Afraid of what he wasn’t saying, she could only answer, “I love you, too.”
The smile he gave her was a flash of white against the darkness. “Stay behind me.”
Picking up his clockwork carbine and his bag, he slung both onto his shoulder. He pressed a six-shooter in her hand, to go along with the one strapped to her hip and the knife in her boot. “Don’t shoot unless you have to. I’d rather stay quiet for as long as we can.”
Jessie nodded and followed him over the rocks as they slowly picked their way down the hill.
Luke paused, crouching behind a pine tree, and gestured for her to stop. He put his hand on her back and stared up at the outpost for what seemed like endless minutes.
Jessie’s heart drummed madly in her chest, and she fought the urge to run, but Luke’s touch kept her still. Voices sighed in the breeze brushing through the trees, and their prayer murmured in the sound of a nearby spring as the water tumbled over rock.
Jessie moved back behind Luke, and pressed her head to his back in an attempt to quiet their voices in the beating of his heart.
Finally, light flashed briefly from the northern outpost. Jessie turned her head and light flashed again, this time from the southern outpost. Luke reached for her and crept down the slope toward the barracks.
Parker joined them about half way down the slope.
Jessie whispered a prayer to her ancestors to keep them safe, and she wished for an answer as she stared up at the moonless night sky, painted with stars.
Jessie, said the voices of many, their voices asynchronous, lending her name an air of menace. A warning existed in that single word, and she was afraid.
Whitfield crept down the path. As they passed the barn, restless horses stomped and snuffled, and the air vibrated with the low rumble of what sounded like an engine.
Black wings of dread fluttered in her chest, and she wrestled with the idea that her anxiety had little to do with her father.
She stared at Luke’s back, and her heart stumbled.
Parker wound the clockwork carbine he held in his hands and motioned to the entrance to the mineshaft with his head.
Luke clapped him on the shoulder and Parker grinned.
Everything was right between them.
Parker winked at her, and she knew everything was right between them, too.
She followed Luke, and as they entered the first chamber of the mineshaft, the noise became louder. Jessie had grown up with that sound ringing in her ears, the sound of home and her father. It made sense that her father would have access to a steam engine to power his experiments, even here.
Her father was here. His energy existed in the walls, in the noise, in the air.
They came to a low pony wall made of rock and concrete, and a prison door of steel bars. Luke pulled her down beside him. “Cover me.” He took the bag from his shoulder and pulled out two small metal cylinders with hooks at the end. “Be prepared to move.”
He put one of the cylinders in his pocket and inserted the hook of the other into the lock. He hit the end of the cylinder with the butt of his knife.
Jessie jumped as the sound bounced off the stone walls and echoed in the cavern.
Luke took her hand and backed up several steps. The cylinder and then the lock glowed brilliant red, the faint hiss of sizzling metal barely audible. There was a pop, and the door shifted a little.
Together, they crept to the door. He barely had to touch it before it swung open, both the lock and the latch burned out. Jessie’s father would have been fascinated by such a device—a lock pick made of thermite.
She put her hand on the wall and felt nothing, but what she heard in the emptiness between the cold and the dark terrified her. Pressing her hand against Luke’s back, she replaced the dread with the impression of him, of pale skin and sleek muscle.
They entered a rough-hewn mineshaft, where the walls still bore the scars of miner’s pickaxes. On her left, standing in the middle of a framed-in area, was a door, and behind it, a steam engine sputtered and hummed. Luke crouched down and took some small object out of the pack, which he placed at the base of the door. Shifting his eight, he kicked it with his foot, shoving the object under the door.
Luke stood and picked up his bag. He wrapped his free hand around her waist.
“Anything tries to come out that door, shoot it,” he whispered.
Jessie, a voice in her head warned.
They moved deeper into the corridor, and it wasn’t long before the dark shimmered with the glow of reflected light. As they made their way down the corridor, the light became stronger. The end of this shaft was collapsed, but another corridor veered sharply to the right, and that was where the light spilled from.
The sound of metal striking metal reached her ears, and a man’s voice shouted, “I don’t know why you have to do that in the middle of the night. Why can’t you do that shit during the day, like a normal person? Bother the day shift people for a change.”
Then the voice of a man Jessie had mourned for dead. “I work when I work. You don’t like it, complain to your boss.”
Jessie’s chest tightened. Her father. Feeling his presence in the walls was once thing, and sensing him in the air was another, but to actually listen to the sound of his voice was something entirely different. She resisted the urge to pull her weapons and charge in there recklessly, and kill every Reb in that room.
Luke put his back to the wall of the cavern and motioned for Jessie to do the same. He took the bag off his shoulder and removed a small mirror from his satchel. With his body low to the ground, he eased the mirror around the corner. He studied the reflection for a moment, grunted, and put the mirror back in the bag.
He reached for her hand. “We’ll get him out.”
Jessie turned so she faced the wall and ran her hand up the side of his neck and into his hair where it peeked out from beneath his hat. “I know we will.”
Pulling the strap of the carbine over his head, he handed her the weapon. “I want you to move up as soon as I’m inside, but no matter what happens, you stand behind that wall. Keep yourself behind cover, but I want you close. You understand?”
His lips against her skin made her shiver, but she nodded just the same.
Luke adjusted his hat over his eyes and pulled the second thermite lock pick from his pocket. His posture straight and proud, he squared his shoulders and stepped into the lighted corridor. Strolled up to the door as if he belonged.
Gripping the gun until her hands cramped, she held her breath. Her ancestors howled in her head, but their words were indistinguishable, nothing more than jumbled noise. She didn’t want to make sense of their warnings, didn’t want to hear them. Finally, a voice, clearly defined, rose above the rest, and spoke a single word.
Jessie.
Her mother.
She bit back tears and the chant rising to her lips. Panic began to set in, the wings of dread beating in her chest. Her heart took off like a spooked horse.
Luke. Come back.
“Came to relieve you for a time,” Luke said in a southern drawl so natural she was shocked by it.
“Got the new guy in the back room. You come in with him?” a man’s voice asked.
“Yeah.”
“You poor bastard.”
Luke laughed. “Huh. The key seems to be stuck.” A heavy thud echoed in the small chamber, and Luke made a startled sound as metal began hissing and sizzling. “What the hell?” Footsteps echoed in empty space.
She wanted to watch, and moved to peek her head around the corner, but invisible hands rooted her to the wall, and she remained still and silent and small and useless. She hated herself for that.
The latch popped and a door slammed. Suddenly, it was if the hands holding her released her, her body under her own power once more. She slung Luke’s bag over her shoulder and crept along the wall to the pony wall.
The steel-barred door stood open, a leather cord dangling from the u-shaped handle. In the dim ligh
t cast by two gas lanterns, one man lay on the floor, and a second one was drawing his gun.
With a quickness that startled her, Luke drew his gun as the second guard ducked behind a large piece of machinery. Gunshots rang out.
The man on the ground began to draw his weapon, and just as Jessie was about to scream a warning to Luke, the device in the middle of the room burst to life, shaking and groaning.
Chaos erupted. Luke’s gun was torn from his hands, as were the weapons the guards carried, stuck to that piece of machinery as if it were a giant magnet.
A knife clattered along the floor and stuck to its side. The steel door slammed shut. Objects flew from the shelves. Something struck Luke on the shoulder, and he spun, but he didn’t fall.
Behind her concrete wall, she was safe. She didn’t even feel the slightest tug.
In seconds, the whirlwind of flying metal ceased, and every man in the room was disarmed.
The man on the ground began to stand, but Luke kicked him in the face with his boot and he went still.
Jessie’s father bolted for the door.
Putting the carbine down behind the concrete wall, she grabbed the leather cord attached to the handle of the door and yanked.
Pop shoved on the bars above the metal mesh covering the handles of the door, and Jessie jerked on the leather strap.
“Jessie-girl, what are you doing here?” Her father’s eyes were wild.
She didn’t answer. She simply pulled on that leather strap with everything she had and watched Luke.
Luke whirled toward the second guard and punched him twice. Lunging, he rammed the guard with his shoulder and threw him on to the device.
The man shuddered and lay still.
Avoiding the molten slag, Pop pushed against the door, and together, he and Jessie broke the magnetic pull. Once the door had opened just beyond the halfway point, the pull began to work in the opposite direction, and when Jessie let the door go, it slammed open with a bang.
Both Jessie and her father jumped.
Luke didn’t flinch.
Pop turned toward her and embraced her briefly. “What are you doing here? You never should have come.”
“I had to.”
“No. I never wanted you here. Not you. You’re all I have left.” He kissed her forehead and took her into his arms again.
It was the first time since Gideon’s death that her father had held her.
Luke gingerly walked over to where Jessie stood with her father. His eyes met hers and the corners of his mouth ticked up into the lopsided smile she remembered so well from her childhood. He adjusted his hat on his head. “Mr. White.”
Pop flinched. “Is that… Luke Bradshaw?”
“The very same,” Luke responded, bending to open the bag. He took out a bundle of dynamite and inserted a small silver rod into it. He did the same for the next four bundles.
When he was done, he nodded to Jessie’s father. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. White.”
She never heard his response, because the voices in her head warned, Run, Jessie.
No, she responded wordlessly.
Luke placed the bundles around the room. Her father’s desk, the device, which still hummed oddly, over near the door. As he laid each one down, he bent the rod.
The dynamite was armed.
Luke finished his task and turned to her and smiled, just as the hairs on her arms stood up and the voices in her head howled.
She may have howled, too.
In the next instant, Luke’s head shot up. He bellowed and leapt sideways as three shots rang out. Sparks flew as the bullets ricocheted.
“Luke!” she screamed, before she had even had the chance to process what had happened. He collapsed to the floor, rolled to his back, and lay still.
Fontaine stood in the far corner of the room, emerging from a door she hadn’t even seen.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?” His cultured voice dripped with causal cruelty. “Miss White. So glad you could join us. No need to jump out of an airship. I’d been planning on bringing you here all along.”
Jessie drew her gun, but the moment she pulled it up, it wavered under the sway of the magnets. Her hands circled and bobbed, and she spent more energy fighting that than she did in taking careful aim.
Her father put his hand on her arm. “Don’t fire. Your lead could hit Luke.”
“Get her out of here,” Luke rasped from his position on the floor. “Go.”
Her father clutched her arms, and she struggled to wrench out of his grasp.
“No!” she cried. “I’m not leaving without him!”
“Jessie.” The grip her father had on her arms tightened to the point of pain. “Those bullets were meant for you. Don’t waste it.”
Fontaine lifted his gun to fire, but like Jessie’s, his weapon bobbed and weaved under the pull of the device. “What’s the use? She can run, but I’ll find her like I did before. You won’t be there to protect her.” He walked up to Luke. “I want these to be the last words you hear, agent. When I do find her, I will break her. I’ll think of you when I do.”
Luke said nothing, but he never met Fontaine’s eyes. Instead, he watched Jessie’s father.
Fontaine came closer.
The device stuttered.
“Now, Luke!” Pop shouted.
Luke sat up, and spun a weapon still attached to the device. Fired. Emptied the revolver.
Fontaine stood stock still, and for one bitter, heart-rending moment, nothing happened. He lowered the hand holding his weapon, and turned his eyes to Jessie, his face a mask of shock and pain. His mouth opened as if he wanted to speak, but no sound came out.
And then, a bright stain appeared on his shirt, blood seeped from the corners of his mouth and from his nose. Before he fell, Jessie wrenched free from her father’s grasp and rushed to Luke’s side.
“Get out, Jess,” Luke hissed. “Place is gonna blow.”
“I’m not leaving without you. You come with me or I’m staying.” Her voice never wavered.
Run, Jessie, the voices in her head whispered.
For the first time in her life, she answered them. Not without him.
Pop appeared on Luke’s other side, and with their help, Luke gained his feet. He draped his arms around their shoulders and panted, and even though he leaned heavily on Jessie, Luke walked under his own power. “Only got a few more minutes until the thermite… is released and this place goes.” He paused. “Go on, Jess. Leave me.”
Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to acknowledge them. “No. You come, too.”
His feet dragged, his respirations labored. “Knew this was a chance. I took the risk. I can’t lose you.”
“You’re going to be fine.” The words were spat from between clenched teeth, and her grip on Luke’s wrist tightened.
They pushed into the middle corridor, and Luke’s labored respirations turned raspy, rattling in his throat, but she refused to let him slump, refused to allow them to slow.
Luke would leave these tunnels.
The silhouette of a man appeared up ahead, bathing the tunnel in light from a gas lantern. “Bradshaw!”
Whitfield.
“Here!” Jessie called out.
Whitfield took one look at Luke and handed the lantern to Pop. He took Luke’s arm and looped it around him. “I got him. You get your father out.”
Jessie was exhausted. She didn’t have much of a choice, and she’d taken Luke as far as she could. Still, she paused.
“Luke.”
“Go, Jess,” Luke said.
“The thermite’s armed,” she said to Whitfield.
Whitfield’s jaw was tight. “Go.”
With one last look at Luke, she took her father’s arm and ran for the exit.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jessie and her father stumbled into cold, clean air of an eerily still night.
“Come on, Missus. We’ve got to get you out of here.” Without so much as a blink, Parker picked
her up and put her on the back of a horse, and not the one she rode in on. She sat there, trembling from a combination of fear and exhaustion, as he assisted her father, and when he came back her way, her gaze met his.
“Luke’s been shot.”
Parker’s features tightened. “Whitfield has him. We’ll just get to the next rise and we’ll see to his wounds.”
“We should wait for Luke.”
“Not now, Missus. We need to get out of here.”
She turned her head to find her husband. Whitfield was helping him mount another horse, and her throat constricted. She wanted to wait for him, but Parker grabbed the reins of her horse and slapped its rump.
“Go!”
Her mount followed Parker’s into the dark, and her horse spooked as a rolling rumble built and broke into a cacophony of sound so loud she had to cover her ears.
Behind her, dynamite exploded, and the mineshaft collapsed in a roar of dust and debris.
Luke.
She turned in her saddle to find him, but couldn’t see him through the trees in the dust and the dark.
Not more than five minutes later, Whitfield shot past her at a full gallop. He stopped when he got to Parker, and Parker dropped the reins of her horse as they moved away to have a low conversation she couldn’t hear.
She whirled her horse around and galloped back to Luke.
Something about the way he sat in the saddle was wrong. His weary eyes meeting hers, he slumped and began sliding from his saddle.
“Luke!” Jessie leapt from her mount and moved beneath him to catch him.
He reached for her, but she couldn’t support his weight, and he took her to the ground with him. He rolled away and lay still.
With desperate hands, she clawed her way toward him.
He turned glassy eyes in her direction. “Wife.”
Jessie’s heart tightened in her chest, and she rubbed her hand against the ache that had settled there like a stone under great pressure.
It would crack soon, and be forever changed. The marks he put on her heart would never heal—they’d only widen, like water poured over a crevice in granite would eventually cleave the rock in two.
Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) Page 29
