Revenge and the Wild (23 page)

He pressed against her, none too gently. She didn’t want gentle. She wanted the anguish that had been building up inside her for so long to be decimated. His hands moved across her skin and knew exactly where to touch. Each perfect landing made her body shiver.

Westie drew in a sharp breath as he rolled on top of her. She wrapped her arms around his neck while their lips consumed each other. They kissed until Westie felt like she would detonate. She grabbed hold of his arm with her machine and flipped him onto his back, where she shredded the rest of his underclothes. An animated smile split his face in two and made Westie laugh, but as soon as she removed her own underclothes, his smile melted away.

Her confidence fell apart when he looked at the part of her arm where the pins of her machine had been drilled into skin and bone, latched on like some metal parasite. Westie had always kept that place hidden, even as a child. She started to wrap the blanket around her shoulders to hide herself, but he stopped her and reached out, touching the raised scars around the pins where Nigel had attached two other machines that hadn’t worked.

The teasing and stares from strangers had formed a callus around her heart over the years, but being there, exposed to Alistair, Westie felt soft and pliable. Like one disappointed frown could shatter her world.

His finger traveled from the edge of her skin to her machine,
caressing the gears, cogs, the copper wire, down to the metal fingers. The muscles in Alistair’s jaw rippled when he touched the bare skin of her leg. There was a long pause before his hand moved again. He pulled away, and Westie watched his fingers fold into the sign for
beautiful
. For once she felt it was true.

Alistair rolled her slowly onto her back. She blew out a shaking breath and worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. He propped himself on his elbows, cradled her face in his hands, and looked at her in a way she’d never seen before, a way that needed no words. She knew then that she would give him a gift she could never get back. It made no matter. That gift was always meant for Alistair and no one else. With a kiss and an arch of her back, it was his forever.

They slept for a couple of hours. By the time they woke up, Henry had settled down enough for them to ride. They arrived in Sacramento by noon, Westie on the verge of bashful and Alistair with eyes squinting in a permanent smile.

Fleets of aeroskiffs flew over the city, the sky tinted brown from the smoke exhaling from their stacks. Most of the coaches on the road were the walking kind, just like the one Isabelle’s parents had bought her. They struggled to move as their sharp metal legs sank into the softened mud of the streets.

“Are you ready for this?” Alistair asked her when they reached the bank. His hair was wet and had turned to soft waves.

“Ready as I’m likely to get.”

They climbed down from their horses. Alistair held her hand, a gesture that would’ve felt foreign only days ago. She wrapped her
fingers around his, taking comfort in the strength of his grip.

When they stepped through the doors of the bank, everyone inside stopped what they were doing to stare. Some gasped, others shied away upon seeing the pair’s mechanics. Westie noticed Alistair’s eyes shift to the ground as they did whenever people stared.

“Is it my dress?” Westie said, loud enough for all to hear.

Her clothes were wet and splattered with mud. Most of the folks in the bank wore fancy clothes to ask for loans or beg for extensions. Westie used her machine to shake out her dress, slinging mud onto everyone else’s silk and velvet.

“That better?” she asked.

Alistair chuckled beneath his mask, a sound that was as familiar to her ears as her own voice but spooked others. No one moved or spoke, just stared.

An older gentleman with a strangely sculpted beard that split in the middle and curled up at both ends stepped out from behind the counter. “May I help you?”

“We’re here to see Amos Little,” Alistair said.

The man’s face rolled from smile to sadness in one swift motion. “I’m sorry—you must not have heard.”

“We don’t hear much about the outside world in Rogue City,” Westie said.

He braided his fingers protectively in front of his chest the way some folks did when they were about to tell someone something sad enough to flail their arms at. Westie’s heart sank lower each second he prolonged the silence.

With eyes lowered and a tremor in his voice, he said, “I regret to inform you that Amos Little has passed on, but I’ll be happy to help you with any of your banking needs.”

The hope Westie had felt earlier dissipated, its remains carried away on the wind like a dandelion. She leaned against a wall covered in Wanted posters.
Dead?
But he’d just been at her party not that long ago.

“How did he die?” she asked.

“House fire—a terrible accident.”

“Accident my ass,” she mumbled low enough to keep the banker from hearing.

Even after closing her eyes and slowing her breathing, the malevolent thing knotting in her chest grew until it was painful. She put her copper hand to her heart. They’d come all this way for nothing. Whatever rivalry there’d been between Amos and the mayor, now she’d never know.

Deciding there would be no hysterics, the banker dropped his hands to his sides and asked, “Is there anything
I
can help you with?”

Alistair hung his head. “No, thank you,” he said. “We’re here conducting business for my employer. He asked us to speak directly to Amos.”

As Westie and Alistair turned to leave, the banker said, “Your employer is Nigel Butler, correct?” Westie looked over her shoulder. Alistair twisted on his heels to face the man. When he saw their quizzical looks, the banker said to Alistair, “I’ve seen you here before. I was Amos’s assistant and helped with most of his dealings with your
employer. I assure you Nigel won’t mind me helping you.”

“I’m afraid it’s nothing you can help with,” Alistair said, making up the story on a whim. “Nigel’s going into a business venture with Mayor Chambers and the Fairfields. We’re here to check on their references. Amos was one of them.”

The man looked skeptical. “I can’t imagine the Fairfields venturing from their home, let alone into business. And I highly doubt Amos would give the mayor a reference after the investigation.”

“What investigation?” Westie said, taking a step forward.

The banker hesitated and looked around the room before saying, “Amos was looking into the mayor’s past dealings when he was still a property lawyer. I’m sorry, but I can’t go into further details regarding bank business.”

“What did you mean about the Fairfields not venturing from their home?” Alistair asked.

The banker’s mouth opened, looking confused. “Everyone knows the Fairfields are recluses. No one has seen them in years—oh,” he said, looking embarrassed, “that’s right. I keep forgetting you’re not from around here. It’s difficult to believe a distinguished man such as Nigel Butler would live in a town like Rogue City.”

Westie and Alistair looked at each other, brows curling in question marks. The last thing Westie would’ve called the Fairfields was reclusive. After all, they were in Rogue City making friends with anyone who gave a damn about Nigel’s machine. And Lavina, with those flashy dresses and low-cut bodices, gliding from store to store spending James’s inheritance . . . it seemed impossible.

“Is there anyone else who might be able to tell us about Amos’s investigation into the mayor,
unofficially
, that is?” Westie said.

The banker looked around the room as if he were being watched. Finally he said, “If anyone knew about the goings-on with the investigation, it was Amos’s wife, Lucy Little. He did most of his work from home. You’ll want to give her a few days, though. Poor thing barely escaped with her life, but it seems she’s doing much better; I talked to her nurse at the hospital just this morning.”

Westie sighed. They didn’t have a few days.

“Thank you for your help,” she said.

As they rode through town, Westie’s stomach felt sick with dread. Though she couldn’t prove it, she was certain that Amos Little’s death and the list of names she’d found in the mayor’s safe were connected somehow.

She pulled at Henry’s reins when they came across the blackened remains of a burned-up house. It looked like the carcass of some giant black mythical beast, with shards of brittle framework sticking out like rib bones.

The smell of scorched wet wood hung thick in the air. Piles of rubble continued to steam after the rain. The fire had taken everything. All evidence of the life Amos and his wife had built together was gone.

Alistair stared at the burned rubble, eyes glazed over with worry. “If burning someone in their home is what the mayor does to those who investigate him, imagine what he’d do to those who accuse his friends of cannibalism.”

Westie put a hand to her stomach. “I’m trying not to think about that.” She climbed off her horse, kicking at the rubble to see if there was anything to be salvaged from the ruins. She made her way to a charcoaled support beam, where she sat and wondered which room she was sitting in. As she looked up at the sky, a drop of rain landed on her lashes. She blinked it away, trying not to let the hopeless feeling inside consume her. If nothing came of their trip to Sacramento, all would be lost. The Fairfields’ gold was useless without Hubbard and Lavina being in jail, and it was doubtful Westie could find a crook brave enough to trade eight gold bars for enough money to allow Nigel to finish his machine.

Alistair sat beside her on the beam and leaned his head against her shoulder. His hair smelled like earth and macassar, and she was reminded of the connection they’d made beneath the maples. Closing her eyes, she tried to hold on to that moment of happiness. “I have to fix this, Alley,” she said, voice barely a whisper. “Of all the plans I’ve messed up, this can’t be one of them.”

“We’ll fix this, I promise. We won’t stop until we do.” He moved his hand to her hair, pulling out a maple leaf. “Let’s start by talking to Amos’s widow.”

Alistair stood and reached out a hand to help her up. When he took a step back, Westie noticed something under his foot, a piece of paper. Picking it up and dusting the soot off, she realized it was a photo.

“Look at this,” she said, holding the photo toward him. It was a picture of Amos and a man shaking hands. Behind him was a family
of four, no one she’d ever seen before except for Amos.

“What about it?” Alistair asked.

In the photo a young girl with coal-black curly hair held a doll wearing a dress with a distinct crisscross pattern. “That’s the same doll Olive was holding when the Fairfields first stepped off the airship in Rogue City. She threw a fit and tore its head off.”

Alistair took the photo from her to study it closer. The edges were burned and curled, and the paper was brittle. He was careful only to touch the border so as not to smear the wet image. “I don’t think that’s Olive in the picture, unless she’s wearing a wig,” he said. “Perhaps their families bought the dolls at the same store.”

Westie shook her head. “That’s no store-bought doll. I know a handmade doll when I see one. My momma was always making them for me. That’s the same doll. We need to find out who these people are.”

Alistair nodded, handing back the photo. “But first let’s talk to Amos’s widow.”

The hospital was a long, flat building with a cross on its east-facing wall. It looked bigger on the inside than out, about two thousand square feet of beds to accommodate the sick and injured. The workings of the machines in the room filled the place with a concert of sound, as if there were thirty Alistairs sitting around just breathing.

Westie recognized the machines as being inventions of Nigel’s. He had his own signature way of twisting and combining various metals to make the simplest machines look like they had taken years to assemble.

A nurse sat at a desk in the entryway, checking off boxes on a piece of paper. She held a clumsily rolled cigarette pinched between her fingers, the smoke curling up her arm. When she looked up and saw Westie and Alistair standing there, she stubbed it out in a metal ashtray.

“Are you in need of medical assistance?” she asked as she studied Alistair’s mask and Westie’s metal hand without any hint of fear or curiosity.

“We’re here to see a patient,” Westie said. “Lucy Little.”

Flecks of ash from the cigarette speckled the front of the nurse’s dark-colored dress. She dusted them off, leaving white smears, and checked the patient roster. “Last bed on the left.”

Even though the place was full of strange machines, folks looked at Alistair as if he were the grim reaper come to steal them from their beds. Luckily, he was too distracted by Westie’s quick pace to pay much attention.

At the end of the row, Lucy Little was sitting up in her bed. She was small like her husband, with a head full of wavy, fading yellow hair that was white at the roots. Her arms were wrapped in bandages from her burns, and she held copper tubing in her mouth.

When she saw Westie and Alistair, she pulled out the tubing and reached for the spectacles on the table beside her bed.

“Westie Butler,” Lucy said with a hint of surprise in her singed voice.

Westie paused, cocking her head. “You know who I am?”

Lucy nodded, smoothing the blankets on her lap. “Amos talked about you after the ball. There aren’t many girls around here with metal arms.”

“No, I reckon not.” Westie sat on the unoccupied bed beside Lucy’s. So did Alistair.

Lucy said, “If you’re looking for Amos, he’s—” Her words were
closed off by a choking sound. Tears trickled down her cheeks, following the lines around her mouth.

“We heard,” Westie said, chest tightening when she saw the woman’s sadness.

With a shaky breath, Lucy collected herself enough to speak again. “What can I help you with?”

Westie hesitated. Clearly the woman was in no shape to be talking, but what choice did she have?

“I wouldn’t be coming to you if the situation weren’t dire.” Westie paused, trying to come up with the right words, then just decided blunt and honest was the quickest way to the answers she needed. “I’d like to know why Amos was investigating the mayor.”

Lucy’s open expression shut down. She closed her mouth, leaned back against her pillow, looking out the window beside her bed. “I don’t know anything about that.”

Westie could tell by Lucy’s wavering jaw that the woman was lying. If someone had set Westie’s house on fire with her inside, she’d be afraid to speak too. But Westie wouldn’t let it go. She needed to know what Lucy knew.

“Do you know my father, Nigel?” Westie asked, brushing the hair out of her eyes. Lucy didn’t answer, or even look at her. “He’s a surgeon. Surgeons are like doctors; they take an oath not to talk about their patients without permission. I’m sure Amos was under similar regulations when it came to bank business.” Still no response from Lucy. “Anyway, that oath never stopped Nigel from coming home and wanting to vent after a long day at work. I’m his daughter, so of course
he could trust me, just like I’m sure Amos trusted you. Some days I wished Nigel hadn’t trusted me so much. You wouldn’t believe some of the things folks needed to have surgically removed from—well, I’m sure you can imagine.”

Westie waited for Lucy to crack a smile, or at least relax, but her attempt at humor had failed.

“Look,” Westie said, lowering her voice and using her flesh hand to touch Lucy’s, “I know you’re scared. Believe me, I’m terrified too. When the mayor finds out I’m conducting an investigation of my own, he’ll come after me—and the people I love. That’s why I need to know what Amos had on him. I want to take that bastard down once and for all so he can’t hurt anyone else. None of us are safe until I do. Please, Lucy, I need your help.”

Lucy’s lips began to tremble. When she closed her eyes, a river of tears escaped. She nodded her head.

“Yes?” Westie sounded far too eager. Others in the beds nearby looked over at her.

Lucy made a shushing motion with her hand. She looked around, hesitating before saying, “Amos believed Ben Chambers was responsible for the airship explosion that killed our former mayor seven years ago.”

“Why would he do that?” Westie asked.

“To become mayor himself, of course. He was the president of the board of supervisors, the next in line in case the current mayor was unable to perform his duties. He has big political plans. First mayor, then governor, senator, and one day president. He might’ve succeeded
by now had he been more likable. He will do anything for that kind of power.” She wiped the tears from her eyes and took a shallow breath that made her cough. “Amos had recently found an old receipt in the county budget for explosives signed out by Ben Chambers only a day before the airship crash. Ben was a property lawyer back then and attended demolitions, only there weren’t any demolitions planned, and the explosives were never returned.”

Westie picked at her lip as she listened to Lucy speak. If the mayor was willing to kill an entire airship of people to get to just one, he was more devious than she’d thought.

“But none of that matters now,” Lucy said. “All the evidence burned up in the fire.”

As soon as the last word left her mouth, Lucy began to cough, the kind of violent hacking that sounded like she might cough up her spine. Westie reached over, cranked the machine to start it up, and handed Lucy the copper tube. It made chugging sounds as it pulled the debris from her lungs. When the coughing stopped, Westie pulled the photo she’d found in the rubble out of her coat pocket.

“Do you recognize any of these people?” she asked.

Lucy nodded, pulling the tube from her mouth and touching the face of her late husband. Her lips eased into a soft smile. “I don’t know who that family is behind them, but that’s Amos shaking hands with James Lovett after he won the mayoralty for the third time in a row. That photo was taken for the newspaper. Amos kept it in a frame in his office.” Her smile fell. “That was just days before James Lovett and his wife were killed.”

Westie squeezed Lucy’s hand once more. “You’ve been a big help. I promise we’ll get the mayor. You won’t have to be afraid anymore.”

Lucy tugged at Westie’s hand when she tried to leave and looked deep into her eyes with a ferociousness that hadn’t been there before. “When you take the mayor down, you be sure to tell him I hope he rots in hell.”

Westie nodded. “You bet I will.”

As they walked away, Alistair said, “That’s a hefty promise to make.”

Westie looked up at him. “And one I intend to keep. Even if I have to kill the man myself.”