Peacemaker (The Flash Gold Chronicles, #3) Read online

  Cedar said nothing.

  “Do the girls mean something to you?” Kali asked. “There’s not even a bounty out for the murderer yet.”

  “I don’t like seeing women killed.”

  “Just in general—a notion with which I agree, by the way—or because…? Is it personal?”

  Cedar gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought maybe there was something similar in these murders to that one in San Francisco. Something that’s haunting you.”

  His gaze shifted away, back toward the trail and the top of the ridge. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Kali considered him for a long moment. She wanted to pry, she admitted it, but it was for a good reason. If she got the story out of him, she could fight for him, tell this Pinkerton fellow what really happened the next time he wandered into her shop.

  “There,” Cedar whispered.

  With all the trees blocking the view, it took a moment for Kali to figure out what he was pointing at. Then she spotted it, the wood of the airship hull among the greens and browns of the forest. From her vantage point, she couldn’t tell if they’d crashed or if they’d managed to land it somehow.

  Clangs started up, someone hammering metal.

  “Can they fix that fan out here?” Cedar whispered.

  “Not unless they happen to have a spare case and assembly. I guess that’s a possibility. They’d know there aren’t any shops that supply airship parts up here.”

  “Are there anywhere? Airships aren’t that common, even down south.”

  “I’m ordering my parts from a place in San Francisco, and I’ve heard New York has an entire warehouse dedicated to aeronautic supplies.” Kali sighed longingly, imagining what such a place might look like.

  “Is that where you want to go for your honeymoon?” Cedar asked.

  Kali twitched an eyebrow. “I haven’t planned that trip yet. Lately, I haven’t even been able to get a man to come back for a second date, despite what I thought was an enjoyable evening at the dance hall, even if some stepping on toes was involved.” She thought he’d enjoyed himself too. He’d laughed and even tried to be witty, in his dry terse way. And she’d made it clear she was available for additional evenings together when he could break away from bounty hunting. The way he’d massaged her shoulders earlier made her think he still had romantic inklings, but why the scarcity if that was the case?

  “Sometimes men get busy,” Cedar said.

  “I’ve noticed most people are only busy for things they consider an onerous task.”

  “Kali, it’s not like that. It’s…” He looked away, not toward the camp or anything dangerous in the area that could have claimed his focus. Just away.

  Kali swallowed. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m not looking to get married any time soon. I want to see the world and not be beholden to anyone or have a litter of hungry young’uns dangling from my…uhm, self.” Even with the correction, she blushed. She hadn’t known any proper ladies growing up, but she had a feeling discussing teats with men was probably considered uncouth in most circles.

  A hint of a smirk touched Cedar’s lips, but he didn’t say anything.

  Kali cleared her throat and pointed to the airship. “Should we get close or wait until dark to scout about?”

  Cedar lifted his eyes toward the sky. “That’s hours from now. This is a pesky time of year for stealthily sneaking about.”

  “Come in December. You can sneak in the dark twenty-four hours a day then.”

  “Yes, I caught the tail end of winter. It’s also hard to be stealthy when your teeth are chattering and your bal—bear cubs are hiding in their dens.”

  “I didn’t realize bear cubs—” Kali snorted at his substitution; that was worse than her fumble, “—played a role in one’s scouting abilities.

  “A robust man is a man confident in his skills.”

  Kali grinned. It was a silly conversation, but it reminded her how much she appreciated having him around. A lump formed in her throat, and she swallowed, trying to force it down. They had more important things to focus on now.

  Cedar pointed at a man walking into the woods and unbuttoning his fly. “I’m going to grab that one for questioning,” he whispered.

  Kali barely managed a quick, “Be careful,” before he slid out and took a circuitous route toward the pirate.

  On her knees, Kali braced her Winchester on the log, found the pirate, and put him in her sights in case he gave Cedar trouble. She tried to keep an eye on the ship and the camp as well, counting people when they walked into view. The trees made it hard to get an estimate, but she guessed there were at least twenty crew members. It would be hard to acquire the ship for herself with that many pirates loitering about.

  Though Cedar might prefer night for skulking about, he did fine sneaking up on the fellow—indeed, even knowing roughly where he was, Kali had trouble keeping track of him. As their target was buttoning his pants, Cedar stepped out from behind a tree and placed a knife blade against the man’s throat. The pirate’s hand darted for a holster on his belt only to find it empty. Cedar had already removed the pistol. He showed it to the pirate, then stuffed it into his own belt.

  Cedar said something to his prisoner, and they started walking, angling away from the ship and Kali as well. She waited, expecting him to circle about and join her, but he didn’t. She was about to stand up and find him when a second pirate walked into the woods, a rifle propped against his shoulder. He faced her, his gaze skimming the forest. Kali sank lower so only her eyes poked above the log.

  It was too soon for anyone to miss the man who had gone to pee, so she guessed this was a guard the captain had sent out. The pirates had to know that people would come after them in droves if word got out that their ship had gone down. Kali doubted that old man on the river was the first miner they had robbed.

  A falcon on the hunt screeched overhead. The dampness of the moss beneath Kali’s knees was starting to seep through her overalls. She wondered where Cedar had taken the other fellow. And why hadn’t he come to get her, so she could listen in and ask questions too?

  The guard finally turned his gaze in another direction, and Kali scooted backward, retracing their route to the ridge.

  A shadow stirred on the periphery of Kali’s vision. She jerked the rifle in that direction, her finger ready on the trigger.

  Nobody was there.

  A strip of moss dangling from a branch stirred slightly. Her eyes narrowed. She licked her finger and stuck it in the air. If there was a breeze, it was too faint to do much. Maybe someone had bumped that moss. Cedar? No, he would have had to cross through her field of vision to get to that side of her.

  Kali continued to back down the trail. She watched that piece of the woods for several slow steps, but nothing else moved. In a nearby tree, a pair of squirrels chattered as they chased each other about. If there had been something dangerous, they would have been hiding.

  When Kali reached the ridge, the sound of voices drifted to her ear. She picked her way through foliage and around stumps to find Cedar standing over his captured pirate, the pistol pointed at the man’s head. Cedar looked at her when she approached, but his face was hard to read. Kali assumed a peeved expression to let him know she expected to be involved with important things. He gave her a quick nod, but quickly focused again on his prisoner.

  “Why’d you have this in your loot room?” Cedar asked, displaying one of the bead-and-hide patches.

  “Never seen it before.” The pirate spat on the ground. “Told you I don’t know nothing.”

  Cedar grabbed him by the front of the shirt and jammed the pistol against the man’s throat. “If you don’t know nothing, then there’s no point in me keeping you alive,” he growled, voice savage, eyes like ice from the bluest depths of a glacier. The prisoner’s surly demeanor vanished.

  The fierce, cold mien chilled Kali, and she wondered if Cedar had known he would have to get tough and that was why
he hadn’t invited her to the interrogation. Maybe he didn’t want her to see him questioning someone. Too bad. This was a pirate, someone who had tried to capture her and would have received a share of the reward for turning her over to gangsters. And, if the pirates had killed that old man’s partner, they were murderers as well as kidnappers.

  “I don’t have anything to do with it, I swear,” the man whispered, his eyes crossing to stare at the pistol barrel.

  Kali straightened, staring intently at the man. This might be the lead they’d hoped for.

  “With what?” Cedar demanded, prodding the pistol against the man’s Adam’s apple.

  The pirate gagged and sputtered. “The girls,” he managed. “That was all Sparwood. Nobody here’s into that. We don’t murder, least not if we can help it, and nobody’s raping and torturing girls and then cutting them up. He was a sick bastard. That’s why the captain sent him walking.”

  The admission of rape and torture made Kali grip the nearest tree for support. She focused on the harsh, thick ridges of its bark beneath her palm and tried not to picture that girl—Vixen—being tormented before finally being killed. And she tried not to think about the fact that that grisly killing had happened less than a mile from the cave where she was always out working, all alone….

  “This Sparwood acts alone?” Cedar was asking, and Kali realized she’d missed part of the conversation.

  “No one would want to spend time with that monster.” The pirate did an admirable job of shuddering for someone with a pistol jammed into his throat. “He’s mean as a rabid badger, but worse’n an animal. Takes real pleasure in hurting folks, especially…” His eyeballs swiveled to lock onto Kali.

  Though his significant stare made her squirm inside, Kali lifted her chin and crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn’t about to let some scruffy pirate believe she was worried.

  “Where is he now if he’s not with your ship?” Cedar asked.

  “Captain put him off just north of Dawson. Figure he’s in the city by now.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  The pirate licked his lips and eyed the trees. Did he think this Sparwood might be about and come take revenge if he was betrayed? The pirate lowered his voice. “Big man, bigger’n you, with a chest like a whiskey barrel. Bushy black hair and beard. Beady dark eyes. I seen him get shot once and not even feel it.”

  Cedar looked at Kali, his eyebrows lifted as if to ask if she had any questions of her own.

  “Why does he leave the beadwork?” Kali asked.

  The pirate checked Cedar’s face, wondering if he had to respond to some girl’s questions maybe. Cedar’s glower deepened, and the pirate shrank into himself. While Kali found Cedar handsome, she had to admit he could assume a fearsome mien when he wanted to. The scar, in particular, gave him a grim, deadly serious visage when he wasn’t smiling.

  “So the Injuns get blamed,” the pirate whispered with another glance at Kali.

  “I see,” Cedar said. He hid his thoughts well, but Kali knew he was irked to have fallen for the ruse.

  “Why does he cut them up?” Kali asked, trying to imagine what manner of tool a man might use to leave those parallel gashes in a person’s flesh.

  “So people will think animals or angry spirits did it,” the pirate said. “And it’s working for him, too, last I heard. Ain’t no lawmen pointing a finger at him.”

  “Yet,” Kali said. “What’d you say his full name is?”

  “I don’t know it.”

  Cedar leaned closer to the pirate, and his words were so soft Kali almost missed them. “You sure that’s the truth?”

  The pirate nodded vigorously.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kali said. “There are plenty of wanted posters that don’t have full names on them. The Mounties can just stick up another one.”

  “No,” Cedar said. “We’ll take care of this animal before they have time to print one up. And before he has time to kill again.”

  His grip had tightened on the pirate’s shirt, and the man swatted at the hands cutting off his air supply. Cedar didn’t even seem to see him. His eyes were hard but focused inward, and he barely seemed to notice the pirate in his grip. After what Kali had heard, she couldn’t blame him.

  “You killing that one too?” she asked, in case he would feel guilty over accidentally strangling a pirate.

  Cedar’s eyes came back into focus, and he loosened his grip. “Probably should. No telling how many honest working folk these men have robbed, but I didn’t see any heads with bounties on them when I was skirmishing on the ship. We’ll just let the Mounties know where to find these men. Maybe they can arrest the pirates before they fix their ship.”

  Though the prisoner was busy gasping for air, he still managed to pale at this statement. Kali chewed on her lip. If the Mounties took care of the pirates, she wasn’t going to have much of a claim on the ship.

  “Get some rope out of my pack, will you?” Cedar asked. “We don’t want this one scurrying back to warn the others.”

  Kali retrieved the rope, but she was mulling over alternatives to relying on the Mounties. If she and Cedar took care of the pirates, they’d be able to legally claim the ship for themselves. That wasn’t foremost on his mind though. She’d have to talk him around to her way of thinking. “What if they get their ship fixed before the Mounties come?”

  “That’d be a shame, but catching that murderer is my priority.” Cedar held out his hand for the rope.

  “Maybe we could take care of both somehow.”

  “How would we get in there to incapacitate everyone without being noticed? There are close to twenty men over there.” Cedar waved toward the ship. “At night, when everyone’s sleeping, we might be able to get the jump on them, but that’s hours off, and I want to get back to Dawson before this Sparwood strikes again.”

  “We got one out.” Kali pointed to the man as Cedar bent to tie him. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so impossible to subdue the others.”

  “Unless you know someway to knock them all out at once, I don’t see how it could be done without a passel of unneeded danger for ourselves.”

  Kali could think of chemicals that could make that happen, but she didn’t have anything like that. They could start a fire and drive them out of the area, but burning the airship wasn’t what she had in mind. Ideally, she’d take it without doing any more damage to it than was already there. “No,” she admitted.

  “Best to go back to Dawson,” Cedar said, “catch this murderer, and let the Mounties deal with the pirates.”

  “They could be gone by the time the Mounties get here,” Kali said again, though she sensed she needed to come up with a stronger argument to sway him. “Think of all the people they might kill, going after folks along the river.”

  Cedar had finished tying the pirate to a tree and had torn the man’s shirt to create a gag to keep him silent. He propped his hands on his waist and eyed Kali. “What’re you angling for exactly?”

  “Me?” Kali shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Really.”

  Kali shifted from foot to foot and avoided his knowing gaze for a long moment before saying, “All right, I was thinking that if the pirates were all captured or arrested or otherwise incapacitated, we could relieve them of the airship. That would destroy their ability to thieve from the air.” Yes, make it noble, Kali, she told herself. Make it about helping the miners. She stifled a snort of derision for herself.

  “You want to steal their ship?” Cedar asked.

  “If they stole it first, then it’d hardly be called stealing, right? We’d just be liberating it for a nobler purpose.”

  “Such as?”

  “Taking us around the world. Or hunting slimy villains from the sky. It’d be easy to keep up with Cudgel if we had our own transportation, something that can go right over mountains and inaccessible terrain. And I wouldn’t have to booby trap all of my working and sleeping areas to tarnation and back because I’m so paranoid that someon
e’ll sneak up on me and try to tote me off to Soapy Smith or the Scar of Skagway. Sure, the ship would need a lot of modifications, and it’d likely be fall before we could take off, but we could get out of Dawson this year. It’d be—” she clenched a fist, almost tasting the triumph, “—heavenly.”

  Cedar, eyebrows raised, seemed bemused by her enthusiasm, but at least he didn’t laugh. He took her arm and moved her out of range of the tied prisoner’s hearing. “I suppose it would be safer for you to be in the air where enemies seeking your father’s secrets couldn’t sneak up on you.”

  Kali barely heard him. In her mind, she was already picturing the ship and what might be done to it. It was a larger vessel than she’d thought to make, but she would have plenty of room for a crew, and maybe they could even pay for the expenses of maintaining an airship by taking on passengers. She’d end up being a captain with people under her. Huh. She’d have to think more on that later, but now she imagined crawling around inside, inspecting and measuring every inch, sketching up schematics, planning her modifications. She’d clamber up in there right now, if it weren’t surrounded by pirates.

  “All right,” Cedar said. “I’ll help you, but let’s get the murderer first.”

  His words catapulted Kali back to the moment. “First? But if he’s in Dawson, and we’re right here, surely we could…”

  “It’s only a few miles back to town,” Cedar said dryly, “and that won’t take long on your bicycle.”

  “True, but we don’t have any idea where in Dawson to look for this man. He could be hiding out anywhere. It’s a big city these days. And if those men get the ship fixed before we get back, we might lose the opportunity.”

  “Kali, I know the airship is important to you, but if another woman gets murdered tonight, will you be able to live with yourself, knowing you chose personal gain over helping out? Those are your people getting killed, whether you want anything to do with them or not.”

  “What can I do? You’re the tracker. I don’t know how to hunt men down in the city.” Kali stepped back and stuffed her hands into her pockets. He wasn’t wrong, but she didn’t care for having someone lecture her. And, damn it, she didn’t want to do the right thing, not if it meant delaying her dream. She could be a do-gooder after she had her ship in the air. “Look, why don’t you go and hunt this Sparwood fellow, and I’ll stay out here and work out a plan to get the—”