CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

J ENNY WORKED ALL AFTERNOON AS THE PLACE FILLED TO OVERFLOWING , people in ghoulish costumes, including a man with a black ski mask that revealed red, murderous eyes. That one made her nervous, but it wasn't Ryder Vance, just some guy having fun with his friends.

There was a vampire, a man in a long, black robe carrying a plastic sickle with a fake bloody blade on the end. There was a lady pirate, a sexy, blond female devil, more black cats. Lots of fake blood and gore.

So far nothing threatening, everyone just having fun.

She was in the kitchen, checking on a food order that was delayed when she heard a loud crash in the basement. Myrna, dressed as a plus-size version of a 1920's flapper, was busy filling plates, and Tim, the busboy, in a sailor suit, was clearing tables.

Jenny headed for the basement. Just as she was about to disappear out of sight, Cain appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"You need to stay where one of us can see you," he said darkly. He and Will were both wearing cowboy boots and hats as their costumes, except the clothes looked perfectly fitted and slightly worn, clearly not just "pretend" for the night.

Jenny glanced at Cain, whose gaze was hard with warning, and irritation trickled through her. "There was a noise in the basement. I need to go down and see what's going on."

If it hadn't been for the shooting, she could have justified being annoyed. The man could be ridiculously protective. As it was, she simply ignored him and continued on down the stairs. Before she reached the bottom, she heard Cain's heavy footfalls behind her.

She kept walking. There wasn't a lot of light down there, but it didn't take long to figure out what had happened. Her mother's precious china, one of the only things she had left that had belonged to her mom, had fallen off the shelf. The box had split open and the dishes were in bits and pieces all over the floor.

Her heart sank. As she knelt beside the pretty flowered porcelain cups and saucers, tears burned her eyes.

Cain's hard gaze followed hers. "What the hell . . . ?"

Jenny rose to her feet, knuckling a tear from her cheek as she looked up at Cain. "My mother's good china. I thought we'd stored it in a place where it would be safe."

Cain's jaw hardened. "We did. It was in the last load we brought from your house. I double-checked it myself. There is no way that box accidentally fell off the shelf."

"You think someone did this on purpose?"

"Who has access to the basement?"

"Everyone who works here. There's all kinds of stuff down here: paper goods, flatware, plates and glassware, food supplies, anything we need." Fighting an urge to cry, she looked back down at the pile of broken dishes.

She took a shaky breath. "I can't stop right now. Maybe I can salvage something later."

Cain softly cursed. He crouched and put the broken pieces back in the box, then shoved it out of the way for the night. Rising, he eased Jenny into his arms. "We'll come down first thing in the morning, see what we can find."

Jenny just nodded. She felt hollow inside. And worried. Who would have done something like that? Maybe it was just the hotel shifting, jarring the box off the shelf. There were eighty-eight miles of tunnels under Jerome. In the old days, whole sections of the town had collapsed.

But surely she would have felt a jolt strong enough to move the heavy box.

She didn't believe it was a ghost. Not for a second. The box was important to her. This felt personal.

Cain took her hand, and they headed back upstairs, into the saloon. The place was packed. Cain squeezed Jenny's hand as she started back to the bar to help with the swelling crowd demanding drinks.

She spotted Will Price at one end of the bar, his gaze scanning the room. She could see Cain's head above the crowd in another section of the saloon.

Troy and Barb filled drink orders behind the bar while Jenny helped the servers take orders and deliver the drinks. She was setting a tray of tequila shooters on a table when she heard a familiar voice next to her ear.

"Well, if it isn't my sweet little cousin, Jenny!" he shouted above the din of the crowd.

She turned. Uncle Charlie's son, the black sheep of the family. "Eddie . . ." He was wearing a white sheet with a hole cut for his head and a bloody, gruesome mask he had pulled off and left hanging around his neck.

His smile looked vicious. "Looks like you're pulling in some major bucks tonight, just like my old man."

"We're busy, Eddie. I have to get back to work."

"I just dropped by to say hello. I'll be back tomorrow so we can talk."

"I've got nothing to say to you!" she shouted. "It's over, Eddie. Finished!"

Will Price moved closer, leaned down, and spoke to Eddie. "You heard the lady. Time for you to leave."

Jenny left Eddie with Will and went back to work. She knew what her cousin wanted. Money. He believed his father should have left the Copper Star to him. The last time he'd shown up, Jenny had given him two thousand dollars, half of what he had demanded. He had taken the money and left, and Jenny had hoped that would be the end of it. Unfortunately, here he was again.

Uncle Charlie had willed the Star to her, not the son he didn't trust to continue his legacy. Jenny wasn't giving her no-good cousin another dime.

As she delivered trays heavy with food and drinks, she couldn't help wondering if Eddie had been the one who'd destroyed her mother's dishes. She had no idea how he could have known they were down there, but maybe someone had told him.

In the back of her mind, she thought about the shooting. Eddie was an alcoholic and a drug user, but she didn't think he was a killer.

They closed the bar at two a.m. Both Cain and Will looked tired. She could read the pain Cain was dealing with in the tight lines of his face.

Jenny knew how the men felt. Her feet were aching, her head pounding. She said good night to Troy, Barb, and the rest of the crew and thanked them for a job well done. Cain spoke to Will, who left for his room at the Grandview, and she and Cain headed upstairs.

She had asked him to stay with her tonight. The hotel was packed, lots of drunk and disorderlies on the street. She needed to be close at hand in case something happened.

She prayed nothing would go wrong.

Cain waited for her to walk past him into her small suite, which looked even tinier with him in the room. She was still wearing her black-cat clothes, eager to get them off.

"You look so damned cute in that outfit, I could just about eat you up." Cain's gaze ran over her, and his mouth edged up.

Jenny sighed, tired to the bone. "Have a little mercy," she said.

Cain laughed. "I'm not in much better shape than you are. No easy job running a bar on Halloween night."

"No."

"We'll save it for morning. Let's just get some sleep."

They didn't even bother to shower. Jenny checked the bandages on his shoulder; then they finished undressing and fell into bed. The queen-size was too small for Cain's big frame, but when he curled her against him, there was plenty of room, and it felt perfect having him hold her that way. Both of them were asleep in seconds.

It was four o'clock in the morning when a noise in the room had her eyes cracking open.

"What the hell is that?" Cain asked groggily.

Jenny recognized the sounds from before. "It's like a bunch of chains clanking together."

"Chains," Cain repeated, sitting up and swinging his long legs to the side of the bed.

The sound came again. "Like heavy iron being dragged over a wooden floor," she whispered. It was followed by the creak of a metal gate swinging open, then heavy footsteps.

Both of them listened hard. "Like a criminal being dragged into an old iron jail cell," Cain said when the noise came again.

"Yes . . ."

The grating noise of a rusty key turning in the lock cut through the silence. A man's deep voice groaned.

Jenny's heart was racing, her mouth bone-dry. It was getting worse. She had to do something. Close this part of the hotel—at the very least.

Cain shot to his feet. "This is bullshit. I don't believe this crap for a minute." He strode into the tiny living room, pulled open the door, and glanced into the corridor. He closed the door and returned to bed.

"Not a damned thing out there." He raked his fingers through his thick dark hair. "Snakes and broken dishes. Demons and murder. Now this. God knows what's next."

"While we were gone, room eight reported seeing a transparent man in the hallway."

Cain swore beneath his breath. When the room fell silent, he climbed back into bed and pulled her against him, planted a soft kiss on the side of her neck. "Don't think about it tonight. We both need sleep. We'll figure this out in the morning."

Jenny closed her eyes. She could feel his hard body slowly relax around her, and then he was sleeping. It took a while, but eventually, she fell asleep, too. It was late the next morning when she awakened.

Cain was already gone.

* * *

Cain had phoned Will Price before he left the Copper Star. Jenny would find him in the hallway outside her door when she left her room for work.

After the broken dishes and the noises in her room last night, protection for Jenny was more important than ever. Someone was purposely causing her trouble, and it wasn't a bunch of ghosts.

He refused to think about what had happened to him in room 10. There had to be an explanation, and Cain intended to find it.

To start with, Jenny was going to sit down and write an enemies list—just as he had done. She had told him about her cousin Eddie's appearance last night and the man's belief she owed him money.

Eddie Spencer held the number-one spot on her list, along with Ryder Vance. Cain picked up the phone and called Nick Faraday. It was Wednesday, but Nick wasn't picking up.

He left a message asking Nick to call. Maybe by the time Nick phoned back, Cain would have a few more enemies to add to Jenny's list.

* * *

Sitting at a table in the bar, Jenny went over the receipts from last night. It looked as if the evening had been extremely profitable, not unusual for Halloween night in a ghost town. She smiled.

Barb and some of the staff had arrived early to clean the place up, though they'd done most of it last night.

Will accompanied her down to the basement, then stood by while she sifted through her mother's pretty dishes and tried not to cry. She managed to salvage a gold-rimmed, flowered porcelain tea pot and four matching cups and saucers. Most of the plates and serving dishes were cracked or broken. She saved as much as she could, wrapped it all in newspaper and boxed it up, then carried the box to a different part of the basement and hid it behind some cartons on the floor.

Thinking of her mother and swallowing past the lump in her throat, she returned upstairs with Will.

The bar and kitchen opened, but very few customers showed up. After the late-night partying, most people were still recovering.

Cain had called earlier to tell her he had some things he needed to take care of and asked about Will. Jenny assured him Will Price had been looking out for her since she had walked out of her room that morning.

She spotted him seated at a table just a few feet away, watchful, leaning back in a captain's chair, sipping a cup of coffee.

Jenny sighed. Between Will and Cain, she never had a moment to herself. She hated living like a prisoner, but for now, she had no choice.

She was continuing to work on the receipts when she glanced up to see a woman pushing through the batwing doors. Silver-gray hair worn in a buzz cut, tiny round spectacles. Evelyn Dunning. Jenny rose and walked toward her, hope rising that the librarian had found something useful.

Jenny smiled. "Evelyn. It's good to see you."

"It's nice to see you, too. I brought some information I thought might interest you."

"Great. Why don't we sit down?" Jenny led Evelyn over to the table where she had been working, and both of them sat down.

"So what have you found?" Jenny asked anxiously.

Evelyn took out a copy of an old newspaper article and set it on the table.

"The Jerome Daily News, dated June 1904." She slid the copy over to Jenny's side of the table. Jenny skimmed the page and began reading the article out loud.

During an arrest attempt by Sheriff John Mackey, a miner named Boris Koblinsky was shot and killed in front of the Cuban Queen Bordello on Queen Street. He was wanted in connection to the murders of three known prostitutes who died between the years 1898 and 1904.

"Wow." She glanced up. "A miner who was shot in the street in front of a brothel. Maybe this is him."

There was more to the article, including the names of the women: Sadie Murphy in 1898, Blanch Milford in 1900, and Lily Dubois in 1904. Each of them had been strangled to death. The article went on to say that there may have been others, but there wasn't enough evidence to include them in the charges.

Strangled. She thought of the journal and Mary Dennison. She thought of what Leslie had said.

Jenny finished the article, both appalled and excited. "This could be what I've been looking for. Thank you so much for working on this."

"Now that you know the date and the names of the people involved, you can probably find out more."

She nodded. "Yes. I'll definitely look into it." But she wanted to talk to Cleo first. "Can I buy you some lunch? It's the least I can do."

Evelyn rose. "Thanks, but I have to get back to work."

Jenny walked her to the door, then gave her a grateful hug. "Thanks again, Evelyn." She smiled. "Whenever you're ready, I still owe you lunch."

Evelyn laughed. "Not necessary. Research is what I do."

As soon as the librarian walked out the door, Jenny grabbed her cell phone.

"Hi, Cleo, it's Jenny. I think I may have found what we were looking for. Or actually, Evelyn Dunning over at the library found it."

"Good. The more we know, the better our chances of getting rid of the bastard."

"I've got names and dates. Cain's busy, so as soon as I can take a break, I'll go back to the library and take another look."

"You do that, and then we'll get together."

"Great. Thanks, Cleo."

Cleo just grunted and hung up the phone.