I struggled to absorb the new information, to turn everything over in my mind. It made a kind of sense. The pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. Mortenson was the third agent who Van Lew’s butler had mentioned, then. There had been three after all, one spelling doom for the other two.
Pinkerton sat quietly, his graying head lowered, clearly suffering under the weight of what he’d done. I wanted to touch him, comfort him. But the truth was too new.
I’d been wrong about his motives. I’d been wrong about Mrs. Greenhow’s role too, or at least not completely right. We all had some part of the guilt, every one of us.
Only one thing didn’t add up. “But they didn’t hang Hattie.”
“No. When it came to the final trial, Mortenson gave the damning evidence against Tim, but he wouldn’t do the same against Hattie. On the stand, he said he didn’t know anything about her being an agent of any sort. Whatever he felt for her before, it seems he feels it still.”
“At least…” I couldn’t complete the thought. It was horrible that he’d done what he’d done but not surprising he’d had a change of heart about Hattie. He hated her enough to put her in prison but loved her too much to sign her death warrant. Tim, though, he had no such feelings for.
“He fooled me,” said Pinkerton, his voice thick with regret. “I shouldn’t have let him. So I came to apologize to you, Warne. Because it seems Tim’s death really was my fault, in a way.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I said. “But you were so angry. In the hotel, when Tim told you about us. Why?”
“It wasn’t because of your relationship. I was angry about that, yes, but not why you think.” He looked down at his hands, knotted together. “If you’d gotten married, if you’d started a family, it would have been a disaster.”
I made a strangled noise in my throat.
“No, no. Let me explain. I didn’t want to lose you as an operative. The agency couldn’t afford to. Your mind, your intelligence—it would have been such a waste, Warne. And I couldn’t bear that thought. You took me by surprise. It’s no excuse, but it’s a reason.”
I remembered DeForest saying something similar long ago. To the world, being a wife meant being a mother, which meant leaving the work. They didn’t understand me, my circumstances. Pinkerton thought I was making a choice I wouldn’t have made. We hadn’t had time to explain ourselves, me to him or him to me. I put my head in my hands.
He went on, “And that upset me. Deeply, I admit. I didn’t want to sacrifice someone as extraordinary as you for something as commonplace as love.”
I had to smile, a little bit, through my tears. “Is it so commonplace?”
“Happens every day.”
“So you separated us because—”
“Because you could do more good apart than together. You’d ingratiated yourself with Mrs. Greenhow; you didn’t need him there anymore. You both begged me to send you where you were needed. You remember?”
“I remember.”
“I took you both at your word.”
I nodded once, soberly. Tim had ridden off with no objections. Sad to leave me but dedicated to his duty. He had died in service of the country we both loved. A long and happy life would have been a better fate, but there were a score of worse ones.
Meeting his gaze at last, the few feet of stale air between us already feeling like untold miles, I said, “Boss, I’m sorry.”
“So am I, Kate.”
“When you know where Mortenson is, you know where to find me.”
“I’d hoped to convince you to come back to Chicago.”
“I’m not ready,” I said.
“I can stay a few days—”
“No, you can’t. You’re needed. You’ve already been away too long, traveling all this way, just to tell me. Don’t misunderstand. I’m glad you did, but you need to go. What I need from you is time.”
“How much?”
“That depends. The only case I’ll work is Mortenson’s case. You let me know when it’s time for me to start the operation.”
He opened his mouth to say something else but then closed it and looked at me, really looked. I had forgotten the strength of that powerful gaze, of having his full attention focused on me. I wondered what he saw there. Whatever it was made him shake his head once, like a horse shaking off a fly, and relax into his chair.
We didn’t sit and converse as comfortably as we had before, but it was at least something. We talked late into the night, about Mortenson and his whereabouts and what was known and unknown so far. By the time the sun touched the morning sky, I was determined that victory was within our grasp. One more clue would be enough, if it was the right one. It was just a question of when.
When he rose to leave, he said, “And Kate? If you want revenge…”
I braced myself for a moral lesson, but I was surprised at what came instead.
“I don’t blame you one whit.”
Then he was gone, leaving me spent and amazed and burning with new purpose.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Case Begins
Two weeks later, I had another visitor, and I didn’t realize how desperately I missed her until she appeared.
Hattie stepped down from the rattletrap coach like a butterfly alighting, the scarlet lining of her traveling cloak winking bright as flame against the town’s muddy backdrop. Smeared with dirt and plainly exhausted, she was still the most beautiful woman on earth, as always. I flung my arms wide, and she stepped into them. We both cried tears of joy and hung on for dear life.
We caught up quickly. She had been released from Castle Thunder at last in a prisoner exchange, forbidden from reentering the Confederate States, as if she would ever want to. She was thinner than she’d been, but she wore it well. It gave her a new air of seriousness, of substance, with little resemblance to the brash would-be actress who had first set foot in the Pinkerton Agency office.