Double The Bounty

Chapter XXXX

New Orleans was different from most of the towns Decker had ever been in. He’d been to some big ones, too. San Francisco, Denver; he even went to Chicago once. None of them seemed to have the same…feel as New Orleans. There were large, opulent hotels, casinos, and plenty of pretty, refined women. The food, too, was different. Decker’s taste buds were not accustomed to the spicy Cajun dishes that he encountered, and he took to drinking lots of cold beer with his meals.

He was in New Orleans because of a message that had finally caught up to him in Texas—which, of course, made it easy for him to respond quickly.

The message said:

DECKER,

NEED YOU IN NEW ORLEANS. WE HAVE FOUND BRENT FOXX. PLEASE HURRY. STAYING AT THE CRAWFORD HOTEL.

It was signed: Rebecca.

That surprised him. Apparently Rebecca had finally straightened out her thinking and she’d decided to keep looking for Brent.

And there was something about her message that didn’t click with him. She said “we” had found Brent.

Who, he wondered, was we?

Decker arrived in New Orleans a full week after reading the message. It had been sent almost two weeks before that, and it had been two months since he had last seen Rebecca Kendrick in Heart-less.

He had been so uncomfortable upon his initial arrival in New Orleans that he went looking for and found a particular hotel, though he’d never been to Louisiana before.

He knew there had to be a New Orleans House. Just being in a hotel that called itself the “something House” made him feel a little better. It showed that in some ways, New Orleans was like any other town.

After checking in, he left John Henry at the hotel livery and hired a cab to take him to the Crawford Hotel. When he arrived, he found a much more expensive hotel than he was staying in.

How was Rebecca affording this?

He went up to the front desk, where a prissy, tight-faced clerk gave him the twice-over—twice!— and found nothing to approve of.

The feeling was mutual.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to see Miss Rebecca Kendrick.”

“Is she registered here?”

“No, she’s registered at the New Orleans House; that’s why I’m looking for her here, friend.” He leaned forward so that his face was inches from Prissy Face. “Aren’t you supposed to look it up and tell me that?”

“Yes,” Prissy Face said, “of course.” He checked the register, then closed it and said with great satisfaction, “We do not have a Miss Rebecca Kendrick registered here.”

“You don’t?”

“No, sir.”

Had he taken so long to get here, he wondered, that she had given up and left.

“Has she ever been registered?”

The man heaved a sigh, compressed his prissy lips, and checked the book again.

“No, sir. Never.”

Odd.

“Thank you.”

“Of course…sir.”

He turned to leave and then a thought hit him. He turned and tried it out on the clerk.

“What about the name Foxx?”

“What about it?”

“Anyone registered here by that name?” Decker snarled. He tried to resist the temptation to grab Prissy Face by the front of his jacket and pull him across the desk.

Looking put-upon, the clerk took out the register and checked.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Foxx?”

“Foxx.”

“Yes, here it is,” the man said. “Foxx.”

“Mister?”

The clerk gave Decker a pitying look and said, “Mister and Mrs.”

“Of course,” Decker said.

He was having lunch in the Crawford Hotel dining room when they came in. They spotted him, waved, and hurried over.

“Hello, Decker,” Rebecca said.

“Decker,” Brian Foxx said.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Decker said, “but I told them to bill this to your room.”

“No, of course not,” Brian said. “That’s fine.”

“You two can obviously afford it.”

“We have to explain—” Rebecca began.

“Sit down,” Decker said. When they sat he asked, “What’s this Mr. and Mrs. business?”

“That’s for real, Decker,” Brian said. “We got married almost two months ago.”

“In Heartless?”

“Right after we left there.”

Decker mentally shrugged. People fall in love. It happens.

“And then what happened—after you turned your brother in, I mean?”

“What?” Brian said. “I haven’t turned Brent in.”

“Then where did you get the money for a hotel like this?”

He looked at Rebecca, who looked away almost in embarrassment.

“We have to explain,” Brian said.

“Please do.”

“After you left Heartless, we talked and decided that we should track Brent down.”

“You had a quick change of heart, didn’t you, Brian?” Decker said. “First you let him go, and then you decided to capture him.”

“I didn’t want to capture him.”

“What, then?”

“Brent had a lot of the money we stole hidden away. I wanted him to tell me where it was.”

“You never mentioned that.”

“It didn’t seem…important.”

No, of course not. Even decent men are tempted by large sums of money. Brian Foxx was a prime example of that—in more ways than one.

“How did you track him here?”

“This is where we were headed when you caught up to us. We just headed this way, hoping to find him either here or along the way.”

“And you found him?”

“Yes—here.”

“And sent for me?”

“Asked you to come,” Rebecca said.

“All right, you asked me to come. Why?”

“We want you to…approach him.”

“Why me?”

Brian looked at Rebecca, who nodded.

“I think you were right about something, Decker.”

“What?”

“I think if Brent saw me he’d kill me.”

“What’s your excuse?” Decker asked Rebecca.

“If I see him, I might kill him without giving him a chance to tell us.”

Decker studied them both in silence. They seemed to have prospered, and in Rebecca’s case she had regained her beauty. Her eyes were glowing, her hair was lustrous, and she was wearing a low-cut dress that showed her firm breasts off well.

And they were both trying to pull something on him.

“I don’t appreciate being brought all this way to have the wool pulled over my eyes,” he said tightly.

“We’re not—” Rebecca said.

“Let me,” Brian said, silencing her. “Decker, we want you to capture Brent and get the bounty.”

“And you think he’ll tell me where the money is?” Decker’s tone was incredulous.

“No,” Brian said. “That’s not it at all. I think that after I let him go he went and got the money and came here with it. I don’t know where he’s got it hidden, though.”

“And?”

“We want you to find out.”

“By asking him?”

“By whatever means you have to use,” Brian said.

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that if I decide to beat it out of him or torture him, you’d go along with it? This is your brother we’re talking about.”

“No, not my brother,” Brian said. “We’re talking about my wife here. I’ve got a wife and I want to provide for her. It’s time I stopped trying to save my brother.”

Decker studied Brian’s face and decided that he was serious. He was a fool, but he was serious. Suddenly the man was being controlled by a woman— his wife—to the point where he would turn in his own brother.

“What’s in it for me?” Decker asked.

“We told you. The bounty.”

“Uh-uh,” Decker said. “Not enough.”

“What do you want?”

“I want a cut.”

Brian’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Rebecca.

“How much?” she asked.

“Not knowing how much there is,” Decker said, “I’ll take half.”

“Half?” Brian asked.

“Half for me and half for you.”

Rebecca shook her head.

“No. A third. Brian and I will have our own shares.” Brian looked at her, but then just nodded and said to Decker, “That’s right. A third.”

“You got a deal,” Decker said. “Now all you have to tell me is two things.”

“What?”

“Where is he?”

Brian frowned.

“He’s in the bayou.”

Decker had never been to New Orleans, but he had heard of the Louisiana bayou.

“Oh, that’s fine. I’ve got to go in the swamp and get him?”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Rebecca asked. “Hunt men?”

“When the price is right.”

“A third of what he’s got hidden plus the bounty—that sounds right,” Rebecca said.

Decker pushed his plate away and reached for his mug of cold beer.

“All right,” he said after a healthy swallow. “The other question is for my own curiosity.”

“What?”

“How do you have enough money to come to New Orleans and afford a hotel like this?”

Brian looked at Rebecca again, and she nodded. He shrugged and said sort of sheepishly, “We robbed banks along the way.”