The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

“What—”

  “Look at your hat.”

  With a shaking hand, the deputy snatched off his hat. A bullet hole pierced the crown, front and back.

  “That was a warning,” Jackson explained. “It’s the only one you’ll get. Unlock the cell.”

  The deputy’s hands shook so badly that he couldn’t fit the key in the hole, and Jackson had to help him. He felt almost apologetic as he shoved MacPhail into the cell and locked him in.

  * * *

  Smoke clawed at Leah’s throat. Though barely able to see, she could discern Carrie standing in the middle of the office, watching the flames devour the drapes and roar along the hall carpet runner. She didn’t flinch as glass bottles and vials exploded from the heat.

  A flying splinter of glass stung Leah’s cheek. She lifted her hand to cover her eyes, shouting, “Carrie! We’ve got to get out!”

  “It’s so beautiful, seeing the fire like this,” Carrie said dreamily. “Just like on Adam’s boat.”

  Leah plunged toward the door, but she wasn’t quick enough.

  Carrie lifted the derringer. “You can’t drive me away. You can’t keep me from getting my medicine. You can’t lock me up in some hospital.”

  “Carrie, please.” Leah eyed the gun; she sensed the racing fire behind her. “We can talk about this after we get everyone out of the house.”

  “By then it will be too late.”

  Leah took a chance, grabbing for the derringer. She caught Carrie’s wrist, managed to drag her out of the burning office and slam the door. Smoke poured beneath it in a boiling river.

  Carrie wrenched herself away, keeping hold of the gun. “You wanted me gone,” she shrieked.

  “You left of your own accord. Jackson would have looked after you forever, no matter what the cost. He’ll still keep that promise. You’re his wife, no matter what.”

  Carrie chuckled. “I was never his wife. We just pretended. Now, Adam really did marry me.”

  Leah absorbed the knowledge. Jackson was free. Free. But it was too late for that to mean anything.

  “Adam didn’t take care of me,” Carrie complained. “Didn’t give me what I need.” Her eyes glittered at the hypodermic needle clutched in her free hand. “Do it, Leah. I’m ill. This will make me feel better.”

  Feeding the appetite of an addict went against all of Leah’s instincts and training. But when she glanced at the door to the outer office, the paint on the wood was blistering and melting, sliding down. “Give me the gun,” she ordered.

  With her hungry gaze fastened on the syringe, Carrie placed the barrel against Leah’s temple. “The needle first.”

  Leah took the hypodermic, grasped Carrie by the arm and turned it wrist up. With one well-aimed jab, she pierced a vein and plunged down with her thumb, shooting the milky drug into Carrie’s bloodstream. Swiftly, Leah removed the needle, dropping it on the desk. “Hold your elbow closed like this. You’ll feel better in a moment.” Carrie stumbled, dropping the gun. Leah kicked it out of the way and guided her toward the exit. “Come. Now.”

  “Why should I come with you?”

  Something in Leah snapped. It was everything at once—the years of living in her father’s shadow. The grinding frustrations of medical school. The unending prejudice of the townspeople. And the fact that this one crazed, charmed woman stood between her and the only man she had ever truly loved.

  “Move, damn you!” she yelled, shoving Carrie with all her might.

  As she forced Carrie out through the back door, Leah barely recognized herself. How different she was from the spinster physician Jackson had stolen from her bed. He had guided her into a new understanding of herself—she was someone who could love and be loved. Someone who could let out her anger, who could take action rather than observing life from the fringes. The ordeals, the peaks and valleys of the past few months had transformed her utterly.

  Carrie fell to her knees outside. Instantly forgetting her, Leah went to the front of the house.

  “Fire!” she screamed, running up the stairs of the front porch, yanking open the main door. Soaring flames surrounded the doors and passageways. “Everyone wake up!” Leah yelled. “There’s a fire in the house!”

  She headed for the back of the main floor first, where Perpetua and Bowie slept. Thick, hazy smoke layered the corridors. Holding her sleeve over her mouth and nose, Leah raced to Perpetua’s room. She wrenched open the door to the suite of rooms the cook and her son shared.

  “The house is on fire!” Leah called. “Get Bowie out—quickly!”

  Perpetua sprang out of bed, long braids trailing down her back. Within seconds, she’d scooped up Bowie, who made no more than a groggy protest, then clung to her neck as she dashed from the room. Leah followed, choking on the thickening smoke in the hall.

  Hot yellow tongues of flame licked up along the wooden rail and the bridge that spanned the second story. Praying the stairwell would be safe another few moments, Leah lifted the hem of her robe and pounded upstairs.

  Battle and Zeke had taken charge in the upper quarters, moving swiftly along the hallway and rousing the boarders.

  The threadbare carpet smoldered underfoot. Leah went to the room at the end of the hall, passing a disoriented-looking Aunt Leafy, who stopped in the middle of the hallway and squinted.

  “Ambrose, is that you? Ambrose Leafington!” She called the name of her dead husband.

  “Battle!” Leah yelled. “Get Aunt Leafy out. I’m going for Iona.”

  The girl slept in a small room at the end of the hall. When Leah burst in, she was still asleep, though an ominous fog of smoke hung suspended from the ceiling. Leah took her by the shoulders, giving her a firm shake.

  Iona opened her eyes.

  “Fire!” Leah exaggerated the shape of the word and gestured at the smoke.

  Iona made a strangled sound and started to dash out. Leah pointed her toward the stairs. The fire had climbed, eating along the beams overhead. Flames devoured the outer edges of the risers, but if Leah and Iona descended swiftly enough, they’d avoid getting burned. Leah followed Iona—but hesitated halfway down the stairs.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she’d seen...something.

  She glanced fearfully back up the stairs. The flames danced underfoot. But...something had moved in one of the rooms she’d passed in the corridor.

  At the foot of the stairs, Battle met Iona. Together the two ducked their heads and made for the front door.

  “Battle!” Leah screamed.

  He stopped and squinted through the fog of smoke.

  “Where’s Aunt Leafy?” Leah shrieked.

  She could tell by his posture the moment he realized Aunt Leafy was still inside. “I guess she didn’t come down!”

  Leah heard a groaning of timber. Her scalp and shoulders stung from falling sparks. She spun around and went back upstairs to Aunt Leafy’s room.

  The elderly lady stood in the middle of her chamber holding the shrouded cage of her pet canary. “I nearly forgot Carlos,” she said wonderingly. “Can you imagine, forgetting my little precious?”

  “Aunt Leafy, you must come—now!” Leah grabbed the cage in one hand and Aunt Leafy’s wrist in the other. She dragged them both to the stairs. The old lady made some noises of protest, but Leah ignored them and hustled her along. “Battle!” she called. “I’ve got her! I’ve got Aunt Leafy!”

  In the mere seconds it had taken for her to go back for Aunt Leafy, the bottom four stairs had been consumed by the flames. Battle and Zeke stood with their hands outstretched.

  “Come, Aunt Leafy, there you are,” Leah said, using all her strength to push her toward Battle’s waiting arms.

  The woman was frightened into near inertia. She managed to gasp, “Carlos first. I won’t move a muscle unless you save Carlos first.”
>
  Leah borrowed one of Jackson’s oaths. She swung the birdcage in an arc, then let go. Zeke caught it and handed it to someone outside.

  “Your turn, Aunt Leafy. You’ll have to jump past those bottom steps.”

  “I can’t!”

  “You haven’t any choice.” With a decisive nod at Battle, Leah gave her a shove. The old woman shrieked as she lurched over the gap.

  In the next second, Leah saw a blur of movement that made her think the world was coming undone. Battle Douglas caught Aunt Leafy and stumbled out the door. The next set of stairs caved in beneath her feet. She jumped back in the nick of time, landing on the bridge that spanned the foyer. Sparks showered down on her like a hot, lethal rain.

  A great uprush of flame stole all the oxygen from the air around her. She heard a thundering sound and glanced up to see the ceiling collapsing.

  Eighteen

  Joel Santana thought Dr. Penelope Lake looked mighty pretty in the moonlight. She didn’t realize he was watching her as she sat on the railed upper deck of the steamer Intrepid, getting ready for the early crossing to Whidbey Island. He stood on deck, feeling the wind in his face, his feet braced apart while he prayed to high heaven he didn’t puke in front of her.

  Just a few quick steps and he’d be beside her. If the boat didn’t roll, he might be all right. She was a powerful motivation, her warm reddish hair neatly coiled at the nape of her neck, her hands folded politely in her lap, and her face raised to the night sky as she waited for the sunrise. She was that rarity, a woman who seemed completely at home in her body. She wasn’t concerned about trussing up her stoutness or binding her feet into shoes that were too small.

  Joel liked that.

  He took a deep, steadying breath and carefully planted one foot in front of the other, making his way across the deck to her. “Enjoying yourself, Dr. Penny?” he asked.

  She glanced his way, and a smile lit her face. He had taken to calling her Dr. Penny and she seemed to like it. “Very much, Marshal Santana. I declare, I’ve never seen anything quite so pretty as the islands of Puget Sound. I can’t wait to see them in the sunlight.”

  “I hear tell it gets even prettier up Canada way.” Joel was halfway to her side when a swell rolled the steamer. The movement was subtle, but to Joel it felt like a tidal wave.

  “Marshal Santana?” She stood up. “You’ve gone quite pale all of a sud—”

  “’Scuse me, ma’am,” he managed to grumble. He reached the rail in time to aim his morning coffee over the side. He was tempted to follow it and drown himself in the clear, cold waters far below. Here he was trying to make a good impression on the lady, and instead, he almost upchucked on her patent leather boots.

  To his mortification, she touched him, putting a gloved hand at the nape of his neck. “Hold very still, Marshal,” she said, pressing her thumb beneath his left ear. “I’m not certain this will work, but sometimes a strong pressure right here will help the equilibrium. Keep your eyes open. Just stare at the horizon line.”

  A few moments later, he put his hand back and covered hers. “Dr. Penny?”

  “Yes, Marshal?”

  “It’s working. You’re a miracle worker.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, but I’m very pleased when I’m able to ease someone’s suffering.”

  They stood that way for a long time, her thumb pressing near his ear, his hand covering hers while the night faded into misty gray dawn. The white cliffs of the lower end of Whidbey Island hove into view. It looked just like a picture postcard, green and moist, lines blurred by a silvery haze.

  “I’m looking at my new home,” she said. “This is where I shall live. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  “That it is, ma’am.” Joel’s next words came even before the conscious thought. “I aim to stay here, too.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be retiring from service soon’s I finish my business up here. I mean to find me a little farm, maybe homestead a place on the island.” His own words shocked him as much as they seemed to shock her. “Maybe we’ll be...friends.”

  Dr. Penny dropped her hand, turning to face him. “Maybe we’ll be more than that,” she said, her gaze level and direct.

  Joel found himself grinning like a greenhorn at a barn raising. He settled back to enjoy the rest of the voyage. “Yeah,” he said, “we might.”

  * * *

  Jackson had broken out of jail before. More than once. The first thing to do was to get the hell out of town, out of sight. But this time he didn’t revel in a sense of freedom. His thoughts were consumed by Leah.

  “Be safe, honey,” he said beneath his breath as he ran up the hill toward the burning house. “Please be safe.”

  Townspeople were creating a minor stampede in their rush to help. Men and women armed with buckets surged up the lawn. None of them seemed to notice Jackson, or if they did, they didn’t think it odd that he was among them.

  The entire lower floor was burning. Flames leaped out of the windows and climbed steadily up the walls. In the yard, Carrie sat on a garden bench, her knees drawn to her chest as she rocked back and forth and watched the fire as if spellbound. Battle Douglas had organized a bucket brigade from the outdoor pump to the front porch.

  “Is everybody out?” Jackson asked.

  “Everybody but Dr. Mundy,” Battle said grimly. His face was stained coal black, with a black mustache of soot beneath his nose. “I tried to go in after her, but she’s trapped upstairs.”

  Jackson didn’t wait to hear more. He grabbed a bucket from someone’s hands and doused himself with it, shouldered a coil of rope, then raced for the house. As he ran, he tied his wet neckerchief over his mouth and nose, bandido-style. He heard shouted warnings and protests, but ignored them. Leah was inside. It was the only thought he allowed himself to have as he entered the house and slammed smack into a wall of flame.

  * * *

  The fire was alive. Leah could hear it roar like a wild animal. Heated tongues licked her feet and legs, her arms, her hair. She had retreated to the end of the hallway only to find the area engulfed in flames, as impassable as the front of the house.

  Her oxygen-deprived brain must be playing tricks on her. For deep within the lethal bellowing of the fire, she could hear Jackson calling her name.

  She knew then she was only moments from death, for she heard the voice of her beloved. “Leah!” How close he sounded. How frantic. “Leah! Where the hell are you?”

  Even though she knew Jackson was in jail and she’d never see him again, Leah thought of the baby and felt hopeful. Perhaps this was one final blessing before eternity—to hear his voice. Hope swept her up like a wave, and she began to move toward the faint, frantic voice. She ran down the burning corridor, beneath flaming rafters, to the bridge that spanned a gaping hole where the staircase used to be.

  When she saw his face, she knew he was not a vision. In the unholy light of the fire, he looked so wonderful that she ached, and it hurt more than the heat, more than the smoke starving her lungs. There were worse things, she decided, than having a last glimpse of something so beloved. “Jackson,” she said. He reached for her, but he stood too far below. He might as well have been in another world.

  She didn’t want him to stand there and watch her burn, but she knew he wouldn’t leave. Of all the things in the world she could have taught him, it had to be that. To stay. She had taught him to stay, no matter what the risk, no matter how much it hurt.

  What an idiot she’d been. He’d tried to leave so many times. She should have let him.

  He took a coil of rope from his shoulder. Tossing the end up, he missed his target a few times. Leah kept screaming for him to get out, but he ignored her, throwing the rope with grim concentration. Once, twice, three times... He finally managed to loop it over a spurting water pipe
high in the burned-out ceiling. He passed one end of the rope through the loop and then began to climb. She saw the strain in his face, saw his muscles bulge and glisten with sweat as he climbed.

  His hand stretched toward her, reaching, reaching. “Jump, Leah!” he bellowed, his voice even louder than the flames.

  She clutched the railing. “It’s too far!”

  “Do it anyway, damn it—”

  A beam collapsed, falling with unnatural slowness to the floor of the foyer. It lay like a felled tree, blocking the front door. Jackson swore through his teeth. Water from the pipe hissed down on him.

  Through smarting eyes, Leah stared at the beam. They would burn in here. This place that had once been her father’s dream would be her tomb.

  “Jump, goddamn it!” Jackson yelled. “Trust me for once in your goddamned life!”

  He had never said “I love you,” but she knew in that instant that he did. More than she’d ever imagined possible. She looked at him and at the flames below like the pit of hell, then at the one escape route left to them—the round colored window over the foyer. If only they could get to it.

  But if not... She looked at him one last time, then closed her eyes, and jumped.

  * * *

  From the deck of the steamer, the town resembled a toy village made of pastel-colored blocks, its harbor filled with boats of all sizes.

  “Leah Mundy lives in the big house on the hill,” Dr. Penny said. “I imagine that’s the one.” She paused, squinted at the sight. “Good Lord, it’s on fire!”

  Joel Santana stared at the ugly tower of black smoke issuing from the large house. “Reckon it is, Dr. Penny,” he said, hitching up his gun belt. “Reckon it is.” As passengers lined the rail, mouths agape, Joel shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Can’t they get this tub into harbor any faster?”

  “Not unless they want to cause an accident,” Adam Armstrong said, joining them at the rail.

  Santana stared at the burning house. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”

  “What on earth happened?” Dr. Penny put her hand on Joel’s arm.