Susan Wiggs Great Chicago Fire Trilogy Complete Collection

by Susan Wiggs

“But you—what—” Before Deborah could get the words out, he was gone. She glared at Tom Silver. “We were in the middle of a conversation.”

  “I heard.”

  “You had no right to interrupt.”

  “You have no rights, period.”

  She shot up from the table. Her vision swam, and for a horrible moment she feared she might swoon. She grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. “I have every right to know why you took me against my will. I have every right to know why you forced me aboard this smelly boat and why you’re taking me far from home. I have every right—”

  “You claim a lot of rights for someone who’s a prisoner.”

  She tried to form an answer, but lost her grip on the edge of the table. The deck raced up to meet her, and she squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for a fall. But something stopped her. A giant male hand caught her, gripped her shoulder and steadied her. She opened her eyes, and a shiver of nauseating revulsion rolled over her. His touch was harsh, impersonal. It set off a reaction within her that made her sick.

  “Let go of me,” she said, breathing the words through clenched teeth. “I beg you, let go.”

  “Don’t beg. I can’t stand that in a female.” He gave her a shove, and she staggered back to the bench. “Do as you’re told and keep your mouth shut, and we’ll get along a lot better.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t care to get along with you?”

  “No, but it occurred to me that I could tie you up and gag you.”

  Her jaw dropped. The utter cruelty of this man stunned her. She was accustomed to the little refined cruelties of ruthless social climbers, but not to the raw force of Tom Silver’s brutality.

  “What’s this?” he asked, picking something up off the floor.

  Deborah reached for the velvet pouch. “It’s mine. It must have dropped when I nearly fell just now. Oh, don’t—”

  But he did, of course. He opened the pouch, and out fell her lavaliere. The blue topaz prism, set in silver filigree, was not the most costly of baubles, but its sentimental value to Deborah was beyond price. “That was my mother’s. Give it back,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “Nope.” He stuck it in his pocket. “We’ll send it to your father—so he knows we’re not bluffing.”

  It was the one possession that truly meant something to Deborah. “Please,” she said. “Not that. You’ve already taken my diamond engagement ring. That’s much more valuable.”

  “And more likely to be stolen by the messenger.”

  “My father might think you simply found that in the confusion of the fire,” she pointed out. Then, realizing her mistake, she covered her mouth.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Maybe I should send an ear or a finger.”

  “This is a nightmare,” she whispered. “This can’t be happening.”

  He stared at her narrow-eyed for a few minutes, then took a wickedly sharp knife from the top of his boot.

  Deborah gave a shriek and scrambled for the door. He grabbed a handful of her hair and used the knife to slice off a thick blond lock. “This’ll do,” he said, sheathing the knife.

  She moaned, sinking to the bench and clutching at her ruined hair.

  He left her sitting alone in the cramped galley, struck speechless and motionless by the fact that she had lost everything in the world and was bound on a journey into the wilderness with two madmen.

  EIGHT

  Smokestacks and grain elevators rose ghostlike through the mist enshrouding the city of Milwaukee. At the stern of the trawler, Tom felt the presence of the girl like the weight of an albatross tied around his neck. He understood all too well that long poem Frère Henri had studied with him one winter. A man had to wear the evidence of his deeds, and he could never go back to what he was before.

  He had abducted the woman on impulse, but now she was his, totally dependent upon him. Holding the daughter of Arthur Sinclair as a hostage on the boat was sheer idiocy, but as a means of revenge it might just work. Lord knew how this would turn out. The whole damned thing made his head ache, a common occurrence since he had been whacked in the skull by Deborah’s father. The swelling had subsided, but not the pain.

  His hostage was in the pilothouse, pacing back and forth, stopping occasionally at a portal to look at the city. He found himself thinking of a time, when he was a boy, that he had caught a butterfly. It had been beautiful, yellow and royal blue, with long-tipped wings and antennae as delicate as a silk thread. He had put the creature in a glass jar, adding a branch of honeysuckle for it to feed on and carefully poking holes in the metal top of the jar. In the morning he’d found the butterfly dead, its wings ragged from beating against the jar, the honeysuckle wilted and brown.

  Deborah Sinclair hadn’t eaten in days.

  He wondered why she hadn’t tried to escape again. After that first attempt, she seemed resigned, defeated. Either it was a ruse, and she was biding her time, or she had surrendered. He stalked across the deck and yanked open the door of the pilothouse. When he stepped inside, she turned a cool gaze upon him. The dog she called Smokey lifted one side of its mouth in a snarl, but otherwise didn’t move from its favorite napping spot on the galley bench.

  “You have to eat something.” Tom grabbed a canister of biscuits from a shelf, pried off the lid and thrust them at her. “You look like a broom handle.”

  “And you,” she retorted, “have the manners of a troglodyte.”

  He thunked a bottle of cider down next to the biscuit tin.

  With a weary sigh, she pushed the tin and the bottle away. “I am neither hungry nor thirsty.”

  “Eat, goddamn it.” He wondered what the hell he was going to do with her. “You’ll get sick if you don’t.”

  “I’m already sick,” she said with quiet contempt.

  Her words raised the fine hairs on the back of his neck. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  She studied him for a moment. “That frightens you, doesn’t it?” she said, clearly intrigued by the notion. “You’re quite terrified of me dying while on your watch.”

  “Woman, I don’t give a damn whether you live or die,” he said harshly. “But we’re counting on your father to care.” He subjected her to an assessing glance. She had the naturally pale coloring of a blonde and the wan fragility of a hothouse orchid. In the past few days, the hollows beneath her cheekbones had deepened, and her tattered dress seemed to hang more loosely from her petite frame.

  He thought of the butterfly again. “What do you mean by sick?” he demanded again.

  “I suffer from the mal de mer.”

  “Lightning Jack’s tea is supposed to help that.”

  “It doesn’t help me.”

  “Then what will? Tell me that, Princess.”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “I need a proper bath and a change of clothing and an actual mattress to sleep on and something decent to eat—”

  “Excuse me while I ring for the servants,” he said.

  “You asked,” she retorted.

  Tom helped himself to a biscuit, thinking it didn’t taste half-bad. “What does a debutante eat, anyway? I’ve always wondered.”

  She sniffed. “I’m not some rare breed of dog that requires a special diet.”

  “Then eat the damned biscuit.”

  “No.” She tucked her arms around the shaggy little mutt.

  He pressed his palms flat on the chart table and leaned across it, watching his shadow sweep over her. “If you think a hunger strike is going to convince me to let you go, you’re wrong.”

  “If I starve to death, my father will—”

  “Will what?” He let a humorless smile curl his mouth. “Hunt me down and kill me? I wish like hell that he’d try.”

  She regarded him with a probing, blue-eyed stare that made him unaccountably nervous. “I think it’s time you explained a few matters to me.”

  “I’ll explain nothing to you.”

  “Then I’ll eat not
hing,” she countered.

  Biting his tongue to keep from uttering an oath that would singe her ears, he sat down on the stool across from her and held out the biscuit tin. “You eat one of these, I’ll answer one question.”

  She squinted at him like a seasoned cardsharp. “You’re on.” Without even looking down at her hand, she selected a soda biscuit from the tin and ate it quickly and efficiently. “First question.” She dusted the crumbs from her hands. “Why do you and Lightning Jack believe my father is a murderer?”

  He could tell from the way she spoke that she had a hard time even saying the word. In the silence that followed her blunt question, he heard the waves lapping at the hull of the boat, and the twang of the wind through the stay lines securing the smokestack. “Because it’s true,” he said. “Arthur Sinclair is responsible for seven deaths, and Jack and I witnessed them all.”

  “If that’s so,” she said, “then isn’t it a matter for the authorities rather than a pair of…of…” She studied him closely for a moment. “I don’t know what you are—besides a kidnaper.”

  “Lightning Jack is the skipper of this boat. I’m—” He paused to measure his words. What was he, anyway? He knew what he used to be. As a youngster he had worked as Lightning Jack’s business partner, fishing the rich waters of Lake Superior and sending the catch to the big cities. Then had come the war years, and he had gone off in search of adventure, foolishly thinking a soldier’s life would open the world to him and show him the things he had always thought were missing from his life.

  What he had found instead was a nightmare beyond anything he could have imagined. He had returned from war wild-eyed and jumpy, with a soul that would not settle. Only the gift of Asa, given into his care by his dying best friend, had brought Tom back to himself. He and the boy had rebuilt their lives on Isle Royale, the rhythm of their years marked by the seasons. From spring thaw to ice-up in early December, they worked side by side at a trading post that supplied the families of the tiny harbor settlement. The easy intimacy of their relationship came to mean the world to Tom.

  They spent the winters on the mainland in Fraser, in the company of the learned and well-respected Frère Henri. The Trappist monk had tutored Tom in his time. Over many a cold, dark winter, he had sat at the robed man’s knee and learned French, mathematics, the classics. The elderly churchman had been taking Asa down the same path—but thanks to Arthur Sinclair, it was a journey Asa would never complete.

  “Well?” Deborah Sinclair prompted, drumming her fingernails over a heading chart. “Finish what you were saying. Lightning Jack runs this steamer. What about you?”

  He nodded toward the biscuit tin. She grudgingly ate another one and washed it down with a swallow of cider.

  “I used to be a fisherman out of Isle Royale. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve seen it in my fa—on a map of the Great Lakes. I used to imagine that Lake Superior formed the profile of a giant dragon’s head, and that Isle Royale was the eye.”

  “I operate a trading post on the island,” he said. “Or I did, until recently.” After the tragedy, he had pulled a mantle of stoicism around himself, tending to his business with precision but not passion, spending hours simply sitting in a fishing boat, unable to think of a single good reason to row back to shore. Then, when the wire had come from the insurance company, absolving Sinclair’s company of any responsibility, rage had taken the place of inert pain. The injustice had planted the need for revenge in Tom’s mind. He had begun to see it as his only chance to live with himself after losing Asa.

  “So you claim my father committed murder,” she said. “On Isle Royale.” Before he could speak, she said, “That wasn’t a question. I’m merely summarizing.”

  “It’s not my claim,” he corrected her. “It’s a fact.”

  “Then present the facts to the proper authorities and let the law take its course,” she said reasonably. “But you won’t do that, will you? Because you know my father has never been to Isle Royale. He didn’t murder anyone.” She was staring at him with those blue eyes again, those strange mirrors that reflected things he didn’t want to see.

  She was smarter than he had expected her to be. Tom suspected it would not surprise her to learn that indeed the insurance board had ruled that the seven deaths were caused by an accident. Nor would it surprise her, he thought cynically, to discover that the ruling commissioner’s pockets had been generously lined by Sinclair’s cash.

  “How did the victims die?” She daintily touched her lips.

  He knew she was looking around for a napkin, but he couldn’t offer her something he didn’t have. “A mining explosion.”

  She shut her eyes briefly and pursed her lips, looking hurt, looking as if she cared. But he knew better than that. All she cared about was getting off this boat.

  “It sounds like a tragic accident, but not murder,” she concluded, opening her eyes. “My father has a lot of enemies. They make a lot of wild accusations. But that is no excuse for what you’re doing.” Idly stroking the fur of the dog, she added, “This isn’t the first time I’ve been kidnaped, you know.”

  That jolted him. “It’s not?”

  “When I was much younger, a war veteran snatched me from Lincoln Park, where I was picnicking with my governess.” She helped herself to a biscuit, as if she had forgotten her hunger strike. “He got as far as the Michigan Southern railroad yards and didn’t even have a chance to make his ransom demand before my father’s hired Pinkerton agents seized him.”

  “You never found out what he wanted?”

  “He claimed my father was guilty of profiteering during the war.”

  “He was probably right.”

  “The soldier was insane. He had lost his mind, probably from the things he had seen in battle.” She blinked slowly, and he couldn’t help but notice the lavish sweep of her eyelashes. “I understand he was hanged for his troubles.”

  “Because he was stupid enough to get caught.”

  “I recall thinking he was rather…sad. Just what is it you expect from my father?” she inquired.

  He sat silent and impassive.

  “Oh, very well,” she said, mistaking his hesitation. She ate yet another biscuit, then took another swig of apple cider. “What will you demand?”

  “Restitution for the families he destroyed. Admission of his own guilt and the liability of his mining company.”

  “That’s absurd,” she said. “Even my father can’t magically sweep away a tragic accident. And if he could, he wouldn’t bargain with the likes of you.”

  “Not even for the life of his own daughter?” Tom shot back.

  She crunched down another biscuit and took another drink, swallowing nervously. “Is that what Lightning Jack will send in over the wire?”

  “You’d best hope you mean more to him than his precious fortune.”

  Suddenly she looked very small and vulnerable to him. She pulled in her shoulders and ducked her chin, as if avoiding a sudden storm. A peculiar melancholy darkened her eyes, made her cross her arms defensively. While they were talking, he had nearly forgotten she was just a little twig of a woman.

  “What?” he demanded, angry at the way she discomfited him. “Do you think he would ignore the danger you’re in because it’s too costly?”

  She didn’t answer right away. The dog wriggled down from her lap and nosed the door open, letting itself out on deck. “I’ve never sent a wire,” she said softly, as if speaking to herself. “Is it true you have to dictate the text to the clerk? If that is the case, wouldn’t the clerk get a little suspicious about a ransom demand?”

  “Jack knows what he’s doing.”

  “Ah. An experienced kidnaper, then. And tell me, how will my mother’s jewelry and a lock of hair travel over the wire?”

  “That’ll be posted by mail packet. When he gets it, he’ll know we mean business.” He glowered at her, trying to pull his mind away from the idea that her mother had died. “You’d just better hope y
our father can be found.”

  “The city has burned to ashes,” she snapped. “I suspect not even the White Stockings stadium can be found, Mr. Silver, much less one man out of thousands of homeless. This is the most foolish of adventures. If you had the tiniest bit of sense, you would simply put me ashore and let me take the train back to Chicago. I could convince my father to forget the entire incident, and we could all go on with our lives.”

  He had a sudden memory of the slender, handsome man in the hack on Lakeshore Drive. Philip Ascot, her beloved publishing heir. If there was no response from Sinclair, they would try to contact Ascot, Tom decided. Though why a fellow would want to marry this skinny, stubborn, yellow-haired woman was beyond him.

  “How is it that you use words like debutante and induce?” she asked suddenly, out of the blue. When he glared at her, she flushed and bit into a biscuit. “I mean, I imagine Isle Royale is a wild and unsettled land. Yet you have a curiously refined way of speaking.”

  “We troglodytes tend to hole up in the winter when the lake freezes over,” he said. “There’s plenty of time for reading and study.” He suspected she’d be surprised to learn that he had studied with a church scholar, spoke three languages—English, French and Chippewa—and that late at night, by the light of a kerosene lantern, he was reading Darwin’s Origin of Species.

  “Then you should be well-versed enough in logic and law to know that your mad scheme will never work. It won’t bring back the people who died. Please,” she said. “Let me go, and you can get on with your life.”

  The trouble with going on with his life was that he didn’t want to. Asa’s death had left a dark and gaping hole in the middle of him that sucked in everything light and good, everything that used to give Tom joy and fulfillment.

  He swore, noting that the word brought a blush to Deborah’s cheeks, and left the pilothouse, thumping up on the top deck to do some chores. As he cleaned the engine housing, her words hammered at him. Let me go. Your mad scheme will never work. It won’t bring back the people who died.

  He knew that. Damn it, he knew that. But he hungered for justice. He couldn’t abide the outcome of the hearings. Like a fool, he had thought the disaster claims adjusters would tell the truth, but they’d ruled the way they were paid to—in favor of Arthur Sinclair.