Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (7 page)

“Spies?”

“Espionage. Sabotage and
secrets.” He paused dramatically. “Murder.”

Is that what Luke had become?
A spy and a saboteur? A murderer? “Is that who you sold the invention to?”

He paced across the floor,
his fingers tapping against the fabric of his trousers. “Yeah.”

She took in the way he
shifted his weight, the way he didn’t quite meet her eyes, the way he fidgeted
with the chain of his pocket watch where it connected with his vest. “Are they
the only ones you sold to?”

He was silent for too long.

“Good God, Hiram, did you
sell to the rebels, too?”

“I never meant for it to be
like this. Listen, Jessie, just get me the plans and we can get out of this
mess!”

The anger in her chest broke
free, her words fierce and her voice uncontrolled. “How dare
you? How could you sell to them when my
brother—your godson—died fighting them? They killed
him!”

“Lower your voice!” Hiram
hissed. “You’re going to attract attention.”

“Stop it! Stop thinking only
about yourself! How long have you been selling out to the South?”

He grabbed Jessie by the
shoulders and shook her so hard her teeth clacked together painfully. “Shut up!”

But pain wasn’t necessarily a
deterrent. There was nothing Hiram could do to her that hadn’t been done
before.

“How long have you been doing
this?” she asked quietly.

He released her, turned away,
and crossed his arms, but he didn’t answer her question. He didn’t need to. It
didn’t matter how long he’d been playing traitor. Once was an unforgivable
offense.

Defeated, Jessie sat down on
the bed. These last few years had been nothing but lies and more lies. Luke.
Hiram. Everything she’d known and accepted as fact simply wasn’t true.

Her whole world fell apart as
she sat on Hiram’s bed and looked at the man who had caused her brother’s death
as surely as if he’d planned it. A man she’d loved her whole life. A man she’d
called “uncle” since the moment she could talk. A man she had trusted with the
secrets of her heart.

And all the while, he stole
from her family, lied to them, and had been the architect of her family’s fall
from grace. So much betrayal, and too much to take in the space of a single
day. She’d lost so much to this damn war, and now it looked like she was going
to lose one of the few people she had left.

Her world, like her heart,
became that much smaller.

The floorboards creaked as
someone stepped in a low spot in the hallway, and then there was a sharp rap at
the door.

“Get up!” Hiram jerked her to
her feet. “They’ve come.”

“Hiram, I don’t—”
Jessie began.

Hiram pushed her back into
the small, attached washroom. “Hide.”

Someone spoke from the
opposite side of the door. “Mr. Andersen.” The man’s voice was deep and
cultured. Refined. A voice so different from Hiram’s reedy pitch, and
infinitely more dangerous.

“A minute!” Hiram called. “Just
stay quiet, Jessie.” Leaning forward, he planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’m
sorry. Get out of here if you can.” He closed the washroom door

From her hiding place, she
heard Hiram open the door and sputter a greeting that was only vaguely
coherent.

“Now, Mr. Andersen. Where’s
the girl?”

“I, uh… I paid her and sent
her away.”

“She’s a whore.” It was not a
question, but there was disbelief in the words.

“She’s a native. Just
some--some Paiute I picked up.”

If she managed to find a way
out of this mess, she’d kill him.

The other man grunted as if
this explained everything, and she wanted to kill him, too.

“Where’s the girl?”

“T-told you.”

“Not her. Jessica White.
Where is she?”

A startled gasp caught in her
throat. Whoever these people were, they knew her and wanted her for probably
the same reason Luke did
.

“Haven’t seen her. She hasn’t
answered my letters.”

“Come now, Mr. Andersen,” he
admonished. “Don’t lie to me. Stop wasting my time—you’ve done that too
long and now I’m in charge. Where is she?” The sickening crunch of breaking
bones filled the air.

Hiram screamed. “At her
house! She’s at her house!”

“Where’s the house, Mr.
Andersen? Don’t make my friend here break anything else.”

Hiram’s weeping sounded
desperate. Jessie pressed a hand to her mouth in the vain hope she could keep
herself from vomiting.

“Please,” he said. “I’ll give
you the address. Just let me go.”

The other man’s laughter was
low and menacing. “That is not how this is going to end. We took care of your
little problem with the Pinkerton Agency, and we’ve been patient with you, Mr.
Andersen. Unfortunately, you’ve run out of time.”

“But you have him! You have
what you need!”

“And he’s not cooperating. I
need the girl. We’ll get the results you failed to get.”

Easing open the washroom
window, Jessie swallowed against the fear and bile and betrayal rising in the
back of her throat.

“She doesn’t know anything!”
Another crunch, and Hiram screamed again.

She ducked under the window
and swung her leg through, and dangled there for a moment. “This isn’t about
what she knows, Mr. Andersen. This is about convincing
her father
to work for us.”

Hanging from the lip of the
window, Jessie froze. Unable to move, the shock crashed into her like an avalanche
and crushed her beneath its weight. Everything collided, all of the missing
pieces falling into place.

Jessie thought about an
envelope she had seen her father holding, that last day before the mine
collapse.

It had come from the
Pinkerton Agency.

Hiram screamed, and two shots
rang out.

Her fingers spasmed, her grip
slipped, and she fell onto the roof below. She lay there in the snow, stunned,
her mind reeling.

Pinkerton.
Her father must have known about Hiram’s
lies.

And somewhere, he was alive.

A scream came from the
windows above, followed by a shot, audible above the heavy hammering of the ore
crushers.

Jessie scrambled to her feet,
slid on the ice-slicked roof, and skidded off the edge. Her dress caught on the
lip on her way over the side. Her descent slowed as the garment tore from hem
to armpit.

She landed on her stomach in
the dirty snow, and for a moment, stars burst behind her eyelids. Pushing
herself onto her knees, she tried to find her footing but slipped again.

If she didn’t get up, she
would die alone in the street.

Get
up
, a voice whispered in
her head.
Run!

She obeyed, because she had
no other choice. Searched for a place to hide, but had no idea where she could
go and be safe. She didn’t even know for certain who was chasing her.

Luke’s face flashed behind
her lids.

“Stop that girl!” A man’s
voice. Harsh.

Screams filled the air.
Beneath the heavy pounding of her heart in her ears, she heard gunshots, but
she ignored them and ran. Not out of bravery, or a sense of cool-headed reason,
but out of a single-minded determination.

For the first time in a long
time, she wanted to live.

Pain seized her chest as she
ducked into an alleyway. She pressed a hand to the stitch in her side, and it
came away bloody.

Someone touched her shoulder,
and the scream she’d been suppressing since Hiram had pushed her in the
washroom tore from her lips.

“Miss White, hush!” a woman
scolded.

Despite her frayed nerves,
she closed her mouth. Behind her stood Vivian Flannigan, the madam of one of
the brothels in town.

“Come with me.” She took
Jessie by the arm. Opening a heavy metal door at the back of a gray brick
building, Vivian roughly shoved her inside.

Jessie was inside a place no
reputable woman would ever go.

Vivian snapped her fingers at
the closest girl. “You. Cora. Go out back and work the alley. Make sure you
walk around quite a bit. Once you’re done, go out to the street. Make a
nuisance of yourself. You’re good at that.”

“Ma’am.” The girl gave a
quick curtsy before she hurried out the door.

Vivian motioned to Jessie’s
bloody side and her torn dress. “Got yourself in a spot of trouble, did you,
dear?”

“Miss Flannigan, I… I… Thank
you.”

The older woman gave her a
rueful smile. “Vivian. Or Viv. No need to thank me, sweetums. We take care of our
own, don’t we?”

“I… I suppose.” In fact,
Jessie hadn’t spoken more than two words to Vivian Flannigan in her entire
life, and she wasn’t entirely sure what a half-breed Indian and the elegant
owner of one of the wealthiest brothels in town had in common. In a place like
Virginia City, the madams often had more clout than the mayor. The last one to
die had had a more lavish funeral than the last governor. Shoot, more important
people had attended, too.

Vivian was one of those
madams, a woman who had attained both wealth and fame throughout the West for
her particular set of talents. While Vivian Flannigan was recognized for a
great many things, altruism wasn’t one of them. So what was it the woman hoped
to gain by helping her?

“Now, a girl like you wouldn’t
normally associate with a woman like me, but I must admit, I do admire your
work. That article you wrote for the paper about the conditions in the camps
was most enlightening. I do hope you’re not terribly scandalized by being here,”
she said, as if Jessie weren’t so far beneath her station that she would have a
choice as to whether or not they spoke. Long, delicate fingers smoothed her
crimson silk skirt. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Vivian clapped loudly and
several heads peeked out of doorways. “You there.” The madam pointed to a girl
several years younger than Jessie. “Go get a basin of water and some
compresses. Oh, and get Mary. Tell her I need a dress or two.”

Before Jessie even had a
chance to protest, Vivian had ushered her into a windowless, sparsely furnished
room, with a bed, an armless chair and a dresser. The scent of perfume and
opium-laced smoke lingered in the air, heavy and cloying.

The bedclothes were a clean,
stark white, a color Jessie hadn’t seen in this town in years. For a moment,
she was disturbed by the thought of staining that perfect fabric. Then she got
a look at the drawings on the wall and forgot about the bed entirely.

In them, men and women were
engaged in a variety of sexual positions. Here, a man knelt behind a naked
woman on her hands and knees. There, a woman had her face in a man’s lap.
Another picture showed a woman with her head thrown back and a man’s head
between her legs. Jessie gasped in surprise and tried to look away, but
everywhere she looked, there was another picture. Unable to escape the images,
she sat down heavily on the bed and focused her attention on the floor.

Vivian laughed. “Shocked you,
have we, dear?”

“I… I’ve never been in a… a
place like this.”

“I never thought you had.”
The madam absently brushed a stray lock of straw blonde hair away from her
face. She gestured to Jessie’s buckskin dress. “All right, let’s get you out of
that.” When Jessie looked around for a curtain she could change behind, Vivian
clucked her tongue in disapproval. “Miss White. You have nothing I haven’t seen
before. In fact, I’d be willing to wager there’s
nothing
I haven’t seen before. Strip before you bleed all over
yourself and the bed.”

Jessie turned her back to
Vivian and began to undress.

The door opened behind her, and
Jessie flinched, glancing over her shoulder.

A girl came in with a basin
of water, and another followed her with towels. “Is this a new girl?” she
asked. “Poor thing. I remember the first time a chiseler did that to me.”

Jessie’s cheeks burned.

“No, she’s not staying.”
Vivian let the rest of the statement drop. “Mary, this is Miss White. I expect
you to clean her up and get her dressed.” She turned toward a small table. “Opium?
Laudanum? We have a little bit of everything.” The madam lit a small, ornately
carved silver pipe, her lips curving into a blissful smile as pungent smoke
wafted toward Jessie.

“Thank you, no.”

“More for me, then.” Vivian
set the pipe down, poured two fingers of whiskey into a glass, and handed it to
Jessie. “Drink this. It will help with the shock and the pain.”

Jessie obeyed because she
couldn’t think of a reason not to. A jigger or two wouldn’t hurt. The liquor
burned all the way down, creating a warm spot in her otherwise cold and empty
belly. She relished that sting of pain—it felt better than betrayal.