The Widow's Secret (17 page)

“Micah, no…”

“Run!”
He ducked and swiveled as their would-be murderer burst into the room, a knife in one hand, brass knuckles over his other fist.

Micah lunged, tackling the bruiser who easily outweighed him by a hundred pounds. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs, Micah seizing the wrist with the knife, slamming it against the doorpost even as he flinched away from the brass knuckles, which missed his chin by a whisker. With his thumbs he searched for and found the vulnerable collection of nerves and veins in the thick wrist and squeezed, squeezed with all his strength until with a frustrated groan, the man dropped the knife.

Retaliation was swift. Micah evaded a punch to the jaw again, but the brass knuckles caught him in a blow to his sore
midriff. The air whistled from his lungs, but he managed to roll over onto the knife, then lashed out with his foot, landing a glancing blow on his assailant's head.

They both scrambled to their feet, only this time Micah held the knife.

“You'll die slow, you filthy—” He called Micah a name. “And so will the chippie.”

“Not today,” Micah growled. “And not by you.” Moving fast, he leaped to the side, scooped up the tubular lamp the man had dropped and shone the brilliant beam directly into his face.

Yowling, the man stumbled backward through the doorway, hands lifted like a shield in front of his face—and tumbled in a resounding crash down the stairs.

J
ocelyn had no intention of leaving Micah alone with a man the size of a barn; she grabbed a board and dashed back across the old warehouse just as the assailant plunged head over heels down the stairs.

“Micah! Are you hurt? Did he stab you? I saw the knife. I know you told me to run but I couldn't.” Near-blinded by the bright light, she reached his side, scarcely noticing when Micah pried the board from her fingers and tossed it onto the floor.

“I'm not hurt,” he managed breathlessly. Still holding the lantern, he manacled one of her wrists with his hand as they descended the stairs. “You might have been, had that knife been a gun.”

“It wasn't, and now you have a weapon, should you need one.” She felt strange, almost giddy, as though her feet were floating down the stairwell while her brain floated somewhere up in the dusty rafters. “Do you think he's dead?”

“I don't know. Can you hold this lantern? Here—wrap your fingers around the handle, that's it. Casts a strong light, doesn't it? Try not to stare directly at it. We'll have to turn it off when we go outside—Are you all right?”

“Just a trifle…disoriented, but I'm fine, Micah. Don't worry about me. Take care of that—that monster.”

She caught sight of his frown before he turned and knelt beside the sprawled body. “He's alive.” Standing, he pondered in silence for a second, then shrugged. “No help for it. I'm going to drag him over to that post and tie him up. Give him a taste of his own medicine. As soon as I'm sure you're somewhere safe, I'll arrange for him to be taken to the city jail. Now, if you'll shine that lamp to light our path…”

 

A short while later, with the captor now the captive, Jocelyn led Micah across the upper floor of the ramshackle warehouse. “We're only a few blocks from the Dakota Apartments,” she told him. “Can you imagine the effrontery of my cousin?”

“Nothing surprises me much these days,” Micah replied as they reached a door held in place by only one rusting hinge. “Except you, Jocelyn.” She watched dreamlike as he turned off the lamp, set it on a dust-filmed barrel, then took her hand and brought it to his lips. “You've saved my life—in more ways than you can imagine.”

“All I could think about, when I listened to Portia and Virgil plotting your death as though they were discussing choices on a menu, was that I'd never have a chance to tell you that…” Shyness locked her jaw.

She thought he smiled. “Time enough for declarations later. Come along, let's see if we can find our way to the El. There's a station at Seventy-second Street. Do you have any change?”

“Oh…” A spurt of vertigo made her dizzy, but Jocelyn was too aggravated with herself to pay much attention. “I wasn't thinking. I gave that cab driver everything, for the lantern.…Micah, I'm so sorry. How stupid of me.”

“Hush.” She gave a gasp of surprise when his arms snaked
around her and he pulled her close, his lips pressing chapped kisses against her forehead, her temples. “I don't want to hear any more disparaging remarks about the woman I love, the woman who just saved my life. We'll walk. It's chilly, but the wind has died down.”

The woman he loved…
The strange sensation intensified, as though her spirit along with her brain had just peeled away like a grape skin from her body, and was hovering over them in a surrealistic mist. “I never thought a man would say those words to me….”

“I never thought I'd say them again myself.” Micah released her, found her hand again and gave it a tug. “Come along. Let's try to escape into the city while we've got some moonlight.” He helped her maneuver around rusted iron tools, a stack of empty fruit crates and a pile of crumbling bricks.

“‘East Side, West Side, all around the town…'”
Jocelyn warbled in an effort to stave off her queasiness. She couldn't remember the words of the popular song “Sidewalks of New York,” and switched to humming, docilely following Micah as he picked a path along the side of the warehouse.

When they reached the end of the building, Micah stopped; Jocelyn almost plowed into him, and his arm went around her shoulders. “Steady there. Let me study the lay of the land a bit.”

“Nobody's here. Used to be, but Virgil got rid of them. Like they were vermin. That's how I think of
him
now. Virgil the vermin.” Vaguely she shifted her weight, wondering why her left leg seemed to be throbbing. “He bought this land—the cab driver told me it covers almost three city blocks. He wasn't very friendly, the driver, I mean. Said this was an eyesore, and no place for a lady. I had to bargain for the lamp like I was a poor immigrant.”

Micah's hand gently covered her mouth. “Shh…” he murmured into her ear. Then, “Are you sure you're all right? You're not scared, are you?”

“Not anymore.” She had to think a moment, then added candidly, “But I feel…strange.”

“Not too cold?”

“Mmm. This is my warmest cloak, even if I didn't take time to change into walking shoes. Katya and I were sneaking out. Oh…I do have money. It's in my shoe. But we can't use it. It's bogus goods. I found the proof we've been looking for. Virgil left it in his room, I think on purpose, so I called his bluff. Here, I'll show you.”

She started to lean down to remove her shoe and would have fallen if Micah hadn't grabbed her waist. “Tell me later, sweetheart, all right?” He held her a moment, but thin cloud fingers had drifted in front of the moon, and Jocelyn couldn't see his expression. She decided to watch the clouds instead, because she finally remembered that Micah had mentioned something about getting the lay of the land. But she was tired, she suddenly realized. So tired she wondered how much longer she could stand.

“Better now? Then let's go. We're going to stay in the shadows of those buildings, then make our way across that field. There's a tree in the middle. We'll stop there for a second. All right?”

Her mouth didn't want to cooperate, so Jocelyn nodded. Micah was in charge now, she reminded herself. All she needed to do was to follow. She wasn't alone anymore.

The night enveloped them, but the wind from the previous afternoon had ceased and the air was crisp, invigorating rather than frigid. In the distance, yellow streetlamps outlined the street where Jocelyn had bargained for the carriage lamp; the rest of their little world lay in soft shades of black velvet. Star
points of light glimmered, then disappeared when the moon slipped free of the clouds. Somewhere in the distance a horse neighed. The faint odor of burning peat stung her nostrils. On the other side of a jumbled mass of outbuildings, she thought she glimpsed the brighter light of a lantern—No. Was the dizziness blurring her vision? She could see lots of yellow blobs of light, and vague amorphous shapes.

Abruptly, Micah yanked her behind the darker huddle of a small shed. Easing her to the ground, he tugged her cloak firmly around her and whispered for her to keep her face down, the hood over her head. “The police are here,” he murmured, his tone a low rustle of sound.

“Looking for us? Shouldn't we—No.” Horrified, Jocelyn grabbed his shirt, and realized for the first time that Micah was hatless, coatless and probably freezing. “Micah, I don't know if we can trust the police here,” she whispered back, the words tumbling over themselves. “Portia p-paid two of them, to follow us.”

“I know. It's all right, don't worry.” In the darkness she felt his hand moving up until he cupped her cheek. “Jocelyn, will you trust me?”

“Not if you plan to lure them away so I can escape without you.”

Without warning his mouth covered hers in a hard kiss. “Don't be a goose. I want to sneak closer, see if I can hear what they're saying. Will you stay here, and not move an inch? Please?”

“Yes.” He started to rise, but she grabbed his hand. “Micah? I—” No. Now was not the time to confess her love. Now was the time to trust not only Micah—but God.

“What is it? Don't be afraid. I promise, I'll be safe. I know what I'm doing, all right?”

“I know.” She brought the cold, rough hand to her mouth
and brushed a kiss of her own across his knuckles. “I wanted to tell you I'll be praying, Micah.”

He froze, then she heard his breath exhale in a long sigh. “Why?” he said.

But as she watched him fade into the night, Jocelyn thought she heard a faint word echo in the frosty air, a word that didn't make sense. Frowning, she shifted until she could lean back against the rough plank siding. Her left leg hurt—she must have knocked it against something. Her face ached from the cold, even inside gloves her hands felt like frozen sausages, and the whorls of nausea persisted in annoying her. With difficulty she drew up her knees, then rested her head on her crossed arms. Stay still, keep her head covered and trust him. Well, that was simple enough, since she was worn to a nub. Rescuing people expended a tremendous amount of energy and she was more than ready for a moment of rest. But puzzlement fretted away over that little word she thought she'd heard.

Why would Micah, whose faith she had grown to admire and trust—why would Micah ask “Why?” when she confessed that she'd be praying?

 

By the time he crept within thirty yards, Micah could plainly hear the nasal voice of a police sergeant over the restless stamping of horses' hooves, the jingle of harnesses and the steady hiss of two dozen police lanterns. Crouched behind an abandoned subsistence farmhouse, he emptied his mind of Jocelyn, of her parting words, of the cold that threatened to sap his strength. The fight with that behemoth inside the warehouse had taxed him more than he could afford to admit.

“…and with her maidservant stole an undisclosed amount of jewelry and cash from the Augustus Brock residence on
Fifth Avenue. The maidservant is a mute, but has been taught to read and write by the suspect. She may or may not have accompanied Mrs. Bingham to this site. One of the Brock servants, the housekeeper, claims she overheard Mrs. Bingham say she was meeting her lover at an abandoned warehouse, which is purportedly located near the center of this block.”

The sound of the policeman's voice was momentarily drowned out by the approach of a Black Maria—the infamous wagons used by police to transport prisoners. While he had breath in his body, Micah would save Jocelyn from that fate.

“…by twos, and approach from all four sides. Right, now, be quick about it, lads.”

The bevy of uniforms separated into pairs; Micah swiveled on his heel and made his way back to Jocelyn. Moments later, breathing hard, he dropped down beside her still form, almost invisible in the shadow of the shed until she lifted her head from her knees. He caught the faint upward curve of her mouth.

“Already? I was enjoying my nap.…”

“Hopefully you'll soon be able to take one in a nice feather bed.” Keep it light, he decided as he helped her to her feet, held her close until she found her balance. “We need to move as fast as we can, quietly,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble. “If you must tell me something, use a low voice but don't whisper. The sound of a whisper actually carries farther.”

She nodded. He led her around a mound of trash, toward the cover of the next building—a single-story structure minus all its windows. When they reached the edge, an open field stretched between them and the next cluster of buildings. Micah tightened his grip on her hand. “Run, but stay as hunched over as you can manage,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

Halfway across the muddy, uneven field she faltered, and he heard a low moan. Because she was swaying on her feet, Micah grabbed her shoulders, though his gaze continued to follow the bouncing yellow lights moving toward the warehouse. “Jocelyn? What's wrong?”

She staggered beneath his hands, and would have collapsed had he not gathered her into his arms. “Sorry…dizzy…” The words emerged reed-thin. “My leg. I don't know why, but it…hurts.”

Grimly, Micah calculated the distance, then set his teeth, lifted her high against his chest and set off across the field. They had five minutes or less before those policemen reached the warehouse and discovered that the man tied to a beam did not match the description of the one they were expecting.

“I'm going to be ill….”

“No, you're not. Breathe shallowly, through your nose, slowly…that's it,” he encouraged her between his own labored breaths. “Just a few more yards, and we'll be out of sight again.” For how long, he did not know, but at the moment his fear for Jocelyn overrode his fear of discovery.

A cluster of shanties had been built around a copse of scrubby trees, now stripped of leaves. Micah carefully set her down in the middle, where moonlight spilled narrow streamers of white between the branches; the shanties provided a screen between the police lanterns and their hiding place, allowing Micah to use the moonlight to try to find out what was wrong with Jocelyn.

“Easy now, sweetheart.” He leaned her back against the smooth trunk of one of the larger trees, but when he tried to straighten her legs she gasped. “Your leg—you told me your leg hurt. Which one? Don't try to talk, just point.” Her hand fumbled downward, then limply collapsed onto her left thigh.

Without another word, Micah pulled her cloak away. “I have to check,” he told her, maintaining a low, calm tone as
he lifted her skirt hem, telling her she would be all right, and to trust him—and the words stuck in his throat as he picked up the white lawn petticoat beneath the fine wool of her skirt.

In the pale block of moonlight, the left side of the petticoat, from the knee down, was soaked with blood.