LAMPLIGHT TOTTERED IN every window as folk were pulled from their beds by the sound of gunshots on the streets of Nantucket. Or was it only the thunder of an off-island storm? No one was sure, for the sounds made no encore after the first two. The men who came out to check the street found nothing, no one. Nothing but the toppled barrels and scattered firewood in front of Simon Parkhurst’s dry goods store. Assuming a stray goat or ram had become frightened and done the damage, they restacked the wood and righted the barrels before going back to bed. If the loud noises were thunder from some incoming squall, better not to be caught out of doors.
Abbey dragged Jake around the corner to the cadence of Pollock and his confederates’ footsteps clapping after them in the moon-shaded night. They had a good head start, but Jake was still stunned by his new wound and she was caught between wanting to let him rest and knowing rest would be the death of them.
She pulled him between two buildings and pressed up against a brick wall, listening.
All she heard was her own panting and Jake’s wheezes. Her hands were cold as she searched for her handkerchief and pressed it against Jake’s shoulder. He accommodated by moving his hand, then holding the handkerchief in place himself. He closed his eyes for a moment, groaned softly, then took a steadying breath.
“You’re bulldog willful,” he commented. In spite of his wound the words were steady and his tone strong-hearted. “I like that in a woman.”
“You had to get shot, didn’t you,” Abbey muttered. “You couldn’t have stepped out of her way.”
“I never step out of a woman’s way, you know that.”
“Why did you come alone?”
“Same as before,” he told her, breathing heavily through a dry mouth. “The little girl found me halfway down Broad Street. I sent her after Elias and Matt, but I came on my own, anyway. Maybe she couldn’t find them. Maybe she got scared, I don’t know . . . oh, that stings.”
“Hold your hand over it. That’s right. They’re coming—I hear them—”
Jake caught her hand and this time he led the way through the alley and out onto the next street.
The sound of pursuit was closing upon them. Pollock’s voice barking orders, Maynard swearing revenge, and finally even Cordelia’s shrill accusations. So she wasn’t dead. Too bad.
Half a block. A quarter block. Closing. Store after store, all closed up tight, fanned by.
“Jake, wait!” Abbey drew up short. “This way!”
“What?” Jake teetered beside her.
“The hat store! We can hide there!”
“How can we get in?”
“Lucy’s spare key.” She scrambled to the door of the Geary Hat Store, dropped to one knee, and searched under a rock in the little porchside garden. By the time she overturned the rock where Lucy had hidden the key, her fingernails were black with soil and her knuckles raw. Her hands were cold, terrified.
Yes, she was afraid now. Running was much scarier than fighting, especially when your adversary was nipping at your heels.
The door opened and closed in a breath.
Abbey and Jake ducked behind the counter and tried to control their panting.
They could hear the heavy clodding of boots on the clapboard sidewalk outside—a big man. Pollock.
An instant later, Maynard and Sumner together. Then Cordelia. The clattering on the sidewalk was deafening, deadly.
Then, quite miraculously, it passed them by.
Other sounds now, farther away. Pollock’s muffled voice blurting orders to the men. He and Cordelia arguing.
Abbey twisted and coiled her arms around Jake’s neck, heedless of his shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you.”
He caressed her back and her hair. “Because you’re pigheaded, that’s why. And, as you see now, it’s a dangerous business.”
“It’s a necessary business,” she said sharply, pulling herself back to look into his eyes. “It was no fair to keep me out, Ross.”
“How did you find out about the tunnel?”
“I followed Elias.” She sat back on her ankles and pressed her hand to her lips. “Oh, Jake . . . I led Cordelia there. I had no idea she was—”
“We had an idea,” he said resentfully. “We knew there was a federal investigator on the island, but we didn’t know who it was.”
Abbey was silent for a moment as all the pieces clicked together in her mind. “Is that why you didn’t want to tell me? Did you think it was me?”
Jake licked his dry lips. After a paused he rasped, “I told you—we didn’t know who it was.”
“But it could have been me.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “It could’ve.”
The wind howled against the stubby building’s facade. Abbey gazed at him through the layered darkness. Somehow the pattern of the windowpane resting across his face in the grainy moonlight endeared him to her. It was a badge of his effort. Quietly she told him, “A smart assumption. I would have thought the same.”
Jake sighed and then grinned sadly. “I’ll admit you did throw me off a mite when you stepped off the ship and immediately set to throttling that slaver. But we’ve learned the hard way not to put anything past the people who want to bust the Underground Railroad. Deception’s one of their best skills. They know we’re sly, so they’ve learned to be twice as sly.”
“Cordelia’s of a worse breed than that, even,” Abbey said. “She’s one who resells them. Bad enough to put shackles back on children and have the government pay her, but she turns a second profit from plantation owners. She’s a greedy woman.”
“Only the seediest of plantation owners would deal with her ilk, Abbey,” Jake mentioned generously. “That’s what my cousins and I concentrate on—the slaves who live under the worst of conditions. Most don’t have it so bad. Most have a roof over their head and food and clothing, which is more than plenty of white folk have when times are bad. But Matt, Elias, and I go after the ones whose owners don’t figure slaves for people at all. We’ve done pretty fair off Nantucket so far, too. We’ve funneled almost three hundred slaves since last year.”
“Gracious,” Abbey whispered. “It makes me ache to be part of it!”
Jake shifted his legs, and with a wince readjusted the bloodsoaked handkerchief against his shoulder. “I fancied it would,” he drawled.
“You fancied,” she scolded. “Fancy this.”
With a handful of his sweater she pulled him against her and pressed her mouth to his. It was a kiss of passion, of thanks, of respect, of apology, of admiration, even of playfulness in this dangerous moment. Their lips made a soft wet smack and they were both lost in it, until a wave of weakness came over Jake and he almost fell against her.
“Jake,” Abbey whispered sympathetically, holding onto him.
“I’m full of holes, aren’t I. . . .” he muttered, squinting at his shoulder in the dimness.
“Medals of honor,” she told him.
He gazed warmly at her and smiled. “Must you be such a cussed optimist at every turn? You’re tuckering me out.”
“Sorry. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he wheezed. “I’ve got to clear those slaves off the island . . . problem is, Matt set it up for Pollock to come through with a boat to transport them. By the time I put a bridle on the arrangement, it was too late to round up another boat for this week. There’s no way to get them to the Continent.”
Abbey had opened her mouth to speak when sounds from outside the door cut her off. Together they looked at the closed, locked shop door.
Her heart snapped when she made out the clear outlines of Pollock and Cordelia through the thin linen curtain on the door window.
“Oh, God!” she gasped.
“Shhh—” Jake pulled her deeper behind the counter.
“Cordelia! She must have thought of the store! She knew I’d come here! Damn me!”
Jake clamped his hand over Abbey’s panicked whispers and drew her back still farther. “Is there a back room?”
Abbey nodded furiously, driven to shakes by Pollock’s rattling the shop door. An instant later the lock was being blown off by Cordelia’s pistol at close range, a bitter reminder that Abbey had failed to pick up the gun when she had had the chance. By the time Pollock was battering his way in through the shattered door, Abbey and Jake were shutting the door to the storeroom—but not before Cordelia’s victorious yelp told them they’d been spotted.
Jake used his whole weight to clamp the door shut while Abbey fumbled with a heavy shipping crate and maneuvered it into place before the door. As the door creaked and groaned under the slamming of Pollock’s shoulder, Jake found a broom and wedged the handle between the crate and the wall. Now Pollock couldn’t get in, but . . .
“We can’t get out,” Jake choked, looking around the tiny shelved room. The only light came from two tiny windows through which moonbeams came in like pencils.
“Then we’ll fight,” Abbey shot back, burying his announcement. The idea of fighting fortified her. A streak of irrationality came over her, and she began pawing through the stored dresses and hats for anything that could be used as a weapon. A hanger, a pin—
“Abbey—” Jake covered the small room in two steps and stood behind her. “Abbey.”
She found a hatpin and held it before her eyes to check the length of it, the strength of it—
“Abbey!”
He clasped her shoulders and wrenched her around to face him.
She hadn’t realized that her breathing had become so jagged with panic. As she stood there rigid in his grip, blood from his hand smearing her sleeve, her lips hung slightly open as the air rasped in and out of her lungs. She stared up at him, and the fear began to creep back.
“Abbey, we could die tonight,” he said. “We can’t just decide against it. Being pigheaded doesn’t stop a bullet.”
“We won’t die,” she gasped.
He shook her. “We might! You’ve got to accept it.”
“Why should I?”
“Because it just hurts more if you don’t. Abbey, I’ve seen death,” he said, his brows pulling together over those nutshell brown eyes, which were glazed by moonlight and the determination to make her understand him. “I’ve seen it, I’ve smelled it coming.”
She stepped back, pulling out of his grip, and smacked his hands away with sudden wickedness. “I’ve seen death too, Jacob Ross. I know something about it.” Her words came like a blade born on those ragged breaths, and with the declaration, her fear abated. “Don’t tell me what I have to accept. I wasn’t made to just accept. And I don’t plan to wait around through life like some cautious granny, cowering away and hoping to die insensible in my sleep. I might go, but I’ll go spitting. Get away from me. I’ve got things to do.”
The pounding on the other side of the door called her with its pulse now, just as moments ago it had repelled her. With a hatpin in her fist, she struck the door.
“All right, Mr. Pollock,” she called. “Stand aside. We’ll come out.”
“Abbey,” Jake warned, wondering if she’d finally gone mad. Yet there was a strange approval in his tone this time and the faintest touch of a smile tugging at his lips.
She turned, and winked at him.
His smile broadened. He moved forward and helped her remove the crate and the broomstick from the doorway.
Pollock had stopped battering the door. There were muffled voices from the outer room.
They would be stepping out into the barrel of at least one gun.
Jake took her hand again. Together they stepped out of the storage room.
Pollock and Cordelia stood side by side near a rack of dresses. Each held a pistol, and Cordelia now held a large lantern, which cast a deceivingly warm glow over the entire store.
“Better,” Pollock said impassively.
Jake and Abbey came out into the glow and said nothing.
“I’m sorry you have to die,” Cordelia told them, but her tone said she was only being polite.
“I’m not,” Pollock stampeded her. “We’ve got a business to run. No sense being soft about the job at hand.”
“You can shoot us, obviously,” Abbey said immediately, “but if you do, you’ll never get off the island. I imagine murder leaves a particularly ugly trail in a quaint place like this, where everybody knows everybody else’s nature. I’ve told everyone about you, Thomas. You’re no secret anymore. Even if you should get away, neither of you will do business for long on the Continent. The slaves recognized you, Cordelia. They’ll tell the Colberts, and word will spread like brush, fire. A business like yours needs secrecy, and you won’t have it anymore.”
A deadly silence came over the hat store. Abbey tightened her hand around Jake’s and tucked the other hand behind her skirt, the hatpin hiding in her fist. She straightened her shoulders, forcing herself not to think of the fact that she was using a hatpin to face down a gun.
Pollock’s mouth was set like rock. He was a conniver, but he had his dull-witted side, and it was this side to which Abbey addressed her logic, the side that held his pomposity at bay and forced him to be aware of the kind of circles he ran in. His eyes grew small with rage. He raised his pistol level with her head.
Jake pulled her behind him in a last moment of defiance, but it was Cordelia who nudged Pollock’s arm downward.
“Stop it,” she said. “She’s right. They’ve got to die drowned or something. Something not so obvious as shot. We need time to get off with the blacks.”
Pollock glowered and fumed beneath the brim of his hat. He paused for one indecisive moment, clearly longing for the perfect violence of blowing their heads off, but then he tucked his pistol into his belt, inhaling to make room for it next to his barrel belly. “Fine,” he growled. “Fine. We’ll do it nice and ugly. Drowning don’t hurt enough.”
Jake’s arm tightened around Abbey. There wasn’t room to jump before Cordelia could fire her own six-shooter, and she wasn’t going to trust them again. She hadn’t taken her eyes from them once, nor had she wavered with her gun.
Pollock reached to his side, to Cordelia’s lantern. He held it before his face, and his face became a golden mask. Using only this thumb and forefinger, he worked the hot glass globe from the wick and rolled it onto the store counter. The light’s consistency changed, becoming bare flame now, burning from the short wick. With quiet deliberation he turned the crank until the wick came up and up, burning and roaring. He winced as the heat singed his face.
He moved the lantern in a rotating motion, then grinned as he heard and felt a full tank of oil sloshing around inside the reservoir. He appeared to like the sound.
“Burn my boat, will you,” he snarled. He raised the lantern.
“No!” Abbey screamed. Jake dragged her backward toward the storage room.
The lantern crashed to the floor and skidded across the wood, leaving a snake of fire in its path. Two racks of dresses immediately burst into flames. A room that seconds ago had been drab now suddenly had turned hellish. Some shadows were destroyed by the monstrous light, others created by it, sharp black shadows defying the violent yellow flame.
The heat came only an instant later, scorching the fine hairs on Abbey’s face as Jake dragged her backward to avoid incineration.
Every dress, every hat in the store became a torch, the room itself a furnace. Any chance of escaping through the front door was grilled as the flames climbed higher and lit the draperies. The small linen curtain on the door shriveled and was devoured.
Suffocating against the back wall, Jake and Abbey shielded their eyes against the heat and watched with pure bitterness as the two who would laugh upon their graves slipped by the window outside, and were gone.