Open Country (43 page)

Hank returned the stare and tried to ignore the slow tightening in his gut.

“Apparently he’s tracked her here.”

“Here?” Brady glanced out the window then back at Hank. “At the ranch?”

“Val Rosa,” Foley amended. “He’s been at the hotel for the last week.”

The clench in Hank’s gut moved into his chest. Motion caught his eye, and he looked up to see Charlie standing at the railing that overlooked the great room. He was clutching the railing with both hands, his face pale. Concerned that the boy would overhear things he shouldn’t, Hank made a shooing motion with his hand.

Charlie continued to stand there.

Rising, Hank excused himself and left the room. As he started up the stairs, Molly came out of the kitchen. He pulled her close and spoke in a low voice. “Charlie’s upstairs at the railing listening to things he shouldn’t. Would you take him to the nursery and keep him there?”

She glanced past him at the men gathered before the fireplace. “What’s happening? Who are those men?”

“I’ll explain it all to you later, Molly. I promise. But for now I need you to take Charlie out of here. Will you do that?”

She studied him for a moment, a worried crease between her brows. Then with a nod, she turned and climbed the stairs. By the time Hank returned to the couch, she was steering Charlie toward the third-floor staircase above the kitchen.

The men sat in silence until the footfalls overhead faded, then Foley turned to Hank and resumed speaking. “I was asking your brother why Fletcher would be seeking your wife, but he didn’t know. Do you?”

Hank hesitated, not sure how much he wanted to reveal to this stranger.

Foley seemed to expect a quick response. When Hank didn’t offer one, a look of impatience crossed his face. “She has no legal claim to his stepchildren, yet she took them from his care. Do you think that’s why?”

“It doesn’t matter. The children stay here.”

Foley’s impatience flared into irritation, but before he could vent it, Jones cut in. “We haven’t come about the children, Mr. Wilkins. We think your wife has something of Fletcher’s, maybe something she’s not even aware that she has, and he wants it back badly enough to send trackers after her.”

Hank thought of Scarface, and the bitter taste of rage rose in his throat. He glanced at Brady, wondering how much he should reveal.

Brady read his unspoken question and gave a half-shrug.

“There’s a man,” Hank said hesitantly, hoping he was doing the right thing. “A man with a burn scar on his face.”

“Hennessey.” Foley sat forward in his chair, his predator eyes taking on a feral gleam. “Gordon Hennessey. He’s been known to work for Rustin. If he’s after your wife, she’s in grave danger.”

Not sure if he’d grabbed the snake by the head rather than the tail, Hank reluctantly told Foley what he knew. “He staged a cave-in at our mine to lure us—and Molly—from the ranch. He cornered her in the livery and demanded she return a book she supposedly took from Fletcher. When she said she didn’t have anything of Fletcher’s, he dislocated her thumbs and told her she had a month to find it or he would start killing off everyone around her.”

“Christ,” Jones muttered.

Foley’s gaze never wavered. “Has she found it?”

“No.”

“And she has no idea what’s in it?”

“No,” a voice answered from the direction of the entry.

Hank looked back to see Molly walking toward them with Charlie by her side, a battered wooden box in his hands.

“But Charlie does.”

 

 

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE FLEETING INSTANTS IN TIME THAT SOlidified into a startling instant of clarity, like that moment when Hank realized all those lingering doubts about his marriage and his memory had substance, and he suddenly
knew
what had eluded him all along. This moment was the same.

Charlie was the key. And the answer lay in the box he gripped so tightly.

Everything pointed to it—his fears, the night terrors, the furtive way the boy had tried to hide the box when Hank had gone into his room. All this time Molly had been frantically searching for whatever it was Fletcher thought she had—and it had been right there in Charlie’s wooden box the whole time.

Relief thundered in his ears. She was safe. They were all safe. They could end this.

He glanced at Molly, saw the same giddy release in her eyes, and realized how frightened they both had been, and how thoroughly they had kept it from each other.

“I’m s-sorry, Papa-Hank,” Charlie said, cutting through Hank’s thoughts. “I d-didn’t know what to do. I was s-so scared and—”

“It’s all right, son.” Sliding to the edge of the seat, Hank beckoned Molly and Charlie closer. As Molly sank onto the couch beside him, Hank pulled the boy around and sat him on the footstool with his back to the strangers listening in.

Charlie held himself stiffly, his eyes round and wet, the box in his lap.

“No one’s mad at you, Charlie. Everything will be fine. I promise. Take a deep breath.” The room remained silent while the boy struggled to regain control. When he had stopped crying, Hank gave him an encouraging smile. “Now tell me what you know.”

It was an ugly story, made uglier because it was told in a child’s voice and seen through a child’s eyes.

“I wasn’t supposed to go into the office,” Charlie began in a faltering voice. “Usually my stepfather kept it locked, but that day it wasn’t. My real father used to keep hard candy in a jar on the bookcase, and I just wanted to see if it was still there.” He lifted a hand from the box and dragged his sleeve over his runny nose.

“What did you see, Charlie?”

“Pictures. But not like those.” He nodded toward a small cameo painting of Jessica’s sister on the side table. “Drawings mostly.”

“Of what?”

“Airships, I think. And hot air balloons. And something that looked like a rocket. There was a whole book of them with lots of writing on the edges.”

Across the room, Foley and Jones exchanged glances. Brady stood unmoving. Rikker made a snorting sound then settled back into his droning snore.

“Then what happened, Charlie?”

That panicky look came back into the boy’s eyes. “I heard him coming and I got scared and ran out the side door into the garden. I didn’t mean to take it, Papa-Hank. I didn’t even know it was still in my hand. When I saw I still had it, I didn’t know what to do. My stepfather is really scary when he’s mad, and I was afraid to go back.” The boy’s voice ended in a wobble. Swallowing hard, he stared at his shoes.

Hank waited for his stepson to regain control.

Beside him, Molly’s breathing sounded fast and shallow, which told Hank she was fighting tears too. The other men in the room sat without moving, as if fearing any motion or sound would frighten the boy into silence. Even Brady curbed his natural restlessness and remained planted before the hearth, a scowl drawing his dark brows into a ridge over his nose.

Once the boy had calmed, Hank said, “Do you still have the book?”

Charlie nodded and lifted the wooden box toward Hank. “In here.”

As Hank took the box from him, Charlie’s courage deserted him. “I wasn’t going to keep it, Papa-Hank. I promise. I was going to take it back but—”

Fearing the boy would start crying again, Hank set the box on the footstool and pulled Charlie forward, tucking the small head between his neck and shoulder. “It’s all right, son,” he said, patting the small back. “You did nothing wrong. No one’s mad at you.” When the trembling stopped, Hank made a space for him on the couch between him and Molly. Once Charlie was settled, he nodded to the box resting on the footstool. “Can I look inside, Charlie?”

Charlie nodded and tucked himself tighter against Hank’s back.

Hank lifted the lid.

Inside were a boy’s treasures—arrowheads, a bullet casing, two buttons from a Confederate uniform, a glossy eagle feather, a ball of string, a tattered tintype of a woman who looked a lot like Molly. And at the bottom, a leather-bound journal the size of a primer. Hank lifted it out. After moving the box to the floor, he placed the book on the footstool and opened it.

Brady came away from the hearth. Foley and Jones shifted to the edges of their chairs, tilting their heads to look at the pages as Hank slowly flipped through them. Rikker continued to snore.

There was page after page of chemical notations in feathery script, as well as detailed drawings of odd canister-type things, hot air balloons, rockets, and airships. Some of the designs Hank recognized; others he didn’t.

Halfway through the book, Molly reached out to stop him from turning to the next page. “I know that name.” She pointed to a note in the margin. “McCullough. He’s a chemist, I think. My father mentioned him.”

“The Professor,” Jones said. “One of the Lincoln Conspirators. He developed a very potent poison gas. Thankfully the war ended before it could be put into use. I understand he was also working on a way to accelerate Greek Fire into an inferno within seconds.” He gave Molly a studied look. “How did your father know him?”

“I’m not sure.” Resting her elbows on her knees, Molly pressed the palms of her bandaged hands together. “I do know Papa didn’t like him, probably because of the Professor’s association with Jeff Davis. Even though my father disagreed with his stand on slavery, he liked President Davis. I think it upset him that McCullough might be carrying out some highly questionable and unethical experiments under Davis’s orders.”

“What kind of experiments?” Jones asked.

“Things my father wouldn’t talk about but that seemed to worry him a great deal. Dangerous things involving chlorine gas and cyanide gas and other poisons that could kill a lot of people very quickly.”

Frowning, Hank rotated the book to study a drawing of an airship. The word AEREON was penciled beside it. He tried to remember where he’d seen it.

Brady looked up from the drawings. “I thought using poison was forbidden.”

“It was,” Jones said. “U.S. War Department General Order 100 banned the use of poison in any manner, gas or otherwise. But the South had no such strictures. A schoolteacher named John Doughty was even trying to devise a way to put chlorine gas into artillery shells. Other men, like Elmer Clements and Henry Kirkland and Fletcher, were looking for a way to deliver the gas to the battlefield or into the water or food supply, knowing it would cause widespread panic and open the door for a new rebellion.”

“They may be planning to use airships.” Hank thumped the drawing with his index finger. “I recognize this from a scientific paper I read. It’s Dr. Solomon Andrews’s design for his steerable airship, the
Aereon
.”

“Well, there you have it then.” Returning to his place at the hearth, Brady rested an elbow on the mantle. “Arrest them, hang them, and be done with it.”

Jones settled back in his chair. “We can’t.”

“Why not?” Brady wasn’t one to dally with niceties. Or legalities. He was pretty much a “see it, do it, worry about it later” type of fellow. Hank preferred a more considered approach. Until now. But after seeing what Fletcher’s man, Hennessey, had done to Molly, he was ready to tear all of them apart with his bare hands.

“They haven’t done anything illegal,” Jones argued. “You can’t arrest a man for drawing pictures, or even for experimenting with poisons.”

“So he gets away with hurting Molly and threatening all of us?”

“That was Hennessey,” Foley said in his gravelly voice. “And we have no proof Hennessey was working on Fletcher’s orders.”

As they argued the point, Brady’s voice got louder, Jones’s got softer. Hank just got a headache. He glanced at Molly, wishing he could shield her from all of this. Her restless nights and frantic searches had taken their toll on her. She looked pared down, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

Charlie seemed no better, his fingers worrying the end flap of his belt, his face pale and watchful as he listened to Brady and Jones argue.

Wanting to offer reassurance, Hank leaned over and said, “You did the right thing, Charlie, bringing this to us. Uncle Brady and I will see it through from here.”

“Maybe I should take him upstairs,” Molly offered, looking as if she’d like to escape upstairs herself. But before she could rise, Jones turned to her again.

“Did your father ever mention any of these other men?”

She shook her head. “Only Professor McCullough. He even went to Savannah to confront him. The Professor admitted he was experimenting with poison gas—not for the government, but for a group of private investors, one of whom was my brother-in-law, Fletcher.”

Hank heard the stress beneath Molly’s clipped tone and, reaching past Charlie, laid his hand over hers. She sent him a grateful smile.

“Did your father confront Fletcher?”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt he would have told me if he had. My sister and I were close, and he probably wouldn’t have wanted to worry me, or have me let slip to Nellie what her husband was up to.” Something shifted in her expression, and her voice took on a bitter note. “But two days after he spoke to McCullough, Papa was found dead in Fletcher’s office. The investigators said it was suicide, but I’ll never believe my father killed himself. Never.”

“He didn’t,” Charlie said.

All heads except Rikker’s swung to the boy. Under so many watchful eyes, he seemed to shrink into himself.

Jones leaned forward again. “Why do you say that, son?” he asked gently.

“I saw.”

“Saw what?”

“My stepfather kill my grandfather.”

Molly inhaled sharply.

Hank felt something cold and deadly swell in his chest. No wonder the boy was frightened. And angry. And unable to trust anyone. He had seen the unimaginable and no doubt feared it would happen again if he told what he knew.

“It was my fault,” Charlie blurted out, tears rising again. “They were yelling at each other. My stepfather thought my grandfather had taken the book, and he was really mad about it. I didn’t want my grandfather to get into trouble, so I ran to get it, but when I came back, I saw him on the floor. He wasn’t moving. My stepfather was shouting at someone on the other side of the room I couldn’t see. I started to go in, but then—then . . .”