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wasn't polite.
    "Sheriff, why don't you bring the man out here and let us question him? Maybe we got a suggestion or two that might solve a few problems." Pushing back his leather vest, Jason found a wooden chair and sat down, propping one boot on the sheriff's desk as if he owned the place. Which he no doubt did. His bank held the mortgages on every building in town.
    Janice shifted uneasily into a far corner of the crowded office. She hadn't meant to attract anyone's notice. She'd asserted herself much further than she had ever intended. She had just wanted the sheriff to know what the man had done. But now she didn't dare leave before she found out what they were up to.
    "Doc said he's suffering from smoke inhalation and ought to rest. He passed out cold on us when we brought him in here." The sheriff shifted his big shoulders uneasily.
    "Doc" was a euphemism for the pharmacist. He'd never had real medical training, but he claimed to have worked with a doctor some years ago. There weren't any other medical professionals around to argue with him. Janice waited impatiently for someone to make a decision.
    "Well, we can't all fit back there. Just set him in that chair there and we'll be real quick." Jason shoved his foot against another chair no one had been bold enough to take.
    When no one offered any objections, the sheriff picked up his key ring and went to fetch his prisoner. Janice clasped her hands nervously. She didn't know why, but she didn't want the drifter looking at her. It was a quite irrational feeling, but she did her best to hide in the corner anyway, concealing herself behind a solid wall of men's bodies.
    The prisoner emerged peacefully enough. She could peek between Mr. Holt and Mick and catch a glimpse of him as the sheriff jerked his arm and shoved him into the room. He was a tall man. She remembered that much. The sheriff was the tallest man in town, taller even than Jason, and the stranger matched the sheriff's height.
    He had wide shoulders and narrow hips. She didn't know what made her think that. She'd never noticed a man's hips before. She would have blushed had she not been hidden. The man couldn't possibly know what she was thinking.
    The beard was an abomination and his stench reached her even back in this corner, but Janice didn't imagine it had occurred to the sheriff to offer him a bath. She wondered what he would look like once he was cleaned up. She thought he might look a good deal younger than she'd first thought. The way he had commanded the crowd last night, she had thought him an older man accustomed to authority. She could see that wasn't so now. She gulped when he turned and his eyes seemed to find her even through the solid wall of bodies. He had green eyes. And long lashes.
    He didn't smile. He didn't take the seat offered. With his wrists manacled in front of him, he merely scanned the crowd without expression. He didn't even complain or question the reason for being brought here. She didn't think he cared why he had been brought here. It was as if he were calmly telling them all to go to hell, that he had better things to do. She had never seen anything quite like it.
    "These gentlemen here want to ask you a few questions." The sheriff jerked his thumb in Jason's direction.
    The stranger raised his eyebrows in that direction without comment.
    "What's your name?" Jason demanded.
    "Peter Aloysius Mulloney. And yours?"
    Janice didn't hear Jason's response. With a gasp, she grasped the nearest wall to hold herself steady. It couldn't be. There couldn't be two men of that name. Peter Aloysius Mulloney had been the man who had fired her sister and caused Janice to lose her job. His family had been responsible for the shantytown where the rent collector had beat up her parents. This couldn't be the man she hated as much as she could hate anyone.
    The arrogance of his response said it could. And the glitter of those hard green eyes as they found her again were exact duplicates of the man