The Only Gold (43 page)

“No promises,” Reid said quietly. “I’ll do what I can.” He passed Liam’s flask to Gil. “Let him have what’s left in it.”

Barton’s footfall had faded on the stairs. If no one pursued him, the deposit was lost. Halfway to the landing when Reid called his name, Jonah couldn’t wait. He took the stairs with a haste that nearly sent him tumbling down and, reaching the lobby, knew Barton had not made an escape by the front entrance. That left only the side door with its blockade of electrical wires.

Jonah found that door ajar, the alleyway deserted. Forced to hands and knees by the dangling wires, he crawled through the snow until he could safely stand and run; it was no easy prospect when he reached William Street. Each step sank him to his knees, the wind at his back adding to his struggle. A few heavily bundled-up souls made equally slow progress from warm shelter to the bitter out-of-doors, but Jonah did not see Barton. Fearful he’d already lost the man, Jonah gasped aloud at the sight of the lanky form scuttling northward through smaller drifts on the east side of William.

As Barton rounded the corner and fled down Pine, Jonah remembered his mention of a boat. He couldn’t let Barton reach the river. But despite a determined pace, he could do no more than keep the man in sight. The storm had ripped down awnings, lamps, and signs all along the street—and what it hadn’t ripped down, it had overturned and torn apart. Picking his way past a six-foot drift, Jonah stumbled over a wagon wheel beneath a thick layer of snow. Not wanting to consider what else might be buried, he recovered his feet and sought the shallowest path to the street corner.

The wind hit fiercely at each cross street, forcing him to cling to lamp posts and abandoned wagons to stay on his feet. Shops gave way to warehouses, and when Pine suddenly opened upon the wide vista of South Street and the river, something other than Barton stole Jonah’s attention and his breath at once. The great bridge above, though iron-girded and resilient in the face of furious winds, apparently shut down to traffic—while below, a vast bridge of ice spanned the distance from Manhattan to Brooklyn, an invitation that impatient souls waiting at the gateways had decided to take up. In growing numbers, they were descending the Brooklyn piers, and Jonah looked on in dismay, wondering if the frozen bridge would hold. If it didn’t, rescue would be long in coming, with the ferries ice-bound at the docks.

Trapped as well were the ships in their slips, their fishing nets weighted with ice and twisting in the wind. Barton passed them by, fleeing to the fish market pier with the clear intention of testing the makeshift bridge, himself. From beneath the pier came a peculiar grinding, and Jonah realized the ice was not as motionless as it seemed. The river moving beneath it brought pressure to bear, and cracks along the edge of the floe were widening.

At the pier’s end, enterprising fishermen had propped ladders and were gathering coin from anyone wanting to make the journey across. Barton pushed through the crowd, silencing objections with a show of his gun, and used it as expediently to obtain a free descent. As Jonah approached, the young fisherman was still cursing Barton. He took in Jonah with a scowl. “Five cents,” he said emphatically.

Without a penny to his name, Jonah resorted to the truth. “That fellow you just let down, the one with the gun. You’ve got to let me go after him. He’s robbed me.” Before the fisherman could argue, Jonah scrambled down the ladder. Though he had seen several others take to the ice without incident, he first set one foot gingerly on it, to test its strength. A layer of snow crunched underfoot, and he proceeded with greater confidence past the pier.

Just beyond the last pile, a blast of wind nearly sent him sprawling. Sliding along under the onslaught, he tried to run, fearful Barton would reach the Brooklyn pier and commandeer a boat from there. Barely ten feet from the southernmost edge of the floe, where black water lapped the ice, he could feel waves rolling beneath. Worrisome dark cracks veined the ice underfoot, but Barton seemed oblivious to it. With a backward glance at Jonah, he raised the gun, but did not fire—no doubt afraid of alerting any nearby police. The momentary distraction was enough to lose Barton his footing, and he landed hard, the satchel skating off the floe, into the water. As he scrambled on hands and knees to fish it out, Jonah flew at him with grim speed—to crash into him as Barton stood with the dripping satchel in hand.

At the ice’s edge, they staggered, and Barton reached for his gun. Jonah hung on and tried to stop their slide, but Barton’s struggling threw him off balance. The ice vanished under his feet and water surged around him, cold, black, and blinding. His predominant fear—losing Barton—gave way to alarm that he would not break the water’s surface before either the bitter cold or lack of air sapped his strength. The water made an enormous weight of his overcoat, but his fingers were too numb to pry apart the buttons. He was forced to give up the attempt when Barton got hold of him and pushed him downward in a violent effort to swim past him toward the surface.

His heart pounding in need of air, Jonah twisted loose and surged for the glimmer of light far above. He came out of the water, dropping his head back, and convulsively filled his lungs. The air turned to ice in his chest, but he sucked in another breath and searched for the edge of the floe—discovering as he did that he’d lost his glasses.

Though the better portion of the world was a stark white blur, just ahead on the ice one particular indeterminate shape gained recognizable significance: Reid, scarf flying, coat flapping, gun in hand as he shouted for Barton to come out of the water. The very instant the command rang out, Barton flung an arm around Jonah’s shoulders, dragging him backward. A blade rose out of the water, glistening, and as Jonah recoiled, the arm around his shoulders locked around his neck. “Start swimming,” Barton rasped in his ear. “And away from him, or I’ll cut your throat.”

Jonah could not make out Reid’s expression, but fervently hoped Reid could discern his. Sucking in a breath, he went under, descending as rapidly as numb arms and legs could propel him. Barton’s surprise registered in a loosening of his grip, just enough to let Jonah slip free. Fingers clutched at Jonah’s coat collar without gaining hold, and he twisted further away. A blade scraped his hand—Barton lashing blindly for him—and Jonah swam without knowing which direction he was headed. A gunshot, muted, startled him. Surfacing, he saw other figures crowding the floe where Reid stood. He wondered if the authorities had been alerted. Barton was striking a furious path through the water in an easterly direction, and Jonah realized Reid’s shot had been a warning. He wanted to capture Barton alive.

That, Jonah knew, would not happen if Barton was not soon fished out. Already so cold, himself, that he could barely feel his limbs moving below the water, Jonah reached the edge of the floe, and the arms stretched to assist him. He looked up into Reid’s anxious face. “The deposit—”

“On its way to China.” Relief all but eclipsed the regret in his voice. “Hold on to me. I’ll get you out.”

Jonah looked around and spotted a dark shape drifting on a chunk of ice hardly much bigger. It was not impossibly far away—yet.

“Jonah, for God’s sake, leave it—”

His voice was lost in a chorus of concern from the gathered onlookers and shouts from the crowded gateway above. Jonah kept doggedly on course as the ice continued most exasperatingly to drift. Only when he caught up with it did a deeper exhaustion make itself felt. He clung to the ice, gasping in painful lungfuls of air. If he lingered another minute, he would not be able to swim back.

He pulled the satchel into the water, only confident he had hold of it because of its weight. Turning back, he looked for the shore—and sucked in another breath involuntarily. Reid and the rest were small waving figures on a sea of white, much too far away to reach.

Fear pumped new strength into Jonah’s sluggish veins, and he swam, an effort that required conscious direction of every joint and muscle. His lungs seemed to be contracting from the cold, and he could draw only the smallest breaths, each a rough sound to his clogged ears. But he could make out Reid still kneeling on the ice, waiting for him—poised, it seemed, to plunge in at the least sign Jonah hadn’t the strength to reach him.

Spurred the last few feet, Jonah clutched ineffectively at the outstretched hand, but Reid didn’t wait. He seized two handfuls of Jonah’s coat and pulled. Jonah tried to help, clutching at the ice with his free hand. It was slick glass under his palm. Reid sucked in a pained breath and, jaw set, pulled all the harder. With no other purchase, Jonah grabbed Reid’s coat sleeve and held on until he could get one leg onto the ice and push himself forward. Breathless, he slumped over Reid’s lap and lay unmoving, devoutly certain he would not rise again, except perhaps in spirit.

“Jo?” A warm hand brushed wet hair out of his eyes. “You won’t make it back to the bank in this. I’ll get you another coat.”

To Jonah’s regret, the hand moved away, and other hands caught hold of him, assisting in the removal of his overcoat. Believing every last atom of warmth had left him, he shuddered at the abrupt sensation of even greater cold. At his protest, Reid said something in a reassuring tone, and Jonah decided to trust that it meant he would not be cold much longer. The dry coat that enveloped him did little to warm him, but it was an improvement. Another pair of hands wrapped a woolen scarf over his head, and someone else fitted him up with gloves. Bewildered, he tried to focus, but the faces were unfamiliar—all but Reid’s. Reid smiled at him, and Jonah was warmer for that. Then he remembered. “Barton…?”

Reid turned him to look a few yards further along the ice, where Barton lay in a sodden, gasping lump while police manacled his wrists. Jonah could feel little beyond a vague relief. “The deposit?”

“I’ve got it.” Reid sounded amused, if weary. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you will let us through.”

Wanting nothing more than rest, Jonah found himself walking beside Reid. Shouts from the bridge confused him, until he realized the crowd was cheering, apparently for the two of them. It took him a further minute to notice he was wearing Reid’s coat—and longer yet to wake to the support of Reid’s arm around him, keeping him warm as well as steady on the ice. Reid bore the brunt of the wind—deliberately, Jonah knew—and talked on as though Jonah were capable of following every word. “If you can make it to William, I think we’ll have a ride to the hotel. Mr. Grandborough was arriving right as I went after you. They’ll want to talk to us, but….” Reid broke into a laugh. “It should be clear even to that son of a bitch that a full report will have to wait.”

Jonah gathered up the words as they fell and attempted in vain to make sense of them. “Son of a….” He shook his head. “Clear to whom?”

“Bennet Grandborough,” Reid said, humor fading. “He shouldn’t have done it to you, Jo. I never should’ve let him. I thought I was only upsetting the order of things for a little while. But you didn’t deserve that. I should’ve insisted Grandborough do it my way.”

Jonah tried to smile, to find his face too numb for the effort. “I only minded at first, you know.” He spotted the ladder ahead, and the scores of people still swarming down for a jaunt across the ice. “It will be ages before they let us up. I must sit—”

“Not just yet,” Reid said, turning him in another direction. “There’s ours.”

The police had raised a ladder and appeared intent on guarding it from the crowd until Jonah, with Reid at his back, climbed to the pier. Winded and shivering, Jonah gasped in sheer gratitude when Reid’s arm came back around him. “Any hope of a cab?”

“In this neighborhood?” Under the joking tone, an apologetic note ran. “We’ll have to walk. Can you make it?”

He couldn’t have, alone. The prospect seemed less daunting with Reid easing the way. Still, by the time they left Pine and turned onto William, Jonah felt as though he were plodding along on blocks of ice. The wind whistling past his ears seemed a permanent sound, and those muscles not benumbed protested every movement. More than once, a half-suppressed groan reached him and he knew Reid was having no easier time of it. When they stopped to rest, Reid seemed grateful for the chance to catch his own breath. He could not conceal his exhaustion behind a commiserating smile. Jonah saw it in his battered face, and wanting to spare him, did his damnedest to walk the last block under his own power.  

The bank stood half-buried yet, but two clerks with shovels had cleared the stairs. At the curb waited a four-horse team with a sleigh; further on, two carriages and a police wagon. Jonah imagined things were in an uproar, but he found comfort in the thought. He was prepared to answer questions, if need be—as long as he could sit and catch his breath.