'Senorita!' he calls out as he rushes into the street. The girl either doesn't hear him or chooses to ignore him.
'Maria!' Emily shouts. She recognizes the girl. It is Sanchez's daughter.
The girl halts a little at the sound of her name.
Emily calls again. The girl comes over, looking nervously at Logan who has stopped by the door of Mannion's shop, still trying to understand how Emily knows the girl.
'?Donde esta tu padre?'
The girl shrugs.
Emily's limited Spanish skills are defeated. She doesn't know how to ask for any more information but she is desperate to see Sanchez again. She needs his help. He will be able to make everything alright again. He will know what to do about Humby.
'I need him.' Emily pleads in quiet English.
The girl shrugs again, never taking her frightened eyes from Logan who still stands behind Emily at the door. The girl turns on her heel and runs away clutching her skirt. Emily makes a grab for her arm to stop her running away and misses, landing inelegantly on the floor.
Logan comes over and offers her his good arm to help her up.
'How do you know her?' he asks.
'Her father works for me. Or rather he works with me, he was a friend of my father's. I really wish I'd listened more when he tried to teach us Spanish when we were little.'
She pulls herself to her feet and dusts herself down.
'So, her father, he's Mexican?'
'Of course,' she laughs.
'And he worked for you?'
'Well with me, rather than for me.' She can't quite see where these questions are going and is suddenly aware that they are standing out in the street where anyone could see them and she feels vulnerable. She starts to head back towards the shop but Logan is standing in the way.
'Why did he try to kill me?'
Her mouth goes dry.
'Sanchez? He wouldn't be trying to kill
'So he has killed people before? Have you asked him to kill people?'
She says nothing. She looks up and down the street. Where is Mannion? Why can't Sanchez be here? She isn't standing on the precipice now, the ground is crumbling beneath her feet and she's struggling for balance. She doesn't want to believe where this conversation is going.
'Did you ask Sanchez to pay someone to blow up McLaren's house?'
'You? It was you?'
Logan stands, hands on his hips, staring back at her.
'You?' She still can't believe it. 'You're just a web of lies and deceit aren't you? Just some sort of mercenary.'
She strides past him, brushing his arm out of the way and climbs back up the steps to Mannion's store. She isn't thinking now, there is no space for thoughts, only vague impressions. She is frightened and feeling exposed on the street and the one man that she thought would shield her from the trouble she is in turns out to
'If I'm just some sort of mercenary, what does that make the woman who hired me? You don't think you owe me an explanation of why you tried to have me killed?'
She doesn't want to face up to the answer to that question. Why did she want to have him killed? He was a danger to her. He was going to betray her. She knows she can't trust him, he lied to her about Humby. And there he is, with a deputy badge in his pocket. Has he already betrayed her? Why is he still with her?
'I don't understand,' she says, pausing at the top of the steps.
'Neither do I. You and I aren't so very different are we?'
Still she can't think. She just knows that she can't bear to look at him any more. She steps through the door of the store and the bell on the door protests as she slams it.
'Is everything alright?' Mannion looks concerned.
'That was Sanchez's daughter. I thought she might know where he is. Do you know where he is?'
Mannion shakes his head.
'This is just a disaster. Sanchez is all I have left.'
Logan pushes the door open.
'I'm going to the hotel to get my things, then I'm getting out of here. That horse out front is yours. Keep it.' He turns to go.
'Wait,' she says 'was it Sanchez that put that hole in your arm.'
Logan looks at the blood-stained bandage as though he'd forgotten it was there.
'No,' he says.
'Do you know where he is?'
There is a long pause. He looks her hard in the eyes.
'No.'
She watches him walk across the street to the hotel and tries to take in what has just happened. So the new man in town was the man she hired to dynamite the cabin. Why hadn't she realized that sooner? It seems so obvious now that she knows it.
She remembers how she felt when she was around him, before she knew that he was her hired gun. He was confident and calm and he genuinely seemed to like her. He didn't know he was working for her. He didn't just like her because she was paying him. And he didn't seem like the sort to betray her secrets and get her hanged. They got on too well for that. Hadn't he said that he thought they'd make a good partnership?
It all seems wrong. Wrong that he would have told the sheriff about her, because he didn't know that it was her. Whatever he told the sheriff can't have been that detailed, he didn't even know Sanchez's name. Had she tried to get him killed on the basis of a lie that an old deputy told just to scare her? Is she really angry with him again because he didn't die when she sent Sanchez to kill him?
It isn't a logical thread. It's a sudden realization that strikes her from nothing. She knows that Sanchez is dead. She doesn't know why but it is there and she can't shake it. Sanchez is dead and Logan killed him. He had to kill him to survive and even now, after all that he has been through and what she has done to him, even now he wants to protect her from that.
She runs across to the hotel. She has to find him. She doesn't care if he wants to go without her. She still has unfinished business in this town anyway. No, she doesn't care if he goes, but she doesn't want him to go without her getting a chance to apologize.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
He walks across the street turning over the events of the last few days in his mind. He is struggling to believe that she paid to have McLaren's house blown up. Maybe it makes some sense. Maybe he should have realized sooner.
He remembers the figure silhouetted on the ridge, watching the sheriff and his men inspecting the remains of the cabin. That must have been Emily. Checking to see that her orders had been completed to her satisfaction.
There are moments that he can see that she can be so brutal, and moments of tenderness when she would seem incapable of such behavior. He can't decide which he was drawn to most. Perhaps it is the combination of the two that makes her so attractive.
He passes through the hotel in a daze, not really paying attention to anything, lost in a world of thoughts. He walked out on Emily and is immediately regretting it. He liked the idea of the two of them together. Now he is facing riding back into the country on his own, no better off and no worse than when he arrived. No, he may not
