CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

J ENNY SAT BEHIND THE COMPUTER IN HER OFFICE . A FTER N ELL AND Cleo left, she'd decided to do a little more digging, see if she could find anything more on the history of the Copper Star.

She had been Googling for a while, skimming through several well-known ghost stories, when she spotted an article that involved the hotel.

A prominent local woman, notorious for her violent temper and certain her husband had been having an affair with the town's pretty schoolteacher, had left her room, gone downstairs to the café, and thrown carbolic acid into the teacher's face.

"Wow," Jenny thought, unable to imagine doing something so brutal.

The teacher had survived her injuries, and the woman, whose name was omitted, had been arrested. She'd been stunningly beautiful, the tale continued, the kind of woman men couldn't resist. She'd been released after only two years, then arrested again after another attack on someone else.

After her death in an asylum in Los Angeles in 1951, her ghost had reportedly been seen upstairs in the Copper Star Hotel.

Jenny kept reading, discovered another story tied to the first. The woman's daughter had secretly been seeing a young Mexican boy. After impregnating the girl, the young man was arrested and thrown into the local jail.

Town vigilantes were determined to hang the boy, but couldn't get past the sheriff. They ended up setting the jail on fire, and the sheriff had to shoot the young man in order to keep him from burning to death.

Jenny shivered and closed down her computer. One more reminder why Jerome had been called the Wickedest Town in the West.

Walking out of the office, she found Will waiting exactly where she had left him.

"I need some air," she said. "One more trip up to the library should do it. Are you game?"

"There's a lot of open space between here and the library. I'm not sure it's a good idea."

He'd been reticent the first time, but Jenny looked forward to any excuse to get outside, into the crisp, early-November air. It was overcast this afternoon, with heavy rain predicted sometime in the next few days. It might be her last chance.

She smiled up at Will. "This is my final trip, I promise."

Will nodded, and Jenny headed for the door in the hotel lobby. When she opened it, Will stepped in front of her to check the street, then shoved open the door.

"Looks okay," he said, walking out onto the sidewalk to survey the area. "Not many folks around today."

Jenny joined him. They'd started across Main Street toward the stairs up to Clark when a shot rang out from somewhere above them. Blood erupted on Will's back as he grunted and went down, and Jenny screamed.

She turned to run back into the saloon, but a man blocked her way. He was tall, lean-muscled, and wiry, Jenny noticed, as he jerked her against him and clamped a white rag over her nose and mouth. Lashing out, she tried to fight him, tried to scream, but she only sucked in more of the brain-numbing drug. She continued to struggle, but his hold was too tight, and the rag left no room to breathe.

Her legs and arms were going weak, her head spinning. She swayed, gripped the man's shirt to stay on her feet. She was beginning to lose consciousness when the man holding her knelt next to Will and stuffed a note in his pocket.

That was the last thing she remembered as the darkness at the edge of her vision closed in, and the world slowly faded.

* * *

Will stirred enough to see a group of people clustered around where he lay on the sidewalk. He could feel blood leaking out of a wound in his back.

"An ambulance is on the way," a heavyset man with a short beard said. "The EMTs will be here any minute. Just take it easy."

Will stirred, tried to sit up. "Jenny . . ."

"Just take it easy, sir," a young woman said.

"Get . . . Barrett."

"Barrett?" someone said. "Cain Barrett?"

"He owns the Grandview Hotel," a woman added.

"What the hell's going on here?" Someone was shouldering his way through the crowd, tall, barrel-chested. It was Cain. Will felt a wave of relief, followed by a sweep of nausea, and fought the lure of darkness.

"Jenny . . ." Will said as the big man knelt beside him.

"The EMTs are on their way," Cain said. "I can see them from here. Just hang on."

"Sniper . . . shot me. Second man . . . took Jenny."

Cain felt a rush of fury that had his hands balling into shaking fists. "We'll find her. You just stay alive."

"Sir, you'll have to step away." EMTs had just arrived, this one young, fresh-faced, and anxious to help.

Cain started to rise, but Will gripped his hand. "Note in my . . . pocket."

"Sir, this man is bleeding very badly," the young tech said. "Please step away."

Cain shoved the young guy off him long enough to search Will's shirt pocket and pull out a white piece of paper. He rose and moved out of the way.

"Take good care of him," Cain said.

The young tech relaxed. "We will."

Cain wanted to stay, make sure Will was going to be all right, but for now, finding Jenny had to come first. His rage swelled as he read the note.

I have Jenny. You want her back, you'll have to figure out where I am.

It was signed, Your old friend, Bart.

Fucking Bart Harwell, once his partner, never much of a friend. He hadn't believed Bart would want payback this badly. Cain wanted to crumple the note and grind it into the dirt with the heel of his boot, but instead he stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.

The police were arriving on the scene. He recognized the two deputies, Jerry Simmons and Neal Gibbons. The Verde Valley ambulance was less than fifteen minutes away. He left the EMTs working over Will and phoned Nick Faraday as he walked back to the Jag.

"Bart Harwell's got Jenny," Cain said. "He's working with a partner. One of them shot Will Price in the back, while the other took Jenny. Will's alive, but he's badly injured. The EMTs are with him. The ambulance should be here any minute. I'll be at the Grandview till I can figure out where Harwell's taken Jenny."

"I'm on my way," Nick said.

Cain got into the Jag, pulled out of the parking space, and drove back up the hill. Bart and another man. Bart was a damned good shot. He remembered the two of them practicing out in the desert around their mining claims. Most likely, he was the sniper. Probably been the guy who had shot him on the ranch.

Absently, he rubbed his shoulder. His wound was healing. He had full range of motion, but his shoulder still ached off and on.

His jaw hardened. Bart had wanted him dead. Now he had Jenny, the leverage he needed to get a second crack at him.

He thought of his Jenny at the mercy of a man like Barton Harwell. Bart had been rough-and-tumble back in their mining days, loved nothing better than a drunken night and a good barroom brawl. Only thing better was a few hours with a woman. Any woman. Didn't matter much to Bart.

Cain's stomach knotted. What would he do to Jenny? Bart wanted payback. What better way than to hurt the woman Cain loved.

The notion hit him hard. He loved Jenny Spencer, and Bart Harwell meant to hurt her.

The answer was simple. Cain was going to find Jenny and bring her home. He was going to find Bart Harwell, and when he did, Cain was going to kill him.

* * *

Jenny had no idea how much time had passed. For several seconds, she didn't move, just lay there, trying to figure out where she was, fighting to remember what had happened. The ground was rough dirt beneath her, and she realized her wrists were bound behind her back. When she opened her eyes, there was nothing to see but all-consuming darkness.

Her heart jerked and started pounding. She told herself to stay calm, try to figure things out, give her eyes time to adjust. Hearing no footsteps or the sound of voices around her, she slowly sat up. More seconds passed before her head stopped spinning and her pupils dilated enough that she could see a patch of gray light about twenty feet away.

She was in a tunnel, she realized with a jolt of fear. There were eighty-eight miles of tunnels beneath Jerome, and she was in one of them. Or a tunnel somewhere else.

Oh, dear God! How would anyone find her?

The faint patch of gray had to be the last hint of daylight shining through the entrance. She had to get out of there before full night set in and she couldn't see at all.

Think! You've seen a hundred movies where the heroine is kidnapped. Cain isn't here this time. You have to help yourself!

His handsome, beloved face appeared in her mind, but Jenny forced down the image. Cain had no idea where she was. She had to get away before whoever had taken her returned.

Rising to her feet, she managed to link her fingers together behind her back, then she stretched her rope binding enough to bend down and step through the circle she had made.

The stiff rope cut into her wrists and made her shoulders burn, but it worked!

She let out a sigh of relief and ignored the pain she had caused in her shoulders. At least her hands were now bound in front of her. She moved, searching the area around her, felt the rough wall of the tunnel off to one side and one of the timbers shoring up the tunnel. Using the wall to guide her, she headed toward the fading gray light.

She had almost reached the entrance when she heard men's voices near the tunnel opening. Two people, she figured, as she hurriedly made her way back to the place they had left her. Lying back down, she curled up on her side against the wall so they wouldn't notice her hands, and pretended to still be asleep. It was so dark she might have a chance to fool them, even with the lantern each man carried.

She prayed they would ignore her a little longer, prayed that Cain would come for her.

Knowing without a doubt that he would.

Jenny prayed that when he got there, it wouldn't already be too late.

* * *

Cain was studying the US topographical map of the Clarksdale, Arizona, quadrant when Nick rapped at the door to the suite. Cain strode across the living room to let him in.

"How's Will?" Cain asked as he led Nick back to the study, where the map was spread open on a table near the corner.

"Critical condition is all the hospital would tell me on the phone. He's still alive. That's something."

"Dammit!" He slammed a hand down on the table. "I was trying to get to Jenny when it happened. I was just a few minutes too late."

"If you'd been with her, you'd likely be the one in critical—or you would be dead."

"Or maybe Bart would have missed his shot, and I would have killed the sonofabitch before he could hurt her."

One of Nick's black eyebrows went up, but he made no comment. Cain went back to reading the map, and Nick's gaze followed.

"You think he's taken her into one of the tunnels?"

"His note said if I wanted to find her, I'd have to figure out where he took her. He wants me to find him. He wants to settle this personally, so it has to be someplace I know."

"Where would he take her?" Nick asked.

"When we were prospecting, we worked a lot of old mining claims. Some of them are in this area. I don't think he's gone too far. He's cast the lure—now he's trying to reel me in."

Cain studied the map. "We worked a claim right next to the Josephine Tunnel. That's right here, not far from Jerome."

He set his finger near a spot on the map. "There's an old dirt road heading north off 89A before you get to Clarksdale," Cain said, tracing the faint line on the map. "We were looking for gold at the time. We found a trace, not enough to keep us working up there. The old mine tunnel we worked goes into the side of the mountain, but it's not that deep."

"Just deep enough to hide a kidnap victim."

"Yeah." Cain looked up. "And it's not far away. Bart was never a patient man. He wants this confrontation. He's got to be tired of waiting."

"You're making a good argument."

Cain scrubbed a hand over the rough shadow of his afternoon beard. "Bart and I worked a lot of claims before I bought him out. It could be any one of them. I could be wrong about this. If I am, Jenny's the one who's going to suffer."

"I can't tell you what to do, Cain. All I can say is I do my best work when I follow my instincts."

Cain's gaze held Nick's for a long, silent moment. "So do I," he said. "Let's go."