“You will not.” I swallowed the gasp of sadness and fury that came with remembering my husband, who had never been my husband, and the reason why my father would never meet him.
“You can’t stop me,” he said. “That’s what you don’t seem to understand. You think you’re calling the shots. But I am. Kate, I want you to hear me. I am.”
He made a move to grab my shoulders. I stepped back smoothly. I wished again for my gun, though it was likely better not to have it; I couldn’t draw attention to myself with violence, not here. Words would have to do.
“I need time to get the money together. My husband is traveling, I don’t have access to the account. I need time.”
“Three days,” he said.
“I need a week.”
“Three days.”
“It’s impossible!”
“Refuse me again, and it’ll be two.” He brandished a finger at me, and I almost slapped it away, but I knew he’d make good on his threat if I pushed him any further. I had to take my bad lot and face it. Born to two people who loved nothing so much as themselves, I had grown into my own woman over time, but every pigeon must return to the roost.
“Three days,” I agreed.
He chuckled low in his throat—it took all I had not to smack him in the face at that—and then was gone.
So three days was all I had, if that. I wouldn’t put it past him to change the terms once agreed upon. He had never been a man of his word.
Regardless of the details, there was one certainty. He would come back. I knew he would. It was only a matter of time, and he wouldn’t hesitate to betray me if the money was better on the other side. He’d betrayed me before, selling me off to Charlie Warne, and cheaply at that. So much more rode on the bets we were making in wartime. My life meant more now, to me and to others. But with my father breathing down my neck, my time was running short.
Now, it was clear what I needed to do. I needed to find E. J. Allen, and soon. Whether he was in the city or not, I had no way of knowing. All I could do, at least for an opening move, was to cable the home office, using the code we saved only for the most dire emergencies.
SEND ME EJ ALLEN STOP HELL IS EMPTY
There was no response, at least no written one, several hours later. I despaired, pacing the tiny strip of floor between the bed and the couch, trying not to remember the room less empty. But after midnight, I heard a soft knock on my door. I prayed that it was the man I needed to talk to. It was.
I motioned him inside and locked the door behind him immediately, but I couldn’t look at him. Not after what had happened.
“Warne,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
I held up my hand, more forcefully than I meant to. “I don’t want to talk about him. That’s not why I needed to see you.”
“Nevertheless. I am sorry. None of us wanted him to—”
“Don’t say it!”
“But I wanted to tell you—”
“No! Nothing about him. Not a word. Only the business we must do. Understand?”
His eyes were full of sadness, but he said, “All right, Warne. Tell me what you’re here to tell me.”
“We must snare Mrs. Greenhow,” I said. “And we must do it tomorrow.”
The boss eyed me. I bore up under his gaze, only my rage against Greenhow keeping me standing. Without it, I might remember and collapse.
I wanted to plan with him, working together, like old times. But I could trust neither myself nor him. This time, all the ideas would have to be mine. I told him the part I wanted him to play and informed him what I would be doing. The only thing I needed from him was a suggestion for a trustworthy local apothecary, which he promised to secure. After that, success or failure would rest securely on my shoulders.
I could get myself invited into Mrs. Greenhow’s house but only while she was there, and it was highly unlikely I could find the evidence I needed while she was present. That gambit had already failed once. We needed to be sure she was gone, and we needed to be sure we could gain access to the house during that time. We found a general who would welcome her company and feed her false secrets. How I wish we would have found him months before. But with his cooperation, we could be sure she would stay out overnight. Then, all we needed was a key. I knew the man who had one.
Getting it from him would be more complicated. That was where the apothecary came in. A sleeping draft would be easy enough to slip into his tea or whatever else he might be drinking. With him unconscious, it would be an easy matter to fit key to lock, enter Mrs. Greenhow’s house under cover of night, and search at our leisure for evidence. Most of her servants did not live in, so there would only be Little Rose and one maid upstairs, and our experts knew how to be silent.
I knew her paramours and I knew her habits, everything I had seen and heard over the course of months in Washington, and I would use it all against her.