“I’m beginning to think you’re insatiable.”
“I certainly hope so.”
Longarm chuckled and pulled on his pants, then his socks, and finally his boots. He grew serious thinking about the meeting that was about to take place. “Megan, I have a terrible feeling that I’m going to get some evidence against Ivan Kane that could send the man to prison.”
“That may well be the case,” Megan said. “But you’re not the judge and the jury like Kane appears to be in Bodie. All you can do, Custis, is conduct your investigation and gather up whatever evidence you can, and then decide whether you need to arrest him or not.”
“You make it sound pretty cut and dried.”
“It is, really. But instead you’re doing what my father always said a lawman can’t afford to do.”
“And that is?”
“Let his personal feelings affect his decisions.”
Longarm reached for his shirt. “Well, it’s damned hard not to. You see, I think a person’s life is sort of like a balancing scale. By that I mean that we all do things we’re not very proud of and would like to erase. But most of us also do some fine things that we are proud of, and we need to balance everything out.”
“That’s certainly an interesting philosophy for a lawman,” Megan said. “Are you trying to tell me that, if a man is good to his wife, children, and friends, yet robs a bank or store, his sentence ought to account for his good deeds? That he ought to be shown leniency?”
“Judges weigh a man’s background into their sentencing. If someone has been a pillar in the community and it is a first-time offense, he’ll get a far lighter sentence than a career outlaw. So yes, I think that there is a balancing of the good along with the bad.”
“And you think that maybe Ivan Kane, because of all the good things he has done, ought to be given some extra consideration even if he is abusing his office?”
“Yes.”
“I strongly disagree,” Megan said. “Someone like Ivan Kane gives a black eye to every decent man who ever wore a badge. If he really is guilty and that is proven in a court of law, people all over Nevada will say, ‘See, another lawman gone bad. They’re probably all bad and it’s just Ivan Kane that got caught.”
“Well,” Longarm said, cinching on his gunbelt. “We’re talking as if Kane has already been tried and convicted. And of what? We don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing.”
“You don’t think what he did to that man whose head he smashed into the storefront was wrong?”
“I think it was too harsh,” Longarm admitted, “but we don’t know what Mr. Johnson really did or is. And Ivan may be right, the man might actually be behind an attempt on his life.”
“You’re bending over way too far in Kane’s favor,” Megan said. “And I know that, if you have to arrest him, it’s going to be very, very difficult for you, Custis. You just need to start thinking about how best you can do your job and not about the consequences.”
“You sound like a judge or something,” Longarm said, feeling a little irritated.
“My father is a lawman, and his personal feelings for someone never interfered with his good judgment. And I can tell you that, although he seems loud and insensitive, there were a few times when he cried alone because he had to arrest someone that he either called a friend or had admired. You’ve got to do the same with Ivan Kane, if that’s what it takes.”
Longarm picked up his Stetson and jammed it down on his head hard. He didn’t like to hear what Megan was saying, but he knew that she was right.
“I’ll be back before midnight,” he told her.
“A kiss good-bye?”
“Sure,” he said, marching over to the bed.
He’d meant to kiss her quickly and then be gone, but Megan pulled him down on top of her. She squirmed and thrust her chest out, and damned if he could resist. Taking a soft breast into his mouth, he laved her nipples with his tongue until she began to moan with pleasure.
“Come back to bed, just for a minute,” Megan pleaded.
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s almost ten and I just got dressed.”
“You don’t even have to undress,” she breathed. “You don’t even have to take off your boots or your hat. Just your gunbelt and undo a few buttons. What do you say?”
“What have I gotten into,” Longarm panted as he unbuckled his gunbelt and let it slip to the floor. He threw his hat aside and unbuttoned his pants. A moment later, he was driving in and out of Megan, the toes of his boots digging into the sheets and generally making a mess of them.
“Oh,” she gasped, her body thrusting powerfully, her hands slipping into his back pockets and jerking his buttocks up and down, “you are my stallion!”
Longarm didn’t argue the fact. In truth, he could not get enough of this filly, and if he hadn’t been committed to duty, he would have just said to hell with Henry Olliver and kept screwing Megan until they both wore themselves down to a nubbin.
But thirty minutes later, he was standing a little weak-kneed and shaky in the shadows near the Harkin Livery.
“Dammit, Henry,” Longarm muttered after a quarter hour of waiting had passed. “I gave up a hell of a lot to be here on time, Now where the hell are you!”
Longarm waited another fifteen minutes and, when Olliver still didn’t show, said to hell with it and started back to his hotel room, the musky sex-scent of loving Megan thick in his nostrils. He was halfway across the street when
