Rusty must have shot his lung.
“And where is your plantation?” Van Ness said, still as cool as the night air.
“It’s about twenty miles due west of here,” Philip said. His eyes rolled back, and his head lolled to the side.
“Does it have a name?”
“Weston Hills. Everyone around knows it by the name of Weston Hills.” Philip’s eyelids fluttered shut.
“Weston Hills. Can you remember that, corporal?”
“Yes, sir.” Rusty tapped his temple. “I’ve already committed it to memory.”
“Thank you, Corporal Brooks.” Van Ness turned toward Philip. “Thank you, Mr. Weston, for being forthcoming with information.”
Philip lay still.
“Mr. Weston?” Van Ness patted Philip’s cheek, rousing him from unconsciousness.
“Huh? What?” he whispered.
“I said, thank you for being forthcoming with information. You’ve been most helpful.”
“You’re welcome, Captain, but please spare my daughters and the young woman. You have all the information you need,” Philip said with a wheezing sigh.
“Corporal,” Van Ness said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Please put Mr. Weston out of his misery. We have all the information we need.”
“Gladly, captain.” Rusty placed the gun’s muzzle at Philip’s chest and pulled the trigger.
Philip’s chest jerked, but no words or moans escaped his mouth.
He was dead now. There was no way he could have survived.
Charlotte continued to sob as Emily kept quieting her.
Van Ness turned toward me and said, “Ladies, I bid you good night.”
He pivoted on his heel and strode away with Rusty and Bart trailing behind him.
If I thought I despised Marcellious, I loathed these men with a hatred so intense my vision clouded with red. I vowed to take my revenge.
If only I could figure out a way to escape.
Roman
I didn’t think I’d ever smelled anything as foul as the way Marcellious smelled. He lay beside me in this makeshift prison in the cellar of someone’s abandoned home, barely breathing, emanating the scent of rotting, unwashed flesh. But who was I to talk? I didn’t think I smelled much better.
And what was it with me and prison cells? I’d escaped the Americas in the 1700s only to be thrown into a prison in Rome. And now I’d fled Rome only to be thrown in a prison cell in the Americas. I was hell-bent on going to the Americas and serving in the war. Throughout history, would I be punished for abandoning my mother in the 1700s? It seemed that was the case.
Dim light forced its way through the grimy hopper windows lining the wall. Bushels and wooden half-barrels of potatoes sat just out of reach, along with smaller baskets of rotting carrots, peppers, and other vegetation. A dead rat, its belly torn open and dried guts spilling out, lay near one of the baskets.
On the far side of the room, water dripped, dripped, dripped in a slow monotonous rhythm that might soon drive me mad.
I squinted as I peered at the darkened corner.
