CHAPTER 30

IN a dirty, dank-smelling hotel room, Paul Kevington, dressed as a Texas Ranger, strode back and forth.

He was a worried man. He had come here from Leadville, certain that he must finally lay his hands on Rachel Frye, or perhaps lose his chance forever. He had come so close in Leadville! She had been literally within his grasp there in the hallway outside Alex Gunnison’s hotel room, and yet she had gotten away. He still couldn’t believe she had managed to do so. It was infuriating, and downright embarrassing.

Now that he was in Denver, he wasn’t so sure he was going to find her at all. This was a sizable city, full of places a clever person could hide, and Rachel Frye was clever. He had to admit that much. It was no small feat that she had managed to evade him this long. The mere act of fleeing to the United States had shown her savvy; had she stayed in England he would long ago have tracked her down and taken care of her.

Sometimes he wondered if she was more clever than he. He had an aggravating history of making mistakes where she was concerned. The first had been to fall in love with her, back before he knew their true relation to one another. What a twisted joke of fate that had been! It made him angry. And even though he knew it was illogical, he blamed her for it.

He also blamed her for having caught him in the act of murder. That one incident had sealed her fate. She had to die; he could not afford to leave alive a witness to his crime.

The murder of the meddlesome priest and the pregnant servant girl had not been his first killing. The first had occurred when he was only fifteen years old. The victim had been a vagrant, an annoying, drunken, bad-smelling, trespassing vagabond who had made a mistake of stumbling across Paul Gunnison as he rode on a remote portion of his father’s estate on an unusually boring afternoon. In those days Paul had been enamored of archery; he had with him his bow and arrow. The idea of using a human being as a target had come to him in a rush, not anything he had planned, not anything he had fantasized about. But the power of the idea, once arisen, had been compelling, and after the vagabond managed to insult and annoy him, he carried it out without hesitation.

It had fascinated him to watch the old man die. Hiding the body, aware that any error on his part could destroy him, had given him a heady feeling like he’d never before experienced.

He had known when the act was finished that he had to do it again. In a life full of luxury but without challenges, where nothing he desired was withheld from him, it was fulfilling beyond description to have found a game worth playing, one in which the stakes were high, and real.

So he had killed again, then again, before he ever even touched the priest and the servant girl. He had not committed those killings merely for a thrill, of course. The priest had died for what he knew, and for being meddlesome; Jenny had died because Paul Kevington had no desire to be a father, and he had to be rid of both her and the unwanted life in her.

If only Rachel Frye hadn’t seen him kill her! It wouldn’t have been necessary to destroy her mother for fear Rachel had told her what she’d seen. It would not have been necessary to launch this great transcontinental chase.

Not that the chase didn’t have its own inherent rewards. He found it gratifying and darkly empowering to realize that another human lived in terror of him, and watched for him as a sleepless child in a dark room watches for ghosts that can appear without warning. It was also fulfilling to pursue this chase on his own steam. His father, suspicious of his crimes, had cut him off financially. Paul Kevington had had to provide his own means of support as he chased Rachel Frye. The means by which he’d done it, he thought, were quite clever. His own creative skills had provided him the means to support himself while he continued the chase.

But what if she had managed to escape him for good? What if she returned to England, and revealed what he had done? What if she found Brady Kenton, and Kenton exposed him through his journalism?

Paul Kevington needed a drink. Time to hit the streets, get hold of a bottle, and calm his nerves a bit.

A sudden rapping on his door startled him, causing him to reach for his pistol.

“Who’s there?” he said, taking care to speak in that perfect imitation of a Texas accent that had helped disguise his British origins here in America.

“It’s me … Crane.”

“Don’t believe I know a Crane.”

“You remember! I’m the man from the rail yard.”

Kevington did remember. Crane was a local no-good who lived in a shack within view of most of the rail yard. Kevington had stumbled across him by chance right after he arrived in Denver, and had offered him money to report to him if he should cross the path of a vagrant Englishwoman. The rail yard had seemed a likely place for Rachel Frye to make an appearance; he knew she traveled by train sometimes.

Kevington reholstered his pistol and opened the door. He wrinkled his nose as Crane’s earthy and unwashed pungency preceded him into the room.

“You’ve seen her?” Kevington asked in perfect faux Texan.

“Yes, sir. Not more than fifteen minutes ago. But if you want to catch her you’ll have to hurry, because I believe she and the man with her are getting ready to slip out of the city.”

“Who is the man with her?”

Crane arched one brow and looked sideways at Kevington, saying nothing. The message was clear.

Kevington dug bills from beneath his vest and stuffed them into Crane’s hand.

Crane smiled haughtily. “Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Best.”

“Tell me what you saw, damn you!” Kevington snapped. For a moment, he forgot to maintain his Texan accent, and Crane looked surprised as he heard the English inflections in Kevington’s voice. Kevington noticed that look, and if Crane’s fate hadn’t been determined until now, it was as of that moment.

“I don’t know who the man is. He’s a tall fellow, strong kind of build, fine-looking sort of gent. Grayish kind of beard and hair. I didn’t know him, but he looked kind of familiar.”

Kevington swore beneath his breath. He knew who it was: a man whose visage seemed familiar to almost every American because it was present in each edition of America’s most popular magazine.

Rachel, that miserable cow, had found Brady Kenton.