Pain stabbed at Amethyst’s finger and she jumped, glancing down. She’d bit her cuticle. Bloody gears, she’d never done that before. She never got nervous enough to bite her nails. Curling her fingers into a fist, she hid her hand behind her back.
A clock ticked somewhere in the courthouse, the rhythm too slow to match her racing heartbeat. The senators didn’t stir. No one coughed.
Samantha stood in the front of the room, beside the podium, with her arms folded across her chest.
She stared at them with her lips pursed and her eyes unblinking.
“You can do this,” Amethyst whispered. They hadn’t allowed her to stand beside the girl.
“This is for her. They can’t think anyone swayed her words,” Amethyst’s father had said.
Samantha closed her eyes and her breath rasped, her chest visibly heaving beneath her linen dress with the empire waist. Amethyst had purchased it for her, with puffed sleeves and a high collar to hide her sharp bones.
“To make you look pretty,” Amethyst had murmured. “I want you to feel like a princess.”
Samantha hadn’t smiled, but she hadn’t screamed or fought.
“Miss Samantha,” Amethyst’s father said. “Address the senate. Where have you been living?”
“Asylum.” Samantha’s voice rasped, but she didn’t tremble.
Fight them, Samantha. Fight for every injustice you served.
“How long have you lived there?” her father continued.
“Forever.” The word shook, but the girl’s sound heightened toward the rafters.
Captain MacFarland glared at the president as if the other senators didn’t matter. Clark lifted his thumb to encourage the man, but still the captain held his sights on President Wilcox.
Before Garth could speak, Captain MacFarland took a step toward the president, and Wilcox jerked back in his chair as if afraid to be attacked.
“My parents died when I was young,” Captain MacFarland said. “I was about five. That’s when the government was opening training camps. I could go to one of those and serve my country, or I could go to a regular orphanage and be adopted. I chose the training camp because my father had been an officer. That’s why they asked me. I had service in my blood.”
“Go on,” Garth said.
Sweat beaded on President Wilcox’s brow and dripped down, little tickles that made the skin on his forehead pucker. He couldn’t rub it away. He couldn’t look nervous. The senators had to think he was in charge of his emotions.
Nervousness made a man look bad.
Captain MacFarland glared at him one more time before heading back to the left witness table.
“Next,” Garth said, “we will question the notable scientists to discuss the water poisoning.”
The assassins had to arrive soon. A ruling couldn’t be accomplished.
Clark curled his fingers into his biceps to keep from punching the wall. Yes, trials went on. Trials were sometimes lengthy.
In the west, judgment was when a sheriff called you guilty.
Judgment happened when people came together against you and you found yourself dangling from a tree.
The senators should have hung the president without all the rigamorall. Clark glanced over at Amethyst where she leaned against a window and chewed her fingernail. Paleness shone on her skin, but a flush burned her cheeks and ears.
The president would be found guilty. He had to be.
“Next is Doctor Vickburg,” said Garth, and another scientist from the right witness table stood.
A crack sounded from above and a door to the balcony, where the president should have sat if he weren’t on trial, slammed off its hinges onto the floor. The room froze thicker than when a witness spoke.
Figures in black slacks and black blouses, hooded masks over their faces, poured onto the balcony. They dropped ropes from their hands to tie around the rungs and leapt off, the other ends of the ropes knotted around their waists.
“What the—” a senator from the south sputtered before one of the masked figures landed with a thud on the table.
Brass glass.
Gunshots sounded outside. People screamed before the gunshots grew too loud to hear them. The figures dropping from the balcony pulled pistols from their waist holsters.
Clark jerked his free and fired at the man dressed in black closest to him, but he’d already aimed at the senator in front him and pulled the trigger. The senator jerked, blood and bone spattering from his skull. Clark fired at the figure’s face to avoid body armor and the man fell backward off the table.
Amethyst shrieked and his heart clenched in his chest. He shot at two other figures as he lunged toward her. Where were the guards? There had been two stationed at the back and front doors of the courtroom.
Clark swung his free arm around his wife and threw them to the floor, rolling to protect her from hitting the wood.
“Stay down!” He fired again. More shots sounded around him. A soldier lunged into the fray from the doorway. Blood spattered across the ceiling. Clark lifted himself into a crouch and kept firing.
His pistol clicked. Empty. “Brass glass.” He popped five extra bullets from the holders on his belt, the metal cold and heavy in his palm, and he used his thumb to open the pistol round.
“Kill them first,” the president yelled over the gunshots. “Kill the Grishams before they bring everyone back to life!”
he president wanted Clark and Amethyst dead. Anger flared in Clark; he narrowed his eyes and lifted a corner of his lips. Screw the nation’s court system. He’d grown up with his own form of justice.
“Bring anyone who is dead back to life. Leave the bad guys, though.” Clark kissed Amethyst, hard, fast, and lunged away from her into the fray. He leapt over a senator lying on the floor gripping at the front of his shirt where blood seeped across the white satin blouse.
A figure in black swung at Clark with an empty pistol; he raised his forearm to block the blow and kicked the man’s crotch. His boot toes collided with a hidden cup. “Brass glass.” Clark fired his pistol before the man couldn’t switch his position, hitting the enemy in the knee. He grunted and bent forward; Clark fired again into his skull.
“Hold there!” A soldier shot into the fray although blood trickled down his arm to slick his hand.
Where could the president be? Clark kicked away another assailant, using his heel to knock him away. A bullet snapped past his boot, but he didn’t flinch. Flinching meant a dead man.
He scanned the crowd, cursing under his breath. There, by the door, the president in his cravat the color of blood struggled to open the backdoor. Clark swung himself over the nearest table and slid in a smear of blood that stained the floor.
The president jerked the door open and stumbled into the hallway; a skeleton key protruded from the lock. Clark caught the door as it started to swing shut and pushed open again.
A long hallway with doors left a crack open. He kicked the first, his pistol ready, only to find stairs. No sound echoed from the stairwell. He turned on his heels to kick the door across from it. These stairs led down instead of up. Brass glass.
Where had the bloody man gone?
President Wilcox glanced over his shoulder, the pistol at his waist a heavy reminder of his precautions. He needed a rifle. He could use one of those; how many times had he gone hunting in the west? Pistols were too murderous. A rifle and he could shoot down a buffalo. A pistol wasn’t meant for animals; its bullets sought humans.
The brick walls of the alley dripped with dampness and vines. A single white flower blossomed by a sliver of a window. No one passed by the street. No one peered through doorways. They would be at the courtroom observing the damage, rushing victims to the hospital.
They would look for him once they reorganized.
He parted the vines, bricks scraping his hand where his silk glove had torn. His finger bumped against the hidden button and steam whished from the bricks in the shape of a rectangle. The door slid upward on
hinges that creaked. His secretary should have kept it better oiled. The escape bunker had to be usable for emergencies.
Emergencies like when the country turned against him. President Wilcox gritted his teeth as he ducked into the narrow opening. Gas lamps flickered into radiance with small flames; they lined the ceiling as he descended the wooden steps into the basement. Behind him, steam hissed as the hidden door lowered.
Wooden cabinets and crates absorbed most of the space, along with a table and two chairs. He pulled out one chair and straddled it, crossing his arms over the back and lowering his forehead. A sigh burned from his throat.
The country was supposed to love him. He was their protector. Instead, they rallied against him. They put him on trial and displayed his faults like ribbons of honor.
Bastards. All of them.
He pushed the button in the center of the table, and static sounded from the speaker built into the wood. “Secretary Butterick?” Static. Bloody gears. “Secretary Butterick!”
“Sir?” The sectary’s voice graveled over the intercom from the microphone attached to his collar. The president hadn’t dared to wear his lest someone in the courtroom questioned it.
“I am in the spot.”
“Yes, sir.” Muffled noises came from the speaker. The secretary wouldn’t be able to say much with others around him.
“I will stay here,” President Wilcox said, “until you can find me accommodations to the west.” Men disappeared in the west. He could plot there. “Set the gears turning when it is safe for me.” He pulled the pistol from his holster and set it on the table before spinning it by the trigger guard. “The steam must be ladled.”
A pause.
“Yes, sir,” said the secretary. “The steam will be ladled.”
“All here!” The rider in a black blouse and matching slacks spurred his horse down Main Street. Dust billowed from the hooves as they slapped the dry dirt. “All here! President Wilcox in danger.”
A man in a cowboy hat pushed through the saloon doors. “Wots that now?”
Another cowboy joined him, and a face pressed against the saloon window. The rider pulled a rolled paper from the leather sack hanging off his back and threw it on the doorstep.
“Read all about it! President Wilcox framed and attacked. Country in shambles. Renegades on the loose wreaking havoc.”
A woman with a little boy stepped out of the general store.
The president’s rider threw another paper, this time at the jailhouse. “Read all about it! President Wilcox needs your help.”
“Jere!”
Jeremiah looked up, one hand on the buckle to the saddle. His horse, Password, snorted against his head, knocking his cowboy hat askew.
His neighbor, Steven, jogged across the yard from the direction of the ranch house. Georgette stood in the doorway, one hand clutching her skirt.
“What is it?” Jeremiah ran his fingers over Password’s mane to keep the mount calm and turned toward Steven.
The farmer thrust a crumpled paper against Jeremiah’s chest. “Read this! A rider passing them out in town.”
Jeremiah fought back the bile in his throat. Don’t jump to conclusions. He never did; he kept a level head. Right. His fingers stiffened as he unfolded the paper. The headline leapt out at him like a horn blown into his ear: President in Danger, Senators Commit Treason.
“What the…” He swore under his breath. His gaze skipped over the printed text. The president had been framed by the prince and the senators. The senators had laid false information in front of the public and then ordered assassins to eliminate him.
A list of the senators followed. All fifteen senators, two for each state and one for Hedlund Territory. The fifteenth, his father, Senator Garth Treasure.
Jeremiah curled his fist around the paper. “Where did this rider come from?”
“I don’t know.” Steven pulled his bandana off from around his neck to wipe perspiration off his forehead. “I rode here as soon as I saw it. All lies, but some people are going to believe it. There were some in town already speaking ill of your father—”
“They know my family,” Jeremiah growled. “Everyone knows we’re honest and hardworking.”
His mother rushed toward him, lifting her skirts. “I’ll go into town. I’ll talk to the sheriff.”
“See that these are burned.” Jeremiah threw the paper into the dirt and stepped on it with the heel of his riding boot. He shouldn’t talk to his mother like that. A fresh growl burned up from his throat.
“It will be fine.” His mother brushed against his arm. “The newspapers have circulated with the truth. The people won’t believe these lies.”
“What’s happening in the courtroom? What does the president think this will get him?” Jeremiah seized Password’s reigns. There wouldn’t be time for a ride around the property for inspections that day.
“This is preposterous!” Georgette ripped the printed paper off the “wanted” board in the sheriff’s office. “You allowed a stranger to post this rubbish around town?” She waved the document in the sheriff’s face.
“Ma’am.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t see that up there. Honest.”
“They are all over town! Everyone I’ve seen has had one in hand!” They’d looked at her with wide eyes and mouths agape. No one had dared to confront her, though. No one could truly believe the document.
“Yes, ma’am, and I’ve been running that rider outta here, but you must know that people come through with papers all the time. They’re always tryin’ to sell something—”
“This is slander, Sheriff Lovato,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
The fan behind him buzzed from the jailhouse’s only window. A drunkard slumped in the town’s lone cell. Outside, someone shouted something inaudible.
“Most people don’t read, ma’am.” He pulled off his cowboy hat to wipe his forehead with a stained handkerchief.
“My husband has made certain that every child within one-hundred miles attends school until the age of thirteen.”
“And that’s why people ain’t gonna believe any of this, Mistress Treasure.” He glanced toward the drunkard before lowering his voice. “Go home, ma’am. People here know your husband ain’t turning against the country, but some folk won’t, and I want you safe.”
“And I want the truth known, not these lies.” She tore the document in half and allowed them to drift to the floor. “Good day, Sheriff Lovato.”
Glass shattered. Demi Farley shrank against the dining room wall, screaming, but the sound ripped her throat like the glass slivers. The Bromi slave ran to her from the doorway, crouching beside the middle-aged woman.
“Please, mistress, you gotta come with me. That mob ain’t gonna—”
“Where’s my son?” In the darkness of night, only a flicker came from the hallway. The flicker of flames.
“Please come with me, mistress,” the Bromi girl whispered. “The mob ain’t gonna let you go.”
More glass shattered from the front of the mansion. Wood crackled. Fire. The mob burned her house.
Her ancestors had been some of the first to settle the southern state of Carlstead. They had built the house, and they had farmed the land. They had built up an area from swamp into prosperous fields.
“Senator Farley is a traitor,” a man shouted from outside. “Death to the traitor’s family!”
Demi whimpered and pressed her hands over her face. Her husband was no traitor.
“Please!” The slave grabbed Demi’s arm and pulled her up. The room spun past Demi, a blur of the silver chandelier and mahogany furniture.
“Got him, got John Farley,” another man shouted.
They couldn’t. Demi’s husband was with the other senators, states away from Carlstead.
A boy yelped. Blood chilled in Demi’s veins. Her son, John Farley, Junior.
“Lynch him!”
“String him up!”
“No.” Demi shoved the slave toward the eatin
g table and dashed toward the front of the house. The mob would not hurt her son. The mob would not —could not —touch her family.
Flames licked across the front, consuming the doors, the curtains, inching up the grand staircase… trapping her from reaching the front yard where her sixteen-year-old son yelped again, and the mob laughed before the crackling fire ate out those sounds.
eremiah!” A door slammed from within the ranch house and footsteps sounded heavy in the hallway. He closed the open folder on his desk to keep his paperwork safe inside and stood just as one of his ranch hands pushed inside. “Jeremiah, they’re coming!”
“Who is coming?” He grabbed the pistol off the corner of his desk. It had felt good to have it near him, right there within grabbing distance, his skin crawling since the visit from Steven.
“A mob.” The ranch hand grabbed the doorframe as he panted. “We were out fixing the fences in the back field.”
“Yes, I know.” Bloody gears, Jeremiah had sent them out there to do just that this morning.
“We saw ‘em coming, a huge mass of them. Folks with shotguns and all screaming. I came running here to get you. They’re going to bring the cattle in so they don’t get harmed.”
A mob. “By the steam!” Alyssa had brought news of that from town. Senators and their supporters were being attacked by mobs of presidential rioters. Senators’ families, rather. He hadn’t heard anything about the senators.
As if they had all disappeared.
He shoved his pistol into his belt and ran to the gun cabinet near the window for the laser rifle his father had purchased a year ago. The gangly thing nagged the pants off Jeremiah, but it didn’t require him to keep reloading. The energy sphere only needed a few second to recharge.
“What do you want us to do, boss?”
What would Garth do?
What would Clark do?
Bloody gears, now he relied on Clark.
“Arm everyone. We’ll make up a barricade. No one is getting to us.”
“Down with Senator Treasure!” The calls floated over the fields. Behind Jeremiah, birds sang in his mother’s garden. Wind rustled the trees in the orchards.
Wicked Treasure (Treasure Chronicles Book 3) Page 21
