Apprehension shivered over her. Would it still be there? The money she’d sewn into her corset? The Old Man had taught her that. Always keep a stash for an emergency. If nobody had found it, she would be all right. She could get to New York and pick up her share of the Thornton score from the Old Man. She’d have to answer for what had happened to Jake, but she’d face that when she had to. First, she had to get out of here and make sure Thornton didn’t find her.
She pulled open the bag and emptied it onto the bed. Everything was there. She wouldn’t check for the money. No telling who might be watching. She glanced over to see how Anna was doing and found her struggling to sit up.
“Don’t move!” The words snagged in her ragged throat, but she forced them out. “Let me get dressed and then I’ll help you.”
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
Elizabeth just glared at her until she slumped back down onto the bed obediently. Satisfied Anna would wait, she started stripping off her prison clothes. Without any obvious searching, she managed to find the hidden pocket inside her corset and felt the reassuring crinkle of banknotes. Relief flooded her. She’d be all right now. She just had to make a plan.
The other women were also trying to dress, with varying degrees of success, depending on how debilitated they were. Some, like Anna, couldn’t even sit up. Those who were able dressed themselves and then helped the others. Ella Findeisen came over to assist her with Anna. The poor girl could hardly move her limbs. She was so thin, Elizabeth wondered why Anna’s bones didn’t break right through her skin. She already had open sores on her elbows and heels from shifting on the rough sheets.
Ella caught her eye at one point and whispered, “She won’t be able to walk.”
Elizabeth nodded, wondering how they could possibly even get her out of the bed.
But they needn’t have worried. When the time came, those who couldn’t walk were strapped onto stretchers and carried out to the waiting wagons. The rest of them straggled out, weak and weary but still avidly searching for the friends from whom they’d been separated. Elizabeth scanned the faces of the women climbing into the wagons. She saw Mrs. Bates, but her wagon pulled away before she could get to her. At least she was well. Elizabeth would find her when they got to the courthouse.
She would have to be clever, especially now because she wasn’t strong. The judge might release them, and if he did, the news probably wouldn’t hit the newspapers until tomorrow. That would give her a head start on Thornton and his thugs, at least. But she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to get to New York without help. She’d have a much better chance if she could have a few days to rest up first. Was it too much to hope that the judge wouldn’t release them at all? That something would happen so they could end the hunger strike but stay in jail for a while to recover? Probably. So she’d have to figure out something herself, some way to get herself to New York ahead of Thornton so he wouldn’t kill her like he’d probably killed Jake.
That shouldn’t be so hard, should it?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gideon had been waiting on the courthouse steps with David for what seemed like hours. He hadn’t known waiting could actually be painful. He’d paced and stood still and even tried to make conversation with David. None of that had been able to distract him from the awful anticipation or relieve the knot of tension burning in his chest. Would Anna and his mother really be released today? And even if they were, what condition would they be in? He had no doubt his mother would have joined the hunger strike, but what about Anna? She’d always been so frail. David was nearly frantic with worry. They both knew she wouldn’t be able to survive for long without food.
Then, finally, something changed. He couldn’t have said what it was. Perhaps just some sixth sense had warned him, but this time when he looked down the street, he knew they were coming. Indeed, only a few seconds later the first of the wagons came into view.
“They’re here,” he told David, then shouted it so they could hear him inside the courthouse.
O’Brien came rushing out. “Thank God,” he muttered as they waited on the steps while the wagons drew up, then hurried down to meet the women.
Gideon searched each face as they climbed down, but his mother wasn’t in the first group, and neither was Anna.
“Dear heaven,” David breathed beside him. “Look at them.”
He was looking at them, and what he saw horrified him—haggard faces, sunken eyes, bodies moving carefully, as if they’d aged decades in only weeks.
Fear roiled in him like a poisonous snake. Where were they?
The next wagon rumbled to a stop, and once again he searched each face, trying not to register how emaciated they were, looking only for the blessed one that had kissed him every night for his entire childhood. Where could she be?
“Gideon!”
He looked again and even then almost didn’t recognize her. “Mother?” His heart lurched.
He lunged for her, but a billy club caught him in the chest. Pain exploded along with rage.
“You can’t touch the prisoners,” a burly guard informed him, shoving him out of the way.
He would have shoved him back, but O’Brien grabbed his arm. “Don’t be a fool! He’ll crack your skull open, and what good will you be to us then?”
“Mrs. Bates, where’s Anna?” David called.
“I don’t know,” she managed before the guard shouted, “No talking!” and herded the women up the courthouse steps.
Gideon watched her go, not certain if he felt any relief at all from seeing her when she looked so awful.
“What does she mean, she doesn’t know?” David asked of no one in particular.
“She was in the infirmary,” one of the other women managed before the guard silenced her as well.
Two more wagons had arrived, and if Gideon thought the other women looked ill, these women looked to be at death’s door. The guards had to assist them getting down, and even when they were on the ground, they had to cling to each other for strength. Their pale faces and haunted eyes told of suffering he could only imagine.
“This must be the group from the infirmary,” he told David.
“Then where is she?”
Only a few women were on the final wagon, or at least that’s what Gideon thought at first, seeing only a half dozen heads visible above the sides and none of them Anna’s. Those women climbed down with difficulty, and then a couple of the guards climbed up and started handing down stretchers.
Stretchers?
“Are they dead?” David asked wildly when they realized there were women strapped to the stretchers.
“They can’t be dead,” Gideon insisted, although the words were more a prayer than a certainty.
“Anna!” David cried, hurrying over to where the guards were carrying the first of the stretchers away from the wagon and up the courthouse steps. Gideon was close behind.
One of the women who’d climbed down on her own looked up at David’s shout. “She’s here.”
Gideon had never seen this woman before, he was sure. He would have remembered. Her startling blue eyes took them both in as they reached the stretcher that had just been handed down.
“No talking to the prisoners,” one of the guards told them, but neither of them paid him any mind.