Two for Trouble Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  Sacramento Suspects

  Clint knew it would all come down to Ted Singleton. He was the only one who knew all the players, and what side they were on. Clint had to find him in order to find the answers. Singleton had sent for him, so he must have still felt the bond of friendship and that Clint would be able to help him.

  Clint had no intention of leaving Sacramento until he, too, knew all the players, knew where they stood, and knew what had happened to his friend.

  And most of all, knew what the hell everybody was chasing . . .

  DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts

  Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.

  LONGARM by Tabor Evans

  The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

  SLOCUM by Jake Logan

  Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

  BUSHWHACKERS by B. J. Lanagan

  An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill’s Raiders.

  DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer

  Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .

  WILDGUN by Jack Hanson

  The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!

  TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun

  Meet J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous—man-hunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he’s the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TWO FOR TROUBLE

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / March 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Robert J. Randisi.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-0-515-14266-2

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  ONE

  A summons to Denver usually meant that his friend Talbot Roper needed some help.

  A request for his presence in Washington, D.C., invariably meant that his friend Jim West was going to drag him into some Secret Service affair he’d barely escape from with his life.

  A telegram asking him to be in Sacramento at a certain time, in a certain place, was a mystery to Clint Adams. It seemed his willingness to help a friend had put his life in more jeopardy lately than usual. But he had set the precedent long ago, and it wasn’t one he could break. Besides, if he didn’t agree to help his friends, what would he be doing with his time? He certainly wasn’t the type to sit and whittle, or settle down in a house or on a farm or—God forbid—behind the counter of a hardware or general store.

  So here he was in Sacramento, registering at the Marsh House Hotel, having already left Eclipse at the nearest livery stable. He attracted attention walking from the stable to the hotel carrying his saddlebags, rifle and several pounds of trail dust on his clothes.

  The telegram from Ted Singleton asked him to be in Sacramento and at the hotel on a certain day, so he had ridden hell-bent for leather from Labyrinth, Texas, to get there.

  “Yes, sir,” the desk clerk said, “we have your reservation right here. We’ve got you in the Presidential Suite.”

  “The Presidential Suite?”

  “Yessir,” the clerk said. “Second best accommodations in the hotel. Please sign here.”

  As Clint signed the register, he asked, “If the Presidential Suite is the second best room in the hotel, what’s the best?”

  “That would be Mr. Marsh’s own suite, sir,” the fastidious clerk said. “He is the owner.”

  “Well then,” Clint replied, accepting his key, “I guess there’s no harm in him having the best room in the hotel, is there?”

  “No, sir,” the clerk said, seriously. “There isn’t.”

  Clint started to say he was kidding, but knew the clerk wouldn’t get it.

  “Much obliged,” he said instead, and picked up his belongings.

  “There are, uh, bathing facilities in the room, sir,” the clerk hurriedly added.

  “There are?” Clint asked. “And you’re saying I need a bath?”


  “I’m, uh, just making you aware, sir, of some of the hotel’s amenities.”

  Again, Clint wanted to ask why the man hadn’t told him about the restaurant, or barber station, but decided against it.

  “Well,” he said, instead, “thanks again.”

  He trudged up the stairs, bone weary, thinking that a bath didn’t sound like a bad idea. The clerk probably just didn’t want him sliding between the hotel’s clean sheets until he’d had one.

  As he entered the room, he gazed in appreciation around at the expensive furnishings, worthy of a Portsmouth Square hotel or whorehouse. But he wasn’t in San Francisco, and these must have been the best accommodations not only in the hotel, but in town. Public accommodations, of course, Mr. Marsh’s suite notwithstanding.

  Actually, it was only the reason he was in Sacramento that was a mystery to Clint. Ted Singleton was an old lawman buddy who had retired from wearing the badge years ago. Clint hadn’t heard from him in about five or six years, but that was no reason to ignore his call for help when it came . . .

  “I could understand if it was Bat or Wyatt,” Rich Hartman had said to him in Rick’s Place, more than a week earlier. “Or even if it was me. How well do you know Singleton after all these years? Remember the mess you got into responding to that telegram from Colorado?”

  “That one wasn’t signed,” Clint said, “this one is—and I knew Ted fairly well back then.”

  “Well, you don’t know what kind of man he might have become since then,” Rick said. “You’ve had friends go bad before.”

  “More than once,” Clint agreed, “but I can’t let that make me ignore them all.”

  “You’re an amazing man when it comes to friendship, Clint,” Rick said. “I guess I should count myself lucky I’m on the list.”

  “Yes,” Clint Adam said to his friend, “you should . . .”

  Clint’s problem, he admitted to himself in private, was that his list of friends got longer and longer because he never crossed anyone off—unless they truly turned on him. And that had happened too few times for him to start crossing names off his list wholesale.

  He almost tossed his saddlebags onto the bed, but they were dusty and the bed was so damn clean, he dropped them onto the floor instead. He leaned his rifle up against a chest of drawers.

  The suite was two rooms, and he left the bedroom to go back out to the sitting room. Off to one side was another door, and when he opened it, he found the bath facilities. He could fill the tub with water himself, but he still had to call for help from downstairs to get hot water, and that was what he wanted.

  He closed that door, walked over to the door of the room, opened that one and found himself looking down the barrel of a gun.

  TWO

  “Are you Clint Adams?” the woman asked from behind the gun.

  Standing with his hands up around his shoulders, Clint said, “That’s right.”

  “How do I know that?”

  Clint studied the girl—and she was a girl, barely out of her teens, he thought. She was wearing boy’s clothes, and the big Colt she was holding was already causing her wrist to bend a little.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Clint said, “but I don’t do well at the end of a gun.”

  “I know,” she said. “According to your reputation, you’re usually on the other end of a gun. Well, this time you’re lookin’ down my barrel—”

  “Oh, what the hell,” he said, and snatched the gun out of her hand.

  She stared at him, mouth agape, and stammered, “You can’t . . . How can you . . . How did you do that?”

  Next he reached out, grabbed the front of her shirt and yanked her into the room, closing the door behind him. In doing so he pinched one of her peach-sized breasts beneath the shirt, and she grabbed it and said, “Ow!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

  “That hurt!”

  “I said I’m sorry,” he replied, then held the gun up and added, “but I didn’t feel comfortable with you holding this.”

  “Give it back!”

  “Later,” he said, then added, “maybe.”

  She fell silent then, as if she suddenly realized where she was. She looked around with her mouth open, again.

  “I have never been in such a room. It’s . . . so big, and beautiful.”

  “It’s very nice.”

  “What’s out that window?” she asked, pointing.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to look.”

  “Can I?”

  “Go ahead.”

  While she drew the curtain aside to gaze outside, he took the opportunity to unload the gun and put it down on a nearby table.

  “It’s the front of the hotel,” she said. “I’ve never looked down at it like this. People going by, carriages . . .”

  “Young lady, would you like to tell me your name?” he asked. “Just so I know what to call you?”

  “I’m Julie,” she said.

  “That’s it?”

  She turned away from the window to face him.

  “Just Julie.”

  “And why are you here?”

  “Ted told me to come.”

  “Ted who?”

  “You know,” she said. “Singleton.”

  “You know Ted.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fat man, balding, mustache?” he asked.

  “Tall, thin man, lots of gray hair, clean-shaven,” she said. “You testin’ me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did I pass?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Why the gun?”

  “I had to be sure.”

  “And are you?”

  “The way you took that gun away from me?” she asked. “The speed of the way you moved? Oh yeah, you’re the Gunsmith, all right.”

  “Now that we got that settled,” he said, “what’s your connection to Ted?”

  “We work together.”

  “As what?”

  “As partners.”

  “Partners . . . in what?”

  “You know,” she said, “partners. We work together, watch each other’s back?”

  “You watch Ted Singleton’s back,” he said, in disbelief.

  “Well, of course,” she said, as if he were an idiot. “That’s what partners do, right?”

  “Julie,” he said, “stick with me here, all right?”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”

  “I’m just a little confused,” he said. “Can you just tell me what you and Ted are partners in?”

  “You know,” she said, and then lowered her voice, “we work for the government.”

  “The government?” he asked. “You and Ted work for the United States government?”

  “Well, of course, silly,” she said. “What other government would we work for?”

  THREE

  “Since when does Ted Singleton work for the government?” he asked. “And by ‘government,’ do you mean the Secret Service?”

  “He’s worked for them since I’ve known him,” she said, “and I guess so.”

  “You guess so? You don’t know for sure?”

  “Well,” she said, sheepishly, “I should say that Ted works for the government, and I work with Ted.”

  “So you only know what Ted tells you.”

  “Well . . . yeah. Why would he lie to me?”

  Why indeed. The Ted Singleton he knew was not a liar, but as Rick Hartman had pointed out, people change. But why would Ted be lying to this young woman about working for the government? To get her into bed, maybe? Ted was a few years older than Clint, certainly too old to attract this girl under normal circumstances.

  “So, Julie,” Clint said, “just how close are you and Ted?”

  The woman looked appalled.

  “I know what you’re suggesting, Mr. Adams,” she said. “That’s . . . terrible.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Clint said. “I’m just asking.”
/>   “Well don’t,” she said. “It’s like I told you. We’re just partners.”

  “Well, where is he?”

  “That’s the trouble,” she said. “I don’t know. I was hoping he’d come here to meet you.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Just after he sent you that telegram.”

  “And you haven’t heard from him since?”

  “Not a word.”

  Clint turned and walked away from her a few feet. When he turned back to say something, she was pointing a gun at him.

  “Julie, that gun is empt—” he started to say, then realized it wasn’t the same gun. The one he’d emptied was still on the table. This one was slightly smaller, not as heavy, and she’d had it hidden on her somewhere. It wasn’t bending her wrist as much.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have to be sure.”

  “About what?”

  She hesitated a moment, then asked nervously, “Do you have it?”

  “Do I have what?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Mr. Adams,” she said. “Ted told me you were good friends. He’s missing, and I’m thinkin’ maybe he passed it on to you.”

  “I’ll ask you again,” Clint said. “Passed what on to me?”

  She bit her lower lip and her eyes searched the room, as if she’d spot whatever “it” was that she was talking about.

  “Julie . . . if that’s your real name . . .”

  “It is.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I haven’t seen Ted. I just got here a little while ago. He didn’t leave anything for me, and I don’t know what ‘it’ is you’re talking about.”

  She looked as if her feet were nailed to the floor, she was so unsure of her next move.

  “Why don’t you put down the gun and we can talk—” he started.

  “N-no,” she said. “I gotta go. Back up.”

  He took a step back.

  “More!”

  He took two steps back. She came forward and collected her other gun from the table.

  At the door she said, “If you see Ted, tell him I’m lookin’ for him.”