Lawman by Lisa Plumley Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes and her fine woman's figure
to turn her wrathy, like it had outside in the station yard.
Instead, she'd stood there, listening calmly, and used it to ambush
him with later! Little Miss Megan had finagled a way to freedom
with his own loose talk for a cover.
    Aside from himself, he'd never met anyone
who'd have tried such a thing.
    Obviously, he'd underestimated her.
    It wasn't a mistake he meant to make
twice.
    So Gabriel tried another tactic instead.
Getting to his feet, he hooked both thumbs in his gun belt and
looked down at her. "I'm authorized to take you into custody, if
necessary."
    She flinched—realizing how far in over her
head she was, he'd wager. Protecting a potential road agent
couldn't be easy. To his admiration, she recovered quickly.
    "Now, why would you want to do something
like that?" she asked, clasping her hands in her lap and gazing up
at him sweetly. "I swan, agent Winter—you must have more important
things to do than be concerned with a harmless female like me."
    She fluttered her eyelashes, then added,
"Isn't that right?"
    The overall effect was like being walloped
to death with a feather pillow. It didn't hurt much while it was
happening, but in the end, you still wound up six feet under. Not
many people successfully misled him, and he didn't intend for a
woman like Megan Kearney to be the first—no matter how much she
batted her eyelashes and petted his hands. He'd handled rock-hard
criminals in the past. He could handle her, too.
    "No, it's not right," he said, leaning over
her. "I'll drag your pretty little conniving self all the way back
to the Pinkerton office in Chicago, if that's what it takes."
    "Conniving! I'll have you know—"
    "Yes, conniving. You probably can't help it,
though." He slipped his hands to her shoulders, feeling her tremble
beneath his palms—with fury, probably. "Like father, like
daughter."
    "My father's no crook!" she yelled, trying
to wriggle her shoulders out of his grasp. "Let go of me."
    "Gladly." He held her tighter, then hauled
her off the chest and deposited her in the middle of the rug. She
lunged to reclaim her place on the chest, but Gabriel got there
first.
    "Next time you try to stop a man from doing
something, Miss Kearney," he advised as he undid the latch, "you
might consider doing a little less posing."
    Pausing to gaze pointedly at the hands she'd
folded so demurely across her lap, he leaned his elbow on the chest
lid and smirked up at her. "I do believe you're your own worst
enemy in that regard."
    With an unintelligible sound of frustration,
she rushed toward him. "You can't search that. It's a violation of
privacy. I'll—I'll—" Her chin jerked upward, a pious attitude in
search of a target. "—I'll report you to Mr. Pinkerton."
    "He already knows." Gabriel lifted the
lid.
    She shot it a despairing glance. "You've got
the wrong man!"
    "That remains to be seen."
    He scanned the chest's contents, taking in a
jumble of fabric, bottles, and folded papers. Strange items for a
station master to keep stored. He picked up a leather-bound ledger
and stood facing her, absently running his thumb along the book's
cracked binding.
    "Criminals behave in predictable ways, Miss
Kearney. That's how we track them. How we catch them."
    "I don't believe you. My father never acted
criminally in his life. He's not that kind of man."
    He looked up. She stood silhouetted in
brightness and shadow, smack in a shaft of light from the window
behind her. Silently she hugged her arms over her chest and stared
at the floor, motionless but for the steady stroke of her thumbs on
her brown-clad elbows. For a woman—hell, for anybody—she seemed
remarkably self-contained. Controlled.
    But that small restless movement of her
thumbs spoke volumes, and Gabriel was a listening kind of man. That
irrepressible gesture told him all he needed to know.
    Megan Kearney was worried. Even if it didn't
show on her face, even if she argued her father's innocence from
now till next