Lone Star 04 by Ellis Wesley

Author:Ellis, Wesley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

It was after six when Ki tapped lightly on Jessie’s door, and the two wandered out of the hotel and across the street to the Silver Bell Café. The evening was still bright under a luminous summer sky. The sun wouldn’t flatten into Colorado for another two hours, and the day would linger on after that. Jessie hadn’t eaten since five that morning, and she felt as hollow as a drum. She’d missed the noonday meal at the village, being somewhat occupied with Feodor and not even thinking about food. When the big steak arrived, she worked through it with a will, polishing her plate clean with a thick piece of bread.

Ki watched in amazement. He was a hearty enough eater, but no match for Jessie in one of her ravenous moods. “I’m glad this place wasn’t out of food,” he said soberly. “It would be embarrassing to watch you shoot your way through the kitchen.”

“Don’t laugh, friend.” Jessie gave him a stern, reproachful look. “If Torgler and his crew had cornered all the steaks in town, I might have done just that.” Jessie leaned back in her chair and let out a breath. “Ki, I think there was a lot that Tom Bridger could have told us about what’s going on in this place. The longer we hang around Roster, the easier it is to see why they killed him. If you ask me, everyone in town’s for hire. It’d be a lot easier for Torgler if they all wore price tags on their collars.”

The occupants of the other two tables were eyeing Jessie curiously. She glared them down and leaned across to Ki. “We know he’s bought Gaiter, and God knows who else. There’s Lucy, of course, and likely a bunch of assorted gunmen like those two on the train.”

“We are not entirely without help if we need it,” Ki grinned. “Remember that swarm of federal marshals and judges you threatened to toss at Gaiter?”

Jessie didn’t laugh. “Gaiter’ll buy that. A man like Torgler knows better.” She had learned that lesson the hard way after Alex Starbuck’s murder. The law was next to useless in this kind of fight. The cartel was playing for high stakes, and one of the deadliest weapons it brought into play was its seemingly bottomless purse. Small fry like Gaiter, and even professional assassins like Lucy Jordan put no strain at all on the organization’s funds. The cartel operated on a grander scale than that—buying the men who made the laws, as well as those who enforced them. Wherever money talked, the cartel opened its pockets. Jessie was well aware of the fact that high-placed men across the country—men in business, the military, the railroads, even in Washington itself—were in the pay of European interests. And sometimes, even the most honest and iron-willed men who couldn’t be bought with money and the promise of power could be broken to the cartel’s will in other ways. When a child’s in danger, or it’s

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