The Touch of Fire Read online

  “That’s what I thought. So I went to Florida to see exactly what it was Tench had buried. The train stations were watched; I had to go by horse, but I had the advantage of knowing where I was going. They just knew the general area.”

  “It wasn’t the money, was it?” she asked slowly. His pale, frosty eyes met hers, waiting. “It was the papers.”

  He nodded. He seemed very remote to her, his mind gone back four years in time. “It was the papers.”

  “You found where Tench had buried them?”

  “Yes. Everything was wrapped in oilcloth.”

  She waited, not saying anything. Rafe was looking at the horizon again. “The government papers,” he said deliberately, “were documentation of Commodore Vanderbilt’s financial aid to the Confederacy.”

  Annie went cold. Those papers were documentation of nothing less than the treason of the wealthiest man, or at least one of the wealthiest men, in the nation.

  “Railroads are the backbone of an army,” Rafe was continuing, still in that calm, remote voice. “The longer the war lasted, the more profits the railroads made and the more important they were. Vanderbilt made a fortune during the war. President Davis’s personal papers included a diary in which he speculated about Vanderbilt’s motives and the results of prolonging a war that he already had accepted was a losing effort. Davis knew the war was lost but with Vanderbilt’s money he was deliberately prolonging it anyway.”

  “Vanderbilt knew about the documentation,” she whispered.

  “Obviously. No government would destroy that kind of evidence when it could be used later, regardless of the outcome of the war. Certainly Vanderbilt never would have destroyed anything that gave him that much influence over anything.”

  “He must have thought it had disappeared during Mr. Davis’s escape, or even that Mr. Davis himself had destroyed it.”

  “When President Davis was captured and imprisoned, he was . . .” Rafe paused, frowning as he searched for the correct description.”. . . subjected to torture, both mental and physical. Perhaps it was encouraged to find out if President Davis knew where those papers were. Perhaps not. If the president hadn’t used them as a leverage to get himself out of prison, it was likely he didn’t have them. Vanderbilt must have felt safe in assuming them lost forever.”

  “Until Tench mentioned the papers he had in the hearing of Mr. Winslow, who was an employee of Vanderbilt.”

  “And someone, obviously, who knew the importance of the papers.”

  “Someone who could have also participated in the treason, and been implicated.”

  “Yes.”

  She stared around them at the glorious spring day. The horses were contentedly cropping the tender new grass, and the world felt fresh. A sense of unreality jarred her. “What did you do with the papers?”

  “I sent the silver to Tench’s family, anonymously. The papers are in a bank vault in New Orleans.”

  She jumped to her feet. “Why haven’t you used those papers to clear your name?” she yelled, suddenly furious. “Why haven’t you turned them over to the government so Vanderbilt can be punished? My God, the lives he cost—”

  “I know.” He turned to face her. She fell silent at the bleakness of his face. “My brother died at Cold Harbor in June of ’64. My father died in March of’65, defending Richmond.”

  There was no way to tell how long the war would have lasted without Vanderbilt’s aid; perhaps the battles at Cold Harbor would still have been fought, but almost certainly it wouldn’t have dragged on until April of ’65, and his father would still be alive. It had cost him his family.

  “All the more reason to make him pay,” she finally said.

  “I was killing mad at first; I couldn’t think. They had picked up my trail in Florida and weren’t far behind. I put the papers in the bank vault under a false name and ran. I’ve been running ever since.”

  “In God’s name, why? Why haven’t you used them to clear your name?”

  “Because they wouldn’t. I’m wanted for Tench’s murder. I can’t prove that Tench was killed because of the papers; I can’t prove that I didn’t do it.”

  “But Vanderbilt is obviously behind it. He’s the one who had put such a large bounty on your head. At the very least you can use those papers to force him to cancel the bounty and . .. and maybe use his influence to have the murder charge dropped.”

  “Blackmail. I thought of it. I tried, a couple of times, but I needed help. I’ve been hunted without letup; I couldn’t get back to New Orleans. The people I told,” he said slowly, “were all killed.”

  “So you stopped trying.” She stared at him with dry, burning eyes. Her chest was hurting. He had been forced to run like a wild animal for four years. What he was saying was that it wasn’t only bounty hunters and lawmen after him; Vanderbilt must have a private army searching for him too, perhaps using the bounty hunters and following close behind to eliminate anyone who they thought Rafe might have talked to. It was hideous. She didn’t know how he had survived. Yes, she did. Most men would have been caught and killed a long time ago, but Rafe wasn’t most men. He had been one of Mosby’s rangers, trained in stealth and evasion. He was tough and smart and cold-minded.

  He gave evidence of that now when he turned and said emotionlessly, “We need to be moving.”

  The pace he set was as fast as he could maintain and still be reasonably careful about their tracks. He wanted to put more distance between them and Silver Mesa, where it was possible that anyone who happened to see them would recognize Annie. He could have traveled faster had he been alone; he had to carefully watch both Annie and her gelding, for neither of them was used to the long hours of travel. His bay was hard and muscled from years on the trail, but the gelding had had only occasional use, and it would take time to build up his stamina.

  He wished he knew how close Atwater was, and if any other bounty hunters were in the area. He figured he could bet on the latter; Trahern was too well known for his presence to go unnoticed, and the other vultures would flock around him hoping to get the prey. It would be safer to avoid meeting anyone on the trail for several days, at least.

  He tried to shake off his morose mood, but it had settled on his shoulders like a blanket. It had been years since he’d told anyone about Tench and the Confederate papers, years since he’d even let himself think about it that much. All of his attention had been on staying alive, not rehashing the events that had made him an outlaw. He was a little surprised by the intensity of the sense of betrayal he felt even now. He had met Jefferson Davis several times in Richmond and had been impressed, as was almost everyone who had ever met the man, by his almost otherworldly combination of intelligence and integrity. Rafe hadn’t believed in slavery, his family hadn’t owned any slaves, but he had firmly believed in the concept of states’ rights over the authority of a central government and in the protection of his home, Virginia. Mr. Davis had made him feel as the American Revolutionists must have felt a century earlier, as if he were involved in a greater purpose, that of creating a new and sovereign nation. It had been a kick in the teeth to discover that Mr. Davis had given up the cause as lost and yet had still accepted money to keep the war going so a rich man could become even richer.

  How many people had died during the last year of the war? Thousands, including the two who had meant the most to him, his father and his brother. It was more than betrayal, it was murder.

  Annie’s questions, as she tried to understand all the ramifications, had brought it all back to him. In the beginning he had compulsively reexamined every detail, every possibility, in an effort to find some way of stopping Vanderbilt. He hadn’t been able to think of one.

  Turning the papers over to the authorities would result in Vanderbilt’s arrest—or maybe not; the man was enormously rich—but it wouldn’t get the murder charges dropped. Rafe would have revenge, but he had to be alive to enjoy it. Revenge didn’t do a dead man a whole hell of a lot of good.

  Annie had