Chapter 11

"I-I... Oh, Sebastian, I'm a killer." Her voice broke. She sobbed into his shirt.

He pulled her into the laboratory, carefully avoiding the man lying dead in the doorway. Drawing his nearly hysterical wife toward the basin of warm water he kept handy, he washed her hands, still unsure if she'd been hurt. Had that man done more than just shove her along?

As she wept, because speech seemed beyond her, he washed the blood from her hands and wrists. She had bloodstains on her face, too, as if she'd pressed her palms to her cheeks. He carefully bathed her face until it was clean.

There was no other blood. No sign she was bleeding, no cuts or rising bruises. Seb heaved a sigh of relief at the same time he was horrified. "Who was that man?"

Shaking her head frantically, she said, "I don't know."

He studied her face. She was still distraught, frightened. "Can you tell me what happened?"

He listened to the whole tale, holding back from asking questions until she'd spilled everything. "I'll go see if he's carrying anything that will tell us who he is," Seb said, "but he's not dressed like a western man. His suit says he's from the city—it's made of fine material with hardly any wear on it. His boots are machine-made with barely a scuff. It all speaks of someone who's well-to-do."

"I didn't think of what he was wearing. I didn't get a good look at him until he was collapsed on the ground. He grabbed me from behind, put his hand over my mouth." Kat's voice rose in distress. "He was watching me. He said he'd been watching me for days. He followed me from the cabin and picked his moment."

Seb, slightly sickened to touch the man, knelt beside him and flipped back the front of his black suit coat, a fine wool that was well tailored. His inner pocket bulged with something. Seb saw a pistol tucked into a holster under the dead man's left arm, and an empty holster hung under his right arm.

"Men wear guns like this to conceal them. And he had two hidden. After his first one went flying, he could have still gotten to the second weapon." Seb didn't know much about guns, though Oscar and Jake had liked talking about them and Seb had listened. And Kat had bought that set of Colt six-guns and left one loaded in the laboratory. He'd seen it, but he'd never so much as picked it up. He'd certainly never fired it.

As a man who'd been shot at, a man who'd recently come out of hiding because of an attempted murder, he probably ought to learn.

He pulled papers out of the man's pocket and a single envelope. Flicking it open, he stared at a stack of hundred-dollar bills. There was a small book along with the money. Seb opened it and saw it was blank, brand-new. It contained one line only, which was written at the top of the first page in a tidy-looking script:

Sebastian and Katherine Wadsworth? Jones. Cheyenne, Wyoming. $500.

The exact amount of money in the envelope.

He turned to Kat. "Does this mean he was sent to find both of us?"

Kat's face, already pale, went bone-white. Her voice trembled. "Or sent to kill both of us?"

Seb moved fast in case she collapsed. Her whole body was racked with shudders. He pulled her close, then got to his feet, bringing her along with him, holding her until she stopped shaking. That was when he noticed some of the tremors were his.

They stood there holding each other for a long time.

"We need to ride to town and get the sheriff."

Gasping, Kat said, "They'll arrest me. I'll hang."

"No, of course you won't. This was an accident, and beyond that, he attacked you. You were fighting to get away from him. The gun going off was his own fault."

"What if they don't believe me?" She clutched his shirt.

He watched her terror and understood it. He remembered how she'd run from the asylum. Then how they'd both run across the country. Maybe they'd done too much running. On the other hand, they were both good at it. And they'd only been met with danger when they stopped running.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

She let go of his shirt slowly, forcing one finger at a time to release, then rested her head against his chest. She was so pretty, so delicate. So smart and tough. Seb had gotten himself a fine wife.

Against his shirtfront, she said, "Do you think he was sent by my uncle? Or by the men who want to steal your invention badly enough to shoot you?"

Shaking his head, Seb answered, "Hmm, I hadn't considered that."

"And what do you think he meant by saying ‘This doesn't end with me'?"

"Sounds to me like whoever sent him will send someone else to finish the job once they learn he failed and is now dead."

Kat leaned harder. "Why the question mark after my name Wadsworth?" She lifted her head and met his eyes. "Should we run? Head back to Hidden Canyon? Maybe we need to hide out as much as Beth and her mother need to."

Seb looked at the small notebook in his hand, then at the dead man at their feet. "I told only one person your full name. Lloyd Sterne, my lawyer. He said I had to because I asked him to put my earnings in both our names. He said he needed your maiden name. But why? Why wasn't the name Kat Jones good enough? I wired the information to him by telegraph. I should have refused. But we were facing our troubles, so I decided part of that was admitting where we were."

"He just wanted to know it?"

"Yes, and maybe he was just curious, but—" Seb narrowed his eyes, trying to remember—"he made me believe it was necessary. And whether he intended to do anything wrong when he asked, he'd've recognized the name Wadsworth. He might have mentioned you when talking to someone, or he might've been excited about my connection to such an illustrious name. He might've blathered on about it far and wide, even wired Chicago." Seb glanced back at the dead man.

Kat nodded. "I think we should run. Maybe we'd tolerate life in that canyon better knowing killers with our names written in their notebooks were roaming around outside the canyon." Then, despite the pallor, despite the tears and shaking, a glint of anger flashed in her eyes. "Or we could go have a hard talk with that lawyer of yours. Who else knew outside of a few folks in Cheyenne? And why would they want to trouble us?"

"Sterne and Morris. Of Independence, Missouri. I told Marcus I'd gotten married, but I didn't mention your last name to him." Seb thought of those two and felt his heart harden. He'd trusted them. They made decent money tending to his affairs. But did they see a chance to improve their income? "Back east, before I was shot, they knew about my invention work, too."

"If they didn't send that man, they almost certainly mentioned our marriage, including my name, to someone who did."

"Whichever it was, those men need to tell me what's going on. And I'm very much afraid they won't unless I'm standing right in front of them. They might not tell me then."

"So should we hide? Or fight? If we leave and don't get back fast enough, we might lose the homestead. We have to live here six months out of the year."

"I feel worse about losing the material in my lab. But I can get more. We can't stay here, though, not unless we're prepared to fight armed gunmen at any time of the day or night."

Kat pulled her hands down in front of her. Seb saw blood under a couple of fingernails, and her hands still shook.

Both of them looked up at each other.

Kat said, "Fight."

Seb jerked his chin down and up. "Fight."

"Let's go find the sheriff," Kat said, "and I need to talk to Mr. Etherton again. Then we go to Independence. We take the fight to your lawyers' doorstep. Let's take the train. We'll tell the sheriff what happened when we go through Cheyenne. If they want to hang me, they're going to have to wait until I get back."

Thaddeus Rutledge was viciously shamed by bending his knee.

To sit with his valet, helping him dress because he was too badly injured to dress himself, made him furious. The pain he lived with made him furious.

The scars on his body made him furious.

Not much in life had any effect on him besides white-hot fury.

And he was a man who prided himself on his icy control of things.

He stood and walked. He'd walk without a limp one of these days, but for now he was glad to walk at all.

He'd had his life saved by a doctor, who gulped a dram of whiskey between every wound he stitched closed. Thaddeus, weakened by the loss of blood, just lay there like a lump while the fool worked on him. Somehow, though, he'd found the strength to order his men to wire down the line and find out when a train was expected. Two days.

The wait was interminable, and frightening because he was so sick. Only laudanum made the pain bearable. He relied on it still.

The Pinkerton agents hadn't helped him get back. Instead, they'd gone hunting for that furiously mad Yvette. Thaddeus would have left her for the wolves.

He hadn't seen the Pinkertons by the time the locomotive arrived. They hitched the eastbound engine to his private cars, carried him on a stretcher to the bedroom in his car, where he'd lain there so weak it was frightening as the train chugged its way across most of the vast, wretched continent.

He'd been urged to see a doctor in Cheyenne, but he'd been sure Cheyenne would have the same kind of Wild West drunkard that Alton, Idaho, had, and so Thaddeus had demanded that they move on. He'd considered Omaha; he was sure he'd make it that far. But if he was going to survive, he wanted the top man he could find to patch him back together.

Omaha was ridiculous with the rail line ending. Why couldn't they get a bridge built? He'd found the private car he used in Omaha and abandoned it there. He was ferried across the Missouri River where his own car was waiting for him. Someone had thought to wire ahead and have it cleaned and stocked with water and ready to be hitched to an engine. He'd gone on to Chicago, where a doctor who possessed a functioning brain could help him.

It had irritated him when the top man in Chicago marveled at the number of stitches and how perfectly they'd been sewn. Thaddeus's life had been spared, that fool doctor had assured him, by the Idaho drunk.

Still, the Chicago doctor had worked on a few things, including fretting about a nearly severed Achilles tendon. He'd opened that sewn-up wound and worked carefully over Thaddeus's leg, which ended with Thaddeus in a cast through most of last winter. He'd removed the stitches and arranged for an attendant with special training to aid in Thaddeus regaining the use of his right leg.

Thaddeus had worked with the attendant all winter and on through the spring. He was still at it, and he might well be at it for the rest of his life.

But that hadn't stopped him from going to work. He was infuriated about the state of his company after being gone west for a mere two weeks or three ... maybe four. He'd spent a part of that time more dead than alive.

He'd hired a man named Gerald Sykes to replace Hemler Blayd. The man wasn't working out well, and Thaddeus probably needed to fire him and find a more ruthless assistant, but he'd had his hands full getting his company running efficiently again after being gone, then healing, and so hadn't found a replacement as yet. Sykes had his uses, though. Collecting rent wasn't one of them. Blayd had been huge and menacing. Sykes was lethal, but not so good at bullying people before he did something drastic.

Thaddeus didn't have time to show him the finer points of terrifying hungry people into handing over money they needed to feed their children. Sykes seemed to have no middle ground between calm and deadly. And the dead didn't pay.

In the meantime, Thaddeus's finances were taking a hard beating because people weren't paying their rent on time.

One thing he had found the time to do was to set about ruining Dr. Maynard Horecroft, the man running Horecroft Insane Asylum. The man who'd let Eugenia escape.

Thaddeus began with more investigators and had come up with the information that another woman was missing from the asylum. When he'd found a name, Thaddeus nearly salivated with the pleasure of learning about Patrick Wadsworth's niece-in-law.

Patrick hadn't known she was gone, and Thaddeus had enjoyed informing him. Yes, Horecroft needed to be ruined, and Thaddeus would enjoy doing the ruination. In fact, he'd seriously mulled over whether to just send Sykes on a midnight visit to end Dr. Horecroft, but Thaddeus liked the idea of bringing the man low first. Wadsworth would be a good ally in that venture.

Today he had a meeting with Wadsworth, and it would be the next step in finding Eugenia and bringing about Horecroft's demise.

Striding as best he could out of his house, he climbed awkwardly into his carriage and headed for the meeting room at Patrick Wadsworth's office building. Wadsworth knew better than to ask Thaddeus to walk up a flight of stairs.

Stepping into the newest, most luxurious office building in the best part of Chicago annoyed Thaddeus. His office was in a fine setting, too, but nothing like what Wadsworth had managed. The Wadsworth fortune put Thaddeus in the shade, and nothing bothered him more.

Wadsworth was there, waiting, and Thaddeus liked the idea of being waited on.

"I've found her." Wadsworth announced it before Thaddeus could even take a seat at the vast oak table. There were two dozen chairs surrounding it, but he and Wadsworth were the only ones in the room.

Thaddeus stopped short thinking of Ginny. "Who?"

"My nephew's widow. I heard from a man in Missouri. I got a wire from there a few days ago saying her name came up in another matter. The wire doesn't say where she's at. He didn't know. But he's going to find out."

"When will you get her back here? I have some questions to ask her. Did she hear where Eugenia was going? I know my daughter didn't stay in Independence. I saw her in Idaho of all places last summer, but maybe your niece knows exactly where she was going. Can she tell us?"

"As I said, I haven't gotten ahold of her yet. And I've got questions, too. Most of them for Horecroft." Patrick Wadsworth wasn't a cool, calculating man like Thaddeus. Horecroft had never told him Katherine Wadsworth had escaped the asylum. Wadsworth had dutifully paid the fee for her room and board monthly, but now it appeared Katherine had been gone for over a year.

Wadsworth wasn't a man who liked being cheated. If there was cheating to be done, he preferred to do it himself.

Wadsworth was tall and thin to a painful degree, as often happened to men in perpetual motion. He dressed in fine wool and silks. His silver hair looked like a glowing crown on his head.

Wadsworth owned much of the land under their feet here in Chicago, but Thaddeus owned most of the tenements and slums. He made a fortune on the crumbling buildings, the only homes most of the scum in Chicago could afford. Thaddeus also owned a lot of the factories the scum worked at, or he owned shares in the factories.

Wadsworth's holdings were different. He owned shiny buildings, some so grand that they'd rival cathedrals, all in the richer sections of town. His renters were prosperous men who liked to show off where they lived and worked. They paid on time and without much urging.

Wadsworth owned shares in many of the same factories as Thaddeus, and both men had their hands in the railroads and shipping lines.

Thaddeus liked to sit and calculate, while Patrick preferred to pace the room with his arms swinging. He had fire in his soul, while Thaddeus had ice in his veins. But the end results were the same, for they were both men to be reckoned with in Chicago.

"I'm waiting to hear back from Independence." Patrick was one for pronouncements. "Once I know where she is, I'll travel there. Right now I'm thinking she's going to turn up in Independence. I've set plans in motion to go there, but there could be last-minute changes. Wherever I go, you're welcome to come along."

Thaddeus had to stifle a groan. He hated to travel on his wounded leg. He'd hoped Wadsworth would go fetch his niece and drag her home. Thaddeus would question her here. But the urgent need to get his hands on Eugenia was alive and well in Thaddeus. "Let me know when we're leaving."

Wadsworth cracked a smile and gave a little nod.

Thaddeus limped from the room, dreading the journey but too wrapped in vengefulness to even consider for a moment sending a list of questions along with Wadsworth and just staying home.

As he headed back to his office, he decided that wherever they went, he'd take Sykes and give the man one more chance to prove himself.

It flickered through his mind, as it did from time to time, to wonder what in the world had happened to that lunatic, murderous Yvette.

"I found her." Oscar rushed into the cabin.

Beth, gently bouncing a baby, the same as always, asked, "Where is she?"

Mama came up beside her, bouncing Jacob.

"She's in that cave where we stored all that extra food we brought, planning for it to last the rest of our lives. That's how she survived. I followed her tracks, found her out front of that cave, and watched until she wandered off. I slipped inside and found she'd eaten some of the canned goods we stored there. It looks like she lived in the room with the hot spring, and that's how she stayed warm. Her dress is the one she was wearing last summer when she stabbed Rutledge. It's even got a few bloodstains on it."

Oscar said the last with grim satisfaction. Beth suspected Oscar would never dislike anyone who stabbed Father.

"Poor abandoned thing." Oscar seemed to like her overly. "Don't reckon she had a change of clothes or so much as a blanket to make the floor softer."

"The woman who attacked me at Horecroft Asylum is living in our canyon?" Mama had listened closely to their story about being found by Father. She recognized the name Yvette.

They'd all heard the story of the first time Mama had touched her. The first time and the last.

Yvette had gone mad with a violent assault.

Mama never touched her again. No one in that place ever did except the attendants, who seemed to revel in sending Yvette into a fit of rage.

Mama gave Jacob a soft kiss on the forehead. "What can we do for that poor bedeviled creature? I've said before that some people in Horecroft were truly mad. But it was no place for anyone, no matter the state of their minds." She looked at Beth, then at Oscar. "Do you think we can help her?"

The only response was silence.

Jake came in then. Joseph soon followed.

"I found her," Oscar said as he washed up, then helped set the table.

Jake washed up, too, and afterward took the baby from Beth, kissing both of his girls gently on the forehead. "You eat first. I'll mind our little Marie."

Joseph took Jacob from Mama.

"This is a spring chick?" Beth tasted the soup and wanted to moan with the pleasure of it. "It's so delicious. I can't quite believe those chicks are old enough."

"It's been plenty long," Oscar said, ladling a bowlful for Mama. "You've been busy the last few months."

Beth laughed. "That is the pure truth."

When they were eating, Mama asked again, "What can we do for Yvette? I want to at least talk to her. She has a rational way about her most of the time. Her speech is refined. She always wore beautiful clothes. I wonder how she came to be at Horecroft?"

"She seemed to think she was married to Father. When he referred to you as his wife, she became furious. That's when he hit her. That's when she went berserk and stabbed him."

Stabbed and slashed and hacked away at him. Blayd had shot at her to stop her, which made the Pinkerton agent, coming in after Yvette had been knocked to the ground, shoot Blayd dead. Then the Pinkerton had a badly wounded Father hauled away to town by Blayd's henchmen while the other agents had said they'd find Yvette and see she was taken ... somewhere.

Clearly McCall had failed.

"She must have somehow followed us right into the canyon." Jake handled the gentle baby-bouncing rhythm perfectly. "I wonder if spending the winter alone suited her or drove her further mad? If it suits her, there's no reason we couldn't just leave her alone, let her live in that cave. Maybe we could leave supplies at the cave entrance. Make sure she's eating right. We could make a mattress for her, sew her a new dress, and see if she's not too addled to change clothes? We just don't know how she's doing, physically or mentally."

"I'm going to talk to her."

"Now, Ginny—" Oscar began.

"I'm doing it." Mama cut him off.

There wasn't much Oscar wouldn't do to protect Mama, and neither was there much he would deny her. He just nodded.

"Let's go then," Oscar said. "Right after we eat. I'll go with you, so will Joseph. But we'll stay well back. So will you. Jake and Beth can stay here with the tykes."

"I want to go. I saw her last fall." Beth, who'd learned to eat fast, was done and pushed back from the table. "Father was talking to me, and for some reason she followed us here. I should go."

Jacob chose that moment to start crying.

The whole table laughed at the baby boy's perfect timing. Joseph said, "I'll stay and help Jake."

Joseph was done eating, too, and took both babies. "I'll see if a nap is coming. Jake, you get your soup."

Mama said, "I've got a spare dress, the blue one. Yvette was of a height with me. I'll take that to her. And I made cookies this morning. I'll take her a plate of those and ... uh, welcome her to the neighborhood."

It all sounded so friendly and yet Beth was sorely afraid it was going to be anything but.