Steal Me, Sweet Thief Page 23

  "He's there." He barely mouthed the words to his partner. "Guarding a door. Must be hers. I'll need a distraction." Billy beamed. "Wait here," he mouthed.

  The younger man withdrew before Macalester even had a chance to caution him. Well, he thought, he'd never had to play nursemaid to Billy before this; there was no reason to start now. He waited, risking another glance into the corridor, hoping, briefly, that nothing untoward would prompt anyone to emerge from a cabin before Billy had executed his portion of the plan. The giant remained, an impassive and solitary guard.

  Macalester pulled back, waiting, counting each breath as if it were an hour. He brushed his sleeve across his brow once.

  From around the corner, a short distance away, he heard a ringing sound, like a silver dollar rolling along the floor. What the hell was Billy doing? The big oak tree of a man would never fall for such an easy trick as that. Or would he? Macalester peeked once more around the corner in time to see the giant's large foot disappear around the far corridor.

  Quick as a cat, Macalester emerged from his own place and was by the untended door in an instant, even as he heard a dull thud from the void into which its sentry had lately disappeared. Praying the thud was Billy's doing and not the giant's, he inserted a long nail into the lock on the door, daring neither to knock nor to call out, lest he attract unwanted attention. He had not troubled to invent an excuse for himself or Billy in the event they should be discovered. In fact, he could barely focus on the comparatively simple act of picking this shabby excuse for a lock. The idea that Geneva Lionwood might be on the other side of the door occupied the major part of his conscious thought.

  The lock yielded even as Billy strolled into view from around the corner, his black shirt and trousers augmenting his devilish appearance.

  "Move it, Senator," he recommended in a whisper, drawing his Colt as he edged toward Macalester's position with a quick glance at every door. "We ain't got all night. Go kiss your lady love good night. I'll wait here."

  Macalester dealt the younger man a grimace. He did not even know for sure that this was Geneva's cabin. Trust Billy to make a joke of everything! Without answering, Macalester opened the door, first a crack, then, discovering that the hinge was soundless, wide enough to poke his head inside. The room was dimly lit by a single lamp, but he was satisfied that the figure on the small bed was Geneva. His heart tightened. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him.

  The room was small and stuffy. There was not even a porthole. It was like a prison. Macalester moved quickly to the bed, reining in a shudder. By the pale golden light of the lamp on the table beside the bed, he looked upon the slack, sleeping features of the woman he loved, unable to resist touching her soft pale cheek with his finger.

  Her eyes were closed, her dark, full lashes making crescents upon her cheekbones. Her mouth, small and pink, was slightly open, and her abundant dark curls were strewn upon the whiteness of the pillow like a rich warm blanket with which he longed to cover himself He knelt on one knee beside her, content, for the moment, just to be near enough to hear her shallow breath, gentle as a spring breeze. Her small, fine hands clutched the blue coverlet to her neck. She looked, he noted with no small relief, as though she had been treated well enough. Encouraged by the thought, he patted her cheek gently.

  "Gen," he called to her, scarcely above a whisper. "Gen, wake up. It's me. Mac. Kieran."

  To his surprise, she did not stir. He thought, for a capricious moment, that she might be feigning sleep just to annoy him. He had to admire her spunk. He felt a brief smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

  "Come on, Gen." He tickled her neck gently with his fingertip. "Don't tease me. Not now."

  Still, she did not react. Puzzled, he tapped her cheek more briskly and spoke her name as loudly as he dared.

  "Geneva! Wake up!" he commanded. "It's me! Kieran!"

  At last, slowly, her eyes opened, her lids fluttering like the wings of a sluggish butterfly. Her green eyes looked dark and strange, and she looked at him, he realized with a shock of apprehension, without seeing him.

  "Geneva! It's Kieran. Kieran Macalester! Don't you—" He gulped, hard. "Don't you know me?"

  She continued to stare at him without moving, without blinking. Overcome with desperation, he seized her shoulders and shook her.

  "Gen, what is it? For the love of God, Gen—"

  She blinked once, slowly. Her lips moved, but she did not speak. Her eyes seemed to focus on him at last. He relaxed his grip, but he did not let her go.

  "K—Kieran…"

  Her voice was no more than a whimper. He felt sick, and it had nothing whatever to do with the motion of the vessel.

  "It's me, Gen." He lifted her to an upright position, putting his arm about her to hold her up. "What's the matter, honey? Why can't you wake up?"

  There were three soft knocks upon the door. Go away, Billy, he thought, glancing once in the direction from which the sound had come.

  "Head." Geneva groaned softly, trying, to shield her eyes with a clumsy hand. "Hurts. Tired… so tired…"

  Kieran took hold of her hand and pulled it gently away from her face. Straightening her arm, he noticed strange blue bruises on the soft white flesh on the inside of her elbow.

  "What's this, Gen?"

  He looked from the bruises to her face and watched with growing apprehension as her lovely features clouded with confusion. She looked away from him, but he caught her chin with his hand and drew it toward him again. She did not resist him. When she met his gaze, he could see that her eyes, those lovely green eyes that had looked upon him with such infinite trust on the train to Roanoke, had filled with tears.

  "Hakim," she whispered, her small voice shaking. "He—I—"

  A sob stopped her. He felt like there was a big, sharp, heavy stone in his own throat.

  "What, Gen?" He found his voice at last. "Did Hakim do this to you? What does it mean?"

  She seemed to struggle with her answer, as though some unseen power held her back. Confused and frightened by her strange behavior, he held her more tightly, wanting to take away her pain with his embrace.

  "A drug," she said faintly. "Laud—laudanum, I think. I—I'm scared, Kieran. Help me!"

  Laudanum. The word was a curse. What had they done to her? What had he allowed to happen to her? He wanted to be sick.

  Her eyes were wide, but still glazed and unfocused. The green in them was almost entirely eclipsed by the blackness of her pupils. He held her limp body tenderly to his breast, wanting to take her with him at once, to remove her from this awful place.

  Billy knocked again. Macalester filled his lungs with the sweet scent of her jasmine before he released her.

  "We'll reach Biloxi the day after tomorrow," he said, training her wandering gaze to his own again with a firm but gentle hand upon her chin. "I'll come for you and take you off the ship. We're stuck here for now. We're in the gulf, out of sight of land. You have to hold out until then, Gen. You can do it. I know you can. I—I have to go now, before they come and find me here. You'll be all right. Do you understand? You'll be all right…"

  He held her again, realizing that he was babbling on more as an excuse to remain with her for a few moments longer than to offer her any real assurance. That, he knew with sickening certainty, was far beyond his limited capabilities. She did not want him to leave. He could tell by the way she held his sleeves. Clutching at him, the way a drowning person would grasp at a rope. He hated leaving her, but he had to, or there would be no hope of liberating her at Biloxi.

  He bent his neck to kiss her lips. They were cool and dry, and they responded only slightly to his own. Laudanum! He shuddered, stroking her dark hair tenderly. What have they done to you, Geneva? What have I done to you? When he broke away from her, he could not look into her eyes. He could not bear the emptiness in her eyes, or the pain that emptiness would inspire in him.

  "I'll be back for you, Gen," he said, not even sure she was listening any longer. "I'l
l get you out of this. I swear it." She drifted off into her deadly, drugged sleep again before he even finished speaking.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Geneva was cold. She felt as though a fire had gone out in the room some time before. Beneath the blankets, she shivered uncontrollably in her thin nightdress, and her head throbbed like the churning of a great unruly engine.

  Kieran had been there, and had gone. She remembered that much, but she recalled nothing further about his visit. She remembered, too, that she was in terrible danger, but she could not remember from whom, or why. She could not even muster concern. There was an agent insulating her against extremes of emotion, driving even her gremlin away, and she had ceased to trouble herself with her own welfare.

  But she was cold. So cold. Her feet were like blocks of ice, and she shivered as though her very core had extinguished itself A fire. She needed a fire. Hakim could make one, or Abdul, but they had been there only a short while before, and would not return for several hours. In that time she could imagine herself slowly freezing to death, and she could not allow that to happen. Kieran was coming for her.

  The thought took her by surprise, and yet she suddenly remembered it as clearly as if he had just now spoken the words to her. Perhaps he had. He would come for her, he said. Tomorrow.

  But when had he said it?

  A fire. She needed a fire. She was freezing. Clumsily, she got out of the bed, stumbling as the pitching of the ship earned her slight body off balance. The blankets, she thought. They were such pretty colors. Would they burn in pretty colors as well? The notion intrigued her drugged senses. The very idea of all of those colors flickering brightly in a brief conflagration struck her at once. It was a sight she desperately wanted to see. She gathered the bulky things into her arms and dropped them into the middle of the floor. A bonfire. A nice, big bonfire. She imagined a bright, colorful bonfire sending its curls of blue and red and orange into the blackness of the heavens, and she imagined herself dancing around it, like some half-wild gypsy.

  The lamp by the bed was full of oil and would start the fire nicely. She picked it up and with careful, concentrated effort removed the glass globe around the tiny flame. The globe was hot. It burned her hands, but she barely noticed it: The flame fascinated her. She had never realized, before now, that fire was alive. It breathed and moved, expanding and contracting in a teasing, sensual way. Captivated, she put her hand into it. The sudden shock of the burning pain made her drop the lamp and back away, cradling her injured fingers in her good hand.

  The flame from the lamp quickly spread about the pile of blankets, spawning lively little offspring. Geneva watched as the brothers and sisters and cousins of flame tickled and teased one another like bratty children at an unwieldy family reunion. More, they seemed to hiss, greedily. Give us more; give us more. We are hungry. Feed us.

  Geneva fed them. The room was slowly filling with gray-black smoke smelling of burning, salt-cured wood. She fed the hungry children with her pillow, and the nightstand, and, with some effort, the thin mattress from her bed. She was warm, now, gloriously warm. Hot. The heat from the fire singed the passageway to her lungs with her every breath, and soon there were children all around the room. Nieces, nephews, cousins, playing leapfrog and hopscotch and tugging impatiently at one another.

  A crash upon the door tore the barricade from its hinges. Many children were crushed as the giant entered the smoky chamber. Geneva felt him lift her from her bare feet; could feel his beefy arms through the thin nightshift that she wore. She fought him, kicking and biting. He wanted to take her away from the children, and she had so enjoyed watching them play…

  Fire! she heard many voices shout. And other shouts, strange words from foreign tongues that meant nothing to her. Hakim's voice was among them, but she could not see him. The corridor was thick with smoke, although the children seemed not to have emerged from the room as yet. Through the column of smoke the giant carried her, and she wept for the children she would see no more, and her burned hand hurt her again.

  The giant crashed through another door and they were outside. It was gray and wet. And cold. Men were running about the broad deck of the long ship, shouting. Gray smoke wafted heavenward like a mighty sacrifice to pagan gods. The giant set her down on the deck and disappeared. She huddled against the damp gun-whale, hugging her bare arms to herself Why had he taken her from the warmth? Despairing of ever being warm again, she got onto her hands and knees and crawled back, unnoticed by the dark figures that darted about her, calling to one another, creating a rich fabric of chaos.

  The children had grown and spread, and another generation had sprung up about them. The entire corridor was ablaze, awash with a warm and crackling light. The children were laughing at the pitiable attempts of the men to deprive them of their sustenance. Geneva laughed with them, her eyes stinging, her throat burning. She allowed the gentle smoke to curl around her like a soft cocoon, sealing her into its warm and deadly embrace.

  When Kieran Macalester and Billy Deal came up from the hold, the entire passengers' berth was a tower of flame. Off the port bow, the coast of Louisiana watched in the misty gray autumn twilight, too far to render assistance in battling the flames. Kieran broke into a run at the sight of the conflagration, ignoring Billy's exhortations to stop. He slipped once on the wet deck, cursing as the wind got knocked out of him. He scrambled to his feet again and ran, wondering why the deck of the Corvallis had not seemed this long to him before. He forced his way through the bucket brigade, ignoring the shouts and curses of its members wanting to enlist his help.

  The wall of heat from the flames nearly pushed him backward. He looked around before continuing on his mission of folly, trying to determine whether Geneva might be among the ragtag assemblage of refugees huddled against the starboard gunwale. He remembered the previous night, when he'd found her in her room. She had barely recognized him. How could she, in such a state, realize the danger she was in? He seized one of the buckets passing near him and poured its contents over his head, lest he provide the fire with more fuel. The man from whom he had snatched it cursed him as he handed it back, but Kieran ignored him and made for the fiery archway, calling to Geneva in a loud and desperate voice.

  The place was an inferno. Holding his arm before his eyes like a shield, he stumbled through the flaming corridor, unable to see. How could she still be in here? he asked himself, fighting a growing desire to turn and run from the flames. How could she still be in here, and be alive?

  "Geneva!" he called again, and coughed as he gasped a lungful of hot smoke. "Geneva!"

  He tripped on something and fell face first beside it. The air was clearer down there, and he saw a blackened bundle beside him, huddled upon the floor like a pile of dirty laundry. He took several breaths of clearer air, then reached for the bundle with a sooty hand. No sooner had he touched it than it uncurled itself like a blossoming flower before him.

  It was Geneva.

  Relief and dread partnered in him as he gathered her quickly into his arms. She did not move. With little effort, he picked her up and headed back through the smoke and flames, back in what he hoped was the direction from which he had come.

  He could not have gone more than a few feet into the burning part of the ship, for in moments he was outside with his small but precious bundle. Even the salty wet air tasted good, although every breath burned him all the way down inside his aching chest. There were shouts all around, and someone doused his back with another bucket of water. He held tightly to his cherished burden, carrying her away from the fire, away from her prison.

  A strong hand seized his arm abruptly.

  "This way, Senator." Billy's voice was low and swift. "I got a lifeboat all ready to go."

  Macalester did not reply. He allowed himself to be led, fairly dragged, unnoticed, across the deck to one of the dinghies. With but a moment of hesitation, he lifted the scrap that was Geneva into the boat. The stabbing pain in his side reminded him sharply of his
injured ribs, but he stifled a gasp and clambered in himself, falling hard to the wooden floor of the small craft. The boat swayed on its winch, and in moments Billy himself climbed in. In an expert fashion that bewildered Macalester, he began lowering the vessel into the water alongside the Corvallis.

  "Where the hell did you learn all about boats?" Macalester managed to wonder aloud, in spite of his aching chest and throat.

  Billy, hauling away at the rope with astonishing vigor, seemed pleased by his partner's surprise. "You don't know everything about me, do you, Senator?"

  "I guess I don't," Macalester replied, trying to sit up.

  The boat landed with a splash in Cat Island Sound, and Macalester fell back again from the shock, muttering a curse.

  "I sure hope to hell you know what you're doing," he said, feeling that familiar queasiness edge up on him as the little boat rolled and pitched in the dark waves alongside the Corvallis.

  "Relax." Billy pulled in the line. "See to your lady friend back there. She looks poorly, Mac. I swear, I never thought I'd see you come out of that hellhole alive, much less with her!"

  Macalester did not answer. While Billy positioned himself in the stem and lifted two long, heavy oars into their fittings, he made his way forward to Geneva, who still lay exactly where he had placed her. It was getting dark, and it was hard to see, but he gently uncurled her limbs until she lay upon the tarp. She looked burned, but not as badly as he might have expected. Her clothing was destroyed: burned, or shredded, it was impossible to tell which in the darkness. He felt her neck and pressed his ear to her sternum. Her heart was beating, and she was breathing.

  "There're some blankets and other stuff up there," Billy called to him in a clear, almost merry voice. "How's she look?"