Providence hadn’t answered Abby once during the past four years. Not the way she expected or needed, at least. Could this turn of events be the answer to that long-ago uttered prayer?
Maybe, maybe not. But she would be on the train to Nebraska, regardless. “I must terminate my post, but they will not balk.” Last week, a pupil’s father learned who her scandalous father was and lodged an official protest about her family’s moral turpitude. The school board would be relieved if she slipped away.
“You can’t start until the second of January, anyway. We’ll pay you on top of your teaching pay, of course. Can’t say it’s much. The Treasury Department doesn’t compensate as well as some of us think it should, not that it’s a polite topic of conversation to have with a lady, but it cannot be helped in this situation. Forgive me.”
Murder was a far less polite topic than finances, but she’d broached it already today. Oh well. “How many children are in the school?”
“I’m not sure.” Mr. Welch consulted his brass pocket watch. “The operative in charge will be here shortly. You’ll get to shake his hand after all.”
“Excellent.”
“He’s to be your official contact, since he knows the intricacies of the case far better than I. And no, young lady, he will not be watching you work in Nebraska. He’ll be close enough for you to summon with a quick tap of the telegraph, but we don’t expect it to be necessary until you’ve found sufficient evidence to identify the boy. Otherwise, you’ll have no need of law enforcement. You’re in no danger. Pitch may want his son—and that tintype, if he knows she has it—but there’s not a single indication he’s anywhere near Nebraska.”
The restaurant door unlatched, and a frigid gust curled around Abby’s nape. The Kansas City operative was here. She spun in her seat.
A tall man in a snow-dusted gray coat paused in the threshold. He dipped his head to remove his hat, revealing mussed dark blond hair curling over his ears and collar. She shifted, preparing to rise and shake his hand. But then the man looked up at her and she couldn’t stand, much less breathe.
“Here he is, Miss Bracey. Meet Dashiell Lassiter.”
She didn’t require the information. The name Dash Lassiter was as familiar to her as her own, but one she hadn’t expected to hear ever again. The instant she regained the ability to move, her molars ground together.
His light eyes widened, then narrowed as he joined their table. “Abby? Is it really you?”
Had he forgotten what she looked like in six years? Bile filled her throat. “Yes.”
“What are you—I mean, how are you?”
She could not give him an honest answer and remain civil at the same time. Instead she rounded on Mr. Welch. “You said there was no one better than I for this teaching assignment. I agree. I will find that boy and that tintype. But I cannot work with this man, so I respectfully insist you assign someone else to me. Anyone else.”
CHAPTER 2
Someone else,” Dash repeated, unsure he’d heard Abby correctly. But her spine was stiff as a flagpole, and she stared at Welch like her existence depended on it. Yessir, he’d heard her, all right.
He couldn’t help it. He started to laugh.
“Is something amusing?” Abby’s face was pink.
He couldn’t answer, for laughing. His summons hadn’t included the name of the teacher the Secret Service would be using. He never dreamed it would be her. Of course, being back in Chicago, he wondered if she still lived here. He assumed she’d be married by now, with a child or two. It had been six years since he left. Six years since his heart—that part of him that felt things, not the organ of the same name—had stopped beating.
Seeing her again, he had to laugh or cry, and frankly, it wasn’t just her reaction to him that was hilarious. He’d always been an idiot when it came to Abigail Bracey.
He swiped a single bead of moisture from his right eye—a stupid response that happened when he laughed. Abby used to swipe away those single teardrops with her soft little thumb and say they were diamonds of joy.
Well, that memory sobered him up. “Nice to see you too, Abby.”
“Have a seat.” Welch indicated with a dip of his coffee cup that Dash should pull out a chair. Probably because they were being observed. By the delicious aroma of fresh-brewed coffee meeting Dash’s nose, the waiter lurked behind him, pot in hand.
Dash lowered his too-long frame into the chair at the too-small table. His knees knocked Abby’s and she shifted away from him.
“Would you care for a menu, sir?” The waiter’s brows arched like upside-down U’s.
“Coffee’s fine, thank you.”
The waiter filled his cup and topped off Welch’s and Abby’s. She took a dainty sip. The color had receded from her cheeks, leaving her face pale, a stark contrast to the study in serviceable brown she made. Brown hair pinned at the nape beneath a brown bonnet. Brown jacket buttoned to her chin. Brown eyes studiously avoiding him. “As I was saying, I’d like to work with a different operative.”
“No,” Dash stated.
“No.” Welch’s tone was kinder. “This is Lassiter’s case, Miss Bracey, and his orders come from Washington.”
She gave a dainty shrug. “I cannot work with him.”
He gulped his coffee and scalded his tongue. That’d hurt later. “Perhaps you don’t understand, Abby, but I’m the one whose sources risked their lives to give me information. I am the one who traveled a thousand miles to learn our subject’s given name. I am the one who has studied his habits longer than anyone in the service. I am the only one to be worked with, so I suppose we must find a different teacher to go to Nebraska to locate Pitch’s boy. One with more experience.”
That got her to look at him. “Why? I’m a fully qualified teacher, I assure you.”
“I figured, or Welch wouldn’t have asked you to do the job. I meant you’re not trained.”
“At what?”
“Lying, for starters.”
Her brow arched as if to say, like you? “I shall be a teacher on a new assignment. That’s no fib. I want to become acquainted with my students and their families. That’s no fib either.”
“But you don’t know what the man we’re seeking is like. Any who cross him aren’t given the benefit of the doubt. They’re, well—”
“Dead, like my father.”
Dash’s vision darkened. “What?”
“Father passed thousands of dollars in Pitch’s bogus currency through his bank. His conscience apparently got the better of him, though, because he wanted out of the mutually lucrative arrangement, according to Mr. Welch.” She glanced at him. “But as Mr. Welch told me and Mother, no one stops doing business with Pitch. Pitch killed Father on the bank steps. Four years ago.”
There weren’t sufficient words to express his sorrow. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you for your condolences.” She sipped her coffee.
These past four years had not been kind to Abby. Her round cheeks had hollowed, and there was a hardness to her now. Her lips used to be soft and pink, not this thin line of pain, and her eyes, well, they could always blaze fire when she was angry. He’d just never seen so much anger in her before.
“How’s your mother?”
“She succumbed to pneumonia a year ago. Natural causes, but I blame Pitch regardless. He broke her heart and stole her will to live. She was not the same person after Father’s death.”
Ah, no. Mrs. Bracey was a kind woman with soft eyes and a ready smile. An ache hit him under his rib cage.
Abby had lost so much. She deserved better than to be thrust into the middle of this mess.
Yet the middle was precisely where she seemed to want to be. “Dash, I know what kind of man Pitch is, but Mr. Welch assured me I would be safe because Pitch isn’t in Nebraska.”
“That may be, but I don’t know that it’s wise that you go.” She was capable, surely, but what if something went wrong?
“Ahem.” Welch’s tone drew both t
heir gazes. “I do not know how you know one another, nor, to be frank, do I care, but if you cannot work together, I shall find others who will.”
“I’m not walking away from my case.” Dash gripped his cup.
“I’m certainly not passing an opportunity to help catch my father’s killer.” Abby pushed away her plate of half-eaten meat and vegetables. “Mr. Welch, you said the operative wouldn’t be in Nebraska with me. Is that true?”
“Yes.” Welch lifted his cup. “Lassiter will give you the information you require about the students and community, and after that you will not be in contact again until you determine the boy’s identity.”
Her gaze fixed at the wall for a few seconds. “If you promise to not contact me or come to Wells, Dash, then I suppose I do not require a new operative after all.”
“I promise. But I will escort you to the train when you go—don’t argue with me, I must report to my superiors that I witnessed you board the train. And you have to stomach me long enough for me to tell you what I know about the boys and their mothers.”
“Can you not send a file for me to peruse at my leisure?”
“It’s not a ladies’ magazine. It’s a secret dossier. You’ll get an oral report.”
“I’ll take notes, then.”
A thousand times no. “And take them with you? What if the family you live with happens to see them?”
“I’d—hide them in my trunk.”
“A place no landlady has ever snooped.” Sarcasm dripped like a spring thaw.
Welch smiled. “It’s policy, Miss Bracey.”
“Oh, well then, of course.”
Dash snorted.
The waiter returned, eyebrows lifted halfway to his hairline. “More coffee?”
“No,” they all said at once.
Her glaring eyes were cold as polished jasper. “I have thirty minutes to spare you, Dash. Is there a park or … somewhere for you to inform me of all I need to know?”
He couldn’t think of a one in this area, but he’d find something that offered them a smidgen of privacy in a public place. Best get this over with as quickly as possible. Every question he’d had when he walked in the restaurant—How are you? Are you happy? Do you ever think of me?—disintegrated like paper in a fire. A few seconds of heat, then nothing but ash.
“Let’s go.” He stood and reached to pull out her chair.
She shoved it back before he could assist her.
This would be a long thirty minutes, indeed.
The following twenty-one days passed in a blur of activity for Abby, packing, resigning her post, and creating lesson plans for her students in Nebraska. At last it was time to leave for Wells, thank the Lord—if she did that sort of thing anymore.
Union Station bustled with Christmas Eve crowds, noisy folks coming and going, their loved ones receiving them or bidding them farewell, all of them pushing to get somewhere, to be with someone.
Journeys began and ended with kisses, hugs, the shaking of hands, though, didn’t they? From every direction on the platform, affection surrounded Abby. But it didn’t touch her. This was the most clinical, awkward goodbye of her existence.
At least it was too loud for her and Dash to bother attempting conversation. They’d been silent since he collected her to escort her to the station. Of course, Dash must have felt the need to say something now that it was time to put her on the train, because his mouth moved and his eyes had a soft-eyed, earnest expression that made him look like the boy she once knew.
She wouldn’t be fooled by it. “I cannot hear you,” she enunciated, standing on tiptoe to yell in his ear.
He sighed—she could see it rather than hear it—and bent at the waist so his lips were right next to her ear. His breath was hot on her chilled skin, tickling her lobe, reminding her of things she’d worked hard to forget.
A fraction of her wanted to lean into him, reintroduce her ear to his lips, find warmth in his embrace. That part of her was weak, forgetful, and utterly traitorous.
She screwed her eyes shut and forced herself to stillness, concentrating to hear him. His words might be pertinent to the case, something he’d forgotten to mention when they discussed the situation three weeks ago.
Or maybe, now that it was the final moment of their time together, he would explain where he went six years ago. Maybe he would apologize.
That disloyal part of her wanted his apology desperately.
He bent down again. One breath. Two, hot on her ear and neck.
Tell me why you left me, Dash.
“If you need me,” he said, “I will come. You’re safe, I promise you, but please …”
Please what?
“Do nothing foolish, Abby.”
No new facts. No apology. Just a plea that she not ruin the investigation by doing something imprudent. At least he’d asked nicely and said please.
She jerked away. “I won’t need you.”
“What?” he yelled over the roar of an approaching train.
“You will receive my telegram.” She shouted over the roar. “Merry Christmas.”
Something hard and heavy hit her behind the knees and knocked her forward. Dash took her by the elbow, holding her steady. “You all right?” he said in her ear. “That fellow didn’t even notice he hit you with his trunk. I have half a mind to inform him.”
The man in question was now kissing a bundled-up woman on her plump cheek. “It’s Christmas, Dash. People are happy.”
But not them.
He released her elbow and bent to her ear yet again. “I’m sorry you’ll be on a train, not with loved ones. In church.”
It didn’t matter. She didn’t have loved ones anymore. Or a church. “Goodbye, Dash.”
His reciprocated farewell was lost to the conductor’s final call. Dash scooped her valise and took her elbow to assist her to the train. The porter took her bag, and then she mounted the steps and found her seat.
She faced forward, toward Nebraska. Toward her future. Toward justice. She didn’t look to see if Dash watched her go. She would never see him again.
Even if her elbow still burned from his touch.
CHAPTER 3
Wells, Nebraska
January 5, 1888
The scratch of chalk on the black-painted slate board competed with low murmurings throughout the one-room wooden schoolhouse. Three days into her teaching assignment, Abby had found her students to be both intrigued by and curious about their first female instructor. A few of them had taken that curiosity and used it to test their limits with her.
“My parents.” Abby read her chalk words loudly before facing her class of eighteen pupils, eleven boys and seven girls, ages six to fourteen. The biggest boys in the back row, Coy Johnstone and Josiah Topsy, clamped their mouths shut the moment she met their gazes.
The boys might want to test her, but at least they had some respect for her authority. “For our final task of the day, each of you will write on the topic of your parents.”
A familiar hand shot up.
“Yes, Willodean?”
“What if I don’t write yet?”
Willodean was her lone six-year-old pupil, the oldest child of the Elmore family, who had taken it upon themselves to house the new teacher. Although there was a boardinghouse in town, none of its occupants were female, so it was decided by Mayor Carpenter that Abby would be better off residing with a family. She was grateful for the arrangement for many reasons, including the delicious deviled ham sandwich and dried-apple tart Hildie Elmore had packed for Abby’s lunch earlier today. However, Abby also appreciated Hildie’s knowledge of the local children and their parents.
Hildie had shared a great deal about the families. Dash had been correct, much as it prodded her like a needle poke to admit it. Three boys fit the description of Fletcher Pitch’s son: Micah Story, Kyle Queen, and Bud Grooms.
Abby was tasked with determining which lad was the correct one. How better than to simply ask the boys what they knew about their f
athers? It wasn’t a bad topic as an assignment, either. After all, she was here to educate the children as well as to uncover the identity of Fletcher Pitch’s son, raised by Katherine Hoover.
She glanced at those three particular boys before turning to Willodean. “You and I will work at my desk with your slate. The rest of you will use paper. Berthanne, pass out a sheet to each student please. Oneida, Jack, a few sentences about the topic will suffice. Those of you who are between second and fifth grade, two paragraphs will do. Sixth through eighth grade, I’d like a page.”
“Aw,” Coy groaned.
Another hand shot up. Dark-haired, round-cheeked Kyle’s. “I don’t got no pa.”
“Me neither.” The words were soft from blond, slender Micah, the smallest of the three eight-year-old boys, and perhaps the most intelligent.
Bud, a plump wiggle worm, squirmed on his seat. “I got a new step-pa.”
Which was precisely why Bud was not her first choice as Fletcher Pitch’s son. Not that Pitch’s sister-in-law Katherine couldn’t have married, but the timing might not work in this particular case. Bud’s mother was expecting a baby with her second husband, the town barber. Katherine Hoover would have had to have married immediately after arriving in Wells, an unlikely scenario, but Abby was not prepared to rule her out quite yet.
“Write what you do know about your father. His name, perhaps? What he did for a living?” She strolled between the columns of plank desks. “Was or is he a farmer or a businessman? What does he look like?”
“And write about our mothers too,” Zaida said.
“Of course.” Abby may have only been here three days, but she’d already identified the dispositions in her classroom: the studious ones, like Micah Story, Zaida Knapp, and Katie Andersen. The chatty ones, like Josiah Topsy, Coy Johnstone, and Oneida Ford. But they were all good-natured children, and they seemed to have been instructed well by their previous schoolmasters.
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