Damian was having a real hard time traveling with Jack Curruthers, despising him as much as he did. Being certain that the man was heading for a prison sentence after his trial didn’t help much. He’d stolen from a company, but rather than just run with the money, as most thieves would, he had tried to place the blame elsewhere and ordered a man’s death because of it, turning theft into murder.
Curruthers deserved whatever the courts dealt him. But Damian didn’t deserve to have to suffer his constant company on the long trip back to New York.
Jack didn’t show an ounce of remorse. He smirked, goaded, and bragged of his crime every chance he got. And in the parlor car on the train, there was no way for Damian to escape his presence. A gag could be shoved in his mouth, but the goading was still there in his owlish eyes.
Which was why, in St. Louis, Missouri, Damian left the train to find another parlor car, one with a separate compartment that Jack could be locked away in. Out of sight—at least partially out of mind. And he found just what he was looking for, a car with a separate bedchamber. Unfortunately, Damian was gone for several hours, arranging for the rental—the car had an in-city owner—and the delivery. By the time he returned, Jack had escaped.
It was the last thing Damian had expected to happen at this point. He had taken precautions against it. Jack had been chained hand and foot, shackles obtained from the Culthers sheriff, as well as the foot chain being secured to one of the bolted-down benches. And the car had been locked with a key, only the porter who serviced it having a duplicate.
The porter wasn’t under suspicion. He had had an obvious aversion to Jack after hearing about his crimes, and besides, he’d taken the opportunity of the train’s being in the city for the night to visit relatives he had here. Damian was quick to find several witnesses, one who had heard the noise in the car, which had been the breaking of the bench, and another who had seen Jack tumble out of one of the windows and hobble away. He was gone, and St. Louis was a large city, easy for him to find places to hide.
Damian immediately reported his loss to the local police, who were quite helpful, but not to the extent of finding Curruthers. After three days of dead ends, he telegraphed the detectives he’d used in New York; they put him in touch with contacts of theirs in St. Louis.
It still took another week before a definite trail was found, one leading directly to Chicago, Illinois. Apparently Jack had given up on losing himself in the vast openness of the West. He was going to try a huge city now, and Chicago ranked right up there in size with New York.
This certainly wasn’t how Damian had figured he would experience Chicago for the first time. In the back of his mind was the fact that his mother was there somewhere, but he managed to keep that out of his conscious thoughts. Maybe someday he would look for her, but he had too many other things on his mind to even consider it on this trip.
Casey, now, was a lot less easy to keep out of his thoughts—was constantly in them, actually. He was still angry at the way she had taken off without a bit of warning, simply sneaked out of the room they’d been sharing in the middle of the night. No good-bye. No chance to speak of meeting up again in the future…or anything else.
He had decided to talk to her about their marriage—or rather, their divorce. He wasn’t displeased that Bean had “unhitched” them. He’d just been furious that the judge had again forced a legality on them without asking. And that marriage had been a farce anyway. He’d been planning to take his pride in hand and ask for a real one. But Casey hadn’t given him a chance.
Just hours after getting her money for finishing the job he’d hired her for, she’d run off. Which pretty much proved how eager she had been to part company with Damian. She couldn’t even wait for morning to roll around. Nor had she been on the train when it had pulled out. He’d checked every car, hoping to find her, before he even went to collect Jack, who’d been stored in the local jail for the night.
Now, several weeks later, he was still stewing over her departure, and with time on his hands—the detectives had been adamant about not wanting an amateur tagging along with them—he had nothing to do but stew. At least when Casey had been searching for Jack, Damian had been actively involved, had even felt somewhat useful—occasionally.
When the thought occurred to him, Damian jumped on it like a starving man on a haunch of beef. Casey ought to be here in Chicago with him. He’d paid her ten thousand dollars to bring Jack to justice, but Jack was eluding justice again. Damian had not gotten his money’s worth.
But how was he going to find her when he didn’t know where she lived, didn’t even know her full name? Even the name he called her wasn’t hers; it came from the K.C. initials she used, which she had probably taken from the brand on her horse for lack of better inspiration the first time she’d been pressed for a signature.
There was that brand on Old Sam…
Bucky Alcott had sent Casey off to that ranch near Waco to look for her roots. Damian had dismissed that as a wild-goose chase, considering he knew she hadn’t bought the horse from the K.C. Ranch but had received it as a gift from her father. Yet that ranch was the only clue Damian had, since she had never once mentioned anything about her home that would point to its location.
It gave him something useful to do, heading back to Texas. There was another reason he was going, but he was still too angry to admit that, even to himself. Yet because he didn’t have much real hope of actually finding Casey, he figured he would probably just be wasting his time.
But wasting his time was preferable to sitting in his hotel room waiting for the detectives’ daily progress reports, which were monotonously the same—no leads yet. Jack had lost himself in Chicago, was smart enough not to use his real name this time. And how did you find a needle in a haystack, which was what he was in a city so big?
Surprisingly, Damian had every confidence that Casey would know how.