A Reckless Love, page 22
Aurora, however, couldn’t so easily dismiss the conversation, and let the events of the entire day roll through her brain like a series of scenes from a dime novel. Though she hadn’t told Joelle about her own fear of rejection, surely God knew about it. It was just so hard to know where faith and courage crossed over into presumption. Lord, please give me wisdom.
That was when she heard a noise on the stairs.
She froze. It could be one of the deputies, or it could be Grandmama, a light sleeper who had been known to ramble at night. It could be Rosie or Bedelia, heading to the privy.
But Zane’s clear worry about some man called Sam Jones kept resurfacing. What if Jones had found Zane?
Should she stay in bed and let him deal with whoever had decided to walk around in the middle of the night? But what if he was asleep? Surely it wouldn’t hurt to at least take a look around. Besides, if Grandmama or one of the girls had fallen ill, she should offer to help. No need to assume dramatic attacks by imaginary villains.
Still . . .
Slipping out of bed, she drew on the dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, tied its belt firmly, then reached into her reticule for the little pepperbox derringer she carried when traveling and slipped it into her pocket. Grandpapa had taught her to shoot it years ago, when the Yankees took Memphis. Feeling a tiny bit safer, she opened the bedroom door. She would just take a quick look downstairs, then come back to bed and go to sleep.
Otherwise, she’d look like a complete hag tomorrow.
Sleeplessness had become such an old friend that Zane no longer cursed the darkness. In fact, he found the small hours of the night a rich medium for confession, prayer, and contemplation. A season when he could hear God’s voice without distractions.
That was before Aurora Daughtry, clad in a dress the color of sunshine, penny-bright hair curling beneath a frivolous straw hat, unloaded before him a basket full of drool-inducing food and dared him with a smile to eat it. Every day since then, walking beside her, hearing her laugh, splashed by the overflow of her joy, he saw glimpses of the mature woman of God she was growing into. Of course he didn’t worship her as an idol—but he’d come to recognize a partner only God could have created for him.
Now, tonight, he begged God to remove this painful thorn of longing. He wanted to tell her more than his place of birth and who his sister had married. He wanted to bare his wounds and let her cauterize them with tenderness and passion. He wanted to cover her in his own strength, protecting her from anything that would bring her distress. He wanted to slay dragons for her favor.
In short, he was becoming a sentimental idiot.
So he got out of bed—why had he thought lying down would bring relief from useless wishes?—strapped on his gunbelt, and quietly opened the bedroom door. Just a walk around the perimeter of the building. One more check of the security of each door. Then perhaps he’d be tired enough to go to sleep.
Out in the hall, at the foot of the attic stairs, he stood listening. All was quiet. No reason to disturb Mosley and the two prisoners. So he continued down to the ground floor, placing his foot near the banister to avoid the creaks in the middle of the step. At the bottom, he paused again. Silence.
He kept going. Having already memorized the layout of the dining and sitting rooms—formerly the bar area—and practiced maneuvering through them without a light, he moved with silent confidence toward the front door in the dark. He was almost there when he heard a scraping noise behind the bar. He wheeled.
Veins icy, he stalked noiselessly back toward the bar and rounded it. By now his vision had adjusted to the darkness, and he saw that the trapdoor leading to the cellar lay open. He slid his gun out of its holster.
He weighed the danger of fetching a lamp against going down blind. If he rushed the stairs from here, with or without a light, whoever was down there could escape through the outside doorway. He could fix that. Grateful that some intuition had made him learn every weak floorboard, rug, and table that might trip him, he made it safely outside.
The night was clear and humid, with a half-moon to light his progress around the building. He wished he’d had time to get Mosley to guard the front door while he went around back, but he didn’t want to give the intruder the opportunity to escape. The exterior cellar door locked from the inside, so there was no way for him to get in that way without creating a lot of noise. His only option, then, was to somehow block the prowler’s exit.
To his relief, he saw that Shug had left a wagon full of lumber and bricks near the back door, so Zane simply moved them a few at a time until the cellar door was braced shut, impossible to push open from the inside, trapping the intruder inside. That task accomplished, Zane reentered the house from the front and again made his way around the bar to the trapdoor.
He had started to descend, gun drawn, when a light flared below, temporarily blinding him.
He froze. Had the interloper seen him? Or did he have some other bizarre reason for suddenly lighting a lamp? Swallowing, he cocked his revolver. “Who’s there?” he whispered harshly. “I’ve got a gun on you.”
There was an eternal moment of silence. Then, “Zane?”
“Aurora.” Releasing the hammer and returning the gun to its holster, he realized his hand was shaking. What if he’d accidentally shot her? He sat down hard on the top step of the cellar stairs and covered his face with one hand.
The light came closer. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Lowering his hand, he stared at her and thought stupidly that he must have died and gone to heaven. Or maybe the other direction, at this point he wasn’t sure. Did angels really have white robes, freckles, and long, copper-red braids? “It must be nearly two o’clock in the morning. I’m checking the perimeter of the building. That’s my job. What are you doing? In the cellar? At two o’clock in the morning!”
She looked offended. “I know what time it is, you don’t have to repeat yourself. I heard something, and I came to see what it was.”
All Zane’s relief coagulated into another wave of fear. “You heard something? Where? Down here?”
“No, I thought I heard something on the stairs. I was afraid one of the other girls was sick, or Grandmama might need something, so I came to check—”
“By yourself? In the middle of the night? Aurora, how could you be so stupid? What if there was an intruder? I’ve told you there are bad people looking for me and the prisoners. And why would you come down here, if you heard a noise on the stairs?”
Her lips pinched together, her eyes narrowed, and he thought she might start hissing. But she seemed to regain control of her temper—barely. “Don’t you dare call me stupid! I brought my pistol. And I came down here because I saw the trapdoor open. I didn’t leave it open. Did you?”
“No, of course not—pistol? What pistol?”
Her hand went into her pocket, and she showed him a tiny pepperbox revolver. It looked somehow familiar, but that didn’t make sense. “Where did you get that?”
“I’ve had it since I was fourteen. One of the patients left it at the house after the steamboat explosion. Grandpapa said I could keep it, and he taught me how to shoot it.” She held up the lamp and glared at him. “What difference does that make? I have it, I know how to use it, and you’re being a boor.”
“That’s because—” He wiped his sweaty forehead. He felt as if he’d come down with a fever. “I’m sorry my manners desert me when I’m scared half out of my mind. I’m sorry I called you stupid, even though that’s not exactly what I said. I told you I don’t talk well. I just—I don’t know whether I want to kiss you or—”
“Oh, you’re not getting any more kisses out of me, mister, not until I get all three of my wishes.”
“Is that right?” As he stood up, the blood rushed out of his head, leaving his brains addled, possibly accounting for the fact that he walked down the steps instead of hightailing it back to the safety of his room. “Let me have the other two. Let’s get this over with right now.”
“I’m not ready to divulge that information at the moment.”
By now he was standing one step away from her, towering over her. “So you’re just going to keep me in suspense, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
She looked belligerent. “Well, you haven’t been exactly forthcoming with me either.”
“Touché. I think they call this an impasse.” Suddenly he wanted to laugh. This woman. “I have an idea. I’ll guess your next wish, and you let me know if I’m right.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “But no more talking allowed. Put the lantern down.”
“You’re going to guess my wish without talking?” She sounded skeptical. But she set the lamp on the floor.
“Shh. No talking,” he reminded her, leaning down to take her earlobe between his lips.
She gave a sharp gasp and fell against him. He caught her around the waist, lifting her off her feet. The only sounds to follow involved breath and the sibilant contact of lips. He’d intended to teach her a lesson about sassiness, about visiting cellars in the middle of the night, and about the correct location for carrying a handgun. But it was hard to be hard-nosed, with an armful of Aurora to deal with.
“Zane,” she breathed at some point, “I’m sorry but I’ve got to talk.”
“Why?” He kissed her.
“Because”—she dodged his mouth—“I need to say, you’re a very good guesser.”
“There are a lot of things I’m good at.” He kissed her again. “Talking isn’t one of them.”
“You win this time.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“You win. Zane, stop. Grandmama’s going to wake up and see the light and—”
“Do we really care?”
“Yes.” She hummed a little nonsense word. “I see now that I should have come to get you when I heard that noise—”
He set her abruptly away from him. “Which I should be investigating.” Ignoring the slamming of his own heart, he picked up the lantern and stepped around the red-haired angel who always seemed to be in his path. “Go back to bed. Go to sleep. I’m going outside to look around, and I don’t want to see you again until daylight.” He looked over his shoulder. “Please, Aurora.”
twenty–two
AURORA WALKED UP THE STAIRS, one hand trailing along the banister, the other in her pocket around the handle of the little revolver. She’d doused the lantern and left it on the bar for Zane, should he need it.
There was a certain satisfaction in having found a man she could not easily manipulate. That wasn’t to say that Zane couldn’t be led. After all, she had secretly hoped she’d find him making one of his nocturnal security checks. The fact that he’d found her was a moot point. They had found each other. And discerning her wishes, he had acted upon them without fuss or argumentation.
Which seemed to her to be a mutually beneficial outcome.
She paused. However . . .
He had successfully distracted her from her original intent of discovering the source of the odd noise she had heard on the stairs. And who had left that cellar door open? Of course it could have been Deputy Mosley making rounds, but that didn’t seem like something he would do—carelessly leaving doors open. Grandmama certainly wouldn’t have gone to the effort, not to mention the indignity, of going into the cellar. ThomasAnne maintained her conviction that spiders lurked in every corner, no matter how thoroughly the space had been cleaned, and Joelle had been fast asleep right beside Aurora. That left Bedelia or Rosie.
Grandmama was fond of the maxim that “curiosity killed the cat,” but Aurora knew she would not go to sleep until she had eliminated every possible culprit and could report victoriously to Zane in the morning that she had solved the mystery. With quiet determination, she resumed her trip up the stairs.
The saloon girls shared a room at the end of the second floor near the attic stairs. The oiled doorknob turned noiselessly under her hand, and she poked her head in. The first light of predawn layered shadows around the furniture—two simple beds, where the forms of their occupants created the expected shapes, and a small mirrored dresser. A couple of dresses hanging on nails in the corner created spectral outlines, but nothing else looked remotely out of place. Aurora had no intention of waking and questioning excitable Bedelia or gentle Rosie—that could wait until morning.
So she backed into the hall and eyed the attic stairs. Zane would tell her she had no business going up there. The deputy had his assignment under control. Well, if she was being stupid, so be it. She had to know for sure that her guests didn’t need anything. Standing in the landing in front of the attic door, she hesitated. Should she knock? Three men slept behind that door. Or didn’t sleep. She put her ear to the door and listened—to nothing.
Eyes closed, in case someone were indisposed, she carefully turned the knob and opened the door a scant inch. The room remained quiet. She would have thought somebody would be snoring. Or rustling. Something to disturb that profound silence.
Heart beginning to thump harder, she opened her eyes and waited for her vision to adjust. The attic was so dark she could barely see her hand in front of her face, but she knew death when it greeted her. No living, breathing human being could be this quiet, let alone three grown men.
As a scream rose in her throat, she clamped one hand over her mouth, the other instinctively gripping and withdrawing the gun from her pocket. What should she do? If the killer was still in the room, he must already be aware of her entrance. If not, he could be anywhere in the house, or he could have already gone. He could be stalking Zane.
Better make sure. Finger on the trigger of the leveled gun, she entered the room and stood listening again. When nothing moved, she squinted at the chair under the narrow slit of a window, where Mosley usually sat. The empty chair filled her with foreboding.
She edged around to one end of the room, where Jefcoat slept. By now her pupils had dilated so that she could discern his huge bulk on the cot. He lay splayed on his back, arms and legs flung wide. She could see the whites of his eyes and a dark river running from the slit under his beard onto the bedding.
Her body fell into incontrollable shudders as she backed away. Inevitably she would find the same thing at Moore’s side of the room, but she made herself look anyway, compelled to know the worst. The Negro lay on his side, still as in sleep, but his throat had also been cut, the blood pooled below his chin.
In the numbness of shock, Aurora’s grip on the gun relaxed, and it clattered to the floor. She stared at it, unable to make herself do anything about it. She could only think that Zane had tried to warn her, that he was right of course, and there was some evil entity stalking everyone involved in this case.
Someone had gotten in the house, climbed all the way up to the attic without disturbing Zane, and had lured Mosley away—or maybe Mosley was part of the enemy?—to kill the two witnesses. Now what? She had to find Zane and warn him.
Despite all her assertions of confidence to Zane, she was just a citified girl with a meager amount of training in self-defense. Yes, she had common sense, but nothing prepared one for emergencies like this. She had no idea about the protocol of evading a killer experienced in the art of stalking, hunting, and war. If Zane was correct, and the killer was Sam Jones, then he was also capable of handling explosives, as well as evading detection in a variety of settings. What possible chance did she have against such a lethal antagonist?
But standing here crying was not an option either. Knees quaking, she bent to pick up the gun, then rose, juggling it like some entertainer at a fair. At last she got control of it by wrapping both hands around the small handle and taking a few deep breaths. She turned and made it to the door without vomiting. So far so good.
Out on the landing, she listened for Zane’s return but heard nothing. Everyone else in the house must be asleep still.
Or dead.
The thought brought more bile to her throat, so she swallowed and made herself start down the stairs. On the second floor, she considered looking in on Grandmama, ThomasAnne, and Joelle, but finally decided there wasn’t time. Selah would have been useful—she was good with a rifle—but Joelle’s skills being more esoteric, she was better left to sleep. One more deep breath and a frantic prayer for protection, and Aurora edged toward the staircase.
She tried to imagine where the killer might have gone. He couldn’t have escaped from the attic window, which was both too narrow and too high off the ground to provide egress. That meant he had to have exited the same way he got in—via this same staircase. He could be hiding beneath her. He could be behind the bar by now, or even back in the cellar. For that matter, he could have gone through the cellar and gotten outside through the exit at the back, behind the building.
He could literally be anywhere, waiting to pounce on her and cut her throat, as he’d done to those two poor men.
One thing was for sure. She needed help. She needed Zane, but she didn’t know exactly where he was. Somewhere outside. But if she left the house, against his express orders, he might assume she was the intruder and respond accordingly. Should she call out to him? If she did that, she would alert the intruder to her presence.
Round and round her frantic thoughts went until they came back to the truth that she was at the mercy of the Lord. If she survived the night, it would be because he willed it so. Except for the little gun in her hand, she was helpless. Gathering her nonexistent courage, she took one step at a time down to the ground floor and stood on the new rug at the foot of the stairs. Why had it mattered what color it was, how big it was, the thickness of its fringe? Life was precious, and if she survived to kiss her sisters again, she’d never worry about new dresses or hair ribbons or other frivolous things again.
What would a silent murderer, who possessed the gall and wicked callousness to send sixteen hundred people into a burning watery grave, do after slitting the throats of two more victims? Would he hide and watch the reaction of the survivors, daring law enforcement to apprehend him? Or would he escape, running as far and fast as he could? She didn’t know Jones, except for what Zane had said about him. From what she deduced, the man seemed the sort who would enjoy the chaos and sorrow he’d left behind. Judging by the calling cards he’d left behind in previous atrocities—the spur left at the courtroom, for example—he might even want to be recognized for his cleverness.
