When he was a third of the way down the hall, a door latch click behind him. He turned quickly, ready to snap the rifle down off his shoulder and ratchet the hammer back.
“Oh,” Haven’s voice said, an eye showing through the three-inch crack between her door and the frame. “I was…”
Longarm turned half around and arched a brow. “Feels like old times. Need somethin’, Agent Delacroix.”
Something seemed funny about her. She blinked, opened the door a little wider, poked her head out. She turned to look down the hall toward the stairs.
Thickly, she said, “I was just…needing some water. I thought you might be Mr. Berger.” She glanced at Longarm coolly, and then stepped out of her room with a stone jug in her hand and strode off down the hall to the stairs. She was walking fine but the thickness of her voice and the shine in her eyes was odd.
Was she drunk? Assuaging her desires?
She stopped at the top of the stairs and called down to the German at the desk, her voice echoing hollowly. The man said something back to her and then Longarm heard the man’s boots thumping on the steps.
Sure enough, Longarm thought—she was in her room, getting drunk alone, needing more branch water to mix with whatever tanglefoot she was imbibing in. He only vaguely realized he was staring back at her incredulously when she turned to him from the balcony rail and said in a typically peeved tone, “Everything is fine, Marshal. Good night!”
Longarm nodded, still puzzled. “Good night, Agent Delacroix. You need anything tonight, I’ll be just down the hall.” He winked at her. “Room four, just beyond yours.”
She didn’t say anything but merely handed the jug to the stocky German, who’d climbed the stairs to retrieve it.
Inside his room, he himself had his own few libations, but just a few. He wanted to get an early start tomorrow, to beat the heat, and he needed to be on his toes. If any sign remained at the spot where the lawmen had been murdered, he had to find it. That was likely his and Agent Delacroix’s only hope of running the culprit or culprits to ground.
Having shucked down to his longhandles, he corked his bottle, stuffed it into a saddlebag pouch, and hung the saddlebags on a peg by the door. He wrapped his shell belt around a post at the head of his lumpy bed, which sagged in the middle, beneath a motley patch quilt that bore a Christmas design though it was not yet the Fourth of July, and then shucked the Colt from its holster.
He spun the cylinder, liking the familiar click of the well-oiled and fully loaded revolver. Returning the gun to its sheath, he blew out his bedside lamp and stared at the door for a while, trying to get his comely partner out of his head.
His lovely partner was drinking alone to quell her own heated cravings…
Longarm’s cock still ached the heavy, dull ache of lust—not a comfortable sensation. He was not accustomed to not having his desires satisfied, and oh, what he wouldn’t give to have Haven Delacroix’s sweet mouth wrapped around his cock again tonight, satisfying that desire the way she had a few nights ago in the Colorado mountains.
Maybe he should have gone ahead and taken a tumble with the puta over at Slim’s.
Well, he was here now, and he needed a good night’s rest, so he’d turn his mind to the case at hand until he drifted off to sleep. And that’s what he’d nearly done, his face in the pillow, opening his mouth to begin snoring, when he snapped his eyes suddenly wide in response to something his half-asleep lawman’s senses had picked up in the building around him.
The click of a door latch?
Hinges squawked quietly. A door just down the hall was being drawn open slowly. Which direction?
In Haven’s direction.
Longarm rolled eagerly onto his back and then sat up, like a boy listening for Santa Claus.
His dong immediately began aching again, though it was a pleasantly expectant sensation this time, like the thrill he always felt when he knew he was going to soon be “visiting” his old pal, the moneyed, young, and beautiful Miss Cynthia Larimer. He and the scrumptious daughter of General Larimer, Denver’s founding father, rarely visited, however.
What they did do more than anything was fuck in nearly every position humanly possible and a couple of poses that required the often bittersweet strain of several obscure tendons, muscles, and joints.
Thinking about Cynthia now and an imminent visit from Haven Delacroix, who obviously hadn’t been able to get him out of her craw, caused Longarm’s heartbeat to quicken and his hands to slicken. Already, he felt his manhood pushing against the wash-worn fabric of his longhandles.
He breathed through his mouth so that he could hear better beyond his door. There was that click again. Had she gone back into her room?
No. A floorboard squawked. It was followed by another squawk slightly louder than the first.
Longarm fairly licked his chops. She was heading this way!
He heard the girl’s soft tread in the hall, but he stayed where he was. He wasn’t going to go running to greet her and make a fool of himself, by God. Let her knock and ask to be let in.
The soft footfalls grew louder until he saw a shadow move under the door. He grinned as he stared at the shadow, waiting. The shadow remained in one place directly beneath the door. Longarm frowned.
Go on and knock, galldarnnit…
Suddenly, the shadow moved back to the right. It disappeared. He could hear Haven’s footsteps again, but they grew quieter now as she retreated.
“Shit!” he muttered, flopping back down against his pillow.
He stared at the ceiling. Should he go after her? If he did, she might only give him the sharp chin again, frustrating him even more. Nah, he’d better stay right here and get rested for the trail tomorrow.
His cock was heavy, however. It yearned for the girl’s soft lips and wet tongue, the expanding and contracting of her throat against its swollen head.
He chewed his cheeks as he stared at the ceiling in frustration. In the hall, a floorboard squawked.
Longarm jerked his head up, eyes wide in renewed anticipation. Again, a shadow appeared beneath his door. He stared at it. He lifted his gaze to the dark door panel.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Knock. Go ahead. You know you want to.”
The shadow wavered as though Haven herself was wavering, about to tramp on back to her own room again.
“Ah, for chrissakes!”
Longarm threw his covers back and rose from the bed. He was halfway to the door, making his way through the darkness, when a loud roar caused him to leap a foot in the air with a start. It also caused his door to blow open and swing within two inches of his nose before it slammed against the wall.
Or what was left of the door after two loads of double-ought buck had blown two watermelon-sized holes in it.
Chapter 16
One of the two figures standing in the hall outside Longarm’s ruined door laughed raucously as he stepped aside for the man behind him to move forward and lift his own sawed-off double-barreled barn blaster.
By this time, Longarm was airborne, diving across his bed that the double-ought buck had shredded and dusted with slivers from the door. He slammed belly down on the bed, closed his right hand over the grips of his .44, and pulled the revolver from its holster as he rolled to the right, over the edge of the bed.
As he hit the floor on his butt, there was a bright, orange flash against the silhouette of the big man in his doorway. The expansive thundering report filled the room, causing the floor to leap beneath Longarm’s ass.
The full load of buckshot flipped Longarm’s pillow up high against the headboard, instantly turning it into a billowing cloud of feathers stitched with shredded ticking. The man with the shotgun swung the savage popper’s barrels sideways, tracking Longarm and shouting, “Die, you son of a bitch! Die!”