory
sun with the man who'd taught him all he knew about bringing in
Pinkerton's most-wanted, the last thing he wanted to do was tell
him that.

"Dammit, McMarlin, I can't stand here jawing
all morning," Gabriel said instead. "It's a half hour past sunup
already."

"You still figuring on finding Kearney at
the station?"