Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (54 page)

Right as they passed his trap door, Walter pulled back. He dropped onto his elbows and smashed his hands against the top of his head, trying to squash down his static hair.

Think. C’mon, think! Nobody down below—not even Hitch—could be sure what Zlo was planning. Only Walter. He was the only one who knew. And he was stuck up here, well and truly.

If Hitch hadn’t crashed—and, of course, he hadn’t—then he’d come back and look for Walter. But without the wing to mark
Schturming
’s hull, he wouldn’t be able to find the ship. Unless... maybe Walter could mark it somehow.

But with what? Nobody’d be able to see anything in the dark.

Except light, of course. He looked up.

The lantern sat on the floor in the big room, beside the door Zlo and his friend had left through.

Time to pretend. Walter clambered out of the trap door and ran on tiptoe to grab the lantern. He glanced through the door.

Darkness filled the room beyond. Wind gusted through it and spattered raindrops against his face.

He looked up toward God.
Please don’t let anybody be in there.
’Cause if they were, they’d sure as spitting see him move the lantern.

He snagged the lantern’s thin metal handle and darted back across the room. He shoved the lantern in first, then clambered after. His heart hammered all the way through his body.

The cannon filled up almost the whole tunnel, so he had to lift the lantern over its wheel, then slither over it himself. He pushed the lantern ahead of him, on the floor, and scootched under the barrel. Good thing he was so scrawny. Any bigger, and he’d’ve been stuck right there. A line of sweat trickled heat down his forehead. He swiped it aside with the back of his arm.

The black tunnel stretched out in front of him. Somewhere down there, maybe he’d find a window. If he could put the lantern in the window, maybe
just maybe
Hitch’d be able to see it.

He started crawling, and he kept right on crawling—until he heard a dog’s muffled whine. Goosebumps scattered his skin, and he stopped short.

Taos
. Could that be Taos?

Walter’s heart jumped with the first happy thought since Zlo had taken Aunt Aurelia.

Maybe, just maybe everything could still be all right.
If
Taos was here and
if
Hitch could somehow come save them both, maybe everything could be all right after all.

Forty-Three

HITCH STAGGERED THROUGH the doorway into the cellblock. They were way up on the fourth floor of the brand new courthouse the county had built for Campbell. Rain rattled against the roof. Griff’s hand against his shoulder guided him toward a cell.

Another deputy pushed a handcuffed Jael to keep her walking on by.

As she passed Hitch, she reached out and brushed her fingers against his.

His body reacted on instinct, his head moving in her direction.

She looked straight at him, her eyebrows furrowed hard at that crossroads somewhere between outrage and concern.

Her look pierced him. He snapped awake, out of the chaos of his jumbled thoughts, and drew a shuddered breath.

“You are not all right?” she said.

Who cared if he was
all right
? At this moment, the only thing he needed to figure out was how all this had happened. How could it be true? He had a
son
? And that son was Walter—who had probably fallen to his death only a few hours ago? Dear God in heaven.

“Did you know?” he asked her.

She shook her head. Her bedraggled, wind-whipped hair flailed against her cheeks. “No. I would have told you.” She gave Griff a sidelong glare. “
They
should have told you.”

The deputy assigned to her pushed her forward. “Come along.”

She turned her glare on him instead. “And what am I in custody for?”

“Sheriff says you’re an accomplice.”

Like enough she didn’t know what an accomplice was, but she tossed her hair back. “Your sheriff is criminal.”

Still, she let him herd her away. She was limping again, whether from the storm or her bare feet or something she’d pulled during her aerobatics earlier in the evening.

Griff touched Hitch’s elbow and guided him down the corridor. “This way.”

Almost every cell was packed with the
Schturming
refugees who had been left behind when Zlo’s men had broken him out.

Hitch let himself be guided. His mind churned in a nauseating blur of exhaustion and new adrenaline. He had a son. He was a father. Celia’d had a son. He and Celia had had a son together... and nobody’d ever told him.

He clamped his eyes shut as he walked. The past week scrolled through his head like a moving picture. Walter running through the cornfield as the Jenny zipped overhead. Walter peeking underneath the fuselage the day they met, when he’d wanted so bad to bum a ride. Walter playing with Taos. Walter holding that sign advertising rides. Walter sitting in Hitch’s lap during his first flight, his hands clamped tight on the stick. Walter turning somersaults afterwards.

Of course the kid was his son. Whose else? He’d even thought how, if he’d had a son, one like Walter wouldn’t have been too far off the mark.

And then there was Walter saying the first words he’d said in years—and saying them to
him
. And Hitch had sent him running like a whipped pup, as if Taos could have mattered more than him.

A groan tore up his chest.

Tonight, for the first time, he was a father.

No, scratch that, he’d been a father all along. For eight years. Tonight was maybe the first time in all those years he
wasn’t
a father anymore.

If he’d been faster tonight—if he and Jael had gone for Walter first, instead of Aurelia—if he hadn’t lost his temper with Walter after Zlo had taken Taos—if he hadn’t come back home—if he hadn’t left. All these useless ifs. At the end of every single one of them, Walter was still unaccounted for and probably dead.

He stopped short of his cell, yanked his elbow out of Griff’s grip, and turned to the wall. He smashed his hand into it once, then again. His knuckle split open and streaked blood across the wall.

Griff grabbed at him. “Hitch. Hitch—stop it. This isn’t doing anybody any good.”

Hitch spun on him, fist still clenched. He nearly swung at Griff’s head.

But what good would that do at this point? Another fight. One more for the history books. What good had any of those fights done? What had they proven? That he was right and his brother was wrong? What good would a fight do Walter now?

He dropped his fist and stepped backwards, into the open cell. He watched Griff the whole way. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

Griff watched him right back, but his expression wasn’t so certain anymore.

“You didn’t think I had a right to know something like that?” Hitch said.

Griff reached for the cell door. His hand trembled. “You left. You left your family. You lost your rights when you did that.”

“You think I wouldn’t have come back if I knew?”

Griff’s gaze charted Hitch’s face. Slowly, he shook his head. “We thought it was best for the boy.”

“That he never knew his father?”

“He thinks Byron’s his father.” He wouldn’t look Hitch in the eye. “Are you really going to tell me you’d have come back, settled down, given him a home? You’re telling me the life he would have had, getting dragged around the country, living hand to mouth would have been a better upbringing than what he’s getting with Nan?”

Yes! The boy was his
son
.

But the words caught in his throat.

He
would
have come back, picked up his swaddled infant, and flown right back out. Griff was right about that.

So then what?

He’d spent the last nine years chasing freedom through the skies. A baby would have chained him down as sure as a farm. Walter was nobody’s fool. He’d have figured that out. He would have realized a long time since that his father was no hero. Hitch Hitchcock was just a no-account wanderer. He had no roots, no responsibilities, no convictions.

Griff inhaled. “I’m not saying what we decided was right. I’m just saying...” He watched the floor.

Then he clanked the door shut. “What you said back there about Campbell being the one we should arrest... That true?” His mouth stayed hard, but something in his face was vulnerable, searching.

Hitch looked him in the eye. “What do you think?”

Griff opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded. “You’re stuck here for now—probably until a hearing. But I’ll see what I can do.” He left. His footsteps thudded down the corridor.

Hitch backed up, one step after the other, until the low bunk hit his legs. He sank down on it. His hands bumped into the thin mattress beside his thighs, and he left them there, limp. He leaned back until his head hit the wall. Overhead, rain hammered against the ceiling. Shadows shifted in the corners.

Walter was out there somewhere, either up with Zlo or dead on the ground.

Please let it be Zlo. His throat cramped, and he closed his eyes. Never thought he’d pray for that. But please let it be.

Because, God help him, he didn’t know what he’d do if it was otherwise.

He had a son, and hadn’t something in him known it all along? He loved the kid already. He’d loved him from the first time he’d met him. Taos had known. Somehow the dog had seemed to see it all before Hitch had even gotten a clue.

If things had gone the way he—and Griff and Nan—had wanted them to, he’d be on his way out of the state right now. He’d have left without even knowing.

That wasn’t even close to being all his fault. They’d had no right to keep this from him. They’d misjudged him every step of the way, never even tried to understand where he’d been coming from, what kind of wrath he’d been trying to stay clear of.

But they were right about one thing: he
had
been that close to leaving his family one more time. Dear God. Just like he’d done before. He’d given it all up without a second thought, because it was hard, because he was afraid, selfish, too downright blind stupid to see.

He raised his head and let it fall back against the wall. Pain splashed through his skull.

And now it was too late.

He thumped his head against the wall again—and again.

***

Hitch must have slept, because after what seemed an ageless wandering through gray and frantic dreams, he woke up and peeled open his sticky eyelids. He was still hunched against the wall. Cramped muscles held his spine in a curve. He raised an arm, and pain jagged through his shoulders. He let the arm fall.

The rain still pounded on the roof; it had pounded all the way through his nightmares. A trickle of light spilled down the corridor and cast a man’s shadow slantways across the cell’s floor.

Hitch looked up and up, until he found the craggy face, shadowed under a fedora, a toothpick in the corner of the mouth.

Campbell. Come to twist the knife, no doubt.

Anger heated Hitch’s stomach. He let the heat growl up into his throat. But he stayed slouched against the wall. No more games. Campbell always won those.

This wasn’t a game anymore anyway. Somewhere along the line—maybe as long ago as the beginning—this had become a war.

Campbell pulled the toothpick from his mouth. He looked old, the lines around his eyes strained, as if he hadn’t slept all night. But his jaw was granite.

“I reckon you know why you’re here,” he said.

“Because you let Zlo take
your
town right back from you. Can’t hardly lock yourself up, can you?”

If possible, the set of Campbell’s jaw got harder. “You’d best not climb on a high horse. There ain’t a sheriff in this country’d say you’re a model citizen.”

“What do you call a model citizen?”