Susan Wiggs - The Hostage

Standing up, he grabbed the newel post as his vision swam and reeled. He forced himself to focus on his goal: retrieve the pistol, pursue Sinclair, shoot him dead.

His boots crunched over shards of broken glass as he crossed the checkerboard floor. Bad shot. The woman had slammed into him at the precise moment he had squeezed the trigger. Damned revolver. Five-shooters were for killing folks, and until now that had never been his business.

Aware of the woman scrambling to her feet behind him, he bent, staggering with dizziness, and scooped up the Colt. Then he ran after Sinclair down a narrow hallway. A back door gaped open to the service alley behind the house.

He stepped out into an inferno. Every rooftop in sight was in flames. A brooding burnt orange stained the smoke-laden sky. Flaming debris flew in a hot blizzard over the city. A brickwork wall along the side of the alley had sustained a huge crack, and great chunks of brick and mortar rained down into the narrow roadway.

Arthur Sinclair had climbed to the box of a phaeton and sat holding the leather ribbons. There was no driver in sight. Sinclair had clearly been expecting the blond woman to follow him out of the house, for his face registered alarm when he saw Tom rather than the woman.

Tom strode toward him. There was no time for the confrontation he had envisioned during the voyage to Chicago. Sinclair would never know exactly what his connection to Tom was, what crime he would die for. No matter. Let the bastard burn in hell on general principle.

Tom stepped to the middle of the alleyway and raised the five-shooter, holding it steady with both hands. The roaring heat of the fire stole his breath. His world narrowed to a florid-faced, well-fed Arthur Sinclair viewed over the notch of a pistol.

“See you in hell, you son of a bitch,” Tom said in a voice he knew was too low to be heard. Just as he tightened his forefinger around the trigger, he caught a glimpse of the woman running out of the building.

Above her, a huge section of the roof gave way. A tarred sheet of flame wafted down over the unsuspecting blond head.

Tom swore between his teeth, moving even as he spoke. He lunged at the woman, knocking her out of the way just as the burning roof crashed down upon the spot where she had been standing. Beams and timbers rained down, filling the narrow alleyway. The wind shifted, and a geyser of sparks erupted. The horses reared and whistled in panic. The carriage surged forward, racing out of control.

Holding fast to the reins of the runaway team was Arthur Sinclair. Flaming debris filled the alley behind the cart, forming a giant pyramid of fire. The cracked wall across the way crumbled with a crash of dust and rubble.

The entire rear section of the house teetered on the brink of collapse. The service alley was impassable, and so was the house itself. Tom’s only option was to go in the opposite direction and hope the narrow roadway cut through to the main thoroughfare.

He barely thought of the woman, this shrieking blond banshee who had cost him his chance at revenge. Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her to her feet, pulling her out of the way of burning wreckage. Only after he had dragged her to safety did his mind register the word she kept screaming over and over.

Father.

Deborah wrenched her arm this way and that, but the wild man held her fast. She kicked out, stubbing her feet on his iron-hard legs. He didn’t even flinch. It was like fighting a wall of solid rock.

The murderer was a force of nature, as determined and unstoppable as the marching fire she and her father had so foolishly underestimated.

Father.

Dear God, what would become of him? Her last glimpse had been of a runaway phaeton with its canvas hood in flames. Now the wild man was dragging her off in the opposite direction. “Please,” she sobbed, unable to keep from pleading. “Please, let me go. I’ve done nothing to hurt you.”

He thrust his gun in its hip holster and stalked on, showing no indication that he heard her.

“I can pay you.” She tried to claw off her blue topaz bracelet. “Take my jewelry.”

“Lady, I don’t want your damned jewelry,” he said between his teeth. The alley angled to the left. He hauled her down the center of it as stinging sparks rained down on them.

Deborah dug in her heels and leaned back, rebelling with every ounce of strength she possessed. Admittedly, that was not much, but fright and fury added power to her resistance. She had never before fought anyone for any reason.

“Woman, I’ll drag you if I have to,” her captor said, barely slowing his pace. “Your choice.”

Her strength ebbed fast, and she went limp. Before she crumpled completely to the cinder-strewn pavement, he caught her against his rough, smoky buckskin chest. “Damn it,” he said between clenched teeth. “You can come with me, or stay here and burn. What’ll it be?”

“I’d rather burn in hell than go with you.”

“Fine.” He let go of her.

She staggered back, catching herself before she collapsed. The heat from the inferno battered her head. Sparks and cinders rained down from every rooftop. She could smell the scent of burning hair, could see small blackened holes appear in her full skirts. With the fringe of her shawl, she beat out a glowing ember. Casting a frantic glance backward, she could see nothing of the mansion that had been her father’s house, nothing but rubble shrouded in a thick fog of eye-smarting smoke. On both sides of her, the buildings burned out of control, turning the alley into a tunnel of fire. Her throat and lungs filled with hot smoke.

In the roadway ahead, Paul Bunyan marched heedlessly forward, not even looking back to watch her burn like a martyr. She hated that he didn’t look back. She hated him for not looking back. Most of all, she hated having no choice but to flee the fire in one direction—toward her captor. After last night, Deborah reflected, she had not been able to stop shivering. She had pulled the covers over her head and, lying in the dark, reflected that she had reached the bottom of a black pit of despair. Now that she found herself confronted by a crazed murderer, she was beginning to think there were worse things than that pit.

When she reached his side, choking and sputtering on smoke and outrage, he barely acknowledged her except to seize her by the arm and yank her roughly along with him. She tried to demand what he wanted from her, what malice he bore her, but she was coughing too hard.

They emerged onto the main street, and finally she grasped the full force of the conflagration. A river of humanity flowed along the street, bobbing and surging forward like boiling rapids. She called to passersby for help, but no one responded. They were all too preoccupied with their own survival. Besides, the fire blazed with a deafening roar that made it seem almost alive. Deborah coughed and wheezed, starving for a breath of air. She staggered with dizziness, and only the oak-hard arm of her abductor held her up. Rushing people, smoke, cinders, flaming buildings, explosions—all filled her senses. But as she was pulled along, her larger view of the crowd narrowed and focused down to individual and heartbreaking detail. A mother holding a screaming baby and running down the street. A child standing on a street corner, turning in circles and crying until someone grabbed him and hurried off. A single shoe in the gutter. A tired old rag doll underfoot. Everywhere she looked, she saw the horrifying evidence of loss and destruction. A drunken man stood atop a piano, declaring the fire the friend of the poor man and exhorting people to help themselves to liquor. A thrown bottle struck him, and he stumbled and fell.