For example, I learned that you’re looking for someone, too. You go to Oklahoma, make nice with your brother and your nieces for a weekend…and I’ll help you find him.”
Logan would give a lot to turn around and walk out of the house, but he could no more walk away from the promise of information than he could stop breathing. Much as he hated it, she had the upper hand and there was nothing he could do—at the moment—but deal with her.
He moved farther into the room. Though she wanted to back off—he recognized that scared-little-bunny look in her eyes—she held her ground, at least until he settled against the dresser, his ankles crossed, his arms folded over his chest so he wouldn’t be tempted to wrap his fingers around her slender throat and squeeze the information out of her. “Who is it you think I’m looking for?”
She pulled the ladder-back chair from the desk where he’d spent too many hours trying to understand algebra and chemistry, sat down and primly crossed her legs. While she gathered her thoughts—or constructed her bluff?—he took stock of her.
She wasn’t particularly tall—a good six inches shorter than him—though with Manny topping out at five foot four, pretty much everyone seemed tall. She was probably somewhere around his age and she was lean rather than slender. She carried some muscle under those tight clothes—her upper arms were well defined and so were her long, strong legs. And she was pretty, her pale brown hair streaked with gold, her hazel eyes solemn, her mouth shaped in a nice cupid’s bow. He always noticed pretty women, though he rarely did anything about it. In some cultures where he’d spent time, too much notice of a pretty woman, and a man could wind up missing vital parts.
Bailey Madison had looked at him a couple times as if she would be happy to remove those parts herself.
Finally, her hands clasped together over her knees, she spoke. “Let’s make the deal first. Will you go to Oklahoma to visit your brother and his family?”
Logan had lived more than half his life in Texas, first in the town that bore his family name, then in Pineville, but he’d never once been tempted to cross the Red River into the neighboring state. He had no intention of doing so now unless the trail he was following led there. But that didn’t stop him from giving her the answer she wanted, albeit grudgingly. “If I have to.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No. When I’ve finished what I’ve started.”
“What you’ve started is taking a long time. I’m talking about one weekend. You can be back in Texas and on MacGregor’s trail by noon Monday.”
At least she wasn’t totally bluffing—she did know he was looking for Pete MacGregor. But a lot of people knew that. Whether she could help him find Mac…that was what counted.
“This Lexy person has waited fifteen years. A few more weeks or months isn’t going to hurt her. Besides, if I go now, what’s to stop you from saying Monday, ‘Oh, sorry, I lied, I don’t know anything’?” Just as he’d lied. He wasn’t going anywhere near Brady or his family. They really could rot in hell for all he cared.
She drew a breath before answering. “The man you’re looking for is Peter Alan MacGregor. He was born October 11, in Chicago. He set a record for suspensions from school before he finally quit in eleventh grade and he had quite a juvenile arrest record before he joined the Army and straightened up. He was on his second enlistment when he got sent to Iraq, where he was wounded in an ambush on his convoy outside Baghdad. He came home on convalescent leave and spent two weeks in this house with Sam and Ella Jensen. A week before he was scheduled to report to duty again, he killed the Jensens, stole seventy-eight dollars and their pickup and disappeared, and he hasn’t been heard from since.”
Inwardly Logan flinched at her matter-of-fact recital of events—so unemotional and damned cold. Sam and Ella had taken Mac in because he’d had no place else to go, because they were generous like that. They had respected him for serving in the Army, had been grateful to him for the dangers he’d been willing to face in the war and they’d felt it was their duty as patriotic Americans to welcome him home. They’d nursed him, opened their house and their hearts and their lives to him, and he’d repaid them by stabbing Ella seven times with her own kitchen knife, by beating Sam to death with a piece of firewood. All for seventy-eight freakin’ dollars and a pickup that wasn’t worth much more.
And it was all Logan’s fault.
Logan’s wrong to set right.
“You could have picked up all that from the newspapers,” he said harshly. Mac’s crimes and Sam’s and Ella’s lives distilled into a few columns that gave just the facts.
“I did pick up all that from the newspapers,” Bailey admitted. “It’s the other things I learned that should be worth a trip to Oklahoma for you.”
“What other things?
She smiled that taut little smile again. “Want to talk while we drive north?”
Sure. When hell froze over. “Give me one piece of information about Mac that isn’t common knowledge.”
Though she considered it for a moment, he had the impression she already knew which piece she would offer. “He has a brother.”
He shook his head. “He didn’t have any family.” That was one of the things that had brought the two of them together. Neither of them had had parents who cared whether they came home from the war alive or in a body bag; there had been no brothers, sisters or cousins sending letters and care packages and no wife or family to go home to when they were wounded. Sure, Logan had had Ella and Sam…but it hadn’t been the same as real family. It was stupid and illogical and it shamed him, but it just hadn’t been the same.
She shook her head, too, chidingly, her hair swaying around her shoulders. “Saying you don’t have family doesn’t make it true. You’re proof of that.”
“Mac was an only child—”
“Of his parents’ marriage. His mother had been married before. When she left her first husband for the bright lights of Chicago, she left her son, too. Mac’s half brother.” The chiding was on her face again when she looked at him. “The man murdered an elderly couple who’d taken him into their home. Do you really think he was above lying about his family?”
Of course not. Mac had no scruples, no morals, no honor. He didn’t deserve to live. But Logan intended to take care of that soon enough.
“Do you know this brother’s name?”
Bailey nodded.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Once we’ve reached an agreement about your going to Oklahoma.”
“With what you’ve already told me, I can track him down myself.”
“You can, but it’ll take time. He wasn’t much easier to find than you were. So…when do we leave?”
“I’ll go as soon as I’ve found Mac.”
She started shaking her head before the sentence was half out and didn’t stop until he was done. “You’re not being reasonable.”
His chuckle sounded harsh in the room. “I don’t have to be reasonable. We have a deal.”
