By Starlight (28 page)

“You got that right,” Clayton agreed, rubbing his jaw. “What happened with you? Sumner get what he had comin’ to him?”

Jack closed his eyes and once again saw Sumner lying at the bottom of the lift shaft. “He won’t be giving us any more trouble,” he answered grimly.

Clayton drove his truck as fast as it would go through the darkened streets. Nearer to the mercantile, a few lights had been turned on; Jack guessed that they’d heard the commotion of the crash. But the farther he and Clayton got from the center of town, the night pressed back in, the sky dark save for thousands of stars. Up and down a low hill, they raced toward the river. Taking a corner fast, Roger’s tires screeched, sliding slightly. Slowly, the distance between the vehicles began to close.

“What’re we gonna do when we catch up to ’em?” Clayton asked. “Jeffers ain’t just gonna pull over…”

No matter how much Jack wished otherwise, there was no easy answer. He knew they had only one chance. “We’re going to have to run them off the road.”

Clayton’s eyes grew wide and he whistled low. “I don’t know if Sumner done knocked the sense outta your head, but if we hit that there truck, we’ll go bouncin’ right off like a mosquito flyin’ into a brick wall!”

“Not if we do it right,” Jack replied, warming to the idea. “All you need to do is hit it hard from the side, back by one of the rear wheels. If you do that, he’ll fishtail right off the road. Then we’ll have him.”

Clayton shook his head and patted the truck’s wheel. “What do you say, Roger? I reckon you’re even tougher’n that big ole thing…”

“You can do it,” Jack said with confidence.

“I got my doubts,” Clayton admitted. “Ain’t no point in lyin’ ’bout it. Comin’ outta this in one piece is gonna take a miracle, but if we do it, then the two of us gotta be the luckiest fellas alive!”

“That’s
exactly
what I’m counting on…”

The huge truck raced down Main Street, darkened storefronts whipping past in a blur. For a moment the bark of a dog could be heard. Wind blew hard and unrelentingly through the open window, blowing Maddy’s long red hair every which way. She stayed as far away from Jeffers as she dared.

No matter what it took, she knew she needed to escape. Her life depended on it. If Jeffers made good on his attempt to get away, if he somehow managed to evade capture, he was going to have his way with her just as he’d disgustingly promised. There was nothing she could hope to do to stop him then, but now…

The truck kept gaining speed steadily. Jeffers drove as fast as he dared; undoubtedly, the only thing that kept him from standing on the gas pedal was a fear of flying off the road at a curve. Within minutes they would be at the edge of Colton, with nothing but woods and little-traveled roads beyond.

I’ve got to do something!

But even as she struggled to decide what she should do, Maddy noticed that Jeffers kept glancing at his side mirror, his face twisted in a scowl. Seeing him like that gave her hope. When she saw his attention was focused on the mirror, she quickly craned her neck out of the passenger’s side window and immediately saw what had made him so concerned; another vehicle pursued them down the dark and deserted streets, its lights bouncing while it kicked up plenty of dust. It was clear they were quickly gaining ground. Maddy knew it had to be Jack. But before she could do anything to signal him, she was abruptly yanked backward.

“Don’t you dare try nothin’,” Jeffers warned with a growl.

Even after everything Maddy had been through, though she had every reason to be frightened out of her wits, anger began coursing through her, a fire that burned in her belly. “Jack is going to catch you,” she said defiantly. “He’s going to hunt you down no matter where you go. You’ll pay for everything you’ve done, for every law you’ve broken, for everyone you’ve ever—”

The back of Jeffers’s hand struck Maddy’s lip, snapping her head violently to the side. Blood filled her mouth. But instead of cowering, flinching, and covering her face so that he couldn’t strike her again, Maddy felt even more empowered to stand against him, to show him that, unlike everyone else in Colton, unlike how she’d been that first day he’d entered the store and proposed the speakeasy, she was no longer afraid of him.

“He’s going to make you pay for that, too,” she said, bracing herself for what she knew must be coming.

But before Jeffers could react to her boldness, the truck was suddenly rammed from behind, the collision an explosion of metal against metal, and both of them were jerked back and then instantly forward, whiplashed by the force of the terrible impact. For a moment the truck fishtailed one way and then the other, but Jeffers managed to hold them on the road.

“Goddamnit!” he roared, looking into the mirror. From close by Maddy heard a vehicle’s horn blare and understood what’d just happened; Jack and Clayton had rammed them.

Maddy looked ahead through the windshield and desperately tried to think of what she could do to help. The landscape continued to blur past. Jeffers drove even faster, taking a sharp curve dangerously quick, and then, in the starlight of early morning, the familiar framework of a bridge loomed up, dark against the night sky. It was the bridge Maddy shared with Jack.

An idea formed in Maddy’s head as they drew closer. It was daring, it undoubtedly would put her at great risk, but in order to save herself, to put a stop to Jeffers’s criminal schemes, to get back to Jack and the love they’d rediscovered, nothing could be ruled out. As the truck’s wheels started out onto the wooden planks at the start of the bridge, she knew it was time. When she acted, she did so without thinking; if she stopped to consider how reckless her actions were, if she hesitated, it’d be too late.

Lunging from where she sat, Maddy grabbed hold of the steering wheel and yanked it toward her with all of her might. While Jeffers was unquestionably stronger than she could ever hope to be, the impulsiveness of what she’d done took him by surprise, allowing her to change their course and direct the truck toward the side of the bridge.

“What the hell’re you—?” was all Jeffers had time to shout before they collided with the steel frame, the whole truck shuddering. In a symphony of twisting metal and the explosion of glass the truck leaped over the railing, caught in the steel like a fly in a spider’s web, before settling slightly to the side. The front of the truck’s cab hung precariously over the river below. Crates of illegal booze were tossed out, landing on the bridge, their contents destroyed.

Maddy felt as if she were moving through a fog as she tried to get her bearings. Tenderly, she touched her forehead, and when she looked at her fingers they were wet with blood. She heard moaning. Jeffers was slumped awkwardly across the steering wheel, his face streaked crimson. He’d taken the worst of the crash; she wasn’t sure if it was because he’d slammed his chest into the wheel or if he’d cracked his head against the door frame; either way, he was a bloody mess. The cab itself was at an angle, trapped in the bridge, with Jeffers’s side closer to the ground. His door was slightly ajar, the ground a few feet below.

“…make…pay for doin’…gonna make…,” he muttered.

Furious anger boiled over in Maddy’s chest. Though a sharp pain flared in her hip when she raised her leg, she began kicking Jeffers in the side, wanting him as far away from her as possible. Relentlessly, she struck him again and again, putting every last bit of her remaining strength into each blow. Jeffers tried to raise his hands and protect himself, screaming in pain every time she struck, but he’d been too badly hurt.

“I hate you!” she shouted. “I won’t be used! I won’t!”

Drawing her foot back as far as she could, Maddy drove it straight into Jeffers’s shoulder. Desperately, he tried to hold on to the steering wheel but couldn’t. He fell out of the truck’s cab and landed with a loud thud on his back on the bridge below.

Jack couldn’t believe what he’d seen. The truck that Jeffers was trying to escape in, with Maddy as his hostage, had shockingly veered to the side, running headlong into the bridge’s railing. Smoke poured out of the wrecked engine, while broken glass and spilled liquor littered the bridge. Jack and Clayton had unsuccessfully tried to knock the vehicle from the road and were just about to try again when something did the job for them.

Or someone…

Clayton brought Roger to a skidding stop behind the truck; one of the disabled vehicle’s rear wheels had been lifted from the ground by the crash and was still spinning. Jack raced across the bridge, fearful of what might’ve happened to the woman he loved.

“Maddy!” he shouted. “Maddy, can you hear me?”

There was no answer other than the clanks and hisses of the wrecked truck’s engine.

Jack hurried around to the driver’s side; with the way the truck was hung up in the bridge’s framework, it was easier for him to reach. His feet slipped on the spilled spirits, but he managed to stay upright. Looking up at the cab, the nose suspended a few feet out over the river, he hoped to see what was happening inside, but everything was dark, the driver’s side window spiderwebbed with cracks. Faintly, he heard a dull thumping. But just as he was about to leap up and investigate, the driver’s side door suddenly fell open and Jeffers plummeted to the bridge, hitting hard.

As the open door swung back and forth, Jack saw Maddy. Her face was bloodied, but he could see that she hadn’t been badly hurt. A scowl creased her still-beautiful face, but when she saw him it softened, making his heart thump hard.

“…not over…not yet…”

Jack was surprised to find that Jeffers had somehow managed to make it to his feet. He looked exactly like a man who’d just been in a bad automobile wreck; blood caked his shirt a disturbing black, while one eye was swollen almost shut. Still, to underestimate him now would be to take a terrible risk.

“You’ll find that I’m not so easy to deal with when I can see you coming,” Jack informed him, ready to fight.

Jeffers took two unsteady but lumbering steps to close the distance between them and swung a heavy left. Jack dodged with plenty of time to spare; the wounded man nearly fell on his face from the effort but somehow stayed upright, coming back for more. Another punch meant another miss, and then another. Patiently, Jack bided his time, waiting for the opening he wanted. With one more miss, there it was. His punch landed squarely on Jeffers’s exposed chin, making a crunching sound that was a smaller echo of the truck’s crash. Already wobbly, the bigger man fell onto the bridge. With great effort, he tried to raise his head, his eyelids fluttering, and then he was out, unconscious.

It was over.

Maddy had watched with delight as Jack finished off Jeffers. No sooner had the criminal fallen still than Jack was beside the truck, his hands reaching up to her through the battered door. Dropping into his arms, Maddy couldn’t believe that it was finally over, that she was safe, or that she and Jack were back in each other’s arms. Even as she dissolved into tears, her face nestled into the crook of his neck, she felt as happy as she’d ever been.

“Shhh,” Jack soothed. “You’re safe now.”

“I knew you’d come for me,” she sobbed. “I just knew it.”

“I’ll never let you go again; I swear.”

Maddy looked up into Jack’s eyes and knew that he meant what he’d said. Standing on their bridge, the brilliant starlight streaming down on them, she no longer had any doubts.

Just as he’d done seven years earlier, on this very spot, the day before he’d left her, Jack said, “I love you, Maddy.”

She couldn’t help but smile. Back then, she’d been a child, not the woman she had become. Theirs was a love that had been given a second chance to be kindled and now burned brighter than ever before.

Nothing would ever put it out.

“And I love you.”

Their kiss was tender, not as passionate as those they’d shared in Jack’s bed only hours before but every bit as powerful. Though their lips touched lightly, their hearts pounded like thunder. Maddy was just hoping that their embrace would go on forever when a low whistle interrupted them.

“I don’t know ’bout you two,” Clayton smirked, looking at the wreckage while a hand scratched at the back of his head, “but if this here ain’t occasion to have a drink, I can’t ’magine what is.”

“No way.” Maddy shook her head. “That’s what got us into all this trouble in the first place. No drinking!”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Jack smiled. “Clayton’s got a good point.”

“That’s just what I wanted to hear,” the other man answered, scurrying off in search of an unbroken bottle.

Maddy frowned, still held tightly in Jack’s arms. “You’re an agent of the Bureau of Prohibition.”

He shrugged. “I don’t have my badge with me.”

“It didn’t stop you from trying to arrest Jeffers.”

Jack ignored her argument. “Relax,” he said. “This calls for a celebration.”

“Of what?”

“Of tonight, tomorrow, and the day after that,” he explained. “I can’t say for certain what’s going to happen when we sort this whole mess out, but I can say that this time, we’ll find out together.”

“So we’re going to celebrate the future?”

“
Our
future.”

Maddy would certainly drink to that.

M
ADDY STOOD BESIDE
her baggage on the train platform in Union Station and shivered before pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders. Even inside, the icy cold managed to chill her to the bone. Looking up at the high windows, the sun peeking through the fast-moving clouds, she could see snow swirling against the glass, like an animal desperate to come indoors.

All around her, people hurried in every direction, travelers coming and going for the upcoming Christmas holiday. Women and children walked hand in hand, pointing up at the large tree that had been erected opposite the station’s entrance, its boughs decorated with colorful balls and strung with lengths of beads. Men sat at the shoeshine stands, smoking cigars and reading papers they’d just purchased at the newsstand. Couples left restaurants, laughing as they buttoned up their coats and headed out into the winter afternoon. Voices could be heard in every direction.

“…just in time, too, because…”

“When Aunt Ruth gets here we can go down and see the…”

“It’ll be the best Christmas ever!”

For Maddy, Chicago was a bit overwhelming. Ever since she’d arrived, it had felt as if she truly was a stranger in a strange land. The crowds, the automobiles, the towering buildings, and especially the
noise
of it all were constant reminders that she wasn’t in Montana anymore. She’d been excited to come, sleepless the night before boarding the train back in Colton, but the truth was that it hadn’t been quite what she’d expected.

But then, what had happened to her and Jack just a couple of months earlier would never have been expected, either.

Even now, months later, it often felt as if it had been a dream. But there were reminders, too; every morning when Maddy stood in front of the mirror, she saw the small, white scar that marred her forehead just beneath her hairline, an unwelcome memento of the truck’s crash. Still, she did what she could to put it all behind her and concentrate on how much her life had been changed by that fateful night.

In the hours after the crash, after Jack had rescued her from Jeffers’s clutches and put an end to his criminal schemes, there’d been much to do. Sheriff Utley had finally been rousted from bed and told what had happened; when Jack informed him that he was a fellow officer of the law, as well as telling him his real reason for returning to town, the sheriff had ashamedly admitted his own role in allowing the speakeasy to exist. Jack had waved the man’s guilt away; there’d been too many other loose threads to worry about.

Once Sheriff Utley had rounded up enough men, he’d followed Clayton out to the abandoned house where Jeffers had stored the booze. They’d seized everything, but there’d never been a sign of the big-city mobsters who were supposed to come for it; Jack figured that they’d been watching the place and, when the law had shown up, had hightailed it for the hills. Jack would’ve liked to have bagged them along with the bootleg liquor, but the ring was significantly damaged nonetheless.

Things got even trickier after Jack contacted the Bureau of Prohibition. His superior officer, Lieutenant Pluggett, had shown up a couple of days later to start an inquiry into what had happened. Jeffers, his face a smashed-up mess, his hands and feet cuffed, swore to anyone who would listen that Maddy had been in on it with him, that she’d known every little detail and encouraged him to use the mercantile’s cellar storeroom to hide their spoils. He claimed that it was Maddy’s idea to open the speakeasy to make even more profit and even went so far as to offer to testify against her in the hopes of receiving a reduced sentence of his own. Maddy figured that regardless of Jack’s assurances to the contrary, she was going to go to jail in the same wagon that took Jeffers.

But then something happened she never would’ve expected.

One after another, the people of Colton came forward and swore that Maddy had been forced into helping the two criminals against her will, that she’d gone along with the illegal tavern in order to protect her father and sister from the threats that Jeffers and Sumner had made against her, and that when it came to breaking the spirit of the law she was completely innocent. Even Anne Rider and Mike Gilson, the couple she’d once been so envious of, had spoken on her behalf. In the end, no charges were leveled against her.

Jeffers Grimm wasn’t so lucky; he was currently serving the first of twenty-five years at the State Prison over in Deer Lodge.

Sumner Colt’s fate was even harsher. Miraculously, his fall down the lift shaft hadn’t killed him, but smashing into the crates and barrels of alcohol had broken his back. There’d been nothing Dr. Quayle could do; Sumner would never walk again. Instead of sending him to prison alongside Jeffers, the criminal Sumner had idolized, the judge had shown leniency and returned him to the custody of his mother. Maddy had met the woman once on the street, her face worn and weary, and imagined that it was she who had really been sent to prison.

But there was one person who’d seemed skeptical of the story concocted to explain away Maddy’s role at the speakeasy. Jack’s partner, Ross Hooper, recovering slowly but surely from his burst appendix, regarded her with sly glances every time she accompanied Jack to the Belvedere. She doubted very much that Hooper believed them, but he ended up leaving without stirring up any trouble; Maddy always wondered if Jack had made a deal with the man, letting him take more of the credit for the arrests than he deserved in exchange for his silence.

Either way, she was grateful to have avoided arrest.

Afterward, things had slowly returned to normal. Without the speakeasy to provide him with drink, Seth Pettigrew had become a bit more irritable than normal, but whenever Maddy saw him he had a quick smile at the ready. Occasionally, he’d come to the mercantile and regale her with another story about his days as a lawyer; Maddy always put her elbows on the counter and listened intently, a remembrance of their time at the makeshift bar.

At home, her father’s condition hadn’t changed much. For Silas, some days were better than others, but when the pain of his arthritis took him, he would struggle through it without much complaint, always a fighter. To help with his care, Maddy hired Karla Teller, the simple girl who’d helped clean glasses in the speakeasy. Silas liked to good-naturedly tease the girl, who gave it right back, which made them both laugh, music to his daughter’s ears.

Helen continued to pine for something better than the life she had, to go someplace different, although Jack’s tales about the rougher underbelly he encountered in the big city seemed to have tempered her desire a bit. Yet a further complication was a young man named Andrew Mungovan who’d just moved to Colton; Maddy was reminded of how she’d met Jack, and wondered if everything her sister held true was about to change forever.

“Maddy!”

Looking up, she saw Jack running toward her, looking smart and handsome in a well-fitted suit. A bundle of flowers was clutched in his hand.

“You’re late,” she said when he reached her.

“I got caught up in traffic,” Jack explained breathlessly. Thrusting out the flowers, especially beautiful given the time of year, he added, “I hoped that these might somehow make it up to you.”

“Bribery, is it?” She smiled slyly.

“Guilty as charged, Mrs. Rucker.”

The biggest and best thing that had happened to Maddy since that fateful night in June was that she and Jack had been married in October. They’d promised themselves to each other in the church they’d attended as children, with Reverend Fitzpatrick leading them in their vows. Her father had insisted on coming to the ceremony, his old tune about Jack not being good enough for his daughter discarded, and beamed broadly from the front pew.

The questions about their future that had haunted her, whether she and Jack would stay in Colton or she’d follow his career to a big city, had been answered for Maddy the day he’d turned in his badge and gun, resigning from the Bureau of Prohibition. She’d tried to talk him out of it, telling him that she’d be happy as long as he was, wherever that happened to be, but Jack insisted that he’d had enough of seedy dives, bar fights, and spending weeks undercover.

But that didn’t mean he’d given up the law.

When Jim Utley had retired as sheriff in Colton, most folks figured he was ashamed of what had happened with the speakeasy. The person immediately hired to take his place was Jack. His first act was to bring on Clayton as deputy, extending an unlikely partnership that’d both upheld the law and undoubtedly saved Maddy’s life. Once Jack and Maddy returned from their honeymoon in Chicago, he would take up a different badge and gun.

As for Maddy, she was happy to stay in Colton and would do everything she could to see that Jack never regretted his decision. She’d return to the mercantile, working with her new husband through the tough times, saving whatever was needed to pay the bills and care for her family. Her hope was that it wouldn’t take long before they could have a child of their own, a boy or girl to take with them to the framework bridge, to make it a special place for three instead of just two.

And then four, then five…

A train’s shrill whistle blew and they both looked back down the tracks to see a locomotive pulling into the station. It was the first they’d board on their journey back to Montana.

“Are you ready?” Jack asked.

In answer, Maddy leaned forward and kissed him, finding his lips warm but his nose cold from his run to the station. Even now, married, after all that’d happened, she still was delighted she was able to feel his touch again.

“What was that for?”

“Love, the future, everything,” she answered.

And we’ll discover it all together.