Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (25 page)

“It’s nothing.”

“We have to get you to a
doctor.” She reached out to touch him, but he flinched away.

“I’ll be fine.” Stepping
away, he pulled some clothes out of the satchel on the bed and handed them to
her. “Get dressed.”

“What? No. You need a doctor.
We need some help.”

“Your friends from Virginia
City have already found you once. We need to get out of here, and fast. Get
dressed.”

Someone knocked on the door. “Everything
all right?” a man’s voice asked.

Luke grabbed her by the
shoulders and turned her so she faced him. “Answer the door. Tell him you
tripped… or something.”

“A gun just went off. I’m
sure he’ll believe that.”

His mouth was pressed into a
hard slash. “Listen, I don’t care what you tell him. I don’t give a fuck what
you do to convince him to leave. We don’t have time for the local sheriff to be
poking his nose around in this. I’m bleeding here, so I can’t do it. Let him
believe you’re some stupid girl. Smile at him, show him a little cleavage, and
get him to go away.”

“Bradshaw!” The word was
spoken as an angry protest.

“Do it.”

Another knock at the door,
and this time, Jessie heard the tinkling of keys. “Hello?”

Luke gave her a rough push.
Turning only briefly to glare at him over her shoulder, she opened the door and
placed her body between the door and the entrance, blocking the view of the
room. She pushed her hair back from her face in a way she hoped looked
coquettish and sheepish.

A large man with dark hair
and eyes stood outside their room, dressed in the black suit of a hotel clerk. “Everything
okay?”

She gave him what she wished
were an embarrassed smile, but her face was too tight, her limbs too heavy, and
the smile she tried to give felt more like the baring of teeth. “Yeah,” she
mumbled. “Just a minor accident.”

“Another guest reported a
fight in this room. Gunshots.” He tried to peer around her.

She shifted to block his
view, and she felt Luke glaring at her back. “Oh, yeah. That.” Taking Luke’s
advice, she thought of the way Vivian’s girls had dressed and acted. She
allowed her robe to gape open, exposing the neckline of her undergarments. They
were nothing special, but the movement seemed to distract the clerk.

She twirled a lock of hair
around her finger and bit her lip. “I was handling my husband’s gun, and it…
well… it just went off.” Her eyes filled with tears that weren’t entirely
disingenuous. “And I just got so scared, I knocked over a tray of food, and I’m
afraid I’ve made a terrible mess.”

“It just went off?” he
echoed.

“Yeah.” She took a long pull
of air to steady her heart, and the clerk’s eyes wandered to her breasts. “But
nothing seems damaged, so…”

“I guess we’ll have to see
about that.” The clerk’s eyes moved from her face to her bosom and back again. “You’ll
have to let me into your room.”

Fear shot through her already
overwrought system, and gooseflesh dotted her arms. “Certainly.” She pretended
not to notice the waver in her voice. “Give me about half an hour to be
presentable, and I’ll get out of your way. Maybe forty-five minutes. I can’t go
out like this.”

“No need. Let me in.”

His eyes lingered for far too
long on the line of her undergarments.

“Not sure it would be proper.”

“No one needs to know, sweet.
You don’t have to leave your room. Unless your husband is here?” He peered over
her shoulder. When she didn’t answer, he put his hand on the door above her
head and shoved.

A heavy boot stopped the door
as Luke was suddenly behind her, a hulking presence at her back. He put a hand
on her shoulder as if to claim her. “Yep. I’ve got this actually.” He pulled
several bills off his money clip and handed them to the clerk. “This should
cover any damages, plus a little extra for your time. No need to trouble
yourself at all.”

The man took the bills from
Luke and pocketed them. “You need me to clean up the mess?”

“Nope. We’ll just put the
tray in the hall.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Luke said. His hand
shifted to her arm, and her robe gaped open a little further. The clerk’s gaze
dipped and lingered, and when she glanced down, she saw the swell of her
breasts and the shadow of a dark nipple beneath the thin fabric of her chemise.

Her face flamed, but she made
no move to cover herself.

“And everything’s all right?”

“Yep. You know women.”

Jessie bristled, and Luke’s
grip tightened on her shoulder as the hotel clerk laughed. Luke’s fingers
brushed her bare shoulder, and she shivered, her nipples puckering.

Lust flared in the clerk’s
eyes, and Jessie fought the desire to pull her robe closed all the way up to
her neck and take a bath.

She swallowed both her pride
and her hurt and took it.

“Right,” the clerk said. He
tweaked Jessie on the chin, and she recoiled as far back as Luke’s presence
would allow. “You let the men handle the guns from now on. We wouldn’t want you
hurting yourself.” He nodded to Luke. “You take care now.”

Jessie gave him the sweetest
smile she could muster, and it made her face hurt.

“Will do.” Luke shut the
door. “What the fuck, Jess. ‘The gun went off?’ Why didn’t you just tell him
about the corpse in the corner, too? Shit.”

“Hey, you don’t get to judge
me.
I’m
not the one who’s done this
before. If you don’t like the way I did it, maybe you should have done it
yourself.” She pulled the robe closed and tied it securely around her waist.

“I didn’t think you’d be so
stupid about it.”

“You told me to play stupid.
I did that.”

“I told you to
play
stupid, not actually
be
stupid.”

“A version of the truth is
always easier,” she spat from between clenched teeth. “I went with it.”

“The truth is dangerous.
Stick with a lie next time.”

“You know, Bradshaw, I’m
hoping there isn’t a next time.”

He picked up the clothing she’d
put down when she answered the door and shoved it into her hands. “There’s
always a next time,” he said. “Get dressed. Now.”

He turned and busied himself
with the bags. When she made no move to follow his orders, he snarled. “You
deaf? Get dressed. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and less than you showed
that man out there, so put some goddamn clothes on so we can leave.”

She turned her back,
struggling into the traveling clothes Luke gave her—two petticoats and a
faded navy traveling dress. Tears stung her eyes, and she took in a long pull
of air in an attempt to steady her heart. Failed.

Luke came up behind her just
as she was struggling with the last of her buttons, her hands shaking so badly
she could barely manage even that task. She didn’t fight him when he turned her
toward him.

He undid the top several
buttons, tugged on the dress, and redid them.

“Might want to line up those
buttons next time,” he murmured.

Jessie pressed her lips
together and nodded stiffly.

Luke had buttoned up his
black overcoat to his neck, covering the bloodstain, and he’d already put the
body on the bed and covered it with the coverlet. If Jessie hadn’t known
better, she would have simply thought the man asleep.

Though his face was pale and
a dark bruise was already blossoming on his right cheek, Luke seemed perfectly
calm, at ease despite the attack and the corpse that lay in the room.

He brushed her cheek with his
knuckles. “Jess,” he said with a gentleness she didn’t want to hear. “I’m
sorry. This isn’t your fault. It’s mine.”

She turned away, unable bear
tenderness from him as a man’s body lay cooling in the bed. A man she’d killed.
Remembering the way Luke’s hand had shifted to allow the robe to fall away from
her shoulders, the way the hotel clerk had looked at her as if she were a
commodity to be bought and sold among men, she shivered and pulled on her coat.

She’d killed a man and
watched him die. She’d allowed herself to cross all lines of decency with
another, acting like little more than a common harlot in order to get what she
wanted. Yet she had more remorse over the guilt she didn’t feel than she did
about the lives she’d taken.

She barely recognized
herself.

Luke picked up the bags and
threw them onto his shoulder. Inhaled sharply and closed his eyes for a moment.
Swallowing, he said, “We’re going to move fast, but not enough to draw
attention. I don’t want anyone following us.”

“Where are we going?”

“Train station. If we’re lucky,
we’ll get a cab to take us and board the first train we can find. I don’t care
where it’s going, we’re getting on it.”

She nodded and reached for a
bag. “Give one to me.”

He shook her off. “A woman
carrying a man’s bags draws attention. I can make it.”

Sweat dotted his brow, his
features pinched and his breathing shallow. One look at him and she knew he was
in pain.

“Luke, we should get you
patched up first.”

He pulled a gold watch from
his pocket. “No time. C’mon Jess.” He didn’t wait for her.

She followed him out into the
dark streets of Fort Clark. After only a few short hours, she already hated
this town. Hated the squat buildings, the guns of the watchtowers. Hated the
sound of the train thundering in the distance and the scent of coal in the air.

The streets were empty. No
horses, no people, and certainly, no cab for hire.

Luke stopped short. “Damn
curfew. Guess we’re walking.”

“What about the horses?”

“Cheveyo said he’d come and
get them. We can’t take them with us.”

He started off in the direction
of the train station, his long strides swallowing up the ground. Jessie had to
run to keep up with him, through streets dark and muddy with half-melted slush,
which was already refreezing in the chill of the night air.

“But we can’t just leave them
here.”

“They’re safer stabled here
than hitched to a post at the train station. I paid the stable boy well to take
care of them until your people come for them. They’ll be fine.”

By the time they reached the
station twenty minutes later, she was panting and sweating like it was a
hundred degrees outside rather than twenty. “Which train?”

In the dim glow of the gas
lamps lighting the indoor station, Luke’s complexion was waxy, pale and shiny
from perspiration. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and studied it
for a moment. “That one.” He pointed, and swayed on his feet.

She took note of the number. “Give
me the money, and I’ll get the tickets. You go to the platform and wait for me.”

He closed his eyes and
swayed, pressing his hand to his chest.

“I can’t do this alone.” She
put out a hand to steady him. “Give me the money.”

He shrugged her off. Fishing
into his pocket, he pulled out a money clip and handed it to her. He’d just
handed her what must have been several hundred dollars without blinking an eye.
The highest paid people she knew made only five dollars a day for hours of
grueling labor.

She didn’t want to think
about what he’d done for this kind of money, but she remembered the men she’d
searched in her house, the vast sum the man had had stuffed in his pockets.

Blood money.

“Go,” he whispered.

Jessie didn’t wait for Luke
to change his mind. After buying two tickets for a private compartment, she
returned to the platform only to find Luke slumped on a hard wooden bench,
their bags on the floor by his feet. His eyes were closed, his head hanging
limply to one side.

For a terrible second, she
was afraid he’d died. A dead man, alone on a wooden bench in a deserted train
station in the middle of the night.

“All aboard!” the conductor
shouted.

Luke wearily raised his head.

Jessie swallowed relieved
tears and pretended they’d never existed. Picking up one of the bags, she held
out her hand.

He glanced at her hand as he pushed
himself up, picked up the remaining bags, and tried to take the bag she carried
from her.

She handed him his ticket and
boarded the train.

Luke staggered in behind her.

For as long as she could
remember, he had always been the most graceful person she’d ever met, a man who
could dive from her front porch and landed on his feet without so much as a
hitch in his step. Yet now he weaved like a drunk.

She took a bag from him and
put it on the floor. “Sit. Take off your shirt.”

“Jess.” His voice was weary,
his body swaying like a willow in the wind.

“You got a needle and thread?”
She ignored the pain and desperation in the way he said her name. Her chest
tightened, and she ignored that, too.