By Starlight by Dorothy Garlock

him.
    Keep it together, Jack…Don’t give him the satisfaction…
    “Truthfully, I don’t much care what you think of me,” Jack began, measuring his words, “but disrespecting them,” his arm waving across the inside of the windshield, “isn’t going to do either of us any good. We have to be both believable and liked if they’re going to buy the story we’re selling. You approach someone with contempt written on your face and in your words and you aren’t going to learn a thing.”
    “Don’t you tell me how to do my job, boy.” Ross chuckled, though his eyes narrowed threateningly. “I’ve been doing this since before you were born in this nowhere town, spending your days sucking on your mother’s tit.”
    Jack struggled to keep his rapidly growing anger from boiling over. “Then I suggest you start acting like it. If you screw this up before we even have a chance to find out where the speakeasy is, there’s going to be hell to pay. Pluggett wants results and won’t stand for failure.”
    “Quit worryin’,” Ross said dismissively. “Gettin’ answers outta rubes like these will be easier than stealin’ candy from a baby. Leave it to me and Pluggett and the Bureau will be kissin’ both our asses. If you ask me, it’d probably be best if you just left me at the hotel and went vistin’ your fine family and friends.” He smiled, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I bet there’s even some old flame of yours been pinin’ away the years, hopin’ you’d come back to town so you could take her to bed and ravish her just like the good ole days.”
    Faster than a rattlesnake, Jack grabbed Ross by the neck of his shirt and practically yanked him out of his seat. Both of Jack’s fists were balled tight and the desire to pound the older man in the face was hard to resist. Jack’s heart thundered and he could hear his blood pounding in his ear. Fear flickered in Ross’s wide eyes for only an instant before he regained his composure, a thin, sly smile slowly spreading across his face.
    “Another word like what you just said and a gut ache will be the least of your concerns,” Jack said menacingly.
    “I’d think about that if I were you,” Ross answered. “I reckon it wouldn’t look too good for a fella’s chances of promotion if he were to rough up a fellow agent. The Bureau frowns on that sort of thing.”
    Jack hated to admit that Ross was right, but he still hoped he’d made his point. Stewing in his remaining anger, he gave the man a slight shove backward as he let go of his shirt. Almost instantly, Ross’s face twisted up in a grimace of excruciating pain, his teeth bared and his eyes clenched shut, his hands grasping his stomach. Jack noticed beads of sweat dotting his forehead and upper lip.
    “Are you all right?” he asked, putting a hand on Ross’s arm.
    The older man immediately shrugged it off. “Get your damn hands off me!” he snapped. “It’s just my stomach flarin’ up.”
    “Do you need a doctor? Steven Quayle’s been here since—”
    “Just take us to the hotel!” Ross shouted, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Between whatever it was I ate, your whinin’ and bellyachin’ ’bout pleasin’ the Bureau, and the pitiful state of this town, it’s a wonder I ain’t keeled over dead yet!”
    Jack sighed; that’s what he got for showing some concern. Without another word, he did as Ross said and drove toward the hotel.
     
    The Belvedere Hotel sat across the street from Colton’s train depot on the north side of Main Street near the banks of the Lewis River. It’d been built in the exciting times just after the railway had first come to town, days filled with wishful predictions of frequent tourists and rare goods shipped from all over the country. Unfortunately, what had followed was nothing like what had been hoped for, and far from profitable. Colton had remained what it always was: far off the beaten path. Consequently, the hotel had seen better