Peacemaker (The Flash Gold Chronicles, #3) (11 page)

“
That’s what he told me,”
Kali said. “Look, there was a series of murders down in San
Francisco, right? And Cedar got blamed because he was found
standing over a woman killed in the same manner as the others,
right? He didn’t murder her or the others though. Surely you must
have wondered when he left town and the murders continued. You must
have known you had the wrong man.”

“
The murders didn’t
continue.”

Kali blinked. “What?”

“
When he was gone, they
stopped.”

Damn, she had been sure she’d been on to
something. What had happened then? Had the murderer figured things
were too hot and he dared not strike again? Or had it simply been
coincidence that Cedar had left at the same time as this cutthroat
stopped attacking women in San Francisco?

“
I’m not after the wrong
man, Miss McAlister,” Lockhart said softly, gently, as if he was
sorry he had to hurt her feelings by telling her a truth she didn’t
want to hear.

Kali sat up straight, a
growl in the back of her throat. It
wasn’t
the truth. “Listen, mister,
I’ve seen him do a lot of good up here. He’s brought in heaps of
murdering criminals. You two should be allies, not
enemies.”

Lockhart snorted.

Kali leaned forward, gripping the edge of
the table. “You weren’t around when he first told me about his
past, so he had no reason to lie to me. He volunteered the
information.”

“
Miss McAlister, I’ve
learned that most men tell tall tales, especially to women they
want to bed. That fibs are commonplace doesn’t make them true or
any less insidious.” Lockhart drew his shiny steel Colt and raised
it above the table.

Kali tensed. He had no law-abiding reason to
kill her, but the gun’s appearance made her nervous. He’d see if
she reached for the man-stopper in her front overalls pocket, but,
out of sight beneath the table, her hand drifted to the pocket
where she kept the pair of smoke nuts.

Lockhart laid the revolver down in front of
her and leaned forward, eyes intent. “They call this gun the
Peacemaker, and it’s here with me to kill Milos Kartes and bring
peace to the spirits of those he murdered. Half a dozen innocent
women in San Francisco, dead by his hand. His guilt was determined
by a jury of his peers. Evidence, not tall tales, condemned him. If
I come across Cudgel Conrad, I’ll kill him, too, because he’s
wanted a hundred times over for his crimes, but his isn’t the case
I was assigned. I’m here to get Kartes.” He gazed straight into her
eyes. “And if you get in my way, Miss, I’ll have the Mounties lock
you up until I catch up with my man.”

Kali wanted to declare that Lockhart was
from the United States, and had less sway with the RCMP than Cedar
did, but his hard, unwavering stare stole her defiance. She had to
fight to not squirm and look away. Seconds ticked by as she tried
to come up with a strong, intelligent reply, but she couldn’t think
of anything.

A scream came from a hallway behind the
stage.

Kali lunged to her feet, tipping her chair
over. Lockhart leaped up even faster. With his Colt in hand, he
vaulted over the table and sprinted for the hallway.

The fiddle halted, and the dancers stopped.
Kali started to follow Lockhart, but caught herself. If the
murderer was back there, he supposedly liked to torment his victims
before killing them. He couldn’t do that in a public place. If he
was kidnapping a girl, he might run out the back.

Kali pushed past groups of gawking men and
headed for the front door. If she could get around the building
quickly enough, maybe she could stop, or at least delay, someone
coming out the back.

She ducked past a burly man in the doorway,
gasped a breath of fresh air, and sprinted down the boardwalk
toward the alley. Muffled grunts and whimpers of feminine distress
came from behind the building. Kali dug into a pocket and pulled
out one of her smoke nuts. She jumped off the boardwalk and into
the ally. Mud squished audibly beneath her feet, and she winced,
hoping the kidnapper had not heard. Striving for quiet, she
advanced more slowly than she wanted.

A shadow passed over her, and Kali glanced
up. The buildings on either side of her hid all but a slice of the
night sky, and she saw nothing but stars in the gap.

“
Your imagination,” she
muttered under her breath.

Kali picked her way through the sucking mud
as quickly as she could. She reached the back of the saloon and
peeked around the corner.

A towering man with a torso as broad as a
grizzly’s was stalking toward her. That had to be Sparwood. A woman
thrashed in his arms, but he kept her crushed against his chest,
her feet dangling a foot above the ground. Her flailing was
useless.

Kali tightened her hand around the smoke
nut, but hesitated before arming it. The shrapnel her weapon flung
would hit the woman, too, probably harming her more than the man,
since he was holding her before him like a shield.

They were only five steps from her hiding
spot. There was no time to think of a better plan. The man would
take at least some of the shrapnel, and Kali could attack him under
the cover of the smoke.

She armed the smoke nut and drew back her
hand to throw. Someone grabbed her wrist.

Kali spun, her free hand reaching for the
man-stopper, but she thought it might be Cedar or Lockhart and
wasn’t as quick to draw as she might have been. She didn’t
recognize the dark figure before her, though, and a calloused hand
caught her other wrist before she could grab the gun. Someone else
appeared and ripped the smoke nut from her grasp, then hurled it
onto the roof. It went off, shards of metal pinging against stove
pipes and chimneys, but the building kept it from doing any good
down in the alley.

Kali tried to twist free of her captor’s
grip, but he was strong and he wasn’t alone. Three other men had
come into view. Behind them a rope ladder dangled from the sky. Not
the sky. The pirate airship. Even with the limited view and the
night darkness, she recognized its black silhouette blotting out
the stars above.

Mud squished behind her. “What we got here?”
a deep voice rumbled over the continuing struggles of his female
captive. “Two for the price of one?” He laughed, a dark, cruel
laugh that sent a chill down Kali’s spine. “She’s familiar too. You
the one what was skulking around in the woods?”

The chill deepened. Had he been watching all
the time? While she and Cedar questioned the other pirate?

“
Hurry up,” someone said,
already jumping for the ladder. “There’s a Pinkerton detective on
his way out, and Ralph can only keep him busy so long.”

As the men backed toward the ladder, Kali
rallied for one more escape attempt. She tried to jam a knee into
her captor’s groin, but he saw the move coming and blocked her.
Someone grabbed her from behind and slipped a bag over her head.
Kali twisted her neck and tried to bite the man through the burlap.
She caught something—a hand?—between her teeth, but a fist slammed
into her temple. Pain ricocheted through her head. The bag made it
stuffy and hard to breathe, and she gasped for air.

“
Feisty wench, ain’t she?”
Sparwood asked, predatory hunger in his voice.

“
Just like you like ’em.”
The other men laughed.

Idiot, Kali, she cursed herself. They never
should have believed that pirate’s story.

She sucked in a deep breath to scream for
Cedar, but she’d barely gotten the “C” out when a hand clamped down
on her mouth. Someone hoisted her legs into the air and wound rope
about her wrists and ankles. In heartbeats she was tied tight. She
bit down on the hand gagging her, and a man cursed. Before she
could try to scream again, another fist collided with her head. Her
dazed body refused to comply with her brain’s orders to keep
fighting, and the men hauled her up the ladder.

The shrapnel being flung from her smoke nut
had ceased, and only its smoke lingered in the air as they climbed.
Kali cursed Lockhart for being slow, but more, she cursed herself
for not sticking with Cedar. Talking to Lockhart had been a waste
of time, and now she was captured, in the hands of a rapist and
murderer, surrounded by a whole crew that apparently supported
him.

Kali’s captors dragged her into the bowels
of the airship. Though the bag over her head stole her sight, the
stifling heat told her where they were. The boiler room.

The man carrying Kali dropped her like a
sack of corn meal, and her shoulder hit hard, sending a fresh stab
of pain through her. While men shuffled about, and chains clacked
nearby, Kali fantasized about commandeering the ship, sailing to
the North Pole, and making these louts walk the plank. She’d leave
them on a sheet of ice where they could become a nice snack for a
passing polar bear.

Someone grabbed her by the head and pulled
off the sack, removing numerous strands of hair at the same time.
It was hard to glower effectively from one’s back on the floor, but
Kali gave it her best.

The men ignored her icy stare. A burly
pirate clapped a leg iron around one of her ankles. Its chain ran
five feet to an eyelet in front of a bin of coal and two furnaces.
The pirate cut the rope that tied her ankles together. Kali lifted
her bound wrists, hoping he would do the same for them. He did
not.

“
We don’t allow anyone
free passage on our vessel,” a graying reed of a man said. Scars
peppered his face, and he wore an eye patch like the pirates in
storybooks. He lacked only a parrot to perch on his shoulder,
though such birds were probably hard to come by in northern climes.
He took a shovel from a scruffy man cloaked from head to foot in
soot. “Everybody here works, ain’t that right, Chum?”

“
Oh, aye, Cap’n,” the
sooty man said.

Kali remained quiet. Working in the boiler
room sounded far better than being mauled by that Sparwood, but she
wasn’t about to say so. The other woman the pirates had kidnapped
was nowhere to be seen, and Kali scowled at the realization of
where she must be. Would she be next?

“
Take all of her things,”
the captain said.

Invasive hands pawed at Kali, and she
gritted her teeth. With her wrists tied and her leg chained, she
could do little to fight the intrusion, though she stood with one
leg slightly in front of the other, blocking the view of the ankle
that held her vial of flash gold. She hoped the man wouldn’t think
to check her socks. Maybe she should have taken the vial back to
her workshop and locked it in its safe, behind a series of booby
traps. Too late now.

Unfortunately, the man searching her proved
adept at finding things. He removed her remaining smoke nut, her
gun, and every single tool in her pockets.

“
Tarnation, girl,” the
pirate said, “you rob a tool shop?”

“
Your murderers caught me
when I was in the middle of a project,” Kali said.

“
I ain’t murdered
anyone.”

“
You let it happen on your
ship.” Though she was responding to the man searching her, Kali
looked the captain in the eyes when she spoke. She thought of the
airship hovering above the alley behind the Aurora, and of that
ladder dangling down. “You even help out, don’t you?” That
explained why Cedar hadn’t found a trail at the murdered woman’s
home. “You drop that bastard down and pick him up when he’s done,
don’t you? You help him perpetrate the idea that there’s something
otherworldly involved in these murders, since there’s nothing but
those fake bead patches to be found.”

Kali was surprised the pirates had chosen
such a public target this time, a woman getting ready for a show in
a saloon full of people. Maybe it’d been a last hit before the ship
cleared out of town. Or maybe they’d counted on Sparwood getting in
to steal the girl without anyone up front hearing about it. Kali’s
stomach clenched at the idea of him leaving a bead patch in the
changing room and people blaming “spirits” for the girl’s
disappearance.

The captain lifted his chin in response to
Kali’s accusations. “Sparwood’s my best worker and fights better
than ten men combined, and he doesn’t ask for a cut of the loot. He
just wants the leeway to pursue his…hobby.”

“
That’s loathsome,” Kali
said, “and so are you if you help.”

“
What’s this?” The man
searching her had found all of her tools and weapons, and moved
down to her ankles. Kali winced when he patted at the lump there.
Having these slimy pirates running around with such power was the
last thing she wanted.

The man pulled out her vial and held it
aloft. The flakes inside the clear container appeared no different
from regular gold, but they glowed softly, sending occasional
streaks of yellow lightning coursing through the glass tube.

“
That,” a new voice said
from a hatchway leading to an upper deck, “is what I was hoping
she’d have, and it’s why I’ve offered you more money than the Scar
of Skagway for her capture.”

The owner of the voice climbed down a
ladder, boots ringing on the metal rungs. He clasped his hands
behind his back and strolled toward the furnaces to join the
captain and others in regarding Kali.

A pale-skinned man, he wore an all white,
expensive suit, tailored to fit his body. His boots were like
nothing Kali had ever seen. Snake skin? Or maybe alligator or
crocodile? She’d read about such creatures. The man bore no
weapons, but all the pirates, the captain included, offered subdued
greetings and touched their knuckles to their hats or foreheads in
polite salutes.