The Loner (3 page)

"Sure." Logan nodded, frowning at the soiled spot on her stylish white blouse from the gunman's grimy hand. Seeing it made Logan want to follow her lead and give ole Gap Tooth another kick in the balls. "That sounds like a fine plan, missy."

"Missy," she muttered.

A thought occurred to Logan that improved his mood. Maybe if he played his cards right, he wouldn't need to visit Ella's place after all. He could be charming when he wanted, and the woman had demonstrated that she knew her way around a belt buckle. Why, they could pass a right fine afternoon. Giving her a wink, he suggested, "After we are done with the rescuing, why don't you join me for lunch?"

A series of emotions flashed across her face—shock, surprise, consideration, then fury. "No, thank you."

Huh. Logan's brows arched in surprise. That put him in his place, didn't it? But he didn't understand the fury one bit. What was he missing here?

Dammit, he wanted to find out. This gal lit his wick.

Well, the sooner he took care of business here, the sooner he could see about getting his answers, so Logan turned his attention to matters at hand. Stepping into the bank president's office, he spied a walking stick with a metal handle. Testing its weight and strength, he nodded. It would do nicely as a weapon. Next, he made a quick phone call to Sheriff Luke Prescott's office and reported the robbery in progress. With the doors locked the lawmen couldn't storm the building, but they'd be waiting when access was provided.

Debating just how best to make that happen, he returned to where the woman waited with Gap Tooth in the hallway, the outlaw's gun in one hand, his medallion in the other. He nodded toward the gun. "Do you know how to use that?"

"I'm quite proficient."

"Have you ever shot a man before?"

"Only in my dreams, Logan Grey. Only in my dreams." The smile she wore when she said it made the hair on the back of Logan's neck stand up. She continued, "I am prepared, however, to shoot one of those criminals if necessary."

He didn't doubt it one bit. "Good. It's my hope it won't come to that. With any luck at all, your other weapon will do the trick."

"My other weapon?" she asked, following him back down the hallway toward the lobby. "What weapon?"

"Your scream. When I give the word, I want you to scream as loud as you can and keep screaming until I tell you to stop. We're going to try to lure one of them in here."

At the wall separating the bank offices from the lobby, Logan peered cautiously around the door. Fidgety stood at the teller's counter. The third man watched the hostages from beside the front entrance. "Are you ready...what's your name?"

"I'm ready," she replied, ignoring his question.

"Go."

She drew a deep breath, then let out a loud, long, shrill scream.

Though it was difficult to do, Logan tried to block out the sound of her voice and listen for the outlaw's approach. He raised the cane like a baseball bat ready to swing and hoped Fidgety would be the one to investigate. He sensed the third man would be less inclined to use his gun.

From the bank lobby, he heard the little kid join in the hollering.
No, kid. Hush up.
Beside him, the woman continued wailing on.

Time seemed to pass in slow motion. Logan saw a boot and he started his swing. The cane's metal handle caught the bandit at his temple, the blow sending him staggering. As Logan followed up by kicking the gunman's—the third gunman, not Fidgety's—legs out from under him, he heard a gunshot and new screams from the lobby.

"Hurry!" urged Violet Eyes when she darted past him as the gunman crashed to the floor. His gun went skidding from his grip and Logan grabbed for it. He heard the woman let out a yell that made her previous screams sound like whispers.

It was a battle cry, nothing less, and the sound of it caused his heart to lodge in his throat. The gunman attempted to rise and Logan hesitated long enough to place one hard kick to the sonofabitch's head and knock him into unconsciousness before dashing after the woman.

He reached the lobby just in time to see her launch herself at Fidgety at the same time his gun exploded. The bullet missed her, thank God, and ricocheted off a center post, then slammed into the plaster wall.

Fidgety's yell was abruptly cut off midscreech.

She'd knocked him down, grabbed him by the ears and beat his head against the floor until he passed out.

Hell, she hadn't needed backup.

Logan halted and observed the woman with blatant admiration as she rolled off the downed outlaw and climbed to her feet, then calmly brushed the dust from her skirt. What a fascinating female.

He stepped forward to help her—not that she needed help—as the head teller unlocked the doors and Luke Prescott and a half dozen lawmen rushed inside. Spying him, Luke called, "Lucky! You all right?"

"I'm fine."

"What happened here?"

Logan gave his friend a brief rundown of events, then showed him where to find Gap Tooth and the third gunman. "She was amazing, I'm telling you," he told Luke as he helped Gap Tooth to his feet. "Downright amazing."

"Who is she?"

"I don't know. I didn't get her name in the middle of things, but I aim to find out now."

But when he returned to the bank lobby and scanned the area, she was nowhere to be found. Logan strode outside and looked both up the street and down. Nothing. No violet-eyed Valkyrie in a simple skirt and blouse. She'd disappeared on him.

And she'd taken his medallion with her.

Well now, wasn't that just his luck?

Caroline tucked a stray strand of hair back behind her ear as she thanked the waitress who led her to an out-of-the-way booth in the Bluebonnet Grill. After this morning's contretemps she didn't want to see Logan Grey again until she was ready. "Mrs. Wilhemina Peters will be joining me shortly. Do you know her?"

The waitress almost hid a wince. "Everyone in town knows Mrs. Peters. I hope you, um, enjoy your afternoon tea."

Caroline intended to do just that. She and Wilhemina Peters shared a passion. It wasn't gossip; that was Mrs. Peters's milieu. No, she and Wilhemina were both newspaperwomen, two of very few in this great state of Texas. Though the Artesia
Standard
didn't have nearly the distribution or prestige of the Fort Worth
Daily Democrat,
Caroline had been able to use that connection to make this most important appointment. She intended to mine Fort Worth's self-acknowledged gossip queen for any and all information she possessed about Logan Grey. After all, knowledge was power, and Caroline needed all the help she could get in these circumstances.

"May I bring you something to drink while you wait for Mrs. Peters?" the waitress asked. "She is invariably late."

Caroline asked for tea, though she would have liked to order whiskey. It had been quite a day. Quite a week. For that matter, the entire year had been a trial.

On January 1, she would never have guessed that in a few short months, she'd be on her way to beg the help of the dirty-dog scoundrel Logan Grey. But then, on New Year's Day, she hadn't known of the horrible events about to beset her family and leave her in these dire straits.

But here she was in April, in Fort Worth, Logan Grey's adopted hometown, filled with fear and willing to do anything—
anything
—in order to protect those she loved.

She had almost had heart palpitations when she saw him sauntering down the city street this morning as she walked from the train station to her hotel within minutes of her arrival in town. Her first inclination had been to duck into the General Store and hide. She hadn't been at all prepared to confront him at that point.

Still, she couldn't pass up the opportunity to observe him, so she'd followed him into the bank, taking care that he not see her. Then when circumstances required she act, she'd expected her plans to unravel.

But the low-down slimy toad hadn't recognized her. He'd looked right at her, spoken with her—held her in his arms!—and he hadn't known her from Adam. Shaken by that as much as the violence of the robbery, she'd slipped away from the bank at first opportunity, checked into her hotel and stewed for a good twenty minutes. Okay, maybe forty. All right, an hour.

The man truly got her goat. She wanted nothing more than to look him in those flirty green eyes and tell him what a lying, rotten, no-good, low-life, snake-breath, dirt-eating, overstuffed, ignorant, heartless, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed dog he was. But doing so would jeopardize her mission and she simply couldn't allow that.

Dang it.

So she'd done physical exercises in her room until she'd calmed down, then she'd invited Mrs. Peters to tea.

Now she fiddled with her napkin and mentally reviewed the collection of half-truths, prevarications and flat-out lies she'd prepared for this meeting and the one she intended to have later tonight. Under other circumstances, the prospect of being so deceitful would prey upon her conscience. Her foster father, Ben, used to tell her she was too honest for her own good. Well, not today. Today she'd lie, cheat, steal— whatever it took to accomplish her purpose. She'd already lost one family member. Be hanged if she'd lose another.

The waitress walked by carrying a piece of pie and suddenly in her mind's eye Caroline was back in Ben and Suzanne Whitaker's kitchen on a Sunday afternoon not long after Ben had hired her to help his wife during her recovery from a buggy accident. Caroline was baking a peach pie for Sunday dinner. Suzanne, bruised and weak as a kitten, sat at the table drinking tea and telling her the story of her Past.

"I'm not proud of who I was, Caroline. I have regrets. Lots of them. No one forced me to ride with the Sunshine Gang. No one handed me a gun and said now go rob that train, then hightail it back to Black Shadow Canyon to hide. I did it for the excite
merit, for the money, and frankly because when I was your age I had a wild streak I simply couldn 't tame. But I grew up and I recognized the wickedness of my ways, and ever since then I've made a real effort to make amends."

Suzanne smiled wistfully, sipped her tea and added, " Yet, for Ben, I 'd do it all again. I guess that means I 'm still not a good person, Caroline. Because I love him that much."

"Well, I love him that much, too," Caroline murmured, carefully aligning her silverware. Besides, she wasn't out to rob a train or steal a person's life savings. She intended to tell a lie that would save a life she valued. It was true that the lie she intended to tell wasn't nice, but neither was the man she intended to lie to. Logan Grey owed her. She'd simply come to collect.

"Get out of the way, you young whippersnapper," came a caustic voice from the front of the restaurant. "You should have more respect for an elderly lady who uses a cane."

"Uses it to hit people with," muttered the man in the booth behind Caroline.

With a prodigious bosom leading the way, Wilhemina Peters sailed through the restaurant toward Caroline's table. A stylish hat crowned silver hair and complemented her smart spring gown in shades of lavender and green. She did, indeed, carry a cane, an ivory-handled affair, and she made Caroline feel downright dowdy as she stood to greet her.

They exchanged pleasantries and small talk as they waited for their orders to be served. Then, her blue eyes shrewd and curious, Mrs. Peters cut to business. "So, Mrs. Whitaker," she said, using the false name Caroline had given when she telephoned earlier. "What made you decide to write an exposé about Lucky Logan Grey?"

Caroline licked her lips, then launched into her story. "Logan Grey has become quite the folk hero in West Texas since he brought the Burrows Gang to justice. And yet, rumors persist that he is not the white knight his reputation allows. I think the Artesia
Standard's
readers will be interested to learn the truth."

"He is an interesting subject, that's true." Mrs. Peters pursed her lips and considered Caroline. "I'm curious. Do you intend to publish such a meaty piece under your own byline? Will your newspaper allow it?"

"My father owns and edits the
Standard,"
Caroline replied. "He publishes my articles under my name."

"Indeed!" Mrs. Peters's eyes gleamed with approval. "You know, in the earliest days when I began my 'Talk about Town' column, I was forced to use a pen name, but times have changed. Women have more opportunity now than they did thirty years ago."

"Especially when the woman works with a man like my father," Caroline told her with a smile. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard him say that women aren't equal to men—they're usually superior."

Caroline had a vivid memory of Ben with his legs propped up on his desk, his weathered, wrinkled face alight with laughter as he read the editorial she'd written about the sanctimonious snobbery of a local church-women's group who refused a charitable donation of much-needed school supplies because the donors were women who worked upstairs at Artesia Saloon.
"You've a wicked pen, sunshine,"
he'd said.
"This is gonna ruffle
plenty of feathers. Think I'll get me a sarsaparilla and sit on the front porch and watch the show."

"Your father sounds like a man I would like," Mrs. Peters said.

"I love him madly. He is a forward-thinking, forward-looking man."

The moment the words left her mouth, Caroline knew they were no longer true. Ben Whitaker had quit looking forward in January when his beloved Suzanne died. He went crazy with grief. Nowadays, he only looked behind, and that way of looking was going to get him killed if she didn't do something to stop it.

Mrs. Peters nibbled at a lemon-drop cookie, then said, "Well, then. Yes, I'll be happy to help you. What would you like to know about Lucky Logan Grey?"

Caroline dragged her thoughts back to the business at hand. What did she want to know about Logan? Anything. Everything. The more the better. If she continued on the course she'd plotted, she'd be taking the biggest risk of her life. The more information she had about the man, the better.

Caroline smoothed the napkin in her lap. "I've done quite a bit of research on his professional successes. I'm curious about Mr. Grey's personal life."