Silverfest had quieted down. There were still a number of vendors around and Desert Diamonds seemed to be doing a decent business, along with the saloon and the spa. There was a group heading out for a night ride, Jane noticed, but Heidi wasn’t leading it—two young men of about college age seemed to be doing it. The haunted hayride was getting ready to roll, as well.
Jane saw Henri Coque in front of the Gilded Lily, out on the street giving a lecture on the history of the theater in the United States, while Cy Tyburn and Valerie Mystro—dressed in hero and heroine attire—were chatting with people on the street. She didn’t see Alice anywhere...and she wondered if any of them knew that Brian had been arrested.
“Best time ever to sneak in,” Jane told Kelsey.
The bar and restaurant had yet to open. There weren’t even any kitchen workers in the old theater; there was nothing but dead silence when Kelsey and Jane walked in.
It felt strange, almost eerie.
“Want to check out the rooms upstairs while everyone else is outside?” Kelsey asked.
“Sure,” Jane agreed. “If they aren’t all locked.”
“The master key is in Jennie’s room. I found it last night,” Kelsey said. “I’ll grab that.”
“Good find!”
They didn’t need to search the Sage suite, nor Jennie’s room, since Logan and Kelsey had stayed in it. They entered Brian’s. Anything he might have taken—such as the dueling pistols that had disappeared from Jane’s bed—wasn’t there.
But they were equally disappointed as they went through the rest of the rooms. The pistols didn’t turn up, nor did any notes, remnants of gold, hidden gold—or even gold jewelry.
“Let’s try the theater,” Jane suggested.
Downstairs, Kelsey admired the stage. “It’s a remarkable place, really,” she said.
“We should move quickly. The company will be coming in soon,” Jane warned.
“What’s Henri going to do? He’ll be missing a villain tonight,” Kelsey said. She was sorting through the props on the table, then looked at Jane. “Hey, I think I just found your dueling pistols.”
Jane walked over to the prop table. The pistols were there, in plain sight. She picked up one and then the other, handing both to Kelsey.
“Blanks,” she murmured.
Kelsey nodded. “You’re sure there was live ammunition in one of them?” she asked Jane.
“I’m sure—and Sloan still has the live rounds.”
“So, I guess Brian was trying to kill Cy. But...why?”
“Because he’s the hero? Because he gets the girl?” Jane shrugged. “Although, while he admits he set up the skull, he denies wanting to hurt anyone. According to Sloan, Brian was just trying to get out of the room without being seen.”
“Should we check the dressing rooms?” Kelsey asked.
“Let’s go.” She led Kelsey through the various rooms, showing her where Sage McCormick’s body had been found.
As they walked to the next room, Jane saw something on the floor. Bending down, she touched the fresh, wet stain.
She looked up at Kelsey.
“Blood,” she mouthed.
Kelsey drew her gun and Jane did the same. Kelsey counted silently to three, then nodded at Jane. Jane threw the door open.
On the floor, as if he’d fallen while clutching the rack of costumes, lay a man in a pool of blood and fallen fabric.
Jane quickly fell to her knees at his side and rolled him over...and recognized Brian Highsmith.
She put two fingers on his throat to check for a pulse. It was there but weak. “He’s still alive.”
As she spoke, Brian’s eyes flew open. He stared at Jane but couldn’t seem to focus. “She’s dead...she’s dead, too. They knew...they knew...they killed her.”
His eyes closed.
Jane felt for his pulse again. “Kelsey, I think...the bullet is in his shoulder. He might make it.”
“I can’t get a signal down here,” Kelsey said urgently.
“Go out to the street. Get an ambulance over here!” Jane begged. “I’ll stay with him.”
Kelsey left her, running upstairs and out to the street. As Jane tried to staunch the flow of blood, she heard something behind her. She looked up, assuming Kelsey had returned.
But it wasn’t Kelsey.
It was one of the mannequins. An old one, from the late 1800s. She’d seen it downstairs.... Jennie had claimed that a clown attacked her, but they’d figured out that it had been Brian, that he’d pushed a clown figure toward her....
This clown was moving—alive and moving.
It lifted its arm; it held a gun and took aim at Jane.
She rolled to a corner of the room just as the bullet exploded against the dressing-table mirror. The sound of the mirror shattering was what she heard, and she realized there was a silencer on the gun.
Someone had tracked Brian down. Someone had tracked him to this room. That someone meant to kill him.
And now her.
* * *
Sloan searched up and down the road, seeking a trail of blood. While he walked, he called the office and reported that Betty and her prisoner were missing. Then he called Newsome and asked for officers to scour the streets in town, the hell with Silverfest.
He got into his car and drove slowly, searching the road for any sign of either Betty or Brian Highsmith.
He was five minutes from town when his phone rang.
Logan said, “Got a call from Kelsey. She has an ambulance rushing to the theater. She and Jane found Brian Highsmith, shot and bleeding to death, in his dressing room at the theater.”
“I’m almost there,” Sloan told him. “Any word on Betty?”
“None. I’ve got another officer coming to the hospital. I’ll be there as soon as he shows up.”
“Thanks. Whatever’s going down seems to be going down now,” Sloan said.
He stepped on the gas.
As he reached the outskirts of Lily, he was forced to slow down. There was some kind of Silverfest event happening on the road.
He left the car on the edge of Main Street and started running in.
As he did, he nearly ran by a heap on the ground. He recognized what it was—a body—and stopped himself.
He turned and fell to his knees.
It was Betty.
His heart thundered as he carefully examined her for an injury.
“Betty!” he said softly.
She groaned and looked up at him. “Sheriff!”
“Betty, what the hell happened?”
“There was someone flagging me down...I veered off the road. Next thing I knew, someone was in front of me, spraying something in my face...I can’t remember. My head...my head is killing me.... I...”
“Stop talking. I’ll get an ambulance out here.”
Betty sat up. “No, no, I’m fine. Go...after him. Whoever it was...took Brian. He took Brian....”
“Betty, who the hell was it?”
“I...don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“He—I can’t even say if it was a man or a woman—was dressed up. Dressed like a...like a Plains Indian...like an Apache in buckskin...with a dark wig and makeup and a black mask. I don’t know who it was...but—”
He’d reached for his phone. She set her hand on his. “No, Sloan. I’m all right. Go—get to the theater!”
“Betty, you’re injured—”
“I’m fine! I’ll call for help. Go.”
He didn’t trust her. Betty—who’d been his right hand since he’d returned to Lily.
He rose, suddenly very afraid—for many reasons. On many fronts. He crouched down again and pretended to make sure she wasn’t shot or injured, hoping his sleight of hand was successful.
“All right, Betty,” he said, and rose.
She might be innocent; she might be telling the truth.
But he didn’t know.
Cops would be crawling all over the theater any minute—but he felt a growing urgency to get there himself.
“Go!” Betty insisted.
He did. He ran. As he raced through the streets, he looked for people he knew. He didn’t see anyone. He paused just long enough to pull out his phone and call Logan. “Found Betty on the road. I left her there. I’m at the theater.”
“You see Kelsey? The ambulance?”
“No.”
“I’ve called for backup. Was Betty shot? Dead, alive?”
“Alive. I don’t trust her, Logan. I don’t trust anything right now.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes. You’ve also got county cops moving in. Maybe you should wait for backup.”
Maybe he should.
“I can’t,” he said.
He burst in through the slatted doors of the theater.
* * *
Jane scrambled to get her own gun. She managed to fire a shot at the clown, but then the clown was gone. She jumped to her feet and moved carefully to the door—just in time to see the clown run across stage right. Ever wary that a bullet could come tearing at her again, she pursued the clown.
She got off a shot when the clown passed ahead of her in the bar area, but he threw open the door to the basement and tore down the stairs. She walked to the doorway, determined to guard the one entry until someone could come.
Then she realized that someone was behind her. She turned, ready to fire.
Her gun went off just as she was slammed in the head. As she went tumbling down the stairs, she heard someone cry out; she might not have killed her attacker, but at least she’d injured him.
It did her little good. She landed in the basement, staring up at the clown.
She hadn’t released her grip on the Glock.
She lifted her gun. The clown dived to the floor, knocking the wig stand on top of her. She struggled to free herself from the hair and heads with sightless eyes.
Footsteps were heading her way down the stairs. The clown, too, was trying to get free from the wigs. She fired again; the clown rolled across the floor and into the mannequin room.
Someone was nearly on top of her, coming down the stairs—and swearing in fury. Jane managed to get up and tear across the room, plowing into the rows of mannequins.
Once she was there, she went as still as she could...and she listened. Someone was breathing near her. And someone else was walking into the room.
In the near-darkness, Victorian madams stared at her, along with Mr. Hyde. A vampire held his cape above his eyes and in the dim light seemed real.
Why not? The clown was real.
And then she heard a voice she’d come to know well. “Agent Everett, you’re harder to kill than I’d thought! But you should just give it up. Those bullets won’t last forever, and quite frankly, you’re outnumbered. Give it up!”
She didn’t move, didn’t breathe. When she felt movement beside her, she turned and fired. She heard a gasp and a scream and then cursing.
She knew the voice. A woman’s voice. She hadn’t even begun to suspect that it could have been this woman!
Who was not alone.
Just how many people were involved?
Suddenly, the mannequins were shoved at her. They all seemed to be coming at her, their faces grotesque in the shadows.
Painted faces, wooden faces, laughing faces and the leering eyes of a Dracula...
She tried to remain steady, but tripped and fell. One of the arms struck hers, and the Glock fell with her in the chaos. She hit the floor.
And something soft.
A body.
Kelsey.
She managed to keep quiet.
“Have you found your friend yet, Jane? Such a conspiracy! And so easy to figure out. I mean, Sloan was friends with Logan. They sent you in, and then Kelsey and Logan showed up. So easy when lawmakers get involved. Just like before!”
Jane felt for Kelsey’s pulse. She was still breathing. In the darkness, Jane patted her holster. They’d taken Kelsey’s gun.
She realized they’d never been alone in the theater.
“We’re going to get you, Agent Everett! Oh, don’t go thinking it’s like the play—that the good guy’s going to save you. We’ve been waiting for him, and in a few minutes, well...the gang will all be here! And the gang will all be dead!”
* * *
Sloan let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He raced to the stage and was startled to run into Cy Tyburn, who seemed to be practicing a monologue.
“Cy! Where is everyone? Has the ambulance come? What the hell is going on?”
“Damned if I know! Everyone’s supposed to be in here. What did you say? Who needs an ambulance?”
“Brian. Brian Highsmith,” Sloan said. He started to go backstage. As he did so he heard the familiar click of a gun.
He spun around. Cy had a Colt aimed at him. “Yes, go on back.”
“You are not going to shoot me, Cy.”
“Oh, yes, I am. But...play your cards right, and you can hope for escape in the next few minutes.”
“What?”
Sloan moved toward Cy, itching to reach for his own weapon.
Cy shot the stage floor in front of him—barely missing his foot.
“Turn around and walk. We’re going down to the basement.”
“This place’ll be crawling with cops in about two minutes,” he said.
“I don’t think so.” Cy indicated the aisle along the side of the seats.
Someone was coming—and he knew who it was. Betty. His trusted deputy. Sweet, older, gray-haired.
And lethal.
“No, I just talked to Scotty and I called Newsome,” Betty said. “On your behalf, of course. I assured him that no ambulances were needed. You’re here, and everything is under control.”
“Kelsey called for the ambulance. Not me. A federal agent,” Sloan said.
“And you know how those feds are, always trying to take control. No, I assured him that I’m all right. We’ve got Brian Highsmith again...and it’s all good.”
“Until they find us all dead, of course?” Sloan asked.
“You’ve figured out the old story—you and your so-called artist. So, figure this out. When we’re done, it’ll look like you—the sheriff—and Agent Jane Everett got together and plotted to take the gold for yourselves. You were going to shoot Brian and me and the others, but we’re not idiots. We shot you first.”
“Seriously? Who the hell is going to believe that?”
“We have our story down pretty well,” Betty told him. “So, do you want to die alone or see your pretty agent one more time before you go?”
“Well, of course I’d like to say goodbye,” Sloan said. “And if we’re going to die, I think I’d like to hear how this all started. Brian wasn’t involved, was he? Cy, you were the one who put live bullets in the gun, but when Jane did her little charade in the street, you really had no choice but to go along with it. But why start this whole thing? Why kill people over gold when you didn’t even have it?”
“Caleb Hough found some of it. Didn’t you know? He had it—and he was acting like a big shot. He called in that enforcer of his to keep the rest of us in line. Can you believe that? Caleb knew Jay Berman and probably thought we’d all be afraid of him, that we’d keep our mouths shut and obey his every edict. But I think Caleb felt that his own enforcer got greedy—and that’s why he shot Jay Berman out in the desert. Then, well—”
“Shut up, Cy. Quit being such a dramatist!” Betty snapped. “Get him downstairs.”
“Not fair. Not fair if I don’t know the whole story. So, let me see—Caleb was holding out on you. That’s why he wound up dead?” Sloan asked.
“Get him moving!” Betty shouted.
“I’m moving, I’m moving.” Sloan turned, hands held high, and started walking toward the front of the room as Betty indicated. She had her gun trained on him.
“Go on. Go on!” Betty urged, nudging him with the muzzle.
“To the basement?”
“You got it, smart boy!”
He walked slowly. Betty might have stopped the county people from coming, but not Logan. Still, he didn’t want Logan taken by surprise—as he’d been.
He didn’t waste a lot of time cursing himself; he’d made a mistake. Now he had to fix it.
“Why were you out at the mines?” he asked.
“That bastard, Hough!” Cy said. “He had us all convinced the gold was in the mines. But it wasn’t. And he admitted it.”
“So, if you knew where it was, why didn’t you just get it and take off?” Sloan asked. “And, by the way, where is it?”
Silence was his answer.
He chuckled softly. “You still don’t know, do you? Let’s see, Caleb showed you a sample because he was going to need help getting it. He needed a cop on his side, so he got you, Betty. And then he created a little gang of thieves, but you were so afraid of being double-crossed that you did him in. Of course, he was trying to double-cross you, wasn’t he? He actually cared for his son, so that probably got in his way, didn’t it? And let’s see—one of you was supposed to torture the truth out of him, but you lost it. Or else he fought back and you had to kill him.”
“Get down those steps!” Betty yelled.
“Cy,” Sloan said. “Why you? Ah...you don’t really have what it takes. But you were dissatisfied and Caleb saw that in you. Betty, you, too. You hated playing second fiddle.”
“Shut up!” Betty shouted. “You think you’re so smart. You think you’re right about everything.”
“I’m sure I am right. You needed a cop for protection, and you needed the actors because...well, because, of course, you searched the mine shaft—no luck—and realized the theater was the most likely place. The gold—”
“Get down the stairs!”
“I’m going. I’m going!”
“Watch it!” someone called from below.
Jane was down there, just as they’d said. But she wasn’t alone.
“She’s in with the mannequins,” the voice said.
Damn! He’d never suspected.
“Heidi,” he called. “You weren’t making enough on the trail rides, huh? But working the trail rides, you were able to set up Jay Berman’s body with the corpse of poor Red Marston pointing at it. Caleb didn’t leave the body there. You dug it up and put it there so Caleb would know you weren’t just a bunch of country hicks. You left Red pointing at him to scare Caleb, but then you killed Caleb, anyway. This is really pathetic—because you still don’t know where the gold is.”
Sloan reached the bottom of the stairs. He tried to judge their firepower. They hadn’t taken his gun, and he’d seen to it that Betty’s was worthless; that was what his sleight of hand had been about. But Heidi and Cy were armed—and he didn’t know who else might be in the basement with them.
“She can find it. She knows where it is,” Heidi said. “Sloan, come on over here.”
He walked around the fallen wig stand. The basement floor looked gruesome—with the wigs and heads everywhere, it seemed to be a floor full of decapitations.
He was about four feet from the first of the mannequins in the third room. He judged his chances.
“Agent Everett!” Heidi called out. “I’m going to suggest you show yourself. You might live if you tell us where the gold is. Oh—and let’s see. I’ll start by shooting Sloan in the foot, then the calf—maybe a shoulder. Don’t want to hit an artery until you come out.”
And she would come out, he was afraid.
They were too confident. Heidi wasn’t even looking at him. Cy was by the stairs, peering into the mannequin room. Sloan saw that Betty had her gun on him.
He reached for her in a swift movement.
She fired.
Nothing happened; he’d emptied her gun.
He pulled her in front of him and pushed her toward Heidi just as Heidi fired. Heidi’s bullet hit Betty, who screamed and choked.
“Shit, Heidi, you killed Betty!” Cy cried. “She was our cop. We needed a cop!”
“Shut up, Cy!” Heidi fired again.
She missed Sloan.
He’d plowed into the mannequins.
They seemed to embrace him. They were everywhere.
“Mike, get out here!” Heidi shouted. “Get the hell out here and we’ll just shoot until we get them all.”
Mike! Mike Addison made up the last of their little club—or so he hoped.
He heard a scrambling near him; he could have fired. But he didn’t know if it was Jane or Mike.
He tackled the moving creature.
A clown went down before him. Mike Addison as a clown. Maybe it was fitting.
Mike had a gun. They struggled for it; it went off, but then flew across the floor and disappeared in the pile of mannequins.
When he ripped off the clown face, Mike stared up at him furiously.
Sloan didn’t bother speaking. He slugged Mike with the hardest right to a jaw he’d ever wielded in his life. Mike was silent. Lights out.
“Damn you!” Heidi shouted. She began firing. She was going to hit one of them if he didn’t draw his own gun. He returned fire.
Heidi screamed and ducked behind a wall. Cy Tyburn sprinted across the room, taking cover by the wall. He fired into the mannequins.
Sloan fell to one side, trying to use a Victorian lady to shield him. Then the door burst open and he heard someone shouting.
“What the hell is going on down here?”
It was Henri Coque.
* * *
Jane had to force herself to keep silent. At first, she was afraid they had Sloan, that they’d kill him or torture him if she didn’t move.
But then Sloan had gotten into the mannequin room, as well.
And she’d had to keep silent—because she couldn’t defend herself.
She scrambled in the darkness, trying not to show herself, desperate to find her gun in the commotion. Then she heard Henri Coque.
“Henri! Get down here, too. You know, Henri, you’re really good at keeping this place afloat—and the shows are terrific!” Heidi said. “But we need you now. Come out, Sheriff. Come out, come out wherever you are, or I will kill this innocent man. And you’ll have to go your whole life knowing he died because you were a coward. Hmm. Maybe we’ll have to run and I can leave Henri alive. I wouldn’t mind doing that. He’s not a bad guy.”
Jane heard movement near her. Sloan.
“I’ll kill him, Sloan. It’ll all be on you!” Heidi said.
She was still behind the wall. Sloan had been returning fire; she had to know approximately where he was. Heidi wasn’t taking any chances. She had Henri in the center of the room. She fired—and Henri screamed.
Just then, Jane felt movement among the mannequins again—but not from Sloan’s direction. She turned. For a moment, she thought she was looking at another mannequin.
Then she realized she was seeing Sage McCormick.
And Sage was desperately trying to push something at her.
Jane frowned. Whatever it was glittered in the dim light. She reached for it, but Sage shoved something else at her.
Her Glock.
Jane nodded her thanks and grabbed the gun.
She had one chance.
She shoved all the mannequins toward the wall where Heidi was taking cover; Henri had been knocked over and Heidi raised her gun to shoot.
Jane fired, and Heidi went down. She heard Cy Tyburn curse.
And then saw that he’d taken aim at her.
But he never fired.
Sloan stepped from the mannequins and fired first.
Cy went down like a log.
Henri sat on the floor, sobbing. “My foot! She shot my foot!”
The door burst open and Logan shouted, “You’re surrounded in here! Nobody move!”
Jane saw Sloan’s shoulders sag slightly. “I think they’re all dead, Logan.”
“Get some light!” Jane shouted. “Get light, quickly. Kelsey is in this mess.”
She heard Logan swearing and Henri crying. In the darkness, she made her way to Sloan as he made his way to her. He took her in his arms and held her, and they were both shaking.
She wasn’t sure what happened next; suddenly there were officers everywhere. An ambulance came for Henri, who was completely dazed.
“We’ll have to close the show tonight. I’ve never closed a show. Oh, my God, I’ve never closed a show. My theater....”
Kelsey refused to go to the hospital. She let the ambulance driver tend to the knot on her forehead. She was humiliated that they’d managed to surprise her right after she’d called the ambulance and come back in to tend to Brian Highsmith.
The rest of the night involved a great deal of paperwork. And because they were law officers who’d exchanged fire and killed, they had to go through additional hours of questioning. Even though there was no doubt they’d been justified, it was protocol.
Not until late afternoon of the next day did they return to the Gilded Lily.
Jane and Sloan didn’t talk about the case after that. They took a long shower together, one filled with tender kisses and whispered words of gratitude that they were together and unharmed. Afterward they made love with an energy and passion neither had thought they could muster.
Then they slept.
Then they made love again.
And at last, when Logan called for a team briefing, they showered once more and dressed and came downstairs.
The Gilded Lily, according to the county, could open the next day.
For that night, Logan had ordered food from across the street. They got drinks from behind the bar and sat and ate in the empty room. They talked and tried to make sense of it all, even though they’d talked about it for so long already.
“The killing spree is what gets me,” Sloan said. “Somehow, Caleb Hough found some of the gold.”
“Where?” Logan asked.
“I think he did find it in the mine, though, at this point, we’ll never know for sure. Then he must have realized that it had to be hidden somewhere in plain sight—but I think he felt he couldn’t get to it himself. Seems he engaged Betty first, and then Heidi—and then Mike and Cy. But one of them did something that made him distrust them. Maybe it was when Brian foolishly put that skull on the wig stand. They all thought they were betraying one another. Caleb led them to the old mine because he wanted to make sure he could trust his partners after that. He seemed to think they were after him. Brian had no idea he’d started the whole rash of mistrust with that skull on the wig stand,” Sloan said. “I heard people creeping around my property because Mike Addison was involved—and he owns the land next to mine. He was probably supposed to be keeping an eye on me, as well.”
“How is Brian?” Kelsey asked.
“They shot him and Betty left him for dead. But he caught up with her and gave her a good knock on the head. She really was injured when I found her. And luckily, she was a lousy actress, so she was so busy playing possum she wasn’t aware I took her bullets,” Sloan said.
“Who killed Caleb—and tried to kill Jimmy and Zoe?” Jane asked.
“I believe it was Heidi. Heidi had been here all her life, and all her life, she’d watched Caleb act like a rich man while she took out hayrides and shoveled manure. So far, according to Newsome, all Mike Addison is doing now is swearing that he didn’t kill anyone and didn’t mean to be involved with killing anyone.”
“Could have fooled me!” Jane muttered.
“Anyway, I’m convinced it was Heidi and Cy who went to the Hough house. Heidi seemed to have the upper hand in everything. Betty was at the station—keeping an eye on me, trying to find out everything I might know,” Sloan said.
“I guess I was semiconscious when Heidi claimed you knew where the gold was, Jane. Do you?” Kelsey asked her.
“I didn’t know. Not until last night,” Jane said.
They all stared at her.
“Sage showed me. She wasn’t trying to show me. I’m not actually sure whether she knew. I’d lost my gun and she helped me find it. But when she got it to me...” She let her voice trail off.
“Where is it?” the other three demanded in unison.
“Well, the stagecoach was never found because it was broken up—and used to make mannequins. The gold was stuffed into the ones that were made out of wood that was part of the stagecoach. I only saw a glint of metal in the leg of one that had fallen. The leg broke on it, and you could see the gold. I’m willing to bet that if they’re all dismantled, the gold will be recovered.”
They all just stared at her.
Sloan reached over and took her hand. “Secretive, aren’t we, Agent Everett? You knew that last night, and you didn’t say a word.”
“Last night, our lives mattered. I hadn’t even thought about it again—didn’t want to.” She paused. “What will happen to it now?”
“I assume most of it will go to the state,” Logan said.
“But what’s left would go to keep the theater open, right?”
“Yes. Brian will have to do some jail time, but that won’t kill the theater,” Logan said.
“And,” Sloan added, “Valerie was innocent of everything that went on, as was Alice. Henri had no clue. He called us in because he was really indignant about the skull. But...he will need to rethink the show.”
“So why was Valerie sneaking around the hospital?” Kelsey asked.
“She wanted to talk to Jennie. She was afraid the theater was haunted or that someone really was after the people here,” Sloan said.
Logan cleared his throat. “Actually, Henri is in trouble. Valerie’s heading back to L.A. She says that as far as she knows, no one ever killed anyone over a toilet paper commercial. Alice says she’ll come back—but she wants a two-week paid vacation. Cy is dead and Brian...Brian won’t be working for a while.”
“Henri will be all right,” Jane said confidently. “Directors have done new shows or recast old ones since the day theater began.”
“He gets to reopen tomorrow,” Sloan murmured. “I wonder what he plans to do.”
* * *
The next night, Sloan couldn’t believe he was standing onstage. Or rather, lying on the stage. He and Jane were now staying together at his place, and she’d talked him into doing this.
Jane was a natural. She was playing the vamp who sang most of the songs and had the most lines. She was carrying him through the song they did as the vamp and the hero—just as Logan and Kelsey covered him at other points.
They’d done a reversal in the show; Kelsey got to save him from the train. That way, he had fewer lines.
Henri had talked Jane into persuading the rest of them. But Henri was halfway in love with Jane himself. The others had thought it would be fun; they’d give Henri three days to find a new cast. They’d warned him they couldn’t possibly learn the lines, but he’d told them it didn’t matter. Ad-libbing was better than no show at all.
They did their performances for a week.
Meanwhile, Sloan had placed Chet in charge of the sheriff’s office, and he and Lamont were interviewing for a new deputy.
Sloan wanted Chet to get in a lot of experience, because Logan had broached Sloan with a job offer.
He and the higher-ups at the Krewe center—men named Adam Harrison and Jackson Crow—had decided to create a third Krewe. Logan wanted him in on it.
It was a big decision.
On the day they finished the show, he went out to his house alone. Out back, he stroked Kanga and Roo and talked to them. He told Johnny Bearclaw about the offer, and Johnny assured him that he’d stay at the Arizona ranch and care for it, no matter where Sloan might be.
In the end he sat in his living room with Cougar on his lap. When he looked at the chair by the fire, he saw that his ancestor, Longman, was sitting with him.
“What should I do, Longman?” he asked.
“Make your own decision,” Longman said. “You came here when you needed to come here. You can’t go back, but you can go forward. Maybe you came back for many reasons. But it’s time to bury the past, all of the past. And then, as men must, go where your heart leads you.”
He smiled and leaned back. He still wasn’t convinced Longman was real. Longman had said what Sloan felt in his own mind.
In the next few days, Jane finished the reconstructions of Sage’s skull and she did a quick job with Red Marston’s.
He wanted a quiet service for the two of them, but the whole town showed up at the chapel by the cemetery.
The dead were put to rest.
He lingered when the others left the graveyard; Jane stayed with him. She’d never once tried to influence him to accept Logan’s offer, but they were together every night—as if they’d always be together.
She squeezed his hand suddenly. “Sloan. There they are.”
He looked up. The day was dying; red streaked a darkening sky. But he could make out three forms and they slowly became clearer.
Red Marston, Trey Hardy and Sage McCormick. He stood and Jane rose with him.
One figure broke away. It was Sage. She moved among the wooden crosses and the occasional stone marker to reach them. She set a hand on his face. He felt it, like the caress of a soft and gentle fog.
Then she turned away and rejoined the others. They started walking into the darkness as the sun fell lower and lower.
Someone else was walking toward the three friends, someone who seemed to shimmer with light.
“Your great-great grandfather?” Jane whispered.
“Maybe,” he said.
Then they were all gone. Neither he nor Jane spoke as they left the cemetery.
“There’s beautiful land in Virginia,” she told him. “Not far from Arlington. Beautiful horse ranches, too.”
“Virginia. There’s a lot of horse country there.”
“Yes, there is. And cats are happy just about anywhere.”
“Yeah?”
She smiled. “Home is where the heart is, you know.”
He whirled her around and kissed her as the red drained from the sky and soft shadows surrounded them.
He smiled, because she looked at him a little anxiously when they separated.
“So I’m going to be a fed,” he mused.
“They’ll make you go through the academy,” she warned.
“Well, they taught you to shoot!” he said.
“They did.”
He kissed her again.
“When do we leave?” he asked.
And with those words, she threw her arms around him.
* * * * *