Twenty-Three

Luke was still floating on air the following morning as he headed to church. The pieces of his life were falling into place. The moment he reached the pew, he was going to fall to his knees, give thanks for the miracle of meeting Marianne, and pray for wisdom in navigating the tricky road ahead. It wasn’t going to be easy, but they loved each other and were ready to move forward.

It was a perfect July morning, and a few parishioners mingled outside, which was typical.

What wasn’t typical was the horse-drawn police wagon parked outside the church. Two uniformed officers loitered near the wagon, and another sat on the driver’s bench. It was one of those covered paddy wagons with bolted doors in the back and a small window covered by bars. No one else was paying the police any mind, so Luke crossed the street and headed toward the church.

An officer intercepted him. “Are you Luke Delacroix?”

“Yes.” How did they know his name? He swallowed hard, all his senses going on alert.

“We have a warrant for your arrest. You have been charged with spying on Congress and need to come with us.”

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. He’d done a lot of sketchy spying over the years, but never on Congress.

“That’s nonsense,” he replied. “I haven’t spied on anyone.” Not in Washington, anyway.

The officer thrust a form in his face, suddenly making this feel very real. And terrifying. Luke reached for the warrant, but the officer held it back. “Read it from here,” he ordered.

It was hard to read with his head so dizzy, but his name was typed on the top line. The charge was spying on a member of Congress, but it didn’t say who or when. Clyde Magruder was probably behind this. It meant hiring a lawyer, and Luke’s bank account was already drained from Caroline’s wedding present. He could get a loan from Gray, but this was a disaster.

He beat back the momentary panic and managed a nonchalant tone. “It’s Sunday,” he pointed out. “I can’t be arraigned today. Why are you even bothering with an arrest? Give me the warrant, and I’ll show up in court tomorrow to settle this.”

“We have orders to take you into custody now,” the officer said. “A cell is waiting for you at the District of Columbia Jail.”

A different officer yanked Luke’s right hand behind his back, and the cold metal of handcuffs clamped around his wrist. The third officer unlocked the heavy latch on the back of the wagon.

“You don’t have to do this,” Luke rushed to say. “I’ll ride on the front bench. You don’t have to lock me up.”

But they were already driving him toward the rear of the wagon. Luke looked helplessly at the aghast parishioners standing outside the church. He recognized Mrs. Lancaster, a woman who sometimes cleaned at the boardinghouse.

“Tell Princeton to get my brother,” he shouted to her.

She nodded and said something in reply, but he couldn’t hear as the two officers lifted and shoved him into the back of the wagon. It was dark. Stifling. The doors slammed, and then the bolt slid into place.

He was trapped.

A suffocating blanket of panic enveloped him, making it hard to breathe or think. Instinct took over, and he dropped to the floor to slam the flat of his foot against the door, over and over. It didn’t do any good, and within a minute the wagon was rolling down the street.

He was on his way back to jail, the same one where he’d humiliated himself with Marianne all those months ago. He couldn’t go back. He wouldn’t, but it was time to calm down and get ahold of his senses.

Behind his back, the handcuffs were loose. He was still thin and hadn’t been able to put on any real weight on Poison Squad rations. It hurt, but he folded his thumb tight against his palm and pulled his hand against the metal cuff. Then pulled harder. The skin tugged and pain seared, but he didn’t let up until he yanked his hand free.

He darted to the bars covering the narrow window on the back of the wagon. Instinct drove him to jerk on the bars even though he knew it was pointless. He couldn’t let himself be locked up in the DC Jail. The smell. The clanging noises. It was too much like the other place.

Don’t panic. Whatever else, he must not panic. His family had money. Soon he would have a lawyer. He had rights.

And clutching at the window bars was a stupid way of alerting anyone watching that he’d escaped from his handcuffs. He let go and dropped onto a hard bench bolted to the side of the wagon. The ride seemed endless as the wheels rolled over bumpy cobblestones. Twenty minutes? Thirty? It felt like forever, but soon a marshy smell indicated they were nearing the Anacostia River and getting closer to the jail.

The panic returned, causing sweat to pour, his heart to pound. There was no way he was going to walk into a jail cell. Never again.

The jail was built on an old army base surrounded by an open field, but if he could make it to the trees, he could get away. He at least had to try.

The wagon rolled to a stop, then shifted as the driver got off the front bench. Casual voices from the policemen mingled with the jangling of keys. They didn’t suspect anything. Luke stood but kept his hands behind his back as the door was unlocked. One of the officers reached up to help him down, but the others were already heading toward the jail.

Luke elbowed the officer in the face and shoved him to the ground, then leapt free and made a dash for the trees. The handcuffs still dangled from his left wrist, but he was free and running for his life.

Shouts came from behind. They were giving chase. Yelling. Ordering him to stop. A stitch in his side felt like a knife in the ribs, but he sprinted through the pain.

He made it to the woods! His feet ripped through the undergrowth, twigs and limbs scratching his face as he stumbled forward. A root nearly sent him sprawling, but he regained his balance and kept running. The men were getting closer.

A huge weight slammed into him from behind, and he hit the ground, dirt and grass filling his mouth.

“Idiot,” a man growled in his ear.

He couldn’t breathe. A thousand pounds was sitting on his back. His arms were wrenched behind him and another set of handcuffs snapped into place. This time when they lifted him, they weren’t so gentle.

Luke spit out a mouthful of grass and dirt. “I’m not going back to jail. I didn’t do it.”

“Sure, sure,” the officer said, driving him forward.

It was hard to keep his balance with his hands manacled behind his back, and the cops had no mercy, shoving him harshly forward until he fell on his face and couldn’t even break his fall. Rough hands hauled him upright, but he hit the dirt three more times on his way to the jail.

Then the grim, granite-stoned building loomed straight ahead. Running had been stupid, but panic had gotten the better of him. He still had to think of a way to get out of this. For once he hadn’t done anything wrong. He was completely innocent. He hadn’t spied on Congress.

But Marianne had.

The documents she photographed had been commissioned by her father’s congressional committee, but Luke had been the one to hand them over to Dr. Wiley. Clyde was going to find a way to pin this on him, and it was going to be hard to wiggle off the hook.

“We’ve got a runner,” the cop said as he dragged Luke in the door and shoved him toward a counter.

The clerk at the desk didn’t even bother to look up. “Put him in solitary, then.”

This couldn’t be happening. Not again. But the clang of the locks sounded hideously familiar, and then Luke was propelled down a dank brick corridor. The edges of his vision began to blur, and prisoners behind bars laughed and jeered as he passed. Then through another set of locked doors to a cell with no bars, only walls.

“You’ll be in here for a while,” the guard said, nudging Luke inside.

The four walls were concrete block, and the only furniture was a board chained to the wall. He closed his eyes as fear engulfed him. Then came the closing of the door and the clanging of the lock.

He couldn’t breathe. It took all his effort to will his lungs to function.

Perspiration rolled down his face, but he’d survived this before. Prison was nothing new to him. When he was in Cuba, he had biblical passages engraved on his soul. He stumbled toward the cot and sat, bowing his head in prayer. He knew all the passages of comfort, and he said them over and over.

It wasn’t working. Wasn’t God supposed to answer?

But there was no answer. Only taunting laughter echoing down the hallways, the smell, and the suffocating sense of doom.

Gray arrived two hours later. The warden wasn’t taking any chances with Luke, and he was clamped into leg-irons and handcuffs before being led to a small meeting room. It had a wooden table, two chairs, and painted concrete block walls.

Gray was pacing in the confined space when the warden led Luke into the room. At least the guard had fastened his handcuffs in the front so he could offer Gray one of his hands to shake.

Gray squeezed his hand but maintained a grim silence until the warden left the room and closed the door. Luke flinched at the sound of the lock clicking into place.

“Spying on Congress?” Gray asked, his voice dripping with angry disbelief.

Luke lowered himself into a chair. “I didn’t do it. I’m completely innocent.”

“Then what convinced a judge to sign a warrant for your arrest?”

“I’m mostly innocent,” Luke amended.

Gray’s face turned to stone as he took the seat on the opposite side of the table. “Explain yourself.”

“I can’t provide any more details than that.”

Gray stood and kicked his chair, sending it skittering across the room and banging into a wall. “Don’t pull that with me,” he demanded. “How did this happen?”

In the past two hours, Luke had plenty of time to piece it together. Marianne had taken photographs of studies paid for by the Committee on Manufactures. That was almost a month ago. Marianne knew he intended to pass them along to Dr. Wiley, but Luke also pounced on the chance to write an anonymous article about them for Modern Century. Clyde knew Luke wrote for Modern Century and assumed he had stolen the documents. Anyone would.

Luke hadn’t spied on Congress. It was Marianne who ferreted out the studies and turned them over. Luke was merely the journalist who sounded the alarm, but he couldn’t clear himself without condemning Marianne, and that would never happen. He didn’t think Clyde would expose Marianne to the justice system, but Clyde might not have a choice. Now that the police and a judge were involved, if the finger of blame pointed at someone else, Clyde might have lost his ability to walk it back.

Even if Clyde could spare Marianne, he would never forgive his daughter for playing a role in this. She would be cut out of the family just like poor, doomed Aunt Stella. That meant there was a limit on how much Luke could disclose.

He focused on the peeling paint in the corner of the room while figuring out how to parse his words. “I think it has something to do with an article I wrote for Modern Century,” he admitted. “Clyde serves on a congressional committee that ordered five studies on chemical additives. They released two that show the chemicals in a good light and buried the others. The article I wrote appeared last week.”

“How did you get your hands on the studies?” Gray demanded.

“I can’t tell you.” He turned in his chair so he didn’t have to see the anger in Gray’s face.

“I’ll hire a lawyer for you tomorrow, but he won’t be any help unless you tell us what’s going on. How did you get those buried studies?”

“Gray, please stop asking.” Acid churned in Luke’s stomach at the thought of being confined here overnight. Maybe even longer. He’d naively hoped Gray might show up with a bag of money to post bail and get him out of here.

“You owe me,” Gray said, his voice cutting. “You put us all through the wringer last year, and I have no desire to repeat the process.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Then tell me who gave you the information. That’s your best chance for getting out of here.”

This room was too small for yelling. It made the walls feel like they were closing in, and it started getting hot. Luke dropped his head into his hands, unable to meet Gray’s eyes and unable to expose Marianne. It would ruin her. Even if she could endure the fear and humiliation of being locked up, she would lose her family. The Magruders were not a forgiving lot.

“I can’t tell you who gave me the studies, but Clyde knows I work for Modern Century. He knows the studies found their way to me, even though the article was anonymous. I think he is to blame for this.”

“Then he’ll be made to answer for it,” Gray said in a quietly lethal voice.