Patricia Potter (47 page)

Sarah opened her hand and stared at the coins.
“Thirty pieces of silver, and Judas betrayed his Lord.”
The dead Mr. Hitchcock’s voice came clearly over and over again. She threw the coins down as if they burned her hand.

Thirty pieces of silver.
She stared at the gold mixing with the dust of the road. What had she done?

He deserved it, she told herself. He had let her think…Cam was a thief. He should be punished. As she should be punished for her wickedness.

Thirty pieces of silver.

The words echoed in her mind, and she started running to escape them.
“You’re a good girl, Sarah.”
She was. She had been. And she would be again.

Thirty pieces of silver.
“No,” she screamed, running even harder, never seeing the carriage coming down the street. She stumbled and fell, hearing noise all around her. There was thunder in her ears, then scarlet all around, like flames from hell. And finally blackness.

The
Lucky Lady
was safely at the wharf. Quinn slowly released his breath; the timing couldn’t have been better. Usually the boat remained overnight because there was much activity here, and he could see the feverish bustling as barrels and crates were transferred from boat to land. Meredith and Lissa could board early in the morning, before many others were astir.

He strode easily up the gangplank and found Jamison. The Scot looked up at him dourly. “Thought you might be dead. You’ve been gone long enough.”

Quinn smiled and shrugged. “It was Christmas, Mr. Jamison.”

“Since when did you care for that nonsense?”

“I’m trying to change my ways.”

Jamison raised a dubious eyebrow.

Quinn ignored it. “Do you have a stateroom available?”

“Aye.”

“Miss Seaton will be boarding with a recently bereaved cousin.”

“The Miss Seaton who was kidnapped?”

“You heard about it?”

“Every damn soul up and down the river heard about it. Thought we got rid of river pirates a long time ago. Is the lass all right?”

Quinn closed his eyes a moment to keep from smiling. “She seems well recuperated,” he said mildly.

“Poor lass. We’ll take good care of her.”

“Good,” Quinn said, nearly choking on the word. It was one of the few times his pilot had shown human emotion, and probably it never was less needed. “Anything unusual happening?”

Jamison looked at him. “Unusual?”

“Any more questions being asked about the
Lucky Lady.”

“Not that I’ve heard,” Jamison replied with a frown. “Just the usual check. There was a runaway not far from here, and the boats were searched more thoroughly, but of course they didn’t find anything.”

Quinn looked out over the town. It was still drizzling, and the river was rough. The sky, already gray, was darkening even more, and he knew nightfall was only minutes away. He had one remaining errand: to arrange for a buggy to bring Meredith and Lissa into town in the morning. If there was a second search Lissa’s “widowhood” would protect her from much questioning. According to everything he’d heard, the authorities were searching for a white man and a mulatto woman. There should be no suspicions of two bereaved white women and a well-known local black resident.

Going to his cabin, Quinn hoped he could get everything done before he dropped from exhaustion.

He awoke to pain. Jabbing, throbbing pain that started in his arms and stretched down into his back. Sharp, tingling pain at the base of his throat.

Quinn’s sleep had been so deep, it took him several minutes to realize what had happened. By then the pain had intensified. His eyes opened slowly as his mind struggled to comprehend.

The room was dark, but his tired eyes could make out shadows. One large form had a knife against his throat; the other was binding his arms behind him. When he tried to speak, the knife pressed tighter against his throat; he felt a trickle of wetness run down it.

“No loud noises, Devereux,” a voice commanded, “or this knife goes deeper. Much deeper.”

Quinn stilled, playing for time. “What do you want?”

“The girl from the Evans plantation,” one of the voices said, and Quinn recognized it. One of the Carroll brothers.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Quinn whispered.

The knife cut a long line along Quinn’s throat, and he could feel the trickle increase to a flow. He closed his eyes. The pain didn’t bother him. God knew he had suffered much worse and survived. That was his ace. He was reputed to be a coward because he wouldn’t race, wouldn’t duel with those who called him a cheat when they lost. But he had discovered long ago that his tolerance for pain was immense; he had simply learned how to shut it out. But the Carrolls didn’t know that.

“For God’s sake, stop,” Quinn said, forcing panic in his voice.

“Where is the girl?”

“I don’t know. You have to believe me.”

“Then where’s that big darky who’s always with you?”

“He better damn well be working,” Quinn said.

“He ain’t on the boat.”

Alarm ran through Quinn. This had something to do with Cam, and the Carrolls obviously knew a little. But what? And how did they find it? “Is that what you want?” he said. “Take him, the worthless no-good bastard. Never been worth the money I paid for him.”

“Is that why you let him go whoring?” The question was dangerously soft, full of insinuation.

Quinn’s heart went cold. Daphne. Had something happened to Daphne?

“I don’t let him do nothing,” Quinn replied.

The knife carved into his chest. “That’s not what a pretty little black whore says. She said your man bragged you and he was with the Underground Railroad, and that he refused to pay her for services used.”

“Is that what this is all about? You damned fools. You believe a whore?” Quinn’s mind quickly ran over possibilities. It couldn’t be Daphne. Then who? And then he remembered Cam telling him about Sarah. “She was acting strangely,” he’d said. Christ. Not only he and Cam were in danger now, but Sophie as well. And Meredith, damn it. Meredith and Lissa. Thank God, he had told Cam not to board in the morning if he wasn’t on deck.

“I believe this one,” John Carroll said. “We knew there was someone running slaves on the river, and I had a feeling about you.”

“Your feeling was wrong,” Quinn protested indignantly.

“You like games, do you?” John Carroll mocked. “I don’t mind them myself.” The knife cut again and, for the Carrolls’ benefit, Quinn winced and moaned.

“I’ll have the sheriff on you,” he groaned.

“Oh, the sheriff will be here all right. He’s out looking, like everyone else, but I left a note on his door. And I want that little bird before he gets here. Do you understand, Mr. Devereux?”

“I told you I know nothing…If that black bastard was involved in anything, he did it on his own.” One of the Carrolls laughed, and once more the knife dug deeper.

Quinn took a deep breath, and faked unconsciousness.

Cam had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. And what made it worse was that he had never felt anything like this before.

He and the captain had been in dangerous situations several times, yet this dread crawling along his spine was unfamiliar. Therefore, he was of a mind to pay attention to it.

He was sitting just inside the door of the shack. He’d insisted that the two women use the cots. Cam had no intention of resting, not tonight. He wanted to stay awake, to make sure he would hear any noise. He’d prowled outside the shack several times, but there had been no sign of man or beast other than their own tired mounts.

Perhaps, he tried to tell himself, it was the waiting. He had never liked the waiting.

Cam rose again and quietly unlatched the door. Outside the sky was dark and forbidding. He was cold, very cold, and not because of the weather. He heard a noise behind him, and the door opened. A moment later Meredith stood beside him.

“Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.

He shrugged. Cam had come to admire Meredith in the past few days. She never complained, never asked for special considerations. She had endured the first day’s long ride, and the cold miseries of the following days without comment. And he liked the way she and the captain looked at each other, and touched each other. Some of that iron hardness, the remote aloneness, had faded from the captain’s eyes.

“What is it, Cam?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It’s just a feelin’.”

“You want to go to him.”

He turned around, surprised at her instinct. “The capt’n asked me to stay with you.”

“We’re safe enough here,” she said. “Quinn said he would send the buggy in the morning.”

The uneasiness in Cam deepened. “You have a gun?”

She nodded.

He hesitated.

“Go,” she said.

He finally nodded. “I should be back no later than midmorning. Ask the buggy driver to wait until then. If I don’t show up, go to Sophie’s. Wait for us there. They won’t be looking for two women.”

Meredith reluctantly assented. She wanted to go, but she had Lissa to worry about, and they really didn’t know that anything was wrong. Just the same, Cam’s restlessness scared her. From what she had seen of him, he didn’t alarm easily.

She watched him saddle one of the horses huddled under the trees. He mounted awkwardly, and looked back at her for a moment. Then he disappeared among the leaves.

C
hapter 25

WATER SPLASHED
in his face, and Quinn couldn’t help sputtering.

He wondered what time it was. Time was a commodity that was running out, he feared.

If the sheriff did appear and he was held, Marshall Evans would surely identify him despite the changes in his hair color. He was profoundly grateful that he had told Cam not to board if he did not see Quinn on deck. The three of them—Cam, Meredith, and Lissa—would be safe. Cam would ensure that.

Quinn blinked his eyes, feigning confusion. There had to be a way for him to escape! He thought of Newgate again, and Norfolk Island in Australia. Christ, he didn’t know if he could survive prison again. At least, this time no one else would get hurt. There was some satisfaction in that.

“He’s awake,” he heard one brother say, and the front of his wet shirt was bunched in a fist as he was pulled to a sitting position. Another groan escaped his throat, this one not altogether voluntary as agony arced through his back.

Quinn tried to think, tried to concentrate. Without Lissa, they had no evidence except Marshall Evans’s testimony that he had used another name, and that Lissa had disappeared the same time he did. He could make up some story that would probably soothe a divided Illinois jury if not a proslave Kentucky one.

If only he could goad or trick the Carrolls into untying him.

His eyes adjusted once more to the dark. The Carrolls were careful to keep the room black. They wanted no alarm, no rescue from Quinn’s friends. Quinn wondered again what time it was, how long before dawn.

Suddenly, out of the gloom, a fist struck his face, and pain shot across his strained back. He grunted.

“Once more,” John said pleasantly. “Where’s the gal? She’s all we want. Perhaps we can even make a deal. If you’re carrying fugitives for money, you can continue to pick them up, and we can collect them from you and split the rewards.” Quinn could imagine the man’s eyes narrow speculatively. “Is that why you’re doing it? The money? If so, we can all make a fortune before anyone’s the wiser.”

Quinn let his head fall. “I tell you I don’t know anything about a girl.”

John shook his head sadly. “Now why don’t I believe you?”

Quinn tried a sneer. “You think any goddamned fugitive slaves have a penny? You think I’d risk my neck without so much as a coin? You think I would risk it, even with gold?”

“Now that is a puzzle,” John replied. “I’ve been trying to figure that one out. I heard you won’t fight. Won’t even race the
Lucky Lady.
So why don’t you tell us, or mebbe I should try the knife again.”

Quinn watched the curve of steel in the air and drew back as much as John Carroll’s hold on him allowed. He couldn’t help flinching. He could smell his own blood now and feel the rivulets still running from previous cuts. His skin stung in a dozen places, but the knife cuts weren’t nearly as painful as the whip lashes had been.

He blocked out the present and thought about that whip now, slicing through open skin and tearing muscles. He saw Terrence suffer another hundred strokes for the third straight morning, his back already infected. That was the day Terrence died. As he had been dragged to the post because he could no longer walk, he’d turned to Quinn and whispered the words that had gotten them both through seven years.
Don’t ever let the bloody bastards get ye down.
How readily the words came back, and the image of Terrence O’Connell with that devil-be-damned smile, although that day it was only a ghost. Yet it had been there to the end. Even as he lay dying, he had mocked the guards with it. Terrence had been a true ironman. And he, too, would be.