Love on the Line - Deeanne Gist [135]
She glanced between him and the man. “I didn’t go ta Industry. I went and fetched Comer instead.”
Euphoria swept through him. This was Comer. Dead to rights at the other end of his barrel. Bettina might have gone to warn him, but instead had delivered him right into his hands. He wondered at Comer’s audacity. Had the man become so complacent he thought he couldn’t be brought in? Well, he’d find out differently now.
Comer put down another card and drew one from the deck. “I want to thank you for rounding up my men for me. We’ve a train to rob today.” He raised his gaze. “I believe I’ll take ’em off your hands now.”
“You’re not doing anything but putting your own hands in the air.”
Comer shook his head. “Still bossy, I see.”
Luke frowned.
Setting his cards on the table, Comer nodded toward the door. “Go let the men loose, Bettina.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind.”
She froze at his sharp command. “You really Lucious Landrum?”
“I am. And, make no mistake, Bettina, as of now, the Comer Gang is no more.”
She swallowed, torn between her misplaced loyalty to Comer and what was clearly a fascination with the new Luke.
“Go on.” Comer shooed her with his hand. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
After a slight hesitation, she dashed down the hallway and out the front door. Luke let her go. She didn’t have keys for the cuffs and she had no idea Georgie was out there. When she found out, she’d be hard-pressed to betray the woman who’d hired her when no one else would. No, he was much more worried about Ragston than Bettina. He needed to get out there.
“Let’s go, Comer.”
He leaned back in his chair. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“I recognize you. I just don’t know from where.”
Comer lifted a brow. “Well, I’d recognize you anywhere. You look exactly the same since the last time I saw you. You’d tucked your tail under and run, leaving me high and dry at Glaser’s mercy.”
Chapter Forty-Three
The wind left Luke as surely as if he’d received a flattening blow to the gut. He fell back a step. “Alec?”
“In the flesh.” He crossed his arms. “So, what do you hear from Ma?”
Luke soaked in the changes the last eleven years had wrought. Alec’s face had lengthened and lost its roundness. His cheeks and jaw had taken on sharp angular lines he’d not had before. His nose had lost its gentle slope and instead started high between the brows before coming to a straight point.
But now that he knew who it was, he was able to pick out the familiar. The eyes were the same. The smile. The dimple. The mannerisms.
On the outside, Luke held the Winchester level, but inside he was reeling. Like a bare-knuckle boxer who’d dropped his guard at the wrong moment, the revelations pummeled him one by one. His love for the brother he’d raised cracked his head back like an uppercut. The news he was alive after all these years hit him like a left jab. But the finishing blow, the hard right, was the discovery his beloved brother was none other than the notorious Frank Comer, and this time, instead of watching Alec be arrested, he’d have to do it himself.
He took a shaky breath. “You’ve changed. You’ve . . .” Become a man, he wanted to say. But the man he’d become wasn’t worthy of the name, so he said nothing.
“You may as well put the gun away, Lucious. You aren’t going to shoot me.”
He adjusted the rifle, securing the stock against his side, aiming the barrel at Alec’s heart. But if it came to pulling the trigger, his brother was right. He wouldn’t, couldn’t do it. It had been a long time, though. Long enough for Alec not to know for certain what Luke would or wouldn’t do. He hoped.
“We were told you were dead,” Luke said. “Had a photograph, a letter written in your hand, everything.”
His brother shrugged. “I was tired of you hunting me down. Seemed like every time I turned around, you were on my trail. Made the fellas I ran with a bit uneasy. So I staged my death.” He gave a rueful smile. “Posing in that coffin was a mite uncomfortable, but it sure looked convincing, didn’t it?”
“Ma was devastated.” He paused.