Page 42 of The Gilded Lady (The Gilded West #3)

Chapter Twenty-one

Z ane coughed as he pushed out from under the bar in the dining room. He’d dove behind it the moment he heard the blast that came from the large pantry off the kitchen. Plaster fell from the wall as he pushed a hunk of the wooden bar back into it in his attempt to pull himself out.

“Pierce!” Able’s deep voice was unmistakable.

“In here!” Zane kept trying to get himself out and got to his feet as Able came through the open doorway.

“Come on.” Able led him through the smoke and dust to the front of the house.

It was like they were in a dream. Zane could feel the coolness of the night air blending with the heat from the fire in the distance and realized that half the house was gone.

He coughed again, nearly doubling over and Able helped him the rest of the way out.

When he looked back, he could see that the back of the house was rubble.

The front might be salvaged if they could work fast enough.

Fire blazed in the back and he figured the boardinghouse was a lost cause.

It was chaos outside. People scrambled around them running in all directions.

A group of women who worked at Victoria House stood in a huddle, watching it all come down.

Gasping for fresh air, he looked around, expecting Glory to be there taking care of them, but he didn’t see her anywhere.

Able was running off to help when Zane caught up to him. “Where’s Glory?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. She was going in to find you, but I told her to wait here and let me go.”

They both looked around. Zane’s stomach churned with the knowledge that something very bad had happened. What if the fire had been set to lure them out? What if she’d been taken?

“Glory!” He screamed her name, his throat already raw from the smoke he’d inhaled.

Turning in a circle in the middle of the street, he couldn’t see her anywhere.

She should be there with her ladies or at the very least with the people who’d formed a bucket line.

He searched them all for her face, but she wasn’t there.

He ran over to the women and asked, “Where’s Glory?”

They all looked at him with blank faces. He turned back around to see Able doing the same thing, walking down the street and asking every person he saw. Everyone shook their heads. Dubose had her. He knew it with a certainty he felt deep in his bones.

It was utter chaos. Everyone was so consumed by the fire and stopping it from spreading to the other buildings, that he had no hope of finding his men in the crowd. Miraculously, they found him. Two of them came out from behind Victoria House, covered in soot and smoke.

“It was dynamite,” one of them said. “Probably thrown through a window in the back of the house.”

He nodded. It wasn’t what he was concerned with at the moment. “Where’s Glory?”

“I kept my station over the general store after the fire broke out,” Raul said. Zane had stationed him on top of the building diagonally across the road from Victoria House. “I saw a carriage stop and take her. They were headed toward the train station.”

They hadn’t had her long, but he couldn’t shake the thought that Dubose might want her dead more than he wanted her back.

It wouldn’t take long to accomplish that task.

He caught up to Able, and the four of them made a mad dash across town on foot.

The sun was starting to crest the horizon to the east. As they turned the corner that would bring the depot in sight, a black carriage pulled away going in the opposite direction.

“Is that the carriage you saw?” Zane asked Raul.

“Looks like it. The curtains were drawn like that one,” the man answered.

“Odds are she’s on that train,” Able muttered, his narrowed gaze scanning the platform.

The station hadn’t yet woken up. The train would leave in about an hour, but with the fire Zane figured everyone was caught up in the excitement.

They had no way of knowing if Dubose had men staked out watching for them to attempt to rescue her, but Zane couldn’t stand here while she was possibly being hurt.

“Stay here,” he said. “Get your guns ready. If someone starts shooting at me, shoot back.” He started to step out of the shadows of the building, but Able grabbed his arm.

“You’re not going without me,” said Able.

Zane nodded. “All right. Once I get to the platform, I’ll take cover and you cross.”

Able nodded his consent and let Zane go.

No shots rang out as Zane crossed the road and in a few minutes they were all safely hidden in the shadow of the station.

They made their way through the gap between two cars in the same way, one at a time and as quietly as they could until they were on the side facing away from town and the road.

If the carriage happened to come back by, they’d be hidden by the train.

On silent feet they passed by each car. It was unlikely Dubose would take her to one of the public cars, so they focused their attention on the private cars in the back.

There were three in all. Each of them identical black lacquer and without markings except for numbers on the side, meaning they were owned by the rail line and leased to elite clients.

The men stood at each one, listening for sounds coming from inside before moving on to the next one.

It was from the last one that they heard the muffled sounds of men talking.

Zane brought his finger to his lips and stepped away from the car.

It only took a minute to form a plan. There were four of them.

Two would get on the roof and come in through a window on each side.

One would come through the door that faced town, and the last one would come through the door in the back.

He hoped it was a good sign that he didn’t hear her.

Maybe it meant she was simply tied up and gagged, not hurt and unconscious…

or worse. He couldn’t allow himself to think of that possibility.

Every time he closed his eyes he saw her sitting on her bed, tears in her eyes as he’d callously left her.

If he could go back to that moment, he’d have stayed and wrapped his arms around her, keeping her safe. What did his notions of love not lasting matter in the face of never seeing her again?

He shook his head, determined not to think of that now when they had a nearly insurmountable task ahead of them.

He walked slowly toward the front of the car so that his boots wouldn’t crunch on the gravel, while Able walked quietly toward the back door.

They were both too broad to go in through the windows.

They waited until Raul and William had pulled themselves up on to the roof and then took their places crouched at the doors.

He counted to ten and kicked the heel of his boot against the lock, forcing the door open.

The sounds of the back door crashing open along with broken glass from the windows filled the air.

Zane hurried inside with his gun drawn and fired at the first man he saw with a gun.

The man fell but another stepped forward to replace him.

The flash of a shot rang out and the hot bullet grazed Zane’s shoulder, but he managed to hold his aim and fire.

The man went down. William tussled with another one, but seemed to have the upper hand, so Zane kept moving toward the back of the car and Raul fell in line behind him.

There was a short hallway with a sliding door on either side.

He nudged each door open to find the sleeping compartments empty.

He raised his gun as he came to the final door that separated the back room from the one they’d come in through.

It was probably a bedchamber. He and Castillo had taken the Jameson car to Boston back in the spring, so he was familiar with the typical layout of these private cars.

All was eerily quiet inside.

“Able?” Zane called out.

“Come on in, Pierce.” It wasn’t Able’s voice that answered. It was the cultured tone of a Southern aristocrat.

Zane opened the door to find a gun trained on him by the ugliest son of a bitch he’d ever seen. His snub nose was almost twisted to the side by an old break that hadn’t healed properly.

“Put your gun down.” This came from the Southern voice he’d heard. A second man that he recognized immediately from Able’s description as Dubose held Glory in his lap.

She wasn’t precisely unconscious, but she couldn’t sit up on her own and her sleepy eyes didn’t seem to focus.

Her gaze flitted from one thing to the next as if it was unable to fix itself on anything.

His heart squeezed in his chest at the sight of her.

She wore the dress he’d helped her put on, but it was torn in places as if she’d struggled.

One side of her face was swelling and a bruise was forming.

She wasn’t tied up, but he honestly didn’t know if she’d be able to walk on her own.

He pushed the door open wider with the toe of his boot and saw Able standing inside the doorway that led to the outside. His gun held before him.

“This is your last chance, gentlemen.” Dubose’s hand came up to lie threateningly against her white throat.

She sucked in a breath but didn’t pull away.

“I will kill her before I let you have her back. Don’t you think it’s best to spare your own lives?

I’m willing to let you go free, Hiram. Let me have Annabelle, and we’ll call it even. ”

“Go to hell,” Able said.

Dubose jeered. “You first, my friend.”

“Let her go, and we’ll let you leave,” said Zane. The sound of his voice drew Glory’s attention, and she turned her head as if struggling to find him.

Dubose laughed. “I don’t believe you.” Then he let go of her neck and reached for something. He was partially blocked by the ugly bastard sitting on the chair next to him so Zane couldn’t see what it was.