The Ballad of Emma O'Toole Read Free Page A

had him right where she wanted him, and the way things were going, she’d probably get her wish to see him hang.
    Feigning indifference, Logan opened the newspaper to page two and pretended to read. He could hear the light tread of footsteps approaching his cell, but even as they stopped, he didn’t look up. Emma O’Toole had sworn to see him punished. He would show her how blasted little he cared.
    “Mr. Devereaux.” Her voice quivered with defiance. Logan didn’t move.
    “Hey, gambler, you got a lady friend here!” The deputy seized a bar of the door and shook it until the lock rattled. “If’n you don’t want her, I’ll be happy to—”
    “All right.” Logan’s rapier glare cut him short. “I’ll speak with Miss O’Toole, but not with you hanging over her shoulder, MacPherson. Get out of here.”
    “But the marshal said for me to—”
    “Go on now, Mr. MacPherson.” Emma O’Toole’s voice was diamond-cool, diamondhard. “Your prisoner can hardly do me any harm when he’s locked behind bars.”
    Do me any harm!
    Logan bit back a curse. The woman wasspeaking as if he were some kind of wild animal who might leap out and have his way with her. Was that the next story she’d share with that little worm of a reporter?
    But what did it matter? She was here. And this, he realized, was his chance to make sure that she finally heard him out. Emma O’Toole was not getting away until he’d told her the whole miserable story.
    Logan stared down at the open newspaper, biding his time as the deputy’s footsteps faded away. In the stillness that remained, he could feel Emma O’Toole’s presence. He could feel her gaze like fire on his skin and hear her shallow, agitated breathing. Even without looking at her, Logan could sense how much she hated him.
    He let the seconds tick past, stalling as he would in a card game, forcing her to wait. He was in charge now, and he wanted her to know it. Otherwise she might not listen.
    And making her listen could make the difference between life and death.
    Only when he sensed she was nearing the end of her patience did Logan untangle his feet, rise from the bunk and look directly at her. Even then, with so long to prepare for it, thesight of Emma O’Toole stopped his breath for an instant.
    She was standing rigidly outside the cell, wearing an ugly, starched gray frock that had clearly been made for someone else. Her dark honey hair was pulled tightly back from her face, accentuating her bloodshot, blue-green eyes. She looked pale and drawn and haggard, but for all that, Logan couldn’t tear his gaze from her. Last night in the dimly lit saloon, his vision had caught little more than the flash of her anger. But now he knew that that exquisitely powerful face, with its tragic beauty, would haunt him to the end of his days.
    Her lips parted as their eyes met. The awareness dawned on him that he’d slept in his clothes, that his heavy black whiskers needed a shave, and that the chamber pot under his bunk hadn’t been emptied since last night. He looked like a derelict and probably smelled worse, but there was little he could do about that now. The only important thing was that she hear what he had to say, and that she believe him. If there was a spark of understanding in her, and if he could touch it—
    But this was no time to lower his guard, Logan reminded himself. The woman wanted him dead. She had said so to his face, and againin that cursed news article. The fact that she was young and vulnerable didn’t make her any less his enemy.
    He cleared his throat and forced himself to speak. “I’m glad you came, Miss O’Toole. You and I need to get some facts straight.”
    “Save your facts for the trial, Mr. Devereaux.” Emma’s attempt to sound haughty ended in a nervous quaver as the prisoner tensed. He looked like a caged wolf, she thought, wild and dark and dangerous. She’d come to watch him suffer, to fuel her own anger with his despair. But Logan