Susan Wiggs - The Hostage

Then a moment of utter clarity came over Deborah. She held the ladder with one hand while a wave lifted the stern end of the trawler, bringing the molten glass water up to her knees. She had it in her power to end this here, now.

Before she could change her mind, she simply opened her hand and let go of the ladder. A brief sensation of falling, then the cold shock of the water stunned her. She felt her wet skirts bell out, trapping air momentarily before pulling her down, down…

It was the worst possible moment to change her mind, but Deborah couldn’t help herself. Something deep within her protested and rebelled. She didn’t want to die at all, no matter how miserable she was. She wanted to live. She scissored her legs, trying to kick toward the surface, so hungry for air that she feared her chest would explode. She wasn’t going to make it, she thought, seeing blackness through her slitted eyes. She’d failed at suicide, and now she would fail to save herself.

Her arm brushed something hard and rough—a floating log or part of the ship, perhaps—and felt herself being dragged up to the surface. She coughed up water, then sucked in air with explosive breaths. Only then did she realize her captor had gone in after her. Looking even more forbidding soaking wet, he grabbed the ladder with his free hand and hauled her up and over the transom, manhandling her as if she were livestock. In the open cockpit of the trawler, the wild man regarded her with disgust.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, woman?” he demanded.

She knew he didn’t want a response, and for a long time, she couldn’t speak anyway. Her legs felt weak and rubbery with fatigue. The ecstatic dog greeted her, turning like a dervish on the cluttered deck and yelping joyfully. She felt too numb to do any more than sit down heavily amid her wet, tangled skirts and stare at nothing at all. After a while, she managed to catch her breath. “Smokey,” she said, addressing the dog. “That will be your name.”

The wild man secured the dinghy to the steamer.

“You mean you don’t even know this dog?” he demanded. “We took on a stray?”

“If you don’t like strangers on your boat, then let us both go,” she challenged him.

“If that critter gets on my nerves, he’s cutbait,” her captor promised, pulling in the ladder. Without a word of warning, he peeled off his fringed jacket and then his shirt, revealing the deep chest, narrow waist and giant arms of a lumberjack. Then he unlaced his trousers.

Deborah gasped and looked away. “How dare you? It’s indecent.”

“I’ll tell you what’s indecent. Jumping into Lake Michigan in October. On second thought, that’s not indecent. Are you crazy, or just stupid?”

When she dared to look back at him, he was dressed in denim jeans and a bleached shirt, and was lacing on another pair of boots.

The big boat smelled of dampness and fish. It had a broad deck behind the raised pilot house, and rows of crates lashed along the periphery. A narrow hatch covered by wooden louver led below.

Deborah had spent plenty of time on the lake, but never in a craft like this. She had enjoyed endless summer afternoons flying along in her catboat, or long lazy days cruising aboard her father’s steamer yacht, the one he had bought from Mr. Vanderbilt of New York City, just so he could have something once owned by a Vanderbilt. Sometimes they steamed as far north as the locks at Sault Sainte Marie.

But this was not a pleasure cruising boat, she knew.

The man crossed the deck with heavy, thudding footsteps. The small gray dog backed against her skirts and growled.

A thump came from below, where she imagined the cabins and the boiler room to be. As Deborah watched, the louvered hatch opened and a small, wiry man with sleek black hair emerged. He took one look at Deborah and his eyes widened, then sharpened with astonishment.

“A visitor, eh? I thought I’d heard someone,” the man said. The faint flavor of French tinged his words. As he hoisted himself up and out of the hatch, Deborah saw a streak of pure white against the black strands of his hair. Though not young, he was fit and muscular. An Indian. She had never seen an Indian at such close range before.

“You are very wet,” he observed, glancing from her to the pile of damp buckskins on the deck. “The fire, she is a bad one, eh?” He shaded his eyes and faced the city. “I figured it’d be out by now.” He peered at Deborah. “So. Who the devil are you?”

The dog growled, and she snatched it into her arms.

“Name’s Jacques duBois,” the man said with a trace of Gallic courtesy that surprised her. “Commonly called Lightning Jack. Welcome aboard the Suzette, mademoiselle.”

She stood up and cleared her throat, tasting grit and smoke. Her damp skirts hung in disgrace. “My name is Deborah Beaton Sinclair.”

His congenial grin disappeared. He threw a glance at the other man. “You brought a Sinclair aboard my boat?”

“He’s crazy,” she said in a rush, praying duBois would understand. “He forced me to come with him, though I offered him a fortune to set me free. I am here against my will.”

“Aren’t we all, chère. Aren’t we all.”

“He abducted you, too?” she inquired.

“No.” Lightning Jack gestured at the flaming night sky. “But I have no liking for Chicago. Pile of dry sticks, railroad slums and smelly stockyards. Pah.” He spat over the side.

“Please. This is a terrible misunderstanding. You must take me back to shore. Your friend is not right in the head.”

“Friend.” Lightning Jack winked at the tall man. “Tom Silver was my foster son. Now that he is grown, he is my partner in commerce. Did he not tell you?”

“He told me nothing.” She turned the name over in her mind. Tom Silver. A simple name for a savage man. “Has he always been insane?”

Lightning Jack hooked his thumbs into the rope sash around his middle. He regarded her with a narrow-eyed harshness that made her take a step back. “Mademoiselle, I assure you he is not insane.” He moved past her to join the man called Tom Silver, who was loading wood from a tender tied to the boat. Silver moved with a peculiar ease for one so large. As he bent and straightened with the rhythm of his task, she saw that he had one vanity, something she hadn’t noticed before. Within the strands of his long dark hair, he wore a single thin braid wrapped with a thread of leather. Secured to one end of the braid was a feather, perhaps from an eagle.

Looking at him, she felt an unaccustomed lurch of…not fear, exactly. Trepidation, yes, but it was mixed with an undeniable curiosity. She was alone with two savages, and so far she had not been injured or terrorized. Perhaps they were saving the torture for later.

With a shudder, she turned to look back at the city. Her father, one of Chicago’s most enthusiastic promoters, had always called it “Queen of the Prairie.” But everything had changed in just one night. From the deck, she could see the whole extent of the conflagration. Nothing in her experience approached the terrible majesty of this sight. The fire raged from the southwestern reaches of the city to the north shore of the lake. It spanned the river and its branches, cutting a deadly swath through the entire city, right up to the lakeshore railroad lines. The tower of the waterworks stood like a lonely, abandoned sentinel flanked by the fire. The heart of the city had been burned out.

Flames spun upward from the high rooftops. From a distance they resembled orange tornados, the sort that sometimes whirled across the prairies far beyond the city.

Government Pier bristled with people crowded close together. Deborah imagined they were as dumbstruck and battle-weary as those at Lincoln Park had been.