His hand was on the butt of the Colt as he opened the door and stepped into the corridor, which was deserted at the moment. The hotel had elevators, several of them, in fact, but there was also a stairwell down the hall to the left, and the door to it was set back in a small alcove. Conrad went to it and stepped into that alcove, then stopped and edged his head slightly past the corner so he could look back down the corridor. He had a good view of the door to his suite. He wanted to see who was going to knock on that door in a couple minutes.
He still had a lot of acquaintances in Carson City. None of them had anything to do with him now, though. It wasn’t like he had tried to keep in touch over the years. In fact, some of his former friends were probably still angry with him for making it look like he had died when his house burned down, then letting everyone believe that for months.
The only other people he knew were Deputy Wallace and Dr. Liam Taggart, and neither of them would have sent him a telegram. If they’d wanted to talk to him, they simply would have shown up at the hotel and knocked on his door. There was something fishy about that telegram, and he wanted to know what it was. Staking out his suite door seemed like the best way to find out.
He stiffened as a man emerged from the elevators and came along the corridor, looking at the numbers on the doors. He wore a gray suit and a black derby and sported a close-cropped beard. Conrad had never seen him before, at least not that he recalled. He put his hand on his gun butt again as the man paused in front of his door, then took a piece of paper out of his pocket and looked at it for a second. He put the paper back, shrugged to himself, and raised his hand to knock.
At that moment, Conrad heard the faint click of the stairwell door behind him, then a rustle of fabric. The cold ring of a gun barrel pressed itself to the back of his neck.
“I knew you’d take the bait,” a woman’s voice said, as down the hall the bearded man’s knuckles pounded on the door of Conrad’s suite.
Conrad moved with blinding speed, twisting away from the gun and whirling around. His left arm came up, hit the woman’s arm, and knocked it to the side so the gun was no longer pointing at him. He drove his body against hers, forcing her back against the wall of the alcove, and closed his hand around the cylinder of the little revolver so it couldn’t fire even if she pulled the trigger. He wrenched the gun out of her fingers. His other hand came up and caught hold of her chin, making her gasp. He knew he was probably hurting her and he regretted that, but he wanted answers.
“I’m not the only one who took the bait, Miss Eastman,” he told the blonde he had last seen in the offices of the late and unlamented Carl Monroe.
Chapter 6
Conrad kept the pressure on Lorraine Eastman’s chin, preventing her from screaming or making even the smallest outcry. Her blue eyes were wide with fear as he pinned her to the wall. He was aware of the warm, full curves of her body under her dress, but at the moment they didn’t mean much to him.
Down the hall, the bearded man continued to knock on the door of Conrad’s suite for a minute or so. Then the knocking stopped and he heard receding footsteps as the man walked away. A moment later the elevator door rattled as it closed and the cage started to descend.
“We’re going to my suite,” Conrad told the blonde. “Don’t make a racket, and you won’t get hurt.”
She hissed something unintelligible at him. He figured she was trying to curse him. Quickly, he shifted his grip on her, getting his left arm around her waist from behind and clapping his right hand completely over her mouth. She struggled in his grasp, but he was too strong for her. He pulled her out of the alcove and forced her down the hall toward his suite.
He hoped no other hotel guests or employees came along before he was able to get her through the door. If they did, trying to force a young woman into his suite would certainly look bad for him. Luck was with him, however. The corridor stayed deserted long enough for him to open the door, which he had left unlocked. A hard shove sent Lorraine Eastman stumbling into the sitting room.
She turned toward him and opened her mouth to scream. He grabbed her again and clamped his hand around her throat, stifling any outcry.
“I know I’m not being much of a gentleman,” he told her, “and I’m truly sorry about that. But you’ve attacked me a couple times now, and I want to know why. If I take my hand away from your throat, do you promise not to scream?”
She glared at him for a couple seconds, then a look of resignation came into her eyes and she nodded.
Conrad didn’t believe her. “I can knock you unconscious before you manage to get a peep out, and I will if you don’t cooperate. I’ll try to pull my punch, but I can’t promise you won’t be injured. I have the rest of the day and all night if you want to be stubborn about this.”
The fear in her gaze struck him as genuine. When he asked again if she promised not to scream, she nodded and he believed her. He moved his hand away from her throat but held it ready to strike if he needed to.
“I’m not going to yell,” she said in a surly voice. “If you’ll swear to let me go, I promise to tell you whatever it is you want to know.”
“You answer my questions first, and then we’ll talk about what’s going to happen to you,” Conrad suggested in return. “That’s the best deal you’re going to get.”
She sighed wearily. “All right. I agree. Now, will you stop pawing me and let me sit down?”
“Keeping you from trying to kill me isn’t exactly the same as pawing you,” Conrad pointed out. He released her and pointed to one of the well-upholstered armchairs. “Sit down.”
The blonde sat. She wore the same dark blue dress she had worn at Monroe’s office earlier. A matching hat perched on her head. She had tucked her hair back up as best she could after Conrad wrecked the arrangement of curls. She looked down at the floor. “What is it you want to know?”
“Your name is Lorraine Eastman, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. How did you know that?” Before he could answer, she went on, “Never mind. I suppose the law told you. They’ve been trying to get something on Mr. Monroe for as long as I’ve worked for him.”
“How long is that?” Conrad wanted to know if Lorraine had been Monroe’s secretary when Pamela came through Carson City with the twins.
“I’ve been his secretary for the past year and a half.”
If she was telling the truth, that meant she had probably never seen Pamela or the children.
“What happened to the secretary he had before that?”
“He fired her when she ... well, when she turned up in a delicate condition.”
“Pregnant?”
Lorraine made a face. “If you want to be crude about it.”
“And I suppose Monroe was responsible for that?”
“Again, if you want to be crude about it ... yes. I didn’t really know what happened until later, when the woman came back to the office to beg Mr. Monroe for money. He ... he laughed at her and sent her away.”
“Nice fellow,” Conrad said in a disgusted tone. “I suppose you were so quick to defend him earlier because the two of you—”
He stopped short at the look of utter revulsion on Lorraine’s face. “God, no!” she exclaimed. “He was the most contemptible little weasel I ever met. But he paid well, and I didn’t want anything to happen to him.” She rolled her eyes. “That didn’t work out too well, did it?”
“Is that the only reason you cared? Because of the money he paid you?”
She hesitated, then said, “I didn’t want any trouble with the law. When you said he tried to have you killed, I was afraid you were going to bring in the authorities and they’d finally have something on him they could use to convict him. I knew if that happened, they would arrest me, too, and claim that as his secretary I had to be aware of all his crooked dealings.”
“Well, weren’t you?” Conrad demanded.
“Of course I was,” she snapped. “I’m not a fool. I saw the sort of men who came and went in that office, and I typed up his correspondence and notes. I hadn’t worked for him long before I knew what he was up to.”
“Why come after me?” Conrad asked. “If you hated Monroe like you say, it couldn’t have been to avenge
