“We’re done here, ain’t we?”
“I suppose.”
“There
“I’m not sure she’d like that,” Jessie said with a frown.
“Well, I don’t want to upset her, but I’ve got somethin’ I want to tell her.”
Jessie thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “All right. I suppose it would be all right. You can knock on her door, anyway, and find out if she’ll see you. However, I don’t know if she’ll be up to—”
Preacher stopped her with a gesture. “It ain’t about that. I just want to talk to her.”
“All right.”
“And you might tell Brutus that we’re all friends again, in case he sees me wanderin’ around the house and decides to use that ol’ blunderbuss on me.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Cleve offered.
They left the office together after Preacher said good night to Jessie. Once they were in the hallway, the gambler went on in a low voice, “You’d better not be planning on double-crossing us, mister. I can tell you right now, you’ll regret it if you do.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Preacher said. “Just tend to your own rat-killin’.”
They parted company, Cleve heading for the parlor while Preacher took the rear stairs to the second floor. He found the room where he had been with Casey before and rapped quietly on the door.
“Who . . . who’s there?” The tentative question came from the other side of the panel.
“Jim Donnelly,” Preacher said, since that was the name she still knew him by.
“Oh! Jim.” He heard soft footsteps on the other side of the door. “I . . . I don’t think I feel up to seeing you right now, Jim.”
“I just want to talk to you for a minute,” Preacher said.
“Really, I—”
“Won’t take long.”
She sighed. “All right. But wait just a minute.”
He stood there in front of the door as a few seconds passed. Then Casey told him, “You can come in now.”
He twisted the knob and opened the door. The room was dark, and when he saw that, he knew that’s what had caused the delay. She had blown out the lamp so that he couldn’t get a good look at her. He could barely see her standing on the far side of the room.
Preacher closed the door, shutting out the light from the corridor. “Casey, you don’t have to worry about what you look like,” he told her. “Not with me. It ain’t your fault, what Beaumont done to you.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if I . . . if I hadn’t been with him.”
“Well, now, you didn’t have a whole heap o’ choice about that, now did you?”
“No,” she whispered. “None at all.”
“So, like I said, it ain’t your fault. It’s that bastard Beaumont’s fault, and I’m here to promise you . . . he’s gonna pay.”
Her gown rustled as she came closer to him. “But I don’t understand. You . . . you work for Beaumont, don’t you?”
“Well, that’s a mite complicated.” Obviously, Jessie trusted the girl, or she wouldn’t have brought her into the office and showed Preacher her injuries the way she had. But Preacher wasn’t sure just how far they should trust her. “All I can say is that things ain’t always what they seem.”
“Are you going to . . . kill him?”
“We’ll have to wait and see about that.”
He heard a soft, swishing sound as she came still closer to him. “If you do, Jim, I want you to know that I’ll be so—”
“You don’t have to say anything else. I just wanted you to know that justice is gonna catch up to Beaumont, sooner or later.”
“Jim.” She reached out in the darkness and found his arm with her hand, stopping him as he started to turn toward the door. “Jim, you don’t have to go just yet, do you?”
He felt her lean against him, and as his arms instinctively went around her, he realized the last sound he’d heard had been her robe falling to the floor. Her nude body was soft and warm in his embrace.
“You’ll have to be gentle with my face,” she whispered, “but as for the rest of it . . . you don’t have to be gentle at all.”
Chapter 19
Preacher hadn’t asked Jessie how she was going to keep Beaumont from making his usual rounds the next afternoon. He didn’t want to know.
