Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II (35 page)

They were speechless. Ava, sitting at the back of the room, couldn’t figure out whether Franklin was trying to sabotage their efforts or was playing a deeper game than any of them could figure. She watched as Odell and Gabriel stood and walked over to join the three in front of the fireplace. The conversation had taken on that deep, serious tone of people exploring an idea of tremendous meaning. She knew that her input would not be welcomed and strained her ears to try and catch the quick back and forth of words.

Instead, she caught the sound of a light intake of breath and felt the doors behind her give very slightly, as if a weight had been lifted from them. She looked over at the men deep in conversation and stood, quietly removing her chair from against the doors. She barely opened one and poked her head around it just in time to see the slim back of a young boy turn the corner into the foyer. Another glance at the group in front of the fireplace assured her that she would not be missed.

Ava exited the room and rushed to catch him as he was leaving the house. Using the front door in the middle of the day would elicit comment. Instead, she turned and walked as sedately as possible through the house to the kitchen. She snagged her cloak from a hook next to the back door and rushed around the house to the busy street in front.

Ava had a good idea who’d been eavesdropping on the meeting, but was perplexed at his possible reasons. She took a quick glance up and down the street and, for a brief moment, thought she had lost him. But the boy’s dark gray waistcoat came back into view as he turned the corner onto Fifth Street, heading north. Ava wrapped the cloak around her and pulled the hood securely over her head. She turned back around and followed a narrow alleyway behind the house to emerge in the middle of Fifth Street and just steps behind Billy.

He seemed to be holding himself in check, walking with studied nonchalance. She noted the tense set of his shoulders. He was actually trying not to hurry. At first Ava thought he might be headed to the college where he took classes, but they passed the turnoff for Market Street and were approaching Arch Street.

“Ava.”

She practically jumped and looked with alarm at the boy who seemed to materialize out of nowhere at her side.

“Mister Jimmy! You scared the life out of me!” she hissed, the remnants of fear shading her voice with irritation.

He lightly touched her elbow and steered her onto a small side street.

“No, I’m—” she began to explain.

“I know. Just wait.”

Ava stood fidgeting anxiously and looking out onto the street when she noted a familiar figure cross over and take up her pursuit of Billy. Evelyn, cloaked and carrying a basket of produce, nodded stealthily as she passed them.

Ava took a deep breath and asked, “What’s going on?”

“We’re not entirely sure,” he replied. “We’re just following up on a hunch, Evelyn’s hunch, to be exact.”

Ava looked perplexed as they stepped out again onto the street and turned back toward Benjamin Franklin’s house. She had been so busy with Odell and Gabriel’s schemes that she now had only peripheral knowledge of the spy ring’s activities and Hershel’s investigation. The couple of days Cara had requested to root out the traitor turned into several, and Gabriel had expressed some impatience at withholding the information from Franklin.

“What does Mister Billy have to do with…,” she hesitated, “you don’t think—”

They turned up Chestnut Street and almost collided with Odell, his face tight with worry. “Ava!” he cried relieved and checked his overwhelming desire to snatch her into his arms.

Ava, for her part, cast her eyes down demurely. Jimmy was a Quaker and good friend, but his involvement in their activities was restricted to spying. He had no knowledge of their political strategies, and knew Ava only as a particularly trusted servant, one who had grown up with the family and was given unusual liberties. But he was an astute observer, and it behooved them to tread with care around him.

“I’m sorry, Mister Odell, but I saw young Mister Billy listening at the parlor door and followed him.”

Odell’s momentary lapse was quickly replaced by his typical Sphinx-like expression. “Billy?”

“Evelyn’s on his trail as we speak,” Jimmy responded. They turned and walked together back up the street to Benjamin Franklin’s house. They stopped in front of it, and Jimmy added, “He… well… Evelyn feels that Billy has become oddly secretive, almost uncommunicative. He’s always been a little jealous of her prominence in the Thornton group, but lately,” he shook his head in bewilderment and continued, “it’s like he doesn’t care, but with this attitude of superiority… aloofness.” He pulled at his ear and grinned at them. “I see it too, but Evie explains it better, ‘It’s like he’s got a secret and he wants to keep it, but he wants you to know he’s got one,’ ” he quoted.

“I understand you perfectly,” Odell assured him. “But surely Evelyn… none of you actually believes he would betray his grandfather’s cause.”

“And his father’s cause?” Ava countered.

Odell nodded remembering Franklin’s son, William, was the Royal Governor of New Jersey and a steadfast loyalist. The revolution had caused an irreparable breach between father and son, with William now under house arrest by the colonial militiamen. Odell had never given much thought to how this affected Billy, but he could imagine him a relatively easy mark for persuasive loyalists.

“Do we know if he’s had any contact with his father or others connected to him?” Odell asked.

Jimmy shook his head, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. Billy was often immature and puffed up with his own importance, but Jimmy wouldn’t believe his friend a traitor. In fact, it had taken some convincing on Evelyn’s part to get Jimmy to help her.

“We just need to eliminate him as a suspect,” Jimmy insisted. “Find out what he’s up to, if anything.”

Odell’s sharp eye was quick to note Jimmy’s discomfort, and he nodded again, content to let the matter rest until, or unless, they had better evidence.

*

Evelyn stood back among a small grouping of lilac trees on the corner of Fifth Street and Cherry Alley. As luck would have it, three young matrons stood just to the side and in front of her. They were engaged in a low, earnest conversation that seemed to involve a mutual friend and her marital woes. The subject was of such interest to the participants as to leave Evelyn virtually unnoticed by them and effectively hidden from the boy who stood not half a block down from her.

He was not alone. Billy stood with another man in front of the brick façade of the German Lutheran Church. They were talking intently, but Evelyn was too far away to hear anything. Her brow furrowed with concentration and suspicion as she observed the slight man whose hand rested with an oddly caressing grasp on Billy’s forearm. Only an inch or two taller than her friend, the man was exceedingly slender. His well-tailored clothes were of a fine quality, and his shoes looked new and barely scuffed. Instead of a hat, he had pulled over his head the hood of a heavy woolen half cape. She saw the tendrils of a yellow-haired wig escape from beneath it. His face was completely obscured.

Having employed the same mode of camouflage, Evelyn knew that this was no accident of dress, but a deliberate disguise. The man did not want to be seen or recognized.

“Joshua can’t deal with the baby on his own, even though its Maggie’s business that keeps them in that house.”

Evelyn refocused her eyes on her near surroundings as the women walked toward her. Her concealment was on the move, and in the next few steps, they’d be by her.

“Well she can’t watch him while keeping the store, now can she? I don’t think it’s too much to ask he watch his own son.”

Evelyn hesitated only a second and then casually slid in among them, employing her usual tactic of feigning interest in the contents of her basket and walking with her head down. She knew there was no way to get near Billy and the man out here on the street. Maybe that was the whole idea; they could see anyone coming from several feet off, and Billy could easily claim he was just helping a stranger with directions.

Evelyn ground her teeth. Billy! What was he up to? She had to get closer.

Rounding the corner onto Fifth Street, she separated from the group by heading north. She turned east onto a small street that bisected the block between Cherry Alley and Arch Street. Evelyn knew it came up behind the church, but was unsure whether it had ingress into the churchyard.

She cursed silently under her breath when confronted with a long brick wall bordering the back of the first three buildings, of which the church was one. The top of the wall was about half a foot higher than her head and, while she could reach it, she didn’t have the leverage or strength to pull herself up.

She walked the length of the wall and came upon a tangle of honeysuckle. It was an old plant of the thick, woody variety and strong enough, she hoped, to hold her. Evelyn stashed her basket at its base and cast her cloak over it. A quick look around assured her that no one else was about. She grasped the vines and scrambled up as best she could. Her skirts were a hindrance and several unladylike oaths escaped her lips, but she achieved the top with surprisingly little wear and tear to her skin or clothes. She didn’t sit there for long, just a hasty second to catch her breath before kicking off and landing softly in the garden encompassing the graveyard.

Evelyn had never been one to fear the supernatural or seek vicarious thrills through scary stories. So it surprised her to feel a sense of dread and foreboding close in around her from the surrounding graves. There were no moss covered trees dripping with dew or heavy fog coursing among sinister gravestones. The sun shone down almost hot for this early spring day. Birds flittered quietly among branches barely touched with foliage. Yet Evelyn felt her hands curl into fists and her breathing take on the quick rhythm of fright.

She had taken only a step before a scream rent the unnatural silence. Evelyn gasped with recognition, and terror sped her feet over the grassy courtyard. In front of the church, she saw a small crowd gathered; a woman on her knees pressed an apron to the wound; a man in a panicked voice called for a hackney; stunned bystanders stood mute with indecision; Billy lay prone on the ground, his white face turned toward her. His eyes glittered with a dull light, and she knew he was dying.

Evelyn slid to a stop beside him and dropped to her knees. The woman looked up at her. Hands wet with blood, she said through her shock, “In the heart! He’s been stabbed in the heart! God only knows how he still lives!”

Billy was struggling now, one hand waving wildly in the air. Evelyn grasped it and brought it tight against her chest.

“Billy! Be still! We’ll get you to a doctor.” Her voice shook with tears, but it focused his eyes with recognition upon her face.

“Evie,” he said, his last words coming out on a calm breath of air, “she is false.”

Twenty-Six

THE DANK CELLAR was warm enough, but it smelled of rats and mildew. She leaned heavily against the wall, her chest heaving with exertion. The hood had fallen off her head, and the ribbon holding her hair back had loosened to allow much of it to fall forward covering her face.

Her ragged breathing eventually slowed, and her heartbeat returned to normal. She pushed away from the wall and reached up to pull the ribbon completely from her hair. She flung it to the floor and walked over to the long wooden table in the center of the room. The table with its benches and a couple of large sea chests were the only pieces of furniture in the cellar.

The woman looked down at her hand in which was tightly gripped a bloody knife. She stared at it so long it seemed to freeze into place. She had to concentrate hard to make her fingers loosen, and eventually the knife fell from her hand onto the table.

This cellar was only one of the many safe places she had secured around the city. It was the least amenable, and she wished matters had not necessitated the use of it. Being, however, only a few blocks from the attack, it was her quickest refuge. Like all of her other places, she had stocked it with a good selection of disguises and should be able to slip with little notice back out onto the street.

The loud clatter of boots on the stairs made her turn hurriedly around, the knife again clutched in her hand. Two rough-looking men appeared in the doorway, both warmly, if simply, dressed. The first to enter was a large man of middle age. He had a pockmarked face with watery blue eyes and thinning hair. The other, a smaller, younger version of him, could be none other than his son.

“Er now, the boy?” the man’s voice was uneducated, but not unintelligent. His words held a large measure of shock and disbelief, “We saw ’em laying out there in the street. That weren’t the plan.”

“He was suspicious,” she said in a hard voice and dropped the knife back down on the table. “He was becoming too great a risk.”

Father and son exchanged a quick, furtive glance that was not lost on the woman.

“On orders from the Godfather,” she told them. “It should throw the Franklin camp into disarray. The old man himself will be stricken with grief.”

“It may strengthen the guard,” the younger man declared in opposition. “They’ll be lookin’ for the killer, an’ we’ve got weapons to move tonight.” He glared at the woman with thinly veiled hostility. “I say it’ll make things harder.”

She was still shaky, but had regained much of her self-possession. Schooling her features into an arrogant and aloof expression, she challenged, “Are you questioning me? Would you like to state your concerns to the Godfather?”

The young man looked inclined to take her up on the offer, but the older man quickly interceded. “No, no, ma’am.”

They had all heard stories of the Godfather, and none of it was good. It was said he came from the Far East, a shrouded and benighted part of the world where normal, civilized men would be tortured and slaughtered for no good reason. His reach was far, and his power derived from enormous wealth. As long as he saw fit to use it to their benefit, the man didn’t see any reason to pursue the murder of one young boy.