Gwyneth Atlee (21 page)

Only moments after Yvette bolted through Gayoso Hospital’s front
doors, exhaustion struck a thunderous blow. It hammered at her head
and elbow; it loosened both her knees. Walking along the avenue, she’d
felt only slightly tired, but the jolt of anger and fear, prompted by the
sight of Russell, had burned away what strength she had recovered
since her ordeal on the dark river.

Still, she staggered forward, fearing at every moment the pounding
of his feet on the pavement, the rasp of his breath as he drew near, the
sharp jerk of her body, stopped by his restraining hands.

Turning her head, she saw he hadn’t followed yet, but she knew
beyond question that she had only seconds left to find some other
avenue of safety: a friendly man to beg for protection, a doorway near
enough to dart inside. Instead, she saw a hedge, one that ran alongside
the building. Without pausing to consider, she hurried to it and hid
herself as best she could behind its scratchy evergreen branches.
Through the fragrant needles, she saw a plump young woman holding
the hands of two young children. The older of the pair, a round little
boy whose pudgy calves peeked out beneath his knee-length trousers,
jabbered excitedly and gestured toward Yvette. When the mother tried
to control her child, his flaxen-haired sister tottered on unsteady legs
before sitting far too hard and suddenly. She gave a yowl of indignation more fitting for a steamboat whistle than a two-year-old.

Yvette felt the blood drain from her face.
Mon Dieu!
This noise
would give her away for certain!
Before Yvette had the chance to reconsider her hiding place, she
spied Darien Russell trotting toward the avenue. He stopped, looking this way and that, until his dark eyes came to rest upon the
pointing child.

Why couldn’t that woman keep her two whelps quiet? The towheaded toddler’s shriek bored into his skull like nails raked across a
slate board. Darien scowled disapproval at the mother, a woman
whose dark brown sausage ringlets swung to and fro as she turned to
tend first one child, then the other.

She chanced to look up into Russell’s face, and her plump
cheeks colored crimson. Darien watched the quick play of emotion
transform her expression from embarrassment to irritation to outand-out anger— apparently at
him,
for some reason. As she
scooped the squalling girl-child into her arms, he hurried past,
unwilling to waste time in instructing this obviously unfit mother
on managing her children.

A brief search of the area yielded no trace of Yvette. Darien cursed
her uncanny ability to elude him. But he saw no reason to keep looking.
He had only to go back and watch the hospital, where he’d been told
that her friend had been taken, and wait for her to come.

“Your hands,” the surgeon told him. “My God, we’ll have to take your
hands.”
Gabe could barely understand the man, for his voice was muffled by the
folded handkerchief he kept pressed to his nose. A stench like rotted meat
explained the surgeon’s reasons. Gabriel had thought that Andersonville had
nearly inured him to foul odors, but this one made him want to gag.
He tried to pull the sheet up to cover his nose and mouth. But nothing
happened. He couldn’t move his hands or even feel them. Peering down, Gabe
saw them lying atop the white sheet, hideously black and swollen, the cracked
and peeling skin oozing green.
“We’ll amputate them both immediately,” the surgeon told him.
Gabe opened his mouth to scream, but his voice was as dead as his ruined
hands. The only thing that passed his lips was the reek of putrefaction, and he
knew in that moment that the rot had taken hold inside as well, that no
amount of cutting would be enough to save his life.
“How are you feeling?”
Gabe jerked awake at the voice, still shaking from the nightmare.
He ought to thank the speaker for freeing him from the dream, but the
man’s voice hung heavy with menace.
Gabe opened his eyes wide, suddenly convinced this was the
surgeon coming with a saw to amputate. Fresh pain rushed in at him,
and he knew in an instant that his burned hands had not died. His
vision blurred, he stared at the man’s face for half a minute before it
swam into focus.
It was not the surgeon who had come to inquire about his health.
Instead, Capt. Darien Russell stood beside his cot, his expression
hawklike, hopeful.
He’s hoping that I’ll die.
Shaking off the nightmare, Gabe took in a deep breath. “What do
you want with me?” he asked.
“Only information,” Russell told him. “I haven’t forgotten your
earlier crimes, Mr. Gabriel Davis.”
He must have looked surprised, for Captain Russell’s countenance
turned smug.
“You told the ward master your name. Did you forget that? Now
I’ll know just whom to charge. Abetting a fugitive, assaulting an
officer. But I’m not terribly interested in you, Private Davis. I want
Yvette instead. Tell me where she is now, and you can live— or die—
in peace.”
“You must be insane. How should I know where she is?” True
enough, but Gabe decided to embellish, anyway. It went against his
grain to appear cooperative in even the slightest degree. “The last I
know of her, she was on the promenade with you. You didn’t see her
after the explosion?”
The captain stared at him as if trying to gauge the purpose of his
question. Somehow or another, Russell had conjured up a fresh uniform. Despite all the hardships he surely must have suffered, he
appeared as meticulously groomed as if no cataclysm had ever
inconvenienced him. But that ought not to surprise him, Gabriel
thought, for one who’d clearly sold his soul so long before.
“Your loyalty is misplaced,” Russell said. “I’ve told you, she’s a
criminal. A murderess, in fact. There’s even talk she might have been
part of a conspiracy that caused the explosion. Whatever the outcome
of that investigation, she
will
hang. And if I don’t catch her, you will in
her stead.”
“You know damned well she had nothing to do with what
happened on the
Sultana.
You know where we all were, and you know
what happened when the boat blew up. What makes you think she’s
even alive?”
A slow smirk curled the left side of the captain’s mouth. “I have
intelligence to that effect.”
Despite the leap of hope his heart gave at the news Yvette might
have survived, Gabriel forced himself to match the man’s disdainful
expression. “Your pardon . . .
sir,
but I sincerely doubt that. That you
have intelligence, that is.”
“You tread the thinnest of thin lines, boy.”
“Yvette won’t come back here. I’m nobody to her, just some soldier
who helped her out a time or two for lack of anything better to do
aboard the boat. Right now she’s probably already sitting in some general’s
office, convincing him that you’re a lying murderer. She sure as hell
convinced me quick enough, and I don’t normally cotton much to
Southerners, not even pretty ones.”
Standing near Gabe’s feet, Darien Russell flinched visibly at those
words. His gold-brown gaze flicked toward nearby cots, as if to check
for any reaction from the men sleeping nearby. His clear discomfort
felt as soothing as a balm to Gabe.
“I’ve known Yvette far longer than you have. She’ll come back for
you,” Russell insisted. “And when she does, I’ll be waiting.”
Gabe prayed that he’d been right before, that the conversation he’d
shared with Yvette had been mainly wishful thinking on his part. That
Yvette had merely acquiesced out of fear and loneliness and desperation.
That after having escaped the explosion and the Mississippi, she had
fled for the safety of her uncle just as quickly as she could.
His hopes were swallowed by an almost overwhelming wave of
bleakness, a cold black swell of utter desolation. For if Yvette were to
escape with her life, it would mean that everything they’d told each
other had meant nothing.
It would mean that the love that burned inside him had been based
upon a lie.