The Union Read online

  The Union

  Gina Robinson

  Copyright 2013 Gina Robinson

  Kindle Edition

  Cover Design by Hot Damn Designs

  THE UNION

  Love is a dangerous deception

  Gem, Idaho 1892

  HE KNEW THE DANGERS OF GOING UNDERCOVER

  After killing Irish union thug McCullough in self-defense and assuming his identity, private detective John Dietz is worried that his cover is blown. Sent to the Silver Valley to infiltrate the miner’s union and uncover their plans to blow up an important mine, he’s ready for anything. Except falling in love with the beautiful fiancée of the man he killed.

  BUT FALLING IN LOVE WAS NEVER PART OF THE PLAN

  Keely Byrne fell in love with her fiancé through the mail. Now seeing him in person, he’s even more attractive and sexy than she imagined. But as Keely gets to know him, and falls more deeply in love she wonders if he really is who he claims to be. And as tension and danger explode all around them she hopes their love can survive the union.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  About the Author

  Books by Gina

  The Escort

  The Last Honest Seamstress

  Chapter 1

  Thompson's Falls, Montana

  May 1892

  McCullough was dead.

  Dietz watched as a fresh bead of blood dripped from McCullough's neck, trickling down to redden the collar of his white cotton shirt. McCullough's blue eyes reflected the clear skies above and nothing else. No life, no emotion. His raven hair was powdered with dust from the street, his head pillowed by soft dry dirt as he lay sprawled. His last living expression, confounded shock, had frozen on his face, giving him the ghoulish look of a caricature.

  Damn! When did my aim go bad?

  The detective agency had taught Dietz to shoot for the largest target, the body. How had he hit the bastard in the neck? Dietz must have squeezed the trigger too tightly, jerking up as he swung around to fire. Back to target practice or next time he'd be the one dying in the dirt.

  Dietz's hands shook. That coward McCullough had surprised him from behind. To hell with him—with any luck, literally. If McCullough hadn't been cocky and yelled a warning, Dietz would be in his place.

  What were McCullough's last words?

  Dietz's safety, possibly his life, hung on two simple words he couldn't recall. Had McCullough yelled die and called out Dietz's alias, or his real name? And had anybody heard?

  Sympathy for the miners' union ran high in Thompson's Falls. The air hummed with it, the saloon overflowed with talk of backing the men in Idaho, a mere thirty miles away, in their battle against tyrannical owners. They'd string Dietz up if they even suspected he was a private detective hired by the mine owners to break the union stronghold.

  The Colt's 45 suddenly felt heavy in his hand. Who had leaked his identity to McCullough? Or had McCullough had another reason for wanting Dietz dead?

  Dietz tried to appear dispassionate as he studied the dead man, masking his expression while coursing with anger. A crowd gathered in front of the saloon, circling Dietz. He looked up from where he squatted beside McCullough's body to the circle of blue sky above him rimmed with faces. Not a familiar one among them. The question remained—who was the betrayer?

  Dietz pushed up from his squat and stood slowly. A meaty hand clamped his shoulder. He turned to stare into the eyes of the town sheriff.

  "He fired first, but killing a man still feels like shit." Dietz stayed in character, acting as if he regretted killing the union terrorist, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Dietz had been undercover so many years, sometimes it seemed like his real identity was only another alias, anyway.

  The sheriff released his shoulder. "I saw. You two were traveling together?"

  Dietz nodded.

  "Looks like you made him mad."

  "Looks like it."

  "You brothers?"

  The lawman's question caught Dietz by surprise. He tried to feign indifference. "No. Just friends, so I thought. Why do you ask?"

  "Two Scotsmen. Same hair, same eyes, same height." The sheriff nodded toward the body. "He got any kin?"

  "We were headed to his fiancée in Oregon." McCullough's fiancée was in Gem, Idaho.

  "Then you won't mind taking the young lady his things. Seems the least you can do."

  "Seems like it, but I can't take two horses. What do you say I sell his, and take the money to his lady? That is, what's left after we take some out for a proper burial."

  "Very decent of you." The sheriff's solemn edge cracked as he gave what Dietz assumed was supposed to be a sympathetic smile. In reality, Dietz guessed the man felt relieved that the incident cleaned up quickly.

  "Excepting his temper when he drank, McCullough was an okay sort." He was an asshole.

  The sheriff motioned to someone in the crowd. "Dailey, go run for the undertaker."

  An old man scampered off.

  "Better get this settled so you can be on your way," the sheriff said.

  "Sure." Dietz was in full agreement. "Anyone want to buy a horse?"

  Gem, Idaho

  Lunn Gaffney sat in Keely Byrne's kitchen watching her as she started supper for the men. She felt his gaze on her as she moved about, dragging pots and pans to the stove. Why did he feel it necessary to check up on her?

  "You think the men will rebel at having stew and biscuits again?" She hoisted a large metal pot filled with water onto the stove.

  "Seems to me they'll eat whatever you serve them and be happy for it, or answer to me. Not a woman in town cooks better than you, Keely."

  "Mrs. Shipley across the street does a fair job of it."

  Lunn laughed. "Heard some of her fellows complaining yesterday. Maybe Allison will have to fire her."

  "Mr. Allison will not fire her. You shouldn't go making fun of her. She's a fine woman, Lunn." Keely didn't understand what Lunn had against Mr. Allison and his storekeeper.

  "Not as fine as you, Keely."

  She let the remark slide by and peered out the window to check the weather. Gray clouds scudded by, but they looked less than threatening.

  Lunn shifted in his seat. "It's odd Mrs. Shipley is out here without her man. Why would he let her come West alone to cook and clean for other men, boarders?"

  "To survive, like I do. Mrs. Shipley running Mr. Allison's boarding house is no odder than me running this one. At least she has a man." Keely used to have a man around to protect her, and if she still did, she wouldn't be running a boarding house.

  Michael! Her heart ached every time she thought of her older brother, dead these last months. Anger, vicious in its vigor, boiled up with the hurt. She bit back a curse at the owners who ran the mine that had taken Michael's life. They held safety in no regard. If they had, Michael would still be alive.

  Dietz pulled to a stop on the hill above the creek-hugging mining camp town of Gem, Idaho, with McCullough's saddlebags slung over his own, or rather, that of his alias, McCabe. Ironically, both were branded with a stylized Mc.

  Damn McCullough! Dietz had counted on McCullough being his ticket into the union bosses' confidence. Eight months spent befriending the asshole back in Penn
sylvania and another month traveling across the country with the union terrorist, wasted.

  Charlie Patterson, aka Leo Allison, the detective agency's operative in the Silver Valley, needed backup. The union suspected a spy in their midst. But the union labor strike made infiltrating by posing as a miner looking for work impossible. If Dietz strolled into town and applied for a job, the union boys would take him for a scab, non-union labor. He might just as well announce he was a detective. Either way, the mining boys would string him high. Now what was Dietz supposed to do?

  Dietz pushed his annoyance away and surveyed the town below him. It didn't differ much from his expectations. Railroad, saloons, boarding houses, a store, a small cluster of houses. Didn't look like much of a place to raise a family. Not that he, being a bachelor, knew anything about raising a family.

  Wild, mountainous terrain, covered with white pine and underbrush the likes of huckleberry bushes and wild syringa, surrounded the camp. Dietz clucked to his horse. Time to be riding in. First things first—find Keely Byrne, McCullough's fiancée, and give her the bad news.

  Rifling through McCullough's things, hoping to find some useful information, he'd found a neatly tied bundle of love letters from Keely to McCullough. Maybe a scrupulous man wouldn't have, but Dietz had read every word. Miss Byrne's letters indicated she mistook McCullough for a compassionate, witty man. How a man as violent and vile as McCullough had pulled off such deception, Dietz didn't know. But for some reason the woman wanted to marry that bastard McCullough. What kind of a woman could she be?

  As unappealing as the task was, he'd better get over and tell her first thing, omitting, of course, his part in the affair. Wasn't that what life was, one distasteful job after another?

  "When is McCullough coming?"

  With Lunn it always came around to McCullough. "He wired he'd be in any day. He had business in Thompson's Falls."

  Lunn looked hurt, almost vulnerable, as he watched Keely.

  Why can't I find him attractive? She honestly didn't know. Even now as she studied him, she couldn't say. Many women thought him handsome. Average height but stocky and powerfully built, he kept fit and muscular by laboring in the silver mines. He had dark hair and eyes and pleasant features. But in Keely's opinion, something about him kept him from being truly handsome, something off-center. She could never pin it down. Was his nose slightly too large, or were his eyes too small? Or was it his personality? She wished she knew, but something restrained her from feeling any physical pull toward him.

  Michael had always discouraged any relationship between them. It seemed odd, considering he and Lunn had been good friends. Maybe it was nothing more than Michael's sense that she wasn't attracted to Lunn. Her brother had always been protective.

  "You are too trusting, Keely. Always have been. Aren't you nervous about a man you've never met, never seen even a photograph of, coming to claim you?" Bitterness edged Lunn's tone.

  She smiled sympathetically at him. "No. I can always reject him. McCullough always made it clear I could. My nerves, if any, come from the thought that I gave him the same option."

  "Even so, Keely. It doesn't seem right." He cleared his throat.

  She knew what he meant. It didn't seem right to Lunn, with him right there waiting for her. But she was not anxious over McCullough's arrival. She was eager and excited. Though they'd never met, she and McCullough had corresponded for nearly two years now. He wrote letters sparkling with wit and intelligence. Maybe that was the problem with Lunn—he was all brawn and no thought.

  For nearly a year before he died, Michael had begged McCullough to come out and help with the union difficulties. Then, in the last month or so before the accident, he’d stopped pleading. Keely assumed Michael had reconciled himself to McCullough's disinterest in their situation.

  McCullough came from the Pennsylvania coal region and had held many prestigious offices in the mining union there. During the years Michael had worked back East, McCullough had taught Michael everything he knew. If Michael had trusted it him, so would she. Michael had never placed his faith foolishly. When McCullough came, he'd straighten out the owners, smooth over the troubles. Keely had no doubt that he'd shoulder her problems, take on her battle. The mines would be safe once McCullough was through.

  McCullough. His name quickened her pulse. He had proposed through the mail before Michael's death. But uncertain whether the admiration she felt for him could blossom into love, Keely had turned him down and they had remained friends. Once he had found out about Michael, McCullough immediately proposed again and made plans to come take care of her. She smiled. The second time she had accepted. A man who would drop everything, all his important work, and come to look out for her, what could be better? Lunn looked edgy.

  A horse whinnied outside near the road.

  "That someone you're expecting, Keely? Looks like a stranger hitching his horse outside." Lunn stared out the window.

  "Most likely someone looking for a room." Though her heart skipped a beat, she forced herself to stave off anticipation. With so many strange men streaming into town lately she couldn't go getting her hopes up for McCullough every time another stranger hitched his horse to a post. She had dinner to get on.

  "Looks like he's sure he's getting one. He's coming up the walk, carrying his saddlebags."

  "We don't have any vacancies." She went to the window to get a look at the fellow. His height, the mustache—everything about him fit the description. "McCullough," she whispered softly. Suddenly, she peeled off her apron and ran for the door. "McCullough!"

  Dietz wasn't halfway up the walk when a young, auburn-haired woman came tearing out the door and lunged into him, wrapping her arms around him and whispering McCullough's name rapturously into his chest.

  McCullough? Dietz stood frozen in the walk, stunned into silence. He patted the woman awkwardly on the back, like the stranger she was. "Keely?" How he formed the word he couldn't say.

  The woman pulled herself away from his chest and dabbed at her eyes before looking up to meet his gaze. She was a petite thing. The top of her head didn't even reach his chin. Her eyes were pale green, the emotion shining in them as fragile as frost. He lost his tongue again, but she didn't seem to mind, almost expected it.

  "Oh, McCullough." She laughed, maybe in embarrassment, maybe in joy. On any account it was a pretty sound. She hugged him again.

  A man stepped out onto the porch and scowled at them. His glare brought Dietz back to reality. He'd just been handed a silver-plated opportunity. If McCullough's own fiancée mistook him for the man, he should be able to fool anyone. From Keely's letters he knew that no one in town had ever met McCullough in person, so who would dispute his identity? True, McCullough was dead, buried in Thompson's Falls. What if someone who'd been there came to town and squealed? The odds were small. McCullough had gotten himself shot within hours of arriving in town. Few knew him as anything other than an unidentified gunslinger, buried with a plain wooden cross marking his departure.

  As McCullough, Dietz had an immediate in with the union. Who would suspect McCullough, union boss from back East, of spying? Time was short. Patterson had reported that things could blow anytime. Trying to infiltrate on his own might take more time than Dietz had. What hardship would it be, escorting a beautiful woman around for a few weeks? His McCabe cover was already tenuous. If this cover were blown, he'd land on his feet as he always did, or die trying.

  He decided in an instant, assuming McCullough's identity and personality immediately. "Seeing you took away my tongue. Keely, my lass, you can't know how long I've waited for this moment to lay eyes on you myself. Mick warned me you were a beauty, but I didn't imagine your looks would match the passionate spirit of your letters."

  She blushed and took his arm. "You have a silver tongue, McCullough. Michael warned me about that, too." She guided him up the boardwalk toward the house. "Come meet another of Michael's friends—Lunn Gaffney."

  Even after McCullough was seated at
her table drinking a cup of coffee, Keely couldn't force her gaze away from him. Nor could Lunn, who wore jealousy as conspicuously as a Sunday suit.

  She liked everything about McCullough, from the timbre of his voice to the set of his shoulders and his dimpled smile. She could admit, now that she'd seen him, that she had worried that he might turn out to be mighty of intellect and spirit and weak in physical beauty. And she had tried to convince herself that that would be fine by her. But seeing him now, she realized she'd been fooling herself.

  The man was modest. And Michael, too, deceptive and humble in his description of him. But McCullough was everything they described and more. She wanted to laugh, to burble over with joy.

  His eyes were startlingly pale, almost the blue-violet of sunrise as color begins to seep into the sky. His hair nearly black. His height slightly taller than average. His build exceedingly fit and trim. And he looked younger than his thirty-eight years.

  "When you're finished with your coffee, you'll be wanting to settle into your room. I'll be happy to show it to you."

  "Room? You said there weren't any vacancies." Lunn looked unhappy. She wished he'd leave.

  "Not for a stranger, Lunn. But of course I held a room for McCullough." She addressed McCullough. "Lunn saw you tying up your horse and thought you were a stranger coming for a room." The notion seemed preposterous now. This man, McCullough, a stranger! She wanted to laugh.

  Lunn glared at her. She was aware her tone had accused him of being a simpleton, but she didn't feel like apologizing. He could take his bruised feelings and leave. There was no reason for him to stay around and torment himself.