Susan Wiggs Great Chicago Fire Trilogy Complete Collection

by Susan Wiggs

  But that was before Deborah. She was a hell of a bargaining chip. Merely killing Sinclair would have been a mercy too great for the bastard. By kidnaping Deborah, Tom had taken from him the one thing his money could not replace.

  * * *

  One look at Jack’s face told Tom the news. “No response from Chicago?”

  “The news is bad. The fires burned for days, and the city is…gone. Simply gone. All but the West Side north of Fullerton Avenue.” Lightning Jack climbed aboard. Smokey, who had taken a liking to him, leaped and yapped in greeting. “Alors, doucement,” Jack grumbled good-naturedly. “Doucement, mon chou-chou. Gently, now.”

  “What about the parcel?”

  “I sent it on the packet. It will be held at the telegraph office until he claims it,” Jack said. “That means we will not have a reply any time soon.”

  Tom took a grim satisfaction in imagining Sinclair opening the parcel to find his daughter’s necklace and a lock of her hair. He wondered if he should have forced her to write a plea in her own hand. No, the lock of hair was enough. That pale blond silk was something rare indeed.

  Jack unloaded the supplies he had taken on in Milwaukee. Food and drink, candles and kerosene, a load of wood and a mysterious cloth-wrapped bundle. “Some things for the girl,” he explained, catching Tom’s look. “She has been uncomfortable.”

  “Hell’s bells,” Tom said. “We’re not taking her on a pleasure cruise, Lightning. She’s a hostage.”

  “I have been wondering about that. Can she be a hostage if her father doesn’t know we’re holding her for ransom?”

  “If he gets the wire you sent, followed by the package, he’ll know.”

  “I heard rumors while I was ashore. Chicago is not the only place that burned Sunday night,” he said. His hand made a swift and superstitious sign of the cross to protect himself from evil. Like his father before him, Jack believed in omens and portents, and in the basic malevolence of the universe.

  “There were other fires?” Tom asked.

  “Peshtigo, Wisconsin, burned—a lumber town. Hundreds, maybe thousands died there. The same happened somewhere in Michigan. All Milwaukee is talking about the night it rained fire. There are men wearing sandwich boards proclaiming it’s the end of the world, and who are we to say they are wrong?”

  Tom gestured out across the broad gray waters of the lake. “We’re still here. The world’s still here.”

  “Perhaps this is all that’s left.”

  Tom was in no mood for philosophizing. “So where did you send the wire?” he asked.

  “A notice will be placed in the Tribune, which has already begun running a list of advertisements to reunite families separated in the fire. I paid extra for notices in the Times and the Journal as well. You would be proud of my wording, mon gars. I said ‘In the matter of his daughter Deborah, Mr. Arthur Sinclair is urged to retrieve an important message from the central telegraph office.”’

  Tom nodded. “So we wait here?”

  “I cannot. I must get back to the island for the last shipment of the season. The people there are depending on me.” He pursed his lips, thinking hard. “My friend, I think you are making a mistake,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I think it is best for all if you take the woman ashore and put her on a train.”

  “Jesus, Lightning, I thought you were with me on this. We’ve taken the richest girl in Chicago, and you want to simply send her packing?”

  “She is more trouble than she’s worth anyway.”

  “Then you haven’t done the calculations, my friend,” Tom said, hardening his heart. “She won’t say, but I think she’s his only child. She’s worth—literally—a king’s ransom.”

  “So does it all come down to money?” Lightning Jack asked, his voice low but sharp as a blade.

  “This isn’t about money,” Tom snapped. “It’s never been about money. But I know how to grab an opportunity when I find one. We went all the way to Chicago to find Arthur Sinclair. The perfect instrument has been dropped into our laps. She’s a valuable commodity. He’ll sacrifice anything to get her back.” Tom paced the deck in agitation. “When you take a man’s life, he suffers but once. When you take the thing that he loves, he suffers every moment he is without her.” Tom knew too well the truth of it.

  “How do you know he loves his daughter?”

  “If he didn’t, he would have ditched her long ago. She’s the most annoying female I’ve ever met.”

  Lightning Jack subjected him to a long study. Under the streak of white, one eyebrow lifted in speculation. “Is she, now?”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

  “So.” He shaded his eyes and looked toward the north. It was a rare, clear autumn day, perfect sailing weather. In the distance, the bridge over the river rotated, letting out a schooner and a brig. Jack snapped his fingers. “We compromise. You stay with her here in Milwaukee.”

  The thought of looking after Deborah Sinclair on his own made Tom’s stomach churn, and he shook his head in vigorous denial. He had no doubt Lightning Jack could navigate the shoals around the peninsula and get himself through the Soo Locks on his own. Jack had been making the voyage for years, but he was no longer a young man, and the trip was grueling.

  “I can’t stay, either.” Only a short while ago, he would have added that he had to get back to Asa, that Asa was depending on him. Now he had nothing. Nobody. No reason to hurry back to the island, to reopen his business and get on with things. But the idea of staying in a strange city with the likes of Deborah Sinclair made him sweat. “We’ll take the girl to Isle Royale. It fits, Lightning. We’ll make Sinclair fetch her from the island.”

  “He has never seen the island,” Lightning Jack mused. “Perhaps you are on to something. But the girl.” He puffed out his cheeks. “It would be like taking a kitten into the jungle.”

  Tom remembered what she was like when she got her back up. “She’ll survive.”

  He looked toward the bow, where Deborah Sinclair sat wrapped in a plaid blanket, catching the weak autumn sun on her shoulders as she read from a battered copy of Gulliver’s Travels that she had found in one of the bunks. The wind off the lake toyed with her hair, lifting the long, golden strands to the light. Watching her, he felt an odd twist of sensation deep in his gut.

  He dismissed the feeling as suspicion. She had been watching the harbor. They lay to a good distance offshore, but she’d already made one stupid escape attempt, and she might try another.

  A brisk wind brought the schooner and the brig out quickly into the main channel. The vessels plowed over the iron-gray swells. In the bow of the trawler, shielded from the wind, Deborah Sinclair paid no heed to anything but the book she was reading. A haunting melancholy seemed to hover over her like a chill mist.

  The trouble with holding her hostage, Tom decided, was that he had to witness her suffering. And she was not the enemy. Yet it was Deborah and her lonely isolation he would have to face, day after day. He steeled himself. This was for Asa. Asa and the other families Sinclair had destroyed. No going soft now.

  Lightning Jack seemed to read Tom’s mind. “She is completely harmless, eh? She is without guile. Exactly as—” He stopped himself, but not before Tom understood.

  “Ah. Now I see where you’re going.” The black emptiness ached inside Tom each time he thought of the boy he had lost. “You’ve convinced yourself that she’s as sinless as Asa was. But you’re wrong.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She’s a goddamned female, and a Sinclair to boot. What more must I say?” Tom made a fist. “You mark my words. She’ll betray us at first opportunity.”

  “And if you are wrong?” asked Lightning Jack.

  “If I’m wrong, we can put her ashore at Sault Sainte Marie.”

  Tom offered the compromise only because he knew he was right about the frail blond woman who was his hostage. Despite the fragile innocence in her eyes, she was far fr
om harmless.

  NINE

  Deborah scarcely dared to breathe as she slowly drew out the box of matches. She could feel Tom Silver’s gaze studying her from the opposite end of the steamer, and she prayed he had been fooled by her innocent pose at the bow.

  “Don’t you say a word,” she warned Smokey, who lay curled on a coil of rope nearby. “You spoiled my other chance to get away, and I won’t have you spoiling this one.”

  The dog yawned and rested its chin in its paws.

  She tugged the thick Tattersall blanket more snugly around her, but opened it in the front to make a wind break for lighting the matches. She shifted her gaze to the east, where the steeples, grain elevators and smokestacks of Milwaukee pierced the sky. Only last summer, she’d passed by this city on her father’s yacht. It was a major port on the lake, and it had a railway station—her best chance of escape.

  Last time she had seen this view from the lake, escape had been the furthest thing from her mind. Aboard the steamer yacht Triumph, she had basked like a well-fed cat in Philip’s attention and her father’s approval. Lucy and Phoebe had been aboard for the cruise, and she remembered thinking how perfect everything was. This past August, she had been cheerfully oblivious to any cruelty or hardship. She’d had no idea people like Tom Silver and Lightning Jack existed. When she ate grilled whitefish for luncheon, it never occurred to her to wonder where the fish had come from, who had caught and cleaned it, and what his life was like.

  In just a few short days, she had discovered that perhaps the world was not the charmed and golden place she’d always experienced. She was coming to know a new side of herself, a side that had not been honed and buffed to a high sheen by the masters and mistresses at finishing school. She was learning that she had a number of less-than-admirable qualities and a capacity for deceit.

  On the deck in front of her, concealed by the plaid wool blanket, lay three signal flares. She had stolen them from beneath a storage bench the night before and had been waiting for her chance ever since. With two boats clearing the harbor, the moment had arrived. When they saw a distress signal, they would assume the trawler was sinking, and they’d come to the rescue. Maritime law compelled them to respond.

  Deborah would call out to the passing ships, and if she was very lucky, a shore patrol might even spot the flare and come to investigate. She had her eye on a mildewed life ring secured to the side of the trawler. If necessary, she would dive into the icy water of Lake Michigan. Never mind that her last attempt had been a disaster. She had very recently realized that some things were more treacherous than drowning.

  In the afternoon sun, the hull of the distant schooner shone with a promising glitter, as if the vessel had been careened and recently painted. It sailed about a quarter mile to the south, close enough to respond quickly once she ignited the flare.

  Deborah took a deep breath. It was time.

  She glanced over her shoulder, noting that Tom Silver seemed busy at the wheelhouse. Lightning Jack had gone below and the dog slept peacefully in the autumn sun.

  Slowly she positioned the flare between her feet to hold it steady while she lit the match. The breeze plucked at the blanket. The match ignited with a sibilant hiss, then immediately died in the breath of the wind.

  Her hand shook as she struck a second match, inhaling the noxious sulfurous smell. She gritted her teeth and cupped her palm around the burning tip of the match. This time, she leaned in close to protect the fragile flame and touched it to the fusee of the flare. The tiny, weak flame wobbled and went out.

  Heart pounding, she tried a third time. She prayed incoherently under her breath.

  The fusee smoldered, then caught with a small burst of sparks. Disturbed from a sound sleep, Smokey leaped to his feet and started yapping.

  “Thank God,” she whispered, grasping the flare, standing up and waving it in an arc over her head. Stinging sparks rained on her hand and head. With more power than she knew she possessed, she launched the fusee high into the air. With an ear-splitting hiss, the missile ascended into the sky, emitting a cloud of green smoke in its wake.

  Deborah held her breath, hands trembling as she hastened to light another flare. She could not trust that one alone would attract the attention she needed. The second fusee wouldn’t light, but she kept trying. Oh, please, she prayed silently. Please get me away from these madmen.

  Heavy footsteps thudded toward her. Based on all that had befallen her since Saturday night, the sound of a man’s hurried tread should cause her to shrink in terror. Yet the exhilaration building in her chest left no room for fear. For once in her life she was thinking for herself, acting on her own behalf. It was heady stuff for a woman who had been taught from the cradle to be a doll-like ornament capable only of following orders.

  When she saw the expression of rage on his face as Tom Silver approached, she dropped the blanket and ran to the rail of the ship’s pulpit. “Help!” she yelled, waving her arms at the schooner. The small gray dog kept barking and trotting back and forth at the rail. Panic and desperation pounded through her like a sudden sickness. “Help!” she called again.

  The great sails of the schooner jibed in response to a shift in course. The wind filled the pale canvas, and in a few moments the sailboat was headed toward the trawler. Deborah gripped the wires of the pulpit, threw back her head and shouted with triumph. Her flare had captured their attention. She waved her arms faster, hoping they would read urgency in her gesture.

  Tom Silver took hold of her wrists, gripping them hard.

  “Let go of me,” she said, trying to wrench herself away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Then quit waving your arms like a crazy woman,” he replied.

  “I’ll quit if you let go.”

  “Fine.”

  As soon as he let loose of her hands, she started flailing again, but one look from Silver stilled her efforts. She tried another tack, reaching for the life ring. Instantly he plucked it from her hands and threw it into the cockpit beyond her reach.

  “You don’t really want to go into the lake again,” he explained calmly. Then he spoke no more. His silence disconcerted her, for she expected him to yell at her as was his custom. Instead, he simply stood beside her, watching the schooner draw closer, until it lay within shouting distance.

  Deborah drew breath to begin yelling for help. Tom Silver leaned down to ask her, “Do you really want me to shut you up?”

  Lightning Jack came up through a hatch. He sat in the cockpit like a spectator at a sporting match, watching the action.

  She clamped her mouth shut, growing more and more discomfited as she waited to be rescued from the man who stood close beside her. She always had the most uncanny sense of him when he was near. He smelled of the wind and the forest, and his hulking form gave her the sensation of standing in the shadow of a rather large tree.

  She flicked a nervous glance at him. “Why aren’t you yelling at me?”

  He kept his gaze on the schooner. “There’s no need.” His voice was quiet and controlled.

  “Well, you can’t blame me, can you?” she said indignantly. “Isn’t it a rule of war that a prisoner is obligated to try to escape?”

  “Is that what this is? A war?”

  On the schooner across the churning water, a figure on deck lifted a bullhorn to his mouth. “Ahoy! Are you in distress, then?” he called, the sound faint in the wind.

  “Help!” Deborah shrieked, jumping up and down. “I’m being held prisoner!”

  A strong arm slipped around her waist, hugging her in against the long, hard length of Tom Silver. It was not a cruel touch, but felt somehow commanding. “Shut up,” he said simply. “I warned you—”

  Panic exploded in her head, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. “Help!” she choked out, clawing at his big hand.

  “The flare, it was an accident.” Lightning Jack’s deep shout sang across the swells. “Begging your pardon. Please disregard.”

  Deborah forced down the
panic. She was trapped, yes, but she wasn’t helpless. Success depended on staying calm. “Please,” she yelled again. “Don’t listen to him. I—”

  “I said,” Tom Silver cut in, “shut up.”

  She gathered all the courage she could muster from the scant supply inside her. “I’ll do nothing of the sort.”

  “Fine.” He moved so swiftly and with such boldness that she had no idea what was happening until he took her face between his hands and covered her mouth with his.

  He tasted different from Philip. He tasted like nothing she had ever imagined. For a moment, that was her only coherent thought.

  Though Tom Silver’s lips were curiously soft, his embrace held her immobile, imprisoned, helpless as a rabbit in a steel trap. The panic in Deborah’s chest hammered its way outward, telegraphing alarm along her limbs, radiating terror to every nerve ending.

  She made a sound of protest against his mouth, trying in vain to twist away from him. She beat her fists on his arms, and the bulging muscles there tightened to iron-hard masses. She pushed against his chest, but felt only an unyielding wall. Faintly, somewhere in the realm outside of her panic, she heard Lightning Jack’s call to the schooner. “Ah, l’amour,” he said good-naturedly. “You see, we celebrate young love!”

  The skipper of the schooner called something that sounded less than celebratory. Deborah could scarcely breathe as she made a sobbing, frantic sound in her throat.

  “You can let her go now,” Lightning Jack called. “The schooner, she is turning her tack.”

  Tom Silver let go instantly. His surrender of her was so quick that she stumbled back and had to grasp the pulpit rail to keep from falling. He didn’t seem to notice that his brutal embrace had nearly made her swoon with horror. He dismissed her as if she were an undersized trout, thrown back into the lake.

  She sagged against the rail, waiting for her racing heart to slow and her breath to catch. Then, giving herself no time to be afraid, she hiked one leg, then the other over the rail. The brisk wind blew her skirts. The wire of the rail pressed against the backs of her knees. She tried not to remember how cold the water was, tried not to recall the horrible suffocating sensation of drowning.