Page 8 of Echoes of Twilight (Dawn of Alaska #4)

8

Sitka, Alaska

A lexei Amos paced from one end of his office to the other. He was half tempted to look out the large windows facing the harbor to see if he could glimpse where his ship, the Aurora, was anchored, and half tempted to hurl one of the wooden chairs toward the window itself.

It was the third time one of his ships had been searched since Simon Caldwell became governor of Alaska in September.

Alexei’s fists clenched at his sides, his nails biting into his palms as he forced himself not to touch the extra wooden chair sitting against the wall. Breaking a window wouldn’t solve anything, and neither would staring at the Aurora while the Revenue Cutter Service workers tore through every last inch of the ship.

He whirled on his heel and stalked to his desk at the back of the room. The search would take hours, and he wasn’t going to be able to rush it by pacing across the office. The time would be best used trying to get some work done.

He yanked out his chair but stopped himself from sitting down as he stared at the pile of paperwork from the Halcyon —the ship Simon Caldwell had ordered to be searched four weeks ago. There was the manifest and shipping log along with the import and export permits. Everything was meticulously recorded and in perfect order, yet somehow, despite the detailed records, Alaska’s new governor had still ordered the Revenue Cutter Service to search the ship.

Alexei picked up the manifest, scanning the neat columns that recorded the tea and textiles the Halcyon had carried from China.

He could understand the RCS occasionally searching a ship after an international shipping run like the one the Halcyon had returned from. After all, tariffs needed to be enforced and paperwork maintained to track imports and exports.

But the Aurora was carrying textiles, dry goods, and tools from Seattle—common cargo that hadn’t crossed international borders. There was nothing illegal or suspicious about the run. And yet the ship would be held up for hours—possibly even days—while RCS workers pawed through every barrel, crate, and sack on board.

Even worse, the RCS would hold the manifest and the shipping log for a week or better, going over every last detail themselves before finally returning them.

When they did return the ledgers, it would be long after the Aurora left on its next voyage, which meant Alexei wouldn’t be able to check the actual cargo against the log to make sure everything matched and he wasn’t undercharging a company for extra cargo that might have been slipped aboard at the last minute.

Three times. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands as if the motion could somehow relieve the pressure building in his head. Three separate searches, and for what? A political grudge? Petty revenge?

The ground-floor door to the office banged open, and boots pounded against the stairs. Sacha. He could tell by the heavy sound of the footsteps.

A moment later his younger brother appeared in front of the giant windows at the front of the office, his burly chest and broad shoulders impossible to ignore. “Are they searching another ship?”

Alexei’s fingers tightened around the manifest he still held. “What do you think?”

Sacha let out a sharp breath. “That’s three ships so far! What’s Caldwell trying to prove?”

“Which one? Preston or his brother, the governor?” He set the manifest on his desk. “I don’t suppose it matters, does it? They’re both trying to prove they can do whatever they want to us—and they can.”

Sacha whirled and crossed to the window, his form so broad it blocked half the harbor from view. “What do we do?”

If only he knew.

The door opened again, and this time lighter, quicker footsteps scrambled up the stairs. A moment later, Yuri appeared, his cheeks flushed from the cold and his dark hair ruffled from the November wind.

“Alexei! There you are! They’re searching the Aurora !”

“I know.”

“Then why aren’t you down at the wharf?” Yuri threw up his hands.

Alexei scowled. “Did fighting it do me any good the last two times?”

Yuri scowled right back at him. “That doesn’t mean you should stop fighting altogether. This is ridiculous.”

“I agree, but making a spectacle of myself for all the town to see will only make it more ridiculous.” Never mind that every inch of his body longed to storm down the stairs and square off with the governor.

“Oh. So you don’t want...” A fresh redness filled Yuri’s cheeks, and Alexei suspected it had little to do with the cold.

“What did you do?” Sacha muttered.

“Ah, I may have called the governor a toad. But don’t worry. I left before Marshal Hibbs caught me.”

Alexei pressed a hand to his temple. “So help me, Yuri. If I have to bail you out of jail for disorderly conduct, I’ll?—”

“You won’t. I stopped before Governor Caldwell got angry, and the moment I saw Marshal Hibbs weaving through the crowd, I decided to leave.”

“Forgive me if I don’t sound all that impressed,” he growled.

Yuri ran a hand through his already ruffled hair, the motion brisk and uneven. “People are starting to talk.”

Alexei narrowed his eyes at the brother who was eleven years younger than him, the youngest of his full-blooded siblings. “Are they saying we’re doing something illegal?”

“It depends.” Yuri started pacing in front of the windows overlooking the harbor. “A few people think we must be hiding something if the governor keeps ordering these searches, but most of the town is saying the new governor has lost his mind, that having all of our ships searched while no other ships are being searched should be illegal.”

It should be, but it wasn’t. The RCS was perfectly within their rights to search any vessel that came into port, but in all his years of shipping, Alexei had never seen the law misapplied so egregiously.

Yuri kept pacing back and forth in front of the windows. Eleven or twelve steps one direction, a turn, and eleven or twelve steps in the other direction. “Did you hear what Governor Caldwell’s doing to Henry Evans?”

“The blacksmith?” Alexei ran a hand over his jaw. “No.”

“Rumor is that the governor wanted a lower rate for the ironwork Evans does for the RCS ships, but Evans refused to give it to him.”

“And...” Alexei drew out the word.

“And now the governor is bringing a new blacksmith up here from California, and he’s refusing to renew Evans’s business license for next year.”

He pressed his lips together. That sounded exactly like something a Caldwell would do.

“He’s going to find something on one of our ships eventually.” Sacha rubbed a hand over the light brown stubble coating his jaw. “Just like the Revenue Cutter Service did when I was captaining two years ago.”

Yuri threw his hands into the air. “That was a ridiculous charge. It never would have stuck had Preston Caldwell not been behind it.”

“Well, now we have two Caldwells pushing for these searches, and one of them is the blasted governor.” Alexei shoved his hand toward the harbor, where Governor Caldwell himself was likely still presiding over the search of the Aurora .

Preston Caldwell had arrived in Alaska nearly four years ago with his daughter, Rosalind. The Caldwell family owned the Alaska Commercial Company, and they had wanted someone living in Alaska to manage it. It made sense from a business perspective. The trouble was, Preston Caldwell thought nothing of using the power that his wealth gave him to trample others and sway government officials.

Alexei was of the firm opinion that government officials should make decisions based on what was good for Alaska itself, not what was good for the Alaska Commercial Company.

And that had set him and Preston Caldwell at odds from the beginning.

Still, he couldn’t help but think that some of their current predicament was his fault. Over the summer, the secretary of the interior and two senators had visited Alaska. They’d asked him about becoming the next governor, but it had come with conditions—conditions he wasn’t willing to agree to. So he’d refused the offer, even going so far as to walk out of the meeting with the secretary of the interior and the two senators.

But had he realized just who Secretary Gray had in mind as the next governor of Alaska, he would have rethought everything, would have tried to find a way to...

What? The ultimatum Secretary Gray had given him seemed impossible.

He never could have agreed to such a thing.

“The question isn’t whether Governor Caldwell will find something he claims is illegal,” Sacha said, turning away from the window. “It’s how long it will take and what he’ll try to do once he’s found it.”

Yuri stopped pacing. “Do you think he’ll attempt to shut down the entire Sitka Trading Company?”

“In a sane world, no. But nothing about this is sane.” Alexei tapped his fingers on his desk, staring down at one of the maps that lay half buried under his other papers. “We need to reroute our ships. None of our vessels can dock in Sitka unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Uh, are you forgetting we have a warehouse stuffed to the gills below us?” Sacha tapped the heel of his boot on the floor. “What are we supposed to do? Let the textiles, grain, and lumber rot?”

“Once the RCS releases the Aurora, we’ll fill it with as much cargo as we can and move it to Juneau. The warehouse there has plenty of space, and there’s no RCS office—or governor—in Juneau who will know the second one of our ships reaches port.”

“I feel like Governor Caldwell will just station an RCS worker in Juneau and keep doing the same thing.” Yuri tugged at his coat sleeve, as if he was itching to do something more productive than talking.

“Then maybe we stick only one ship on our Alaskan routes. That way they’re searching the same ship over and over. They’ll have to tire of it at some point.” Alexei shifted some papers that were covering the edge of the map and stared at it for a moment longer, trying to parse out the best course of action for the five ships their trading company owned. “I have a meeting with the governor tomorrow to discuss three of our contracts. I’ll bring up the sudden rash of searches and see what he says.”

“You think a conversation is going to stop the searches?” Yuri rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I think you’re smart, and other times I swear you’re an imbecile.”

“Wait. You have a meeting with the governor? To discuss our shipping contracts?” Sacha raked a hand over his light brown hair. “I thought we had another eighteen months before those renewed.”

Alexei tried to ignore the heavy sensation filling his chest. “We do.”

“There’s only one reason the governor wants to meet.” A muscle pulsed at the side of Sacha’s jaw. “He’s going to take those contracts from you.”

Yuri stiffened. “He can’t. Governor Trent already signed them. They’re good until 1890.”

Sacha crossed his arms over his impossibly large chest. “I’ll bet you every last dollar in my bank account that Governor Caldwell will find a way to void them. He’ll come up with a reason that’s technically legal, something he can send back to Washington, DC, that looks good on paper, and no one who reads his report will care enough to ask any questions.”

Yuri took a step closer to Sacha. “I’ll take you up on that bet.”

“No, you won’t. Sacha will win, and then I’ll have to spend Thanksgiving listening to you whine about losing all your money.” Alexei shoved a hand toward the wooden chair he’d contemplated throwing through the window before his brothers had joined him. “Now sit down and help me think of some ways to solve this problem.”

Yuri stalked to the chair and sank into it, his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest. “You really think our best option is to rework the shipping routes?”

“For the time being, yes. Until we can come up with a way to get Simon Caldwell removed from his governorship.”

“Oh, that sounds like a great plan.” Sarcasm dripped from Sacha’s voice. “And just how are we going to get Simon Caldwell removed?”

“We wait for him to mess up. You know he will.”

“I agree with you there. He’ll certainly mess up. He probably already has.” Sacha turned to look out the window at the Aurora . “But the man’s brother found a way to distribute falsified navigational charts for six months and got away without so much as a conviction, let alone spending time in prison. Simon Caldwell could mess up as governor a hundred times over, but I doubt we’ll ever be able to pin anything on him.”

“Sacha’s right,” Yuri said from where he slouched in his chair. “We’re not going to get him removed. Their family is too powerful.”

Alexei picked up the Halcyon ’s shipping manifest and turned it over in his hand. It recorded every last detail about the cargo the ship had carried to Sitka, down to the ounce. He kept meticulous records, as did every other business owner of repute. It was imperative to the successful operation of the business.

Politicians were the same way. Records of everything had to be maintained, and half the time those records would be looked at and scrutinized by a dozen other people. That meant there were records of everything the Caldwells did, whether Preston as manager of the Alaska Commercial Company or Simon as the new governor. There were records somewhere, even if some of their activities skirted the law. The question was, how did he get his hands on them?

“I disagree, Yuri,” he finally said. “The Caldwells are powerful enough to be dangerous, but they’re not powerful enough to get away with everything. If we were to find irrefutable proof that both Simon and Preston were doing something illegal, irrefutable proof regarding something Washington, DC, cares about, then we could take that evidence over to Secretary Gray directly. He would feel compelled to do something about it.”

“And just how are we going to find evidence?” Yuri pushed himself out of the chair.

“We need to figure out where they keep their ledgers and get our hands on a few of them without anyone noticing.” Alexei narrowed his eyes at Yuri. “Tell me, how’s Rosalind doing these days?”

Yuri narrowed his eyes right back. “What’s Rosalind got to do with anything?”

“She’s Preston’s daughter. If her father is doing something illegal, she’s going to know about it.”

Yuri snorted, then gave a dismissive shake of his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Have you seen how he treats her? She’s like a caged bird. Exotic and beautiful but utterly helpless.”

Alexei rubbed the back of his neck. He’d seen Rosalind with her father only once in the privacy of their own home, on the night they went to Caldwell’s house to confront him about the false navigational charts. The memory of how poorly Caldwell had treated his daughter caused the spot between his shoulder blades to itch.

“So have you talked to Rosalind lately?” he pressed. “Has anything changed now that her uncle is living in their mansion?”

“You told me to stay away from her, remember?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Yuri threw up his hands. “Do you think I’m sneaking off at night to visit her? I’m not. I’ve talked to her maybe twice in the past month, and both times she was with a group of other women. I wouldn’t even call us friends, just mutual acquaintances who sometimes end up in the same social setting.”

“Maybe you should become her friend.”

“Alexei, no.” Sacha made a slashing movement with his hand. “You can’t tell Yuri to lead that poor girl on. There’s no way that’s going to end well.”

He blew out a breath, long and slow. “You’re right. I’m getting ahead of myself.” Again. It seemed that was all he ever did these days. He moved his gaze back to Yuri. “Leave Rosalind out of it, Yuri. I’m sorry for asking. We’ll find some other way to get the evidence we need.”

“Don’t apologize,” Yuri said. “I understand what you want to do and why. I just don’t want to be involved in anything that might end up hurting Rosalind.”

Alexei looked down at his desk, where the map of the Pacific Ocean was still splayed. He narrowed his gaze at the long group of islands that formed Southeast Alaska—the Alexander Archipelago. “Maybe we should focus on the Indian tribes. I know the new governor has been sending representatives to meet with various villages. He’s trying to get chiefs to sign treaties and move onto reservations.”

Sacha’s eyebrows winged up. “That’s never going to happen.”

“That’s what I would have thought, but just this morning I heard a rumor that Chief Gookshí down in Ketchikan agreed to a treaty.”

“I don’t believe it,” Yuri said.

“That man isn’t going to give up an inch of his land.” Sacha spoke at the same time.

Alexei rubbed a hand over his jaw. “That’s what makes me think one of us should take a trip down to Ketchikan to figure out what actually happened when someone from our dear, sweet governor’s staff met with the chief.”

Sacha blinked. “You really think talking to the Tlingit will give us the evidence we need to have Simon Caldwell removed as governor?”

In some ways it seemed flimsy, but in other ways... “Americans have been underestimating the tribes here ever since they bought Alaska. If they make a mistake somewhere, it will be with people they don’t view as a threat, and that means visiting Ketchikan is worth a try.”

And at the rate Governor Caldwell was going after their ships, they couldn’t afford to be picky about what they tried next.