Read Smokescreen for Free Online

misery—even if it meant never quite trusting others to do the same.
    And his sister had learned to close her eyes, pretending her world was peachy keen even as it closed around her. Hiding the bruises…believing the promises it would never happen again.
    Sam stood in the mouth of the alley, waiting. She appeared relaxed enough; Jethro forced himself to do the same, wincing at all the tender places he found in the process. And what, he wondered, are her truths? What brought her out into this dark night, watching over a system that took women away from their own lives?
    And she said, “Just tell me. And then I’ll go away.”
    “No,” he said, quite suddenly certain of his only remaining chance to find Lizbet. “I’ll show you.”
     
    He couldn’t be serious.
    Sam’s hands landed on her hips of their own volition, disbelieving defiance shouting out through posture. Her palms stung fiercely. “You can’t be serious.”
    He pointed at himself. Clothes disheveled, hair disheveled—hell, even that mustache was disheveled. “Do I look serious?”
    She wrinkled her nose. He looked serious.
    “You’re wasting time,” he told her. “Holy Oleo, what have you got to lose? It’s not like you’re going to learn anything I don’t already know—that’s the whole point, isn’t it? That I’m the one who can help you follow the trail backwards?”
    “Holy Oleo,” she said flatly, her thoughts going a hidden ninety miles an hour. To a certain point, he was right. He’d only be revisiting someone to whom he’d already spoken. “You took that whole Batman thing a little too seriously when you were growing up, didn’t you?”
    “Easily,” he admitted, and in that moment, in that little self-aware dip of his head, that wry twist of his mouth, he charmed her.
    And is that how Lizbet had started?
    Of course, there was no telling. Maybe he was, against all amazing odds, actually the woman’s brother. She didn’t exactly have time to check him out. “And if you come along, you probably figure you’ll ride me the whole time. You really think I’ll let some little juicy tidbit slip?”
    “No. I think you’ll figure out I’m telling the truth and you’ll give me some juicy tidbit on purpose.”
    She let out a long breath through her nose. “Were you listening when I already told you I don’t know anything?”
    “Listening,” he said. “But believing’s got to go both ways.”
    Stubborn jerk.
    “Excuse me?”
    Aurgh, had she said that out loud? “I said,” she repeated, “you’re a stubborn jerk.”
    His eyes gleamed briefly in the darkness; she thought he’d smiled. Somehow she’d actually just made points with that too-blunt honesty. “Okay, then. Shall we go?”
    Not so fast. But still, she felt the time slipping away; the Captain’s trust made her shoulders ache with impossible responsibility. She had to find Jethro Sheridan’s source, to see if that same source had spoken to Scalpucci—and then what else had been said. What else of the railroad had been compromised.
    “Besides,” he added, in a casual tone that gave her no warning he had a trump card to play, “you need someone to drive. Unless you want to handle a steering wheel with that road rash on your palms?”
    Ah, damn. There was that. She lifted her hands, gave them a rueful glance. “You’ve got good eyes.”
    “And a good camera,” he said, but didn’t make any effort to explain the comment, not even when she frowned at him and fairly demanded it. He just moved on with the conversation. “You choose. I’ll take you back to where I got my information. You let me hang around. Maybe I can convince you I’m Lizbet’s brother, maybe I can’t. I figure I’ll learn something either way.”
    He thought he knew something about her. He thought he’d talked her into a corner, thought she couldn’t drive easily, thought she’d been bowed down by his superior logic. Given that camera crack, he might even think he had a clue