Feral began to sweat. This tall kid had shocked him, and he wished he were anywhere but where he was. Still, he couldn’t resist a chance to boast. “I did a few jobs for Sam in Tucson, killed a couple of fellows he wanted out of the way. No big deal, just a couple of nameless prospectors.” He shrugged modestly. “Now you tell me how you knew.”
“I happened to be there,” Slade replied in a low voice. “I saw your work firsthand.”
“Did you?” Feral perked up. “But hell, you must have been just a kid then.”
“True, but what I witnessed I’ll never forget.”
Feral mistook Slade’s meaning. “You saw me get Hoggs? Yeah, that was a close one. The bastard got what he deserved for daring to challenge me.”
“No,” Slade said slowly, ominously. “It was the nameless prospector I saw you shoot, the one Newcomb paid you to kill.” His conscience needed that confirmation.
Feral turned wary again. “That fight wasn’t worth remembering. There was no challenge to it.”
“I know.”
Feral swallowed. “You never said who you are, mister.”
“Name’s Holt, Slade Holt.”
As he said it, his voice carried to a nearby table. His voice spread in a matter of seconds until the room buzzed with the name.
“You’re pullin’ my leg, mister.” Feral mustered enough bravado to sound almost belligerent. “Slade Holt ain’t no half-breed.”
“That’s right.”
The eyes that had seemed light green before now burned with yellow fire. Feral’s hands were sweating, and that wasn’t good. Couldn’t handle a gun well with sweaty hands.
“Didn’t mean to offend you none, Mr. Holt.”
“You didn’t.” A single muscle ticked along Slade’s smooth jaw, the only sign of the turmoil inside him. “Your offense was committed nine years ago when you killed that nameless prospector. And your mistake was in not killing me when you had the chance.”
Feral’s eyes widened in sudden understanding, but understanding came too late. He smelled death, his own. Automatically he reached for his gun, but the ball slammed into his chest just as the gun cleared his holster. He was thrown backward with the impact, landing on his back several feet away. Slade’s soft moccasins made no noise as he walked over and stood by Sloan’s head.
Sloan was looking up into a face that showed no emotion, not even triumph. He was dying, and the man who had killed him was taking it in stride.
“Lousy bastard,” Feral managed in a whisper. “I hope you go after him now.” His words weren’t coming out as clearly as he heard them in his mind. “Then you’ll be a dead man. Damn kid. Dead like you should’ve been…you were supposed…”
Feral Sloan’s eyes glazed over. Slade stared at the dead man for a moment. Though he had meant to kill him and didn’t regret it, his stomach churned. Bile rose in his throat. But his expression remained impassive, and the onlookers thought him a cold-blooded killer, unaffected by death. The legend of Slade Holt was being confirmed there in the saloon.
Slade wasn’t thinking of that. He was remembering two ten-year-old boys racing desperately away from Tucson with a murderer after them. He was seeing it all again, and this time his head didn’t ache with the memory. Feral Sloan had shot him and assumed he was dead. He hadn’t bothered to climb down the rocky gorge to make sure. Now, finally, Slade remembered all of it. He knew now how to start looking for his brother.
He left Newcomb without a backward glance.
One
1882, New York City
Not too far north of the hectic business district, Fifth Avenue became a quiet residential area. Trees grew at curbside between handsome street lamps. Elegant mansions lined Fifth Avenue. Brownstones could be found next to houses with mansard roofs in the French Second-Empire style. A Gothic Revival mansion stood next to an Italianate-style mansion with pediments over the windows and a balustrade atop the cornice.
The facade of Hammond House was a mixture of brownstone and white marble, with a high stoop on the first floor and three more stories above the first. Marcus Hammond lived here with his two daughters. A self-made man who was well on the way to wealth long before his first daughter was born, he permitted no obstacles. Few challenged his will, so he was generally good-natured and generous, especially with his daughters.
One of those daughters, the older one, was at the moment readying herself for an outing with her fiancé, a man chosen for her by her father. Sharisse Hammond didn’t mind the choice. The day Marcus had told her she would marry Joel Parrington during the summer, she’d just nodded. A year before she might have questioned his choice, might even have protested, but that was before she returned from a tour of Europe and a disastrous love affair so humiliating that she welcomed a safe, loveless marriage.
She had nothing to complain about. She and Joel Parrington had been friends since childhood. They shared the same interests, and she found him terribly handsome. They would have a good marriage, and if they were fortunate, love would come later. It would have been hypocritical for either of them to speak of it now, though, for Joel also was abiding by a father’s dictates. But they liked each other well enough, and Sharisse knew she was envied by her friends. That went a long way toward keeping her pleasant if not overly enthusiastic. It never hurt to be envied by a crowd of women who were forever trying to outdo one another. With her wealth on a par with theirs and her looks rarely commented on, her fiancé was the only thing Sharisse was envied.
Her thoughts were not on Joel just then, however. Sharisse was wondering where in a house of so many rooms she would find Charley. She had decided to take him along on today’s outing. He would keep her company if Joel turned absentminded, as he had been doing lately.
She left her maid, Jenny, to put away the outfits she’d been trying on before she’d decided on the basque top with a skirt trimmed in velvet, a French style of plain green satin combined with wide moiré-striped green satin. She carried her Saxe gloves and plumed poke bonnet to put on just before she left.
