Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (34 page)

“Untrue.”

“You’re naive if you think it
isn’t true.” He motioned to Luke. “Because of you, he got stabbed in the chest
during a fight with
one man
.” Parker
ignored her sound of angry protest. “Don’t try to convince me you weren’t to
blame. He’s been my partner for years, and I’ve never once seen a lone man get
a jump on him. You’re a distraction we can’t afford. You’re not going.”

Parker turned to Luke. “You
shouldn’t be going, either. You won’t be able to do what needs to be done. Our
orders were clear—we’re supposed to keep her out of Confederate hands,
not deliver her to them with a pretty bow.”

Something inside Jessie
snapped like a brittle twig. “You know what? You don’t get to tell me what to
do.” She pointed at Luke. “And neither do you.”

“No?” Parker demanded. “He’s
your husband, isn’t he? Didn’t you promise to obey him?”

“I didn’t promise much of
anything, and neither did he. It wasn’t that kind of wedding.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a
wedding at all.”

“I don’t expect a white man
to understand, but I wager my Shoshone brothers would,” Jessie snapped back.

The muscles in Parker’s jaw
worked as he ground his teeth together.

“Enough, Jess,” Luke said. “Solo’s
right. I’m compromised as long as you’re with me, and this whole idea is in
direct violation of the orders I was given when I took this assignment.” He
rubbed the scar on his forehead as if it hurt. “I can get your father out, but
I’ll go in alone.”

“And you’ll
die
.” She picked up a photograph and
waved it at him. “You’re obviously an enemy, but I’m not. If you’re with me,
you might not be considered one, either.”

Luke opened his mouth to
respond, but Whitfield interrupted. “She has a point.”

“Thank you,” Jessie said.

“No decisions have been made
yet.” Jameson’s voice carried a whisper of warning. He unfolded his arms and
rested his hand on the ivory handle of his pistol. “And Whitfield is right, she’s
got a point. We’d use a man in this same situation.”

“But she’s not a man, is she?
No, she’s the
wife
of the man who
proposes to lead us in, the daughter of the man we’re going in after. Too
dangerous.”

Luke gestured to Parker with
his chin. “As much as I dislike what Solo here has to say, he’s right. Jessie,
you must stay here.”

“No. If, Heaven forbid, my
father’s dead, I know what he was working on. I’ll get the papers for you.”

“Write down what the
information, and give it to Whitfield,” Luke said.

“And you think
he
will know what to look for?” Jessie
asked.

“He’s our resident scientist.”

Jessie’s gaze shifted from
Whitfield to Luke and back again. “So much for not being much of a reader.”

Whitfield grinned and made a
vague gesture with his shoulders. “As I recall, you said the same thing, but I
hear you build a mean revolving shotgun.” He turned to Parker. “She can get us
closer to the target. If we aren’t forced to fight the natives, we’ll be better
equipped to deal with the Confederates when we come across them.”

“Our orders were to keep her
away from the Rebs,” Parker repeated. “Besides, from what the Pinkerton fellow
said, no one even knows precisely what this invention is.”

“Trust me, you don’t want
them to have this invention,” Jessie said.

It wasn’t a bluff, not
entirely. In those years after Gideon died and Luke had stopped writing, Pop
had retreated into his own world. When she’d told Luke her father hadn’t talked
to her about his invention, she’d told the truth—Pop barely spoke about
much of anything of any consequence. In those early months after Gideon’s
death, every time Jessie would speak, her father’s features would tighten, and
he’d go down to his study and stay there for hours. He threw himself into his
inventions, obsessed with the idea of creating something that would end the
war. Not weapons—he didn’t believe in weapons, and certainly not after
Gideon died. But just because he didn’t describe his project as a weapon didn’t
mean it couldn’t be used that way.

After all, the blue silver
alloy allowing airships to fly also made explosive shells capable of hitting a
town over a hundred miles away—farther if the land was flat. What began
as an invention to help the human race by making travel and shipping easier and
more affordable became the most effective weapon the Confederacy possessed.

The development that had
brought so much good to the world was also one of the reasons why Jessie’s
brother was buried in some anonymous grave in West Virginia. The idea had
destroyed her father, and he became obsessed with the idea of rendering such
technology useless.

Jessie knew, because the only
time her father even interacted with her at all was when he allowed her to help
him with his work. Only down there, entombed in his study, did he permit her to
glimpse his world.

He had never came into Jessie’s,
and she never asked him to.

She rubbed at the pain in her
chest. The past was past. What mattered now was getting him back.

Luke took her hand. “You don’t
know what the invention is, do you? You told me you didn’t.”

“I also told you I wouldn’t
tell you if I did.” Jessie toyed nervously her grandfather’s talisman, hanging
around her neck.

Luke shook his head, just
once, and set his jaw. “So you do know?”

“Yeah, but remember, he didn’t
consider it a weapon,” Jessie answered. The knot in her throat grew and
expanded until her voice sounded strangled, even to her own ears. “Pop didn’t
like weapons. He thought of it as a tool.”

Parker snorted. “The Rebs don’t
need a tool, and neither do we. It’s great if it’s helpful and all, but tools
don’t win wars.”

“This would,” she answered
quietly. “Just because my father refused to think of it as a weapon doesn’t
mean it isn’t one.”

Parker scoffed.

Luke worried his lower lip
and watched her, his body still and quiet, like a cat preparing to pounce.

“What is it, Jess?” he asked
finally.

Jessie shifted her weight
uncomfortably and looked out the window past his head, unable to meet his eyes.
“As the developer of the blue silver, Pop understood the chemical reactions in
the formulas better than anyone. There wasn’t anything he didn’t know about it.”

“Yeah,” Luke said.

“So… he was working on a
device that would disrupt the flow of energy over the blue silver. Set it off,
and
poof
. No more energy.” Jessie
made a slow, exploding motion with her fingers.

Her words hung heavy in the
air as everyone processed this information.

“Shit,” Elizabeth said in her
cultured British accent.

“If the Confederacy has this…”
Jameson turned to his wife. His features tightened, and he cut himself off as
if unable to finish the thought.

“Yeah,” Jessie said grimly. “Your
airships will fall from the sky.”

“Jesus Christ.” Luke pulled
his hand over his mouth, and his jaw locked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I’m
sorry
, she mouthed.

When he finally brought
himself to look at Jessie, her eyes were bright with tears, and Luke had to
look away.

“At first, I wanted to talk
to Hiram and figure out what was going on. After that, there never seemed to be
the time.” Her words were fast and desperate.

Luke shook his head and
closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at her, didn’t want to listen to her. She had
the time to tell him. She simply hadn’t.

“You said something about
papers earlier,” Whitfield said.

Jessie didn’t move toward
him, like he expected her to.

“Yeah.” Her tone was bleak. “When
I looked for my father’s notes on his invention, they were gone. I—”

The anger Luke held in check
erupted from his chest. “Goddammit, Jessie! What else haven’t you—”

His words were drowned out by
a chorus of shouts.

“So the Confederates
have—”

“I told you this was a bad
idea!”

“Silence!” Elizabeth shouted,
slamming her hands palms down on the table. Everyone turned to her in surprise.
“That’s better. Go on, Jessie.”

She shook her head weakly. “That’s
all. The papers are gone. If the Rebels didn’t have them before, they do now. I
suspect Hiram is the one who stole them in the first place.” She stared at her
hands.

He rubbed his face and gave
her a small, disappointed shake of her head. There was so much she’d failed to
tell him. He turned from her and walked toward the bank of windows, studying
the mountains in the distance.

There
is so much you’ve failed to tell her, too
, a voice in his head whispered.

He’d become accustomed to the
secrets and the lies. No one told the truth anymore. Why had he expected so
much more from her than he expected from himself and everyone else?

Because
she’s so much better than we are. Because I want her to trust me like she once
did.

“The papers were gone when we
got there, Luke,” Jessie pressed, as if to him alone. “The Rebs either didn’t
have them or the notes weren’t adequate, because they blew up the door. Why
break in if you’ve got everything you need?”

Luke clasped his hands behind
his back and didn’t answer.

“Is there anything else?”
Jameson finally asked.

“No. That’s everything.” She
paused for a moment, and her voice shook. “Please believe me, Luke.”

“There’s not much she can do
about it now,” Elizabeth said, and Luke got the sense her words were meant for
him. “She’s told her story, and I think it’s adequate. We couldn’t have acted
any sooner than today, anyway.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about
the papers?” Parker’s question was like a knife in Luke’s chest.

“You mean, when you were
threatening to shoot me in the back? Should I have told you then?” Jessie
snapped.

“No, I mean when you were
with Luke.”

She was quiet for a long
time. “That’s between me and Luke.”

“Whose side are you on? Seems
to me you’re not on ours.” Parker voice was low pitched and dangerous. “Probably
not on his, either.”

“That’s enough,” Luke said,
turning. Parker had no business questioning Jessie in such a fashion. Jessie
was
his
. “It’s not her fault, Solo.
It’s mine.” He turned to Jameson. “We need to get George White out. If he
really can build something like this, we can’t allow it to slip away. The Rebs
will eventually find some way to convince him he needs to comply.”

“You mean torture?” Jessie
gasped.

Luke couldn’t bring himself
to answer.

“True.” Jameson ignored
Jessie’s question, and Luke forced himself to relax. As long as Jameson didn’t
see her as a threat to this mission, she’d be safe. “I agree with you, Luke. We
need to get him out.”

“But it shouldn’t be
us
,” Parker said, shaking his head. “It
sure as hell shouldn’t be
her
.”

“He’s
my
father,” Jessie said.

“That’s my point. You’re too
close.” Parker’s eyes met Luke’s. “So is he. Send another team.”

“Where are we gonna get
another team on such short notice?” Whitfield asked. “Where are they going to
get an operative who speaks Shoshone? Relations with the native tribes are
barely a step above hostile. John Singing Death’s granddaughter being in our
party will certainly help. We couldn’t do better if we had a member of that
particular tribe helping us. Any other team would take her.”

“Another team doesn’t have
Luke,” Parker argued. “He’ll take unnecessary risks to protect her. The mission
won’t be the most important thing on this job.
She
will be.”

“We don’t have weeks to
assemble another team,” Whitfield said. “Time is short, Mordecai. If they find
out we’ve located him, they’ll move him and we’ll lose him.”

Please
no. Please. She can’t come. I can’t have her with me if I’m forced to do what
needs to be done.

“You must to choose,”
Whitfield said to Jameson, and his British accent seemed more pronounced. “Solo
and I will never reach an accord.”

Parker shook his head and frowned.
He understood Luke better than anyone else on the team ever had. Only one other
person had ever had his back the way Solo did.

Luke looked at Jessie.

“Bradshaw doesn’t want her to
come either,” Parker pointed out. “Two against one. The problem is solved.”

“I’m team leader and this is
my decision.” Jameson put his hands on the dark wood table and picked up the
artist’s drawing of the landscape. He studied the picture for a long time. “I
wouldn’t be able to talk you out of going, would I?” he asked Luke.