Hawk arrived just as Garland entered. It was good timing, and Hawk was thankful that he needn’t explain his mishap to Garland. Except . . . as he hung his hat and glanced about the room, there was no sign of his ring of keys.
“Everything all right?” Garland paused by the desk.
Hawk ran a hand through his hair. Had he set them elsewhere at home? He hadn’t thought to look beyond the parlor. “It appears I’ve misplaced my keys,” he finally confessed.
Just as he thought, a knowing grin lit up Garland’s face. “Can’t imagine how that happened.”
Hawk shook his head. He had to have set them down in the kitchen. “I’ll give Turley his breakfast and check again at home. Could you . . . ?”
Still grinning in a way that made Hawk want to smack him up the back of the head, Garland retrieved his own keys from his pocket and opened the door to the jail. Hawk muttered his thanks as Garland began to laugh. Turley’s company would be preferable to that of his deputy right now, Hawk thought as he entered the jail.
“Turley! I’ve got your—” Hawk stopped still just outside Turley’s cell, his eyes drawn to a huddled-up figure in the far cell. But there was something odd about the person Garland must have locked up last night . . .
“Garland?” he called as he shoved the wrapped-up bread and cheese through the bars to Turley, who took it with an amused smile. “Garland!”
“I’m right here,” the man said from the door.
Hawk stepped toward the last cell. There was no doubt at all now—the person occupying the last cell was a woman. He could tell from the voluminous skirts puddled around her. “You arrest a woman last night?”
“Did I arrest . . .” Garland repeated the words as if they were a language he didn’t understand. “No.”
“Then—” The words lodged in his throat when the woman raised her head. Hair the color of cornsilk fell in wisps about her face, and those eyes . . . “Lina?”
Garland retreated back into the office, and before Lina had risen from where she’d been huddled on the floor, he’d returned, the cell key in the lock before Hawk could piece two thoughts together.
Lina stepped silently from the cell. Without a word, she held out Hawk’s keys. He stared at them in her hand before finally taking them and sliding them into a pocket. He had so many questions he couldn’t pinpoint where to begin.
“I didn’t have a thing to do with this,” Turley said from around a mouthful of bread. “Girlie snuck in last night and locked herself up. Must’ve felt bad about what she did to me.” He chuckled as he leaned against the bars of his cell.
All too aware of their audience, Hawk turned without a word and strode to the door. He could hear Lina scurrying after him as Garland growled at Turley to shut his mouth.
Not until they were inside the house did Hawk stop. Lina pressed the door closed behind her and turned to face him.
He regarded her a moment. She looked the same as always, only more tired than usual. She blinked at him with those clear blue eyes, and for a moment, he thought he’d seen them before. It was an unsettling feeling, but it slid away almost as quickly as it arrived, and he was left wondering . . . everything. “I don’t know where to start.”
Lina gave him the slightest of smiles. “I don’t know either.”
He rubbed his chin, trying to figure out which question to ask first. “How about how you came to possess my keys?”
“Oh,” she said, her face lightening as if he’d suggested she explain how to bake bread or how to put on a pair of shoes. “I’d come downstairs to talk with you, but you weren’t here and I happened to see them on the table there.” She pointed to the small end table, exactly where Hawk had thought he’d placed them.
Hawk furrowed his brow. Every instinct he possessed had been raised in suspicion since he’d discovered her in the cell, but Lina acted as if she’d come down for simple conversation and wound up just happening to take his keys. He lifted his hands to his hips, trying to make sense of it. “And so you decided to take them? Why would you do that?”
Lina sank onto the settee, as if the entire conversation had somehow exhausted her. “I’m sorry, Hawk. I shouldn’t have. But when you weren’t here, instead of waiting to ask you my questions, I thought I’d go ask them directly to Mr. Turley.”
“Turley?”
She looked up at him then and nodded, curiosity written all over her face. “Yes. You see, as I began to drift off to sleep, I remembered that the men Mr. Turley rode with had emptied one of the trunks. I couldn’t see what was in it, of course, but I thought that perhaps if you knew, then that might help you track down the other men. And Mr. Turley would certainly know, since he was there.”
Hawk stared at her a moment. Her words were so earnest, and her sweet, heart-shaped face held such innocence, he couldn’t fathom any other reason for what she’d done. He ought to be surprised she took it into her own hands to go have a conversation with an outlaw, but he wasn’t. Not after having found her the way he had. “And you thought you’d ask him yourself?”
She smiled at him then, for just a second before her face fell. “Yes. But it was dark and I’d forgotten a lamp, and well . . . you saw what happened. I was too embarrassed after that to say anything to him at all. I’m sorry. I should’ve mustered my courage and asked him anyway.”
“You should have . . .” Hawk repeated, more incredulous now than when he’d discovered her in his jail. He dropped his hands and paced to the kitchen door, not knowing what else to do. He turned around and faced her again. “Lina. It was money. One of those pasty fellows you rode with in the coach had put his life savings into his trunk, for who knows what purposes. Apparently he got talking to the wrong man back at the last stop the stage made before the mountains, and wound up getting himself robbed.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. She fiddled with her skirt, folding the fabric over itself. “I thought I was helping you, but I see now I shouldn’t have. Of course you already knew what was in the trunk.” When she looked up at him, tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.
Hawk let out a rush of air. There was nothing wrong or sinister about what she’d done. She’d wanted to help him. The thought made his heart ache. How had he been so lucky as to wind up with Lina answering his advertisement? He moved to the settee and sat down beside her.
