“So he seized the opportunity.”
“I’d seen him hanging about the house before, in that cab of his, but I’d thought nothing of it.”
“He counts on his invisibility,” replied Ransom, a grunt of pain escaping him. “And the gun that was so ready at hand? Would you care to explain that?”
“Yes…the gun that shot you.”
“Guns do not in and of themselves shoot people.”
“All right…OK. I had excused myself. Retrieved it, placed it on the table so that he could clearly see it.”
“Then you did feel threatened by him?”
“Absolutely, but he’d done nothing overt to warrant my fears, and I did not want to alarm Gabby. I told them both there’d been a prowler at the back door.”
“Don’t tell me-Bosch?”
“Well, no. I lied.”
“Then you came back as Jane with the gun because you suspected something dangerous about Denton?”
“Nothing I can put my finger on. Just eerie, creepy, odd, awkward…nothing you could use in a court of law anymore than you might use phrenology or magnetism-or your cop’s intuition for that matter.”
“So it was you this time who hauled out the weapon and not Gabby?”
“Yes, but…but all the time, I thought it unloaded as usual. I hadn’t the slightest idea, and had I known, I would’ve emptied it, and you…you wouldn’t be on your back strapped down to this bed like a-”
“Like some sort of wild boar ready for the pit?”
“I was about to say like a prisoner.”
“Aye, that too.” He paused and with his left hand locked in the leather bracelet at her breast, Ransom’s finger stretched to touch her there. She responded with a little gasp, then leaned in over him and they kissed.
He did not understand it, but being helpless and unable to put his arms around her while she passionately kissed him over many times, made him want her the more. “Lock the door,” he whispered in her ear.
“What?”
“It’s a private room Christian’s given me.”
“You want to test just how private?”
“Do it.”
She went to the door, closed and locked it.
She made love to him while in the restraints, and it was the best lovemaking he’d ever known, as Jane Francis turned it into a sensuous dance, a dance of light and life and wonder. No woman had ever made him feel so unreservedly wanted before.
Their passion consumed them, blotting out all but their mutual caresses, although his were limited to lips and eyes. Their mutual kisses and movements seemed of one mind, one body. When she finished, Jane fell into him, sated, without ever removing her skirt.
After a moment’s tidying up, her cheeks flushed, Jane became all business again-the doctor. She examined his bandages and found a good result. “You didn’t break your stitches,” she informed him. “Had you not been strapped down-”
“You’d have not found me so attractive? You do like taking control.”
“There is that, but I was pointing out that you may well’ve broken your stitches and opened that horrid wound.”
“I like you, Jane…I like your touch, the way you smell, your hair. The only thing I don’t like about you is when you are that man Tewes!”
“Hey, that man feeds my family.”
“All right, touché.” He returned to his bonds. “Since you’ve determined rigorous exercise has not ripped my wound open, it can do no harm if you let me up from this confounded bed.”
“But I like you tied to the bed.”
“Jane, please.”
“Why? So you can go shoot down Denton? Make it look like an accident?”
“Why do you think so ill of me that I would kill a man in bushwhack fashion?”
“Things I’ve heard all my life.”
“All your life? About me?”
“You really don’t remember me as a child, do you?”
“No. I am sorry, but I do not.”
“But my father, Dr. Francis. He was well known even then.”
“I’m sorry. As I said…my childhood was bitter…too bitter to store away as memory.”
“That’s so…so sad. And when you were out of your head with fever, you said something about a stillborn child.”
“My twin at birth. One of us died, one lived.”
“I am so terribly sorry.”
“It’s really quite all right now. I tell people my parents attempted to drown me at birth because I was not the other one.” He lightly laughed at this. “Other times, I tell people that no one in the family knew which of us died in the womb, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.” He laughed again.
She realized his laughter and jokes covered his true feelings of guilt. She hugged him to her. “Do you ever…”
“Visit his grave?” He avoided her eyes.
“Yes.”
“No…not since it was moved.”
“The grave was moved?”
“Along with hundreds to make way for Lincoln Park.”
“Still…perhaps you should make an effort. I’d go with.”
Instead of answering, he whispered, “Undo me.”
“I thought I had.”
“I am speaking of the cuffs.”
“All right, if you promise to do nothing foolish, and remember your promise to Dr. Fenger.”
“You were on hand when he operated, weren’t you?”
“I was.” She loosed his left hand, and it went to her cheek, caressing her. They again kissed. A long, lazy, dreamy, indolent kiss, fully alive with passion on both sides. She was petite enough that he hefted her atop him again with one hand. But even as he held her, his left hand went about her waist to the second strap, and he undid himself while they continued kissing.
In an instant, she felt both his hands wrap round her and squeeze her into him. “It feels so good, so right.
“You feel good atop me.” He smoothed her cheek with his hand.
“And you feel good below me.”
“But I have to go now.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“To work?”
“To work.”
“Despite doctor’s orders?”
“Despite, yes.”
“You will be careful?”
“Yes…I will. I have a reason to take care now.”
She kissed him again. “Yes, you do, so be careful and watch your back.”
“Where Chief Kohler stands ever present?”
“I should say so.”
“As you once said, he fears me.”
“Passionately so. It is eating him alive.”
“Which says he does indeed have something to hide.”
“R-regarding the Haymarket bomb?”
He eased Jane over the edge of the bed now and stood her up like a child’s toy. She acquiesced, sensing his need. He remained true to form. Like a bear, he might hibernate best in his own lair, and he felt most uncomfortable here. She kissed him good-bye with a slight admonition. “Do not-please do not overexert yourself, and please kill no one, and please, if for any unforeseen reason that something should happen, I had nothing whatsoever to do with loosening your bonds.”
“A bargain it is.”
“A bargain with Ransom, I fear, may be a bargain with the Devil.”
“Then kiss the Devil once more.”
She did so. “Promise me you will see me regularly to treat you.”
“Absolutely. I promise.”
Jane watched him dress, and she winced each time he gasped in pain. She knew he’d not heed any further warnings. With mixed feelings, she watched him disappear from the room, fearing she’d made a terrible mistake in allowing Alastair his freedom. But the man was, after all, all about freedom.
Two weeks later…
Alastair Ransom stood on the corner of Lincoln Avenue where it met Lake Michigan, where an entire cemetery had been uprooted and moved for the common good, to make way for the sprawling Lincoln Park, now a common green stretching out before the oceanlike vistas of Lake Michigan. In fact, Alastair stood very near to where his brother’s grave had once been. Beyond the point where the rocks had been laid as a breaker, in the distance beyond, stood the world’s largest lit-up amusement wheel-Mr. Ferris’s wheel rising hundreds of feet into the night sky, a beacon and a marker for the northernmost section of the great fair where the crowds continued to flock daily and nightly. South along the lakefront stood the grand fairway running down the center of the World’s Columbian Exposition like a concrete spine.