Lucas shrugged. “It’s the truth. They are on their way.” He hoped his ruse worked.
Bowman carelessly boasted, “No one knows of my involvement. I’ve been spying for the Confederacy all along and no one was smart enough to figure it. Not even the intelligent Colonel Rourke. The Union is staffed with fools and you, Lucas, are the most gullible of all. How easy to do favors for you, be at your beck and call. How easy to play on your loyalties and set up your abduction from Washington to Richmond. Somehow you escaped. Miss Pierce, our lovely traitor and the Saint which she goes by, obviously lent her assistance.”
Lucas stepped forward, palms up. “She’s not the Saint. He’s a man living in Richmond. I would know.” He feared for Rachel more than life itself. He dared a glance at her pale countenance, his sweet, brave Rachel, so vulnerable. A black rage bubbled in his blood.
Bowman snorted. “You are a fool to make me think otherwise. After I properly mourn your corpse in front of General Dodge, he’ll promote me to your position. To get rid of the evidence, I’ll shoot her, then you.”
Lucas reached for the Colt concealed behind him. He leveled it at Bowman. “You’ll never live anything down if I shoot you.”
The congressman scrambled. Yet Bowman remained a man of swift understanding, an essential attribute of his trade. He’d not succeeded so long under the Union’s nose because he was stupid.
“You are full of surprises, Lucas. Your resilience never ceases to amaze me. I couldn’t believe the day when you walked into our office after your long sojourn in the south. But for now, I hold the power. You must understand there are many men outside loyal to me and resentful of your crimes against the Confederacy, especially as a born and bred Virginian. As a gentleman, I will let Miss Pierce go if you drop your gun. For it is truly you, Lucas, that I want dead.”
“Don’t do it, Lucas,” Rachel warned.
Bowman cocked back the hammer on his gun, resounding in the deafening silence into a single click. Lucas’ jaw tightened.
“The standoff is complete. I hold all the cards,” Bowman bragged.
There might be a slim chance Bowman would keep his word and release Rachel. For his part, Lucas wondered why he wasn’t shaking.
Death had reached its icy hand out to him before. He knew it would someday touch him.
Was this the day?
“I’ve decided there are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to lose graciously than to win defiantly.” Lucas slid his gun across the floor. “Let her go.”
“No,” Rachel shouted. Tears fell down her face.
Bowman kicked the gun out of the way. “Not on your life, Colonel Rourke. You know what your fault is, Lucas? Being alive.”
Bowman marched Lucas outside and into the barn, greeting his companions, interrupting their meeting to run his new show. “I have not only captured the elusive Saint, but also Colonel Rourke, my illustrious superior. It takes a spy to catch a spy,” he sneered. “Let this be a lesson, you must always expect the unexpected from your enemy. Tie them up, and we’ll enjoy a cozy bonfire, toasting…I mean roasting our guests.”
His companions cheered. “Enjoy your journey to the Netherworld.”
“No one likes to hear the prophecy of his own death,” said Bowman.
Lucas dismissed the prediction with a grin.
Lucas and Rachel were lashed to a wooden beam. Accelerant was thrown on the hay-strewn floor to hasten the flames. The barn doors were closed, leaving them temporarily to adjust to the darkness.
Lucas saw moonlight filter through the slits in the planking, casting vertical shadows. His eyes fell on munitions boxes. Lucas cursed. The whoosh of fire wended its way through. A match must have been tossed. His ears caught another unusual sound. That of teeth chattering.
“Have you ever been scared?” Rachel whimpered.
They were being burned alive while tied up in a barn surrounded by Copperheads that were going to assassinate President Lincoln. “Yes, plenty of times,” admitted Lucas, becoming angrier now that she was so frightened. He remembered her fear of fire when her home burned down, stemming from when she had seen her father’s gruesome murder. How he wished he could spare her of this.
“You are not human, Rachel unless you get scared. But these men don’t scare me, they are just scum.”
“Why aren’t you scared?”
He heard the break in her voice and it tore him apart. “Because I’m going to be free in a couple of minutes.”
She turned her head toward him, and her mouth dropped open. He shrugged out of the ropes.
“How?” She didn’t finish, coughing on the rising smoke.
Lucas completed untying his feet and pulled a knife from his boot. He sprang to cut her ropes from her. “You aren’t the only one who has tricks up his sleeve. It’s an old Indian maneuver I leaned from my younger brother, Zachary. You put as much air into your lungs and billow out your chest while they are tying you. It gives you enough slack to shrug out of them. These idiots were too dumb to see it.”
