by Cameron Judd
“No, you won’t. You’ll never have that opportunity. If anyone else dies here tonight, it will be you. Because I don’t really need you, Kenton. It’s the woman upstairs that I’m after.”
“Kevington sent you.”
“He did. But it’s not Kevington I’m concerned about. I’m doing this for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Kevington wants that woman back, Kenton. You don’t know how bad he wants her back. He’s hired agents, manhunters, a whole spiderweb of people looking everywhere you might be, following everyone you might try to contact … but it’s me who found you. I’m the lucky one.”
“I’ll not let Kevington have her back. It won’t happen.”
“It’s not up to you.”
“How did you find me?”
“Never mind how I found you. The point is, I did. And as you can see”—he kicked Livingston’s body—“there’s nothing I won’t do to get what I want.”
“However much Kevington has paid you, I’ll pay more.”
“Kevington hasn’t paid me yet. And believe me, even he has no idea how high the price is going to be.”
Kenton understood. “You’re double-crossing him. You’re going to hold Victoria hostage!”
“You’re a smart man, Kenton. Smart enough to figure that out, smart enough to have faked your own death, smart enough to have found your wife, smart enough to have stolen her away. But you’ve reached the end of wisdom. This is my game from now on.”
Victoria appeared above, walking out of her room slowly, looking down over the balcony railing. She grew pale when she saw Livingston lying unmoving on the floor.
“Well, greetings, my lady!” McCurden called up. “It’s indeed a pleasure!”
“Go back in your room, Victoria,” Kenton said. “This is a dangerous man.… He’s killed Jack.”
McCurden laughed as Victoria withdrew quickly, the door closing behind her.
McCurden’s smile went away. “You and me are going upstairs, Kenton. Your wife is going to tie you up, and then I’ll tie her up, and then we’ll wait for Dr. Kevington to arrive. He’s already been wired.”
“You’ll not take her away from me. I’ve gone too far to get her, and waited too long.”
“Too bad that none of that matters anymore, Kenton. Now move. Upstairs.”
Kenton had to obey. He backed away, eye on the derringer on the floor, but McCurden chuckled and shook his head. “Forget it, Kenton. Keep in mind that I’m not required to keep you alive at all. All I need is Victoria. Though I’m thinking that Kevington might be willing to pay a nice bonus if he got you, alive, thrown into the bargain. I’m sure he’d enjoy disposing of you in his own way, slowly and painfully.”
Kenton, fighting a fury that threatened to make him lose control, headed up the stairs. Everything seemed surreal. Only minutes before, Kenton had been seated, talking over plans with Livingston, feeling pleased at the prospect of a safer location for Victoria. Now Livingston was dead, he was hostage, and Victoria was cowering in her room, moments away from being a hostage herself.
Unless she wasn’t cowering, but doing what Kenton hoped she was.…
They reached the door. Victoria had locked it, which annoyed McCurden. He kept his pistol leveled on Kenton while he stepped back and rammed the door hard with his heel, once, twice. The latch smashed apart, the door swinging open.
“Damn you, woman, I’ll tie you all the tighter for that!”
These were his final words. Victoria was standing just inside the door, with the sawed-off shotgun that Livingston had given her for protection, just in case, in her hands.
She had never fired a shotgun before and squeezed down hard on the triggers, setting off both barrels at once. The recoil slammed her backward as the impact of the shot striking his chest sent McCurden flying in the other direction, out against the railing, over which he pitched and plunged to the floor, where he landed in a bloody heap.
Kenton rushed in and gathered up Victoria, who was stunned and bleeding slightly from the forehead. The shotgun had struck her there when it bucked up.
“Are you all right, Victoria? Dear God.…”
“Is he…”
“Oh, yes. Very much so.”
She closed her eyes. He helped her scoot back against the wall, where she sat weakly, breathing hard.
Kenton went out to the railing and looked over at the two bodies below. He hoped against hope to see Livingston move, alive after all, but he did not.
But amazingly, McCurden did move, just a little. And his eyes opened, looking up at Kenton, an expression of disbelief on his face.
“I suppose you aren’t quite as smart as you thought you were, Mr. McCurden,” Kenton said.
McCurden’s lips moved, but nothing passed them except blood. Kenton was looking into McCurden’s eyes as they went cold and glazed and life departed.
Kenton went back to his wife and held her.
“What now?” she asked. “Will someone come?”
“I don’t know. It depends on whether anyone heard the shotgun go off.”
“Who was he?”
“He was hired by David Kevington. And Kevington is on his way here, he said.”
“Oh, Brady, we have to leave!”
“We have to go to the law, Victoria.”
“No, Brady. I’m too afraid.”
“Things have changed now. There are dead men.”
“No, Brady. Take me away from here. Don’t take me to the law!”
“Victoria…”
“Please, I beg you! I’ve killed a man.… What if they don’t believe what we tell them? I’m afraid of what the law will do. David always told me that if I left him, the law would be on his side … the law would bring me back to him.”
“Victoria, I have no choice. We must go to the law. Men are dead here.”
She began to cry. “They’ll call me a murderer, Brady. They’ll take me away from you.”
“But if we run, Victoria, it will only make it all the worse.”
“But nobody knows we’re here, Brady. Nobody knows it but us.”
“The man you shot to death tonight knew. And he said that Kevington is coming, so Kevington knows.…” Kenton quit talking. Kevington is coming.
Kenton would not argue further with her. The law would become involved, now that men had been killed. But perhaps it could happen later, not now. And perhaps he and Victoria could somehow escape detection. When Victoria’s “resurrection” was finally known to the world, Kenton didn’t want her name associated with a fatal shooting, even one as justified as this.
“What if David is already here, in town?”
“Surely he isn’t.” But Kenton could not be sure.
“The man was going to have us wait for him. David may be closer than we know. I want to go, Brady. I want to get away from here. But is there a place we can go?”
Kenton could not deny her plea. He would not go to the law. They would gather the meager possessions they had with them, take food from Livingston’s pantry, stock up on weapons and ammunition, and wipe out any traces that would indicate Victoria’s presence here. They would try to arrange the setting to make it appear that Livingston and McCurden had killed each other. A good investigator would be able to detect otherwise, but it was not likely that a little town like this one would have a good investigator.
“Yes, Victoria. There is a place we can go, if we can find it. A little empty town called Caylee, over the mountain. There is a good place to hide there; Jack told me about it just tonight.”
They had to hurry; the sound of the shotgun blast would have been audible outside the house. Kenton hoped the isolation of the house had kept the shot from being heard all the way down in town, but he couldn’t assume it had.
Kenton wrapped his arms around his wife, and she all but collapsed in his embrace. He was overwhelmed by a sense of protectiveness and a desire to do what she wished.
“When will we leave, Brady?”
“Poor Jack!” she said, voice tightening. “Poor, poor Jack!”
“He was good to us, Victoria. He helped us when few others could have. And I’ll be sorry for the rest of my days that us coming to him here brought him such misfortune.”
CHAPTER 22
Alex Gunnison bent his head low and let the brim of his hat deflect the worst of the gritty New York City rain. The day was gray and foggy, the rain penetrating and cold. Gunnison had always loved New York, thought it one of the most visually exciting cities in the nation, but today it was drab and ugly. And ominous.
He and Roxanne had just disembarked from a horse-drawn cab outside a white-painted Catholic-run hospital on a side street close enough to the bay to be bathed in the murky, organic scent of the ocean.
Battling the wind for possession of his hat, Gunnison managed to pay the cabbie, the tip generous enough to bring a smile and a tip of the cap.
“Come back around here in an hour,” Gunnison instructed. “We may be waiting for you. If you don’t see us, just drive on.”
“Very good indeed, sir. I’ll do that very thing.” He clicked his tongue and gave a little shake of the reins.
The cab rolled on, and Gunnison took Victoria’s arm and raced through the rain and wind for the broad double doors, both of which were marked with the image of the cross. Under the recess that protected the doors, they shook off all the excess water they could.
Roxanne glanced around. “Alex … look. But be sly about it.”
He followed her subtle gesture and glanced back across the street. A man sat under a shelter built to accommodate those waiting for cabs. He was reading a newspaper and seemingly minding his own business.
“A little wet to be sitting out and reading a newspaper, even under a shelter, don’t you think?” she said.
“Maybe. You’re thinking he’s one of Kevington’s agents?”
“He could be. Just like the man on the train.”
This was a delicate moment. Despite Roxanne’s impassioned claim that she had seen a man trying to peer into their private car during the journey to New York, she had been unable to identify him among any of the male passengers, and no sign of any further intrusions had taken place. Gunnison trusted his wife but was secretly wondering if she had simply misperceived something and set her imagination to running out of control.
“I suppose we can’t know. We’ll just have to be careful.”
“I think we have to assume the worst,” she said. “When we leave here, it shouldn’t be by this door.”
“How would Kevington know that Rachel Frye is here?” Gunnison asked. “He would have no reason to post a man here unless he knew there was someone here who could attract Kenton.”
“Maybe that man is the same one who was on the train. He may have followed us.”
Despite his doubts, Gunnison could not rule this out. If Kevington was after Kenton it made sense that he would send men to watch those with whom Kenton had a history of association.
“Well, let’s go in,” Gunnison said. He reached up and knocked loudly on the door.
A few moments later it was opened by a stoutly built nun, who smiled at them welcomingly while also studying them closely and with no small amount of suspicion. In this part of the city, Gunnison supposed, it was essential to be careful about strangers who appeared on doorsteps. “How may I assist you?” she asked.
“My name is Alexander Gunnison. This is my wife, Roxanne. We’ve come to see one of your patients, a young woman named Rachel Frye.”
“Yes, indeed. Miss Frye is still with us, and much improved now. She will be pleased you have come. She had asked that we contact you.”
“Yes … I received the letter. She’s better, you say?”
“Come and see her for yourself. She is ready to leave us … but she has had no place to go.”
“She has a place now,” Gunnison said.
“Good. I’m Sister Anna. Please come with me.”
The hallway was tall and broad, thick with shadows, and cool. Yet it was an unexpectedly pleasant and secure-feeling place, particularly after the soggy coolness outside.
“What happened to her?” Gunnison asked.
“She was injured when the ship she was on sank off the coast. For a long time she was mostly senseless, sometimes awakening but never speaking, not at the beginning. But with time, care, and much praying, she began to improve. She told us who she was and asked that we contact you, Mr. Gunnison, and ask you to come here.”
They turned a corner. “Here we are. Wait here in the hall a moment.… I’ll go in and make sure she is ready to see you.”
Gunnison took Roxanne’s hand while they waited.
Sister Anna reemerged. “She will see you now.”
Gunnison somehow managed to hide his shock when he saw Rachel. She was thin and pale, and if Rachel as she was now was much improved over what she had been when she came to this hospital, she must have been in bad condition indeed.
But she brightened when she saw Gunnison and extended her hand. He took it, squeezed it gently, and smiled at her.
“Rachel, I’m glad to see you, and I’m glad to hear that you’re doing better. Please allow me to introduce my wife, Roxanne.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Rachel,” Roxanne said, taking the lead. She extended her hand to the seated woman.
“You’re very beautiful,” Rachel said.
“And so are you,” Roxanne replied, even though Rachel at the moment had only a shadow of beauty about her. “We’re very sorry that you’ve been hurt.”
“I’m much better now … but it was important for me to talk to you. I’m sorry you had to travel so far.”
Gunnison turned to Sister Anna, who had followed them back into the room. “Might we talk to her in private?”
“Certainly. Call me if you need anything.” She silently glided out of the room.
Gunnison turned to Rachel. “I know there is much to tell, much to talk about, but I want to ask one thing at the beginning: do you know where Kenton is?”
Rachel closed her eyes. “I had hoped you wouldn’t ask that question, because it tells me that you don’t know where he is, either.”
“You’ve not heard from him?”
“No. Not since I was in England.”
Gunnison pulled up a chair for Roxanne, then a footstool upon which he perched himself. “Tell us what happened, Rachel. From the beginning.”
* * *
She spoke in a soft voice that grew steadily weaker because she was not used to talking for a long time.
She talked at first about the background of the voyage to England that she and Brady Kenton made—how through her Kenton had learned that his wife still lived as the “wife” and prisoner of Dr. David Kevington. Also because of her, Kenton very nearly died because of Kevington’s son, Paul, but in the end Paul had been the one to die.
Kenton had taken advantage of his situation and allowed Alex Gunnison to present a story to the world of his “death” and, with the freedom that comes of no longer being believed alive, had gone to England with Rachel to find Victoria again.
Rachel briefly described their voyage, their landing in England, the journey to the estate of Dr. David Kevington.
Though Kenton was her father, she called him Kenton just like everyone else did, because that’s the way Kenton liked it.
“Kenton did not allow me to even approach the estate,” she said. “He said it would be unsafe and make it more difficult besides, because he would have to worry about getting both Victoria and me out. I stayed, in secret, in the home of a family nearby who had been servants for Dr. Kevington at the same time I was. Kenton disappeared into the estate … and seemed to vanish.
“I waited for days for him to reappear, or to send word, but none came. I was sure he was dead, but then a message was sent out of the estate. Kenton sent word
that I should flee the country as quickly as possible, and come back to the United States, specifically to St. Louis. I was to contact you, then await his return with Victoria … if it was to happen at all.
“There was something about the message that scared me. It didn’t seem to me that Kenton was at all sure he would return at all, and clearly he was in some sort of danger. He had been on the estate for days, which could only mean that he had been caught and detained there. But at least his message proved he was still alive. And I knew it was a valid message because I knew his script. It was written by his hand.
“I did what he told me, fled the area, found passage on a ship back to New York. Then there was a storm, and a shipwreck … and my next memory was being here. For a time I didn’t even know where ‘here’ was. But my strength, and my memory, came back slowly, and as soon as I could, I had this hospital contact you. And now you’ve come.”
“We’ve come. But we still know nothing of what happened to Kenton.”
Rachel’s eyes grew red and moist. “I had hoped you would come telling me that Kenton was home, with Victoria.”
“I wish I had news. And perhaps soon I will. We have some indications that Kenton is in Colorado.”
“Colorado? Why there?”
“We don’t know. It’s unexpected, and maybe that’s the point. He may be hiding there.”
Rachel sat up straighter and looked more vigorous all at once. “Hiding … from Kevington?”
“That would seem the likely candidate.”
“That would indicate he may have brought Victoria home.”
“Yes … and also that Kevington has pursued them. Maybe personally, or more likely through hired agents. Or perhaps both.”
“He might be here, in this country?”
“I don’t think he would let Victoria go without a fight, or a chase.”
“But if Kenton is back in the country, why hasn’t he contacted you? Why hasn’t he come looking for me?”
“That’s the question we’ve all asked. And I’ve got a friend in Colorado right now trying to find the answer.”
“Have you heard from him?”
“Not yet … not that I know of, anyway. We’ve made arrangements for me to be telegraphed by him at a certain station here in New York. But so far we’ve not checked in at the station.”