All I Need Is You (8 page)

C
asey spent the rest of that day castigating herself for succumbing to temptation. She never should have agreed to “stick” herself with Damian Rutledge again. Finding this killer for him was one thing, but taking him along to do it…she knew better. She’d already dealt with the difficulties of having him around.

Half the time, he made her feel like a mother with a young child, needing to do everything for him because he couldn’t do for himself. But then she’d look at him and not feel that way at all. He jumbled her emotions too much. He made her feel things she wasn’t used to. Hell, even after she’d thought she’d seen the last of him, she had still been thinking about him way too much.

But ten thousand dollars for one job—there was just no way she could turn that down, when she could then go home as soon as the job was done. The money offered for a wanted man usually correlated to his dangerousness, but in this case she didn’t think so. The killer was an East
erner, after all, so how dangerous could he be?

It would be an easy job, too easy for the kind of money being offered. But it didn’t make her no nevermind if Damian wanted to throw away good money. She would just have to deal with the negative aspects of it, though…which began the very next day.

Casey showed up at the train depot at the time Damian’s message to her that morning had stated. He was easy to find. Dressed in his fine suit, wearing a silly-looking hat that wouldn’t do a bit of good to keep the sun off his face, he stood out like a sore thumb.

He was carrying a rifle case along with his travel bag. She really hoped there wasn’t a weapon in it, because if he intended to do any shooting, she imagined she’d have to tend to shot-off toes.

“You’re late,” he said by way of greeting as soon as she came up beside him.

“I’m right on time,” she disagreed.

He didn’t argue the point. Instead, he walked off toward the train that was already boarding, expecting her to follow. She didn’t.

Casey took one look at it and called out, “I don’t see a stock car on this train.”

He stopped, turning around to raise a brow at her. “A stock car?”

She gave him a pointed look. “You think I’m leaving my horse behind, tenderfoot?”

His flush of embarrassment was immediate. Obviously he hadn’t considered her horse in his travel arrangements, but then, a man who’d never been on one until a few days ago
wouldn’t. And now they’d have to wait for another train, one that transported animals as well as passengers, which could be later that day—or even next week.

Damian said, “I’ll be right back,” and he was back after only a few minutes to tell her, “They’re going to add a stock car.”

Casey almost chuckled, but settled for a grin. “That must have cost you a pretty penny.”

His nod was curt. He was still embarrassed. And the train was delayed in leaving while the extra car was hooked up to it. It had probably cost Damian even more than she figured. Train engineers prided themselves on keeping to their time schedules, after all.

But they finally did get settled, in one of the plushiest cars Casey had ever ridden in. Damian had lucked out there; this particular train had one of those fancy Eastern Pullman luxury cars attached to it, or so she thought. When no other passengers entered it, though, she found out that he’d arranged to have it delivered from one of the northern stations for his exclusive use.

He’d agreed to pay an exorbitant fifty dollars a day to rent it. But having already experienced the emigrant train cars with their hard, uncomfortable seats, he told her that he counted that a small price to pay for his comfort, especially since they still had Oklahoma Territory to pass through, as well as northern Texas.

Casey couldn’t complain. She was in complete agreement with Damian about the fact that the few trains she had ridden on in the past six months hadn’t been at all pleasant. Having been raised on a ranch, she actually preferred the out
doors and a good seat on a horse, but if she had to ride the rails, one of George Pullman’s deluxe parlor cars was definitely the next best way to travel.

“I should have thought of this when I left New York,” Damian told her. “My father owned one of these cars, which we used to travel in when business took us out of the city. It had nearly all the comforts of home, even including a large bedroom. I’m sorry to say it never occurred to me to use it to travel West in.”

“What, no beds in this one?” Casey asked him, tongue in cheek.

He missed the sarcasm. “No, but the seats look comfortable enough to sleep in if the train doesn’t stop over in a town for the night. Not all of them do, and those hard benches at the out-of-town depot stops allow about as much sleep as the cold ground does.”

“Would depend on whether you like sleeping on the ground or not, wouldn’t it?”

That remark had him slanting his eyes at her. “I suppose you do?”

Casey sank down in the thick, overstuffed, velvet-upholstered chair, her hands hooked over her belly, and just smiled. That seemed to annoy Damian no end, to go by the look of disgust he gave her. So she added a shrug.

“I was raised on a ranch, Damian. I’ve spent many a night out on a roundup, sleeping next to a campfire.”

Also, some of her fondest memories were from those times she had spent in the wilds with her father and brothers, when he was teaching them all the things he felt they should know. But
she wasn’t going to mention that, since she’d told Damian she was an orphan.

Being nameless, as she’d claimed to be, sort of took it for granted that you weren’t raised by loving parents. But her real name was
not
something she was going to pass around, even after all this time, not when her father was likely still out there looking for her.

“So you know ranching as well as bounty hunting?” Damian asked her casually.

“I know ranching inside and out.”

“You say that like it’s something you enjoyed doing. So why did you switch to bounty hunting, which is so much more dangerous?”

“More dangerous?” Casey couldn’t help grinning. “Now that’s debatable.”

“I hardly think—”

She cut in, “Have you ever been around cattle to know, Damian? With a gunman, it’s your skill against theirs, but with cattle, it’s you against brute force. If a bull’s charging you or a stampede’s started, there’s no skill to it, you just get the hell out of the way as best you can.”

“But if you prefer that…?”

Casey shrugged. “I’ll be ranching again, just as soon as I finish doing what I have to do.”

“Which is?”

“You ask too many questions, Damian.”

Damian grinned this time. “Not nearly as many as I could, but no matter. I just figured, since we were going to be spending a lot more time together, that we might as well get to know each other better.”

“The only thing you need to know about me is I can get the job done. Now, why don’t you
tell me about this man you want tracked down?”

It didn’t take long. The bare facts weren’t many. But Damian also recounted all the evidence that his detectives had uncovered. Everyone who knew Henry Curruthers had been shocked to learn what he’d done—his elderly aunt, his co-workers, his neighbors. No one could believe that he would embezzle money from the company he worked for, much less resort to murder to hide his crime.

But circumstances could change people drastically. Casey knew that. She was an example of it herself. And having two confessions, as well as Curruthers’s fleeing West without telling anyone that he was leaving the city, not to mention the clear indication in the accounts, which only
he
kept, that the money had been stolen, were damning pieces of evidence.

“He’ll be easy enough to find with a description like his,” Casey remarked after Damian had finished speaking, though she added, “But I’d like to hear his side of it before I turn him over to the law.”

Damian frowned. “After everything I’ve told you, you can’t think that he might be innocent.”

“No, it doesn’t sound like he is. But he’s not the typical sort that I hunt either. The outlaws I hunt all have one thing in common—witnesses to their crimes. If I have to kill one of them, I won’t feel too bad about it, being assured of their guilt beforehand.”

“You’ve said that was never the case, that you haven’t had to kill any of them.”

“True, but it could happen, and actual wit
nesses pretty much make it a closed case, a trial after capture just a matter for the court records. I’ve only come across one exception to that, with only one witness claiming this fella by the name of Horace Johnson had shot the man’s brother in cold blood. The witness was a known member of the town. Johnson wasn’t, having only just moved there, so a Dead or Alive poster went out on Johnson. But after I talked to his mother and one of his friends I tracked down, it started sounding like the witness was the culprit. And sure enough, after I confronted him, his guilt had eaten at him long enough that he broke down and confessed to being the one who’d killed his brother.”

“Amazing,” Damian said. “You actually saved an innocent man from getting gunned down and likely killed by a less scrupulous bounty hunter. I didn’t realize you were so thorough in what you do.”

Casey blushed, which annoyed her no end. She hadn’t been trying to impress him, she’d merely been trying to make her point.

She said so. “I was only explaining why I’d like to hear Curruthers’s side of it first.”

“But there are witnesses, the two men he hired—”

“Paid killers aren’t witnesses in my book, Damian, they are accomplices. And killers aren’t known for being scrupulously honest. For all you know, those two men could have held a grudge against Curruthers for some unknown reason and, being caught themselves, figured they’d get some payback out of it by naming
him as the one behind the killing. He could have run for that very reason.”

“There is still the embezzled money.”

“Yes, there is that. But what will it hurt to question the man when we find him?”

“Suit yourself—as long as we find him.”

I
t should have been an uneventful trip to Fort Worth, but Casey and Damian were both of the opinion, for different reasons, that luck had plain and simply deserted them. As it happened, they were still a few hours away from the Texas border when their train nearly derailed. But the engineer managed to stop just short of the missing tracks. The suddenness of the stop, however, threw a lot of passengers in the forward cars out of their seats.

Casey, ensconced in one of the big, thickly padded chairs in the parlor car, was merely jarred. She glanced at Damian to make sure he was all right, then moved to stick her head out of one of the windows. She couldn’t see the missing tracks, but the masked riders coming out of a clump of trees and heading for the train with weapons drawn were definitely noticeable.

She sat back down, adjusted her poncho, and told Damian, “Relax, it’s just a train robbery.”

His eyes flared. “
Another
robbery? You’re joking, right? Tell me you’re joking. The odds on being robbed again this soon—”

“Were pretty high,” Casey interrupted, “Considering the territory we’re passing through.”

“And what, pray tell, has that to do with it?” he asked huffily.

“This area has always been tempting to outlaws, Damian. Half of it became a Territory just a few years ago, when the Cherokee Strip was bought from the Indians for white settlement. This half we’ve been traveling through still belongs to the Indians.”

“Indian Territory? You couldn’t have mentioned that previously?”

“Why? They’re tame Indians. But before ’90, the entire area was beyond white jurisdiction, and the Indians that the government had moved here years ago pretty much minded their own business, as long as the outlaws left them alone. Hell, the panhandle isn’t too far from here, and it wasn’t known as No Man’s Land for nothing.”

“No Man’s Land?”

“It was an outlaws’ haven, since neither the whites nor the Indians had any jurisdiction, it being completely unclaimed land. And they’ve still got their hideouts in that area as well as in the rest of the area. Just because the three land rushes that the government sponsored here in the last couple years moved in a slew of new settlers didn’t mean the outlaws were going to move out.”

“And you couldn’t have mentioned
that
previously?” he demanded.

Casey shrugged, then grinned. “Was hoping I wouldn’t have to. After all, despite what you’re probably thinking right now, train robberies do
not
occur daily.”

“The statistics that seem to be following me on this journey dispute that claim,” Damian said as he moved toward his rifle case stored in the corner of the car.

Casey frowned at him. “And just what do you think you’re going to do with that?”

He gave her a determined glance. “See to it that I keep my money this time.”

“Get yourself killed is more like it,” Casey grumbled in answer.

“I’m inclined to agree with that,” the man stepping in through the door muttered beneath his bandana, having overheard Casey’s prediction. “So sit yourself down, mister, and you might live through this.”

Damian halted his movement, but he didn’t back off or sit down. He looked angry. Of course he was, but to show it was plain foolish, considering that the stage robber who had joined them looked damn nervous—and young. He didn’t appear much older than Casey. A good guess was this was probably the young man’s first holdup.

“The big fella there isn’t going to attack you, so don’t do anything stupid,” Casey said.

She was looking at the robber, but the words had been more for Damian’s benefit. And the remark didn’t ease the robber’s nervousness any. His gun was visibly shaking, his eyes darting warily back and forth between her and Damian.

But he gathered up enough bravado to order, “Just toss your money over here and I’ll be on my way.”

“You might want to consider leaving without
the money,” Casey suggested calmly.

“Why?”

“It will be less bloody that way.”

Casey wasn’t a bit surprised that his eyes flew back to Damian. The big Easterner appeared to be the greater threat. But being dismissed as harmless didn’t annoy her this time, since it allowed her to draw her weapon without the robber even noticing.

And because this was the second time someone had tried to rob her in a matter of days, she didn’t shoot just to disarm. She hit the man’s gun hand squarely to damage it enough that he wouldn’t be using it again for robberies, at least not with any proficiency.

The weapon fell with a soft thud on the carpeted floor; blood splattered all around it. His scream was plaintive though brief, but the groaning that followed continued unabated. And his eyes above the bandana were boggled with pain and terror. However, he didn’t move, not with Casey’s gun still trained on him, other than to grasp the wrist of his mutilated hand, holding both hard to his chest.

Casey sighed inwardly. Stupid people always ignored good advice.

Aloud, she snapped, “Get!” He did, immediately. But she yelled after him as he ran out the door, “And find yourself another line of work, cowboy. This one’s going to get you killed in a big hurry.”

He probably didn’t hear her, he was running so fast. Casey moved back to the window, but only to make sure he headed for his horse and took off, rather than gather his cohorts for a little
retaliation. She was glad to see he was already hightailing it back toward that clump of trees. And after a few more minutes, the other robbers were spilling out of the train to do likewise. Whether they’d heard the shot and panicked, or been quick to collect their loot, only the other passengers would know at this point.

And then Casey nearly jumped out of her skin when the rifle went off next to her. She glared at Damian, but only because of the scare he’d just given her.

“Let them go.”

He glared right back at her. “Like hell—”

She cut in. “They’re just a bunch of young, out-of-work cowboys.”

“They’re train robbers, plain and simple,” he said, firing off another shot. “And let me add, while I’m at it, I am twenty-seven years old, if you hadn’t noticed. Having a child protect me is ludicrous, so don’t do it again.”

“Excuse me?” Casey said stiffly.

“You heard me. I can damn well take care of myself. So from now on, let me make my own decisions, if you don’t mind, about how to deal with these unpleasant situations.”

Casey shrugged and sat down in her seat. Protect himself indeed. Now
that
she would like to see. As for him firing off that new rifle of his, he wasn’t going to hit anything he was shooting at anyway, so it didn’t make her no nevermind if he wanted to waste good ammunition. She was surprised to see he was even holding the weapon correctly to fire it. At least she wouldn’t be tending any dislocated shoulders from wrong handling.

After four more successive shots, he turned to her, apparently finished, but not quite done with his complaints. “You had one of them captured. Since when do you advocate letting outlaws go on their merry way?”

“Since I got hired to find one particular killer. Or didn’t it occur to you how much time would be wasted taking them fellas in?”

“Killing them wouldn’t have taken any time at all, and is no more than they deserve.”

Casey wasn’t surprised to hear an Easterner say that, which was why she snorted before remarking, “Then be glad you can’t hit the side of a barn, tenderfoot, because you’re angry enough to say that now, but your conscience would be giving you hell for it later on.”

He glanced back out the window for a moment. Then he smirked in satisfaction.

Casey shot to her feet to see for herself if he’d actually hit something. But by then the train robbers were mere dots on the horizon, and no dead bodies were littering the ground out there.

She gritted her teeth, figuring he’d just had a go at pulling her leg. Still, she wasn’t going to add to his satisfaction by remarking on it.

So instead she told him, “I’m going to go see if it’s rail damage that stopped us and how bad it is,” then headed for the door.

But his next question halted her momentarily. “What made you think they were just cowboys?”

“The chaps they were wearing. Wranglers get used to wearing them after working the range long enough. And that fella’s nervousness. It was pretty obvious he’d never done anything
like this before, was either desperate or, more likely, got talked into it when he was drunk.”

“That’s a lot of presuming, Casey,” Damian scoffed.

She shrugged. “I’m not always right.” Then she grinned. “But it’s rare when I’m not.”

She left the car. He followed and kept up, despite Casey’s long strides that had him walking much faster than he was used to.

“Are you
always
in such a hurry?” he asked her along the way.

She glanced sideways at him before saying thoughtfully, “Never thought of it, but I guess I am. Suppose it comes from being in a hurry to grow up.”

“If you ever reach that point, let me know.”

“My, aren’t you chock-full of sarcasm today. Remind me to keep you out of any more holdups. They purely don’t agree with your disposition.”

It was his turn to snort, but she didn’t give him an opportunity to say anything else that might annoy her. She just strode on a little faster. And then they reached the front of the train, where most of the passengers were gathered. They were in time to hear the conductor announce that they would be returning to the last town they’d passed through, there to wait until a crew could be sent out to repair the tracks. Damian looked like he was about to explode over this new delay.

Casey tried defusing his anger by asking him, “You want to stay with the train or ride on to the next town on the train route and catch an
other? Would mean doubling up again.”

She almost kicked him when he leaned forward to sniff her before answering, “Let’s ride on.”