Fletcher's Woman (27 page)

He kissed her forehead lightly, squeezed her shoulders once in a kind of stricken reassurance, and turned to make his way down the steps and stumble toward the barn.

Molly was watching from the window when he emerged, seconds later, with Billy and the horse, Tempest. Together, exchanging words she could not hear, Billy and Griffin hitched the horse to the buggy.

Molly closed her eyes, felt warm tears gather in her lashes. The prayer shining in her heart was a fervent one.

•   •   •

“What happened?” Jonas repeated, marveling at his own patience.

Herbert's mother was still whimpering, still wringing her hands. “They had the key—I thought they was you—one of them hit me—”

Breathing deeply, Jonas made himself speak in moderate tones. “How many men were there—and what did they look like?”

The woman's face was woebegone, and the cut in her forehead was bleeding slightly. “There was four of them, Mr. Wilkes—big, strapping men with sunburned faces. They came busting in here and took the girl, and I said to myself, ‘Marlys, there ain't nothing you can do except scream.' So I screamed, and one of them came back and hit me!”

Rage pounded in Jonas's veins and burned in his throat. He'd been had—Frazier had his fee, and he had Rachel, too. By now, he was probably back on board the
Drifter
, laughing his ass off.

And Rachel was sick—so very sick.

Jonas couldn't bear to face the possibilities; if he did, he would slip into stark, useless panic. No, he had to
think
.

He turned and glared at the door opposite his own. The windows of that room overlooked the street and much of the bay.

He prowled across the hall, almost as though he was stalking something, and tried the door. It was locked.

Jonas retreated a step, raised his left boot, and kicked. The lock gave way with a thundering crash and the door whined on its hinges as it swung open.

At the window, he wrenched the curtains apart and scanned the still, glistening waters of the harbor. Incredibly, the
China Drifter
was at anchor, her white sails limp in the warm, motionless air.

A harsh, jubilant laugh escaped Jonas's taut throat;
she was becalmed!

But there were tugs to be hired, he reminded himself. The
Drifter
could be drawn out of the bay, into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Beyond that lay the open sea, where it would probably be an easy matter to catch the wind. Once Frazier reached the coastline, there would be no hope of catching him.

Calmly Jonas left the hotel and walked toward the Skid Road.

•   •   •

Grim with pain, and sometimes only half-conscious, Griffin raced overland, to Kingston. There, he abandoned his horse and buggy and coerced the skipper of a small salmon boat to take him south, to Seattle.

The cost of his passage was high, and he didn't know which smelled worse—the residue of thousands of fish or the skipper himself.

None of it mattered. Griffin stood at a railing near the bow, willing the pain into submission, feeling infinite gratitude for the laboring chortles of the craft's steam engine.

It was dark when the salmon boat groaned into Elliott Bay, but light from the kerosene street lamps along Front Street lay in golden splotches on the water. Peering into the gloom, Griffin thought he made out the sleek, familiar form of the
Merrimaker
, a craft in which he owned a major share.

“Please,” he said, in a half-whisper, addressing himself to whatever superior forces might be listening. Then, as the salmon boat pulled alongside a wharf, Griffin bid the skipper a grim good-bye and vaulted over the side onto the shifting, creaking dock.

As his feet made contact with the hard surface of the wharf,
jarring pain shot through his testicles and exploded in his rib cage. Griffin staggered, caught himself, and started toward the shoreline.

Behind him, the salmon boat was already retreating back into the bay.

To keep his mind off the searing pain, Griffin concentrated on the click of his boot heels, the sound of the tide slapping at the pilings beneath the wharf, the familiar scents of pitch and sawdust and kerosene.

Reaching the wooden walk that edged the wharfs, Griffin turned toward the lights and spirited debauchery of the Skid Road. The shrill laughter of a prostitute echoed over the dark water and the puddles of liquid light.

He thought of the soft, warm way Rachel laughed and walked faster.

•   •   •

The Chinese woman was trying to feed her again; Rachel could feel the spoon prodding at her mouth. She wanted so to sleep!

A man spoke sharply, in a rapid dialect, and Rachel opened her eyes just as he lifted her head from the pillow. At the sight of his face, her mouth fell open, and the woman shrewdly grasped the opportunity to thrust the spoon in.

Rachel nearly choked on the broth, then muttered, “Chang?”

The Tent Town cook did not look at her; instead, he scolded the woman sitting on the other side of Rachel's cot. The poor creature trembled visibly, lowered her eyes, and then padded away, disappearing through a curtain of clattering beads.

Chang sighed, and his eyes were fixed on some point just above Rachel's head. “Missy in bad trouble,” he said.

Even though Rachel was gaining strength moment by moment, she was still very weak. “Chang, you must help me. If you'll just find Mr. Wilkes—”

Chang's thin face hardened. “Not find Wilkes!” he spat. “He tell Chang go, not come back!”

Tears of hopelessness gathered in Rachel's eyes. “It was my fault that you lost your job, wasn't it? It was because you and I had that argument in the dining tent.”

The Chinaman seemed surprised by her words, but he made no response.

Rachel groped for his arm, found it. “Oh, Chang, I beg
you—don't let Captain Frazier sell me—please. I'll be a stranger and a slave!”

Chang shrugged, but there was a glimmer of sadness in his eyes, a sadness that said he understood what it was to be a stranger and a slave all too well. “If Chang tell, Captain beat—maybe kill.”

“No! Mr. Wilkes will protect you—and your wife! I know he will!”

The Chinaman deliberated. After a torturously long time, he asked, “Missy is Wilkes's woman?”

A lump gathered in Rachel's throat, but it did not block the desperate lie. “Yes.”

Again Chang thought. He was still thinking when Rachel slipped back into the dark velvet folds of sleep.

•   •   •

At the base of the Skid Road, Griffin paused. Jonas was here somewhere, he was certain of that. But where? It would take all night to search every saloon, and Griffin didn't have a night to spare.

He took a cheroot and a wooden match from the inside pocket of his coat, struck the match on the sole of his right boot, and drew deeply of the smoke.

A prostitute sidled past, looked back, and paused. “Hello, Handsome,” she drawled, her face in shadows. “You look sorta lonely.”

Griffin was careful not to let the light of the street lamp reveal his battered face; it wouldn't do to scare the poor girl away before he found out what he wanted to know. “I'm here on business,” he said, in a toneless voice.

“Well, so am I!” giggled the girl. “What can Chloe do for you, Sugar?”

Griffin pried a bill from his trouser pocket and, without bothering to look at it, held it out. “I've got some questions for you, Chloe. But tonight anyway, that's all.”

The faceless Chloe snatched the bill from his fingers. “Chloe does like easy money, Handsome. Ask away.”

“Do you know if the
China Drifter
is still in port?”

Again, Chloe giggled. It was a grating, affected sound, underlaid with a singular sort of misery. “She's right on the bay, Honey. I'll hate to see her sail, too; there's some big spenders on that crew.”

“I imagine there are,” Griffin remarked evenly. “I have another question; do you know a man named Jonas Wilkes?”

“Land sakes, Sweetness, everybody on the Road knows Jonas Wilkes.”

“Have you seen him tonight?”

“He's in the Shanghai, buying whiskey for any swabbie who'll sit down and talk.”

“Thanks,” Griffin said, as he turned and walked away, toward the Shanghai Card Palace and Saloon.

Chloe's voice rang, petulant, through the night. “Hey, Sweetness, no need to rush away—”

“Another time,” Griffin called back, over his shoulder.

Five minutes later, he found Jonas just where Chloe said he would—trying to get what looked like a whole damned navy roaring drunk.

At the sight of Griffin, he shot to his feet. There was a gruesome strain in his face, in the set of his shoulders, in the nervous gestures of his hands. “It's about time you got here!” he shouted.

Griffin sighed. “Where can we talk?”

Jonas dropped a sizable bill on the saloon table and left his newfound friends to drink on in prosperity. “Outside. Shit, you look bad.”

Griffin grinned venomously. “Yeah. I got run over by a train.”

With elaborate good manners, Jonas held open one swinging door to let Griffin pass. “Damn shame, Griff. You're normally so good-looking—or at least presentable.”

Griffin pushed open the other door, and held it stubbornly. “After you, Jonas. I'm superstitious.”

“Superstitious?” frowned Jonas.

Griffin nodded. “It's usually bad luck to turn my back on you.”

Jonas's laugh was raw and guttural. “So it is,” he said. “So it is.” And then he walked out of the saloon into the starry warmth of the night, his back to his cousin.

They walked along the waterfront, neither one speaking until the Skid Road was far behind them.

“He's got her, Griffin,” Jonas said finally, in a voice that held an eerie, plaintive note. “Frazier has Rachel.”

Griffin was amazed at the calmness he felt. Even the ceaseless pain in his rib cage and groin was easing, as though he had somehow shifted it to another level of his mind, to deal with later.

“Did you go to the police?”

Jonas was leaning against a wooden railing now, glaring out at the ghostly shadows of ships anchored in the bay. “Of course I did,” he snapped.

“And?”

“And they boarded the
Drifter
. Rachel wasn't there.”

Griffin muttered a curse. “Jonas, are you sure Frazier has her? How do you know she didn't leave on her own?”

There was a stiff silence before Jonas explained. When he did, it was all Griffin could do to keep from closing his hands around his throat and squeezing the life out of him. “I came to town to find Rachel. She was staying at a boardinghouse on Cedar, and who do you think she introduces me to? Her fellow tenant—Captain Frazier. I knew what he had in mind right away, and when I offered him a price, he took it. Like an idiot, I kept Rachel in my hotel room all night—I should have known what would happen.”

Griffin's mouth was dry, and the muscles in his hands ached with restraint. “What happened?”

“I didn't make love to her, if that's what you're asking. But in the morning, while I was paying Frazier, his men broke into my room and took her. God, Griffin, if only I'd taken her back to Providence—”

“Well, you didn't.”

In a spasm of furious despair, Jonas clenched his fists and
slammed them down, hard, on the wooden railing separating the walkway from the bay. “Griffin—that isn't all.”

Griffin sighed, bracing himself. “Oh, good.”

“S-She's sick. I guess it was the rain—or everything she's been through—I don't know. I found a doctor and he said she had pleurisy. Like I said, when I got back, she was gone.”

“You left her alone?” The words were only whispered.

Jonas shook his head. “Of course not. I found a woman to stay with her while I was gone. To say the least, Frazier's thugs didn't have any trouble at all getting past her. Griffin, what are we going to do?”

Griffin took a few moments to sort his tangled thoughts and feelings. It all distilled down to one grim fact: if they didn't find Rachel before Frazier made his move, whatever it was, her life wouldn't be worth living even if she did survive the pleurisy.

“Get some men together, Jonas, and make sure nobody gets on or off the
Drifter
without your knowing it. If none of your—people—are around, I think I can persuade the crew of the
Merrimaker
to help.”

“What about you?”

“I'm going to find out where Frazier hides his women. If she's not on board the
Drifter
, she's got to be somewhere nearby. My guess is that he'll make a run for the Pacific just before dawn.”

Grimly, Jonas nodded. “He's smart, Griffin. He must know we'll be watching the
Drifter
.”

“He does.”

“Do you think he might be planning to use another ship? He could sail while we were standing around watching the
Drifter
.”

Griffin shook his head. “He's a rogue, Jonas. I can't think of another captain who would be willing to drink with him, let alone cooperate in a scheme like this one. All the same, keep an eye out for anything that even looks out of line.”

The two men parted then, Jonas remaining where he was, within sight of the spectral
China Drifter,
Griffin moving rapidly back toward the Skid Road.

It took more than an hour to find the captain of the
Merrimaker
, but Griffin managed it.

Standing outside a seedy crib behind the Widowmaker Saloon, he rasped, “Lindsay—get out here!”

There was a shuffling of hastily gathered clothing. “Who the hell is that?” demanded Malachi Lindsay, captain of the clipper ship,
Merrimaker.

“It's Griffin. Will you get your ass out here?”