Circle of Spies

by Roseanna M. White

  Then frantic rustling, padded thuds at her side. “Give me a moment, dear. My hands are tingling.”

  What? She couldn’t mean—but she did. The blindfold slipped away, though precious little light reached them in this rocky alcove. She could just make out Mother Hughes’s foot as she reached behind Marietta and worked at the gag.

  “There.”

  Thank You, Lord! Gasping in a long breath, she tried to speak her thanks aloud but managed only a rasp. Mother Hughes helped her sit up and then tilted a canteen to Marietta’s mouth. Cool water touched her lips, her tongue, her throat, and made the rest of the world brighten.

  The woman’s frown didn’t agree with that assessment. She lowered the canteen again and scooted behind her. “These knots will take me a moment, I’m afraid. Oh, Mari—your wrists are bloody and raw. Do they hurt?”

  Terribly, but Marietta gritted her teeth against the pain. “They have mostly gone numb. Why are you helping me?”

  Her fingers didn’t slow. “Because you made Lucien happy. Because when I was ill, you cared for me with patience and love. Because every time I slapped at one cheek, you turned the other. You, my dear, are more my daughter than that monster out there is my son. He killed my son, my favorite son.”

  Her head snapped around, though she still couldn’t see her mother-in-law’s face. “You—you were lying to him?”

  “Where do you think Devereaux learned the art?” She grunted and tugged hard at the rope. “You must have loosened it some. I nearly have it…there!”

  Her wrists fell to her side. Blood rushed into her hands, making her wounds catch fire. She clenched her teeth and scrambled for the canteen.

  Mother Hughes settled before her, her face a decade older than it had been that morning. “You must find a way out. He will kill you, but only after he has made you wish yourself dead a thousand times over.”

  Nodding, Marietta took another drink and looked around. This must be one of the caves marked on his maps. Would he have selected one with a single entrance? Even if so, she could surely sneak past them. There were only the two of them, and they were gone for long stretches, no doubt as they unloaded more crates from the train and carted them over what had sounded like a small bridge.

  Though her legs protested, she pushed herself up and crept to the edge of the rock wall beside her.

  A large central cavern stretched out, the pile of crates and barrels small within it. The line of muddy footprints tracked the men’s comings and goings. Lanterns revealed other dark, gaping places in the rock. Nine of them, counting the one she and Mother Hughes were in, which extended but ten feet off the main chamber.

  “He told me nothing about where we are.”

  “Rest easy, Mother. I have a few aces yet up my sleeve.” One large cavern, nine arms attached. The map surfaced in her mind. His sketch had been surprisingly good, the ratio exact. She hoped that meant she could trust it to have the twists and turns of the second entrance correct too. She turned back to her companion. “There is another way out. I saw a map he had drawn of this. We can—”

  “You, dear.” Mother Hughes shook her muddied blond tresses. “I would slow you down. But when that other man carried me in, he knocked my head against something, and I’ve a bump. I will say you freed yourself and that you struck me. It will keep me safe.”

  “I cannot leave you with him!”

  “Mari, what hope have I of outpacing him through the woods?” Her look now bade her to be realistic. “You are young and strong. You must find the authorities and bring help back here.”

  Another lie? Perhaps…perhaps she meant instead to warn Dev and disappear with him. But since Marietta could hardly drag the woman from the cave, she had no choice but to trust.

  She stepped back into the sheltering oblivion of the wall and slid her eyes closed. “Lord, lend me Your strength. Give wings to my feet. Give purpose to my life.”

  “Amen.”

  Drawing in a long breath, she turned her back to Mother Hughes. “Would you loosen my corset? And untie the hoop and petticoats, if you would.”

  “Of course.” Her fingers seemed to have regained some agility, for they flew over the row of pearl buttons and then tugged at her stays.

  Marietta sucked in a deep breath for the first time all day and, when her heavy petticoats sagged to the floor, stepped over them. Mother Hughes secured the now-too-long skirt for her and then stepped away.

  Marietta took a moment to capture the woman’s image as it was now. Dirty, bedraggled, broken—yet tall with that stubborn will that had caused Marietta so many headaches over the years. She surged forward and gathered her in a quick embrace. “I will send someone back for you.”

  “I know. God speed, Mari.”

  “God keep you.” Anticipation tying new knots in her chest, she pulled up the mental image of the map again, strained to be sure she heard no footsteps returning, and then darted along the wall of the cavern. Ten long steps and she could breathe again, back in the cover of darkness.

  Trying not to think about what might be creeping and crawling along beside her, she felt her way along the tunnel, nearly panicking when her hair brushed the ceiling, when the sides closed in. Near panic ratcheted to full panic when she heard the men’s voices echoing through the main chamber.

  But that was good. If they were inside, they wouldn’t be outside when she emerged. Drawing in a calming breath and whispering another prayer, she pressed on. The tunnel couldn’t get too small, or Dev never would have made it through to realize it was an exit.

  No light told her when she reached the end, nothing but rock one moment and then wet leaves in her face. Her toes struck a wall, her hands found a ledge, a hole. Pushing aside the leaves, weak moonlight filtered through the disbursing clouds.

  She sifted through the other maps in her mind, finding the one of the area. Assuming this was the dot he had circled, assuming the other markings were accurate, her best bet was the inn a mile away.

  If only he had noted every tree root, every undulation in the landscape. If only she had spent more time outside with the boys on Grandpapa Alain’s wooded property in Connecticut. If only, when she crawled out into the chilly night, a hand of sorrow didn’t press on her heart.

  She curled into a ball on the wet ground to catch her breath. Sorrow choked her and made the tears well.

  He was gone. Slade was gone, his body probably but a mile or two away—the train had squealed to a halt so soon after he fell. Let someone find him. Let me take him home to his parents. Let me…let me…

  The sorrow pressed her down into the earth until it threatened to swallow her.

  His face swam before her, frozen in that last moment, the one that sealed his fate. When love had pulsed from his midnight eyes, when he had said without a single word that she was all that mattered. When his hand had given that simple, profound command. Live.

  “Jesus, help me.” The words were barely a whisper.

  But He was a rushing wind. It swept over her, blew away the sorrow, and lifted her back to her feet. Without another thought, she took off at a run toward that scratch on the map.

  Sensations swirled and melded, a cacophony of impressions that made little sense. The light hurt. Why did the light hurt? Heaven should be free of pain.

  Daggers attacked his chest when he drew a breath, and Slade’s eyes flew open at the agony. The ceiling spun. A little face appeared above him with a cloud of dark hair and a smudge on her cheek. If she was an angel, then she needed to take a swim in the crystal lake.

  “Are you waking up?” The cherub bent over him, a sticky hand on his arm. “Aunt Abigail said to holler if you wake up. But you keep opening your eyes and just shutting them again, and that doesn’t seem very awake. I do that sometimes when Ruby tries to get me to go to school but I don’t wanna.”

  Abigail…Ruby…faces flashed to match the names, but they wouldn’t still long enough to figure out why he knew them. He drew in another breath, more slowly, and blinked.
>
  The girl’s halo cleared, and freckles appeared on her nose. She grinned down at him and patted his bare arm with those sticky fingers. “My name’s Rose. I usually have to be in bed by nine o’clock, but it’s almost eleven now, and I’m still up because you could die any minute, and it ain’t right for a man to die alone, but all these guests are flooding in from the train stuck behind the fallen tree up on the mountain.”

  “Rose Elizabeth Kent, will you stop chattering for five minutes and let the man die in peace?” A boy’s voice came from the left, tired and short.

  The cherub stuck out her tongue. “His eyes are open.”

  “What?” Footsteps, and then a boy’s face joined Rose’s over him. Her brother, from the looks of him. His eyes went wide. “Mister? Mister, can you hear me? Say something if you can hear me.”

  The girl gave the boy a push. “He’s hearing me. I’m the one talking to him. You’re just hiding in the hall in a grump.”

  Slade swallowed and tried flexing his fingers. How was it possible that he was alive? The pain searing his chest proved the bullet had struck, and he remembered falling into nothingness. And then…what?

  “Yetta.” Her hair, he saw her hair spilling from the freight car’s door. Did she fall? Was she here somewhere too? Oh God, let her be alive. Please, please let her be alive.

  “Who?” Rose squinted at him, head tilted. “Judah? He’s right here, though you don’t wanna talk to him. He gets cranky when he stays up past his bedtime. Not me, though. Aunt Abigail says if she let me, I’d be up until the rooster crowed. I tried it once, but—”

  “Rose, stop.” Judah put a hand to the top of her head and pushed her out of Slade’s line of sight. “Sorry about her, mister. Are you all right? Do you need a drink or something? Do you have a name?”

  “Don’t be dumb, Judah. Everyone has a name. Is it in here?” Rose must have jumped onto the bed beside him—the mattress bounced, and the pain doubled with his vision. His breath hissed out. She fluttered the pages of something.

  “Rose, be careful! And what did Aunt Abigail say about nosing through his things?”

  “It’s just a book. Golly, it looks old. Are you Ob…Oba…Obadiah Reeves?”

  The name swam in his head with the rest of them, but it settled into place when the room stopped spinning. She had the prayer book, that was all. She was looking at the last page, where the family names had been written, the ink getting rustier as one followed the list upward. He had found them only a month ago but had read them so many times since that he knew each flourish of the various hands.

  Obadiah Reeves. Hezekiah Reeves. Winter Reeves. Thaddeus Lane.

  “Slade.” He moistened his lips. “I’m Slade.”

  Her face scrunched up. “You’re not in here.”

  No. He hadn’t ever meant to leave his mark on that family.

  She held up the book and peered through…a hole? “What’s this for?”

  “Rose.” Judah’s voice again, longsuffering. “The bullet got it. Didn’t you hear Doc say that? You never pay any attention.”

  What? “No!” Slade lifted a hand before he thought better of it, wincing at the new surge of agony as well as the damage to the tome.

  Judah put a restraining hand on the foolish arm. “I wouldn’t get too upset about the book if I were you, mister. Doc said it coulda been what kept you from dying then and there. Coulda slowed the bullet down just enough, he said, before it went into you.” The boy shrugged. “Didn’t seem to do much good to me. You about gave up the ghost on our kitchen table, but maybe I was wrong.”

  “Besides, it’s just the corner. You can still see all the words. Mostly.”

  Floorboards creaked, and footsteps sounded somewhere nearby. Judah and Rose both snapped to attention and called out “Ruby!”

  “How is he?” An older voice, but still young. Slade eased his face toward the door and frowned. Something about the blue dress, the black hair were familiar, though he wasn’t sure why. Her eyes went just as wide as Judah’s had. “You’re awake!”

  Another of the Kent siblings, it would seem. Older, more woman than girl. She charged in and pushed her brother aside, gripped his hand, and leaned over him. “Can you speak? You scared a decade off of my life when I saw you falling from the train. Was it really Devereaux Hughes who shot you?”

  He had to blink to keep his head from swimming again. These kids sure didn’t know the value of quiet.

  “I am sorry, sir.” Another woman’s voice, older, drifted into the room. “Her train must have made it through before the tree came down. I have seen no young woman with red hair today.”

  “It would have been an unscheduled train.” That voice—masculine, familiar, and asking after a young woman with red hair. But it couldn’t be Lane. Lane was in Washington, saving Lincoln. He couldn’t be here.

  He dug his fingers into the mattress under him. Of course he was here, doing the same thing Slade had been doing—trying to save their Marietta from that monster.

  Footsteps halted outside his room. “Interesting. An unscheduled train came through just before the lightning strike. I cannot speak to your granddaughter, but a man was shot and fell from one of the cars into the river. We brought him here, though the doctor thinks he cannot hold on much longer. Perhaps you would know him too?”

  Ruby leaped from his side. “Aunt Abigail, he’s awake!”

  A clamor of footsteps followed, and a moment later a trio rushed through the door. A woman whose face seemed as familiar as Ruby’s—Abigail, apparently—and two tall men partially visible behind her. Lane, it had to be. No one else was that tall. Sweet relief sang through him at knowing someone was here to help where he couldn’t.

  “Lane.” He tried to sit up and ended up back on the pillow, moaning.

  “Oz.” The old man was at his side in one step. He shook his head as he took the chair beside the bed. “I knew, even as I prayed, something had gone wrong. What happened, son?”

  Isaac came up behind him, looking conflicted.

  Slade focused on the grandfather. “I don’t know where she is. We were together in the freight car, but Hughes…” His eyes slid closed. Such a blur. He could remember her face, the love and the fear in it, her hand shaking and straining against Hughes’s as they raised the gun. “I tried to give her a chance. I tried. I…” He couldn’t breathe. It hurt too much, within and without.

  She had to be all right. She had to be.

  “We’ll find her.” Lane gripped his forearm. Firmly, but there was a quaver in his hand, and his smile lacked its usual confidence. “I daresay when we do, she will settle for nothing less than your full recovery.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t know that he could have said anything even if the perfect words rested on his tongue. Lane’s face went blurry, Isaac’s behind him contorted.

  The black approached again.

  Did she hear voices behind her or just the night giving chase? Was that a light up ahead, through the budding trees, or a star breaking through the clouds? Not knowing, Marietta could only ignore the cramping in her side and run onward, faster, narrowly dodging trees, slapping at stray limbs, stubbing her toes countless times on roots.

  Yes, it was a light, set on the next hillside—half a dozen windows shining out hope, and even lanterns twinkling their way toward it. The inn, it had to be. And it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  A crack split the air, and the pound of thunder shook her. She looked first to the heavens, but the clouds were still thinning.

  The thunder increased. Hooves.

  Another crack, and this time bark flew off a tree a few paces to her left. “Mari! You might as well give up!”

  Dev. Not looking behind her, she prayed God would lift her and set her feet toward the light.

  She had to get there. Had to find help. Had to keep her promise to Slade.

  She had to live.

  A gunshot echoed. A scream rent the air. High, desperate, it struck Slad
e right in his wound and brought him bolt upright, agony be hanged. “Yetta!”

  Lane and Arnaud were already out the door, Judah and Ruby and Abigail behind them. Slade tossed aside the blanket and swung his legs to the floor. He had no shoes, no socks, and the trousers he wore were unfamiliar. Blood stained the bandage wrapped round his torso…a stain that grew as he watched.

  Little fingers wove through his. “Mr. Slade, you better lay back down. You’re bleeding again, and I don’t want you to die.”

  He dug up a smile for the girl. “I can’t lie back down, Rose. My Yetta’s out there, and I can’t let a bad man hurt her.”

  Her big eyes solemn, she nodded. “I better help you then. You can lean on me. I’m real strong.”

  He didn’t have time to argue. Marietta’s scream tore through the room again, masculine shouts following. He tried to tell himself Lane was there, her brother was there. They would save her.

  Not good enough. He accepted the little one’s support and staggered up, lurched toward the door, and let her lead him down the hall. Every step felt heavier, and he had to pause halfway along and lean into a doorway.

  He was glad he did when he spotted the rifle propped against the wall. Sucking in a deep breath, he reached for it and checked the chamber—loaded. “God of my end,” he murmured as he stumbled back into the hall, his vision narrowed upon the door swinging wide in the breeze, “it is my greatest, noblest pleasure to be acquainted with Thee.”

  Perhaps it was just the wind whistling through the opening—or perhaps it was the touch of the Father, lending him a breath of borrowed life. He released Rose and told her to stay out of sight inside, and then he slid onto the porch and leaned against a post.

  He stared at the pure horror in the yard.

  A lathered horse quivered, reins dragging the mud. Lane and Arnaud both stood with their backs to him, guns drawn. Abigail had Judah and Ruby clutched to her chest, terror frozen in her eyes. And there, facing him, barely in the circle of light, stood Hughes. He held a thrashing, gnashing Marietta before him as a shield, Slade’s revolver pressed to her temple.