Authors: Sarah McCarty
So much money spent on an illusion that didn’t matter. Why did he bother? she wondered.
“Of course,” the desk clerk said, motioning the porter over and collecting the coins.
Fei reached for her pack. The colonel smiled and tucked the pack over his shoulder. “I’ll carry that, my dear.”
Of course he would. Holding the front door open for her, he waited for her to pass through. As soon as she was level, he said, “You changed your clothes.”
The comment snapped just behind her ear. She jumped. His hand came down to the center of her back, touching lightly, letting her know he was there. That he was in control. It was hard to swallow.
“It is uncomfortable to ride in my tunic and pants,” she lied. She needed the skirts to hide the dynamite. “The material is too thin.”
“I’m not complaining. I don’t approve of that heathen garb anyway.”
Heathen. He was calling her heathen and he was the one doing the kidnapping. Instead of spitting out the truth, she kept her gaze down and her hands meekly folded. Her ancestors had known one thing, men relaxed around a woman they thought submissive.
“While you were gathering your items, I sent a boy to have our horses brought around.”
He motioned to the rocking chairs. “Please sit.”
It wasn’t a request. It was only the illusion of choice. She gave him the illusion of gratitude. With a bow so shallow as to be an insult, she said, “Thank you.”
“I can see what Shadow liked in you. It’s a nice change to have a woman around who does as she’s told.”
“A woman’s place is cherished at her husband’s feet.”
He sat beside her. “Maybe later we’ll test that out.”
Maybe by then she would be gone. The dynamite felt heavy on her thighs. She could only hope it didn’t slip. Had she tied it tightly enough? Had she tied it too tightly? The only way she would know was if it fell off, or if her legs got numb. Waiting to find out just put a finer edge on the night. The colonel reached into his vest. She stiffened.
“No need for nerves. It’s just a journal.” He held it up. He opened the cover and she knew immediately there was nothing “just” about it. There were dates and columns and precise areas of structured writing.
He took a pencil out of the spine and turned to a page three-quarters of the way through.
“You write in this book?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He closed the book and tied the leather flap down. With equal precision he tucked the pencil into the spine. “It’s good to have a record. There will come a time down the road when people will need to know what I’ve done. I don’t want the newspapers and the biographers creating fiction because they don’t have fact.”
“It is your life story?”
He turned so fast she jumped back. “Do not refer to my life’s work as a
story.
”
“I am sorry.”
“People don’t always understand why leaders have to do what they do.”
“You wish to be understood?”
“Of course.”
“Do you put all in the book? Good and bad?”
“How else would there be context?”
She had no idea.
Three men rode up the street leading two saddled horses. Daniels stood as the riders approached.
“Colonel.”
“Men.”
The men did not have the colonel’s neatness of appearance. They looked like what they probably were, opportunists. Men who did whatever they needed to for coin.
Daniels glanced down his nose at her. “Do you need assistance?”
Getting out of the chair, no. Getting up on the monster horse they brought her, likely.
“I do not know.”
“Well, since daylight’s burning…”
Grabbing her by the waist, he tossed her up onto the big chestnut. She clung to the saddle horn, glad she hadn’t strapped the dynamite to her waist.
“Xei-xei.”
“I do like the way you say that.”
“I will remember.”
And never say it again.
He smiled, grabbed her horse’s reins and turned them south.
“I just bet you will.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
B
Y
THE
TIME
THEY
REACHED
the claim, their number had grown to twenty and Fei had run out of fear. Not that she hadn’t started out with a fair share, but every hour they’d ridden she’d watched, prayed and hoped. But no miracles had occurred. No heroes had appeared. After twelve hours, she’d decided she would have to save herself. By the fourteenth hour, she had a plan. By the fifteenth hour, she was prepared to enact it. The horses plodded into the clearing.
“We’re here.”
The men looked around. “I don’t see anything.”
The colonel pulled out his revolver. “Playing games now would be very foolish, my dear.”
The revolver didn’t scare her. They wouldn’t kill her until they knew for sure they had the claim. “It is here.”
She slid off the horse.
“Where are you going?”
She walked stiffly up to the boulder. “The way is through here.”
The men dismounted and tossed the horses’ reins over a bush. The horses immediately ducked their heads to eat. It had been a long ride. “Where?”
She slipped behind the boulder. The colonel grabbed her arm and hauled her back out.
“Oh, no, you don’t.”
“But this is the way…”
The man called John came over. “Damn narrow space. Do you think it’s a trap?”
“Send her in first and see.”
John gave her a push. Daniels yanked her back. “Not without some guarantee we can get her back.”
“What do you suggest?”
He grabbed some rope. “Fix it so we can reel her out.” He tied the rope around Fei’s waist and knotted it tightly in back. John tossed him a thinner rope. Daniels used that to tie her hands in front of her, and then to secure them to the thicker rope at the back of her waist. She stood, waiting patiently. She couldn’t implement her plan until she was in the cave. The colonel stroked her hair off her face. “You look very pretty like that.”
She bowed her head, giving him the impression he wanted.
“Just get her in there. This place gives me the creeps.”
With a shove, Daniels sent her into the cave.
T
HE
CLAIM
WAS
EXACTLY
as she and Shadow had left it. The bag of food tins they had brought still sat by the mouth of the cave. The saddlebags for carrying out the gold were on the far wall. The blankets and pillows she’d started to lay out were neatly bundled ten feet apart on either side of the fire pit. It was as if it was all waiting for her, eagerly anticipating the time she’d pick up the threads of her original intent and fix all that had gone wrong since she’d disobeyed Shadow’s order to stay put and stay safe.
The claim was the same, but everything else was different.
She
was different. She wasn’t scared any longer. Not of making a decision anyway. Daniels and his men were not going to have her claim. They weren’t going to have Shadow. And they weren’t going to have her.
Behind her, she could hear the colonel and his men struggling to pass through the opening. Once they succeeded, she wasn’t going to have much time. Rummaging awkwardly through the food sack, she located the knife and cut through the rope that bound her wrists and then sawed through the one on her waist, the pieces falling to the ground. She took the sulfurs and map out of her pocket and stepped out of her dress and petticoats.
From beyond the rock entrance, she heard the colonel curse when the tension left the rope. “Fei Yen!”
Her heart leaped to her throat. It was now or never. Lighting the lantern, she moved farther into the cave. She set it on a rock and looked at the map. She focused on small scribbles that looked like pebbles. It’d been two months since she’d checked the explosives her father had laid out. She needed to be very sure where the connections were. She wasn’t going to have much time once the series started. The narrow entry to the cave was only a delay, not a solution.
“Goddamn it, girl, your ass better be there!”
It was, but it wasn’t going to be there for long. Her hands shook. One way or another, she was leaving.
“Get the hell out of the way, John,” she heard Daniels order.
“Why? So you can get the gold for yourself?”
Fei picked up the lantern. The flickering light cast grotesque shadows along the wall, highlighting the dug-out areas and the shored-up tunnels. There was fresh dirt around the openings. The claim was less stable than before.
“Take off your gun belts, and strip down, goddamn it,” she heard the colonel say.
It was time to go. Following the marks on the map, she walked around the perimeter of the cave, checking the fuse connections at each of the three tunnel openings that led deeper into the cave. The left one led to the waterfall. The center one was a dead end. The third narrow, ramshackle tunnel
looked
like a dead end but actually snaked around behind the waterfall. Getting to it was the key to her plan. If the explosions started from there, she could escape out the back of the cave, leaving the men trapped in the center. Buried. She shivered at the horrific image. Her stomach turned, but she buried the weakness. These men had killed others. Would kill her and Shadow. They needed to be stopped. She could stop them—she couldn’t think beyond that.
Fei finished checking the front section and headed into the left tunnel to the back. She hated the back of the cave. There were steep ledges that crumbled to deep drop-offs along the carved-out path. When placing the charges, she’d almost fallen to her death when a narrow part of ledge had given way under her feet.
Putting the memory out of her mind, she picked up the sack of gold she’d reserved for herself months ago and dragged it close to the ledge. She searched the floor, looking for the connection. She couldn’t find it and began to panic. She took a deep breath and looked again. There was a spill of pebbles on the ground that didn’t look natural. She gently pushed them aside and found the connection, but she didn’t remember laying out pebbles like that. She sat back on her heels. Her heart pounded in her throat, her breathing stuck in her chest. She also didn’t remember tying those wires together.
“Fei!”
She jumped at the loud echo of her name. Daniels and his men had made it into the cave.
“Where are you?”
She didn’t answer, just quickly moved on to the next location.
“Shit,” she heard one of them mumble. “There’s no gold here.”
Something was dumped on the floor. “The hell there’s not. Look at this!”
They’d found the gold she’d collected before she’d gone to free Lin. Good. That should keep them busy. The next connection was the same as the first—the wires connected and covered with pebbles. She knew she hadn’t done that, which begged the question, who had? Her heart started racing an the sick feeling in her stomach grew.
There was a hoot when the men found her supplies. Cans clunked against stone as they emptied the sacks out on the ground. She had to hurry. The gold pulled on her shoulders, dragging her down.
“Follow the stream. I think I hear a waterfall back there.”
“Usually do find gold in rushing water.” She thought that might be John.
“Nature’s shovel is what I call it.”
It made it easier for Fei to find the other connections now that she knew what she was looking for. Her muscles burned as she strained to carry the weight of her load as she went from point to point. A little voice inside said
leave it,
but she couldn’t. It was her fresh start. Shadows danced on the walls as she passed, rocks scraped under her feet
. Too much noise. Too much noise.
She tried to walk more carefully. Instead of silence, she started a little landslide. Sound reverberated around the cave. Pressing against the wall, she watched the ceiling, expecting it to come down any minute. It didn’t, but she’d drawn the attention of the men. She heard them closer. It wasn’t a bad thing.
“I think I have her!”
“Where?”
“There’s a light down here.”
“Is it the woman?”
“Damn, I hope so. I haven’t had me a decent woman in a coon’s age.”
Fei sprinted to the waterfall. Grabbing nuggets out of the water, she tossed them on the bank. She needed greed to hold the men in place. Just for a little while longer.
Fei checked her sulfurs. They were dry and ready to go. Taking a breath, she nodded confidently. So was she.
She set the lantern behind her, letting the light illuminate the spot, drawing in the colonel and his men. “There she is,” someone hollered.
As if he were inviting her to dinner, Daniels called, “Why don’t you make it easy on yourself and come here, my dear.”
My dear.
He made the endearment an obscenity. Adopting a calm she didn’t feel, Fei held the dynamite, listening to the soothing hiss of the fuse, and didn’t answer. The men advanced, making obscene comments, telling her what they were going to do with her body.
Just a little more. Just a little farther.
Something flew past her ear, drawing a small scream past her resolve. The man who’d just uttered the most vile comment dropped, a knife in his throat. His last obscenity ended in a gurgle.
From the shadows she heard a deep rumble of sound, “A man ought to know how to talk to a lady.”
Oh, my God.
Someone else was in here.
Who are you?
She couldn’t get the question past the knot in her throat. The immediate question of friend or foe was answered by the stranger’s next question, “You ready to throw that yet?”
Her heart started beating again. Friend. He had to be friend. “Almost.”
Daniel’s men crouched and drew their guns.
She stood there, giving them a target.
“Get the hell down!” the stranger ordered.
She shook her head. Heart thundering in her chest, she stood stock-still and started counting. She needed them to stay where they were.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
By the time they recognized what was flying through the air at them, Daniels and his men had no time to react. The walls shivered and groaned, the explosion reverberating with a deafening thunder. A hand latched onto the back of her shirt and lifted her off her feet, knocking her down behind a boulder. She had a vague impression of long hair and broad shoulders before the stranger picked up the lantern, grabbed her hand and dragged her with him as he ran faster than she could ever run by herself.