A Desperate Hope

by Elizabeth Camden

  She’d have fallen if the arm around her waist wasn’t so firm, but finally there was a jerk, and the train began moving, inching its way out of the station. The gun was still jammed to her ear, and she’d never felt so helpless as the train pulled away and the two detectives slid into the distance. The boxcar door was still open as they left the railyard, then passed a series of warehouses and an open field. A group of boys played stickball in an empty lot. The rest of the world carried on while the old soldier was dead and a madman had a gun to her head.

  “Let’s step back,” Kasper said. Stacks of lumber filled the space behind them, but she obeyed as much as possible. The door of the boxcar was still wide open, adding to her trepidation.

  “In a few minutes, we’re both going to jump,” he said.

  “Jump where?”

  “Jump off, Miss Drake. You didn’t really think we’re going to Milton, did you?”

  She blanched. The train was moving at full speed, and the countryside flew past at an alarming rate. Kingston was gone, and now they were in the middle of unbroken forest. Kasper clung to the open frame of the door with one hand but still aimed the gun at her with the other. Wind ruffled his hair as he scrutinized the countryside ahead of him.

  “In one more minute, you are going to jump,” he said. “I’ll follow the moment you’re off. Don’t try anything stupid. Remember, if you play by the rules, you’ll be fine.”

  How could he know where they were? The barren trees flying past the open door all looked the same to her, but soon the forest thinned. Sunlight glinted on water through the trees, so they had to be close to the river. Gravel covered the raised track bed, and it would be awful to land on it.

  “Now, Miss Drake.” Kasper held the gun straight at her. “Jump now with everything intact, or I shoot off your ear and then you jump. Your choice, but make it quick.”

  This was going to hurt, but Kasper took a step closer to her.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  She held her breath and jumped. Her knees banged hard, and her hands slammed against the gravel. She tumbled down the embankment, helpless against the momentum. Even after her body stopped rolling, everything kept whirling. She pushed onto all fours, tugging her skirts aside to scramble upright. Could she make it to the woods before Kasper got his gun?

  It was pointless. There’d be no cover in the barren forest, and Kasper was already on his feet, his gun back in hand. A trickle of blood tracked down his face, much like the blood on both her palms. The gravel roadbed hadn’t been kind to either of them.

  “Very good, Miss Drake,” he panted. “Now we’re heading for the river, and after a few hours of good behavior, you’ll be set free. Keep your hands in plain view as we walk. Don’t try any heroics.”

  “I’m an accountant,” she said. “We don’t do heroics.”

  Heroism was easier to imagine when reading Treasure Island or Ivanhoe. Right now she felt like a whipped dog as she trudged into the forest, her feet sinking into mucky soil with each step. She scanned the land on either side of her, desperate for a sign of civilization, but there was nothing aside from a squirrel racing through the carpet of decaying leaves. Her entire body hurt, and a cut on her lip leaked a salty tang of blood.

  “Why did you shoot the old soldier?” she asked, her voice shaking as they walked farther into the woods. The sight of that kind man sprawled on the platform would haunt her forever. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I didn’t want to, but the train station was under surveillance. They were planning to arrest me, and I needed to get out.”

  “What makes you think they were about to arrest you?”

  Kasper let out a whoosh of breath, and suddenly she sensed he was as exhausted as she was. “I eavesdrop on the wires, you know that,” he said as though she were a simpleton. “Those detectives were using a telegraph station at Kingston and didn’t realize I could hear every word. They wired the Russian embassy in Washington that a person from Finland was about to be arrested for the deaths of twenty-three Russian citizens, and asked if they wanted me deported to Russia. So I needed to get out, and fast. I’m sorry about the old soldier, but it was him or me.”

  By now they were nearing the river, over a mile wide with choppy gray water and no sign of a town on either side. A flat-bottomed barge waited along the riverbank in the distance. She froze, for a man on the barge took a cigar from his mouth and sent them a brief wave.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Kasper said. “It’s only Jack, and we’re in this together.”

  A fresh round of fear gripped her, for it would be impossible to escape, now that there were two captors. “Were you the town snitch?” she asked as they walked toward the barge.

  “Snitch has such a derogatory connotation,” Kasper said. “A snitch is nothing more than a purveyor of information. It’s a service, if you will.”

  She detected the trace of his accent again, and Eloise had the sensation she was walking alongside the man who had written the incriminating message on the back of the Garrett scrip. Tasha had said the Russian note was badly written, probably because Kasper wasn’t a native speaker of the language, merely a man who grew up in Russian-occupied Finland.

  Jack Riesel lowered a wooden plank for them to board when they drew alongside the barge. He tossed a cigar over the side, and Eloise recognized the cedar-scented tobacco from the night she’d been shot. How many times since that night had she smiled and worked alongside Jack, never realizing he was the one hunting her that night? He always had a peppermint stick in his mouth when she was with him, but it seemed he liked cigars when doing dirty work. A chill raced through her, but she mustn’t let on that she suspected him.

  “Welcome aboard,” Jack said with a regretful smile. “I apologize for all the trouble this morning. You certainly don’t deserve any of it, but in a few hours everything will be over, and we’ll set you free. That’s the plan, so long as you cooperate. Okay, Eloise?”

  His face was soft and open, but his breath reeked of the cedar-scented cigar.

  A glance around the barge didn’t reveal much. A wheelhouse enclosed the captain’s wheel and pumps. It was a working barge, with barrels, piles of rope, and casks of fuel on the deck. Only a few things looked incongruous. Stacked alongside the wheelhouse were some fine leather trunks and traveling bags. She glanced at Kasper, whose face had turned grim.

  “All my worldly goods, packed and ready to accompany me back to Finland,” he said bitterly.

  “Finland?”

  “I can hardly remain in the United States, can I? Those gravediggers are about to put all the pieces together.”

  “Did you mean to kill the Russians?”

  Kasper shot a glare at Jack, who answered her question. “What happened was exactly what was written on that piece of scrip. It was an accident. We didn’t mean for them to be seriously hurt.”

  “Except that you blamed Bruce Garrett for it, when it was you all along.”

  Jack was defensive in his reply. “I was the enforcer during the strike, and I was good at it. Accidents happen. I tried to cover it up so no one would ever know, and the note Kasper wrote on the scrip was only an insurance policy should the boxcar be discovered. Neither of us wanted what happened. Everything would have been fine if that stretch of land hadn’t been seized by the state for development.”

  She wished he wasn’t telling her all this. It meant they probably didn’t intend to let her survive this trip.

  “Forgive me, but I must ask you to step inside the hold,” Jack said. “I assure you, as soon as Kasper and I are safely out of the country, you will be released to go about your business. We don’t want to hurt you, and in a little less than twelve hours, we will all be free.”

  Jack held open the door to the hold. Built alongside the back of the wheelhouse, it was little more than a closet lined with shelves of tinned food and coils of rope hanging from pegs. There were no windows, and it would be pitch-black inside.

  �
�Don’t make me go in there,” she stammered through suddenly chattering teeth. “I’ll be good. I won’t try to escape.”

  “I know you’ll be good, because you’ll be locked in the storage hold. We won’t be able to guard you all night long,” Kasper said. “Now get inside, or I’ll be required to demonstrate another show of force.”

  Her mouth went dry. A true hero would make a valiant lunge for freedom rather than obediently walk into captivity, but she wasn’t much of a hero. Her heart sank as she eyed the lock on the door. The iron bolt was thicker than her thumb and secured by a heavy padlock. It would be impossible to escape once she was locked inside.

  Kasper sighed. “You have such pretty ears too. Jack? Brace yourself, I’m about to perform an unpleasant task.”

  “I’ll go!” she said.

  Five seconds later she stood in the musty closet and listened to the bolt slide shut and the padlock click into place. She was trapped. It was pitch-black in here, and there was no way out.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  Hercules shook off his despondency from the previous evening and came to Alex with a surprising suggestion.

  “The McGregor house has been sitting empty ever since they moved to Albany in December. How about we jack it up and move it to Highpoint for us to live in? It will save the state the cost of knocking it down.”

  Why not? There didn’t seem to be any reason for the state to deny them an abandoned house, but Alex knew better than to expect reason whenever government bureaucracies were involved. Eloise was expected back within the hour from driving the old soldier into Kingston, and he’d ask about their odds of getting the house. The prospect of living in a real house for the first time in his life was immensely appealing.

  “Let’s go look,” he said, excitement burgeoning inside.

  They sprinted to the east side of town, where the two-story house sat on an abandoned street. They had to break in through a window, since the front door had been locked. Their footsteps echoed on the hardwood floors as they moved through barren rooms stripped of furniture and the embellishments that made a house a home. But Alex didn’t see barren rooms. He saw gathering places where children would laugh and come of age.

  He and Hercules walked each room, envisioning which pieces of furniture from the tavern could be moved here. Outside, the sky clouded over and rain began to fall, making the interior even gloomier, but every inch of this house brimmed with possibility. Heedless of the rain, they circled the house to measure the foundation and inspect the windows. Everything about this building was well-made and likely to survive the move. They wouldn’t have time to build a basement, but if they acted fast, they could get this house moved in time.

  It was late in the afternoon before they made it back to the town square. The nonstop drizzle meant Alex was likely to find the demolition crew in the hotel. He and Hercules were accustomed to working through the rain, but he’d bet his bottom dollar that Claude would have set up shop in the hotel’s dining room.

  He was right. Claude and Enzo sat before mounds of paperwork, completely ignoring the telegraph machine that rattled unattended.

  “Where’s Kasper?” Alex asked. Kasper was the only person who knew how to operate the telegraph, and he hadn’t set up the Morse inker to catch messages.

  “No idea,” Willard said. “Whoever is on the other end of that message has been persistent. It keeps going off every few minutes, and it’s been driving me insane. I’m tempted to yank the wire from the wall.”

  “What about Eloise, is she back yet?”

  Willard shook his head. “Nope, and she promised to bring us back a chocolate torte from the bakery in Kingston.”

  It was worrisome. Eloise should have returned by now, but maybe she had decided to wait for the rain to stop. In the meantime, he needed to make arrangements to save the McGregor place. They might be able to buy a few more days.

  “Enzo!” he said in a hearty voice. “Let’s talk about the order of demolition. You probably aren’t going to get to the east side of town for a while, right?”

  Before Enzo could reply, a pounding of footsteps was followed by the hotel door nearly being torn off its hinges. Bruce Garrett stormed into the lobby, his face a thundercloud.

  “Saddle up every able-bodied man you can find,” he ordered. “Kasper Nagy killed the old soldier and made a run for it. He’s kidnapped Eloise too.”

  Alex listened in disbelief as Bruce relayed the story. The sheriff in Kingston had placed a telephone call to Garrett’s mansion, telling them that Kasper Nagy had made a daring escape when the detectives tried to arrest him for the death of the Russians. Garrett admitted that Kasper had also been the town snitch, with excellent access to everyone’s secrets as the only telegraph operator in town. He’d eavesdropped at the hotel and carried out a lot of dirty work for both Garrett and Theodore Riesel over the years.

  Alex didn’t care about ancient history. None of that mattered until they got Eloise back.

  Garrett’s voice was frustrated as he continued talking. “Kasper left a set of demands to be met at the Milton depot, but when the train stopped, there was no sign of either Kasper or Eloise. They bailed off the train somewhere in the thirty miles of wilderness between Kingston and Milton.”

  The stop at Milton had obviously been a ruse, but figuring out Kasper’s plan would be a complicated guessing game. Unless Alex could find some clues.

  “Do you have a key for this safe?” he asked Willard as he yanked the cuckoo clock that covered it from the wall.

  Willard shook his head. “It’s Western Union property. Kasper has the only key.”

  “Forget keys,” Hercules said. “We’ve got sledgehammers.”

  Two minutes later they had retrieved sledgehammers and crowbars from the yard outside. Alex extracted the safe from the hole in the wall, struggling to balance the heavy metal box as he lowered it to the floor with a thud.

  “Have at it,” he told Hercules.

  Hercules hefted the sledgehammer high, bringing it down on the rim of the safe with an earsplitting clang. It wasn’t the strongest safe, and after a dozen blows, the door no longer fit neatly inside the frame. Alex wiggled a crowbar into the crack, and after a few more blows from the sledgehammer, they were able to pry the door open.

  Alex pulled out stacks of paper, most of it run-of-the-mill forms for Western Union, but some papers didn’t fit. A map of the Hudson River with markings. An advertisement for a steamship due to sail for Rotterdam tomorrow. A separate page contained ticket prices and the port of embarkation in New York.

  “Kasper is heading for New York City, and it looks like he’s doing it via the Hudson.”

  The train Kasper had dragged Eloise onto ran alongside the Hudson River for miles, and they’d obviously bailed out well before Milton. Eloise would be a useful hostage all the way to Manhattan, but after that, her survival didn’t look good.

  “I want my daughter back,” Garrett declared. “I don’t care what it takes.”

  “Daughter?” Claude asked. “I thought she was only your—”

  “She’s my daughter,” Garrett interrupted. “Nothing in my life has made me prouder than that girl, and I want her back.”

  Part of Alex wished Eloise could hear that declaration, but the most important thing was getting her back. He focused on the map and saw an excellent spot to intercept a ship well before it reached Manhattan.

  “West Point,” he said, pointing to the map. “He won’t be expecting an attack there, and the folks at the military academy will be able to help. Let’s get started.”

  Even trapped inside the hold, Eloise could hear the argument raging between Kasper and Jack. With her ear pressed against the wood, sound transferred almost as well as if she were in the room.

  “Ten thousand dollars is plenty to set yourself up in style in Finland,” Jack said.

  “But it’s Finland,” Kasper growled. “It’s under the boot of the Russians, and it’s freezing year-round. I
need another ten thousand to buy my silence for good.”

  “And you’ll get it, but you’ll have to wait until the quarry is mine.”

  Her mouth went dry. It was the third time Jack had implied he would soon own the quarry, and she wondered if this was related to the legal documents Bruce had been working on regarding the inheritance of his property.

  “With luck, Garrett will still swing for killing the Russians,” Jack said. “If he wiggles off the hook . . . well, accidents happen all the time. Especially in quarries with blasting and rock slides.”

  Her heart sank. Jack intended to waltz back into town and continue life as before. That could only happen if she was dead, and he planned on taking Bruce out soon too.

  “When?” Kasper demanded. “Don’t think I can’t stir up trouble for you even if I’m in Finland.”

  “An accident now would look suspicious,” Jack said. “I’ll be sure it happens within a year or two. First we take care of the little problem, then I’ll go after the big problem. The little problem will be an excellent hostage until you’re safely out of the country. So far she hasn’t been any trouble at all.”

  Her heart pounded so fast she went dizzy. Once she and Bruce were dead, the quarry would go directly to Jack. Conversation halted, and soon Eloise smelled the reek of cedar-scented cigar. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from gagging, but the conversation had come to an end.

  She was probably going to die tonight, and her life was full of regrets.

  No . . . actually, it wasn’t. All in all, she was mostly proud of her life. She’d done well by Tasha and the baby. She’d gotten her accounting certification and done honorable work for companies who needed her help.

  Her only real regret was Alex. They had been perfect together, even though they were complete opposites. He sparked a bold streak in her, while she helped tame his wildest impulses, and she had loved every moment of it. Alex had been right. They were one for the ages, and she regretted it had taken her this long to realize it.