Gideon, Robin - Desire of the Phantom [Ecstasy in the Old West] (Siren Publishing Classic) (4 page)

“This talk is all fine and good,” Dahlmann said, his tone
changing slightly to indicate a man of considerable power,
a man accustomed to giving orders and having them fol
lowed. “But it doesn’t get me what I came here for, now does it?”

Jonathon Darwell smiled. A crooked smile, Pamela thought.
“No, judge, it doesn’t. I like a man who cuts the fat and serves only the prime.”

Suddenly, Pamela could hardly believe her eyes and ears
as she watched Jonathon Darwell move over to his bed, hesitating a moment when he saw the portrait was not quite secured, then swing
aside the portrait of his deceased wife. He spun the dial
on his safe. A few seconds later he turned the handle and
opened the thick, heavy steel door.

On the couch, Andy Fields was subtly craning his neck to see into the safe without actually changing his position.
Judge Dahlmann was leaning back on the couch, his legs
nonchalantly crossed, his demeanor one of a man in com
plete control of his life and his future.

“No wonder we can’t get any justice in this territory,”
Pamela murmured.

She regretted saying anything instantly because the Midnight Phantom once again placed his hand over her
mouth. This time, however, he did not clamp his palm as
tightly over it, and for some reason, he lightly ran his
thumb over her cheek. She closed her eyes for an instant, d
amning herself for speaking, wanting to push her captor’s
hands from her body but not daring to do anything more to anger the man who now, quite literally, held her life in
his hands. As he caressed her cheek with his thumb, she was more intimately aware of his pelvis pressing against her buns and his hand against her rib, pressing lightly against the undercurve of her breast.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw Jonathon
Darwell hand the judge a small envelope he had taken from
the safe. The judge removed three paper bills from the
envelope, folded them in half, and handed them over to
the would-be politician.

“Don’t spend it all tonight at Lulu’s,” Judge Dahlmann said
sternly. “You show that much money at one time, right
after you and I have been seen together, and people might
start talking.”

“Don’t you worry about people talking, Judge,” Andy
Fields said, draining the last of the liquor in his glass.
“Anybody opens his mouth, I know just how to shut it
for him.”

“None of that,” Judge Dahlmann snapped. His gaze became
hard and unforgiving, and his jaw was thrust forward com
mandingly. This was a pose he’d used countless times to
instill fear in the hearts of those men who stood before
him in court. “Don’t draw any attention to yourself
if you want me to back you in the next election.”

Fields frowned drunkenly, looking like a spoiled child
who’d just been scolded. “Don’t worry ’bout me, Judge. I’ll go to Lulu’s and stay the night there. Won’t see any
body but my special gal.”

Judge Dahlmann nodded toward the door, and Andy rose a bit unsteadily to his feet. “Guess I’ll be moseying on,”
he decided, making his way toward the door. “I’ll see me
ownself out.”

Alone now, Judge Dahlmann and Jonathon Darwell exchanged
smiles. They were, apparently, competent, capable thieves
no longer needing to deal directly with one of the inferior,
though essential, elements of their enterprise.

“Do you trust him?” Jonathon asked.

“I don’t trust anyone. Not completely, anyway. But he’s
a good man for what we need done, and he has the gift of gab the common voters like,” the judge replied.
“Andy Fields is a fool, but he knows his place, and when
we make him territorial governor, he’ll listen to us and know who pulls his strings.”

Jonathon nodded. Pamela guessed that his thoughts about
Fields went along the lines that such men, though displeasing to be near, were nec
essary to carry out profitable deals and still keep one’s hands unstained by the blood spilled.

A moment of silence passed as the two men simply
looked at each other. There were many things that had to
be said, Pamela sensed, and though these two were willing to smile at each other, they weren’t willing to trust each other.

Finally, it was Jonathon Darwell who broke the silence. “Do we know any more than last week?” he asked.

The judge shrugged. “Nothing definite. I’ve asked my questions when I’m at the courthouse. Nothing unusual
about a judge asking questions of the marshals and sher
iffs in courts now, is there?”

“What have you learned?”

There was an edge to Jonathon Darwell’s voice that hadn’t
been there before, Pamela noted. She didn’t know him well
enough to determine whether impatience was wearing at
his nerves, whether he simply did not like the judge, or whether it was something else entirely.

“Like I said, nothing definite. If he makes a move, I’ll hear about it though, and when I do, I’ll let you know.”

“Do that,” Jonathon said, the edge to his voice this time
more pronounced, dangerous, and undisguised. “We’re in
this together.”

“I know that, Jonathon. I’ve never forgotten that.”

“Don’t forget how much of my money has gone straight
from that safe”—Jonathon nodded toward the portrait of his deceased wife—“to your pocket.”

For several seconds the judge, his gaze hard and cold, stared straight at Darwell. Pamela thought if she were in the
judge’s courtroom and he stared at her that way, she would
shiver in her boots.

“Yes, Jonathon, I’ve profited by our association but never forgot that you do not pay me out of the goodness
of your heart. You pay me because I earn my money. If it were not for me, Richard would be spending his days and
nights in a cell in Yuma instead of living here, fat and
comfortable. And if it were not for the strings I pulled on
your behalf just this spring, you wouldn’t have been al
lowed to reroute that creek near the Pellman range. When
you rerouted the water, you destroyed Pellman’s pasture,
didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. But I had no choice. I needed the water.”

“So did Pellman.” Judge Dahlmann rose to his feet, setting his nearly full glass of cognac aside. “I only say this to illustrate the fact that our association has been profitable for both of us. We’re experiencing a little trouble right now, but it is minor trouble. As soon as I get more
information, either you or I can assign men to it, and the
problem will disappear as completely as if the Midnight Phantom had never been born.”

Pamela’s breath caught in her throat as the Midnight Phantom’s arm tightened unconsciously around her. A moment
later the grip loosened, but she understood he wasn’t as fearless as she’d thought. He had a healthy respect for
the power of Jonathon Darwell.

Darwell nodded, still leaning back in his chair. It was rude
of him not to rise with the judge leaving, and Pamela suspected
this was his way of showing that
he was still the man in control, still the boss.

Moments after the judge left the room, there was a soft
knock at the door, and a dangerous-looking man in his
early twenties entered. He had a long, ugly scar
on one cheek, which he seemed to bear with pride, and he
looked like a man who enjoyed inflicting pain. Pamela trem
bled in Phantom’s arms.

At precisely that moment, from the room next to
Jonathon Darwell’s, a young woman’s high-pitched laughter
cut through the night air. A moment later, Pamela could see
from their position on the balcony that a lamp had been lit in that room, and the sounds of laughter soon became
more pronounced.

“Get down,” Phantom hissed in Pamela’s ear. “Get down on
your knees.”

She was relieved when he took his hand from her
mouth, but the relief was short-lived. In the next moment
he pulled her down and removed her trusted Colt from
the holster at her right hip.

Hearing the soft, distinct metallic sound of the Colt’s
hammer being thumbed back to firing position, she
thought frantically, I
never should have expected I could
get away with this!

Chapter Three

Cursing silently, Garrett got down on his knees, keeping the young blonde woman close to him. He tossed his black
cape around her to conceal their position as Angie Darwell’s laughter continued.

For several weighty seconds, Garrett was afraid that Angie
would step out onto her bedroom’s balcony, dangerously
near them. If he were seen, then what? Shoot it out with the men guarding the mansion? Garrett could picture the headlines in next week’s paper.
Midnight Phantom
unmasked! Local lawyer caught break
ing into charity hospital celebration he
cosponsored!

The laughter suddenly died away, and Garrett didn’t have
to look into Angie’s bedroom to guess what she was doing so quietly.

He eased the Colt’s hammer down, shifting his position just enough so that he could tuck the weapon into his belt.

Keeping a grip on his captive, he turned his attention back to Jonathon Darwell’s bedroom. Though the name es
caped him, Garrett recognized the man who’d entered as a
hired killer. The scar-faced gunman was sitting quietly on
the sofa while Jonathon read some papers at his desk.

Garrett turned his attention to the young woman kneeling
on the hard balcony. Tall and broad-shouldered for a fe
male, she was strong. He shifted his position slightly to
get a better look at her honey-blonde hair, her classic profile with the rather Romanesque nose, her wide, sensual mouth. He remembered the woman’s name.

“Pamela,” he whispered.

She turned her face to him, her pale-green eyes wide
with shock, but she said nothing for a moment. In the moonlight, Garrett
found her strikingly beautiful, and this rather surprised
him, since his taste in women tended to run toward petite
brunettes rather than tall blondes with a propensity for
wearing Levi’s and carrying a Colt.

“You know me?”

“Not really,” Garrett replied quietly. “Just stay quiet and
I’ll get you out of this.” He used the flinty tone often
written about in the
Whitetail Creek Journal
and which so ef
fectively masked his own voice.

“I can get out of this myself,” Pamela replied. She
squirmed on her knees, her
waist surrounded by the Midnight Phantom’s thighs. H
is arm was still around her. “Give me back my
gun.”

“No. And be quiet. I want to hear what Darwell’s saying.”

When Pamela turned toward the open window again, Garrett
tried to pay attention to the people inside the room. But
that wasn’t possible. Not when he had Pamela so close to
him, and he could feel the heat and strength of her body,
not when he could see her striking profile, definitely aris
tocratic, which was ironic, since he knew she came from
a family that had never been able to get two dimes together
at the same time.

Her unexpected presence added a dimension to his plan
to strike at the heart of Jonathon Darwell. As the Midnight Phantom, Garrett found her a nuisance, reducing his odds of
success and jeopardizing him needlessly. But as Garrett Ran
dolph, the lawyer, he thought Pamela’s presence terribly sad
since he was certain that sooner or later she would get caught stealing, and then he would have to defend her in court, possibly before the corrupt Judge Robert Dahlmann.

Suddenly both Jonathon Darwell and the scarred gunman
left the room. At almost the same time, Garrett heard Angie’s
voice, low and authoritative, telling someone to take his hands off her that instant or she was going to change him
from a stallion to a gelding.

Garrett smiled as he adjusted his mask. Obviously, Angie’s
evening wasn’t turning out the way she’d wanted, and
Garrett knew her well enough to realize that tomorrow she
was going to be impossible to be around.

Garrett rose silently to his feet, reaching down to take Pamela’s hand to help her up. She refused his aid. Smiling
in the moonlight, he pulled aside the curtain and bowed
theatrically. Pamela scowled at him.

“You want to tell me what you’re doing here?” Garrett
asked, his voice still low, though not as low as it had been
before.

“I could ask you the same thing. Who are you anyway?”
Pamela shot back.

“The Midnight Phantom.”

“I know that much. I mean behind the mask.”

With the mask over his eyes, his hat pulled low, and the ebony cape draped over his shoulders and hanging
nearly to the floor, the Midnight Phantom looked dangerous
as sin. But Pamela couldn’t help noticing that his smile was devastating and put the dimple in his cheek on display. The shimmer of moonlight off his white teeth was daz
zling, and despite his clipped manner, Pamela could tell that
he was disguising his voice. He seemed—she was going on instinct here—like an educated man. But why would an educated man become the Midnight Phantom?

“If you think you can steal from Jonathon Darwell and live to spend whatever you get, you’re taking one hell of a gamble. There are easier ways of making money,” the Phantom said, sounding rather disgusted with Pamela.

“I’m not looking for easy money for myself,” she replied.

“Then what are you looking for?”

“Justice. Revenge.”

“So you’re fed up
with the lawlessness rampant in Whitetail Creek
and had decided to do something about it?”

“Of course. Everybody is, but most people are just too scared to do anything about it.”

For several seconds Garrett pondered her statement before
casting it aside. As the Midnight Phantom, he could not afford to have friends or allies.

He had to keep his identity secret. He believed that if two people knew his secret, it would only be a matter of
time before three people knew, and shortly after that, everyone would know that Garrett Randolph, firebrand attor
ney for the downtrodden, was also the Midnight Phantom.

“You won’t find justice in Jonathon Darwell’s bedroom,”
Garrett said finally. “But you will find money. Let’s have a look in that safe.”

“It’s locked. You’ll never get it open without dynamite.”

Garrett smiled. “Never underestimate the skills of the Midnight Phantom.”

He went to the portrait, kneeling on Jonathon Darwell’s
bed, and swung it open. When he thought of how furious Jonathon would be when he discovered that the Midnight
Phantom had been traipsing through his bedroom, Garrett’s smile broadened.

“It’s a combination lock,” Pamela whispered, kneeling on
the bed. “I already looked at it.”

The safe was a Barns & Bradley Model 6, but Garrett
had known this even before he’d set eyes on it. When
he’d first begun practicing law, he had defended a bank
robber who’d specialized in banks using Barns & Bradley
safes. When the client was finally apprehended, it was discovered that he had worked for the company. One of the man’s last official acts as an employee of the Barns & Bradley Safe & Lock Company was to install a wall safe in the residence of Jonathon Darwell.

In exchange for his legal services for the bank robber, Garrett had received lessons of a most peculiar and helpful
nature for a defense attorney.

He now spun the dial four times around in a clockwise
direction then did the same thing counterclockwise. Fi
nally, very slowly, he began turning the dial, listening care
fully to the clicks as the internal tumblers turned, only his
fingertips touching the metal.

On number thirty-eight, he felt the unlocking handle
register ever so faintly and the tumbler falling into place. Garrett
smiled. The only flaw with Barns & Bradley safes was
that when the tumblers fell into place, they tapped lightly against the unlocking handle, and if a person’s touch was
sensitive enough, it could be felt.

It took Phantom nine minutes and four tries, but he even
tually got all
four numbers correct and swung open the
safe door.

“Amazing,” Pamela whispered.

She was suddenly aware of how ill-equipped, both educationally
and emotionally, she was to be a thief. She had no idea how Phantom had managed to open the safe.
To her, it was magic, pure and simple.

Garrett smiled at Pamela and let his gaze touch her for just
a moment longer than necessary as they knelt side by side on the bed. He’d never really cared much for tomboys,
for those who acted,
he felt, like men. But Pamela possibly could change his at
titude. Daring and brave, even wearing Levi’s and a cotton
shirt, she was all woman. Her breasts were large and
round, pressing against her shirtfront. Though this wasn’t
the time for Garrett to be wondering exactly how feminine
Pamela Bragg really was, the memory of holding her close
against him came back with such startling intensity that he felt his cock begin to stir, coming awake.

He forced himself to look away from her and into the
safe. There were a number of bound stacks of paper
money, which Garrett counted, surprised that the bundles
contained varying sums.

“Bribery money?” Pamela asked, breaking the silence.

“They’re not marked.” Garrett counted all the bills,
which came to nearly two thousand dollars. He split the
sum approximately in half, handing some bundles to Pamela.
“Be careful how you spend it. You don’t have the cash to
get showy with it and not draw Darwell’s suspicion.”

“It’s not for me,” Pamela said, folding the money in half and stuffing it into the back pocket of her Levi’s. “I told
you, I’m not in this for the money. I’m in it for justice.”

“That’s what every thief says.”

“The money’s not for me. It’s for the people the Darwells have hurt, the ones they’ve crushed.”

Phantom looked at Pamela, thinking he’d
never before met a woman quite like her. Though he didn’t en
tirely believe she was not out for personal gain, he
did
believe she would not steal from an innocent person. As
a lawyer, Garrett had been lied to too many times for him
not to understand the power and allure of stolen cash.

“Sure,” he said, deliberately letting Pamela hear his skep
ticism. He turned back to the safe and began inspecting
the papers still inside
.

Garrett was disappointed with what he found in the safe.
The rest of the legal documents were mostly deeds to
property that Jonathon Darwell controlled. Although this let
Garrett know that, among his other criminal activities,
Jonathon Darwell was also loaning money to ranchers at usu
rious rates, it accomplished little else.