Читать книгу: «Burke's Rules»

Chapter One

It was the hump that drew Burke Youngblood’s attention to the man in a red flannel shirt and baggy coveralls, walking ahead of him on the Denver boardwalk. Burke mentally sifted through the Wanted posters tacked to his office wall, putting together names with distinctive physical characteristics. Thinking about the ugly pusses marring the black-walnut-veneered panels of his brand-new office was enough to sour his already grim mood.

He didn’t know why his bank, the Denver First National and Trust, had suddenly been singled out as the most popular place for every man with a pistol and a larcenous desire to say, “Give me all the money in your vault.” But he refused to have everything he’d sweated blood and tears to build stripped from him by men too amoral to perform an honest day’s work.

He deliberately slowed his pace, keeping three yards between himself and the bandy-legged figure. Dangling from a dusty hat, a faded gray ponytail thumped against the red fabric stretched across the clearly visible hump.

“Pappy” Pikeman...no, Pickman. Burke pulled the name from the dozens he’d committed to memory. Pappy was a notorious, if aging, bank robber, specializing in dynamiting safes. Burkes’s right hand drifted to the Colt 45 on his hip.

The man bearing a startling resemblance to Pappy paused on the corner. Across the street, where McClintock and Larimer intersected, rose the bank’s new four-story structure, completed three months earlier. Burke also stopped, moving to the inside of the boardwalk so as not to block the pedestrian traffic that flowed in both directions around him.

The humpbacked man was peering into one of the French plate-glass windows. Burke still wasn’t sure if he was trailing Pappy or someone who looked enough like the criminal to be his brother. Before the man entered the bank, Burke would know.

The anger that had been growing within him for the past few months climbed another notch. What was going on? If indeed Pappy Pickman was studying the building with robbery in mind, he would be the fourth thief in as many months to choose the First National and Trust as his target. It didn’t make sense. There were at least a dozen other financial institutions in Denver with poorer security measures than he maintained.

Burke stepped onto the boardwalk and walked past the man raptly staring into the front windows. The brief glimpse he caught of the profile shadowed beneath the hat stoked his wrath. With a certainty he didn’t question, he knew Pickman had joined the ranks of those who thought they could successfully steal from the First National.

Burke drew his .45 from its holster and shoved the barrel against Pickman’s side. “Put your hands against the window.”

He felt the shudder of shock that rocked the smaller man.

“What’s going on?” The high-pitched protest bristled with outrage.

Burke leaned close and spoke through tightly clenched teeth. “I know who you are. If you want to see tomorrow, don’t make any sudden moves.”

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! There’s been a mistake!”

“You’re right about that.” Burke cocked the Colt. “Reach into your pocket and take the gun out by its barrel.”

“I ain’t got no—”

Burke pushed the .45 deeper into his side. “Do it.”

Uttering an oath, the man plunged his hand into the pocket concealed by the baggy coveralls. What came into view made Burke suck in his breath.

“I told you I wasn’t packing a pistol.”

Burke gingerly retrieved the stick of dynamite from Pickman’s shaking fingers. “Now, we’re going for a walk. Inside.”

“Inside?” Pickman squeaked. “Ain’t you gonna take me to the sheriff?”

“I might be willing to turn you over to Sheriff Donner after you answer some questions.”

He turned pasty-colored. “I ain’t answering no questions.”

Burke spun the man around to face the doors closest to them. “Walk.”

Pickman dragged his heels but managed to stumble forward. Burke eased the stick of dynamite into his coat pocket while keeping his gun pressed discreetly, but firmly, against his prisoner’s ribs. They stepped in tandem through the glass doors.

The teller closest to the entrance looked up from the plump matron he was assisting. “Good morning, Mr. Youngblood.”

“’Morning, Jamison.” Burke nodded in the general direction of the customers standing in five short lines. If lowlifes like Pickman continued to view his establishment as their personal source of ill-gotten loot, the First National and Trust would soon be an empty shell of a building.

And, without your business, you’d be an empty shell.

The rogue thought stunned Burke. When had he started thinking of himself only as an extension of the banks he owned?

“Up the stairs,” Burke ordered gruffly.

“Okay, okay, I’m going. Don’t push.”

They went up two flights. By the time they reached the top, Pickman was sweating heavily and wheezing. “Slow down. I don’t see why you’re in such an all-fired hurry.”

Burke opened his office door and shoved his prisoner inside. “Better save what little breath you have.”

Burke was surprised to find he had a visitor. Gideon Cade lounged casually in one of the chairs that faced the mahogany desk. Gideon got to his feet, eyeing Pappy with obvious interest.

Burke forcibly guided Pickman to an empty chair. “Sit.”

“All right, all right.”

“Is this where I offer to get the rope?” his friend drawled.

“If Pappy’s feeling chatty, we won’t resort to force.”

“Knowing that your father is the president and owner of an eastern conglomerate of banks, I pictured him as being more of a dapper dresser.”

Despite his anger at being the target of another robbery attempt, Burke grinned. “Allow me to introduce Pappy Pickman—not my father, but a low-down, bank-robbing scoundrel with the mistaken notion he could walk into the First National and help himself to some easy money.”

“You can’t prove anything,” the older man grumbled.

“With a reward on your head, I don’t have to prove anything,” Burke replied. “Grab Pappy’s picture off the wall, Gideon. It’s the third one from the left in the fourth row.”

Burke gave the directions without taking his gaze from Pickman.

Gideon sauntered to the cluster of Wanted posters that covered almost one wall of Burke’s office.

“I never did care for all these ugly mugs staring at me every time I visited you, but I can see you’ve put them to good use. You’ve probably memorized the face of every outlaw within a five-state radius.”

“Just about.” Burke trained his Colt on the sweating man. “Before I turn you over to Donner, you can satisfy my curiosity.”

“Why should I? What’s in it for me?”

Burke shrugged. “Is staying alive reason enough?”

Pickman’s Adam’s apple wobbled beneath his grizzled chins. “You’re bluffing. No fancy-dressed banker is gonna shoot somebody in cold blood.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

Sullenness tinged by fear clouded the prisoner’s face. “I don’t know why you’re so riled. You got so much money, you wouldn’t even miss the piddling amount I might make off with. It’s not like it was personal.”

“I happen to take being robbed very personally. Tell me why you chose my bank to hit.”

Pickman’s pale eyes shifted from Burke. “No special reason.”

“I think there is,” Burke said softly. “And, before I have you hauled off to the sheriff, you’re going to tell me what it is.”

Two hours later, Gideon and Burke were alone in Burke’s office. Three security guards had transported Pickman to jail. He’d seemed eager to accompany them.

“Look on the bright side.” Gideon tore Pappy’s Wanted poster in half. You’ve got one less ferret-faced outlaw staring down at you.”

Burke picked up the letter he’d received yesterday, holding the document so the bold seal of the United States Treasury was visible. “There is no bright side as long as the government is considering revoking my federal charter to mint U.S. coins.”

“I can’t believe they would let a few robbery attempts affect something as important as that charter. Hell, you own and operate the only privately held financial institution in the country with the equipment to print money and mint coins. The government would be crazy to shut you down.”

“Representatives from another Denver bank insist their facility would better serve the needs of the federal government.”

Gideon scowled. “Let me guess, the Bank of Colorado, owned and presided over by Winslow Dilicar, has been suggested as a replacement.”

Burke laid aside the letter, pushed back his chair and stood. He went to the window that overlooked the congested street below, where buckboards, buggies and men on horseback vied for their place on the packed thoroughfare. “Dilicar hasn’t made it a secret that he wants that charter.”

“There’s an arrogance about Dilicar that sets my teeth on edge.”

Burke pictured the dandified Easterner, whose facial expression habitually bordered on disdain. “He’s not one of my favorite people.”

“Emma doesn’t care for him. He’s been blackballed from our guest list.”

Burke felt a smile overtake him. “That settles it. If someone as discriminating as your new wife doesn’t care for him, he’s snake excrement.”

Gideon chuckled. “My wife is an excellent judge of character.”

“Except for that one memorable lapse when she married you.”

His friend’s eyes sparkled with an inner light that made Burke uneasy. A smart man didn’t let himself become as enamored as Gideon was with his bride. Bitter experience had taught Burke that the world was a dangerous place. A person had to be on his guard at all times. The delusion of romantic love invited disaster. The heart was a vital organ only so far as it pumped blood through one’s system. All the rest was vain imaginings. A clear-thinking brain was the key to survival.

“You know how tenderhearted Emma is,” Gideon said, warming to what was clearly a favorite topic. “She’s always concerned about the welfare of others. If she doesn’t want Dilicar in our home, it’s as good as saying he hasn’t a redeeming quality.”

“She won’t get an argument from me.”

A pause followed. For the first time, Burke wondered what had brought Gideon to his office. “Would you care for a brandy?”

His friend shook his head. “I can’t stay much longer.”

More silence ensued. Gideon appeared restless. The man had been through a lot during the past four years. His younger brother and sister-in-law had been murdered, and he’d assumed the care of his young niece, while struggling to hold his freighting empire together. It astounded Burke that, despite the recent period of savagery, Gideon had lost his heart to his niece’s tutor and married her.

The skin at the back of Burke’s neck prickled. Until Emma Step had entered his life, Gideon Cade had been a ruthlessly logical man. But like Burke’s brother, Logan, the freighting tycoon had sacrificed his cold-blooded rationality for the fiction of romantic love. The fallibility of two otherwise sane men made Burke distinctly uncomfortable. He could accept their physical craving for the women who’d joined them at the altar. It was the men’s emotional weakness that disturbed him. As far as he was concerned, their declared love made them as vulnerable as newly hatched chicks.

Burke pushed his thoughts in a new direction. “Has Hunter had any more problems with rustlers?”

“Not that I’ve heard. It appears your bank has claimed the honor of becoming a magnet to the area’s lawless element.”

“Considering what Pappy told us, that’s not likely to change,” Burke said glumly.

“If what he said is true, you can count on every bandit within a thousand miles paying you a visit.”

In frustration, Burke shoved a hand through his hair. “In effect, someone has put a bounty, payable in advance, on the First National.”

“Offering a free horse and fifty dollars up front to known thieves if they’ll strike your bank is a powerful incentive to men with no scruples.”

“It’s not going to do much good to keep foiling robbery attempts. I’ve got to find the person paying the bribes.”

“Do you have any doubt who’s behind this?”

“Obviously Dilicar has the most to gain from the First National losing its credibility with the government. He’s formally petitioned the treasury department to award the charter to the Bank of Colorado.”

“And it’s his newspaper that keeps printing articles about the lack of safety at the First National.”

Resolve settled in Burke’s gut. “It’s going to take irrefutable proof to convict a rich, respected businessman like Dilicar of being guilty of anything illegal.”

Gideon nodded. “Sounds as if the Guardsmen have a new assignment.”

Three men had formed the organization known as the Guardsmen. Burke Youngblood, Gideon Cade and cattle baron Hunter Moran had banded together to form an organization to protect honest, hardworking people whom local lawmen seemed unable to shield from not-so-random violence.

The Guardsmen refrained from exacting their own justice at the end of a rope or smoking pistol. Instead, they turned the thieves and murderers they caught over to authorities, with the names of people who’d witnessed the crimes and would testify against the wrongdoers.

“Emma doesn’t mind that you’re still involved with the Guardsmen?”

Burke heard the edge in his voice and regretted it. He didn’t begrudge Gideon his illusion of happiness.

“When I’m on Guardsmen business, she worries, of course.”

Emma was the only outsider who knew the identities of the secret group’s members. “Has she taken to nagging you to quit? Wives do that, I’ve heard.”

Amusement flickered in his friend’s eyes. “Emma tended to nag before she became my wife.”

“You have my sympathy,” Burke said with an exaggerated shudder.

“I don’t need it. Emma’s sweet nagging is one of the many ways she shows how much she loves me.”

Burke shook his head. “You’ve got it as bad as my brother.”

“Good, ” Gideon corrected softly. “I’ve got it good. Life has never been so worth living. Until now.”

Until Emma, Burke heard him silently say.

A chill, having nothing to do with the threat against his bank, brushed Burke’s spine. It made him nervous that a onetime cynic like Gideon Cade could crumble over a woman. Burke recalled an incident Gideon had related several months ago, an abbreviated account about climbing through a second-story window of his own home during a midnight rainstorm to woo his lady. That tale alone illustrated the asinine depths to which an intelligent man could plummet, if he believed he was in love.

“Be sure and give Emma my best.”

“She’s the reason I dropped by.”

Surprised, Burke returned to his chair. “How so?”

“She has a favor to ask of you.”

The chill paid a return visit. Burke rotated his shoulders. “What kind of favor?”

“It involves her friend Jayne Stoneworthy. You might remember her. She was one of the guests at our wedding. Anyway, Miss Stoneworthy is starting a school for young ladies and...”

Burke heard the drone of Gideon’s voice as he would have heard the hum of a bee in the background. Remember Jayne Stoneworthy? He almost laughed aloud. Of course, he remembered her. Her image had hovered at the edges of his thoughts since that otherwise ordinary afternoon he’d first seen her.

Their paths had first crossed in the sanctuary of his home. Before the school had burned down, he’d been prevailed upon by the Hempshire Academy to open his private art gallery for occasional student tours. One afternoon he’d strode into his residence and encountered a flock of giggling schoolgirls about to return to their school. His housekeeper had casually introduced their intrepid leader. Jayne Stoneworthy.

It was hardly a momentous meeting. Midday, his house a-clutter with chattering girls. He’d been late for a meeting with the Guardsmen and was in a hurry to make up for lost time. Detached and impatient, he’d waited in his entry. Then he’d caught his first glance of her. His initial impression had been that of a woman virtually hidden by a dark cloak and unflattering bonnet. Buried beneath the flowing folds of her cloak, she appeared to be slight of frame and of average height.

Their gazes had caught. He’d found himself being politely investigated by a pair of intelligent green eyes that evidenced no sign of feminine timidity. Something inside his chest had tightened.

Then, amid a flurry of thank-yous, she and her charges were gone. The encounter had lasted less than ten seconds. And yet, at odd times, her image infiltrated his thoughts.

He’d seen her again at Gideon’s impromptu wedding to Emma. His gaze had tracked her through the throng of well-wishers. Evidently content to occupy the fringes of the room, Miss Stoneworthy again had pricked his interest. She certainly did nothing deliberate to draw his attention. There were no soulful glances, no fluttering eyelashes, no coquettish mannerisms to accentuate her feminine charms. Yet her quiet demeanor had made him want to draw closer.

She was hardly the kind of woman he ought to be attracted to. Oh, her dark-golden hair appeared beguilingly silky. Her green eyes, slightly tilted as they were, radiated a tempting warmth. And her delicately shaped mouth invited the brush of his own lips to investigate their improbable softness. Without the cloak, her shape was definitely female. Her modestly designed dress didn’t conceal her bosom’s petite fullness, the sleek curve of her trim waist and the gentle flare of her hips.

It was her expression, however, that of propriety wrapped in the impregnable armor of chastity-until-marriage, that should have rendered her off-limits. Hers was the kind of innocent appeal that struck terror in the hearts of confirmed bachelors. Her virtue shone as brightly as her golden hair. The price of that virtue was, of course, marriage.

“So I would appreciate you dropping by.”

Gideon’s statement fell into Burke’s thoughts with the soft splash of a stone sinking into a deep pool of water. Drop by where?

Gideon leaned forward in his chair. “Well?”

Not wanting to betray his distraction over a woman with whom he’d exchanged only the briefest greeting, Burke steepled his fingertips and frowned thoughtfully. “Could you be a little more specific?”

Gideon’s eyebrows knitted. “I thought I had been. Emma wants you to go to the Wet Beaver and check on how Miss Stoneworthy is coming along.”

Shock slammed into Burke. The Wet Beaver was a notorious Denver brothel. What the hell was going on? Pronouncing the names of the teacher and the cathouse in the same breath was akin to blasphemy.

“Coming along, how?” A cold rage built within him at the thought of Miss Stoneworthy selling herself several times a night to any man with the coin to purchase her sweet warmth.

“With her school, of course. Weren’t you listening?”

“I must have missed something. Explain what Miss Stoneworthy is doing in a whorehouse.”

“A former whorehouse,” Gideon corrected. “It closed down, and she bought the building. Like I said, she’s sunk all her money into renovating it and turning it into a school for young women.”

The tension that gripped Burke eased. “That’s crazy. No one’s going to send their daughter to a place that was once a house of prostitution.”

“I know it, and you know it. Unfortunately, Miss Stoneworthy has no idea that the Wet Beaver was anything other than a tavern. For obvious reasons, the former owner neglected to disclose the fact. Anyway, she’s running low on cash, and Emma’s concerned about her. There’s a long-lost uncle who’s supposedly sending a bank draft to help out, but it hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Using the bank draft for such an enterprise would be throwing good money after bad.”

“I agree. So does Emma.”

Burke regarded his friend quizzically. “What precisely do you want me to do?”

“According to Emma, Miss Stoneworthy wouldn’t have bought the building if she’d known what it had been used for. She’s not stupid, just naive.”

“But now that she does know—”

“That’s just it, she doesn’t,” Gideon interjected. “Emma only found out a short while ago.”

“How did that happen?” Burke asked, fascinated by the amazing phenomenon of the prim Miss Stoneworthy owning a brothel.

“I told her, of course. Anyway, Miss Stoneworthy needs help, and Emma feels you’re the best person to provide it.”

“Remind me what you want me to do,” Burke said warily.

“Inform her that she has to move her school, find her a new building and provide enough cash to cover her expenses until she begins making money.”

Silence descended in Burke’s office. He considered Gideon Cade and Hunter Moran his two best friends. He would risk his life for either man. But all things considered, Emma and Gideon were asking a hell of a favor.

“As I said,” Gideon continued, “I’ll supply the necessary funds. Miss Stoneworthy is apparently a proud woman who won’t let Emma help any more than she already has.”

“So, what you’re asking is that I inform Miss Stoneworthy she’s bought a whorehouse and find her a new building—with you underwriting all costs?”

“Right.”

Burke shook his head. “I’ve got to ask, why me?”

“You’re a banker.”

“And?”

“You lend money. Miss Stoneworthy will accept funds from you where she wouldn’t accept a loan from a friend. Just visit her at the Wet Beaver.”

“She’s living there?”

“Emma invited her to stay with us, but Miss Stoneworthy insists on remaining, even during the remodeling.”

“So, I walk into her place and say, ‘I’m Burke Youngblood. This used to be a brothel, so you can’t have your school here, after all. I’ll help you sell this building. And, since I’m a banker, I’ll lend you money to buy another place.”’ There was no way to keep the mockery from his words.

“That’s it,” Gideon said, ignoring the sarcasm.

“I can’t believe you’re asking me to do something so crazy.”

“She’s Emma’s friend, and she needs help.”

“Which she won’t accept from you?”

“But because she’s sensible, she will accept a loan from a banker.”

“A sensible woman doesn’t buy a brothel!”

“She just needs a chance, Burke.” Gideon laughed ruefully. “I know I’m asking a big favor. Just telling her she’s bought a cathouse is bound to be ticklish, but once that’s done, she’ll be grateful for your assistance.”

It was the damnedest favor ever requested of him. The thing was, he couldn’t say no to his friend. Judging from Gideon’s slightly amused expression, he knew it

“When’s a good time for me to show up there?”

“I told Emma we could count on you.”

“Did you?”

Gideon shrugged. “You know I would do the same for you.”

What Burke knew was that his friend was so besotted with his new wife that she had him wrapped around her little finger.

“I’ll take care of it.” The skin at the back of Burke’s neck started tingling again.