He still wasn’t sure if she was acting, or if she totally thought she’d been caught. Not in sneaking out. That had to be an excuse. Had to be. “How old are you and your sisters?”
“Twenty-two, twenty-one, and nineteen.” She huffed out a long, frustrated-sounding breath. “Plenty old enough to go out, but to hear our father talk, you’d think we are still two, four and five.”
“Which one are you? Oldest? Youngest?”
“The oldest, Betty. Jane is next and Patsy is the youngest.” She sighed again. “Despite what people might think, being one of William Dryer’s daughters is not much fun at all.”
William Dryer? Henry had only been in town a couple of days, but already had learned more about William Dryer than he cared to know. The old cabin he was staying in was on Dryer’s land, but that chunk of land was too hilly to develop, so his supervisor, a man he’d worked under for years, LeRoy Black, was convinced he wouldn’t be discovered, not even by the other agents working on this case.
During his briefing, LeRoy had mentioned that Dryer had daughters. Three of them. But from what LeRoy had said, they were little girls. Children. Not women. Did she know that, and was pretending to be one of Dryer’s daughters? If so, why? Was she hoping to learn if he knew who the mole was or, more precisely, whom he thought it was?
Normally, he had an easy time reading people and his gut said to believe her, but the fact she’d been in Seattle, where the counterfeiting ring had gotten a tip that they were about to be busted, and here, where Burrows was now setting up a bootlegging operation after having Gaynor offed, his mind said that was just too much of a coincidence. She had to be working with the mole. The very person he was here to stop, and anyone who might also be involved.
He just had to figure out how best to use her to get to the mole. Flat out asking, demanding she tell him all she knew, could send her straight to the mole. However, a little finesse, get her to leak enough that he could point out the danger of her being arrested for her participation, could make her flip sides. Then he’d have a direct line to the mole, learn the motivation, and gather enough proof to send the mole up the river for the rest of his life.
Finesse, especially when it came to a woman, wasn’t his specialty. He’d avoided women after the Scarlet incident, as much as possible, and it goaded him that he didn’t have a backup partner to turn her over to. Normally he did, but this case was too risky to bring in anyone else except for him and his direct supervisor.
“Who told you?” she asked again.
He leaned forward, rested both hands on his knees. He was at an impasse of sorts on whether to use the mole’s name or not, and whether he should say he was Henry or Rex and see her reaction. If she knew Rex Gaynor was dead, then she was a part of things for sure.
“I guess who doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “It’s what happens now that does.”
Henry mulled on the what-happens-next portion of her statement for a moment. LeRoy, who had been a Texas Ranger before going to work for the department, oversaw the operations from the Mississippi River west, and was as thorough as he was stern; he was one hell of a supervisor, and rarely, if ever, wrong.
Yet, LeRoy’s information about the Dryer children being young and Henry’s own gut instincts weren’t matching up.
Because his gut wasn’t the only thing sending out signals. She was pretty.
Very pretty.
His body had been reacting to her closeness since he’d sat down at the table beside her. Her perfume was light, but heady. Intoxicating far more than any whiskey he’d ever consumed, making him believe parts of what she was saying were true.
He’d been fooled by a pretty face before, and had sworn that would never happen again, and it wouldn’t.
She could bat those long lashes all she wanted. It wasn’t going to affect him. The mole could have already told her who he was, so it didn’t matter. “My name is Henry, Henry Randall. I’m an intelligence officer, for the Department of Justice, looking for an escaped convict.”
Her head snapped up. “Rex Gaynor?”
Chapter Three
“You’ve heard of him?” Henry asked. Her reaction had been immediate. As soon as he’d said escaped convict. “Rex Gaynor?”
“There was an article about him in the newspaper, that he’d escaped from prison. I didn’t read the article, but my sister Patsy did.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh, dear. Is he near? Here? Patsy said the newspaper said to keep all doors locked.” She jumped to her feet. “I have to go. I have to find my sisters and tell them. I—I have to get them home, now!”
Henry took ahold of her wrist, felt how fast her pulse raced. “No. He’s not here. You aren’t in any danger from Rex Gaynor. Neither are your sisters.”
“How do you know? You just said you are looking for him.”
Lying could make a person’s pulse race, but it usually didn’t make a person tremble the way she was trembling. He stood, and though it was unlike him, he laid his other hand on her upper arm. “You’re safe, Betty.”
“Why should I believe you?”
There was no more reason for her to believe him than there was for him to believe her. If he wanted to find out if she was being truthful, he was going to have to gain her trust. Not so unlike Scarlet had convinced him he could trust her. Maybe he had learned more from Scarlet than a lesson. She’d been an expert at
