Книга - Bride of the Night

Bride of the Night
Heather Graham


She’s the vampire that could destroy a nation At least, that’s what detective Finn thinks of Tara Fox.He’s convinced she’s been sent to take out the president. She’s the most attractive assassin he’s ever faced, but that won’t keep him from his duty. Tara has always been caught between worlds.As a vampire born and raised in Key West, she has many friends among the humans.Friends that are fighting and dying in the Civil War. When her strange dreams began, she thought of them as abstract visions. But she now knows that she must protect the president at all costs. Finn still won’t trust her. But Tara will do whatever it takes to save the president, even if it costs her heart.












PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OFHEATHERGRAHAM


“An incredible storyteller.”

—Los Angeles Daily News

“Graham does a great job of blending just a bit of paranormal with real, human evil.”

—Miami Herald

“Heather Graham has a wonderful talent for taking bits of history and blending them in with urban fantasy. With Night of the Vampires, set during the Civil War … vampires [take] advantage of the great death tolls to feed and replenish their numbers. Her ability to take interesting little historic tidbits … could pique even the non-history buff’s interest.” —Fresh Fiction

“Graham’s unique tale cleverly blends Civil War history, vampire myths and lore and of course, heart-pounding romance. It’s perfect for those who love intricate historical details, lush scenery and old-fashioned romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on Night of the Vampires

“Graham’s expertise is in weaving a tale where the unbelievable seems believable.”

—Suspense Magazine

“Mystery, sex, paranormal events. What’s not to love?”

—Kirkus Reviews on The Death Dealer

“Heather Graham knows what readers want.”

—Publishers Weekly




Heather

Graham

Bride of the Night







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




PROLOGUE


Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

November 19, 1863

“FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The breeze picked up, just as President Lincoln began to speak.

Finn Dunne heard a soft crackle from the dead and dying leaves that clung to or fell from the trees in the surrounding forests and hills. It was almost as if the earth itself mourned the tragic loss of life here.

Still mounted atop his large thoroughbred, Finn surveyed the crowd. He had ridden near the president during the procession from the Wills House to Baltimore Street, along the Taneytown Road, and into the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Looking at the president, Finn reassured himself that others equally tasked with the duty of guarding him were likewise vigilant. Vigilant even through the last speaker, Edward Everett—ex-senator, professor and highly acclaimed orator … and certainly a long-winded fellow—had gone on for two hours before giving way to the president.

There were children in the crowd growing very restless, prompting their mothers to take them toward the graves where their antics would be less audible. Other mothers who had lost sons stood near the speakers, dabbing at their tearstained eyes. And since life went on despite the dead, soldiers and civilians stood a little closer to the prettier women, trying to use the occasion, with all of its solemnity, to flirt.

Soldiers, and other Pinkerton men, stood around, the soldiers obvious—some in dress uniforms and some in their well-worn fighting attire—and the Pinkerton men in various combinations of clothing, from dress shirts to frock coats to railway jackets. It was November, and the day had a nip to it: “a cold like the dead,” someone had whispered earlier.

The victory at Gettysburg and recent successes along the Mississippi and on the western front had been encouraging. But Abraham Lincoln’s reelection remained in doubt. Even now, there were those sick of the war, those who believed they should just let the Confederacy go their own way, and good riddance, too.

But that had not happened, and so Finn was on the lookout for Southern sympathizers, fanatics who might just want the tall, grave man who carried the world on his shoulders out.

The president had arrived by train yesterday, and a young local man, Sergeant H. Paxton Bigham, had been assigned to guard the chief executive. Finn had met Bigham, and liked him, and his brother, Rush, as well. Neither had slept during the night. Their loyalty couldn’t be questioned. Finn wanted to believe that he could rest easily; Gettysburg was firmly entrenched in the hands of the North. But he never rested, for there was always the possibility that a Confederate spy or sympathizer might just take a shot at Lincoln.

Never before had Finn met a man that he was so completely willing to die for. For Lincoln, he would give his all.

Not that he’d ever die easily.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Finn scanned the natural surroundings—acres, hills, trees and beautiful little streams where rivulets sent sparkling water dancing over the rocks by day. There were also rocky tor areas, trails that twisted and turned through narrow paths. Places like Devil’s Den …

Where bodies had lain upon bodies … So many men had become trapped in the rugged rock formations, and mown down. More than fifty thousand casualties here alone—Northern and Southern, dead, dying, wounded and captured. Rains brought the masses of hastily buried bodies back to the surface, the decaying corpses a mortal reminder that filled every breath, and which attracted swarms of flies and herds of wild pigs intent upon consuming everything. As the summer heat following the July battle added to the wretchedness of the place, Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania had to do something, and thus the cemetery had been planned. And the president’s consecration of that land today.

Gettysburg would never be the same again. For some, it would be a shrine. For others, it would be remembered as the site of a massacre. Finn was fairly certain that no matter how it was seen by his contemporaries, history would prove that it was the pivotal ground upon which the rest of the war would hang. Here, the South had been forced to retreat. General Lee was said to have all but wept at the loss of life, and that his chance to take the war into the North had surely been lost. And with that, likely the war, as well.

A surge of anguish so strong it was almost physical swept through Finn. He knew General Robert E. Lee. He had been Lincoln’s first choice as a commander for his own forces. Lee, so it was said, spent a tortured night pacing the hallway of his Arlington home, trying to decide by light of his conscience and his great belief in God what was the right path to take. The grandson of Lighthorse Harry Lee, a hero of the Revolution, Lee had finally decided that he was a Virginian first, no matter his individual thoughts and feelings on secession.

There.

In the rear, near a gravestone but moving closer to the podium. There was a woman, her shoulders covered by a long cape, her arms and hands concealed by it. Carrying something …

Lincoln—never truly aware of his own personal danger—gave his complete attention and heart to his words. “We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

Finn drew his coat more tightly about him as he whispered, “Stay, boy,” to Piebald and dismounted. As he slipped through the crowd, most people barely noted him; they were silent, listening. Some, however, smiled as he passed, glad for a break from standing and staring. Many had now wandered off, Everett’s speech having left them fatigued.

Finn looked over toward the podium.

He knew that the Bigham brothers and their company were on assignment, and, by the president’s request, Finn’s own guard kept a perimeter. There shouldn’t really have been any trouble. Lincoln’s appearance here had actually been a last-minute consideration—after all, tens of thousands of men had died in many locations, and he couldn’t be present for every burial. But the battle at Gettysburg had demanded a price of American blood, Northern and Southern, like no other. Finn imagined that Lincoln’s host, Attorney Wills, might have believed the president would turn down the invitation to speak. But Finn also imagined that Lincoln had actually been looking for just such an opportunity. A victory like Gettysburg was hard-won, and this was the place to convince the people that the war could be won, and must be won. And that it would end not in retribution against the rebels, but in a true peace for all Americans.

President Lincoln was always hard to guard. He considered himself a man of the people. And he couldn’t be a man of the people if he didn’t see the people, and if they didn’t see him. This, of course, made gave his bodyguards more of a chore.

Finn had almost reached the woman. The president was still speaking, and it seemed that he had thoroughly gripped the attention of the people now. No one noticed as Finn politely slid closer and closer to the woman—who herself moved closer and closer to the president.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” Lincoln’s voice rang with sincerity, a tremulous quality to it.

And the woman was almost upon him.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced,” Lincoln intoned somberly. “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The president of the United States stepped back from the podium. Some of the crowd applauded enthusiastically. Some stared ahead with such glazed eyes that Finn wondered if they’d really even heard the man.

But Finn’s quarry, she was a young beauty, and she seemed to be watching the president with rapt, splendorous eyes. Huge, hazel eyes fringed with impossibly dark lashes. Her long wavy hair fell down her back in shades of reddish gold—

A murderous agent didn’t have to be ugly on the outside to carry out a heinous deed! Finn reminded himself.

Just as he made it to her side, she reached beneath the encompassing warm cloak.

He’d expected a gun.

Or a knife.

His arms encircled her just as he saw what she carried….

A beautifully knitted scarf in the colors of the American flag.

Her eyes, gold and gleaming, turned on his. They seemed to burn with a strange fire, and yet, one he knew too well.

“Idiot!” she whispered at him.

She turned away, somehow escaping Finn’s grasp and backing out of the crowd.

The scarf fell to the earth.

Blood-soaked earth …

For a moment, Finn lost her, but whether or not she had been carrying nothing more lethal than wool, his instincts told him not to trust her. He moved quickly and saw her again, hurrying away, toward the woods.

The crowd was clearing, enough so that he could whistle for Piebald. His horse came to him, carefully moving through the dispersing crowd. He leaped atop the animal and urged it into a trot to clear the crowd, and then a lope to hurry in pursuit.

The beauty had already disappeared….

Finn rode into the woods and reined in, looking, listening. He heard the rustle of a tree, and quickly turned.

Yes, something moved, just ahead….

He urged his steed on and tore ahead. There … darting from one tree to the next!

When he was almost upon her, he jumped from his horse’s back and tackled her back down to the earth. She lay beneath him, staring up at him with hatred and fury.

“What? What?” she demanded. “What do you want from me?” “What ill intent did you intend President Lincoln? Who are your coconspirators? What is the plan?” he demanded.

“Coconspirators?” she said blankly.

But there was the hint of a soft Southern drawl in her speech….

She took him completely by surprise; that was his downfall. He knew his own power and strength, but he’d been so damned confident in it that he’d not bothered to ascertain hers.

“Ass!” she hissed.

And then she shoved him up off her and backward, much to his surprise.

She was on her feet in seconds. “For your information, I would do anything for that man! Anything at all!”

He leaped up, staring at her. “Then stand here and tell me who and what you are!”

She shook her head, and turned.

He lunged for her, and caught a lock of her hair. She cried out in fury and escaped his hold. And then …

She seemed to disappear into thin air.

He held nothing…. Nothing, save a lock of her hair.

He held on to the red-and-gold lock of that hair, intending to find her, come hell or high water.

He would hold on to it, until he found her again.

And find her he would.

But well over a year of war, bloodshed and death would follow before he did.




CHAPTER ONE


Winter, 1865

“LINCOLN, LINCOLN, LINCOLN,” Richard Anderson said, shaking his head sadly. “Frankly, I don’t understand your obsession with the man.”

Richard pointed out beyond the sand dunes and the scattered pines to the sea—and over the causeway to Fort Zachary Taylor where the North was in control, and had been in control since the beginning of the war, despite Florida being the third state to secede from the Union. He sat down in the pine-laden sand next to Tara, confusion lacing his gray eyes.

“You’re at the southernmost tip of the southernmost state. A Confederate state. I don’t see you gnawing your lip and chewing down your nails to the nub over Jefferson Davis, who has certainly had his share of trouble, too. Seriously,” he said, scooting closer to her, “Tara Fox, if you’re not careful, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Getting myself killed is highly unlikely,” she murmured. She smiled at Richard, her friend since childhood. They were seated on the small dunes on the edge of the island, away from the homes on the main streets of the town, and far to the east of the fort and any of its troops that might be about. Tara loved to come here. The pines made a soft seat of the sand, and the breeze always seemed to come in gently from the ocean, unless a storm was nearing, and even then she loved it equally. There was something about the sea when the sky turned gray and the wind began to pick up with a soft evil moan that promised of the tempest to come.

“Hardly likely? More than possible!” Richard said hoarsely. “My dearest friend, your passions make you a whirlwind!”

“Honestly, please. This is a war between human beings. The Northern soldiers don’t run around killing women—from what I understand, they’re only locking up spies when they’re women, and not doing a great job keeping any of them in prison at that.”

“There’s nothing human about war at all.”

“But, Richard, I’m not a spy, and I’m not trying to do anything evil. I just keep dreaming about Abraham Lincoln.”

“My dear girl, he’s not the usual man to fulfill a lass’s dreams of fantasy and romance,” Richard said, grinning widely.

She cast him a glare in which her effort to control her patience was entirely obvious. “Richard, that’s not what I mean at all and you know it.”

“It was worth a try,” he said wearily. “You are like a dog with a bone when you start on something, and it terrifies me.”

Tara ignored that. “I’ve already gone north once, Richard.” She said the words flatly, as if they proved that she could well manage herself. Yet, even as she spoke with such assurance to him, she was startled to feel a chill of fear.

Yes, she had gone north, and, yes, she had been accosted. By an idiot citizen who seemed to think that she was about to offer harm to President Lincoln. Idiot, yes, but …

Canny and observant, he had watched her—stalked her practically!—and stopped her from getting near Lincoln. If she hadn’t been wary …

No, she could take care of herself. If forced into a fighting position, she could take care of herself. And, while highly unlikely, she could be killed, especially if someone really knew or understood just who she was.

What she was.

That was then, long ago now. The man could be dead now, such was the war.

Somehow, she doubted it. She could too easily remember him. Though far shorter than the president, he was well over six feet tall, built of brick, so it appeared, with sharp dark eyes that seemed to rip right through flesh and blood. She remembered his touch all too well. He was a dangerous enemy.

“I’ve been north before,” she repeated to Richard. “I’m not a soldier and I’m not a spy. I’m a traveler. I’m just trying to find a place to live, to find work … I’ve been there, I’ve done it before.”

“Yes, I know, and I didn’t think that it was a good idea then, and I think it’s a worse idea now.”

She touched his hand gently. She couldn’t be afraid, and she couldn’t let others be afraid for her. If she could only make her friends understand that it was almost as if she was being called to help. “Richard, it’s as if he knows me, as if he’s communicating with me through his mind. I don’t know how to explain, but I dream that we’re walking through the White House—and he’s talking to me.”

Richard stood, paced the soft ground and paused again to look at her. “If you want to go, you know that I’ll help you. I just want you to realize what a grave mistake you’re making—absolutely no pun intended.” He hesitated. “This is home. This is Key West. This is where your mother came, and where you are accepted, and where you have friends. It’s where I’m based.”

Tara lifted her chin. “It’s where you’re based. Half of the time, you’re off—trying to slip through the blockade. Speak of dangerous.”

“It’s what I’m supposed to do,” he said quietly.

“You never wanted the war,” she reminded him. “You said from the beginning that there had to be a way to compromise, that we just needed to realize that slavery was archaic and the great plantation owners could begin a system of payments and schooling and—”

“I was an idiot,” he said flatly. “In one thing, the world will never change. Men will be blind when a system—even an evil one—creates their way of life, their riches and their survival. John Brown might have been a murdering fanatic, but in this, he could have been right.” He gazed off into the distance, a bemused look on his face. “The state of Vermont abolished slavery long before your Mr. Lincoln thought of his emancipation proclamation. But do you think that rich farmers anywhere were thinking that they’d have to pick their own cotton if such a law existed? Yes, it can happen, it will happen, but …”

“You’re saying the war is over, that we’ve lost—but you keep going out, running the blockade.”

He lifted his hands. “It’s what I have to do…. But! You don’t have to. You are in a dangerous situation when you leave this place.”

“Richard! I don’t walk around with a sign on my back with large printed letters that spell out b-a-s-t-a-r-d!” she said indignantly.

“Nor do you have a sign that says Be Wary! Half Vampire!” Richard warned.

Tara was silence a minute. “And you’re my friend,” she murmured dryly.

He knelt back down by her in the bracken by the pines near the tiny spit of beach that stretched out along the causeway to the fort. “I am your friend. That’s why I’m telling you this. You know I’ll take you aboard the Peace when you wish … you know that. What I’m trying to tell you is that every journey we make grows more dangerous. The South started the war with no navy, had to scrounge around and build like crazy—beg, borrow and steal other ships—and then count on blockade runners to carry supplies. My ship is good, but the noose is tightening on us, Tara.”

He was quiet for a minute, looking downward, and then he looked up at her again. “Tara, I’m saying this to you now, here alone. If I were heard, it might well be construed as that I was speaking as a traitor, and God help me, I’d fight for my state, no matter what. Yet, every word we’ve spoken here is the truth of it. The war is ending. And we are on our knees, dying. The Confederacy can’t hold out much longer, and who knows, maybe God Himself is speaking. General Sherman ripped Atlanta apart, and thankfully Savannah surrendered before being burned to the ground, as well. Since Gettysburg, our victories have been small and sadly sparse.”

Tara drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. “Yes,” she said softly. “I can read very well,” she assured him.

“The death toll is ungodly.” He might well have been sadly informing himself.

“I know …” She waved a hand in the air. “I know the tragedy of the whole situation, and all the logic. Grant is grabbing immigrants right off the ships and throwing them into the Union forces. The North has the manufacturing—and what they didn’t have, they seized. They’re in control of the railroads, and when the South rips them up, they have the money and supplies to repair them, and we don’t. Lee’s army is threadbare, shoeless, down on ammunition and, half the time, scrounging desperately for food. I know all that, Richard. Like you, I’d hoped that there wouldn’t be a war, and that most people with any sense would realize that it wouldn’t simply be a massive cost in life for all of us.”

She looked at Richard, pain and passion in her eyes. “I think about you, and my friends fighting for the South. And I think about Hank Manner, the kind young Yankee at the fort who helped old Mrs. Bartley when her carriage fell over. Richard, the concept of any of you shot and torn and bleeding is horrible. North and South, we’re all human beings.” She winced. “Well, you know what I mean. Hank is a good man, a really good man.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then added softly, “I think I’m just grateful. It really is all over. I just don’t know why we keep fighting.”

“Human beings. Yes, as you said—it’s the human beast,” Richard said, shaking his head as he looked out to the sea. “Men can’t accept defeat. It hits us at some primal level, and we just about have to destroy everything, including ourselves …”

“So, it may go on. Please, Richard …?”

“The war will go on,” he said harshly. “And it will be chaos while it’s still being settled, and, God knows, far worse after!”

“You can’t understand this urgency I feel,” she told him.

He gripped her hands. “Tara, it makes no sense! Why in hell are you worried about Abraham Lincoln? He’s been elected, again. He’ll be inaugurated soon, again. He’ll be the conquering hero of the United States. What, are you crazy? There are professional military guards who worry about his safety, friends who watch over him. And Pinkerton guards …”

“He surely can’t imagine the amount of enemies he must have.”

“But, Tara—” Richard began, and then he just shook his head and went silent with frustration.

She smiled, touching his face tenderly. They’d known each other so long. She almost smiled, thinking about how most of the people they knew couldn’t understand why they hadn’t married. But, of course, they could never marry. They were closer than a sister and a brother. They had grown up as outcasts who’d had to prove themselves, even to survive in the bawdy, salvaging, raw world of Key West, where nationalities mingled with the nationless pirates, and, yes, where the War of Northern Aggression went on, though most often as idle threats and fists raised to the sky. At Fort Zachary Taylor, the Union troops died far more frequently from disease than from battle, though Union ships ever tightened their grip on the blockade. Beer, wine, rum, Scottish whiskey and all manner of alcohol ran rich at the taverns. Fishermen mingled with the architects of the fine new houses, and only at night, behind the wooden walls of their houses—poor or splendid—did the system of class mean much in Key West.

Tara thought that she and Richard were far closer than they might have been had they been born blood sister and brother. Tara’s mother had returned from an excursion to the mainland with a new name and child, but no husband. Richard’s mother had deserted his pirating father, who had eventually been seized and hanged for his criminal ways. Lorna Douglas Fox had taken Richard in when he’d been just eight years old, ignoring all speculations that the boy would surely grow to be as bad as his father. Lorna had already weathered rumor and whispers; she didn’t care what people said, no matter how tiny the island community. She had been born in Key West, and her father had been there before Florida had even become a U.S. territory, much less a state. And, of course, at the beginning, statehood had meant little in Key West. Its population had remained Spanish, Bahamian, English and American … and that really only at shifting intervals, since so many came just to fish, drink and rest, and move on back to nearby island homes.

Tara stood. Richard eyed her warily but stood, too.

“Where is your ship?” she asked flatly.

“I haven’t dissuaded you at all, have I?”

She wagged a finger at him. “You have given me a lecture. Now, I shall give you one! I think—however he might have been hated in the South—that Abraham Lincoln is an incredibly good man. I believe that of many of our leaders and generals, as well. And, I think that we need him. I think that we’ll need many men of his ilk if we’re ever to repair the great rift that’s been created. As you said, John Brown might have been an out-and-out murderer, and certainly, by the law, his sentence was just, but he did have the right idea. Here’s where we are, though, about to surrender to a furious power that will have to have any remnant inklings of vengeance held in check, or else the South will be truly doomed. I have to try to get close to the man. I believe that he needs me—and that’s not turning traitor, because my state will need a strong, enlightened man in control when the giant foot of victory stomps down on us as if we were a pile of ants. Maybe God did decree that we lose the war, but I don’t believe that even God wants more horror than what we’ve already seen to follow it.”

Richard looked downward for a moment, and then met her eyes again. “I’m so afraid anytime you leave, Tara. Here … here, you’re safe. You have me—and even if I’m not here, you have the threat of me! You have people who know you and love you, and if the general population somewhere knew everything about you—or if they suspected the truth about you—we have stock! We have plenty of beef, we have … blood.”

THE UNION SHIP USS Montgomery found anchor in the deep harbor at Key West.

Soon the ship’s tender drew to the dockside entry of Fort Zachary Taylor on a crystal-clear winter’s morning, and Finn took a moment to enjoy the sun streaming down on him through a cloudless blue sky. Palms and pines lined deep-water accesses on the island and joined with the bracken that collided on small spits of sandy beach.

The fort itself was a handsome structure, joined to the island by a causeway that was equipped with a drawbridge. When the Union had first maintained the fort, there had been fears that the citizens of Key West would rise up and try to take it, hence the drawbridge, and the ten cannons set toward the shore. The walls were thick, and dominating the northwest tip of the island, the fortress was an imposing structure to those at sea.

However, despite these fears, it had yet to see real action in the war, and at this point, it was not likely to. Still, the fort had been a major player by enforcing the Union’s dominance of the shipping lanes. The Union blockade was strangling the South, and many of the men stationed at the barracks at Fort Zachary Taylor had been the sailors who prevented Bahamian goods and British guns from reinforcing the rebels.

Finn mused that, from the outset, the North had been at a disadvantage when it had come to true military genius, since many of the mainstays of the Union army—men who had fought and prevailed valiantly in the Mexican conflict—had chosen to lead the troops in their own states. An agrarian society, the South had naturally bred many fine horsemen, and their cavalry had been exceptional. But the North had the manufacturing, a greater supply of men upon which to draw and what Finn considered the key in finally winning the war: tenacity. That tenacity, of course, came in the form of the one man who stayed his course no matter how bitter and brutal and disillusioned many had become: Lincoln.

“Agent Dunne!” a smartly saluting soldier proclaimed, offering assistance with his travel bags. Finn greeted him in return, leaping upon the dock.

“I’m Lieutenant Bowers. We’ve been expecting you, sir! And, please, whatever you’ve heard about the island and the fort, don’t condemn us before you’ve had your stay. Winter is the time to be here. Though it can grow cold, the days are dawning beautifully! It’s not wet and humid like the summer, and mosquitoes are at a minimum. There’s hardly a man in the hospital ward, and we’re praying we’ll not see another summer of war, sir, so we are.”

“We can all pray,” Finn assured him.

“Come along, sir.”

The fort was impressive, Finn thought as they entered. The causeway and drawbridge gave it a bastion against the island, and its high thick walls and multiple guns aimed at the sea provided for a threat against invaders from the water. On the grounds, the barracks seemed clean and even bright in the winter’s sun, while within the walls, Finn was certain, there was ample space for supplies, ammunition and further arms. As they walked, Lieutenant Bowers pointed out the dorm-style rooms where many of the fort’s occupants slept, the guard stations and the desalination plant, supplying the fort with its own mechanism for providing clean, potable water.

“Started out with cisterns here, but the rain didn’t come as thought. Then the seawater came in and the salt started eating away at the foundations,” Bowers said cheerfully. “We expected much more difficulty from the population, but … well, the citizens may call themselves Southern as we’re in a state in secession, but the place was filled with speculators, fishermen, a few rich and a few down and trodden. None has risen at arms, and while the few moneyed families are careful to keep their daughters under close guard, most of our men have managed to carry on decent relations with the Rebels. Oh, there’s a bit of jeering and even some spitting here and there, but nothing too bad!”

“And yet, you know that some of the populace must be plotting,” Finn said.

“Sir?” Bowers asked.

Finn smiled at him. “Please. Those running the blockade surely sift right through here. In small boats, there are many ways to move undetected or unnoticed. Fishermen still make a living, rum is reaching the bars and taverns. It would be impossible to police every transaction taking place.”

“True, of course,” Bowers said. “But you’ll note the east and west martello towers across the causeway on the mainland, sir. We are not a huge garrison, but we do manage something of control. Our power, however, is on the sea. We’ve learned well through the years.”

“We’ve learned a great deal through the years,” Finn agreed. “Where there is a will, dedicated men will always find a way.”

Finn was led to an office in one of the wooden barracks constructed on the grounds. Bowers opened the door and introduced Finn to his commanding officer, Captain Calloway, and then left.

“Agent Dunne,” Calloway said, standing. The captain had the weathered look of a man long familiar with the sea, and the very fact that his skin had begun to resemble one of the state’s famed alligators made him a man well worth his salt to Finn. Here was no pretty boy, no educated rich man sitting in power through academic hobnobbing. He’d been on a hard ride in service to his country.

Finn wondered what the captain saw in him, since he seemed to be measuring his worth in return. Finally, Calloway indicated a chair. “Sit, Agent Dunne, please. I must admit, I was surprised to hear that you were coming, and I hope we’ll be able to help you. I find it incredibly curious that you’re here, when President Lincoln is at the capital, and that still, in the midst of mayhem, you’re willing to track down every threat, obscure though some may be.”

“There is no threat against the president we deem obscure,” Finn told him.

Calloway nodded gravely. “Yes, but … well, I’m sure that President Lincoln has enemies everywhere—North and South. There are those in his own camp who believe he should have let the secessionist go. Those who were furious over the draft—Hell, there were draft riots. He surely has political enemies. Quite frankly, I’m surprised you have enough men to cover all threats. But to come here …”

“Here, to this is faraway, other world, you mean?” Finn suggested. “I certainly see your point, but we’ve learned through the years to separate what is probably an idle threat—angry talk—from what may well be a concerted plot being put into motion. My superiors consider this plot by the blockade runners and their coconspirators serious. We have a man incarcerated in the capital now, and the correspondence he carried was damning. Better to stop the situation at the seed than allow it to become a giant tree with branches sweeping across the continent.”

“I see,” Calloway said, though Finn was pretty sure he didn’t really. “And yet, in truth, how easily the president could be stopped by a single bullet, while riding in his carriage around the mall …”

Finn didn’t want to admit that it wasn’t an easy task protecting the man. While Lincoln was plagued with strange dreams and a sense that his lifespan would be cut short, he seemed unwilling to take the necessary steps to prevent such an outcome. “In the capital, and when the president travels, he is still under protection. He has the military, and he has Pinkerton agents. Pinkerton himself stopped an assassination attempt in Maryland. We have men in the capital, and we have men covertly stationed throughout the Southern armies. Captain, the point is not just to be at the president’s side and stop individual bullets. It’s also to stop what could become an event in which many people are involved, if you will—a situation in which the entire government is brought down.”

“Like, say, a civil war,” Calloway said gravely, still looking puzzled, though introspective. “Do you usually succeed in these intelligence missions?”

“We do, sir.” Inwardly, Finn flinched. Usually. Usually, he discovered the truth of every situation. But he still chafed over one particular failure: the day he had lost the woman at Gettysburg. Ostensibly, she’d carried nothing but a harmless scarf. But there had been something strange about the beauty, something he felt he recognized and that portended danger. The memories of that day had haunted him since.

“Well,” Calloway said, “I’m not privy to your means of intelligence, sir, but we’re pleased to offer all the assistance that we may. I believe that you want to set out tomorrow night?”

“Indeed. The moon will be all but black, and I understand that this time of year lends itself to good cloud cover. If I were setting out with contraband and communications, it’s the night I would choose to take flight.”

“You’ll be sailing with Captain John Tremblay, an excellent sailor, and a rare man—a native of St. Augustine. And,” Calloway admitted, “he pointed out to me himself that the date you have chosen does seem optimal for such a runner to take flight. I hope, sir, that you are not on a wild-goose chase, and that you catch your man. May God help us all in this.”

THE WAR, EVEN IN DISTANT Key West where little happened, had changed life.

Tara could remember being a child when it was easy to run down to the wharf at any time, when a friend might head out fishing or just take sail because it was a beautiful day. She remembered shopping the fish market without tension in the air, and when the cats and seabirds shrieked and cried out, trying to steal the best fish heads and the refuse tossed aside by the men and women working the stalls.

She remembered when the great ships had brought in new supplies from the Northeast, the Bahamas or even Europe. Women on the island would receive their copies of Godey’s Lady’s Book, and they had oohed and aahed over the newest fashions and determined what they should buy, what they could sew and what they could practicably wear on an island where heat was king.

Some merchant ships still came, though they were heavily patrolled by the Union. Women still looked at fashions, but they could seldom afford to buy. The fish markets were quiet, with only the birds and the cats unaware of the unspoken tensions.

And it was no longer easy to set sail from the tiny island, not without proper credentials. Unless, of course, it was by darkness, in a small craft, and with someone who knew the lay of the land.

That being, Tara left the island of Key West on a single-mast fishing boat with Seminole Pete, who had long kept a bar in town. Pete had outlasted the Seminole Wars, and he had never surrendered or succumbed—he had just kept moving, and now his bar was a fixture. In his spare time, Pete “fished,” and in doing so he helped his friends, who numbered many. There were only friends and those who were not his friends. In his day, he’d seen half his people decimated in the Seminole Wars, and there was no white man in a uniform he trusted, North or South. Tara was Pete’s friend, and she loved that he was one of the few people who seemed to know everything about her without ever being told.

When Tara’s mother had died, just as the war had commenced, Tara had rented out the beautiful home on Caroline Street her grandfather had built, and took residence in a few rooms in the huge and rambling home Pete owned. Pete and Richard had both insisted she do so; it was dangerous for her to be alone.

That was fine with her. She’d always thought her mother would eventually marry Pete, but while the two were close and constantly together, they’d never taken vows. It was nice to be around him after her passing.

As they neared the small island just north of Key West, Tara became aware of the scents on the air: cows, pigs, chickens and other animals. The Union-held fort and the Confederate citizens of the lower Keys all found their sustenance through the remarkable resources of the island.

“We are near. You are in plenty of time,” Pete said, his voice expressionless.

Pete didn’t question the power of dreams; when she had explained to him that she felt that she had to get close to the American president, he merely nodded. He’d taken many a person through the years to Richard’s ship, hidden behind the mangroves. An Indian out in a small fishing boat was not someone with whom the Yankee troops would bother.

Besides, not even the Union troops questioned where Seminole Pete secured his beverages. Off-duty, they were far too pleased to enjoy his bar. In fact, at times, the situation there would have been comical if there weren’t a country pathetically at war all around them. Customers sometimes shouted taunts, or made them beneath their breath, but all kept it peaceful, as if they were but placing bets on different horses in a race.

She looked over at Pete. The sail was down, so he rowed steadily, his sculpted face impassive. He watched her as he steadfastly drew the oars, one easy, even stroke after another.

“You think I’m crazy,” she said quietly, breaking through the rhythmic sound of the oars on the water.

“You said you must do this. Then you must,” he said. “Will I worry about you? Indeed, child, I will.”

“Have you ever had anything like this happen to you?” Tara asked. “I mean, where your dreams were of someone else and came upon you like a sickness of worry?”

“I know many people who have had such dreams,” Pete said gravely. “But were they dreams? Or did we know that the guns were coming to our shores, and that we would be driven farther and farther into the swamps? Perhaps we rush to bring these things into our minds, and dreams are the culminations of our fear—fear for what we can’t stop.”

“But if we see omens, doesn’t that mean there’s at least a prayer we can stop a catastrophe?”

“Perhaps,” Pete said, gazing out across the darkness. “Sometimes we see a path, and think that we must take it, and then there’s a fork in the road. We may not go to the same destination.”

She smiled. “You’re confusing me, Pete.”

“Life is confusion. Now, more than ever. Or it is not. We just live. Time will come and go, and this war will end, and there will be new wars. I understand that any man or woman must do what they believe is asked of them by a great power. So, do what you must. And then come home. This is where you belong. Where you are known and where you are loved. There will be bitter days ahead, and harsh punishment, and our tiny island world will be far enough from the heaviest part of the boot when it falls.”

“The war isn’t over yet,” she half protested, though she didn’t know why.

“All but the tail end of the dying. Trust me—I’ve seen war. At the end, there is nothing but blood.”

“There is already blood,” Tara said softly.

Pete didn’t disagree; he had spoken his mind.

She was aware of the sound of the oars striking the water again and listened to them for a while. Then Pete nodded his head toward the horizon.

Squinting, Tara could see Richard’s Peace, sails down, at deep anchor off the stock island. It was barely a silhouette against the dark sky. She was surprised that Pete had seen it, but he had spent much of his life fighting and running through the darkness and the marsh.

Peace was a beautiful ship. Richard had commissioned her for his salvage and merchandising business before secession, and before he had ever dreamed of operating her as a war vessel. She had three masts and a square rig, which meant that at full sail she was quite a sight to behold. She could move swiftly over the open water, but since the decline of the clipper had begun with the advent of steam, Richard had modernized her by equipping her with a steamer, as well. She had a shallow draft, and could easily navigate the coral reefs and shoals, especially with a captain like Richard manning her; he knew the waters around the Florida Keys as well as he knew his own image in a mirror, if not better.

Richard had sailed out on a dark night many a time, evading the enemy ships. He hid the Peace and walked about Key West as an average citizen, avoiding the Yankee troops in the town these past four years.

Pete ceased to row, letting his small boat drift toward the larger ship. A man on guard on the deck quickly called down to them. “State your business, and speak quickly!”

“It’s Tara Fox!” she called quickly.

“Come aboard!”

A rope ladder was thrown down, and Tara leaned over to plant a kiss on Pete’s face. She imagined he might have blushed. “Don’t worry. I will make it home,” she promised him.

Grabbing her satchel and securing it around her shoulders, she reached for the rope and carefully climbed her way up to the deck. Richard was there to help her on board.

“You know, you are insane,” he told her huskily.

“Just following the lead of my captain!” she returned. He turned quickly, introducing her to the man on guard.

“Tara, I think you know Grant Quimbly here. Lawrence Seville is at the helm, and Gary French is working the steam engine. Make yourself at home in the cabin. We’ll be on our way.”

“Thank you, Richard,” she told him.

He nodded. “Lawrence, let’s get her under way!”

Tara looked down to the dark sea; she could barely make out Pete’s small boat.

The darkness seemed overwhelming.

But just as she thought so, the cloud cover shifted, and a pale glow of starlight filled the sky. She could see the barest sliver of a moon. It was the night of the new moon, and yet, it almost looked as if, for a moment, it was waxing crescent.

It almost appeared to be grinning.

She shivered. It seemed as if even the moon was mocking her.




CHAPTER TWO


“THEY’RE GOOD—THE BLOCKADE runners around these waters,” Captain John Tremblay told Finn, looking out at the darkness. “They’re very, very good—the men who sail in the night and the darkness. They know when to make their runs. They know how to make use of moonless nights, when cloud cover erases even the stars.” He turned and looked at Finn. “But, of course, you chose the date.”

The sea and the sky seemed to combine that night, as if they might have been sailing off the earth’s surface into a stygian void of nothingness. Setting out on the captain’s steamer, USS Punisher, they had navigated easily enough; the Key West lighthouse helped ships on both sides avoid calamity on the reefs. But Tremblay and crew were now beyond its glow, heading north, and the moonless, starless night created an eerie realm where even the truth and the horror of the war seemed of another world. The stars, of course, were out there. But cloud cover was blocking even their gentle light. The world was one, water and air merged. Watching the vastness of the ocean at night, Finn could well understand how the medieval population had believed that the world was flat.

He’d been at sea enough to comprehend winds and tides; he’d kept a small sailboat on the river for years. But here, tonight, the sky was deep velvet and blue-black, and the sea seemed to be a glass sheet as vast as the endless dark heavens above them. Though Calloway had been apprised of his mission, Captain Tremblay had not been told any of the particulars, other than a Pinkerton was seeking a certain man, and he believed that he’d find him in these waters.

Finn found himself admiring both the Union navy seamen who plied these waters and the blockade runners themselves. Of course, there was money in running the blockade, but at this stage of the war, many of the men willing to risk the noose of the Union navy did so out of a sense of patriotism; money only meant something if you were alive. Of course, there were those reckless would-be pirates who were willing to take a chance at anything, but at this stage of the game, many were also die-hard heroes, continuing to fight a losing battle in the hope of keeping the Confederacy alive long enough for the North to tire of the war before the South was completely decimated.

“What makes you think your man is a blockade runner?” Captain Tremblay asked him, handing him the spyglass.

“We intercepted communications,” Finn said. He looked through the glass, and still there was nothing to see but blackness.

“About a blockade runner?” Tremblay asked. He seemed puzzled, and then said, “Blockade runners are not often spies, except, of course, they will carry whatever information they acquire. They’re seldom assassins.”

“This one is an unusual circumstance. The man is apparently obsessed with his hatred, though I don’t suppose that’s so unusual at this time…. But he has a vendetta against Lincoln, and he just happens to be a blockade runner, and since he’s able to move around quickly and communicate with others, he’s especially dangerous.”

Finn hesitated a minute, looking at Tremblay, but he was afraid that if they didn’t catch the man tonight, whether his name was known or not wasn’t going to matter much. “He’s a man who goes by the code name of Gator. His brother was killed at Gettysburg, and one of his conspirators was apprehended in the capital—with an incriminating correspondence.”

“Many good men were killed at Gettysburg. Tens of thousands,” Tremblay said, a hoarse note in his voice. “But putting together a conspiracy … What fool puts that information in a letter?”

“Most of it was code, but we have code-breakers. This Gator is moving supplies to the Jacksonville area—there are scores of inlets that connect with the St. Johns River. A Florida militia is planning a movement somewhere in the north of the state. Gator is bringing up arms procured in the Bahamas, and beef from the Keys. His delivery made, he will continue north, without stock or arms, and gain entry close to the capital, possibly around northern Virginia or Maryland. He’ll carry nothing but legal sales goods at that point, in case he’s stopped. Once he makes land, he’ll find his way to the capital, working then as some kind of a sutler. He has fellow conspirators in the North, who will supply him with arms when the time comes. I don’t think he cares if he’s shot on the spot himself—not if he manages to kill President Lincoln. That’s why it’s imperative that we stop him now, while he’s bearing goods to break the blockade. Once he divests himself of arms, it will be difficult—even in war—to recognize him, detain him and stop him.”

“Then we’ll do our best to bring him down,” Tremblay said.

Finn lowered the spyglass. “Thank you, Captain.”

Tremblay nodded. He was an old-timer, a man who had spent his life in naval service. His beard and hair were white, his eyes were blue and his stance was square and steady. As he looked at Finn, he added, “We’ve lost many a good ship to the Confederates, you know. We had to scuttle three in the river up at Jacksonville just last November. Many of the blockade runners have guns aboard as well, but they’re not fighters. They keep themselves light and shallow for speed and the ability to slip through narrow channels and rivers. But if we come across your man, there may be a fight.”

“Captain,” Finn said, a note of bitter amusement in his voice. “Do I look like a man who’s never seen a fight?”

Tremblay studied him a moment, and then grinned sheepishly. “No, sir, you do not. But fighting as a Pinkerton is different, of course, from a fight at sea.”

“Don’t worry, Captain. I’ve seen my share of action—on land and on sea.”

Finn looked through the glass again. Nothing. His vision tended to be excellent, no matter the velvety blue-black of the night. But there was nothing to see, as yet.

And, of course, this mission could be a futile one.

Still, better futile through overexertion than through laziness and bad surveillance.

No matter how much energy it took, Finn couldn’t let this Gator make his connections, definitely could not let him reach the capital and their leader. No matter how many times guards, generals, friends and fellow politicians warned him, President Lincoln was a man of the people. He rode his carriage along the mall. He invited his constituents to speak with him. Quite simply, Lincoln believed to the core that if he was not available, then he was not serving anyone. To try to change him might well be an effort to change the very soul of the man they all strove so diligently and with such love and admiration to protect.

Finn didn’t know that he and others could prevail, not forever. He did know, however, that there had been many times when his abilities helped him single out the right person to stop in a crowd. That he had protected his charge on that particular day. He didn’t necessarily face an assassin every time, but often someone bent on harassment, or ready to throw rotten food at the president, or to create a riot out of a rally. He had done well so far, but it only took one mistake….

Like the woman at Gettysburg. Moving toward him, reaching beneath her cloak …

She had carried a scarf, he reminded himself. She might have meant nothing but a show of worship.

Yet, she had been so strange. So beautiful, and so different, dangerous … dangerous even if what she had produced had been a hand-knitted scarf. She had wanted to get close to the president, and there had just been that strange difference about her….

He still had that narrow lock of her hair in his wallet. And he still believed that she was out there somewhere, and that, one day, he would find her.

Of course, now he was here.

And still thinking about his failure that day!

Finn chafed at this assignment. He felt better serving the president nearer to him; he was ready to stop a bullet for the man at any time. He felt himself well qualified to do so.

But he also knew something about the sea, and it was true—he had seen many a naval battle and survived. He’d seen battles the good captain couldn’t begin to imagine.

Staring into the darkness, assigned to stop a blooming threat before it could fully materialize.

“You needn’t worry about me,” Finn said. “Whatever course is called, I will be ready.”

“Bosun!” the captain called, looking to the man up on the fantail behind them, a sailor who was studying the night with his own spyglass. “Any signs of life?”

“No, Captain, sir!” the sailor called back. “Not a whisper as of yet!”

Captain Tremblay looked through the glass again. “I see nothing.”

Finn narrowed his eyes suddenly, looking toward the shore. He knew that they were in an area where mangrove swamp gave way to rivers and waterways. They were now north in the Florida Keys, nearing the mainland. It was an area where the Atlantic frequently gave way to channels between the islands, where little mangrove spits were in the tectonic process of gathering silt and debris to become islands, and where trim, shallow-draft ships could easily disappear in the blink of an eye.

“There!” Finn announced suddenly.

“Where?”

“There … hugging the shore. He must know of an inlet.”

“Bosun!” the captain called.

“Nothing. I see nothing, sir!” called the lookout.

“It’s there, believe me,” Finn said. “We didn’t see her, but she’s seen us, and she’s ducking through a channel now, heading for the gulf.”

As Finn spoke, a break formed in the cloud cover overhead. The moon might be new on this January night, so crisp and cool even, but with cloud cover gone, the sky seemed to be filled with a sudden burst of starlight. Perhaps God himself was on the side of the North, Finn mused.

And there, just disappearing before them, was what almost appeared to be a ghost ship, a steam clipper, gliding away, her sails down but her masts just caught in a pale sparkle of starlight.

“Full speed ahead, sir!” Finn said.

“Man your guns!” the captain bellowed.

And the chase was on.

TARA HAD BEGUN TO FEEL that her fears had been entirely unjustified. They had set out with a light wind, cutting through the islands midway between Key West and the mainland and then out to the Atlantic, where they had run parallel with the coast. A breeze had picked up, perfect for the sails, and for a while, she had gone to the cabin, far too restless for sleep, but determined to at least lie down awhile.

And it had been while she had been there, planning a route once she reached land, that she heard Richard’s anxious shout.

“Union steamer starboard. Down the sails! Steam power, with all due speed!”

Tara jerked up and raced out to the deck. The men were grimly pulling down the sails. Richard was at the helm, and they were under steam power once again. The Peace moved quickly. Richard knew how to avoid the reefs, and she was certain that he would head back into the inlets and perhaps the gulf, doing his best to ground the enemy ship as it came in pursuit.

He cast her a glance as she hurried to him at the helm. “She’s heavily gunned,” he said tersely, indicating the enemy ship. “If the firing starts … do whatever you need to do to get out of here. Even if you haven’t the strength to go far, you’ll know where you can find shelter along the islands and the coast.”

“I’m fine, Richard.”

“You’re not listening to me. That ship is heavily gunned. I have a few small cannons. If I can’t outrun her …”

“If you can’t outrun her, you surrender,” Tara said, feeling a choking sensation in her throat. “Richard, do you hear me? You surrender. They don’t shoot down blockade runners in cold blood. They’re trying to stop the flow of supplies, not murder people.”

The look he gave her was one that clearly told her his thoughts.

No. In principle, the enemy was not out to commit murder.

But this was war.

And tempers flared and shots fired easily….

“Men die in the camps,” Richard said flatly.

“And men live in the camps!” Tara insisted.

“You should get out of here, now,” he told her.

“No.”

“You’re stubborn!”

“I know my own resources.” It was difficult to see the Union ship, but she could make out its ominous silhouette.

“Take the helm!” Richard told her.

She did, and he reached for his spyglass, looking over at the enemy ship.

“He should be over the reef any minute … grounding, I pray….” And then he swore, quickly looking at her apologetically. “He rounded it. He knows the game I’m playing.”

“You’ll outrun him,” Tara said with confidence—far more confidence than she was feeling. Few people knew these waters like a native son.

Save another native son.

“I’m heading for the channel. Maybe there …” Richard said.

“You will outrun him,” she repeated staunchly.

But the echo of her words had barely died when the sound of a cannon boom burst through the night.

The ball fell short of its target, causing the water in their wake to burst from the sea like a geyser.

“That was too close,” Richard murmured.

“Damned close!” Lawrence said.

“Aye, Grant. You and Lawrence, man the rear cannon!” Richard commanded. “Quickly. We must pray for a strike and hobble here on the reef!”

His men scurried to do as bidden. Before they could reach their posts belowdeck, a second volley came their way, closer this time. The Peace shook in the water, the waves rose and Tara quickly grabbed hold of the mast to keep her feet.

“Tara, do something to save yourself!” Richard said firmly.

“No! I’m not leaving you!”

Richard stared at her in frustration and yelled out to his men below. “Fire!”

A second later, their cannon fire boomed.

Tara stared out at the enemy ship, relieved to see a small burst of fire explode near her aft section.

“Direct hit, first volley!” she said.

Richard had his spyglass on the ship.

“She’s lamed, she isn’t dead,” he said flatly.

As he spoke, another volley exploded from the enemy ship.

“Hold on!” Richard roared to her, bracing himself.

The water exploded to their front aft side. A miss, though the Peace rocked precariously.

Tara held tight to the mast, weighing the possible consequences of the battle. It might be time for them to abandon ship, and use Richard’s knowledge of the islands and the water to survive. “Where are we?” she asked him quickly.

“Near the mainland,” he told her. “Just a few islands southwest of the mainland. And it’s time for you to go. Head northeast—”

“I will not leave you. You’re—well, you’ve a safety net in me, if we’re together. We’ll head northeast. By ship, or by foot. They will flounder in the channel—they’re floundering now! I’m not leaving you, so please don’t waste your time trying to get me to do so.”

He stared at her with exasperation. But even as he did so, he bellowed to his men below.

“Fire!”

THE UNION SHIP WAS ROCKING like a cradle in the water, ablaze in the aft section, and Tremblay was shouting orders to his men.

Finn balanced easily enough, watching as men hurried about, stumbling here and there, and turning a slight shade of green at the pitch and heave of the ship.

Tremblay was a seasoned captain. He held his sea legs steady, moving with the motion of the ship, a pitch and roll he probably knew far too well.

“Gunners!” he shouted out, his voice calm and powerful. “Stay your posts! Seamen, douse that fire! See if we’re taking on water!”

Tremblay swore beneath his breath. “She hit us! The lucky Reb actually hit us…. Keep us steady men! We’ll come apart on the reef! Gunners, fire! Take to the cannons, boy, and give her a long volley, one after the other, all ablaze!”

Finn turned to him. “Captain, we don’t want all aboard killed.”

“We’ll man the boats, and bring them in. We must stop her—before she stops us.” He stared at Finn. “We may be floundering already. If she scrapes coral now …”

“Demand her surrender,” Finn urged.

“Her surrender? We’ve been hit!” Tremblay said.

“Aye, but she is listing worse. Demand her surrender,” Finn insisted. “She can’t know that we’re taking on water just as badly.”

“Hold fire!” Tremblay called.

His order came just as someone fired a gun prematurely.

THE NIGHT WAS SPLIT again with a great boom of sound, and the earth itself seemed to tremble.

That time, the thunder in the air was followed by a shuddering explosion; they’d been hit again, and hard. The repercussion swept Tara off her feet. She fell and discovered that she was lying under Richard. She quickly eased from beneath and rose above him, touching his face. “Richard, Richard …”

He opened his eyes slowly, and then blinked rapidly. “We’ve been hit … we’ve been hit a death blow…. Take the helm and try to steady her until we can abandon ship. I’ve got to get below … to the others …”

“Richard, it’s burning. It’s—it’s too late!”

“Have to … have to get down there … My men …”

He staggered to his feet; she feared he wouldn’t make it to the deck below, but there would be no stopping him.

The night that had been so pleasantly dark and quiet was now ominous in its silence between small bursts of fire that ignited about the ship. Black smoke was heavy on the air.

“Richard, please,” she said softly.

He grabbed her by the shoulders; his eyes seemed almost blank. He was shell-shocked, she knew, but she couldn’t stop him.

“I have to see,” he said thickly. “You know I have to see … Someone could be … injured.”

No. She wished that it was true, but no one could have survived that explosion.

He thrust himself from her, heading for the steps below.

Tara staggered back and grabbed the wildly jerking wheel, using all her strength to steady the ship, trying to keep her limping forward. But another volley followed, and another. It was all she could do, just to hold tight.

Richard burst out from the deck below, his face covered in soot, his features twisted in a grim mask.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, jerking her around to face him. “They’re dead … the men are dead, and we’re taking on water. Get out of here, now!”

Past Richard, she could see that the enemy steamer was moving in on them.

They stared at each other—Richard angry and impotent to get her away, Tara determined that she’d never leave him, not at any cost.

Then thunder burst through the sky again, so loud that it was painful, and when the ship shuddered, it was as if they’d been hit by the hand of God.

Perhaps they had been….

Tara landed hard, stunned and breathless. For a moment, even she was completely disoriented, seeing only darkness. Then color and light returned to her world. She grasped a trunk and pulled herself to her feet. Looking around desperately for Richard, she saw that he was hanging over the portside of the ship.

A wave crested over the ship. Water washed around her friend.

And when the water was gone, Richard was gone.

With a scream, Tara rushed to the rail, and saw his body being swallowed by the darkness of the ocean.

She pitched herself over the rail to follow him.

“JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH!” Tremblay raged. “Who’s responsible? The last volley wasn’t on order!”

Finn could have echoed his furious sentiments, but it would do no good. A gunner ran up to them, soot-faced and frantic.

“Captain! There was a spark that flew from the match … it caught the wick. We didn’t fire to destroy her!”

“Destroyed or not, I need the men aboard that ship,” Finn said.

Another filthy man ran up to the captain. “Sir, we’re taking on water—heavily. We’re working the pumps, bailing…. She’s on a reef, sir. Cut by the coral as well as their return fire!”

“Lower the longboats!” Tremblay ordered in a booming voice.

As the men hurried to do as told, Finn stared out at the Rebel runner.

“We’re sinking, Agent Dunne!” Tremblay told him.

“I am aware, sir.”

He stood his ground, staring at the enemy ship. The masts were shattered; she was listing badly to the landward side. Fire had broken out in her aft; he’d seen the explosion that had hit her there. The way that flames were leaping and burning, he assumed they’d hit her powder supply.

Whatever cargo she carried would soon be lost.

Anyone caught in the aft was dead; they had, at the least, died swiftly. The portside of the ship and her fore still stood in the night, though the fire would soon consume them, as well.

He quickly reckoned the distance from the dying ship to the shore; a strong swimmer could make it. Theoretically, others—if not killed by the blast—might well still be aboard, dead or dying, or unconscious.

Finn didn’t want to wait for the tenders; he stripped off his jacket and headed for the rail.

“Agent Dunne!” Tremblay called. “Sir! The boats will be speedy—”

“Not speedy enough.”

Finn dove from the ship’s deck, hitting the water hard and pitching downward. The water was cold, a hard slap of ice against his flesh as he landed and thrust through its density. In the night, not even his eyesight was much against the depths, but he had little interest in what was around him. When his legs scraped coral, it only confirmed that their ship would have floundered had it come out this far. The Rebel captain they chased knew his landscape, and knew it well.

Finn swam hard, picking up greater speed with every length he cleared from the Union boat. He could see the Rebel ship burning and listing, and he swam harder; it was war, of course. A Union ship destroying a blockade runner and all aboard was a regrettable fact of war.

To Finn, it meant a dead end. If all aboard had perished, he might never know if he had found Gator, if this threat to Lincoln still remained; if failed, he might not be able to return to the president’s side.

There were shouts audible in the air. The Union men had lowered the longboats, and crews were coming in his wake.

He reached the burning ship. It listed so badly to the side, he could climb straight aboard. The remnants of her shell would remain where it was in the days to come, her skeleton caught on the reef.

Despite the heavy smoke on the air, he could smell the sickly sweet scent of burning flesh, and he prayed that those caught in the inferno had been baked before the fire even reached them. Crawling aboard, dripping with seawater, he lifted his arm against the rise of the flame to protect his face. He quickly ascertained that there was no getting belowdeck; anyone caught there was gone.

But a hurried search topside against the rip of the flames in the night revealed no bodies consumed by fire or otherwise. And if anyone had survived, they had not gone for their longboats—they had done as he had, diving into the night.

Someone was out there. Even if the ship’s crew had been small, there had been someone topside. Someone running the operation.

Gator?

In just another second, Finn realized that the heat of the fire had already nearly dried his sea-soaked clothing.

He could feel his flesh beginning to sear.

He dove back into the water, and began to swim again, aware that the water felt even more frigid against the heat of his body. The difference between the fire heat aboard the ship and the winter water was extreme; he knew that he had to keep moving, and move fast. The fire illuminated the night, and he looked toward the shore. He could just see a tangle of mangroves, and beyond that, the small spit of a beach.

The island was some distance. And though it might be far warmer than any sea farther north, the icy hand of winter had stretched even down here. Could an injured man have possibly survived?

Yes.

Possibly.

Whatever it took, he had to know.

Finn couldn’t help his thoughts from spinning, even as he kept his arms and legs moving in swift, even strokes through the water. He was sick at the thought of the men caught by the cannons as the ship exploded. He was angry that he had come so far, and that he might never know if they had or hadn’t killed Gator.

No.

Someone had to have been topside. And that person had survived.

Someone was out there, alive and well, or dying, in the midst of the mangrove isle, and he was going to find them.




CHAPTER THREE


TARA’S DESPERATE DIVES beneath the surface had paid off—she’d found Richard and quickly brought him to the surface.

But he wasn’t conscious, and with the frigid water washing around her, salt waves rocking hard against them minute after minute, it was difficult to even ascertain at first if he was alive. Mindless of the water, she squeezed his torso to force water from him … and he coughed, and he breathed.

And he lived.

“Tara …” he gasped.

“I’ve got you, Richard, I’ve got you,” she assured him.

“Too far from shore. I can’t make it. Go … for the love of God, go.”

“Ease back. I’ve got you.”

“Tara, you can get—” Richard’s words were cut off as a wave washed over them. He coughed violently again. “Get away!”

“Shut up! Quit talking. Keep your mouth closed and lie back. Damn you, Richard, I can swim with you. Stop fighting me or I’ll knock you out and drag you, so don’t make it harder for me,” she warned him with a note of steel in her voice.

Water washed over him again. He sputtered it out, and she took advantage of his weakness to force him flat and slip her left arm around his chest in a hold that would allow him to keep his head above the surface while she fought the waves with her right arm and legs. She had a reserve of strength that was deep, fortunately, as the sea itself seemed to be against them that night.

As she kicked harder, she was dimly aware of some form of shadow that seemed to linger over Richard’s boat.

Death?

She gave herself a mental shake; she couldn’t think that way. She had to use her entire concentration to get her friend to the shore. She didn’t even dare look back at the Yankee ship. Richard had been thrown severely about his wounded ship, and if she didn’t get him to land, nothing else about the night would really matter.

An explosion suddenly burst through the night and Tara realized that a powder keg had exploded.

The resulting mass of waves wrenched Richard from her arms. Skyrocketing flames illuminated the water, and she couldn’t see Richard anymore.

Even with her exceptional sight and strength, it seemed like an eternity in agony, diving and searching, diving and searching.

While the blazing fire on the ship illuminated the surface of the water, creating an almost beautiful array of golden splendor on the now-gentling waves, beneath the glowing sheen the water remained stygian in the night. She could barely see, and while she knew about where Richard had gone in, she couldn’t pinpoint the precise location, and she might not have found him at all had he not bobbed to the surface.

Facedown.

“Richard!” she shouted, swimming to him, turning him over in the water. His eyes were closed; his form was limp.

“Richard!” she cried again, and then squeezed his torso with gentle pressure, fighting the waves around them. To her relief, he coughed and choked, and water spewed from his mouth. A wave lapped around them, covering his face, and he coughed again, trying to fight the water that seemed so ready to claim him.

“Easy, easy, just float, I’ve got you!” Tara assured him.

“The ship … the men,” Richard said, and choked as icy salt water moved over his mouth again.

“Shhh … Stop talking.” She wondered if he’d been struck in the head…. But he was breathing; he was alive and breathing and she was going to make sure nothing changed that.

“The men …” he repeated.

“Stop. We’ve been through this.” She was terribly afraid that her friend didn’t want to live, that guilt over his men would infect his thoughts and keep him from assisting her rescue attempt. “Richard! Shut up! The war has taken many lives—I won’t let it take yours.”

Richard wasn’t a small man, and the water felt bitterly cold, and it wasn’t easy managing the weight and length of his lean and muscled body—especially when he wasn’t cooperating.

“Fire,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her, glazed eyes reflecting the burst of fire in the sky.

She was tempted to knock him out again. He was the dearest friend she’d ever had, or would have, and she would not lose him.

“Quiet!” she whispered softly. She hooked her arm around his body, trying to get him to relax and let her use the power of her right arm and legs against the water. “Lay back, Richard, and let me take you. Please. Please …” Just when she thought she couldn’t wrestle with him for one minute more, he mercifully passed out once again. She felt the fight leave his muscles.

Finally, she was able to begin a hard crawl toward the shore.

The water was deep; the ship had floundered in the channel between isles, where a coral shelf rested just to the Atlantic side. They couldn’t be in more than thirty feet of water, and yet, now the length of her body burned with the exertion of her muscles and her lips continued to quiver from the cold.

She had never felt so strained, nor so exhausted, in her life.

Just when she thought that the agony in her arms and legs would cripple her, she felt ground at the tips of her feet. She realized that she could stand, having reached the gnarled toes of the island. She slipped off the submerged root, dragging Richard with her. Doggedly, she found a foothold again, paused, breathed and waited. She looked back to the Yankee ship, on fire now.

At last, she managed to drag him up on a spit of sand between the gnarled and twisted “legs” of a spiderlike clump of mangroves. She lay there next to him, panting, and feeling as if her muscles burned with the same fire that still illuminated the night sky. She breathed in the acrid and smoky air.

Turning then to Richard, she felt for his pulse—faint, but steady—and warmth jumped in her heart. She allowed herself to fall back for another moment, just breathing and gathering her strength. She was drenched, and her skirts were heavy with water. She felt the winter’s nip that lay around her, even here.

She thanked God that they hadn’t gone in farther north, where temperatures would have been far more wicked.

She rested, and then, even as she breathed more easily, she bolted up. Looking out over the dying remnants of the Peace, she could see that the Union ship floundered, too.

She had grounded herself; she wasn’t injured and limping, but she was caught on the reef, and there was no escape for her. The Union boat would have a number of longboats, easy to send into the inlets, saving the lives of the men aboard.

Richard was alive, she knew that, and she believed in her heart that he would survive. But he wasn’t coming around, and they had to leave their present position; they were like sitting ducks at a county fair.

She dragged herself to her feet. Half of the heaviness of the weight she had borne, she realized, had been that of her skirts. She wrenched off the cumbersome petticoat that had nicely provided warmth—before becoming saturated with seawater. Rolling the cotton and lace into a ball, she stuffed it into a gap in the tree roots, shoving up a pile of seaweed and sand to hide the telltale sign that this was where survivors had come ashore.

Something in the water caught her eye, some form of movement. It might have just been a shadow created on the water by the rise and fall of flames that still tore from the desiccating ship. Soon, the Peace would be down to charred, skeletal remains, and she would sink to the seabed. At the moment, enough of the hull remained above the surface to allow the flames to continue to lap at the sky, shooting upward with dying sparks now and then.

A shadow on the water … The Unionists would be coming … coming after a blockade runner.

She reached down, dragging Richard’s body up. He was far bigger than she was, but she managed to get him over her shoulder. Taking a last glance back at the flame-riddled night, she started to move through the mangroves that rimmed the edge of the isle.

THE FIRE ON THE BLOCKADE runner was just beginning to subside, but Finn could still hear the lick of the flames as they consumed tinder, and the split of wood as it disintegrated in the conflagration. Soon, however, the sea would claim the fire, and the night would be lit by only the stars.

He couldn’t wait for the longboats; he surveyed his surroundings from the mangrove roots he stood upon.

This side of the islet—new to time and history, created by the tenacious roots and the silt and debris caught with those roots—was really nothing more than a tangle of gnarled tree, slick ponds and beds of seaweed. But looking toward the east, he could see that there was a spit of sand. He began crawling over the roots, heedless when he stepped knee-deep in a cache of water. Tiny crabs scurried around his intrusion, and he could hear the squish of his boots. When he cleared the heaviest thicket, he paused, leaning on a tree, to empty the water from his boots.

Shortly after he resumed moving through the thinning foliage, he heard a grunting sound. He paused. Alligators roamed the freshwater areas of the upper Keys, and even crocodiles made a home in the brackish waters off the southern coast. But Finn wasn’t hearing the odd, piglike grunt of a gator. He was hearing the snuffling grunt made by wild pigs. There was hope that water was to be found on the island, and if pigs were surviving here, then man could, too. Good to know, in case this was a long excursion.

Something along the terrain caught his eye and he paused. The remaining fire that had lit the sky was all but gone, little more than a flicker. He paused, seeing nothing, and retraced his footsteps, wincing as he stepped knee-deep into a pool again. But even with this, his efforts were rewarded. There, deep in a crevice, was something. He reached for it, and was surprised when something big and white and heavily laden with seawater fell into his hands. He frowned, puzzled for a moment, and then smiled grimly.

A petticoat. A woman’s petticoat. Soaked and salty, ripped and torn and encrusted with sand and muck.

It hadn’t been there long. It hadn’t been there long at all.

He looked ahead to the beach, where a survivor might conceivably find a dry spot in the chill night. Where a survivor just might have to risk building a fire, or freeze. There was certainly no snow this far south, but it was a bitter night. They were probably hitting down close to freezing.

He set the petticoat down, studying it, and felt a sweep of tension wash over him. He did his work well, and he knew that he did, and he felt passionately that the future of the country—the decency, the healing—were in the hands of a good man. He had followed through on every threat, perceived or real, and he had lost his suspect only once.

At Gettysburg.

The woman had slipped cleanly through his fingers, and he had never forgotten, and now …

He couldn’t help but look at the petticoat, and wonder, as impossible as the odds might be, if he hadn’t come upon her again.

Was she Gator?

TARA FOUND A SPOT SHIELDED by a strip of land where pines had taken root. She looked around carefully before lowering Richard’s body to the soft, chill ground, and then paused for a minute to stretch her agonized muscles. She fell into a seated position next to Richard and leaned her head against one of the protecting trees. She was exhausted and, despite her exertion, very cold.

She checked Richard’s pulse and breathing again, and assured herself that he was going to make it. But his limbs felt like ice. She forced herself back to her feet. She would gather fallen palm branches to make a blanket for her friend. Now that she had gotten him out of the water, she wished that he would come to—there were others out there in the night, and it was imperative that they stay hidden until she could find a way off the island. Another blockade runner would eventually come by. They would survive; they both knew how to hold out in such an environment. If there were palms on the island, there were coconuts. And she had heard the scurry of wildlife. But they had to get through the night.

And avoid the men from the Union ship that had gone down. They would be seeking shelter, as well.

“Richard?” she whispered, caressing his cheek. He didn’t open his eyes; he didn’t acknowledge her in any way. She groaned inwardly, checking for his pulse once again.

Still steady.

She wanted to build a fire; she didn’t dare. “Richard, I so wish that you would wake up and speak!”

His chest rose and fell as he breathed. But his eyes didn’t open. She consoled herself that it was better that he got some rest; the death of his men was a crushing blow to him. It had almost been a fatal blow.

She eased against him, trying to use her body to warm his. The winter breeze seemed to rise with a low moan, as if it wailed for the bloodshed that night.

She listened to the sound of the wind, and the waves, and she watched as the fire left the sky, and cloud cover came over. The night became dark again, as if it had consumed all the events that had taken place, and nature had been the victor.

She knew she needed rest also, but she didn’t want to doze. She had to stay awake.

And listen.

SO GATOR JUST MIGHT be a woman. No matter, he told himself, she had to be dealt with as harshly as a man. He wasn’t sure at all why women were considered to be the weaker sex; he’d met many who could make strong men cower. But still …

In the darkness, he did his best to follow a trail. It was difficult with the watery sand washing over every footprint. Finally, however, he cleared the mangroves, and found the part of the isle that had surely found birth at the beginning, and had gained substance from the passing sea. There was one beautiful, clear area of beach, residing almost like a haven, visible only in the pale starlight that fell upon it, and, in that starlight, almost magical. As he stood there for a moment, he thought of the great majesty of the sea and the sky. He might have been at the ends of the earth, he was so far removed from Washington, D.C. No troops marched through the streets, no civilians at work and play, and no great buildings rising around him. There were no buildings at all. Just the crisp darkness of the night, the wash of the waves and the soft whimpering of the wind.

Actually, he wasn’t sure he was glad for the wind; he was slowly drying, but the air was cold, and his flesh felt like ice. He’d had matches in his pocket, but they were quite worthless now.

He hunkered down to see the sand.

Footprints. The foot was fairly small, but the indentations were deep, and they almost dragged, as if the imprinter had carried a heavy load. There seemed to be drag marks in the sand, as well.

A seabird let out a raucous cry in the night, a sound so sudden and eerie in the darkness that even he tensed, spinning around. He stood quickly.

The last of the fires had burned out. There seemed to be nothing in the darkness.

He looked toward the center of the island where pines and palms had taken root, and where someone, evading capture, might well seek sanctuary.

TARA COULD SEE HIM coming.

The man was tall. The darkness wouldn’t allow much more information than that, but she had a sense about him. It was almost like she was being stalked by a jungle cat, one of the panthers that prowled the hammocks of the Everglades up on the mainland. He didn’t slouch. He didn’t creep along the beach. He just stood there, perhaps doing the same as she—trying to sense the very air around him.

He couldn’t possibly see her in the dark, and yet, she felt as if he was looking right through her.

He saw her!

Or he saw something. He started walking right toward her little palm-and-pine sanctuary, and in a minute, he’d discover where she’d hidden Richard.

Tara eased to her feet; as silently as she could, she made her way behind the stand of pines and crept back into the brush and palms … once there, she fled back toward the west, allowing the foliage to slap around her, giving a clear path to anyone who wanted to follow her.

She did well. Turning back, she saw the man was no longer on the beach. He had disappeared as if he’d been no more than a shadow in the night.

She weighed her situation. Looking up, she saw the outstretched branch of a sea grape tree. She measured the distance, lowered herself and bounded onto the high branch. Then she sat silent, waiting.

EVEN FOR FINN, PURSUIT in the dark was not easy, though it was usually more of a friend to him, and an enemy to those he sought.

He had followed the trail, and yet, it seemed amazing that, now, the same person who had made those footprints was bounding as light as a bird through the trees. He followed with all speed, running through brush, a copse of pines and through a thicket containing a dozen different trees. He followed the thrashing he had heard, the bracken breaking underfoot, and he burst through the trees onto a higher spit of ragged brush and poor sand.

Which was empty.

He held still, listening again.

He let go of the natural sounds of the island.

The now-slightly distant roll of the waves, the rustle of branches. He heard again a sound that was guttural, like a rooting sound, as if animals—wild pigs? boars?—sought deep in the ground for some kind of food. He heard the wings of a bird as it took flight from one of the tall trees.

He knew that the Spaniards had found native tribes living on most of the islands; fishermen and others had come and gone forever. Pirates had made use of the channels and the reefs to escape capture. They’d brought new species to the little islands, and there might well be anything—plant or animal—hunting in a semitropic climate here.

Pigs, birds, insects, crabs.

He kept listening, concentrating his extrasensory abilities.

Then he could hear it.

The beating of a heart.

The sound was fast, a strong rhythm.

And then Finn knew; he was being watched, just as he was watching.

He stood where he was for a long time, and then he started back to the beach. As he did so, he heard a wild flurry of activity behind him; he turned, and he saw the figure running back into the trees.

He raced after the fleeting form, but in the midst of trees again, the subject of his chase disappeared once again. He didn’t hesitate that time.

He stopped cold, and he listened.

And found that heartbeat again.

He waited a very long time, until he was certain, until the thump-thump-thump grew stronger and so familiar to him that it almost seemed a cacophony.

He took aim, and jumped, certainly taking his culprit by complete surprise.

Even though the thought had crossed his mind upon uncovering the petticoat, he had not fully accepted that he might actually find the woman he had lost in Gettysburg. The experience had been such a sword in his side; he had chafed at losing her, been haunted even by what had happened, and now …

She screamed, not so much with fear, but with complete surprise, as he made his way to the branch, capturing her in his arms and bringing them both slamming down to the ground below. He looked into her eyes, amazed that he remembered them so well, and as she stared up at him, he realized that she found instant recognition, as well.

She stared at him as if fighting for the right words of loathing to hurl his way. She was winded, he realized, even if he’d twisted himself to take the brunt of the fall. And so he spoke first.

“Why, miss. Fancy meeting you here, on such a dark and lonely night.”

She looked back at him, gasping for breath, and he eased his hold.

“Let me go—move. You’re an oaf. You’re a disgrace to your uniform,” she spat out.

“I don’t wear a uniform. But I am taking you in—”

“You have no power to take me anywhere.”

“You’re a blockade runner. And I believe your name is Gator, and that you’re plotting against the president of the United States of America. You will face a military tribunal, and you will hang, my dear,” he said most pleasantly.

Of course, it was doubtful that she would hang. Southern spies—women—had been incarcerated in D.C., but the judges and leaders seemed loath to take action against such a woman. Hanging one damsel—however clawed and vicious she might be—would just be another knife in the side of the Southern ethic.

And, of course, Finn thought, what a waste if she were to hang. Even now, in half-dry, tattered clothing, hair tangled in clumps around her features, she was stunning. The same uncanny beauty he’d reflected upon since Gettysburg. She had a perfect face, with large eyes that dominated the fine, slender structure of her cheeks and jawline. Her brows were clean and even and flyaway, and if she were to smile …

She didn’t smile. “You’re in a Southern state, you fool,” she told him.

“There’s a massive Union fort down at the tip, in case you hadn’t noticed. And let’s see, the Union has held St. Augustine since ‘62. Plus, there’s a host of Union sailors about to land on this little islet, while I’m not seeing any boys in butternut and gray marching along the sand to save you. Oh—and since we’re at war, I think I’m doing okay,” he told her pleasantly.

To his amazement, she smiled, giving no resistance.

And then she did.

He had eased his hold to something far too gentle; she was small, but apparently built of steel. She suddenly shoved him aside with exceptional strength, kicked out hard, catching him entirely by surprise and with a sound assault, and leaped to her feet.

“Ass!” she hissed.

And he was, of course, because she was gone.

IT WAS EASY ENOUGH to escape him; she could move quietly and with the speed of light when she chose … of course, she was exhausted, and laden with the heaviness of the salt water still soaked into her clothing. And still, she had managed to take him by surprise.

As he had done with her.

But now she knew; now, she would not take her eyes off him.

Even with this resolve, her heart sank; she was certain that he was telling the truth. The Yankee ship was going to go down, but not as Richard’s Peace had.

The men aboard the Union ship had survived, and they would be coming to the island.

Trying to keep a step ahead of him, and draw him away from Richard, she headed toward the western side of the island. Moving through the trees and brush, she burst out somewhere near the southwest, at a copse leading straight out to the water, to an inlet where old coral formed some kind of a seawall.

She bent over, breathing hard, pondering her next move—her way to save Richard—when she heard his voice again, and jackknifed instantly to a straightened position.

“You are stubborn, my dear. But you’ll not get away. Not this time.”

She stared at him, incredulous. How was he standing before her? How had he reached the copse before she had managed to?

“You’re supposedly some kind of officer of the law, is that what it is? Well, you’re insane. I wasn’t in Gettysburg to hurt anyone. And I’m not hurting anyone on this island. What, did they put you in charge of the blockade? Are you trying to starve women and children?” she demanded.

“I’m not in charge of the blockade. And the blockade isn’t to starve anyone, but instead to stop a war, and any reasonable student of military history is surely aware of that fact. But, no, I’m not in charge of the blockade. I’m in charge of rounding up would-be assassins.”

Up close, within an arm’s breadth, he did tower well over her and, while he appeared lean in what remained of his white cotton shirt, muscle rippled at his chest where the buttons had given way from throat to midabdomen. She looked into his eyes, however; his physical prowess was not something that really worried her.

“There are no assassins on this island,” she said. “In fact, this is my home. You’re rude. You’re trespassing.”

“You came off the blockade runner. This is not your home.”

“It’s certainly far more my home than it is yours, or the North’s.”

“It’s not a qualifying point at all—this island is deserted, and you came off the blockade runner. For that, you will answer to the government of the United States of America.”

His eyes glowed so darkly that they almost appeared to be red fire in the night. His features might have been chiseled for a great warrior statue, and he seemed to have the ego and arrogance of a god to go with the hard-wrought classicism of his face. She felt the urge to take a step back, but, of course, she would never do so. She wouldn’t lose.

“I am not a citizen of the United States of America, sir, and therefore, I will not answer to any government other than my own.”

He stared at her without speaking, and then shook his head sadly. “You people would prolong this war forever. You would watch thousands and thousands more die.”

“I am not fond of war!” she snapped back sharply. “But, sadly, I am not in charge of the state of affairs, and to my knowledge, the war still exists.”

She felt a strange chill; it was what she believed, and she so wanted it to be over. Every day was futile now; every day was just more loss of life.

“I have no intention of discussing my feelings regarding this war—or anything, for that matter—with you, sir.” She set her hands on her hips, trying for some form of dignity, which was actually quite ridiculous under the circumstances. Had someone called her bedraggled at that moment, it would have surely been a compliment.

He didn’t take a step toward her, but, hands folded behind his back, he took a step around her, making her far more uneasy than she wanted to admit.

“What is your name, and where are your accomplices?”

“I don’t have accomplices,” she replied.

“You were sailing that ship on your own?”

“I didn’t come off that ship. I live here.”

“You didn’t come off the ship, yet you’re caked with sand and seawater.”

“If I choose to take a dip at night, it’s no one’s concern.”

“The water just about has frost in it,” he said dryly.

“I am from here. I am accustomed to bathing through the year. One can become quite adept at the water in the islands,” she assured him.

“Interesting. I last saw you in Gettysburg. Stalking the president.”

“I was not stalking the president,” she said.

“I suggest that you tell me about your companions—or hang alone,” he said agreeably.

“You are an arrogant and extremely rude person, and I know your countrymen far too well to believe that many share your total lack of courtesy. I am guilty of nothing, and I suggest you leave me be, or the fate that awaits you will be far worse than hanging.”

He laughed, and for a moment she was, despite the circumstances, struck by just how appealing his dark good looks were.

Except, of course, he was an ass.

“I weary of this. Leave me be, and no harm will come to you.”

He shook his head, still smiling, and amused that she would dare to threaten him.

“You’ll excuse me?” she said, her tone equally modulated, as if they were in a fine drawing room.

He didn’t move. She stepped toward him, took one hand and set it on his chest, and pushed.

She had expected that he would go flying. He did not; she took him by surprise again, but he barely budged. His movement, however, did give her the escape she needed. With the foot and half that lay between them, she turned, and burst back through the brush and trees.

Where to go? Oh, God, where to go? She couldn’t lead him back to Richard….

Had Richard awakened to consciousness yet?

She tried leading the tall stranger deep into the trees, and far from the eastern spit of beach where Richard lay covered in the sheet of branches. To the northwest … that was the way she had to go. Again, she ran, swift as sound and the darkness.

But she could sense her pursuer at every turn.

She burst into another copse, aware that her strength was waning.

She turned back; she could hear noise on the island. The men from the Union ship had reached the shore at last.

How many men had survived from the Union ship? Oh, God, if the men thought that one of them was an assassin, indeed, they might not make the night.

She wanted to sink to the sand in exhaustion; she must not.

She turned again, forming a plan in her mind. She had to keep them away from Richard through the night, and in the morning steal one of their longboats. No one knew the coast and channels and the islands like Richard did. If she could steal one of the longboats, they could escape. That was it, a simple plan.

She stiffened, her muscles suddenly burning again as if the fire on the ship raged near once more; she felt him behind her, knew that he was there.

How?

She turned, and he was.

Just behind her, so close she could feel the heat of his body, sense him there.

He stared at her, waiting; she didn’t speak. “Agent Finn Dunne, miss. Pinkerton. By the power invested in me by the United States of America, I’m placing you under arrest for seditions and attempted murder.”

She gasped. “I’m not attempting to murder anyone! And you’re still an ass. I will not go anywhere with you.”

“I honestly suggest that you do. I can chase you around the island all night, or you can come with me now. You can bring me to your companion, and when the others arrive, we can administer medical aid to him.”

“I don’t have a companion.”

“Really, miss. I’ve seen whereabouts you’ve hidden your friend. Not very endurable alone and injured, and he probably does need medical attention.” He shrugged. “Such as we can offer.”

She shook her head, feeling lost, impotent and helpless.

She could escape. Eventually, she could escape.

But Richard …

“Whatever you’re thinking someone is guilty of doing, it’s not us.”

“You were on a blockade runner.”

“We are still at war,” she reminded him.

“Choice is yours,” he said softly. “Show me to your friend, and we can see to him. Keep trying to escape, and I will keep coming after you. I never give up, miss. And if my companions come upon your companion without my protection, well, I’m not sure how things will go.”

“You will not hurt Richard?”

“That I swear.”

“And I should believe you? Why?”

“My word is sacred to me. And besides, you really have no choice. I don’t know if you’ve heard it yet or not, but the Yankee longboats have reached the shore.”

“Then we will return to Richard,” she said.

He nodded. She was surprised when he looked at her curiously, head at a slant, dark eyes seeming to have that ripple of fire again. “Richard. Richard …?”

“Richard Anderson,” she said. “Captain Richard Anderson.”

He nodded and came closer to her. She bit her lip. She wasn’t going to move.

“And you?” he said politely. “Who are you? I don’t know your name, or who you are—even though I’m quite sure that I know exactly what you are.”




CHAPTER FOUR


TARA STOOD STILL, for a moment not sure that he’d said what she thought he’d said. Maybe her fear of discovery was becoming irrational. Maybe she was imagining things.

She stared back at him, desperately praying that she would show no emotion.

There were others of her kind; she knew that. And that “her kind” came in full-blood and half-blood—those who had an ancestor generations before, and had inherited certain traits. Her mother had done her best to teach Tara everything that she had known, that she had learned from Tara’s father. Tara had never actually met another of “her kind,” but she knew that someone was out there; she also had half siblings, and she often felt an emptiness inside, wishing desperately that she might know them. She had sisters and brothers and….

And a father.

Finn was staring at her. She tried to stare back at him, her head cast at an angle, a slight smile curving her lips.

“Yes,” Finn told her. “I said exactly that—I know what you are.”

She waved a hand in the air. “A Southerner?”

He laughed. “Well, that would be true, too, I imagine. No, I know what you really are. Half-breed. Bloodsucker. Vampire. Some might call you a succubus, demon or lamia. What they call you doesn’t matter.”

She shook her head, incredibly wary of the man who seemed to have her at his mercy. He’d been ahead of her all night long—even though she had managed a smooth escape from him at Gettysburg. She could have escaped him tonight, too, but for Richard.

“No tricks,” he told her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she assured him.

He indicated the path where they had ripped through the foliage in their chase. “I’m going to suggest that we head back—before the angry men who just lost their ship come upon your friend.”

She hesitated. “I’m telling you, neither of us is a spy. And neither of us is an assassin.”

“You’re both blockade runners.”

“Richard is a merchant, nothing more.”

He sighed. “Of course. But merchants running arms at times of war are by definition blockade runners. I am a tremendous believer in due process of law. If you come with me now, I can guarantee that nothing will happen to either of you on my watch. So, if you value your friend’s life …” He let his voice trail and indicated she begin walking.

Tara did so. She turned and began moving quickly through the brush, doing her best to make sure that every branch she passed slapped back into his face.

He didn’t say a word, he simply caught the branches.

She let her words trail over her shoulder at him, along with her anger. “Due process of law. That means you get us into a puppet military court, and see that we’re hanged.”

“If you’re innocent, you have nothing to fear.”

“You’re looking for someone called Gator. I’m not Gator. Richard isn’t Gator. There’s no reason that you should suspect either of us as your man.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” was all he replied.

“You should be worried, you know,” she said smoothly.

“Oh?”

“Lamia! You see me now, but I’ll turn to smoke, and you’ll find me behind your back, slipping around your side, seeking your jugular vein.”

“That’s always possible.”

“You should tremble. You shouldn’t push my temper,” she warned.

“I’m a mass of trembling flesh. Please keep moving.”

As she walked, she became aware of the shouts and instructions of the other Union men in the distance—one booming voice, and then others that rang back and forth as they scurried to obey the commander.

Tara quickened her pace. Finn Dunne hurried behind her.

When she at last neared the little copse where she had left Richard, she ran the last few steps.

She raced by the last tree. From there she could see that men had pulled longboats up on the beach, and that they were being sent out to gather firewood.

There seemed to be a lot of them.

Tara slid down to her knees at Richard’s side. His eyes were still closed; he had barely moved. But a quick check assured her that he was still breathing. His pulse even ticked a little stronger than before.

Finn Dunne was down beside her. He could move with an astonishing ease, especially for a man so tall. She tried to ignore him, but could not.

“Richard Anderson,” he said.

“Yes, his name is Richard Anderson.”

“And your name is …?”

“Tara. Tara Fox.”

“What?” His tone was so sharp that it stunned her.

She looked at him. His features were hard and tense; his eyes seemed to be burning as he stared at her. They were such unusual eyes.

“Tara Fox,” she repeated.

To her surprise, his eyes said he knew her name.

“Look, I don’t know what information you’ve been given, but you’re mistaken in me. I would never hurt Lincoln. Never. I would do anything to stop any evil being done to the man. Even a fool knows that we’ll need his strong leadership when it’s time to make peace and reconstruct the South. Stop looking at me like that. I am not a monster.”

“That’s debatable,” he murmured, getting to his feet.

As he did so, a loud shout rose in the air.

“Dunne! Agent Dunne! Are you here?”

Tara touched Richard’s face gently and rose, as well.

On the beach, she counted ten men. Several were still securing their boats.

The others had their guns at the ready.

“Here!” Finn Dunne called out. “I have the survivors from the Rebel ship. They’re unarmed. Hold your fire!”

Tara looked at him, feeling a sudden surge of anxiety. The Union men could have come upon them after the sea battle with guns blazing. This man had prevented that. She could only pray that the Pinkerton meant his words, that they wouldn’t be harmed.

In her heart, she honestly believed that most men were honorable. Union men would not murder a man in cold blood. And yet, despite the decency and courtesy displayed by commanders on both sides, horrible murders had occurred. While she understood that John Brown had wanted to make all men free with his campaign against slavery, he had in fact committed murder—and in the Kansas and Nebraska territories, men had committed murder in retaliation.

Wasn’t war just sanctified murder?

She just stood there, tense, terrified and praying. The philosophy of man wasn’t something she could solve, and certainly not at this moment.

Please, God, don’t let them hurt Richard.

A young soldier came through the trees. She thought that she recognized him—that bit of scruffy beard on his chin—but he was so covered in soot that she couldn’t be sure. He looked at Tara with surprise, his brows shooting up. Then he looked at the man on the ground and spoke to the Pinkerton agent.

“Sir!” the young man said, addressing Finn Dunne. “The men are busy setting up on the beach, sir. Captain Tremblay set off a flare, and he says we can expect a Union ship by tomorrow. There are always ships ready to move with all speed from the fort.” His eyes kept darting with surprise toward Tara. He gasped suddenly.

“Tara!”

“Billy Seabold?” she asked.

Billy nodded.

“You two know each other?” Finn asked sharply.

Billy nodded. “Well, a bit, anyway.” He scrambled to take off his military jacket, and offered it to Tara.

“I’m fine, thank you, really.”

“Please, Miss Fox, allow me the courtesy,” Billy said.

She thought to refuse would be rude, and so she accepted the jacket. Dunne was looking from one of them to the other, as if mentally shaking his head over the naivety of youth—in his mind, apparently, Billy was offering comfort to a venomous snake.

Finn cleared his throat.

“Oh … oh! If you’ll follow me to the beachfront, please?” Billy said.

Tara hunkered back down by Richard. Finn lowered himself as well, moving her aside with the breadth of his shoulders. “I will take him,” Finn said.

“He’s—he’s my friend. My brother, really,” she added softly. “I will tend to him.”

Finn’s voice lowered. “You want everyone wondering how you have the strength of ten men?” he queried.

She fell silent, lowering her eyes. He could, if he chose, kill her—he knew how. Why didn’t he? Was he actually decent in his way, loathe to murder without the facts established?

Finn took care as he lifted Richard’s form, keeping the man’s head rested in the crook of his arm. Tara rose with him and followed them to the beachhead.

Men were already busy setting up makeshift tarps for a shelter. Two others were collecting wood for a fire.

An elderly man, dead straight and dignified, was the one calling out the orders.

“Captain Tremblay, Agent Dunne is here, sir! With the, um, the Rebs,” Billy said.

Tremblay seemed equally surprised to see a woman. “Well, Agent Dunne. Are these the culprits you meant to apprehend?” Tremblay asked.

“It’s hard to know for certain, sir, until I’m able to question them thoroughly, and as you can see, this one is scarcely in shape for questioning.”

Tremblay looked at Richard, still in Dunne’s arms.

“He lives?” Tremblay asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll have the good doctor see to him, then,” Tremblay said. “MacKay! Doc MacKay! We’ve a man in need of your tender touch, sir!”

One of the men building the fire came over and nodded to Finn. “Bring him under the tarp, will you, please, Agent Dunne? Billy, I’ll need some light—will you see to it, lad?”

“Aye, sir,” the young soldier said.

Finn Dunne walked with the doctor and beneath the canvas tarp that had been lifted about fifty yards in from the shoreline. There were already blankets spread out beneath it, along with a captain’s portable desk; the men of the Union ship had known they were in trouble, and they had salvaged all that they could.

“Fresh water might be in order,” Doc MacKay said, preceding the others.

Tara found herself longing to follow, and yet, under the scrutiny of Captain Tremblay.

She looked up at him. He appeared to be a fine and gentle man, and she wondered how he went to war, and watched everything that happened around him, and still maintained that sensibility.

“So,” he said, “you’re our culprit. You’re from Key West, child?”

“My name is Tara Fox,” she told him. “And I’m not a spy. I have no intention of bringing harm to anyone.”

Except, she thought, maybe Agent Finn Dunne. I’d love to give him a good slap right across that smug face!

“Tara Fox …” the captain murmured, looking at her speculatively.

“Seminole Pete is a dear friend,” she told him.

Tremblay smiled. “I don’t frequent the taverns of the island, my dear. Mine is to set an example.”

Tara stood there awkwardly, wondering what she was supposed to do. No one seemed ready to tie her up or confine her. Maybe they realized that she would be making no escape attempts when Richard Anderson was in their care.

Or, perhaps, they didn’t think that she was capable.

Tara smiled, looking at the captain. He was reassuring; she didn’t believe that she had fallen into the hands of cold-blooded murderers. “Sir, I promise you, I don’t sit around the tavern gulping down rum or beer. Pete is like a father to me, just as the young man now in your care, Richard Anderson, is like a brother.”

“Your young ‘brother’ is one hell of a seaman, Miss Fox. And, I admit, I wish that he were on my side. But as he is not, he is not a man in my good graces, as my ship will soon be at the bottom of the sea, providing a home for the fish.”

“He is not a man who seeks to harm others.”

“He’s a blockade runner,” Tremblay said flatly. “Let me rephrase—was a blockade runner.”

“You will never be able to prove that Richard is anything other than a merchant, carrying food—”

“Young woman, do I look like a fool?” Tremblay demanded.

She shook her head. “No, sir, you don’t. I merely mention that in any legal court of law—”

“War changes everything, doesn’t it?” he said plainly.

“What will you do with us?” Tara asked politely, switching tactics.

“Well, had I just brought down the ship, I’d have seen that you were held at the fort, confined until this weary bloodbath limps to its halt. But you are prisoners of Agent Dunne, and I believe it’s his pleasure that you be brought to the capital.”

“Sir, we are not the cold-blooded killers he thinks us to be,” she said.

“The problem with war is that it makes cold-blooded killers out of all of us, now, doesn’t it?” Tremblay asked. “Never mind, child, the weary philosophy of an old tar. I believe you are standing there anxiously awaiting a chance to see to the welfare of your young seaman. You are free to do so.”

Thus encouraged, Tara gave him a grateful nod and headed for the tarp. A pallet had been set up for Richard. Doc MacKay was down on his knees. And seeing that Richard had come to, she let out a little cry of joy and slid down next to them both.

“Easy, now,” MacKay said. “The boy has taken a good rap to the head.”

“Richard!” Tara said happily. He looked at her, his face still ashen. He tried to smile. He caught her hand. “Thanks, my friend,” he murmured.

“You got him here—you swam?” MacKay asked, studying her. She flushed slightly, just imagining what she must have looked like in her tattered, salt-, sand-and debris-covered clothing, and sodden hair plastered to her face.

“I’m from Key West. I’m a strong swimmer,” Tara said.

“So you must be,” MacKay said. “I don’t believe there’s more than bruising to the skull—I can find no crack or rift—and I believe that Mr. Anderson will make a full recovery. Rest is in order now, but as we are awaiting rescue, rest can be easily procured.” He looked at Tara again. “What about you? You must be thirsty, my dear.”

She suddenly realized how thirsty she was. For water, at the moment.

MacKay offered her a canteen. She accepted it gratefully. After drinking a long swallow of cool freshwater, she looked at the doctor, who was studying her in return. She felt a flush come to her cheeks. “Thank you. We are receiving far greater kindness than I expected.”

“This is a war wherein fathers fight sons, and sons fight brothers. The intent is not to torture others, just to bring the conflict to an end.” He grinned, and she liked his grin. “Besides, I have taken an oath to save lives,” he reminded her.





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