A Killing in Gold by Ralph Cotton

Author:Ralph Cotton [Cotton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

When Pearl and Catlow arrived back at his hotel room, she had already started planning her getaway. Shooting those three men down like animals, men who had worked for him in the past and had now changed sides to the bandidos? What absurdity, what childishness! It was time to start making her move. Not that she couldn’t handle Catlow. She could, for certain. But for how long?

She had found herself entangled with bullying men in the past, never realizing it until it was too late, never considering how dangerous these men could be until she found herself running from them, changing her looks, her name, whatever it took.

She stopped herself and took a composing breath. That was over. It was always much easier to climb into bed with men like Nathan Catlow or Bertram Leonard than it was to get away from them later. Well, those men would never foil her plans again. She was on top now. She could think of nothing, nothing she wouldn’t do to stay there.

Pearl Whitcomb, Private Investigator. She smiled to herself. From her personal bag, she took out a very small bottle of clear liquid and poured half of it into a glass of bourbon she had set aside for Catlow. She capped the little bottle and hid it under her dress. Tonight, when the bourbon and its special potion had done its job—either killed him or left him in a permanent drooling stupor—she would slip out and go see a man who’d befriended her at Perrito Cantina. He was a friend of the bandidos. Maybe he was one himself. Either way, he would see to it she made it safely out of here, away from Perrito, away from Nathan Catlow, to Bertram Leonard and his Lobos’ secret encampment.

In the middle of her thoughts, the door flew open and Catlow walked in boldly. “Knock, knock, I’m here,” he said, sounding edgy.

He was already exhibiting a brusqueness fueled by bourbon, cocaína and a dark, insidious suspicion she’d had something to do with him vomiting his guts everywhere in the first place. Yes, she had saved him, he thought. But had she saved him only from what she herself had put in motion?

“Well, well, you certainly are here,” she said, giving him her smile of glowing admiration. “I was just now thinking about you, hoping you would show up. I can’t stand being alone when I could be getting my hands on a big strong man who’s running loose.”

She wasn’t going to bring up how terrible he had acted earlier out on the sand flats. Instead, she crossed her legs toward him, both of them bare from the knee down and the top leg rocking back and forth languidly.

He leered, stepping forward. “What’re the chances we go to bed early and stay up late?” he asked.

She laughed as if she had never heard that old stringer. “Very good chances,” she said.

He looked around. “May I have a drink?” he asked.

“Of course, you certainly may.” She gestured toward the glass of bourbon sitting on the small table beside him.

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