by Jamie Carie
He’d come to her rescue a few times too, though. Such as when some overzealous man made insinuations toward her, or the time an Indian had wanted to buy her. She’d been terrified for a moment that Will was actually going to trade her for some furs, but she found out later he just couldn’t pass up the chance to tease her. Elizabeth supposed she should be happy that he cared enough to want to tease her, but still, every time that man had come in since, she ducked into the back room. Will just laughed at her and it had become a shared joke.
Glancing over, she saw Will talking with one of the dark-skinned Tlingit Indians. They were deep in negotiation over some thick furs. Elizabeth turned her attention to the man who just walked up to the counter.
“Can I help …”
The words died off as her voice froze in shock, her eyes locking with his.
The man gave her a slow, blinding smile showing his even, white teeth. He wore the same slicked-back, black hair and thin mustache. His dark eyes casually looked her over before he answered. “I’m sure you can,” his silky voice oozed.
Ross had found her. She gripped the edge of the counter as she struggled for control. Her heart was pounding as if it would burst from her chest, and the room was tilting sickeningly, but she was determined that he not know it. Lifting her chin she glared at him.
The man’s smile seemed to melt into an evil leer. “You are looking better than ever, Miss Smith,” he drawled lazily. “That is your name now, isn’t it?”
The wicked laugh that followed sent tremors through her spine.
“I can see you’re surprised to see me. Didn’t think I would come all this way for you, did you? Thought you were … safe?”
He threw back his head and laughed again, causing Will to look over in curiosity. With precise movements, Ross removed a white, perfectly folded square of paper from his pocket and slid it across the counter. Head down, he raised his eyes and looked secretly at her from under straight black brows. “Fill this order, exactly to the letter, and there won’t be any trouble.”
The lurking grin was back as Elizabeth numbly took the paper and unfolded it with shaking hands. There were three ordinary items at the top and a neatly written sentence at the bottom that said, “Meet me in the parlor of the Juneau City Hotel at eight o’clock tonight. If you fail to show, your new friends will soon know all about you.”
Elizabeth dropped the note onto the counter as if it had sprouted a head and hissed at her. She quickly turned away from him to gather the goods. She could feel his eyes boring into her back as she reached up past a tin of shortbread cookies. What was she going to do? At the brink of hysteria, she knocked the tin off the shelf and spilled the contents on the floor. Will glanced at Elizabeth with a frown.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Will, keeping her head down so he couldn’t read her eyes.
Will asked his customer to wait and leaned down to help Elizabeth pick up the cookies. Softly, he said, “Is this fellow giving you trouble?”
Elizabeth scooped up the remaining cookies, stood, and turned away to get another item. “No, no, I’m just clumsy today, that’s all. Thank you, Will.”
Will looked sharply at the man and then back to Elizabeth. “If you say so.” He wasn’t convinced and Elizabeth knew it, but she had to go on as if nothing was wrong. She had to get Ross out of the post.
Finally, she had the items wrapped. “That will be a dollar and thirty cents.” She kept her gaze on the package, her hands clasped behind her back, hiding her scarred wrists.
“What’s the matter, honey, don’t you want to introduce me to that friend of yours?” She wanted to tell him he wasn’t worth a second of Will’s time. She wanted to rail back at him, but she held her composure. When she neither answered nor looked up, he continued in a hiss, “You’re not afraid of me, now are you?”
She lifted her face to his and allowed, for a second, the contempt she felt for him to blaze from her eyes. “One dollar and thirty cents, sir.”
He smirked at her, slid her the payment, picked up his package, and turned to leave.
Elizabeth took a deep breath as she watched his slim form step out the door and toward the street. She glanced over at Will, who was closely watching the scene, as was everyone else in the store by this time. Elizabeth took a shaky breath and turned her attention to the next man who was waiting to be helped. With a reassuring smile toward Will and then her new customer, she managed, “May I help you?”
The big, burly man Elizabeth recognized as a regular slapped a meaty hand on the counter. With a broad smile and a lighthearted wink, he said, “You surely can, Miss Smith.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the door. “Was that dandified version of a man troubling you?”
“Uh, no. Thank you, but I’m fine.”
“Well, if he does, you just find ol’ Charlie here and me an’ the boys will take care of him. You got me?”
Elizabeth gave him a shaky smile. “Thank you, Charlie, I’ve got you.” She glanced at Will and received his nod before going on to fill Charlie’s order. Somehow she made it through the rest of the afternoon, but as soon as there was a lull in business, Elizabeth made her excuses and went up to her room.
God help her. What was she going to do now? She had never really thought he would find her. When he hadn’t shown up immediately, she had lulled herself into a false sense of security. That he would come now, months later … she hadn’t even let herself consider it. Elizabeth paced the length of her tiny room, her arms crossed protectively in front of her stomach, unconsciously rubbing the scarred skin of her wrists.
But he had found her and, if possible, he would take her back to Seattle and the Dunnings. Or worse, she feared he may want to exact a more permanent form of revenge. She couldn’t possibly meet him, but if she didn’t he would go to Will, she had no doubts about that. She couldn’t bear the thought of them knowing all she’d done. Will and Cara were her friends, her first real friends, and they meant more to her than she had realized until this moment.
There was one thing she was sure of: She had to delay Ross. She needed time to think and plan. Scrambling, she found a scrap of paper and scribbled a note: I can’t meet you tonight. Will is leaving and Cara can’t be left alone, with the baby so close. It would be too suspicious. I can’t vary my schedule after the scene this afternoon. Give me two days. I go to Raleigh’s Bakery on Friday mornings. I’ll be there by 10:00 a.m. We can talk then.
It was a lie that Will would be gone, but she couldn’t think of anything else. It had to work. She had to buy some time to make her escape. Elizabeth took a coin out of her small horde of savings in the top drawer of her bureau. She knew a boy who would deliver the note to Ross. She would slip out and give it to him tonight.
Still clutching the drawstring bag that held her savings, she walked over to the bed, sank down, and clenched her eyes in concentration. There was really only one thing to do, get as far away from the likes of Ross Brandon as soon as possible. If he was determined enough to track her all the way to Alaska, his reasons had to be sinister. He might no longer care about finding her for the Dunnings; he might be driven by revenge alone.
“It’s time to run again,” she whispered aloud to the room.
Noah’s face came to mind. He had visited her several times over the winter and early spring, taking her ice skating and sightseeing, dining at the restaurant, and introducing her to his friends like she was a treasure he had found. In the evenings, after dinner, Will and Cara would mysteriously disappear and leave them alone in front of the fire, making plans together for purchasing mining supplies and the best way to set up their camp in the spring. After a while, Elizabeth forgot that she was supposed to be pretending and found herself caught up in the excitement. But it wasn’t gold she hungered for this time; it was time with him.
When he would reach for her hand and silently hold it, a new sensation threatened to engulf her, a feeling she couldn’t remember ever having and didn’t know how to identify until one day, right aft
er Noah had left, Cara had remarked, “You seem to glow with peace after Noah has been here, Elizabeth.” Peace. She had never known peace before.
Noah made her feel other strange things too. One time a strong wind had swept through town during one of their walks and he had pulled her into his encompassing embrace, wrapping his arms tightly around her, bending his head so that even her head was covered and then turning so that the wind gusted against his broad back while she felt only his warmth. They had stayed like that until the wind grew slack and then walked on, laughing at such a wind, hand in hand, back to the trading posts. Warmer were the moments when he stared into her eyes and made her secretly wish he would kiss her again.
Strangely, he didn’t make her frustrated with herself and the restless dreams he caused. He had made her feel like a part of his life—a part of him. And somewhere along the way she had fallen in love with him. She had started to believe that she might stay and mine his streams with him, that her past would stay safely buried thousands of miles away and that she would start over, be a better person with him and for him. She’d even begun to pray a little—not how she had always thought of prayer, formal and sterile, but talk to God the way Noah did, crying out to Him with her feelings and thoughts, believing He was real and cared about her.
She had let herself dream of a normal life. She should have known better. She would never deserve those things.
Taking a deep breath and wiping away the tears that were coursing down her cheeks, she straightened her spine. It would have grown tired and boring, such a simple life as they would have had. She was forgetting who she was, and it was time to wake up. She balled her hand into a fist thinking of the lost time. Prospecting parties had been stocking up at the trading post for weeks and, like a fool, she had always found an excuse why she couldn’t join them. It was nearly May. She could have left by now, should have left by now, but she hadn’t and that had been a terrible mistake. Now Ross had found her—and he’d brought the truth with him. The truth would never set her free.
Charlie McKay’s lengthy list from earlier this afternoon came to her mind. Hadn’t he mentioned he was readying a group to leave in the morning? Hadn’t he said that if she needed anything to just call on him? What had she come to Alaska for, anyway? To work as a storekeeper? No, she had come to take on the trail to riches—Dawson City in the great Yukon Territory of Canada.
She closed her eyes and imagined the gold, saw the nuggets, black on the outside but with gold showing through—the gold always showed through—calling to her, telling her it was her only salvation.
* * *
February 12, 1888
Dear Mrs. Rhodes,
I regret to inform you, dear ma’am, that I have been ill, struck down by many hardships in my efforts to locate Elizabeth. If you’re a praying woman, please intercede on my behalf. This case has taken on such importance in my life that sometimes, I confess, I would abandon it … yet I cannot.
I shall write as soon as I can make further inquiries. I remain your devoted servant.
Sincerely yours,
Jeremiah Hoglesby
Private Detective for Hire
Ten
Noah rolled back over toward the clock, hoping the hands had moved more than five minutes, which was all they had moved the last two times he’d checked. He finally decided he should end this misery and get up. The time was a quarter till four, and he swore silently to himself. This just wasn’t working. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. Getting up, he pulled on his pants, lit the lantern, and looked scornfully at the bed. The sheets and quilt were in a rumpled ball hanging precariously off one end. The floor around the bed was strewn with clothes, and when his gaze reached the kitchen, his frown turned to a scowl. Unwashed dishes were piled up in three pails, large portions of uneaten, dried food sticking to them. Tools were lying around pell-mell wherever he had last used them. The wooden floor was no longer a golden honey color, but muddy brown. Books were everywhere, taken down for a momentary distraction and then tossed to the floor or on the growing piles on the sofa when that hadn’t worked. His cabin was a disaster! Never in his life had he let things go like this. Where was the discipline that he’d honed to a science? What was wrong with him?
Swinging around, he stalked to the washstand and plunged his fingers into the bowl to splash his face. His fingertips hit the thin layer of solid ice on the bottom and he growled in frustration. He hadn’t filled the bowl from his fresh water barrel before going to bed, so the leftover had just frozen up, being so shallow. He gripped the edges of the bowl in frustration. He felt like slugging something. He’d hit the wall if his fingers weren’t already throbbing. Looking up into the oval mirror, he caught a glimpse of himself in the lantern light. There was a month’s growth of beard on his face. He’d worn a beard before, but it had never looked this shabby. There were bags under his bloodshot eyes and his hair was longer than it had ever been. He didn’t think he had ever looked worse. Heck, he was starting to look like an old sourdough. When he thought of what a well-weathered Alaskan (a.k.a. a sourdough) looked like, he almost laughed, but he decided to scowl at himself instead. It better suited his mood.
Walking over to the window, he tugged rather ruthlessly at his beard and sighed. He knew what was causing the problem, and working himself to exhaustion each day was no longer helping. It had barely been a month since his last visit, but he missed her. Just the thought of her face filled him with longing. The icicles were even now dripping from his roof. Spring was just around the corner. If he waited a little longer, just a couple of weeks, the next time he made the trip he could bring her home.
Shrugging into his coat, he spent five minutes looking for his ax and finding it, headed out into the darkness. He gave the enormous woodpile, stacked to the roof around two walls of his cabin, a rebellious glare. So he already had enough wood to last months. He would chop more. The grueling physical labor was his only hope for sleep later. He wouldn’t stop until every tree on his property was cut down if need be. Swinging the ax to his shoulder, he trudged into the woods.
Two hours later Noah had worked off enough steam to go back to the cabin. If nothing else, he knew he had to take care of the animals. After gathering up the supplies and food, he made it to the barn, congratulating himself that he hadn’t thought of her since he’d left the cabin that morning. He shook his head at himself as he watched the dogs wolf down their meat. He was thinking about her again. Nothing worked for very long. Sitting down among his sled dogs, Noah took some comfort in their rambunctious presence.
It hadn’t been too bad when he’d first come back. Jacko had still been there, and he had hung around for a few more days, teasing Noah unmercifully about Elizabeth but keeping the loneliness at bay. Once Jacko was gone, a heaviness had settled over him. Noah had never felt so lonely in all his life, and he’d been alone for so long. He just couldn’t figure it out. She had only been with him a few weeks, and yet in that time she’d destroyed his life. Yep, that’s what she had done all right, destroyed the peace and the disciplined routine that he had prided himself on. With sudden insight, he realized he had thought himself better somehow than other men who weren’t complete without a woman. He’d wanted a wife someday, but he hadn’t ever really needed one before. Sitting on the floor with his knees up, he dropped his head onto his arms and faced the truth. Now, God help him, now he couldn’t even eat for thinking about her. He wanted her in every way … friend … lover … soul mate. It was an ache that wouldn’t go away and gnawed at him every waking moment. He prayed, he ranted to God, but God had been strangely quiet. So what was he going to do about it? He couldn’t go on like this. A man couldn’t live on chopping wood for the rest of his life. Confound that woman, she’d ruined him. She had broken him into little pieces of clay, and she wasn’t even around to appreciate her handiwork. Shelby licked him on the top of his head, causing Noah to look up and rub his lead dog’s face affectionately.
“What should I do, girl?
”
Shelby just stared at him with her pretty blue eyes.
“Well, I can’t go on like this,” he said. “I need to see her.” He didn’t understand the hold Elizabeth had over him, but he finally recognized that he wanted her home with him—for good.
Once the decision was made, Noah felt like a load had been lifted off his shoulders. He once again had purpose, meaning, and energy poured through him. Later today he would take the goat and dogs to his nearest neighbors, a Tlingit camp, for safekeeping. Then he would pack up his meager stack of furs and light out for Juneau in the morning. Now to clean the cabin. He might just be bringing his woman home, and the place had to be spotless.
* * *
IN THE DARK quiet of her room, Elizabeth folded the notes carefully and laid them on her pillow. They were brief, saying only that she had to leave, without any real explanation. If there was one thing she really regretted, it was having to depart before the baby was born. She owed Will and Cara so much more than that. It saddened her to have to leave just when they needed her most. Sighing, she scooped up the bedroll stuffed with her belongings and crept quietly toward the door.
She had pleaded a headache after slipping out to find her errand boy and had remained in her room the rest of the evening. Cara, thoughtful and kind as always, had brought up a tray with her dinner and inquired as to how she was doing. Elizabeth knew Will probably told her about the strange incident with Ross, but she’d successfully convinced her that she just wasn’t feeling well, or so she hoped. When Cara left, Elizabeth had written the notes and quietly worked on getting herself ready to leave. If her plan worked as expected, she hoped to be on her way out of Juneau by early morning. Good ’ol Charlie had better come through, she thought.