by Lisa Bingham
Turning, Krupp finally left the scene, knowing that the old man was gone as well, his body still hidden, undiscovered. He’d passed from this world, his wide, sightless eyes and clenched fists revealing he had not been ready for his assailant. Nor had he been ready for death.
As the commotion behind him became frantic, Krupp joined the rest of his men, swinging onto the back of the mount that waited. “Come along, boys,” The Judge called, signaling for them to fall into line. “We’ve got some ground to cover and a lawman to catch.”
“Jacob!”
Rusty burst into the bank office early the next morning, startling the two men who had drunk whiskey and planned until the wee hours before falling asleep in Ethan’s office.
“Come with me. Now!”
The red-headed deputy didn’t wait to see if Jacob followed but ran from the room. After a moment’s hesitation, Jacob did the same, Ethan close on his heels.
A pair of horses waited outside. Rusty had mounted his own gelding and was holding the reins to Jacob’s animal as he ran from the building.
“Ethan? Jacob? Jacob! What in the world?”
Neither he nor Ethan answered as a carriage pulled alongside them and two elderly women peeked out the window, nearly obscuring their charge. Turning into the street, they urged the horses into as brisk a pace as possible with the congested traffic.
The hospital was a good six miles away crosstown. As soon as the stone edifice came into view, Jacob felt a cold bitterness seep into his stomach. He didn’t need to be told why his deputy had brought him here. As the walls grew closer and closer, he sensed the reason behind Rusty’s errand: Dub Merritt must have died.
After all that had happened to the man, Jacob should have been prepared for the possibility. Nevertheless, he found himself filled with a silent rage, an acrid frustration, knowing that they’d lost their only witness to the prison massacre—not that it really mattered. There was enough evidence against Krupp and Stone to see them hanged for murdering the men of Exeter. But Jacob hated death. Especially the senseless death of a lawman.
After leaving their animals with a boy near the front stoop, the three men took the inner stone steps two at a time. Even from a distance, Jacob could hear the hushed murmurs of the staff members who waited outside the ward door. A ward that had been cleared of all other patients to allow the bevy of lawmen who had arrived more room to perform their grim duties.
When Jacob would have stepped inside, Rusty stopped him.
“You’d better prepare yourself.”
Jacob caught more than a simple worry in Rusty’s gaze. A cool finger traced down his spine. His deputy evidently had much more on his mind than the death of a fellow officer.
“What’s wrong, Rusty?” Ethan asked.
The deputy didn’t speak but merely glanced down at the toe of his boot, then up again.
How had Jacob failed to see that the overt concern his deputy displayed had been directed at him? His reactions. His strength.
Rusty drew him to the side, away from the curious medical staff. The foreboding Jacob felt burgeoned, grew, swelling inside him with such a dank, overwhelming power, that for the first time in years, he experienced a very real twinge of fear.
“Rusty?” It was the only word he managed to squeeze from his tight throat with any sense of normalcy.
“They think Dub died late last night, judging by the blood.”
The chill grew stronger. “Do you mean to tell me that the stitches pulled free and no one noticed all that time?”
Rusty shook his head. “He didn’t die of the wounds he received at Exeter.”
Jacob’s chin lifted ever so slightly, as if bracing for a blow. Without waiting for Rusty to explain any more, he stepped into the ward.
Immediately, his gaze flew to the far side of the room where Dub had been ensconced in the last bed. Upon his first glance, the entire scene took upon itself a haze of unreality. He absorbed each minute detail as if time had suddenly ground to a halt, becoming slow, so slow.
He saw the huge puddle of blood beginning to dry on the scarred floorboards, the sheets drenched with more of the stuff, stained with huge patches of scarlet. He noted the way Dub’s fingers lay waxen and lifeless, extending toward the door as if pleading for help. The sightless eyes that lay open to the shadows. The grimace of a painful death.
Jacob’s boots echoed hollowly on the floor as he moved forward. In a dream. This had to be a dream. He knew Dub. Knew his wife. The son he liked to bounce on his knee. Dub liked warm whiskey on cold January evenings and delighted in conning the iceman into giving him a lump in the middle of July so that he could chip it into little pieces and chew on them for most of the afternoon.
“Dub?”
The name slid unwillingly from his lips, conveying quite eloquently the disbelief he felt. The room around him shrank, stinking of death, of fear. The blade that had been driven into Dub’s chest had not been removed, and Jacob felt a surge of anger, wondering why the hospital staff had left him this way, in all the indignities of such a demeaning death.
But as he drew to the foot of the bed, a slow horror seeped into his breast, and he knew why the man had not been disturbed until he’d arrived. Blood covered everything and gleamed garishly beneath the dim gaslight. Even so, there was no disguising the note pinned to the man’s chest, held in place by the blade of the knife. Nor had its crimson hue completely obliterated the symbol that had been scrawled upon the none too subtle missive. An eight-cornered star inscribed with three letters: SCJ.
Jacob had seen that sign often enough in the past to know immediately what it meant. At one time he had even been a member of the vigilante group known as the Star Council of Justice. He’d thought he’d been righting wrongs, helping his fellow man. Instead, he’d become embroiled in a band of mercenaries led by a corrupt judge. They’d been after Ethan then. Ethan, Lettie, and Jacob.
“Krupp.” He hadn’t heard Ethan approach, but his pronouncement came as no surprise. “He did this.”
Jacob’s eyes squeezed closed, and he fought the bubbling nausea. But even though he kept his lashes tightly shut, he could not avoid the image emblazoned on his mind. The sight of his friend. His colleague. The eight-pointed star.
Blinking, he looked again, sure that he must be mistaken. The sight was just as horrible, just as real.
Jacob’s hand tightened around the hilt of his revolver and his jaw grew hard. “Find The Judge. Find the bastard! Then bring him to me.”
A gasp tore through the macabre silence and Jacob whirled, his gut wrenching when he saw Fiona standing in the doorway.
“Damnation! What’s she doing here! Catch her and take her back to the hotel!”
Rusty rushed to get Fiona, but she’d whirled and dodged from the room.
“Where’d she come from?”
“She was in the carriage with the Beasleys. No doubt they followed us here.”
“She won’t know the significance of what she’s seen,” Ethan murmured.
“Not yet.”
“But if Krupp is anywhere nearby…”
Rusty came back, shaking his head. “I couldn’t catch her, but the carriage seemed to be on its way to the hotel.”
“Rusty, I want an extra man who does nothing but follow her wherever she goes. Have another man assigned to the Beasleys. Despite what I say, those women tend to disobey my orders and leave the suite when they please.”
A silence settled about them. An awful gloom.
“What about Dub?” Rusty asked. “Someone’s got to inform his wife.”
The leaden weight of responsibility threatened to choke Jacob. “I’ll tell her.” He could barely force the words from the tightness of his throat. Swallowing in an attempt to ease the pressure, he reached forward, closing the eyes of the man who had suffered so much.
“I’ll tell her,” Jacob said, walking from the ward, the crushing yoke of his job settling even more firmly into pla
ce, reminding him that he had no time—no right—to seek out Fiona and comfort her. There were things he had to tend to first.
Fiona waited for hours. Night piled deeper, Chicago grew looser, less staid. And Jacob didn’t return. She tried not to think too much. She tried to push the images she’d seen from her mind, but she couldn’t deny the way her instincts screamed that something was wrong, very wrong.
Finally, she heard him enter. She waited, not wanting to intrude if he’d brought Rusty with him for a conference, but there were no noises. So much so, she wondered if she’d imagined that he’d returned.
Her feet made no sound as she tiptoed over the carpet, padding out of the bedroom and moving through the silver bars of moonlight that spilled onto the floor from the windows. Inexplicably, the draperies had been flung free and the panes thrown wide. The Beasleys had not been responsible for such a state. After Fiona had returned to the carriage appearing so pale and shaken, they had acquiesced to Jacob’s orders to keep Fiona in her room and hidden from sight. Jacob alone must be responsible for the change.
Seeing the man sprawled in the chair and staring into the evening, she doubted such unaccountable actions had been done out of spite or even to catch the breeze. No, Jacob’s face told her clearly enough that he wanted to escape, that the room had been closing in on him, threatening to smother him. This man loved the outdoors, the wide spaces of the prairie, the solitude, the grandeur.
But upon rounding his chair and seeing him head-on, Fiona realized that her suppositions had been correct to some extent, but there was more she could only guess about. So much more.
She had never seen Jacob this way. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot and a bit vague. His clothing hung untidily upon his body, the buttons only partially fastened, causing the edges to gape and expose the dark hair dusting his chest. In the lax fingers of his left hand, he held a squat glass of whiskey. Judging by the bottle at his feet, it wasn’t the first tumbler he’d consumed.
“Jacob?”
The silence pounded between them, loud and keen. Fiona began to believe that he’d been so immersed in his own thoughts that he hadn’t heard her until he spoke.
“Go away.”
The order was stern and implacable. But there was something buried in its depth. A thread of need. Of utter desolation.
“What happened today? At the hospital? Who was that man?”
“No one that concerns you.” The words dripped with scorn, and she prepared to march into the other room. But she stopped, knowing that was exactly the reaction he expected.
Without uttering a word, she pulled a chair next to him and sat upon the cushions, drawing her feet beneath her and resting her chin on her knees.
Several minutes passed. “Go to bed, Fiona.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Well, I wish you would.”
She didn’t move, and he sighed in frustration.
“Is there nothing in this world that fails to bring out your stubbornness?”
“Very few things.”
He took a healthy swallow of the whiskey, obviously hoping to shock her by his open indulgence. She was not shocked. Indeed, she found herself wanting to startle him a little as well. Taking the glass from his hand, she took a sip, allowing the fiery liquid to trip down her throat and warm her stomach, then handed it to him.
“Not the best I’ve tasted, but certainly not the worst.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is there anything you haven’t done?”
“So very much.” Her earnest reply took him by surprise, but he didn’t comment. Gesturing to the liquor, she asked, “What’s driven ye to drink, lawman? Ye’ve seen death. Ye’ve seen men killed. Why should a stranger in a hospital bed be so different?” This time she consciously used the lilting brogue of her childhood. Not because she was nervous or tense, but because it was employed as a sort of endearment. An intimacy to be shared with someone who’d grown close to her.
Closing his eyes, he rested his head on the back of the chair. His pose displayed an overwhelming weariness.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s not something a man should discuss with a lady.”
One of her brows lifted. “As I recall, you’ve spent most of your time telling me that I’m no lady.”
“Is that new?” He gestured to a pale blue nightshift barely hidden by her wrapper.
“Of course it is. You’ve had me sleeping in a sheet.”
“Mr. Peebles must be very quick.”
“This did not come from Mr. Peebles.”
He frowned at her.
“The Beasleys and I have been shopping off and on for days. We went again this morning. That’s when we saw you rushing toward the hospital.” She saw the way his body tensed, muscle by muscle.
“You were told to stay at the suite.”
“With our departure growing so near, the Beasleys insisted we finish our errands.”
His gaze blazed a trail from her head to the tips of her toes. Fiona found her muscles becoming relaxed, her movements more sinuous.
“Tell me, Jacob: Do you like my new things?” The question held the same husky fire as the scotch she’d drunk. For some unknown reason, she found herself wanting to push this man, to make him see her as a woman, not a criminal, to make him confide in her, Fiona.
“It’s very nice.”
“We found a few more things this afternoon at a little boutique near Lake Shore.”
His gaze grew steely. “I thought I posted a guard outside your room and sent word that you weren’t to go out?”
“So you did.”
“But you went anyway.”
“I had chaperones.”
“The Beasleys are no match for the kind of people you need to be avoiding.”
“We went in disguise and took your guard as well.”
“Disguise?”
“I wore my ugly black suit and a veil.”
He swore, lifting the glass to gulp another healthy portion of liquor. “A veil isn’t going to keep the wrong sorts of people from recognizing you.”
“You would be surprised.” She lowered her feet to the ground, crossing them at the knee—an action that caused the edge of her nightwear to shift and reveal a sliver of her calf. “People feel awkward around the bereaved. They don’t bother to look at you. They don’t want to—as if by seeing your face they’ll be touched by your tragedy.”
Jacob started, clasping her wrist. “Have you experienced tragedy, Fiona?” There was a cutting bite to his question. In an instant, he radiated a patent fury, an overwhelming frustration. His reaction disturbed her—almost frightened her. Lunging up, he planted his palms on the arms of her chair, leaning close. “Have you, Fiona?”
She didn’t know how to respond. This wasn’t the Jacob she knew, the unflappable lawman, the easygoing gentleman. No, this man had a hardness to him, revealing the things that he’d seen and experienced that no one should ever know.
He grasped her cheeks. “Have… you?”
He didn’t give her time to respond. His head dipped and his mouth closed over hers, fiercely, hungrily. Fiona was startled by the blatant need he revealed. It was as if he wished to drown himself in her, to forget everything that had occurred but this moment, this kiss.
Fiona wondered if she should be miffed or even frightened by the overwhelming passion he displayed. But as his tongue flicked out to graze the corners of her mouth, she found she didn’t care, didn’t care at all. Few men had given her a second glance. She and Papa had never really stayed in one place long enough to develop any sort of relationship. Even if they had, Fiona had discovered in the past that few men found her type of woman desirable. They wanted meek, fragile creatures in bonnets and ribbons.
But Jacob… Jacob wanted her. Now.
She pushed him away, framing his face in her hands, needing to see that what she’d sensed was true, that the passion he’d displayed was for
her, Fiona, and not just for the convenience any female might provide.
The fire she saw reassured her. He scanned her hair, her cheek, her neck, and the skin beyond, which pushed above the scooped bodice of her wrapper.
“When?” The word was a bare whisper escaping from his lips.
Her brow creased in confusion.
“When did you become so beautiful?”
The words caused a blooming in her heart, filling an empty portion of her soul that she had always denied existed.
Closing her eyes, she drew him down to her. As their mouths met, softly, gently, she savored the storm of sensation such a simple embrace inspired. Her fingers tightened, pressing into the stubble on his jaw. She found the contact oddly exhilarating, tantalizing. She had never dreamed that a man’s face with a shadowy growth of beard could rub so deliciously on the palms of her hands, sending a rush of gooseflesh over her skin.
The kiss deepened, became something pagan, needy. Fiona gave in wholeheartedly, abandoning the voice of caution that told her this wasn’t real, couldn’t be real. She didn’t care anymore. She didn’t care if such an embrace was transitory or if it led to nothing permanent. She didn’t want to think of the consequences or the future. She wanted to drown in the here and now.
He stood, pulling her with him. Her arms automatically swept behind his neck while his wrapped around her waist, bringing her tightly to the planes of his hips. A slow ache settled in the pit of her belly, one she had never really experienced, not this desperately.
Seeking to ease it, she shifted closer, closer, rubbing herself against him in such a way that caused him to moan and break away.
They were both breathing hard. The stridency of their panting could not be ignored.
“Dammit, I don’t want this to happen,” Jacob whispered.
“I do.” Her admission was stark, honest.
His eyes clouded, adopting a hint of worry. “We don’t belong together. We mix like water and oil.”
“Does it matter?”
“This is wrong.”
“Why?”
“I should be protecting you, shielding you from this very thing.”