Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (37 page)

His voice was so calm and
reasonable, she almost believed him. If not for Luke, she may have fallen prey
to the pretty story he concocted. After all, her father had often become so
engrossed in his projects he’d forget to eat. When he became lost in an idea,
he lost track of everything else.

Not only that, but she
already had recognized the danger in Jameson, in Parker. Of course he’d done
some of the things Fontaine accused him of, if not all of them. But Luke
trusted him with his life and hers, and she would do no less.

She squared her shoulders. “You
killed Hiram.”

A predatory smile spread
across Fontaine’s features. Something shifted behind his eyes. “I thought you
may have been close by. You have no idea how put out I was to discover Andersen’s
little Paiute and Jessica White were one and the same.” He moved to put his
hand on her shoulder.

Jessie jerked away.

He dropped his hand. “I’m not
a bad man. Why not come with me and join your father? He misses you terribly. I
can’t imagine how much you must have suffered thinking he was dead.”

“No.”

“This can’t be about
Andersen, can it?” Fontaine’s eyes narrowed briefly before he smoothed his
features. “He was an evil man. He kidnapped your father and stole from both of
you. He was a war profiteer and a murderer. If anyone killed your brother, it
would be Andersen and men like him. The war continues because of men like him.
It’s time to end it.”

He stepped forward and
crowded her body with his. “Don’t you think it’s time for the war to end? Come
with me, Miss White.”

Jessie watched him in the dim
glow of the lantern as the light flickered and played across his features. She’d
said much the same words to Luke and his team not two hours before.

“I’m not like the men you
were with. Those men are dangerous, and would kill you before letting you go.
But me, I’m under orders to keep you alive. The Confederate States of America
seeks only to protect you. I would do nothing to hurt you.”

Jessie’s eyes widened in
surprise.

“Oh, they didn’t tell you?
They’ve been lying to you this entire time. They’re not out to save you. They’re
only interested in themselves. Come with me and I will make sure you’re safe.”

If not for Luke, and for the
sacrifice Jameson had just made, Jessie would have believed him. Only she
already knew what the team’s orders were. It didn’t matter how reasonable
Fontaine’s arguments were. After living with war for most of her life, the time
had come for her to choose a side.

No longer would she pretend
neutrality in a war that had stolen so much from her.

“No.”

She chose Jameson, Whitfield,
and Elizabeth. Even Parker. She chose Gideon.

She chose Luke.

Fontaine’s mouth tightened. “If
that’s how you want to play this, Miss White.” His drawl lost all its warmth,
and he stepped back out the door. “This could be a pleasant experience. I’d
rather have you come willingly than have to force you.”

“It is easier that way,” she
agreed. She squared her shoulders and willed her spine to harden.

Fontaine’s brows knit, and a
line formed between them. Stepping forward again, he reached out to touch her
hair.

Disgust tightened her throat,
and Jessie fought to keep her eyes open. She back up even further and attempted
to smooth her expression.

A sneer briefly flashed
across his face. “I’m glad we understand one another.”

With those parting words, he
slammed the door and locked her in. She hoped he planned to keep her locked up
long enough for Luke to come get her, but her Confederate captor had other
plans. Less than a few minutes after he’d left, Jessie smelled smoke.

No
.

Her mother had died in a
fire. Like she had told Luke, she would rather be shot than go through that,
and she knew he understood—he’d never let her go out that way. He knew
how Jessie had been tormented by the thought of her mother screaming as she
burned.

“Get me out!” she screamed,
pulling desperately on the door. “Get me out!”

Fontaine flung open the door,
grabbed a blanket and yanked her out into the restaurant. She looked into the
saloon and immediately wished she hadn’t.

The dining room was littered
with bodies, including several women. Fire engulfed the wall behind the bar,
and hungry flames licked at the floorboards and some of the corpses. No longer
able to control her stomach, Jessie doubled over and retched.

Fontaine grabbed her by the
arm and dragged her after him. He shoved her against the wall and lit a fuse on
a cylindrical object—some sort of explosive, she guessed. She focused on
that rather than the grisly image in the saloon, though she’d never forget what
she’d seen. Those images would haunt her for the rest of her life.

He smiled, and Jessie would
have been blind if she’d missed the malice in it. “Thermite grenade.” He
motioned to the bodies on the floor.

She didn’t follow his
gesture—she kept her eyes firmly locked on his face.

“See, Miss White? If I wanted
you dead, you would be. I don’t want you dead. I want you compliant.”

He casually tossed the
grenade into the saloon, pulled her into his arms, and held a cloth over her
face.

She fought against the
strength of his arms as the world began to dim.

Jerking the door open, he
shoved her through it. “Fire!”

Windows exploded and the
world went dark.

* * * *

 
She lurched on a sea of darkness, her
head throbbing. It was so dark, she could see nothing, and no sound reached her
ears. Dizzy and nauseous, she stretched along the floor of her dark prison, and
found herself alone.

Suddenly, the movement
ceased, and moments later, light scorched her eyes as someone opened the door
and bright light flooded in to burn away the darkness. She blinked rapidly, her
eyes watering. Fontaine reached in, grabbed Jessie’s arm, and hauled her out
onto pavement.

He dragged her after him, and
within seconds, another man had a hold on her other arm. She blinked again and
realized precisely where she was.

The airship station.

“No!” Jessie screamed.
Twisting against their arms, first to the left and then to the right, she
writhed like a fish in a net.

With his free hand, Fontaine
backhanded her across the face, and her scream died.

“That’s better,” he grumbled.

He and his companion dragged
her up the steps to the platform and threw her into the belly of an airship,
climbed in and shut the door. Fontaine shoved her against his compatriot. “You
stay here and watch her. Tie her up if you have to. But she goes nowhere. Do
you hear me? Nowhere.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to Jessie. “You can’t
get out of here, so don’t get any bright ideas. Just because I don’t want you
dead doesn’t mean I won’t make this unpleasant.”

The engines whirred faintly
as the blue silver sparked to life and the airship pulled free of the gravity
holding it to Earth. Fontaine scowled at his companion and marched off in the
direction of the bridge.

“Sit,” the man said.

Jessie squared her shoulders
and disobeyed.

“You speak English?” he said
loudly. “Sit.” When she did nothing, he shoved her and yelled, “Sit!”

He put his hands on his hips
and glared at her, and in so doing, revealed both a silver gripped pistol and a
long bowie knife. But the pistol was wrong on his hip, and it took her a second
to realize it was canted in the wrong direction—designed to be pulled
forward from the holster. Fontaine’s compatriot was a left-handed man wearing
his pistol on his right hip.

Fool. Everyone knew better
than to try to cross draw or wear a gun like that.

This man wasn’t the man
Fontaine was. He was nothing more than a tool, a lackey, probably no better
equipped to fight than a porter in a hotel, and maybe less so.

So she held her ground, and
waited for him to come at her. She didn’t have long to wait.

“Sit!” He stepped forward to
push her back.

Instead of reeling from him,
Jessie stepped into him. He shoved her hard, and it hurt like hell when she
crashed into the wall and bounced back off. She came away with his gun.

They both froze.

Taking a step backward,
Jessie raised the pistol and cocked it. “Don’t even think it,” she hissed
through clenched teeth. “You’ll be the third man I’ve killed in less than two
weeks. Don’t think for even a second I won’t do it.” She didn’t want to have to
resort to that, but would if she had to.

The man stepped back and put
his hands in the air.

Relief flooded through her,
and she tried to think of Elizabeth’s jovial calm. “Good. Now why don’t you be
a good lad and show me how to get off this boat.”

Her words sounded odd even to
her.

But her new hostage didn’t
seem to notice. He led her down a narrow, winding staircase and deep into the
bowels of the ship. Down here, Jessie heard the whir of the propellers, but not
the roar of the engines firing.

From what she knew of
airships, the engines should be loud. But many cities—most, in
fact—had ordinances forbidding the use of steam engines during take off
and landing, and for a certain number of miles in and around the city. So
instead of using the engines, the necessary electricity within city limits was
generated via battery packets. Four of them, housed in different locations on
the ship.

The lack of noise meant this
ship still operated on battery power. If she disabled one of the battery banks,
it would cause a drop in the strength of the electrical current, and the
airship would stop climbing at worst, and, at best, would gradually descend.

No fiery crashes, nothing
dramatic. A gradual descent as one section lost power, giving the captain
plenty of time to fire the engines and regain altitude.

It wasn’t the best plan—hell,
it wasn’t even a
good
plan—but
it would have to do. She didn’t have anything else, and she was getting off
this beast.

Her hostage pointed to the
cargo doors and to a two different baskets. One was metal, coated in blue
silver, and large enough to carry several heavy pallets and several men on
horseback. The other was simpler, designed only to drop maybe a few men
standing, or a single pallet, and was nothing more than a simple wooden basket,
secured by a rope as thick as Jessie’s arm.

“There’s your exit, but we’re
too high up now.”

He was probably right. Even
now, Jessie fought the sensation of vertigo as the airship continued the climb.
They’d been in the air for a few minutes—it didn’t take long for a
dirigible to climb to great heights.

“Where’s the switch for the
battery bank?”

“No way I’m telling you that.”

She shoved the gun into his
back, at the base of his ribcage. Hard.

He grunted in surprise.

“Tell me, or you can die and
I’ll find it anyway. I don’t want to die. We’re not going to crash.”

He paused for a moment too
long.

She jabbed the gun in even
more. “Tell me.”

He pointed to a black box
mounted to the wall next to a steel door. “Over there,” he said miserably. “Listen
lady, I have a family…”

“Be a good boy and I’ll let
you live,” Jessie told him. “Kneel.”

“This is just a job. I don’t
care what you do. Please don’t kill me.”

Fear and tears caused his
voice to waver, and she felt sorry for him. She understood what it was to be
afraid like that. “Kneel,” she said softly.

He slowly went to his knees,
broken sobs escaping.

She took one last look at the
back of her would-be captor’s head and hit him with the butt of the pistol. He
collapsed onto the floor in a heap.

Opening the cargo bay doors,
she positioned the heavy basket so it dangled over the empty air, carefully
avoiding looking down. She wasn’t going to think about what her return trip to
Earth would entail. She simply needed to convince herself everything would work
out fine.

Once Jessie had positioned
the basket, she moved to the lockbox containing the switch to turn on and off
the batteries housed behind the steel doors. It was locked, as she suspected it
would be. With the butt of the pistol, she smashed the lock until the thing
broke. Opening the box, she yanked down the lever to shut the batteries off.

The airship slowed
precipitously and did an unexpected lurch. Jessie’s stomach lurched right along
with it.

She sat on the floor of the
cargo bay and dangled her feet into the basket. Tried to keep her eyes on the
basket, not allowing herself to look at the ground beneath it. Leaning back,
she pulled the lever to release the basket and hurtled into empty space.