Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) Read Online Free

anything buried in the rubble if people
did
help? Anything worth digging out?
    Frustrated, she glowered
around at the abused landscape. She had never craved violence or
had urges to kill people, but nobody had ever wronged her to this
degree. Even Sebastian’s betrayal seemed almost innocuous compared
to this. She had the urge to track down Amelia or whoever had done
this and pummel the person senseless with her hammer. Many
times.
    “Too bad the only man I
know who tracks people is in jail,” she muttered.
    “What did you say?” Tadzi
asked.
    Kali looked at him.
“You’re still here.” She had been too busy fantasizing about
pummeling and hadn’t realized he was still standing here.
    “I wasn’t sure if I
should leave you here alone. What if whoever did this comes
back?”
    Her first thought was to
point out that a boy with a limp wasn’t going to be much help to
her if the intruder returned, but she bit her tongue to keep the
comment to herself. It would hurt his feelings, and he had already
suffered enough on her behalf. Besides, didn’t people underestimate
her and what she could do all the time?
    “You’re right.” Kali
patted his shoulder and pointed toward the trail, what
remained
of the trail. “Neither of us should stay here.
You need to head back to Moosehide so someone can patch you
up.”
    “And so I can find help,”
he said brightly.
    “And so you can find
help.” Kali wished she could manage some brightness of her own.
Maybe he believed that all they had to do was dig out the cave and
everything would be tucked inside of it, undamaged. She wished she
could believe that.
    “Where are
you
going?” Tadzi asked.
    “To plan a jail
break.”
    • • • • •
    The cell did not offer a
lot of room for pacing. That was unfortunate, because Cedar was a
man of action, and the confinement bothered him more than the idea
that his death might be looming somewhere up ahead.
    No, he wasn’t going to
accept that this was the end for him. He had finally gotten Kali to
agree that they were officially courting. With Cudgel gone, he was
ready to go on with his life—his life with
her
. He would
find a way to escape.
    A scrape and a thump came
from somewhere overhead.
    Cedar frowned up at the
knotty pine ceiling. He could reach the boards and had already
tested them for weaknesses. They, like his entire cell, were
sturdily put together.
    Another thump sounded,
and he thought of Kali’s interest in helping him escape. He had
meant what he said—he did not want her to risk becoming a criminal
herself to help him. Having Pinkerton detectives and bounty hunters
after you was no way to go through life, even if she eventually had
an airship in which to flee the law.
    Still, a little thrill
coursed through his veins. Maybe she cared about him too much to
heed his words. Maybe she was up there right now, cutting a hole in
the roof.
    Except those thumps were
quite loud. Wouldn’t she work more quietly? And wouldn’t she have
waited until deep within the night to attempt a jailbreak? The
shadows had deepened inside his cell, and sunset might be
approaching outside, but he could still hear the clip-clop of horse
hooves in the street and the occasional yells of men on the
boardwalk outside the window.
    The door leading to the
front office thumped open. Cedar assumed an indifferent expression
as someone in a Mountie uniform walked into the hallway, trailed by
the constable who had escorted Kali earlier. The newcomer brought a
lantern and hung it on a hook just outside Cedar’s cell door. Cedar
recognized him, even though they had only spoken once.
    As the man turned toward
the cell, his graying hair and mustache neatly trimmed, his uniform
tidy, his weathered face cool, nerves tangled in Cedar’s belly.
Commissioner Sam Steele. The man who had apparently decided Cedar’s
past crimes—
supposed
crimes—in the United States were not
worth overlooking, despite all of the felons Cedar had brought in,
despite