Devils night, p.23
Devil's Night, page 23
They headed toward the hotel. The song had switched from ACDC to Linkin Park’s “In the End.”
On the way, Penny wrote a text to June, just in case June was still in Ashton.
Hi, I can’t find Linden, she wrote. Getting worried. If you hear from her or Anvi, please let me know?
The text went through. Next, Penny started on a similar message to Matthew. She wished he were here. Matthew thought so clearly in an emergency. He steadied her, and she desperately needed that right now. But Matthew was miles away.
“Are you texting someone?” Tripp glanced at her. “It’s best if we don’t raise any alarms yet. I don’t want to jeopardize the festival for nothing.”
Is Linden “nothing”? she thought. But she nodded, putting away her phone. She could finish writing to Matthew later.
They reached the hotel. Tripp had a quiet word with a security guard, who handed over a key to the padlock on the hotel’s door.
“Did you ask him to check the bank?” she said.
“I will after we’re done here. I don’t want rumors starting without reason.”
He was already changing what they’d agreed. But Penny let this go. If they didn’t see any sign of Linden or Anvi at the hotel, they could go with the security guards to the bank.
They went inside. The lobby was dim. There was no hint of the catastrophe that had happened at the opening party, when June dove off that balcony. The similarity to Jason Boyd’s death was unsettling, though his fall took place in a different building. She thought again of what Helen had told her: people in the hotel often felt compelled to the higher floors.
She thought she saw something move in the shadows near the dining room—a swirl of fabric—but when she looked again, nothing was there. She hugged her arms at the elbows.
Penny went to the base of the staircase. “Linden? Are you up there?” Her voice echoed in the rafters.
“What about that room you found?” Tripp asked. “The hidden one.”
“I thought of that. I don’t know why she’d be there, but it’s possible.” If the ghost was talking to her. Drawing her. Penny suppressed a shiver, thinking of her friend trapped. Terrified. Like Penny had been.
They walked through the bar, then into the dining room. “If she’s there,” Tripp said, “wouldn’t someone have heard her yelling through the open window? Or if she went in that yard where you found the bones?”
He’d asked the questions so coldly.
Don’t let him find me, a voice whispered.
She forced the ghost out of her mind. “I think someone would’ve heard her before,” Penny answered. “But now, with all the noise outside, I’m not so sure.”
Penny glanced up at the crack in the dining room ceiling. The room was in shadow, the chairs skeletal, placed legs-up on the rental tables. But the view from the window still showed blue sky. They had hours until night. Plenty of time for an ample search. Breathe, she told herself. If something terrible had already happened to Linden, they would know. She had to believe that.
From the kitchen, they veered into the long hallway. Penny pointed to the anteroom with the bookcase, where she’d found the secret entrance. She didn’t want to go in. She remembered the last time, and her throat tightened, as if those invisible hands were on her.
“You’ll have to show me,” Tripp said.
“I don’t…” I can’t go in there, she thought. Please don’t make me go in there. But Linden could be inside—pushed down. Hurt. Tears burned Penny’s eyes.
A faint cry rose in the air. It was coming from the other side of the wall. The ghost.
Or was it Linden?
“Do you hear that?” Penny asked.
“It’s something outside. A truck backing up.”
Be brave, she told herself. Holding her breath, she marched to the wall and felt around for the gap in the paneling. The room was so dark that she could hardly see Tripp beside her. But she heard his breathing. Felt his exhale, hot against her neck, and smelled the sweat underneath his cologne.
“I can’t see anything.”
He held up his phone and switched on the light. She found the gap and pulled the latch. The door swung wide. The hidden room beyond was a little brighter because of the window, though still dim. The tattered curtain shifted with the sudden rush of air.
It didn’t look like anyone was inside. She let out her breath, relieved that Linden hadn’t been trapped in that terrible place. But then, where was she? They’d have to search upstairs, but it might not be safe. They would need help.
“Aren’t you going in?” Tripp asked.
“She’s not there.”
“But you should check.”
“No.”
Penny tried to step back, but Tripp grabbed her by the bicep. “I’m sorry, Penny. I can’t let you ruin the festival tonight. It’s just one night, all right? I’ll be back for you in the morning.”
He took the leather backpack from her hand, shoved her into that horrible room, and slammed the door.
“We’re going home,” Debbie said. “Now.”
We’d retreated to the cars. Wallace and Carlos were scuffing their shoes in the dirt, unwilling to get involved in our family drama. Helen and Jason had likewise settled a few yards away.
Penny was lying on a blanket on the bed of my pickup truck, eating Goldfish crackers. She’d calmed down rapidly, in that way that children can suddenly smile and laugh after being upset. She’d bounced back like a little rubber ball. But Debbie was freaked.
“Babe,” I said to my wife, “just slow down. Let’s talk about this.”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“Daddy?” Penny sat up in the truck bed. Orange crumbs were scattered over her shirt. “Can we go in that hotel now?”
Debbie whimpered. “Why would you want to go in there?”
Penny looked at me, as if she expected me to understand. I couldn’t help thinking of her words from less than an hour before: She knows we’re here. The chills came back.
“Why honey?” I asked.
“Somebody’s lost in there. They need help getting found.”
-from A DEVIL IN EDEN by Lawrence Wright
Devil’s Night - 1894
The minute they heard the shots, Marian went to the door. She drew the revolver from her boot—the gun she’d taken from Bart earlier that day. In her other hand, she held her tiny derringer.
Douglas grabbed her arm. “Wait,” he said. He too had his gun in his hand. “You’d better stay here.”
“Like hell I will.” Such grammar. She was forgetting herself, wasn’t she?
Douglas twisted the knob. He opened the door by a few inches, then paused. He put a finger to his lips. Tilted his head to listen.
Marian looked back at the papers littering the floor. There was no money in the safe. Nothing of any value to her. She, Douglas, and Tim would walk away with nothing—except their lives, if they were lucky.
But Fitzhammer was dead. She took solace in that.
Outside the room, a floorboard creaked. Somebody was out in the corridor.
Douglas pointed his gun into the hallway and fired. More gunshots responded. He pulled back.
“Two men,” Douglas said. He leaned out again. Fired. Someone yelped. Douglas pulled back just as bullets slammed into the wood. Marian gripped her weapons, aiming at the open doorway. She still couldn’t see the intruders. Her pulse was picking up, thrumming in her ears like the ticking of that grandfather clock.
Douglas leaned out again. There was a shot. He screamed and reared back. He’d been hit. Marian didn’t hesitate. She stepped over him, aimed into the hallway, and pulled both triggers. Bart’s revolver bucked so hard she barely kept hold of it. She might’ve laughed at herself, firing both Bart’s enormous gun and her own undersized one, if the moment hadn’t been so fraught.
There was a man out there, red headed with a harelip. He pointed his weapon at her, but he didn’t fire. Instead, he looked down at his stomach, where red was seeping into his brown shirt.
Marian pulled the triggers again. The bullets tore a hole through the red-haired man’s chest. He stumbled back a few steps, then fell atop the other body sprawled on the hallway floor.
Panting, Marian kept her guns trained on the end of the hall, where a doorway opened into the kitchen. But no one came.
“Tim?” she hissed.
A constant hum whined in her ears. But she still imagined she could hear the ghostly cries.
She returned to the small room to check on Douglas. He wasn’t breathing. Poor man. Blood soaked his shirt. She went to the hall and tore a strip of fabric from the red-headed man’s shirt. Douglas gave no sign of life as she tied the fabric around his wounded shoulder.
A noise came from the kitchen.
Back against the wall, she crept her way along the corridor. At the doorway, she stopped. Was that breathing in the kitchen?
No—creaking. The rope. Keeping time with the ticking of that blasted clock. But where was Tim? She took a step forward, crossing the threshold.
A still-warm circle of metal touched her temple.
“Hello, Marian,” Bart said. “If you want that pretty head to stay in one piece, you’ll drop your weapons.”
“Where’s Tim?”
Still holding the gun to her head, Bart grabbed her by the back of the neck and jerked her forward. Tim lay sprawled in a pool of blood just inside the dining room.
“Your weapons,” Bart said.
She dropped the derringer. But her finger remained on the big revolver’s trigger. Could she swing it toward him in time? Not soon enough to stop him from killing her. But he was probably going to kill her, anyway. Her heart pounded so hard that her entire being was shaking. Yet somehow, she’d never felt so alive as in this moment.
She didn’t want to die.
The gun clattered to the kitchen floor.
“Where’s your tall friend?” Bart asked.
“Right behind me. I’d run if I were you.”
“I don’t think so. I think he’s dead. That’s what all that fuss was in the hallway. But now what do I do with you? That’s the only thing I haven’t figured out.”
He backed up a few feet, still training the gun on her. She wondered where he’d gotten the new weapon.
Bart leaned casually against the wall, assessing her. “You’ve done me a favor, you know. Killing Fitz. I would not stay here much longer, anyway, and you’ve made my exit a far sight easier. So I thank you.”
She spit between her boots. “I did it for myself. Not for you.”
Bart scratched his scalp with his free hand. “Only thing I can’t figure—why’d you want the old man to suffer like that? After he took you in. Educated you.”
Her calm broke. “He cast me aside, destroyed me! I’d kill him again if I could for what he done to me.” Did to me, she corrected. Did. Her chest heaved and her shoulders trembled.
A vicious smile spread across Bart’s face. “Well hell, you don’t know? You don’t know?”
“What are you talking about?”
He threw back his head and laughed. She’d have lunged for his gun if she wasn’t frozen in place. His laughter chilled her straight to her core.
“And I thought you were sharp, Marian. For a woman, anyhow.”
He grabbed hold of her arm and dragged her into the hallway. The gun pressed into her lower back. He brought her to the small records room. Douglas lay against one wall, his skin pale as sand. Bart nudged him with a boot.
“Dead. Just as I thought. Now it’s just you and me, once again.”
When Bart saw the open safe and the scattered documents, his laughter increased in pitch.
“You even got into the safe! A surprise, wasn’t it? You had the wrong end of the stick yet again. Fitz was always careless with his funds, but I convinced him to take more active measures. So many outlaws about, this day and age. And he built the damn bank, so he might as well use it.”
Bart dug into his pocket and produced a key dangling from a length of silver chain.
“Fitz had it around his neck the whole time. The key to his fortune—safely stored in a deposit box in the Eden Bank vault. You killed an innocent man and got absolutely nothing for it.”
He threw her to the floor. Marian backed into the corner, papers crinkling underneath her.
“Liar,” she said. Fitzhammer wasn’t innocent.
It was all lies.
She heard crying. Her child. Her poor, lost child. Doomed before she ever had a chance at life. But Marian had known whom to blame. That knowledge kept her alive—that drive for revenge.
She put her hands over her ears, but they couldn’t block the child’s cries or Bart’s cruel laughter.
No, she thought. No. It can’t be true.
“No!” she screamed.
Bart cringed. “I’ve heard enough from you to last me the rest of my days.” He went to Douglas’s body and ripped away part of the man’s shirt. Bart used it to tie Marian’s hands. He ripped another reddened strip of fabric and used it to gag her mouth.
“That’s much better. Now you can be quiet and listen. That obedient little girl is still in there somewhere.”
He knocked his fist against her forehead. She turned away, trying to burrow into the corner.
“Now, Fitz was an old letch,” Bart said. “But he couldn’t seal the deal, if you catch my meaning. So he always liked to have pretty young things around for the view. But I thought to myself, why should all that loveliness go to waste? You weren’t the first, nor were you the last.”
Her gorge rose. Bile filled her mouth behind the gag. She had to swallow it down to keep from choking.
She remembered the darkness. The hands holding her down. The smell of Fitzhammer’s cologne. She’d known it was him. She’d been sure.
“The crux is,” Bart said, “that I need to make it seem this is all your doing.” He thought a moment.
Marian barely listened. She was lost in the world of her memories, suffocating in the dark. But she hadn’t seen him in the light, had she? The smell of him was clear. His outline in the doorway. But back then, Bart and Fitzhammer cut a similar figure, didn’t they?
No. No, no, no.
“Let’s see, now,” Bart mused. “You’re holding Fitzhammer as your prisoner. Threatening his life, unless I deliver his fortune into your hands. Right? And your men killed O’Connor and the others, so what am I to do?” Bart clapped a hand to his thigh. “Go to the bank and retrieve the money, of course, at all costs. Which I then deliver to you. And I’m left here to mourn my dear master, Ernest Fitzhammer, who you so viciously dispatch even though I do everything you ask. Doesn’t that sound like a grand little drama? Half of it’s true, thanks to you.”
He squatted in front of her. “Only, you’ll need to disappear to make it convincing.”
She made a desperate grab at his gun, which he easily pulled out of reach.
“I’m a man of many secrets. This room is one of them. I fitted out the design myself during the construction—Fitzhammer may have paid, but he wasn’t ever one for details, was he? He didn’t see what he didn’t want to see. If there were cries in the night, he believed the ghost stories.”
She screamed her rage into the gag. The child’s cries picked up again.
“So you see,” Bart said, “you aren’t my only problem here in Eden. But I do believe I’ll work out my solution.” Keeping the gun trained on her, Bart reached around one of the bookcases. He pulled some sort of latch, and it swung open. The child’s cries grew louder, filling the room and Marian’s head.
He picked her up by the back of her shirt. Shoved her inside a dim room. It smelled like an unemptied chamber pot. Her knees hit the ground. Immediately she turned, trying to get back through the doorway.
He kicked her backward. The hidden door swung closed.
She threw herself against the wood, choking on her muffled screams.
Marian’s eyes watered from the smell. The child’s cries still filled her head.
Slowly, very slowly, she turned around to face the room.
She examined the tiny, dark space. It took a moment for the shapes to take on meaning in her mind.
Bottles, jars, boxes and tins covered a set of shelves. Emptied containers were piled into one corner. A cot was pushed up against a wall. Blankets sat in a bundle on top.
But it wasn’t just blankets. There was a person inside.
A woman. She had her eyes squeezed shut and her small, grime-streaked face turned to the wall, as if she were trying to hide. The child’s mewling cry was coming from the cot. Somewhere in those blankets, the woman held a baby.
“Shhh,” the woman said in a faint whisper, “shhh.”
My God, Marian thought, though she’d never in her life been a church-goer. Bart had said he had secrets. If there were cries in the night, he believed they were ghosts.
But these were no ghosts.
Marian got up. She tried to pull the gag from her mouth, but it was too tight. Using her bound hands, she pushed back the curtain over the window. Wan light filled the room. The woman on the cot flinched.
No, she wasn’t a woman. She was a girl. Gaunt enough that her cheekbones made sharp lines, but she had not a single wrinkle or sign of age. She was just a few years younger than Marian. Perhaps sixteen.
This could’ve been me, she thought.
Marian made a grunting sound through her gag. The girl wouldn’t look at her. How long had Bart been keeping the girl here? Since the pregnancy, maybe before, Marian guessed. It was horrifying to contemplate the girl’s life here.
“Please, leave me alone,” the girl whispered.
Marian got onto her knees by the cot and held out her bound hands. She made a small whimpering sound through the gag, hoping the girl would respond. Because if she didn’t—if they didn’t help one another—they were both going to die. Bart had a purpose for them yet, but Marian was sure he wouldn’t let them live long.
The baby was quieting. The blankets moved, and Marian thought that the girl was giving the baby the breast. Finally, after several agonizing minutes, the girl looked over.
On the way, Penny wrote a text to June, just in case June was still in Ashton.
Hi, I can’t find Linden, she wrote. Getting worried. If you hear from her or Anvi, please let me know?
The text went through. Next, Penny started on a similar message to Matthew. She wished he were here. Matthew thought so clearly in an emergency. He steadied her, and she desperately needed that right now. But Matthew was miles away.
“Are you texting someone?” Tripp glanced at her. “It’s best if we don’t raise any alarms yet. I don’t want to jeopardize the festival for nothing.”
Is Linden “nothing”? she thought. But she nodded, putting away her phone. She could finish writing to Matthew later.
They reached the hotel. Tripp had a quiet word with a security guard, who handed over a key to the padlock on the hotel’s door.
“Did you ask him to check the bank?” she said.
“I will after we’re done here. I don’t want rumors starting without reason.”
He was already changing what they’d agreed. But Penny let this go. If they didn’t see any sign of Linden or Anvi at the hotel, they could go with the security guards to the bank.
They went inside. The lobby was dim. There was no hint of the catastrophe that had happened at the opening party, when June dove off that balcony. The similarity to Jason Boyd’s death was unsettling, though his fall took place in a different building. She thought again of what Helen had told her: people in the hotel often felt compelled to the higher floors.
She thought she saw something move in the shadows near the dining room—a swirl of fabric—but when she looked again, nothing was there. She hugged her arms at the elbows.
Penny went to the base of the staircase. “Linden? Are you up there?” Her voice echoed in the rafters.
“What about that room you found?” Tripp asked. “The hidden one.”
“I thought of that. I don’t know why she’d be there, but it’s possible.” If the ghost was talking to her. Drawing her. Penny suppressed a shiver, thinking of her friend trapped. Terrified. Like Penny had been.
They walked through the bar, then into the dining room. “If she’s there,” Tripp said, “wouldn’t someone have heard her yelling through the open window? Or if she went in that yard where you found the bones?”
He’d asked the questions so coldly.
Don’t let him find me, a voice whispered.
She forced the ghost out of her mind. “I think someone would’ve heard her before,” Penny answered. “But now, with all the noise outside, I’m not so sure.”
Penny glanced up at the crack in the dining room ceiling. The room was in shadow, the chairs skeletal, placed legs-up on the rental tables. But the view from the window still showed blue sky. They had hours until night. Plenty of time for an ample search. Breathe, she told herself. If something terrible had already happened to Linden, they would know. She had to believe that.
From the kitchen, they veered into the long hallway. Penny pointed to the anteroom with the bookcase, where she’d found the secret entrance. She didn’t want to go in. She remembered the last time, and her throat tightened, as if those invisible hands were on her.
“You’ll have to show me,” Tripp said.
“I don’t…” I can’t go in there, she thought. Please don’t make me go in there. But Linden could be inside—pushed down. Hurt. Tears burned Penny’s eyes.
A faint cry rose in the air. It was coming from the other side of the wall. The ghost.
Or was it Linden?
“Do you hear that?” Penny asked.
“It’s something outside. A truck backing up.”
Be brave, she told herself. Holding her breath, she marched to the wall and felt around for the gap in the paneling. The room was so dark that she could hardly see Tripp beside her. But she heard his breathing. Felt his exhale, hot against her neck, and smelled the sweat underneath his cologne.
“I can’t see anything.”
He held up his phone and switched on the light. She found the gap and pulled the latch. The door swung wide. The hidden room beyond was a little brighter because of the window, though still dim. The tattered curtain shifted with the sudden rush of air.
It didn’t look like anyone was inside. She let out her breath, relieved that Linden hadn’t been trapped in that terrible place. But then, where was she? They’d have to search upstairs, but it might not be safe. They would need help.
“Aren’t you going in?” Tripp asked.
“She’s not there.”
“But you should check.”
“No.”
Penny tried to step back, but Tripp grabbed her by the bicep. “I’m sorry, Penny. I can’t let you ruin the festival tonight. It’s just one night, all right? I’ll be back for you in the morning.”
He took the leather backpack from her hand, shoved her into that horrible room, and slammed the door.
“We’re going home,” Debbie said. “Now.”
We’d retreated to the cars. Wallace and Carlos were scuffing their shoes in the dirt, unwilling to get involved in our family drama. Helen and Jason had likewise settled a few yards away.
Penny was lying on a blanket on the bed of my pickup truck, eating Goldfish crackers. She’d calmed down rapidly, in that way that children can suddenly smile and laugh after being upset. She’d bounced back like a little rubber ball. But Debbie was freaked.
“Babe,” I said to my wife, “just slow down. Let’s talk about this.”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“Daddy?” Penny sat up in the truck bed. Orange crumbs were scattered over her shirt. “Can we go in that hotel now?”
Debbie whimpered. “Why would you want to go in there?”
Penny looked at me, as if she expected me to understand. I couldn’t help thinking of her words from less than an hour before: She knows we’re here. The chills came back.
“Why honey?” I asked.
“Somebody’s lost in there. They need help getting found.”
-from A DEVIL IN EDEN by Lawrence Wright
Devil’s Night - 1894
The minute they heard the shots, Marian went to the door. She drew the revolver from her boot—the gun she’d taken from Bart earlier that day. In her other hand, she held her tiny derringer.
Douglas grabbed her arm. “Wait,” he said. He too had his gun in his hand. “You’d better stay here.”
“Like hell I will.” Such grammar. She was forgetting herself, wasn’t she?
Douglas twisted the knob. He opened the door by a few inches, then paused. He put a finger to his lips. Tilted his head to listen.
Marian looked back at the papers littering the floor. There was no money in the safe. Nothing of any value to her. She, Douglas, and Tim would walk away with nothing—except their lives, if they were lucky.
But Fitzhammer was dead. She took solace in that.
Outside the room, a floorboard creaked. Somebody was out in the corridor.
Douglas pointed his gun into the hallway and fired. More gunshots responded. He pulled back.
“Two men,” Douglas said. He leaned out again. Fired. Someone yelped. Douglas pulled back just as bullets slammed into the wood. Marian gripped her weapons, aiming at the open doorway. She still couldn’t see the intruders. Her pulse was picking up, thrumming in her ears like the ticking of that grandfather clock.
Douglas leaned out again. There was a shot. He screamed and reared back. He’d been hit. Marian didn’t hesitate. She stepped over him, aimed into the hallway, and pulled both triggers. Bart’s revolver bucked so hard she barely kept hold of it. She might’ve laughed at herself, firing both Bart’s enormous gun and her own undersized one, if the moment hadn’t been so fraught.
There was a man out there, red headed with a harelip. He pointed his weapon at her, but he didn’t fire. Instead, he looked down at his stomach, where red was seeping into his brown shirt.
Marian pulled the triggers again. The bullets tore a hole through the red-haired man’s chest. He stumbled back a few steps, then fell atop the other body sprawled on the hallway floor.
Panting, Marian kept her guns trained on the end of the hall, where a doorway opened into the kitchen. But no one came.
“Tim?” she hissed.
A constant hum whined in her ears. But she still imagined she could hear the ghostly cries.
She returned to the small room to check on Douglas. He wasn’t breathing. Poor man. Blood soaked his shirt. She went to the hall and tore a strip of fabric from the red-headed man’s shirt. Douglas gave no sign of life as she tied the fabric around his wounded shoulder.
A noise came from the kitchen.
Back against the wall, she crept her way along the corridor. At the doorway, she stopped. Was that breathing in the kitchen?
No—creaking. The rope. Keeping time with the ticking of that blasted clock. But where was Tim? She took a step forward, crossing the threshold.
A still-warm circle of metal touched her temple.
“Hello, Marian,” Bart said. “If you want that pretty head to stay in one piece, you’ll drop your weapons.”
“Where’s Tim?”
Still holding the gun to her head, Bart grabbed her by the back of the neck and jerked her forward. Tim lay sprawled in a pool of blood just inside the dining room.
“Your weapons,” Bart said.
She dropped the derringer. But her finger remained on the big revolver’s trigger. Could she swing it toward him in time? Not soon enough to stop him from killing her. But he was probably going to kill her, anyway. Her heart pounded so hard that her entire being was shaking. Yet somehow, she’d never felt so alive as in this moment.
She didn’t want to die.
The gun clattered to the kitchen floor.
“Where’s your tall friend?” Bart asked.
“Right behind me. I’d run if I were you.”
“I don’t think so. I think he’s dead. That’s what all that fuss was in the hallway. But now what do I do with you? That’s the only thing I haven’t figured out.”
He backed up a few feet, still training the gun on her. She wondered where he’d gotten the new weapon.
Bart leaned casually against the wall, assessing her. “You’ve done me a favor, you know. Killing Fitz. I would not stay here much longer, anyway, and you’ve made my exit a far sight easier. So I thank you.”
She spit between her boots. “I did it for myself. Not for you.”
Bart scratched his scalp with his free hand. “Only thing I can’t figure—why’d you want the old man to suffer like that? After he took you in. Educated you.”
Her calm broke. “He cast me aside, destroyed me! I’d kill him again if I could for what he done to me.” Did to me, she corrected. Did. Her chest heaved and her shoulders trembled.
A vicious smile spread across Bart’s face. “Well hell, you don’t know? You don’t know?”
“What are you talking about?”
He threw back his head and laughed. She’d have lunged for his gun if she wasn’t frozen in place. His laughter chilled her straight to her core.
“And I thought you were sharp, Marian. For a woman, anyhow.”
He grabbed hold of her arm and dragged her into the hallway. The gun pressed into her lower back. He brought her to the small records room. Douglas lay against one wall, his skin pale as sand. Bart nudged him with a boot.
“Dead. Just as I thought. Now it’s just you and me, once again.”
When Bart saw the open safe and the scattered documents, his laughter increased in pitch.
“You even got into the safe! A surprise, wasn’t it? You had the wrong end of the stick yet again. Fitz was always careless with his funds, but I convinced him to take more active measures. So many outlaws about, this day and age. And he built the damn bank, so he might as well use it.”
Bart dug into his pocket and produced a key dangling from a length of silver chain.
“Fitz had it around his neck the whole time. The key to his fortune—safely stored in a deposit box in the Eden Bank vault. You killed an innocent man and got absolutely nothing for it.”
He threw her to the floor. Marian backed into the corner, papers crinkling underneath her.
“Liar,” she said. Fitzhammer wasn’t innocent.
It was all lies.
She heard crying. Her child. Her poor, lost child. Doomed before she ever had a chance at life. But Marian had known whom to blame. That knowledge kept her alive—that drive for revenge.
She put her hands over her ears, but they couldn’t block the child’s cries or Bart’s cruel laughter.
No, she thought. No. It can’t be true.
“No!” she screamed.
Bart cringed. “I’ve heard enough from you to last me the rest of my days.” He went to Douglas’s body and ripped away part of the man’s shirt. Bart used it to tie Marian’s hands. He ripped another reddened strip of fabric and used it to gag her mouth.
“That’s much better. Now you can be quiet and listen. That obedient little girl is still in there somewhere.”
He knocked his fist against her forehead. She turned away, trying to burrow into the corner.
“Now, Fitz was an old letch,” Bart said. “But he couldn’t seal the deal, if you catch my meaning. So he always liked to have pretty young things around for the view. But I thought to myself, why should all that loveliness go to waste? You weren’t the first, nor were you the last.”
Her gorge rose. Bile filled her mouth behind the gag. She had to swallow it down to keep from choking.
She remembered the darkness. The hands holding her down. The smell of Fitzhammer’s cologne. She’d known it was him. She’d been sure.
“The crux is,” Bart said, “that I need to make it seem this is all your doing.” He thought a moment.
Marian barely listened. She was lost in the world of her memories, suffocating in the dark. But she hadn’t seen him in the light, had she? The smell of him was clear. His outline in the doorway. But back then, Bart and Fitzhammer cut a similar figure, didn’t they?
No. No, no, no.
“Let’s see, now,” Bart mused. “You’re holding Fitzhammer as your prisoner. Threatening his life, unless I deliver his fortune into your hands. Right? And your men killed O’Connor and the others, so what am I to do?” Bart clapped a hand to his thigh. “Go to the bank and retrieve the money, of course, at all costs. Which I then deliver to you. And I’m left here to mourn my dear master, Ernest Fitzhammer, who you so viciously dispatch even though I do everything you ask. Doesn’t that sound like a grand little drama? Half of it’s true, thanks to you.”
He squatted in front of her. “Only, you’ll need to disappear to make it convincing.”
She made a desperate grab at his gun, which he easily pulled out of reach.
“I’m a man of many secrets. This room is one of them. I fitted out the design myself during the construction—Fitzhammer may have paid, but he wasn’t ever one for details, was he? He didn’t see what he didn’t want to see. If there were cries in the night, he believed the ghost stories.”
She screamed her rage into the gag. The child’s cries picked up again.
“So you see,” Bart said, “you aren’t my only problem here in Eden. But I do believe I’ll work out my solution.” Keeping the gun trained on her, Bart reached around one of the bookcases. He pulled some sort of latch, and it swung open. The child’s cries grew louder, filling the room and Marian’s head.
He picked her up by the back of her shirt. Shoved her inside a dim room. It smelled like an unemptied chamber pot. Her knees hit the ground. Immediately she turned, trying to get back through the doorway.
He kicked her backward. The hidden door swung closed.
She threw herself against the wood, choking on her muffled screams.
Marian’s eyes watered from the smell. The child’s cries still filled her head.
Slowly, very slowly, she turned around to face the room.
She examined the tiny, dark space. It took a moment for the shapes to take on meaning in her mind.
Bottles, jars, boxes and tins covered a set of shelves. Emptied containers were piled into one corner. A cot was pushed up against a wall. Blankets sat in a bundle on top.
But it wasn’t just blankets. There was a person inside.
A woman. She had her eyes squeezed shut and her small, grime-streaked face turned to the wall, as if she were trying to hide. The child’s mewling cry was coming from the cot. Somewhere in those blankets, the woman held a baby.
“Shhh,” the woman said in a faint whisper, “shhh.”
My God, Marian thought, though she’d never in her life been a church-goer. Bart had said he had secrets. If there were cries in the night, he believed they were ghosts.
But these were no ghosts.
Marian got up. She tried to pull the gag from her mouth, but it was too tight. Using her bound hands, she pushed back the curtain over the window. Wan light filled the room. The woman on the cot flinched.
No, she wasn’t a woman. She was a girl. Gaunt enough that her cheekbones made sharp lines, but she had not a single wrinkle or sign of age. She was just a few years younger than Marian. Perhaps sixteen.
This could’ve been me, she thought.
Marian made a grunting sound through her gag. The girl wouldn’t look at her. How long had Bart been keeping the girl here? Since the pregnancy, maybe before, Marian guessed. It was horrifying to contemplate the girl’s life here.
“Please, leave me alone,” the girl whispered.
Marian got onto her knees by the cot and held out her bound hands. She made a small whimpering sound through the gag, hoping the girl would respond. Because if she didn’t—if they didn’t help one another—they were both going to die. Bart had a purpose for them yet, but Marian was sure he wouldn’t let them live long.
The baby was quieting. The blankets moved, and Marian thought that the girl was giving the baby the breast. Finally, after several agonizing minutes, the girl looked over.
