CHAPTER 15

Marsh looked out at the street almost empty now. He’d been keeping an eye on the Silver Slipper and just noticed a closed carriage. Two men walking toward the carriage seemed to be struggling with a large bag. He stepped farther out into the street and saw the “bag” was a woman. Limp. And then the man in the checkered suit got out of the carriage and went over to the two men carrying the woman.

All Marsh’s instincts started working. There was a furtiveness about their movements that signaled no good. And the man had raised Marsh’s hackles from the first moment Marsh had seen him watching the Silver Slipper. And the woman. Catalina? He couldn’t tell since a shawl covered the hair and face.

His hand went automatically to the gun at his side. Catalina was his, by God, his to torment. His to ruin if he chose. No one else on earth had a right to lay a finger on her.

His hand on the butt of the gun, he quickly crossed the street as the men were trying to load the woman into the carriage.

“I don’t think she wants to go,” he said in a quietly lethal voice.

The men swung around, all three of them. The one in the checkered suit reached inside his jacket, but Marsh was faster. His gun was out before any of them could blink.

“This ain’t your business, mister. It’s my … sister, and I’m taking her home.”

“Let me see her face.”

“I told you, this ain’t your business.”

Suddenly one of the men let go of the woman, and the other shoved her at Marsh. She fell toward him, and he had two choices, to drop his gun and grab her or step back and allow her to fall. The choices flickered through his mind instantaneously, and he stepped back. Better for her to fall than for both of them to be taken.

But as he did, one of the men darted toward him, and the other came around to attack him from the rear. He swung the gun around, hitting one man with the barrel and jabbing his knee in the other’s crotch.

The woman fell, the shawl falling from her head, and he saw the light-brown, almost blond, hair. It wasn’t Cat, but it was the girl he had seen that first night, the shy one. Just then he caught a movement by the man in the checkered suit, who had pulled a derringer from his pocket and was aiming it at Marsh.

Instinct took over. Marsh didn’t even think; he just squeezed the trigger. The sound echoed in the street as the man doubled over, blood spraying from a wound in his chest. There was a noise behind Marsh, and he whirled around to see people pouring out of the Silver Slipper. The big bartender. Cat. Customers.

The two men who had grabbed the girl were doubled up on the street; the man in the checkered suit lay motionless in the growing pool of his own blood.

Catalina rushed over to the girl while the bartender, holding a club, glared at Marsh. “What happened?”

“These three … gentlemen were trying to put the lady in the carriage,” Marsh said.

“You stopped them?” the bartender’s voice was incredulous.

Just then a policeman ran up, blowing a whistle as more and more people congregated, the gamblers from the Glory Hole joining the drinkers from the Silver Slipper.

The policeman bullied his way to the front, knelt in front of the man in the checkered suit. “He’s dead.” Marsh had already holstered his gun.

Cat took over. “I think he drugged one of my girls. Trying to kidnap her.” She looked to Marsh for confirmation. “This man prevented it.”

The policeman looked at the two thugs still on the ground. “What do you have to say?”

One of them groaned, his hands still protecting his crotch. “We wuz jest taking this girl back to her family … where she belongs … that’s what he told us.”

“By drugging her?” Clearly the policeman didn’t believe the man. His glance went around the crowd and settled on Marsh, who by far dominated the crowd. His eyes moved downward to the gun holster. “You do the shooting?”

Marsh nodded. “Self-defense. He drew that derringer on me.” He gestured toward a small gun lying in the gutter.

The policeman held out his hand for the gun, and Marsh gave it to him, watching his eyes as the man studied the handmade butt. The barrel was still warm.

“You three,” he said, including Marsh in his glance, “will go to the station house with me until we sort this out.”

Two other policemen joined the first, apparently summoned by the whistle. One of them stared down at the dead man. “That’s Calvin Tucker. Used to be one of us,” he said. “Detective now, I hear.”

“Sergeant,” Cat pleaded again, promoting the man. The officer obviously knew her, Marsh noted. It seemed everyone did. “Can we take her inside?”

The officer flushed with pleasure, and Marsh knew exactly how he felt. Cat was using those incredible green eyes to advantage. He also recognized a familiar sinking feeling. Jail again. And it appeared as if Miss Catalina Hilliard couldn’t care less.

He and the officer watched as the burly bartender picked up the still-unconscious girl and carried her inside. Cat waited until they were gone, gazed at Marsh for the first time, then at the officer. “I don’t see why you have to take Mr. Canton in. My bartender and I saw everything. That man”—she gestured to the ground—“has been lurking around for the past several days. He obviously took a fancy to one of my girls. Mr. Canton was defending her, and himself. I saw the man go for his gun, and so did my bartender.”

The officer looked at her dubiously, then at Marsh, apparently seeing something he didn’t like. “Your full name?”

“Taylor Canton,” he said easily enough, though inside he was in turmoil. He’d thought he was through with killing, goddammit, but it still came easily. He suddenly realized his right fist was clenched, and he tried to relax it but couldn’t. He struggled for the detachment that served him so well. “I own the Glory Hole across the street.”

The officer’s face cleared slightly as if ownership of the Glory Hole made Marsh acceptable. He took out a notebook and wrote the name down. “You aren’t planning to go anyplace?”

Marsh shook his head.

The officer turned to Cat. “You willing to testify to what you saw?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“I need to talk to the girl.”

“Tomorrow?” Cat asked.

The policeman sighed, helpless in the onslaught of that bright green gaze. “All right, Miss Catalina, but I expect to see her then.”

Cat nodded.

“I’ll be back to talk to you,” the police officer said to Marsh. “You,” the officer then said, turning to one of the newly arrived policemen. “Wait here for the wagon to pick the dead one up. I’ll take these two men in.” He handcuffed them as they looked at Marsh with stunned hostility.

Cat went to Marsh. “Would you have a drink, Mr. Canton? It’s on the house.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Again?”

“Payment of a debt,” she said curtly.

His mouth quirked. “You don’t place a very high value on the young lady.”

“I place a very high value on her,” Cat replied. “What do you want?” The question was very low, audible, he knew, only to himself.

“I’ll let you know,” he said in a voice just as low. “After due consideration.”

He felt her anger, her chagrin at being indebted to him. He took advantage of the moment, putting his arm around her waist and steering her toward the Silver Slipper, knowing she must hate the possessiveness of that gesture. He certainly hadn’t intended this, but he wasn’t above taking advantage of it, either.

They went through the door, aware that a crowd was following them. Marsh understood himself well enough to know that his outward indifference to the episode was misleading. He had told himself he had interfered because he thought the lady might be Cat. But he would have interfered in any case because …

Because …

The images came back, the ones conjured in his mind when he’d heard the truth, or rather part of the truth, about his sister and mother. A band of Yankees foraging for Sherman. Rape. Fire. Murder. He hadn’t been able to do anything about that, though he had spent years avenging his family’s deaths. But he had no intention of standing by and allowing anything like it to happen again.

Marsh knew his fist had tightened again into that ball as they reached the bar, and he tried to relax. He kept trying to reassure himself that it had been the woman’s danger that caused it. It hadn’t been the killing, the pulling of a trigger again—or had it? But no matter how hard he tried to bring his attention back to Catalina, he still saw the man’s eyes, the man he’d just shot. Somehow the old detachment was no longer there, the shell that had protected him from his own actions.

Cat’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “What would you like?”

“Whiskey.”

A small glass was filled, and he took it in one swallow, feeling the burning straight down to his gut.

Cat watched him carefully. Something tortured him.

She poured him another drink, and though his fingers wrapped around the glass, he didn’t pick it up. His gaze bored into hers. “Why did you lie for me?”

“I didn’t lie,” she said simply. “Teddy and I were alerted by a customer and had just reached the window when that man took aim.” She hesitated, then added, “Sweet Lucifer, but you were fast. And,” she added after a pause, “accurate.”

She saw him tense, then shrug. “A talent I picked up in Texas.”

“You have a number of talents, Mr. Canton. Playing the piano. Handling a gun. I hear you’re very good at gambling too. How many more are there?”

He wanted to change the subject, and he knew just how to do it. “I can show you one, anytime you say,” he added.

“Men overestimate themselves,” Cat retorted quickly.

“Do they now, darlin’?” he drawled, his insinuation only too clear: how much experience did she have?

She flushed down to her toes. She’d never done that before she met him.

Cat did something she rarely did: poured herself a drink and downed it just as efficiently as he had.

It was enough to reestablish her composure. She set the glass down. “I have to go up and see how Molly is.”

His expression changed from taunting into a smoothness she couldn’t read. “Do you know what all this was about?”

“No,” she said, and then hesitated. “But I thank you on her behalf.”

“Does that mean our little war will … cease?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said flatly. “I’ve been here a long time. I’ve built this place from nothing through sheer hard work.”

“And you don’t want competition?”

“There’s not enough business for both of us.”

“Ah, but you’re wrong, darlin’,” he said. “I expect you’ve never done better.”

“It won’t last.”

“So you’ll do anything to rid yourself of it?”

“Yes,” she said defiantly. She knew her voice was too strident, and she wondered whether she was trying to convince him or herself.

His eyes locked with hers, and they were so dark, she felt as if she were being drawn into a black night sky. Limitless. Uncharted. She knew she should break away from them, but she couldn’t. And, she discovered with shock, he couldn’t draw away either. But there was something unsure, despite his bold words, ever since the shooting. In that minute his hand had moved so fast, she couldn’t follow it. Sweet Lucifer. The pure reflex of the movement spoke so eloquently of experience.

The dark, mysterious Taylor Canton. Canton. And then she remembered what she had been trying to remember since she’d met him.

She’d seen gunfighters in Colorado, in Utah. Now she knew what she’d recognized in Canton. That stalking grace. The way he always positioned himself where he could see the entire room. The familiarity with which he wore a gun. The cold eyes. The lethal danger she’d sensed since she’d first met him. Canton. She searched her memory for names, but she’d been in San Francisco so long now. Yet she’d read the name somewhere. Heard it. She hadn’t found the connection earlier because he was out of place as a saloon owner.

But then, she was out of place too. A fugitive from a past that was also dangerous. Canton. Why did the name haunt her? But she would remember. And then what?

She turned to Harry, the second bartender. “See that he has anything he wants.”

The man nodded.

Canton’s mouth quirked as if to ask whether she was really going to see about Molly, or if she was running from him. “You’ll let me know how she is?”

Cat hesitated. “Would you like to go up and see for yourself?” She was surprised at her own question, but his concern threw her off guard, just as that look of pain had earlier.

“No. I have to get back.”

“Are you still accompanying the singer?”

Something flickered again in his eyes. “No,” he said shortly.

He turned abruptly and, in that effortlessly graceful way of his, walked to the door.

Molly continued to sleep through the afternoon. A doctor had been called and he’d sniffed the air. “Chloroform,” he pronounced. He checked her breathing, her heart. “I could try to wake her,” he said, “but there’s really no reason. I’d just let her wake naturally. It will be an hour or so, no more.” He gave Cat, who’d appeared in Molly’s room at almost the same time the doctor did, a bottle of pills. “If she has a headache, give her one of these.”

Cat took them. “Send me the bill.”

He nodded. He took care of everyone at the Silver Slipper.

Teddy paced anxiously, and Cat looked at him sympathetically as the doctor left. “Why don’t you go help Harry? I’ll call you when she wakes.”

“What if they try again?”

Cat smiled. “I think it’ll take some time for whoever sent them to realize what’s happened. I’ll try to make sure those two men are held for quite a while.”

Teddy hesitated at the door. “Why do you think he helped?”

“I don’t believe he thought about it. He just reacted.”

“He was real fast.”

“Too fast,” Cat grumbled.

“If it wasn’t for him …”

“He’ll find a way to exact payment,” Cat said dryly.

“Maybe we misjudged him.”

“No,” Cat said flatly.

“But—”

“No,” she said again. The man really was Lucifer. He was even turning Teddy around now.

Teddy said nothing else, but closed the door behind him with a softness that, like Canton’s capability with a gun, was eloquence in itself.

Cat closed the curtains in the room, blocking out the early-evening light. She sat in the semi-darkness, beside Molly. Her thoughts jumped between Molly and the man who had saved her—saved her from what? She had to know or they couldn’t protect her.

She wondered exactly how old Molly was. At least eighteen.

By that age Cat had been a prostitute, had lost a child, and had killed a man. But she had never looked innocent. She’d been as tough as bark on an oak tree. She’d had to be to survive.

But Molly? Mary Beth. Cat suddenly felt very, very old.

She reached over with her hand, touching the girl ever so gently, wondering what it would have been like to have a daughter. She would have protected her own with her life. She’d tried. When she’d been Lizzie, when she’d been fourteen, she’d discovered—or the other women had—that she was with child. She hadn’t known enough to realize what was happening to her body, yet once she did know, she’d wanted the child. Desperately. Someone to love. To love her. But her mother had called in a woman to rid her of it. Lizzie had refused, but in her ignorance, played into the old woman’s hand. She took tea with her. Then she’d felt woozy and everything had started whirling around her. When she woke hours later, she knew the baby was gone. In its place was agonizing pain.

She’d never gotten with child again, despite two more years at the Natchez Under the Hill brothel and then the god-awful time with James. Whatever had happened during those black hours of unconsciousness had apparently made her unable to conceive again.

She’d told herself in the succeeding years that it didn’t matter. But she was so alone. Perhaps it had taken Canton to show her just how alone she was. The impression of aloneness hovered around him like a dense San Francisco fog, but it never dissipated as the fog did. He hid in fog. And so, she reluctantly admitted to herself, did she.