My Outlaw - Softcover

Chapter One

Redemption, present day

The elegant old house, emptied by the other heirs of everything except the fixtures, one bed, a few boxes of papers and books, and Great-Aunt Marthe's harp, seemed to yawn around Keighly Barrow as she stood in the entry hall, one suitcase at her side.

She bit her lower lip and held back tears, allowing the mantle of ownership to settle slowly over her. Her emotions were mixed: she had always loved this place, and her experiences here had almost invariably been happy ones. Still, its very emptiness was a painful reminder that her grandmother and parents were dead.

Keighly sighed. She owned a small art gallery in Los Angeles, selling other people's paintings and sculptures, and she and Julian had been dating seriously for five years. She had plenty of money, inherited from her parents and carefully invested. There was no reason to hold on to an enormous old house in the near-ghost town of Redemption, Nevada, fifty miles from anywhere, and yet Keighly had not wanted to give the place up.

The reality was that the mansion was literally falling to ruin; it was time to do something -- restore it and put it on the market, turn it into a shelter of some sort, donate it to the local historical society, if there was one...

Or move in herself, and pursue her sculpting in peace.

Keighly shook her head. That last idea was out of the question, of course. She had the gallery to consider, a circle of friends...and Julian. A successful pediatric surgeon, he could not be expected to abandon a thriving practice and start all over in a town so small that even freight trains didn't pass through.

She felt a mild surge of irritation, and suppressed it quickly. She was thirty years old, after all, and she wanted children. But, that required a husband, which was where Julian came in.

Keighly picked up her suitcase and sighed again. It wasn't that she didn't love him -- he was sweet, steady, and even good-looking, if a little on the predictable side. It was just that -- well -- where was all the wild passion she'd expected to feel? Where was the poetry, the romance?

Where was Darby?

At the foot of the broad stairway leading to the second floor, Keighly glanced toward the tall double doors of the ballroom, which stood slightly ajar, remembering the photographs of her grandparents dancing there, Gram in her wedding dress, Grandfather in his coat and tails.

Oddly, a stray breeze stirred the strings of Aunt Marthe's harp just then, and Keighly thought she heard the notes shape themselves into a brief, merry tune.

Brow puckered in a slight frown, she put the suitcase down again and, after drawing a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, proceeded into the ballroom. She glanced at the harp, a large instrument, once spectacular, like the house, but now fallen into disrepair.

Keighly knew she was stalling. On some level, she'd been thinking about this room and its mirrored wall since the last time she'd visited the house, several years before, when she'd been tempted to sell. In the end, she hadn't had the heart, even though the real-estate market had been booming then and her uncles and cousins had all encouraged her to go for the big bucks.

She hadn't seen Darby during that visit, which shouldn't have surprised her, she supposed. There had been no sign of him the day the memorial service was held for her father, or after her grandmother's funeral, either. His absence had seemed like a betrayal, and deepened her already fathomless grief.

She forced herself across the dusty marble floor and stood directly in front of the mirror, in just the spot where she'd first glimpsed Darby, on her seventh birthday.

Nothing.

Unexpected tears burned in Keighly's eyes. "Where are you?" she asked in a whisper.

The harp's strings stirred, and overhead, the crystal teardrops of the Murano chandelier tinkled a soft, almost mystical response. A sweet shiver danced up Keighly's spine.

She was alone, of course.

She smiled ruefully and turned back to the mirror, almost as an afterthought, and what she saw made her gasp.

There was still no sign of Darby, but the saloon was back, crammed with unsavory-looking types in canvas dusters, battered cowboy hats, and mud-caked boots. Stringy hair and pockmarked faces abounded. On a small stage at one end of the room, three women in scanty costumes and garish makeup performed a suggestive dance, while a diminutive man wearing a derby, garters on his shirtsleeves, and high-water pants with suspenders hammered away at the keys of the same ruin of a piano. A fat, mustachioed barkeeper polished glasses, and other men played cards at various tables, most of them armed with long-barreled pistols in battered holsters.

The tableau was completely silent, and yet Keighly felt the faintest vibrations of sound and energy, as though the scene were just barely beyond the reach of her hearing. The colors were vivid; women moved among the tables serving beer and whiskey, as sleekly bright and colorfully plumed as birds from some undiscovered jungle.

Suddenly, desperately, Keighly wanted to step through the mirror, like Alice, and enter that other world.

She retreated a step, swallowing hard. Her own image, that of a tall, slender blond woman clad in bluejeans, a white cotton shirt, and a lightweight tweed blazer, was hazy and transparent. As though she were the ghost, and not the long-dead people on the other side of the glass.

The uncomfortable sense of unreality she so often felt intensified in those moments, making her light-headed.

Holding her breath, Keighly stared through her reflection at the scene beyond.

She took another step back. Instinctively, she knew that the cowboys and the dancing girls and the barkeeper were not specters or hallucinations; they were utterly real, going about their business in their own niche in time, completely unaware of her presence.

Only Darby, she thought with a pang, had ever been able to see her.

Where had he gone?

Keighly dashed at her cheeks with the back of one hand. Maybe he'd died, she thought. What she was seeing was obviously the nineteenth century, and mortality rates had been high there, for everybody. The population was plagued by such killers as typhoid, smallpox, cholera, and consumption, to name only a few. People carried guns, and didn't hesitate to use them.

Of course, they did that in L.A

She shook her head involuntarily, rejecting the idea that Darby could be dead. In almost the same moment, she made up her mind to have a look at the old part of the local cemetery, a place she had assiduously avoided when visiting her dad's and grandmother's graves. Unless Darby had left Redemption, never to return -- a distinct possibility -- there might be a stone or monnument bearing his name and the date of his death.

The spectacle in the mirror began to fade, and Keighly leaped forward again, without thought, pressing both hands to the glass as though to hold on, to stop all those busy strangers from leaving her. A moment later, she moved back again, quickly, and dusted her palms on the thighs of her jeans.

Keighly turned and left the ballroom with as much dignity as she could muster.

Once, she'd visited a psychiatrist in L.A. and told him about the mirror, and he'd diagnosed the phenomenon as an "autogenic hallucination," a condition often associated with migraines. Keighly had explained that she never had a headache serious enough to be described as migraine in her life, only to be handed a prescription fo pain pills.

She'd tossed the slip of paper into a trash bin in the lobby of the doctor's office building.

Even now, she didn't question her sanity. Yes, she was a sculptor and therefore an artist -- Julian said she was hopelessly right-brained -- and she had always had a active imagination. But Darby and the Blue Garter Saloon were not illusions.

Were they?

She was in her old room, studying the naked mattress on the narrow canopy bed with distaste, when the cellular telephone in her purse gave a burbling ring.

Knowing the caller was Julian, Keighly hesitated, then pulled the electronic marvel out of her bag and flipped down the mouthpiece.

"Hello, Julian," she said. Had she sounded snappish? She hoped not, because Julian didn't deserve that kind of treatment. He was only being thoughtful. He was always being thoughtful, no matter what he said or did. He chuckled, and she imagined him in the hallway of Los Angeles' Mercy Hospital, wearing his lab coat and stethoscope over a crisp white shirt and well-pressed trousers. His dark hair would be impeccably combed, no matter how frantic the day had been. Nothing, but nothing, ruffled Dr. Julian Drury, miracle-worker and surgeon extraordinaire.

"I guess I should be grateful you weren't expecting a call from some other man," he said.

Keighly held back a sigh, shoved the fingers of her free hand through her hair. "I'm a one-man woman," she replied, a little flippantly. If you don't count your weird obsession with Darby Elder, taunted some part of her brain that usually minded its own business and kept quiet.

"How was the trip, darling?"

"Long," Keighly answered. "I'll feel better once I've had a shower and something to eat." She glanced at her watch -- it was nearly four in the afternoon -- then at the bed, where her suitcase rested, unopened. Maybe she would check into a motel, just for a few days, until the utilities were turned on and she'd had a chance to buy a cot and some blankets, sheets and pillows. She'd been so anxious to return that she hadn't foreseen the need for secondary lodgings.

Julian would have, of course. He'd have planned ahead. Made reservations.

No, Keighly thought ruefully. The whole trip was a fool's errand to him; he wouldn't have come back at all, if he were in her place.

"Do you know what I think you should do?" he asked, startling her back to attention.

Yes, Keighly reflected, mentally rolling her eyes. Julian meant well, but he could be so pedantic. You've already told me a thousand times, and now you're going to tell me again. And I'll listen because I want so badly to love you. "What?" she asked, in a quavering voice.

"Get a good night's sleep, hire a real-estate agent to sell that monstrosity of a house, and then drive straight back to L.A. Your life is here, Keighly. With me."

She was starting to get the kind of headache that called for a buffered pain reliever, and it annoyed her that Julian had referred to her grandmother's home as a "monstrosity," when he'd never even seen it, but she was too tired to debate the matter. "It isn't going to be that simple, Julian," she replied moderately. "The place needs a lot of fixing up and besides, Redemption isn't exactly the crossroads of the nation. People aren't clamoring to buy property here."

"So hire carpenters and painters and leave already," Julian said, with a sort of blithe peevishness. "Give the place to the town for a library or free clinic, blow it up or burn it down. Just get rid of it."

Keighly waited a beat before answering. She hated it when they quarreled, and being so far apart would make it worse. "What do you care if I own one old house in the desert?" she asked, as reasonably as she could. "You have investment property all over the country, after all."

"That's just the point," Julian replied, with tender indulgence. "I have investments. Holding on to a rickety old mausoleum in a ghost town is not good resource management, Keighly."

Keighly bit her lower lip. "I think we should talk about this another time."

"When, if not now?"

"Julian, I have a headache. I'm tired and I'm cranky and I'm feeling very unreasonable. That's why I am hanging up now. Pressing the End button. Good-bye, Julian. I'll call you in a few days."

His sigh bounced up to some satellite and back down, into Keighly's ear. She visualized the whole process, and it seemed to take place in slow motion. "I'm sorry, darling. You're right -- this is no time to talk about anything important. And I'm being paged, so I'd better go. Get some rest, Keighly."

With that, he was gone.

Irritated with herself, rather than Julian, Keighly switched off the power on the cell phone and tossed it back into her purse. Then, picking up her suitcase again, she left her childhood bedroom and went downstairs to her car. She passed the Shady Lane Motel on the way to the cemetery, and smiled to herself. No concierge floor there, she thought. No room service, and no minibar. But at least the place would be clean, and the VACANCY sign was lit.

Reaching the Redemption Cemetery, Keighly stopped to pay her respects to her father and grandmother before moving on to the weed-filled part of the grounds, where the oldest graves were. Here, there were crooked monuments, weathered crosses, and, occasionally, brass nameplates all but covered in dirt and grass.

Some sites were ringed with white stones or broken bricks, and many had vanished altogether. More than an hour had passed before Keighly found Darby Elder's grave, tucked away in a plot belonging to a family named Kavanagh, and marked with a bronze sundial, half grown over with moss.

It did not surprise her, this tangible proof that a person called Darby Elder had actually lived.

It was the family plot that troubled her.

Maybe, Keighly reasoned, with a strange, deep pang of sorrow, Darby had married a woman of that name. Or perhaps the Kavanaghs had been his mother's people. In either case, she had never heard her grandmother mention that particular clan, and that was odd, since Gram had been an authority on Redemption's colorful history.

She caressed the name with almost reverent fingertips. It was spelled out in large, raised letters, simple and unembellished. Finally, with a sigh, she scraped away the debris in order to read the dates beneath.

Born, 1857. Died, 1887.

Keighly's throat closed over a soft sob, and again tears stung her eyes. It was just plain silly to be kneeling in an overgrown graveyard, mourning a man who'd died over a century before, but there she was.

What would Julian say, if he saw her now?

She smiled a little, despite the sorrow that gripped her, rising awkwardly to her feet, dusting her dirty hands off on her jeans. He'd probably suggest, with a teasing glint in his eyes, that she look into the possibility of having a left-brain transplant, since her own didn't seem to be functioning.

She drove away from the cemetery in a hurry, and stopped at a filling station to wash her hands and face and run a comb through her hair before checking into the Shady Lane Motel. After a consuming a grilled-cheese sandwich from the snack bar in the bowling alley across the street, she went back to her room, bolted the door, took off her clothes, and headed for the shower.

Afterward, she pulled on a cotton nightshirt, brushed her teeth, and fell into bed, attempting to watch television. There was noth...