The Ballad of Emma O'Toole

And making her listen could make the difference between life and death.

Only when he sensed she was nearing the end of her patience did Logan untangle his feet, rise from the bunk and look directly at her. Even then, with so long to prepare for it, the sight of Emma O’Toole stopped his breath for an instant.

She was standing rigidly outside the cell, wearing an ugly, starched gray frock that had clearly been made for someone else. Her dark honey hair was pulled tightly back from her face, accentuating her bloodshot, blue-green eyes. She looked pale and drawn and haggard, but for all that, Logan couldn’t tear his gaze from her. Last night in the dimly lit saloon, his vision had caught little more than the flash of her anger. But now he knew that that exquisitely powerful face, with its tragic beauty, would haunt him to the end of his days.

Her lips parted as their eyes met. The awareness dawned on him that he’d slept in his clothes, that his heavy black whiskers needed a shave, and that the chamber pot under his bunk hadn’t been emptied since last night. He looked like a derelict and probably smelled worse, but there was little he could do about that now. The only important thing was that she hear what he had to say, and that she believe him. If there was a spark of understanding in her, and if he could touch it—

But this was no time to lower his guard, Logan reminded himself. The woman wanted him dead. She had said so to his face, and again in that cursed news article. The fact that she was young and vulnerable didn’t make her any less his enemy.

He cleared his throat and forced himself to speak. “I’m glad you came, Miss O’Toole. You and I need to get some facts straight.”

“Save your facts for the trial, Mr. Devereaux.” Emma’s attempt to sound haughty ended in a nervous quaver as the prisoner tensed. He looked like a caged wolf, she thought, wild and dark and dangerous. She’d come to watch him suffer, to fuel her own anger with his despair. But Logan Devereaux appeared neither cowed nor remorseful. His rage burned as hot as her own, leaping like black fire in his eyes.

“It seems the trial’s already begun,” he muttered, snatching up the newspaper from his bunk and crumpling it against the bars. “Have you read this? Have you seen what that lying little weasel of a reporter wrote about last night?”

Emma’s heart sank. Hector Armitage had wasted no time getting his story to press. As she took in the headline, part of her rejoiced in what seemed to be an open, public condemnation of what the gambler had done. But another part reeled with dismay. The article could expose all her secrets, leaving her open to the most vicious kind of scandal.

Devereaux was glowering at her, waiting for a reply. “No,” she declared. “I didn’t see the paper this morning. I came here straight from the boardinghouse.”

“Read it!” His fist shoved the crumpled paper through the bars. “Read this drivel. Then tell me how much of it you put into his head.”

“I didn’t put anything in his head!”

“Just read it.” His voice was a snarl. Emma pulled the paper flat, hands trembling, blurring the print. His searing black eyes fixed on her face as she read.

Young Man Murdered By Gambler—Sweetheart Vows Justice

A nineteen-year-old miner lost his life last night in a dispute over a game of fivecard draw. Billy John Carter, lately of Tennessee, had never set foot in a saloon before, but he needed money to marry his sweetheart and give their unborn babe a name. His only hope was the gaming tables and, to his ill fortune, he chose the Crystal Queen.

Today would have been Billy John Carter’s wedding day. Instead he lies cold and dead, most foully gunned down by Mr. Logan Devereaux, an itinerant gambler, who used a .22 Derringer to shoot young Carter in the chest at point-blank range when the young man accused him of cheating. Mr. Devereaux was arrested and taken to the Park City jail, where he awaits trial on the vile charge of murder.

This reporter was a personal witness to Mr. Carter’s tragic death in the arms of his bride-to-be, the beautiful Miss Emma O’Toole, who was summoned to the scene of the crime. Miss O’Toole has sworn vengeance on the villain who murdered her true love and robbed her unborn babe of a father. She was gracious enough to speak with this reporter after the tragedy. Her tear-filled eyes blazed with resolve as she uttered these words: “Logan Devereaux is a man without conscience. I mean to see him pay for this treacherous deed with his life!”

The color drained from Emma’s face as she read down the page and saw her fears realized. Thanks to Hector Armitage, everyone in town would soon know about the baby. She could just imagine the scene at the boardinghouse. She’d be out on the street by nightfall. And how was she going to find another job? Who’d even think of hiring a woman in her condition?

Her gaze met the gambler’s over the top of the newspaper. “How could he do this to me?” she muttered. “I’m ruined.”

Devereaux exploded with strangled fury. “You’re ruined? Good Lord, woman, is that all you’re worried about—your precious reputation?”

“Stop it!” Emma shot back. “You’ve no right to rave at me, you cold-blooded monster. If you hadn’t murdered Billy John, my reputation would be safe because I’d be a married woman on this day! Now—”

His hand snaked through the bars to seize her wrist in a viselike grip. She twisted and struggled, powerless against the strength that yanked her flat against the bars of the cell, bringing her eyes within a handsbreadth of his own.

“I’ll scream,” she threatened.

“Scream and I’ll break your wrist.” The black heat of his gaze seared her soul. “You’re talking to a desperate man, Miss O’Toole, a man you just called a cold-blooded monster. Don’t underestimate what I can—and will—do if you push me to it.”

“What do you want?” Emma’s voice was a raw whisper.

“Just this.” His grip tightened, twisting her against the bars. Her eyes traced the scar on his cheek and the thick, black stubble that shaded his jaw—anything to avoid getting pinned by that awful, angry stare. “I want you to shut that lovely mouth of yours long enough to hear me out. Then I’ll let you go, and you can scream or faint or do whatever you damn well please!”

“You’re hurting me!” She braced her free hand against the bars and tried to pull away, but his strong fist only clasped her tighter.

“Hey, everythin’ all right back there?” The deputy’s nasal twang echoed down the corridor.

The grip on her wrist tightened in warning. Emma glared into the gambler’s anthracite eyes. “Yes,” she said loudly. “Everything is quite under control.”

She felt his fingers relax slightly, but he made no move to let her go.

“I’m not afraid of you!” she said. “Do your worst, Mr. Devereaux. You can’t hurt me more than you already have. You killed Billy John! You destroyed two other lives, and, by heaven, you’re going to get exactly what you—”

“Damn it, woman, listen to me! The last thing I wanted was to kill your Billy John. But he was pointing that big .45 at a helpless old man. He was in the act of pulling the trigger.”

“That gun was too old and rusty to fire. It could only have been used for bluff.”

“How the devil was I to know that?” His breath rasped in Emma’s ear. “From the way the young fool was waving that pistol around, I’m not sure that even he knew it.”

“Billy John was the gentlest person I’ve ever known! He would never threaten an old man, let alone shoot him.”

Logan Devereaux’s frustration exploded in a muttered curse. “Find the man and ask him. He’s about seventy—thick, white hair and a glass eye. Doc, they called him. He said he was a retired dentist.”

“Doc—Doctor Kostandis.” The old man had filled Emma’s tooth when she was thirteen, she recalled. The following year, he’d lost his son in a mining accident, and his whole world had collapsed, followed shortly by his reputation and his career. “He drinks,” she said. “All day, every day. By that time of night, I’d wager he was so drunk he wouldn’t remember anything that happened.”

“He didn’t look drunk. Damn it, he didn’t act drunk.”

“He never does. He just drinks quietly until he passes out somewhere.” Pressed against the bars, Emma studied the stormy face of the man who’d killed her lover. She steeled herself against the desperation in his eyes as he spoke.

“Ask somebody else, then. There were other men there. They saw that the fool boy had an extra ace. They saw—”

“I don’t care what you think they saw, or what you say Billy John did. He wasn’t a danger to anybody. And you…” She glared at him through the hot blur of her tears. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

Her bravado was no good. She was on the verge of sobbing now. Something flickered in the hard, black eyes that watched her, but Logan Devereaux’s fist didn’t loosen its grip on her arm.

“By all that’s holy, you’ve got to believe me,” he rasped. “I was only trying to stop the boy. I aimed for his shoulder. I never meant to kill him.”

“But you did!” Emma plunged into the well of her anger. “You pulled the trigger and killed a defenseless young man. If that isn’t murder—”

He released her so abruptly that she stumbled backward. “All right, Emma O’Toole, you win!” he snapped. “I’ve tried to tell you the truth. If you don’t want to listen, there’s no reason for you to be here. Go on! Get out!”

Turning his back on her, he stood facing the rear wall of his cell. Emma regained her balance, then stalked past the leering deputy and out of the jail.

She wouldn’t come here again, she resolved as she strode up the boardwalk. Even behind bars, there was something about Logan Devereaux that made her feel vulnerable. He was a dangerous man, compellingly handsome, with the Devil’s own persuasive tongue. If she let herself listen to him, she might come to believe his lies and break the promise she’d sworn on her mother’s grave to keep.

Emma walked faster, her thoughts churning. Only as she passed Birdwell’s Emporium and glimpsed a reflection in the freshly washed glass did she realize, to her horror, that she was being watched.

Scores of curious eyes were following her every move along the boardwalk.

Peering more closely into the reflection, she could see the far side of Main Street, where men and women stood in clusters, whispering and pointing at her.