Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (7 page)

Matthew regarded him. He didn’t look convinced. “Her too?”

Hitch looked through the screen door to where she stood listening to J.W. going on about the drought or some such.

Part of him just wanted to say
yes
. Yes, she jumped from a plane. Yes, all these bodies had been chucked out of a plane.

But it wasn’t as if planes were exactly common around these parts. Before this week, there was no reason at all why pilots should be flying over Scottsbluff, Nebraska—much less tossing people out at five thousand feet.

He might have dismissed the whole notion of the bodies even having fallen at all—except for her. He’d
seen
her. And night flight or no night flight, he’d still swear up and down his Jenny had been the only plane out there.

So what did that leave? That she’d jumped off a cloud?

Obviously not. But maybe the question here wasn’t
how
, but
why
? Somebody’d been after her, that was clear. But again:
why
?

He looked at Matthew and shook his head. “You want answers that make sense? Don’t ask me. I gotta tell you, I ain’t ever seen anything like this one.”

But if he could find Jael’s attacker, that might put a period to a lot of questions. If the man was anything like her, he was going to stick out in Scottsbluff like a society grand dame at a county fair.

Six

BY THE TIME they reached town, the noon sun was pouring heat on their heads. Scottsbluff had grown considerable since Hitch left nine years ago. Main Street was still dirt, but the raised sidewalks were paved now. The rows of cottonwoods were long gone, together with the buggies. Now, dusty Model Ts chugged up and down, and a six-story brick building—Lincoln Hotel painted across its front—dominated the row of stores and cafes. They even had electric lampposts and, on one corner, a drinking fountain.

Strange how things moved on without you.

He hooked his hands in his pockets and squinted down the street. “Wouldn’t even know it’s the same town I grew up in.” He looked over his shoulder at Jael.

She was busy twisting the drinking fountain’s knob. When the water started trickling out, she laughed. Her gaze flashed up to his, delighted.

They must not have these admittedly newfangled things up on her cloud. He grinned back at her.

Just like that, her delight faltered into uncertainty. She deliberately looked away and cupped a handful of water to start cleaning the dirt from her bare feet. Matthew and J.W. hadn’t had any shoes that would fit her, so she’d walked barefoot all the way into town. The soft dirt on the roads had been easy enough on her feet, but now she was a dusty mess.

Several ladies in flower print dresses and cloche hats passed by, watching her from the corners of their eyes.

Hitch winced. “You know, maybe we should find you someplace else to do that.”

She straightened, then turned the knob once more. “Very beautiful, this thing.” It was about the first full sentence she’d said since leaving Matthew’s, despite Hitch’s best attempts to make conversation.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nifty.” He turned back up the street and surveyed his options.

“Where do you go to?” she asked.

“Have to find someplace for you to hide out, have to make some money, and then I have to hightail it back to camp. Those planes you saw go over—they’re why I’m here. There’s going to be a big airshow, like nothing anybody here has ever seen before.”

She shook her head, obviously not picking up on much of what he was saying.

He beckoned. “C’mon.”

He selected a dry-goods store—Fallon Bros.—halfway down the street. He didn’t recognize it, or the name, so maybe the folks inside wouldn’t recognize him either. All things considered, he was likely to get more for the gun from a stranger.

He pushed through the door, Jael treading softly after him. The big front room was whitewashed and airy. The shelves along the walls and the island counters down the center offered everything from ready-cut dresses to stick horses to electric fans. A modish clerk with slicked-back hair and a half apron stood behind a glass-fronted case.

Hitch pasted on a grin and approached. “Howdy. Would you be interested in swapping?”

The man—one of the Mr. Fallons probably—smoothed his hair. “Not exactly my line.” He watched Jael retreat to the back of the store, his look somewhere between doubt and interest.

Hitch leaned against the counter. “Wouldn’t want a pretty girl to go without lunch today, would you?”

Fallon looked back to Hitch. “That hard up, are you?”

“Just temporary. I’ve got a Colt .45. It’s in good shape.” He pulled it from the back of his waistband, popped the empty cylinder, and handed it over, grip first.

As soon as the gun left his hand, he had doubts. If ever he found the flare shooter, he just might want a gun of his own. He looked back at Jael.

She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, peering at a display of mustache cups.

Thing was, if he didn’t find her a place today, he was going to need that extra cash a sight more than he currently needed the gun.

He turned back.

Fallon grunted as he examined the revolver. “Not from around here, are you?”

“Not recently. I’m here for the big airshow.”

“Oh, yes, I saw the posters around town.” Fallon glanced again at Jael. She was now out of earshot. “She in the show, is she?”

Hitch kept the grin going. “Not officially.”

The front door opened with a rush of heat and a tinkle of the bell.

Behind him, someone inhaled sharply.

“Morning, Mrs. Carpenter,” Fallon said.

Hitch’s stomach clenched. His grin slipped entirely. He straightened away from the counter and turned.

Three women stood framed in the sunlight from the two big display windows. The two in front were Celia’s older sisters—Nan and Aurelia. The slender third, red wisps escaping from beneath her straw hat brim, must be Nan’s girl Molly, all grown up.

“You,” Nan said. She clutched her handbag as if it were his neck.

Of all the people here, Nan was the one most likely to hate him until she died of it. Her—and maybe his brother Griff. He’d known that. He just hadn’t figured it’d hit him in the gut quite so hard.

He fitted his hands into his pockets. “Hello, Nan. I guess I’ve come home.”

“It’s ten years too late for you to come home, Hitch Hitchcock.”

Molly shot her mother a wide-eyed glance.

“Oh, it’s all right.” Aurelia wafted over. She was as pale as ever, her eyes unblinking. “I remember you. You married Celia, didn’t you? Poor Celia. She’s dead now. Did you know that?”

Hitch’s heart stumbled just once. “Yeah. I... know.”

“I remember you gave me half a taffy in the schoolyard, and you tied my sash to Laura Everby’s in Sunday school. How charming.” She extended her hand, bidding him kiss it.

Aurelia had been stuck in some kind of fairyish dream ever since she’d fallen out of the haymow when she was twelve.

He squeezed her hand gently. “You still look like a princess, Aurelia.”

She laughed and twirled around. She was wearing a violet scarf as a shawl, and it spread around her elbows in diaphanous wings.

He turned back. His mouth was as dry as the drought. Nan was still glaring Black Death at him, so he turned instead to her daughter. “This must be Molly. You probably don’t remember me. You must be, what? Fifteen by now?”

The girl dropped her eyelashes in a slow blink. It looked like an expression she’d practiced in front of the mirror more than a few times. “How d’you do? You’re a pilot, aren’t you? That’s awfully ducky.” She extended a hand.

“Stop it,” Nan said. She was trembling, and her eyes were huge, almost with outright panic. There was a fair share of anger too.

“I’m sorry.” His words came out before he even had time to think them. Lord knew he’d thought them plenty often in the last nine years. “I should have come back for her funeral.”

“You shouldn’t have left in the first place.”

Nan’s dark hair was pinned in a simple bun at the back of her neck, beneath her hat. She had been the prettiest of the sisters—more color than Aurelia, smaller features than Celia. But the years had weathered her skin and drawn fine lines around her eyes and her mouth. She was rail thin, the muscles in her tanned forearms ropy and hard.

She stared into his eyes. “You ruined Celia’s life when you left.”

From the first moment he’d heard Col. Livingstone was holding his show in Scottsbluff, he’d known this was coming. People around here would hold him accountable for what had happened to Celia. And maybe, in more than a small way, they were right.

Regrets weren’t too valuable, so he didn’t keep them around. But this one had stuck anyway, year after year, despite his best attempts to justify what had happened. He couldn’t have stopped Celia’s dying, not even if he had risked staying here while Sheriff Campbell cooled off. But there were too many other promises he’d made her that he hadn’t had enough time to keep.

“I never knew she was sick,” he said.

“Of course you didn’t.” Nan’s voice squeaked, the way it always did when she was beyond angry.

“You act like I was never coming back.”

“You never did.”

“After she died, I didn’t have a reason to.” He tried to bite back the defensiveness. Nan was Celia’s sister. If he’d hurt Celia, then of course he’d hurt Nan too. “And besides, other things were going on you didn’t know about.” Things like Bill Campbell threatening his family and wanting to throw him in jail.

“You were
married
to her, Hitch!”

That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? No one could have blamed him for her death. But he
had
married her—in a summer of folly. And when it came right down to it, maybe the thing he felt most guilty for was the little bubble of relief that sometimes surfaced and broke. Because if she’d lived and he’d had to live with her, wouldn’t they all have been the more miserable?

Nan clenched her handbag harder, almost hard enough to stop the trembling. “You couldn’t just settle down and work a farm, like everybody else?”

“You know that’s not who I am. It’s never who I’ve been.”

The look of fear swam up to the surface of her eyes once again. “Which means you’re not planning on staying now either.”

Anger, he understood. He’d expected anger—deserved it in some respects. Anger, he could deal with. But what cause could she possibly have to be afraid of him? He had no ways left to hurt her. She had to know that as well as he did.

His leaving again couldn’t hurt her. If she hated him as much as all this, then surely that would be what she wanted anyway.

He cleared his throat. “I’ll be going at the end of the week. Soon as the show’s over.”

“Of course. The airshow.” Her mouth stiffened. “I should have guessed you’d come back for
that
.”

His stomach turned over again. “I never meant to hurt you, Nan. You or Celia—or anybody else.”

She held his gaze for a long moment. “That makes it worse, I think.” Then she glanced past him. Her face hardened again.

He followed her gaze to the back of the store to see Jael and Aurelia standing next to a rack of dresses.

Admittedly, Jael did look more than a little bizarre, with her uneven haircut and her muddy feet. Matthew’s clothes were so big on her she was practically falling out of them. She had to keep hiking the overalls strap back over her shoulder to keep the whole thing on.

Next to her, Aurelia was murmuring happily and holding dresses up to Jael’s chin. The wild filly look still backed Jael’s eyes, but she seemed to understand Aurelia was no threat. She stood quietly, letting Aurelia have her fun, while she, in turn, studied Hitch and Nan, brows knit hard.

Hitch turned back to Nan. “That’s Jael. She’s a... friend.”

“I can see that.” Nan’s tone said she was seeing more than was actually there to be seen.

Molly edged out from behind her mother. She smiled at him. “Must be awfully exciting, flying all over the world like you do. Aren’t you in constant danger up there?”

“It’s a lot safer than you might think. If you’ve got a good pilot.” He glanced at Nan.

If she could see the life he’d built—
was
building—for himself, would there be some small part of her that would understand why he’d never come back after Celia’s death? He was plenty good at what he did, even if it had never mattered much to the folks back here. He might not own a farm or have a family any longer, but his life was a long shot from the waste they all wanted to believe it was.

He turned back to Molly. “I’ll take you up sometime this week. If your mother says.”

“Absolutely not,” Nan said.

Hitch took a breath and gave it one more try. “Then why not come out and see the show Saturday.” It would give him another reason to win. If she could see he wasn’t just some worthless tramp, maybe it would help her understand he
hadn’t
up and left Celia.