by Pam Crooks
“Get down, get down!” Jack choked out, but Grace already felt herself crumpling, her body racked by coughing. She squeezed her eyes against the terrible sting. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. She needed air. Sweet, fresh air….
Grunts and oaths penetrated the deep fog that surrounded her. Noise, so much noise and confusion. Men yelling, women screaming, furniture crashing, glass shattering.
Strong arms banded around her, lifting her high above the floor. She clung to the arms, to the lean body cradling her against his chest, saving her, taking her away from the awful smoke.
Something soft covered her face; her nose and her lungs instantly reacted, sucking inward.
Sucking her into a black abyss.
Chapter Sixteen
“She’s coming to.”
Grace clawed through the oblivion and grasped onto the shredded reality of a voice. Someone male, someone close. Her eyes cracked open. Her brain swam to comprehend her surroundings.
A tiny shack. Squalid and cold. A lone kerosene lamp illuminated the cobwebs clinging to the rafters. A dirty blanket covered her, and she lay on a hard, narrow cot. Blurred shapes of two men stood over her, watching her, and oh, God!
She scrambled to sit up, flinging aside the foul covering as if it was reeking meat. Assailed with dizziness, she grabbed the edge of the cot.
“Careful.” One of the men reached out a hand, as if sure she’d fall. “You need a little more time.”
She stared at him in the lantern’s light. Darkly handsome, with a thin moustache, neatly trimmed hair, black eyes and one slightly angled eyetooth….
“What I need is out of here.” Her voice didn’t sound like her own, but raspy and desperate. “Damn you, Boone. Get me out of here!”
“Alexandre.” The word quivered with warning. “Never call me Boone again.”
Grace saw her mistake and learned from it. “Of course.” She nodded carefully, knowing she had to play the game. “Forgive me.”
He straightened to his full height. In his gray herringbone suit, he appeared a man of influence. Well-bred and proud. “Are you strong enough yet? Our work must begin.”
She didn’t move. “Where are we? Where’s Jack?”
“Forget Jack.” The second man spoke. “He is of no use to you now.”
Her stare swiveled. Recognition slammed into her belly, stealing her breath. A man so handsome, so cunning and capable of betrayal, her heart squeezed with instant hate.
“Hello, Charles.” Grace stood on legs barely steady. “How strange it must feel for you to be hiding here in the cold and filth when you’re accustomed to… finer pleasures.”
“It will not be forever.”
“Yet for Alexandre, who has lived no better than a savage, it did seem that way. Forever.” Her glance touched on the other man. She understood the fragile threads that kept her tethered to Boone. She feigned her compassion. “Didn’t it, Alexandre?”
A muscle in his lean cheek leapt. “Yes.”
“It had to be done,” Charles snapped coldly.
“Of course. By someone other than yourself.” She reined in her contempt and regarded him. “Your name isn’t really Charles Renner, is it?”
He hesitated, the barest of moments. “No.”
“Then what shall I call you?”
“Charles, as you always have. It is who I am to you.”
“I want to know the truth.”
Because he’d lied to her so often, for so long, it was imperative to Grace to know. To be less of a fool.
“It won’t hurt to tell her,” Alexandre said, a hint of impatience in his voice. “She sympathizes with us.”
Words to deny him sprang fast on her tongue. Sympathize? Hardly. Yet she didn’t dare speak her denial, not when she needed Boone as her ally, needed to retain his trust.
“She has not earned the truth,” Charles told him.
“Oh?” Grace crossed her arms against the cabin’s chill. Or maybe it was this frigid side of Charles that left her cold. “Have I not acted as a friend to you from the time we were introduced? I’ve been nothing short of sincere in all of my dealings with you, as had my grandmother, Allethaire, and everyone else in the Society.”
“Then you served your purpose for me, did you not?”
“As your pawn for stealing the funds you helped us raise?” she shot back.
“I worked as hard as you did for that money, Grace,” he snarled. “Harder, in fact.”
“And that gives you the right to—to just take it in an elaborate scheme—”
“You will never be able to prove anything.” He appeared so calm, Grace shivered. “I have all your grandmother’s records.”
She went still. The records from her satchel? The ones she’d kept in the hatbox so she could incriminate him?
“Where are they?” She needed to see the red-ribboned hatbox for herself to know he was telling the truth. Because she was afraid he was, and she didn’t want to believe him. She prayed he was just lying again, as skillfully as he’d always lied.
“Did you think you were so clever, Grace?” He appeared amused. “Hiding them in a satchel where even a hapless mouse could find them?”
She battled panic. “Those papers belong to the Society. Not to you or to me. You have to give them back, Charles, or the library project will surely fail. You know what a loss that would be. You know!”
He swung toward Alexandre. “Let us hurry. It will be dark soon.”
With a quick nod, Alexandre stepped aside, toward a crudely built table, and there laid the hatbox, looking woefully feminine and out of place in the squalor. Forgotten, almost, begging for Grace to take it back.
She’d have to find a way, but for now, sitting next to the hatbox, a brown bottle plainly labeled Ammonium Nitrate and the small pile of rolled up newspapers tied in string, reminded her of the violence these two men were capable of.
The smoke bombs were only the beginning.
Her pulse pounded in worry for all she’d left behind. Had anyone been hurt? Jack? Allie or Mick or the others?
Grace trembled from knowing if they were, it would be her fault. Everything was her fault. The violence, the terror—if she could only read like any other educated adult, if she hadn’t come to Great Falls to seek Allie’s help in deciphering her grandmother’s records pertaining to the Ladies Literary Aid Society, then none of this would be happening.
Worse, it was far from over. Charles and Boone had gone to a great deal of trouble to bring her out here to this dilapidated shack. They believed she was worth the risk. That she was of some benefit to them.
She couldn’t fathom why. Or how.
“Come, Grace.” From seemingly out of nowhere, Boone produced her camera. Her prized Kodak, stolen out of her satchel, too.
He thrust it at her, gripped her elbow and pulled her toward the door. “The light won’t last much longer.”
“Remember she has no coat, Alexandre. She cannot work for you half-frozen.” Charles plucked the musty blanket off the cot. “Wrap her in this.”
“What is it I am to do, Alexandre?” she asked, ignoring Charles and the careless way he draped the dirty blanket over her shoulders.
“Take my picture, Grace.” With an eagerness that attested to the vanity he’d too long kept suppressed, Boone half pushed her out the door and past two horses, tethered at a post. “As many as I want.”
“You want me to photograph you?” Outside, her steps faltered. She blinked up at him, partly from the sharp cold, partly from shock. “Whatever for?”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she realized her mistake. She remembered the game she had to play, the trust she needed to keep, and she hastened to reclaim her place in Boone’s fanatical mind.
“Oh, of course.” Instantly, she stopped fighting him. “I understand now. How could I have forgotten?” She managed an acknowledging nod. “For… the Revolution.”
His lips curved with approval beneath the thin m
oustache. “What else, my love?” He wore no coat himself, but it didn’t seem to matter. “Many times, I’ve thought of how best to present myself to this country and my own. I know now, and you will help me.”
The soles of Grace’s button oxford shoes slipped over the crusty, uneven snow. Now that she was outside, she must get her bearings and discern her location, because once these pictures were taken, Charles and Boone would flee. Boone would take her with him, driven by the infatuation he felt for her and the misguided belief that she’d be a perfect tool with which to help him win his Revolution.
Besides, she knew too much.
A mountain stream sparkled beneath the setting sun and flowed beyond an outcropping of rock. Alongside, a line of trees, and in the distance, Great Falls sprawled… and she knew, then, where she was. Where she’d been just yesterday with Allie. Where Carl and Boone had been hiding out from the law, and where Carl had been killed.
That Boone dared to return with Charles instilled Grace with renewed urgency. She had to find a way to escape and soon. Jack would know of this place. Mick, too, but if they didn’t come, if something had happened to them back at Margaret’s Eatery, then she’d have no one to turn to for help.
Except herself.
“Here, Grace. This is where I shall stand.” Boone released her elbow and strode toward a large rock, jutting from the banks of the stream. In his zeal for the perfect pose, he propped his foot on top, rested his hand on his thigh and angled his head toward the north. “We’re not far from Canada, and this view reminds me of the beauty and the wildness of my country.”
The snowcapped Bear Tooth Mountains loomed in the distance. Douglas firs, long-needled pines and various species of spruce grew along the foothills. Puffs of clouds decorated the blue-gray sky, and Grace conceded the backdrop was indeed fitting for a man of Boone’s compulsion.
Yet she thought more of escape. Now, in the coming moments, while Boone was distracted and preening. Pretending interest in their surroundings, she gauged the plausibility of running away, but as soon as she spied Charles watching them at the cabin’s door, a revolver leveled in her direction, she abandoned the idea.
He’d shoot her dead if she tried.
Besides, she had no coat, no horse….
“My profile first, Grace. It’s appropriate, don’t you think?” Boone asked.
Grace had little recourse but to follow along. The photographs were harmless, she supposed, something she could do to feed his fantasy and keep her outside, in easy view in case Jack happened to be riding this way….
“Quite appropriate, yes.” She carefully bettered her grasp over the black box. She found him in the camera’s lens, cocked the shutter and turned the key to advance the film. “Don’t move, Alexandre.” She pressed the trigger. “There.”
Obviously pleased and enjoying himself, he struck one pose after another, keeping Grace busy with snapping shots of him until she was almost out of film, until her fingers grew too numb to work the camera.
“Enough, Alexandre.” Charles called out. “You have more than enough photographs. Bring Grace back inside.”
His aquiline nose reddened from the cold, Boone acknowledged the command and once again took her elbow, assisting her across the snow.
“When can you have them ready?” he asked, his breath billowing.
“The photographs?” she asked.
“Yes, yes. How do you get them out of the box?”
She hesitated. “I can’t.”
He nudged her inside the shadowed cabin and shoved the door closed. He appeared taken aback. “What do you mean you can’t?”
“I have no experience in developing the film, Alexandre.”
Charles gestured for her to sit in a chair placed at the table. Grace longed for the heat from a roaring fire, but the block was empty, she knew, for the smoke that would curl from the chimney, giving them away. She had to settle for clutching the dirty blanket closer about her shivering shoulders.
“Then how am I to get my photographs?” Boone demanded.
“I must return the camera to the company who manufactured it.” She kept her voice even. Patient. And understood how her explanation would impair the expediency of his plan. “They are the ones who will print them. Then they will send the photographs back to me.”
“Unthinkable,” Charles said.
Boone ignored him. He stepped closer to Grace. “How long will it take?”
“I said it is unthinkable, Alexandre,” Charles thundered. “It is too simple for someone to recognize you and trace you back to Grace. And we cannot reveal her whereabouts. So forget the photographs.”
“I will not forget them.” Fury darkened Boone’s expression.
Charles snatched a coil of rope off the table. “You must.”
“Maybe another photographer can get them out of the camera.” He swung back toward her. “Can he?”
“I don’t know.” Grace spoke honestly. “Maybe.”
Charles emitted a disgusted curse. “Now your photographs have become a foolish waste of time. We cannot shop around for someone with the ability to make the pictures.”
“Foolish?” Boone echoed. “Waste of time?”
“There are far more important things you can do for the sake of the Cause.” Charles stepped around the table, toward Grace, the coil of rope in his hand.
“And how many photographs have you had taken, Louis David?” he demanded sharply. “With your friends and the beautiful women who have surrounded you all these months, while you recline in comfort?”
“I dedicate myself to the Cause as much as you, Alexandre.” Charles’s nostrils flared from the anger he could barely hold in check. “My methods are just as effective as yours.” He paused with an arrogant tilt of his brow. “More, in fact.”
“I’ll find another way to get my photographs out of the Kodak box.” Boone fairly shook from the resolve.
Grace eyed the rope Charles held with growing trepidation. Clearly, the men had no intention of staying in the cabin. No fire, no food, and too much risk prevented it.
But it was their intentions for her that lifted the fine hairs on the back of her neck. An ugly premonition growing uglier with every step Charles took toward her….
She bolted out of the chair to the door, but too quick, Boone grabbed her and pushed her back into the seat, and before she could even think it, Charles looped the rope again and again around her flailing body, binding her to the back of the chair so tightly she could hardly breathe, let alone scream.
“Damn you, damn you both!” She kicked out at Charles, then at Alexandre, narrowly missing both sets of shins. “How dare you!”
Alexandre’s dark eyes darted from Charles to Grace and back at Charles.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in a voice so low, so lethal, Grace realized he’d not known what his accomplice had intended.
“We have no further use for her.”
“She is mine now, Louis David. Mine.”
“She is a hindrance!” Charles swung toward his coat and shoved his arms into the sleeves. “We must get rid of her. She will only slow us down.” He jerked toward the cabin’s only window. “Look outside. Do you not see how late it is? How time is working against us?”
“This is not the plan we agreed upon.”
“The plan must change.”
“Alexandre.” Grace tried one more time to appeal to the man’s vulnerability, the hurting part of him that nurtured his infatuation with her. “Alexandre, please. The ropes are hurting me. Please untie me.”
“Shut up, Grace.” Charles grabbed the lantern off the shelf.
“I don’t care about the money anymore.” Grace ignored Charles and leaned toward Alexandre, as far as the bindings allowed. “I know now why you stole it, and I can help you. You know I can.”
“Do not listen to her. Put your coat on.” Charles tossed Boone the garment one-handed. “We must leave. Now.”
Alexandre caught the coat, but he didn’
t put it on. “You understand why my people are oppressed, don’t you, Grace?”
“Yes.” More than ever, Grace wished that Jack was here. She’d fallen headfirst into the hole she was digging for herself, so deep she feared she couldn’t get out. “Yes, you know I do.”
“You’ll try to help me save them? To organize the government they need to survive?”
“Yes!”
“No-o! She is lying, Alexandre! Stop listening to her!” Enraged, Charles slammed the lantern against the wall.
The fuel splattered, and the flames roared outward, latching onto the cabin’s side and rafters and refusing to let go, ravenous for the old wooden logs that would feed its frenzy.
Grace screamed.
Boone yelled in fury.
Suddenly, the window’s glass shattered. The nose of a rifle jammed inward, and Mick’s face appeared through the opening. In the next moment, the cabin’s door flew open, so fast, so hard, it rocked on its hinges, and there stood Jack, tall and ruthless with a gun in each hand….
Boone whipped toward him with his weapon, and Jack coldly fired. Blood spurted across the front of the gray herringbone suit. Boone screamed and spun to his knees, losing his grip on the rifle.
“Do not shoot!” Charles crouched against the flames and half crawled toward the door. “Please, please, do not shoot!”
“Get out.” Jack grabbed him by his coat and shoved him to George Huys, waiting outside to catch him.
Mick dashed in. “You hit, Jack?”
“No, Boone is. Help me get him out of here.”
Combining their muscle, they lifted him from the floor. Mick took his weight and rushed him out of the blazing cabin.
The flames grew hotter, their fiery arms reached closer, nearly singeing Grace with their ferocious bite. She strained against the ropes and screamed Jack’s name.
And then, he was there.
Chapter Seventeen
The roar of the fire poured pure, unadulterated terror into Jack’s blood. Grace was alive, and she didn’t look hurt, but seeing her trussed up, left to burn, to die, had him shaking so hard he could barely undo the ropes. With Grace’s frantic help, he managed it.
