Last Orders

by Laura Strickland

  “I’m the one did the persuading, aren’t I? No one else.”

  “What if Mason’s beyond persuading? If his mind’s gone—well, you’re not responsible for that. Brendan? Brendan, look at me.”

  He turned and found her eyes waiting for him, deep brown and full of light. “I think you’re a remarkable man, absolutely remarkable. And however this comes out—whether Pat survives or you lose your job or…or whatever, I’ll not regret the time I’ve spent with you.”

  “Aye?”

  “Aye,” she repeated softly. “And that’s quite a statement for me. I usually end up with regrets—some big, some small. Not with you.”

  Even as gladness at her words touched him, he couldn’t help but wonder about the other men she’d had besides Hank; he ached to ask her about them, desired with a very real passion for her to tell him he was the best. A mutual streak of wildness had brought them together. But what might hold them together? Because he discovered he wanted very much to keep this woman in his life.

  “It’s strange,” she said very softly indeed, “because I’d given up on the very idea of…”

  A thunderous knocking sounded from the front door. The nearest person—a human police officer—hurried to answer it and returned followed by an older man also in uniform. Brendan leaped to his feet, recognizing a man called Emil Klemmer, now retired from the force.

  “Thought you’d be here,” Klemmer said, walking directly up to Brendan. “Captain Addelforce is looking high and low for you. Sent me to seek you out.”

  “Klemmer? I thought you retired.”

  “Captain called me in to help out, now we’re so short-handed. I don’t mind. Buffalo’s in turmoil, and everybody who cares about this city needs to step up and do what he can.”

  “He’s right, Brendan,” Ginny agreed. “You’ll have to go.”

  When she spoke, Klemmer turned his eyes on her. “You’re that Dr. Landry’s daughter, aren’t you?” Curiosity brightened his eyes. “You two courting, then?”

  “Not courting, no,” Ginny answered quickly, and Brendan’s heart sank. “But something like it.”

  “Tell Mrs. Gideon I had to leave.” Still dressed in the black clothes Rom had lent him, Brendan moved to follow Klemmer.

  Ginny caught him back with eager hands. “Not so fast. This is for luck.” She kissed his cheek and, almost in the same breath, whispered into his ear, “Please keep safe, Brendan Fagan. And be sure to come back soon. Because I have something important to tell you, something you need to know.”

  ****

  I have something important to tell you. What kind of foolish thing had that been for Ginny to say to the man as he walked out the door? She should have just come out with the truth, told him straight how she felt about him, while she still had the chance. Granted, opening herself to him emotionally felt far more terrifying than doing so physically when they were in bed together. But was she a coward?

  She never risked her heart. Never, ever. Yet something about the look in his eyes as he turned away made her regret withholding the confession. Words not spoken now might never be spoken at all.

  A ridiculous assertion, she told herself. He’d merely gone to see the captain—in his own city, on his own ground. She’d see him in a few hours, at most.

  Then why did watching him go out the door set all her instincts to howling?

  Chastity Greely emerged from the inner room and approached Topaz Gideon, who’d taken up Brendan’s pacing.

  “Well?” Topaz asked. “Any progress?”

  Chastity’s exquisite face, rather disconcertingly, did not change. “It is impossible to tell. He has the contents of Pat’s head spread over a wide surface in there.”

  Topaz twitched, or perhaps that was a shudder.

  “And he is demanding more supplies—rare metals and things I am not sure we can procure. If this place gets raided and he is hauled away, I fear Pat will have no chance.”

  “What should I tell Rose?”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  They all spun toward the door to the inner room. Rose Kelly stood there looking very much like an ambulating ghost. Someone had put her in a clean nightgown, and her hair hung loose down her back, but the white bandages at her wrists and her face contorted by pain turned the sight of her into something shocking.

  Rasmussen, at her shoulder, looked prepared to catch her if she fell.

  “Rose!” Topaz exclaimed even as everyone else stared. “You shouldn’t be on your feet. Dr. Rasmussen—”

  “I tell her,” the doctor put in unhappily. “It is difficult when a patient cares nothing for her own welfare.”

  Rose Kelly ignored him. “Where is Pat?”

  “In the spare room.” Topaz moved to Rose’s side. “But you won’t do him any good this way.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I need to see him.”

  “Rose, my dear, you truly don’t. Not yet. Give us some more time.”

  “It’s been far too long already!” Rose howled. “I want to see my husband.”

  “Perhaps,” Rasmussen suggested, “just a brief viewing.”

  Topaz blanched, no doubt envisioning, as did Ginny, the scene Chastity had described—Pat’s head open and its contents spread around the inner chamber.

  “No. Just a while longer, Rose. I promise. Repairs are under way. I will send someone for any necessary supplies. I—”

  She got no farther before Rose burst into sobs. Topaz took the woman in her arms; both she and the doctor led her back to her cot in the other room.

  The hours dragged on. Rom Gideon failed to return, though Chastity Greely, sent on a foraging mission with her husband, Terry, came back loaded down with Mason’s requested supplies. On one occasion, everyone in the parlor heard a voice from the inner chamber—Mason’s?—lifted in what sounded like rage, as swiftly hushed again.

  Then, deep into the hours of the night, the young officer called Dennis arrived, hat in hand and looking apologetic.

  “How’s Pat?” he asked the room at large. Looking crestfallen when Ginny and the others shook their heads, he went on, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the captain’s desperate. He says if Brendan’s here I’m to bring him at any cost.”

  Ginny shot to her feet. “But he reported to Captain Addelforce hours ago.”

  They stared at one another, minds at cross purposes. Dennis shook his head. “He didn’t. I’ve just come from the station. The captain wants to send him to the site of this latest murder. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.”

  Cold drenched Ginny from the head downward. “You must be mistaken. Addelforce sent that man he called in—Klemmer, I think Brendan called him.”

  “Emil Klemmer? The captain hasn’t called him in, so far as I know. Listen, how long ago did they leave?”

  “Hours,” Ginny repeated. Her heart started to pound. She remembered what Brendan had said about this case feeling off—his conviction there had to be a missing piece. Was this man Klemmer that piece? Had she let him walk off with Brendan from right under her nose?

  And if so, where could they be in this big, dark, and crowded city?

  Suddenly Rose Kelly’s fear became personal. She wanted to rage and wail, to howl at the sky.

  Instead she seized Dennis’s arm. “What do you know about this man Klemmer? Where could they be?” She struggled for breath. “You’d better take me to Addelforce.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Holy Jaysus.” Brendan grunted involuntarily as his broken arm was pulled behind and—despite the cast—bound to the other one. Agony washed through him in a dark wave, and he fought it back desperately.

  Fool, fool, fool. He’d been a right idjit to go off with Klemmer, taking the man’s appearance at face value, climbing into the cab he had waiting—not a steamcab but a regular horse-drawn one. There he found three dark figures waiting, all with black hoods over their faces. He’d realized his mistake then, right there i
n front of Pat’s house with the automatons standing all around. He’d tried for escape, but the three men wrestled him back onto the seat and the cab moved away at a fast clip down Bryant Street toward Main and into the darkness.

  The same three had manhandled him into a blackened building somewhere down around Main and Broadway, battering him when he tried to resist, landing several blows on his busted ribs. They’d tied him to a chair, both hands behind him, and at present he didn’t think much of his chances. The three thugs—brave men all—kept their hoods in place. Too bad. Brendan would have liked to spit in those faces.

  Unable to do that, he glared at Klemmer instead, struggling to recall more about him. The kind of officer who always did his job, he’d been nearing the end of his career when Brendan entered the force. Brendan would have said the man had just been marking his days then, waiting for retirement, which must have occurred over a year ago.

  Brendan did recall Klemmer being vocal over the matter of the Irishmen hanged at the jail and sold to Charles and Mason—the raw materials, so to speak, for their hybrids. There’d been comments like, “They’re just Irish” and “Maybe now they’ll work for a living.” As Brendan well knew, prejudice still existed, and not only toward automatons.

  Now he began to wonder if Klemmer’s dislike had another cause. A far darker one…

  He should have seen the pattern, should have figured there was more to it than a bunch of rogue steam units. Thought himself so clever, he did, yet here he sat duly caught and the door slamming not only on his career but his future.

  Ginny.

  Heart struggling in his chest, he reached for her the way a bird in a cage strains for the open air.

  “Well now,” Klemmer said, eyeing him up and down. “Sorry to make you uncomfortable, Fagan, but I can’t take any chances on you getting away. You’ve proved a right pain in my backside, do you know it? Sympathizer that you are.”

  “Sympathizer?” The word came out in a croak that made Brendan ashamed of himself. But he seemed to be having trouble getting air into his lungs, and his cracked ribs screamed at him. “I’m no…”

  “Save it, Sergeant. I’ll not hear your lies. You’ve been on the side of the automatons all the while. Friends with that monstrosity that calls itself Patrick Kelly and that mob of machines that go around professing to be the Irish Squad. How can they still be Irish, for Christ’s sake? It’s an abomination.”

  “They—”

  “You’re a turncoat. A traitor to the cause. Your mother must weep over you.”

  “The cause.”

  “To rid ourselves of those vile, metal contraptions that prance about this city pretending to be men.”

  The three hooded figures chimed in with growls of agreement. It sounded uncanny in the big, darkened room.

  “I’m no sympathizer,” Brendan insisted. “I just think everybody deserves a fair chance.”

  “You’re right, Sergeant. So everybody does—every body made in God’s likeness of flesh and blood. Not ungodly machines bent on taking over the force, our city, and the world. We’re putting a stop to it here and now, do you understand? Before it spreads. Before they gain these rights they’re after and we find ourselves working for them.”

  Brendan said nothing, though his thoughts clattered like a fast horse down a narrow street. The Automaton Liberation Movement had put a lot of humans on edge, and they’d started fighting back. His own physical condition reflected that. Quite obviously, the divide in the city had become a wide fracture. Were Klemmer and his crew responsible for the murders? Not rogue or disgruntled steamies at all but men who wanted to put the automatons in the very worst light?

  He drew another breath; this one came just a bit easier. “I’ve been a pain in your backside, have I?”

  “You ask too many questions, even for a policeman. Don’t you know a good cop does his job and no more? Walks his beat, answers to his superiors, and keeps the base element at bay. Your trouble, Sergeant”—Klemmer paused and waved a finger in Brendan’s face—“is you don’t know what’s good for you. You’re too ambitious. And that’s a selfish trait.”

  “Is it?”

  “You need to think about what’s best for all of us—the humans of this city—like the rest of us have done.”

  “You’re heroes, are you?” Brendan asked.

  The three hooded men stirred on their feet. One grunted.

  “We’re heroes,” Klemmer confirmed proudly. “Vigilantes. We’ll make folks see the danger lurking among us before we’re done. Not like you.”

  Klemmer stepped closer to Brendan’s chair, seized him by the hair, and drew his head back so he might glare into his eyes. “You’re a right disgrace, Sergeant.”

  “Am I?”

  “Consorting with the worst of them.”

  “You mean the members of the Irish Squad.”

  “Not them, though they’re bad enough. I’m talking about the daughter of that unnatural witch who created another crop of those things—harlots, no less! Don’t try and deny it. I saw her kiss you. And the whole force knows you’re sleeping with her. I still have plenty of friends on the force.”

  Ginny. This time Brendan’s stomach turned over when he thought of her. Was she still safe?

  Was anyone in this city really safe?

  Now he growled, “Leave her out of it.”

  “I’d like to, Sergeant. I truly would. No man of any worth likes harming a woman. But that woman carries evil in her bones, and that evil shouldn’t be passed down to another generation. We need to stamp it out—all of it. Right, men?”

  The three hooded figures again chimed in their agreement.

  “She’s not like her mother.” Ah, and he should have let Ginny leave Buffalo as she’d planned—should have sent her far away from here to where she’d be safe. Because suddenly her safety meant far more to him than his own.

  If he didn’t escape from here he couldn’t protect her. And looking into Klemmer’s staring eyes, he didn’t like his chances of escaping.

  “Have some faith in your city,” he grated out. “Trust the people and the automatons to find a way to exist together.”

  “Trust? Automatons?” Klemmer gave a hard laugh. “They’ve not a drop of humanity in them, Sergeant. They’ve already begun turning good folks—like yourself—into their puppets. How long before they seize positions of power? No, no—they must be stamped out. Made illegal. Declared dangerous and abolished.”

  Hence the staged murders all over the city. Aye, in a twisted way it made sense. Men like Klemmer might not see the humanity that lurked within every automaton—the aching desire for personhood. Maybe they didn’t want to see.

  Klemmer leaned down and spoke directly into Brendan’s face. “You, Sergeant, were getting too close. You would have tumbled to the truth soon. Now you’ll make another piece in the pattern—sadly beaten to death while investigating a murder in a back alley. Must have come upon the murderous steamies before they quite got away. Great loss to the city—you being such a rising star—and to that bitch you’re bedding.”

  Brendan’s mind flailed like a gasping fish. He didn’t want to die; of course he didn’t. Especially here in this grubby room, tied to a chair so he couldn’t fight back. Worse, though, was knowing he’d have no chance to warn Ginny, that she’d likely be next in this maniac’s march toward eradication.

  He had to get free, had to say whatever he could, whatever he must to change Klemmer’s mind about him and allow for escape.

  “Wait now,” he gasped eyeing the three thugs, one of whom had drawn a billy club from the pocket of his coat. “Give a man a moment to think. Mr. Klemmer here is making a great deal of sense.”

  “Oh, don’t even try and talk me round, Sergeant. You think I’ll believe anything you say? Do you take me for a fool? Even the ardent missionary will renounce Jesus when his feet hit the cooking pot.”

  “But I’d be a valuable man to have on your side.”

  “So you would, and it’s a g
reat pity you went the other way. We could never trust you. You’ll just have to be chalked up as another casualty of those dangerous machines—a damned convincing one, I should think. Shows the automatons can turn on even one of their closest allies. But we’ll put it about you must have been closing in on the truth about them. A bit ironic that, isn’t it?”

  Oh, yes.

  “Me, I love irony. When you’re found in that alley, nothing but a pile of broken bones in a pool o’ blood, now, that will be the very picture of irony.”

  Klemmer gestured with one hand. “Take him, boys.”

  “Big men, brave men,” Brendan rasped at the three figures, “taking on a fella who’s trussed to a chair. You think any good copper will believe that? It needs to look like I fought back—because I damn sure would. You’ll have to untie me.”

  And what good would that do? He might be strong and could rely on a rush lent by mingled fear and determination, but he had a broken arm and four busted ribs. What could he hope to do against three thugs armed with billy clubs?

  Klemmer must have arrived at the same conclusion. He nodded at the thugs and one of them stepped forward to untie Brendan, no more gently than he’d been tied in the first place.

  “There, Fagan. Can’t say I’m not a fair man. No machine, me. Human kindness runs through my veins. But it’s going to end for you here, understand?”

  Ginny, Brendan thought again. He should have told her exactly what she meant to him when he had the chance, thrown caution to the winds and expressed his devotion. If he survived, he vowed he would.

  If he survived.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “You need to find him. Do you understand that? Why are you just sitting there?”

  Raging like a wild woman, Ginny stood before the desk of Captain Addelforce, who seemed to have aged by years overnight. Had she been thinking clearly, she would have perceived the truth—the man looked nearly as desperate as she felt.

  She didn’t care about that, though. A single thought dominated her mind, and her will had leaped to the fore.