She nodded and went out. Brendan crossed over to Kevin.
“Officer, did you learn anything?”
“Many things, Sergeant Fagan. I have written it all down.”
“Are the units willing to talk to you?”
“Some of them are. Some seem to have partially shut down. Those say nothing at all. I still have a few to interview.” Kevin paused. “Several of them are severely damaged. They have had no repairs yet were expected to perform their jobs.”
“Yes, that’s what Mrs. Flude said.”
“One told me his hand got flattened in that selfsame presser. The deceased called him clumsy and left it there until all the joints were burned out.”
“An unpleasant man and no mistake. Do you think one of them killed him?”
“They say not. They say they ran out of work and he put them on standby. When their timers restarted them this morning, they found him like that.”
“Do you believe them?”
“Yes. They are not capable of lying.”
Brendan, not so sure about that, said nothing.
“When they found him,” Kevin went on, “they did not know what to do. They gathered and waited for instructions.”
“Found him? Surely they knew he was dead?”
“That is uncertain. Sergeant Fagan, these are very basic models, most of them, and in poor condition. They lack a higher unit’s ability to discriminate.”
“Would you like my assistance interviewing the others?”
“I believe they will speak more freely to me.”
“Then I’ll just wait for you, shall I?” Brendan glanced at the presser and away again. “Terrible stink in here, though.”
Kevin smiled. “Fortunately for me, Sergeant Fagan, I have no sense of smell.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Only three more streets,” Ginny muttered to herself as the tram rumbled slowly to a halt, belching steam. Then she could get off and walk the rest of the way to the house on Linwood. It felt like a long ride home from her meeting at Phil Ballister’s office, where she’d gone to request he draw up plans to dissolve her interests and ownership in the surviving Landry’s Ladies. To free them all.
She hated the tram, which lurched and swayed, threatening to make her lose the contents of her stomach. To Ginny it seemed to epitomize the things to which she objected about life in the city—dirt, noise, and overcrowding by rank humanity.
Well, humanity and steam units. A number of the latter rode along with Ginny and the human passengers, most looking like they were out on errands for their owners. One stood in the aisle next to Ginny, who shared her bench seat with a large woman holding a sleeping baby.
It would have been faster had she taken a steamcab home. But she detested those even more than the trams. Darting everywhere far too quickly, cutting off pedestrians and other vehicles, she considered them a menace.
She should have hired a horse-drawn cab but hadn’t seen one, and the tram had stopped right there outside Ballister’s office.
Her thoughts broke off as the tram, still stopped at the corner, suddenly rocked violently. Several people in the car exclaimed, and the baby next to Ginny woke up.
“What was that?” Ginny asked the woman.
“I don’t know. The—”
The car rocked a second time, far more aggressively. The steam unit next to Ginny, a large silver model, swayed and banged into her seat. Someone screamed, and the baby in the woman’s arms began to wail.
A man near the front of the car got to his feet and pushed up toward the driver. “What’s happening, driver?” he asked. “The tram should have left the stop by now.”
Before the driver could reply, people all around Ginny began to exclaim, “Look, look! Oh, my God, look!”
She leaned across the large woman and peered out the window. Now, at late afternoon, the descending sun glinted off something silver. Here, there…there again…all around the tram car.
She felt a bump, hard, on the outside of the car, and it swayed again, mightily.
“They’re trying to push us over! They’re going to kill us all!”
Ginny leaned into her neighbor’s lap and pressed her face to the window. She saw steam units, a veritable chain of them, each one beside another, shoulder to shoulder, surrounding the tram. She stared into the molded silver face of the one right outside her window. It had its arms extended, braced against the tram, its very expressionlessness terrifying.
She heard the tram driver exclaim. Seated about halfway down the aisle, she couldn’t see him very well, but he sounded alarmed, and fear gripped her throat. If the steam units pushed the tram over, people—and an awful lot of metal—would go flying. With the big steam unit beside her, she could be mangled or crushed.
She glanced at it as the tram rocked again. The steamie steadied itself, using the bar that ran up from the floor beside her seat, and gave no outward sign of alarm.
The tram shuddered, and the floor beneath Ginny’s feet began to rise. The car seemed to teeter on the far wheels before crashing back down onto the street with a force that rattled her teeth.
The passengers screamed. Ginny’s neighbor cried, “Oh, my baby!”
“Cuddle him against you like this.” Ginny wrapped her arms around the woman, holding the wailing infant close.
The tram tipped the other way, and everything inside shifted. Ginny’s neighbor was thrown against the window with Ginny on top of her. The large steam unit, perhaps pressed by others, came pushing in. She was going to die, crushed here, no breath in her lungs.
That thought exploded into her mind before the left-side wheels crashed back down into contact with the street. A terrible roaring filled her ears; it took her a moment to realize it came from outside. The attackers pounded on the skin of the tram and cried out in dozens of mechanical voices.
The woman seated just ahead of Ginny began weeping hysterically. The tram rocked again.
This time she felt cool metal fingers catch and steady her even as her neighboring unit pressed against her.
“I beg your pardon,” it clicked in a deep voice.
“Can you make them stop?”
The tram crashed back down, and she heard a dual whoosh as the mechanical doors opened. Her heart leaped into her throat.
The silver units would come in. They would…
She had only a poor view of what happened next. A glint of silver—arms?—and the driver was hauled from his seat, down the steps, and out the door.
Everyone screamed.
The baby next to Ginny wailed at deafening volume. Its mother had turned milk white. “We’re all going to die.”
Were they? Damn it all. She hadn’t even slept with Brendan Fagan.
As if her thoughts had conjured him, she saw a flash of blue outside her window. Not him—it couldn’t be him—but the police had arrived. In fact, it appeared a full-fledged riot had erupted in the street outside.
What if Ginny’s neighboring unit, as well as the others onboard, decided to join in? What if every steam unit in the city did? The human population would not stand a chance.
Yet her metal neighbor continued to steady her gently as the tram rocked once more, less violently this time.
“They’re moving. They’re moving away,” the baby’s mother gasped.
“Thank God.”
It took a good ten minutes for the police to clear the units away from the tram. All that time—which seemed much longer—the interior of the car continued to heat up. The woman in front of Ginny had stopped weeping and slumped forward. Ginny wondered if she had fainted.
Eventually a police officer appeared at the rear door, which still stood open, and shouted, “I’d like everyone to exit. In an orderly fashion, please.”
“Is it safe?” a man boomed. “Are those vicious mechanicals gone?”
Vicious mechanicals? Ginny wondered what her silver guardian thought of that. Did it think? She had no time to decide; a stampede began.
Everyo
ne wanted off the tram at once. They exited both fore and aft—or attempted to. The aisles, already full of standing passengers, mostly steamies—immediately clogged, and the screaming resumed.
“Off! I want off,” Ginny’s neighbor wept, tears running down her face.
“I can’t move,” Ginny told her.
The steam unit beside them turned its head. For an instant the molded metal depressions that served as its eyes met Ginny’s gaze. It stiffened its back and held off the pressing crowd.
“Go,” it told them.
She squeezed past, so close she felt the heat from its boiler, knowing it could kill her if it chose. Instead it helped, waiting till her seatmate also pushed past to move. She led the woman with the baby the few short steps to the rear door and down into the street.
The scene outside did not look much better than that inside the car. People milled everywhere, passengers and onlookers alike. Here and there a silver steam unit had been pushed over. Water ran from them like blood. Police made a strong presence. Ginny stumbled away, her arm around her neighbor.
“All right? Is the baby all right?”
“I don’t know. I think so. He’s still hollering.”
So he was. “Do you need help getting home?”
“No—it’s just up there—my mother’s house. I was on my way… Oh, I’ve never been so scared.”
Neither had Ginny. Her heart still pounded, and her legs threatened to give way beneath her.
She looked around, trying to spot the steam unit that had maintained its station beside her. She wanted to thank it but couldn’t catch a glimpse of it anywhere.
When she turned back, the woman with the baby had gone, swallowed up by the crowd as if she’d never existed.
Ginny stumbled back from the thick of the crowd and up a walkway, where she sank onto the stoop of a stranger’s home. She put her head in her hands.
That was no better, for now she could hear everything. A stream of competing conversations, the shouts of the police, and a persistent pounding. No, that was inside her head.
“Miss? Are you injured?”
She looked up into the face of a police officer—not Brendan Fagan. What were the odds he’d find her here? Suddenly she wanted him to, so much it frightened her.
She wanted him.
“Miss, do you need an ambulance? They’re on the way.”
“No. No, I’m…all right.”
“Will you give a statement? You were on the tram?”
“Yes. I didn’t see much.”
“Name?”
“Virginia Landry.”
Did he do a double take? Hard to tell. He scribbled in his notebook rapidly.
“I was on my way home. The tram had stopped at the corner. It—it just started rocking. They came from nowhere…”
“Yes, miss. Give me your address. Someone may want to speak with you later.”
She rattled it off. “Officer, there was a steam unit on the tram—it protected us, me and my seatmate, who had a little baby. They’re not all bad.”
She thought of her steamies back home, earnest and concerned for her comfort.
The officer’s expression did not change. “You sure you’re not hurt? Do you require assistance getting home?”
“No, I…just need a minute.”
He went away. Ginny lowered her face back into her hands, wishing the rest of the world would follow him.
Chapter Seventeen
“Miss Landry? Ginny?”
Brendan’s heart had seized in his chest when he caught sight of the familiar figure crouched on the stoop of the house on the corner. Hunkered down tight, she seemed to have curled in upon herself. The demeanor—so at variance with what he knew of Ginny Landry—frightened him.
She’d been on that tram which had very nearly gone over in a rush of fire and steam. She might well be hurt.
He’d battled his way over as soon as he caught sight of her, and posed his query in a voice that barely sounded like his own.
She looked up at him. Dark eyes burned in a chalky face. Half her hair had tumbled down, and her expression stopped his breath again.
Dropping to his knee beside her, he asked, “Are you hurt?”
“No, I—just shaken.”
“Are you quite sure?” He put his arm around her. Not strict protocol, but at the moment he didn’t care. She’d almost been in the middle of a riot. When human pedestrians on the street had started beating off the chain of steamies bent on tipping the tram, it had very nearly spiraled out of control.
She leaned into him. It felt so blessedly right that for an instant he couldn’t focus on anything else.
“Funny.”
“What’s funny?” he asked; he couldn’t imagine.
“I was just sitting here wishing for you.”
“Were you, now?”
“Yes. And you c-came.” Tears filled her eyes. She blinked them back. Shaken but still not the sort to weep, this one. “How did you find me in all this?”
“Chance. Luck. Fate.”
Her gaze met his, and heat kindled impossibly. Not here, not now, he told himself.
“Hold up a bit. I’ll get someone to see you home.”
“I can go on my own. Just getting some strength back into my legs. I’m sure everyone’s needed here.”
“I am not after letting you walk on your own, not given who you are.”
“You think they’d attack me?”
“God knows what could happen. Those units may have dispersed, but we’re not sure how far they’ve gone. We’re still trying to take statements. Can you hold tight?”
“Will you be able to see me home if I wait?”
Damn it. He wanted to but didn’t know if he could manage it. “I’m not sure.”
The door behind them opened. A steam unit stood there, along with a woman.
The woman said, “Miss, would you like to come in? I saw what happened…”
Brendan helped Ginny up. “That would be most kind, ma’am. I will call for her as soon as I can.”
“Come inside, my dear. Roxie, prepare some tea.”
The door closed. Brendan sucked in a breath. Off the street, at least, and out of the chaos. Would she recover her usual spunk?
Hoping so, he turned away and plunged back into the mess.
****
Hours later, or so it seemed, Brendan returned to the house on the corner and rang the bell. His shift had expired sometime in the midst of the insanity. Night had fallen, and he expected Ginny to have given up on him and left her temporary shelter. But when the steam unit ushered him into the woman’s parlor, he saw her ensconced in a chair, looking somewhat restored.
She sprang to her feet and set her tea cup aside when she saw him.
“Officer,” said the woman who kept her company in the parlor, “is everything resolved outside? We had another policeman come and take our statements earlier, but Miss Landry here wished to wait for you.”
Brendan looked at Ginny. “I’m that glad you did.”
She cleared her throat. “I waited as—as you asked.”
And when had Ginny Landry ever been so obedient? He had a sudden vision of her lying beneath him, obeying his every request, and despite his weariness he rose to the notion.
“I’ll see you home now, if you wish.”
“Oh, yes. Mrs. Howell, thank you so much for your hospitality. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
“I’m only glad I could help. Such a terrifying spectacle. Officer, I hope you and your colleagues have everything in hand.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ginny moved to Brendan’s side and caught his arm, pressing tight against him. They went out into the September evening.
Evidence of the near riot still lay all around. Puddles of water, shards of metal, a residual police presence. Brendan turned Ginny away from it all and up the nearest side street.
“I’m that relieved you waited for me.”
“Are you?”
&nbs
p; “Oh, yes. I’ll have you home in two shakes. It’s not far.”
“I know.”
He measured his steps to hers and caught her when she stumbled. She must be even more exhausted than he.
“That woman was very kind. Imagine taking in a stranger.”
“People can be kind,” he agreed.
“There was a steam unit beside us on the tram. It was kind too. I wish I knew what happened to it.” Her voice roughened. “Oh, Brendan, I was so scared. And I pride myself on not scaring easily.”
“I know that.”
“How? How do you know?”
They stopped walking. Brendan couldn’t explain that he seemed to know her even though he barely knew her. “I just do. Come on. Your place is up here.”
A light shone from the parlor window, and a steam unit opened the door as they approached, the one Ginny called Millie.
“Miss?”
“Oh, Millie, there’s been an…incident. Sergeant Fagan saw me home.”
“Dinner awaits you, miss. Will you dine?”
“I’m not sure…” She turned to Brendan. “Are you hungry?”
“I am, a bit. Don’t remember if I ate since breakfast.”
“Then that would be wonderful, Millie. We’ll dine.”
Millie bustled off, and Ginny turned to face Brendan. “That is, if you can stay. I didn’t think…you must have duties.”
“Fact is, I’m off duty now.”
“Good.” She moved into his arms and laid her cheek against his chest. His heart began to thud. “I need…”
So did he but doubted it would happen this night.
“Ginny, I near fell down where I stood when I saw you there. Why were you on that tram?”
“Coming back from Mr. Ballister’s office. Listen, I want to go upstairs and change. These clothes are filthy.”
“Go on, then.”
“Wait for me in the parlor. You will?”
“Sure.”
“Promise?”
“Ginny, I’m not going anywhere.”
He realized, as he went into the parlor, just how much he meant that. He didn’t want to leave this woman.
Ever.
Alarming—this had never before happened to him. A consistent love-’em-and-leave-’em sort of fellow, he’d managed to keep himself remarkably unencumbered—except that first time with Ruella, and he’d even wiggled out of that with no hard feelings in the end.
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