A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(11)

“I was in an automobile. Trying to beat the train into town.” Eli was so patient with his answer, I knew he must have told me this before.

“You didn’t see the tracks blow up?”

“No. I was ahead of the train, closer to Sally. But I heard the noise. It was terrible. I turned back after I heard it.”

“Hear the gunshots?”

“No. So the tracks were blown up, the train began to derail, and your car went sideways?”

I nodded. Though Eli’s words didn’t seem adequate to sum up the awfulness.

“You were hurt in the wreck?” Eli said, nodding at my arm.

“No, I was shot,” I said, for what seemed the tenth time. “There were people, lots of ’em, trying to take the cargo after the wreck. They were coming in from both ends of the car. Maddy and I were the only ones standing. Charlie was already dead by then—that was the wreck—and Rogelio and Jake were banged up, but they helped, especially Jake. We stood over the cargo until we went down. I got shot in the arm. Maddy got shot in the leg. And someone snuck up behind me and hit me on the head.” I felt my scalp again. The minute I touched the bump, it let me know it was ready to hurt. To make it all better, Eli’s fingers went over it too. Thanks.

“Why didn’t they take the cargo then? I was down.” I tried to figure it out, but my thinking felt as clumsy as my wounded arm. Then I remembered. “Oh, the man and the woman.”

“What man? What woman?” Eli wanted to move and he wanted to talk, and he couldn’t seem to make up his mind which was more urgent.

“That Seeley and Ritter,” I said. “I saw her after the wreck, her and Sarah Byrne.”

“Now someone else!” Eli flung up his hands. “Let’s get in my car and go.”

“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t think of a better plan. Eli and I in a car in a strange country. Felt like old times. When I’d seen a man’s blood leave his body, and a dead woman walk into a house. A man being hung. A woman shriveling into a mummy.

When I’m with Eli I see awful things, I thought, clear as a bell.

And that was the thought I should have stuck with.





CHAPTER FIVE


Come this way.” Eli glanced back to see if I was still trailing him. I was. I couldn’t see that I had a lot of other choices, but I was doubtful I could walk much farther.

“Just a little now,” Eli said coaxingly, like I was a blindfolded baby. He took a hold of my arm, the unshot one. Eli’s car was on the other side of the road from the tent, at the base of the low hill where the bodies lay. They were now being loaded into the back of a truck. It had a mortuary name printed on the door.

“Charlie is in there,” I said, nodding toward the truck. “I guess when they find Jake, he will be too.” I felt a little distant.

Eli looked at me, his eyes all narrow. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

Maybe I wasn’t. It had been a long day already. And I’d thought I’d never see Eli again, to top off everything else. But here he was.

I climbed into the car. It was not the fancy Celebrity Tourer he’d had in Texoma. It was an ordinary Carrier, which was—if cars could be averaged out, the Carrier would be on that line.

“The refrigerator’s working great,” I said, as he pulled onto the road. Always grateful for the refrigerator, Eli’s gift.

“Good.” Eli gave me another narrow look. Worried.

I hadn’t seen him since right after I’d killed his father. I had a history of killing fathers, I realized all of a sudden.

“Water under the bridge,” I said out loud.

“What?” Eli kept his eyes on the road. It was paved, but that was just a notion the work crew had had. The potholes were more like tiny caverns. “Lizbeth, you’re not making sense.”

“How is the tsar?” I asked, to change the subject.

“He’s well. Thanks to the young man we found, and your sister to back him up.” Talking about the tsar made Eli feel that I was just fine, because that was a right and proper topic.

“Have you used Felicia’s blood yet?” The tsar had a bleeding disease. Grigori Rasputin’s blood had kept him alive long enough to take the throne when his dad, Nicholas, had passed away. But when Rasputin had died, grigoris had combed the continent looking for his by-blows, since all of his legitimate kids were dead. My half sister was Rasputin’s granddaughter.

So was I. But Eli had kept my secret.

“Once, Felicia gave him blood. When the older boy was ill.”

“How did she do?”

“She was very brave, I am told.”

Felicia would not have wanted them to see her cry. “She’s young for that,” I said, not happy. And there was something wrong with the way Eli had said “I am told.” Why hadn’t he been there? He’d been in the inner grigori circle taking care of the tsar before.

“I warned you it might happen,” Eli said, all touchy. “That we’d need to try Felicia’s blood. The time came sooner rather than later. One of Rasputin’s other children… died.”

“I understand.” In return for her blood, my little half sister, Felicia, who was maybe ten (she wasn’t sure), got room and board and an education, things she would never have had in Mexico, where we’d found her. What I didn’t like was Eli’s pause. How had “one of Rasputin’s other children” died? But I felt too tired to ask. “So her blood helped,” I said.