Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (28 page)

“Luke?” Jessie asked again.

“Already off.”

She looked out the door only
to see Luke being carried away on a stretcher, his face so pale it was almost gray.

His hand fell from his chest
and dangled there. Limp. Lifeless.

“No!” The anguished word
burst from her lips in a voice she barely recognized as hers.

Jessie dropped the bags and
ran after them, but by the time she’d descended from the airship, Luke had
already been loaded into the back of a black, steam-powered carriage. She
chased after them, banging on the back of the cab with her bare hands until
strong arms encircled her and pulled her back.

“No! Luke! No!”

“No, lass,” a gravelly
Scottish burr said. “You canno’ go where he is goin’.”

“But we’re travelling
together! I’m
with
him!” She looked
up at the Scotsman, a giant of a man with flaming red hair and a beard to
match, dressed in a dark uniform. A silver badge was pinned to his vest pocket.

“You are not his concern
anymore.”

“You don’t understand! I’m
with
him!”

The Scotsman harrumphed. “Give
me your papers.”

She blinked, her protest
temporarily stolen from her mouth. “Wh-what?”

“Papers.”

“I don’t know what you’re
talking about. Look, take me to Luke. We’ll get this cleared up. I’m with
him.
”

“Papers, lass. You’re either
a stowaway or you’ve got papers and I’ll take you someplace safe. No papers,
and it’s into the lock-up you’ll go.”

“Wh-why do I need papers?”
She shook her head and continued with her train of thought. Hard to do when one
considered she had slept only a few minutes in the last twenty-four
hours—and everything that had happened in between. “Please, take me to
him.”

The giant Scotsman took
handcuffs from his belt and roughly cuffed her wrists together. “You must ken,
rules must be followed. No papers, you go to lock-up.”

Jessie stared at him, her
mouth hanging open like a fish out of water, until she flashed back to the bank
and to the papers Luke had handed her.

“No, wait!” she cried. “I
have papers! Just let me get them.”

The Scotsman gave an
exasperated nod and she went back to where her bags had been unceremoniously
dumped on the ground. She rummaged around in the pack and found the papers. He
joined her, looming over her in his big, dark uniform.

Jessie straightened and
handed him the papers she hadn’t had the time to examine. She watched his face
carefully as he scanned them, then looked around her.

A completely different
skyline greeted her.

The airship station was in a
big valley, flanked on either side by rugged mountains. Not barren like they
had been in Fort Bastion, not desert. No, these mountains were more like the
Sierra Nevada, their rocky, snow-covered spines covered with trees and reaching
for the heavens.

“Where… where am I?” she
whispered.

Scotty uncuffed her.

Somewhere beneath his flaming
beard, he smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Suddenly, he pulled her
into his arms and covered her mouth with a cloth. “Welcome to Deseret.”

The world went dark.

Blood pounded in his temples,
and Luke groaned as he opened eyes gritty and hazy from sleep.

Behind him, skirts rustled.

“Jessie?”

“No,” a woman answered. Her
British accent could be heard in that single word. She laid a delicate,
feminine hand on his arm.

He’d always marveled at her
skin, skin so soft he had once wondered if harsh words would damage it. What he
hadn’t known at the time was that her soft skin and upper-crust accent covered
a spine of steel and a heart of iron.

“Lizzie.” His mouth was dry
and cottony, his voice strained even to his own ears. His vision cleared just
as she sat down in a swirl of black satin and white silk. Beautiful, expensive
clothing, so unlike the simple buckskin dresses Jessie seemed to favor. A lot
less interesting, too.

“Good to see you, Luke. You
gave us quite a scare.” She hit him on his good shoulder. “You only get to get
away with calling me Lizzie the once.”

“Right. You prefer Elizabeth
these days.”

“Or Mrs. Jameson. Either way,
I’ve always preferred Elizabeth. I only let you call me Lizzie because I like
you.”

His muscles screamed in angry
protest as he sat up. He looked over at the door, at the drawn curtains.
Elizabeth sat in one chair, and his bags sat, untouched, on the other.

“Where is she?”

She touched his hand. “Who?”

“Jessie. Jessica White.”

“Ah, yes, her. She’s safe.
Keeping the boys entertained, so I hear.”

His heart clenched, the stab
of jealousy both unfamiliar and unwanted. “Where, Duchess. Tell me where she
is.”

Elizabeth brushed her blonde
curls over her shoulder. “She’s fine. We’ve got her in a safe house, just like
we planned.”

“I don’t recall discussing
that.”

She lifted a single shoulder.
“I don’t think
we
did. We’re just
following protocol. You extracted her, now she becomes someone else’s problem.
What do you have for me?”

Luke nodded in the direction
of the chair that should be Jessie’s and wasn’t. “In the bag. Where’s Jameson?”

Elizabeth rummaged through
the bags and pulled out Jessie’s father’s papers. She settled them into her lap
and didn’t look at them, but he knew she would. “Around here somewhere. Tell me
what happened.”

“I’ll tell you in debrief,
Duchess. Get me Jameson.”

Her skirts whispered as she
stood. She rapped once on the door and returned to her seat. Keys rattled in
the lock and Luke’s team leader entered the room.

Luke had met Mordecai Jameson
not long after he’d joined the ranks of the Army, a mountain of a man from West
Virginia with the world-weary spirit of one who has seen too much and lived too
hard a life. He had recruited Luke directly out of the Army into Special
Services and been his team leader ever since. He was, by far, the toughest man
Luke had ever met.

Except where Elizabeth was
concerned.

Luke frowned at the woman
sitting next to him. “You locked me in.”

Elizabeth cocked her head to
the side in a gesture somewhere between a shrug and a nod. “You’ve been… restless.”

“Shit.”

“Language,” Jameson warned.

Luke shot him a dirty look.

Soft light filtered
underneath the curtains. All Luke remembered were vague flashes of Jessie’s
face in the light of early dawn, followed by an endless night. “How long have I
been here?”

“A few days,” Elizabeth said.

“Got yourself pretty banged
up,” Jameson added.

“A few days?” Luke swung his
legs over the side of the bed, and got shoved back. “I’ve got to get Jessie.”

“Not like that, you won’t.”
Jameson gestured to Luke’s lap.

“Get me my clothes.”

“No.” There was a finality in
Jameson’s tone that warned him to keep quiet.

But he couldn’t.

“Goddammit, Jameson, don’t do
this. Jessie should be here, not in some safe house.”

“She’s all right. Parker and
Whitfield have her right now.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Luke threw off the blankets and stood up, not caring that he was in the
presence of a woman and wore nothing but his short clothes.

If he had to choose two men
to trust with Jessie’s life, it would be Parker and Whitfield. If he had to
choose two men he didn’t trust with her body, it would be the same two men.

“Sit down, Bradshaw. Try to
leave this room, and I will have you brought up on charges of insubordination.”
Jameson’s voice was low and dangerous. “You came in wounded, you haven’t been
debriefed, and by God, you
will not
leave
this room until your reports are completed to my satisfaction and filed. Do you
understand me?”

“Get me a graph. I’ll send
them by gram to Chicago.”

Elizabeth’s brown eyes
scanned his face. “There’s no hurry. Take a few days to rest. Then you can file
your reports.”

Luke sat back in the bed, and
forced himself to relax. “George White is alive.”

Jameson threw Luke’s duster
at him, covering the majority of his short clothes, and dumped the remaining
contents of the chair onto the floor, flipped it around, and sat. Rested his
forearms on the back of the chair.

“Talk, Bradshaw.”

As quickly as he could, Luke
told them what he knew—about Jessie’s father, about the Rebel pursuit of
Jessie in Virginia City and how they’d killed Hiram Andersen, and the airship
attack.

“So you see why I need to get
to her. I promised Jessie I’d keep her safe.”

“And she is,” Jameson said. “I
understand if you think you have feelings for this girl—”

“She’s my wife.”

Several heartbeats passed.
Jameson’s eyes widened marginally, the most intense expression of shock Luke
had ever seen on him.

“Beg pardon?” he asked.

“She’s my wife.”

Jameson regarded him for a
long time, his dark eyes interested and cautious, then exchanged a long look
with his wife. “Headquarters won’t like this. Violates team charter.”

“Like you give a damn about
the team charter.” Luke jerked his head in Elizabeth’s direction. “And I don’t
recall you caring much about Headquarters when it was you and Lizzie.”

“That was different.”

“Different?” Sweat broke out
on his forehead as he fought the urge to attack his team leader and take the
keys from him. He had to get out. “Different how?”

“Jessica White is an asset.
Use her, seduce her, do whatever you need to do to get the information we need,
but don’t develop feelings for her. Goddamn it, Bradshaw, you’ve gone and
compromised yourself and this mission.” He stood up gestured at the door.

The look Elizabeth gave Luke
radiated disapproval as she passed. A few weeks ago, her disapproval would have
shamed him.

“I
saved
this mission.” Luke ground his teeth, his entire body tensing
for the coming fight. “We know George White is alive and in Rebel hands because
of
me
. Without me, Jessie would be
dead and you wouldn’t have any clues about your scientist. So don’t lecture me
about being compromised.”

“You also needed a sudden and
rather public extraction from Fort Bastion. Don’t even get me started on the
amount we’ll have to pay out in bribes, so don’t try to convince me you’re
not
compromised.”

Luke couldn’t, so he didn’t
try. “I promised her I’d keep her safe.”

“You have. Let her go,
Bradshaw.”

Luke’s fists clenched until
they ached, and he stood up. “No.”

Jameson raised himself to his
full height, maybe an inch or so taller than Luke, but broader and more
muscular. “Sit down, Bradshaw.”

“No. You want my reports, you’ll
get them, but get me Jessie first.”

“
Sit down
, Bradshaw.” With his fingers, Jameson jabbed Luke hard in
the sternum.

He didn’t flinch. “Fuck you,
Jameson.”

A needle stung as it pierced
his flesh. “No, Luke, that’s
my
job.”

Elizabeth held a pneumatic
syringe in her hand—a syringe he hadn’t even noticed until
after
she’d used it on him.

He was losing his touch.

“Dammit, Lizzie, you know I
hate that sh…”

The world went black.

* * * *

Jessie opened her eyes and
stared up at the ceiling.

When she’d first awoken here
several days ago, she hadn’t known what to do. She’d lain for hours in the
thickening dark, watching shadows move in the pale light filtering in from
beneath the door, listening to the cries of children, barking dogs, shouts and
breaking glass coming in from outside.

Even now, the air inside this
room carried a faint hint of smoke, and while it didn’t bear the hellish scent
of sulfur, it invaded her lungs all the same.

She wanted to believe the
ache in her chest was from the smoke, but it wasn’t. With each passing day,
though everything remained the same, the pain got worse, building until she
thought her ribs might crack.

Luke.

The men who guarded her never
told her what had happened to him, and the wondering had become its own special
brand of torture.

She got out of bed, opened
the door and followed the light into the front room, where she found a man she
thought of as “Snakeskin Boots” reading the paper. The first time she’d
encountered him, he’d chloroformed her when she got too excited.