A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(62)

“I got the bones as close to Sally as I could get with the train blowing up!” I was mad now. “That was my job, and I did it! If someone who knew what was in that crate hadn’t blabbed, none of this would have happened!”

“Ssh, ssh,” Eli said. He was looking at the way we’d come. Alligator alley.

I heard a shriek, faint and far away. And yelling. And gunfire.

“All right then,” I said. “We can’t go east, because the nearest town is twenty miles away and we have nothing. I have my guns. My clothes are back at the hotel. I got no money. I’ll bet you don’t, either.”

Eli patted his pockets. “Not much.” At least he had on his grigori vest.

“The bones were last in the Ballard attic. I guess they’re still there. We don’t know if Holden Ballard will live or die from the knifing. If he dies, we might be okay. There might be enough hoorah for us to get out of Sally.”

We were in big trouble, isolated in a place where everyone’s hand was turned against us—everyone who was powerful, that is. And the people who weren’t powerful, that was a little chancy, too. They were terrified of failure. I could understand that. But they’d wanted the bones, they’d got the bones, the Holy Russian Empire was willing to back them to some extent, and if we didn’t leave, we had to come up with another plan.

I was in favor of getting out while we could. My mission was over.

But Eli’s was not.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


Our return to town took three times as long as it should have. We were both tired and aching, we had to stay off the road and in what cover we could find, and we were thirsty. I knew better than to drink bayou water, because it was full of alligator shit. No, thank you.

I’d seen enough of that bayou to last me the rest of my life. Which might not be very long, given the situation we’d put ourselves in.

Finally, we reached Sally. We’d decided we’d go to our hotel, openly, because… we needed our stuff. And we had to find another car, if that was possible. It was lucky the first person we saw at the hotel was John Edward. He was shocked to see us coming to the back door.

“Didn’t sound like you, the man hanging on a tree at the Ballard place. But I was worried,” he said, low and quick. “You go up our stairs, the servant stairs. You got your key?”

Eli did have our key, which was one good thing.

John Edward scouted the stairs and unlocked the door to our room so we wouldn’t have to stand there, exposed.

“They’re after us?” Eli asked, after we were safely out of sight.

“Nobody knows what-all is going on,” John Edward said. “People are saying Miz Ballard’s dead, man got hung behind her house, trackers going through the country with dogs. Those two white folks missing from the other hotel. All the people who worked out there are in town hiding with kin.”

“The man that got hung is the missing man,” I said. “The woman ran back to town with us, partway, but we’ve lost sight of her.” We had to talk to John Edward, but I wanted to get in the bathroom so bad I was almost crying. “And Mary Ellen Ballard is dead.”

“Oh my Lord.” John Edward’s eyes were wide, and I could not be sure what he was thinking.

“John Edward, now is the time,” Eli said. He was using his serious voice, the one that pushed you to act.

John Edward looked terrified. He took some deep, ragged breaths, and then he said, “Yes. I see that.”

“Are you sure the relics of Moses the Black are still in the attic?”

“Before she ran away from Miz Ballard, Juanita went back to the attic. She says the trunk is still up there. It has to be the right one.”

It had been galling to have to leave the object of our search when we’d actually been at the house, but we couldn’t have carried that trunk on our scrambling, running, gator-ridden trip to Sally.

I told Eli and John Edward I was going to clean up and they could keep talking if they wanted to. I grabbed what I needed out of my bag and the closet. I was really glad to have clean clothes. A clean bathroom. A bed with clean sheets. Not that I’d get to sleep in it.

It was a huge relief to shut the bathroom door behind me. I sat on the toilet with my hand over my face for a long moment. Then I started the water running.

I knew my day wasn’t done, as much as I wanted it to be.

Eli stuck his head in the door as I was climbing out of the tub. “We have company,” he said. “You need something?”

“I got all my clothes.” My real clothes.

When I came out in my jeans and boots, feeling like myself, Jerry Fielder was sitting in our room.

“…whole town is ready to blow up, like the train,” he was saying. He stood when I appeared. “Lizbeth,” he said.

“Dr. Fielder… Jerry. I hope your wife is well.”

“She’s pretty upset just now. I wish I’d gotten her out of Sally before today.”

I looked a question at Eli. He shook his head just a trifle. Jerry Fielder did not know what had just happened at the Ballard plantation. Eli wasn’t going to tell him, and I didn’t know why.

I heard a scream outside in the street. For the first time, I wished our window overlooked the front.

“I’m sorry now that we talked to your representative,” Jerry Fielder said. “When he first came to town and had such careful conversations with a very few people, I should have known…”