Chapter Three
Cole Maddox went still with half a strip of bacon between his fingers and his hand already closing around the Colt on the table.
The voice came from the dark passage beyond the kitchen. It was low and unsteady, but not weak. It was a woman’s voice.
The house should have been empty. Ruth was in Hannibal.
Cole didn’t turn at once. He listened.
There it was again, the smallest scrape of bare feet or soft slippers against the boards. The flame in the lamp trembled, throwing long shadows across the kitchen wall.
Now the world answered him.
“Set down whatever you have,” the woman ordered.
Cole’s thumb eased back the hammer of his revolver. The sound was small, but sharp enough that he heard the gasp from the hallway.
“Ma’am,” he said in a voice rough with dust and lack of sleep, “I would advise you not to test me.”
She replied with more courage than sense. “I might say the same to you.”
He turned. She was standing at the edge of the kitchen light in a white nightgown buttoned high to her throat, with one hand clutching the stair rail and the other lifted with a brass candlestick held like a club.
Her hair, chestnut in the lamplight, came loose from its pins and fell over one shoulder in a dark, untidy braid.
Her face was pale, her brown eyes wide and frightened, but her chin stayed up.
For half a breath, Cole forgot the bacon, the long ride, even the name Caleb Rusk.
Then his training returned. He lifted the Colt and aimed it at the floor between them.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
Her grip tightened around the candlestick. “Who are you?”
“This ain’t your house.”
“That isn’t an answer.” Still, she stood her ground.
“It’s the only one you’re g’tting' until you tell me how you came to be standin’ in my kitchen in the middle of the night.”
A flush rose along her throat. Fear, embarrassment, anger… maybe all three.
“I have every right to be here,” she told him.
“No, ma’am. You don’t.” His patience was wearing thin.
“I was given permission.”
“By who?”
Her mouth opened, then closed again as if she decided the truth sounded too unlikely to be trusted.
Cole noticed the tremble in her wrist then.
The candlestick was heavy. She raised it high enough that the sleeve of her nightgown slipped back from her forearm.
She looked as if she might strike him or faint, and he couldn’t decide which would be more inconvenient.
Outside, the wind moved along the side of the house like a violent hand searching for a way in.
Cole’s gaze cut past her to the hallway, then the stairs. “Is there anyone else in this house?”
“No.”
“You certain?”
Her eyes flashed. “I am not in the habit of hiding men upstairs.”
He saw the small tightening around her mouth, and for some reason, it sat poorly with him.
But Rusk had escaped. Men like Rusk did not always come through front doors with guns drawn.
Sometimes they sent softer things ahead, like lies, sob stories, or pretty faces meant to make a man lower his guard.
And this woman had a very pretty face. Worse, she looked scared enough to be telling the truth.
“Name,” he demanded.
She swallowed. “Eliza Bellamy.”
The name meant nothing to him. “From where?”
“Hannibal, Missouri.”
The place struck close enough that his hand shifted on the Colt.
Hannibal.
Ruth.
Cole’s eyes narrowed. “What business you got with Ruth Maddox?”
At the sound of his sister’s name, the woman’s face changed, and some of the terror dropped from her shoulders, as her gaze moved over him with quick, searching disbelief.
“You… know Ruth?”
“I asked first.”