He made a valiant attempt to glare at her. “I wouldn’t know.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth to smother her laugh. She’d never imagined seeing Gideon Bates so discomfited.
He tried to cover his embarrassment with anger, but she wasn’t fooled. “Now it’s your turn, Miss Miles. Start at the beginning, and tell me everything.”
Suddenly, she no longer felt an urge to laugh. This was worse than she could have imagined, but she’d already told him that she was a grifter, so she probably couldn’t sink any lower in his opinion. She started with meeting Thornton on the train and running the con, then how it went bad and how Thornton’s men beat up Jake and started after her, and how she joined the suffragists to escape, and finally how Thornton’s men had captured her here in the city and taken her to him.
“He wanted to know where his money was, and he was going to beat it out of me, and if that didn’t work he and his men were going to . . . to violate me.”
Gideon flinched at that, so at least he didn’t hate her completely. “Dear God. Why didn’t you just give him his money back?”
Was he serious? Of course he was. “Because I couldn’t betray my friends and family to a man who’d kill them without a qualm,” she said, certain he would understand that, at least. “Besides, the money . . . Well, I couldn’t get it back even if I tried.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s gone!”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know! You see, we only got half of it to start with. Less than half, forty-five percent. That’s what the ropers get, and Jake and I were the ropers, the ones who roped Thornton in. Then Jake and I split that between us.”
Gideon blinked. He’d probably consider even half of forty-five percent to be a fortune. “What happened to the rest?”
“Mr. Coleman got that. He paid the expenses out of it and kept what was left. Knowing him, he’s probably gambled it away by now. In any case, I don’t even know where he is.”
“Assuming Jake would also be reluctant to part with his portion, you could at least have given Thornton your own share.”
Elizabeth sighed. “I don’t even have my share, and besides, I was still trying to convince Thornton that the money was really lost, because I knew I’d never be able to get it back. That’s when I got the idea to help him sell his precious rifles. He’d been talking about them when we were in Washington, and I knew you didn’t want David to help him find a buyer. So I told him that. I stretched the truth a bit and said that you were going to make sure no one else bought them, either, but that I could convince David to help him because we were engaged.”
Gideon stiffened at the reminder. “How convenient.”
“Yes, well . . . At least it worked. Thornton didn’t beat me or . . . or anything else.”
Gideon winced again. “Thank God for that. And Thornton believed you, and now David and I have played our roles. But how is your general going to ruin Thornton?”
“I don’t know exactly. He’s going to cheat him out of the rifles somehow.” Was that enough information to satisfy Gideon? “So you see, Thornton will be ruined, and it will finally pay him back for everything, for what he did to Jake and what he did to Marjorie.”
“We don’t know for sure that he did anything to Marjorie,” he said, always the stickler.
“But we do! I didn’t tell you, but when he had me at his house, he admitted that he’d killed her.”
“If you think that will convince me to help you—”
“I’m not trying to convince you of anything. It’s true. He was trying to frighten me, even though I was already scared witless. I guess he wanted me to know he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt a female or something. He told me he’d beaten her nearly senseless, and then he strangled her. If you’d seen his face when he said it . . .” She shuddered at the memory. “Anyway, you can be sure he killed her, and he got away with it. Nobody is ever going to punish him for it unless we do.”
She waited for him to agree, certain that he would, but he only sat there, thinking.
“Gideon?”
“I can’t do it. I can’t take the law into my own hands. It goes against everything I stand for.”
“Do you stand for letting murderers go scot-free?”
He frowned, but he didn’t back down. “When we bypass the rule of law, civilization crumbles.”
“It’s not going to crumble just because one rotten apple gets what’s coming to him. It’s more likely to crumble because the law didn’t notice what he did in the first place.”
“I can’t help you cheat someone, Elizabeth.”
She managed not to groan. “You don’t have to help. You just have to stay out of it.”
“But I’m already in it.”
“You can still beg off. Just tell David . . . Oh, I know! Tell him your mother found out and asked you not to be involved with Thornton. You know she would, if she knew. I can even tell her, if you want.”
“And who would draw up the contracts?”
“Ask someone else in your firm to do it.”
“Ask one of my colleagues to help cheat someone?”
“Yes! Lawyers do it all the time!” In fact, she could name some she knew personally.
“I don’t.”
God save her from an honest man! “At least promise that you won’t warn Thornton off.”
She waited, hardly daring to breathe and watching the emotions play across his handsome face, as if he were in actual pain. Finally, he said, “I can’t.”
“Oh, Gideon, how can you say that? He’s a killer! He killed at least one defenseless woman, and he had my brother beaten nearly to death.”
“I’ll go to the district attorney and have him charged.”
“With what? Jake isn’t going to court to say Thornton had him beaten after he cheated him out of fifty thousand dollars, and nobody is going to believe Thornton confessed anything to me, either. So he’s not going to jail or even to trial, and if you warn him about the general, he’ll just sell his precious Ross rifles to someone else and—”
“What did you say?” he demanded, straightening in his chair, all trace of pain gone from his face.
“I said he’s not going to jail . . .”
“No, the rifles. What did you call them?”
“Ross rifles.”
He leaned forward, his eyes blazing. “Why did you call them that?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what Thornton called them. All he could talk about when we were in Washington was his Ross rifles this and his Ross rifles that.”
“Dear heaven,” he murmured.
“Why? What is it?”
“Ross rifles. The Canadians used them early in the war, but they malfunctioned in combat. They would jam and the soldiers would be left defenseless in the middle of a battle. And there was some problem with the bolts, too. They’d sometimes fly off and injure a soldier, taking out an eye or even killing him.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Indeed it was, so Canada replaced all their rifles, but how did Thornton get his hands on some of them?”
“He bragged that he’d gotten them very cheaply. I wonder if he knew why.”
“It doesn’t matter if he did or not. I have to tell him so he won’t sell them to our army.”
“Do you think that will stop him?”