An Agent for Savannah Read online

  “As neither of you have stepped forward, we shall choose which of you will train our newest agent,” Archie said and then nodded toward his secretary. “Marianne?”

  Marianne offered them all a wide smile. “Lucas McKay, would you please become Savannah’s training agent?”

  Lucas’s heart dropped toward his stomach at the same time as Miss Lockwood gasped and her eyes met his. A smile tugged at Lucas’s lip. For some reason, he found pleasure in the fact that she remembered his name.

  Chapter 4

  Savannah blinked hard and shot a gaze at Mr. McKay. The slightest of smirks ticked up his lips as he met eyes with her. More heat rushed to her cheeks. How was it possible? She didn’t much like that look in his eyes, and a pang of fear shot through her chest. Certainly he wouldn’t do anything untoward, even if his roguish expression said he might. She swallowed hard. No, she shouldn’t let her imagination rush forward without her reason. And for half a moment, she wondered if her father might have been right. Maybe she’d read a few too many novels.

  “Do you accept, Mr. McKay?” Mr. Gordon’s deep voice asked in his rough Scottish accent.

  “Aye,” Lucas McKay answered with a nod, winking toward her.

  Though her heart fluttered, fear also twisted her stomach. Exactly what had she agreed to? Black spots crowded her vision and she felt a bit weak in the knees. Her father had wanted her to be married, but certainly not like this. Had her mother known this was a stipulation before she’d sent letters of introduction? No. She couldn’t have. Savannah swallowed hard. What if Mother found out? What if her father found out?

  No.

  No one would ever have to know about this short marriage on paper. It would be annulled the moment they got back from whatever mission Mr. Gordon sent them on. Marianne and Mr. Gordon had assured her that it wouldn’t be a difficult process to get free of her training agent upon their return.

  She would just have to keep her distance from him until then. Slowly, she took a deep breath and steeled herself. She could do this. She just had to believe that she could.

  Miss Marianne grabbed her gently by the elbow. “Savannah, are you all right.”

  Swallowing hard, Savannah nodded. “Yes. I’m fine.”

  After searching Savannah’s eyes for a moment, Marianne nodded. “All right then. We’ll have a short ceremony and then Archie—I mean, Mr. Gordon—will discuss with you both the case you’ll be handling.”

  Savannah nodded and then followed Miss Marianne as she led her to the parlor. It wasn’t long before she was agreeing to vows and signing her name upon a marriage certificate. Then Mr. Gordon pronounced them man and wife, but thankfully, they weren’t asked to kiss. It all seemed to happen much too fast for Savannah’s brain to comprehend. She was used to having time to sit and think about things. Even in the mysteries she read, she’d had time to think about each clue and witness so that she could solve the crime before the main character did.

  But real life moved much too fast for Savannah.

  After the ceremony, Mr. Gordon called them into his office.

  He stepped around to the other side of his desk and shuffled some papers on the top. “This mission is a rather simple one, but we needed to have a female agent—a couple even—in order to do it. You see, there is a merchant in San Francisco who has travelled ahead to start a trading company with the Orient and left his family behind. Mr. Blackwell, the merchant, intended to send for his family as soon as he had things settled in California. However, Mrs. Blackwell was taken by the gripe. Although two of the three children also fell ill with the sickness, only Mrs. Blackwell was taken.”

  Savannah frowned. “That’s terrible.”

  “It is,” Mr. Gordon said as he peered up from his papers and took a seat in his chair. “The children have been in the care of the town’s preacher and wife in Covington, Nebraska. You’ll travel there to pick up the children and the travel with them along the transcontinental line to Sacramento, and from there a stagecoach to San Francisco.”

  Mr. McKay—that is, Lucas—cleared his throat. “Are you saying that you’re sending us on a babysitting mission.”

  Wrinkles formed in Mr. Gordon’s brow as he frowned. “It is a bodyguard mission. Pinkerton agents work as bodyguards for dignitaries and politicians as well as the children of such.”

  Savannah blinked. “Are you saying the children are in danger?”

  Gordon shot a glance her direction. “That is exactly what I’m saying. Not only is Mr. Blackwell the owner of a large shipping firm with many competitors, he’s favored to possibly become mayor of San Francisco in the next election—the other man in the running is a importer and exporter, just like Mr. Blackwell.”

  “Then it’s possible that there are supporters of the other politician who might want to harm or kidnap the children in order to keep Mr. Blackwell out of the race for Mayor,” Lucas said with a frown, his face suddenly growing very serious.

  “That’s right. Now you see the full weight of the situation. Mr.Blackwell has hired our office because we are in a central location to go pick up the children and ensure that they arrive safely into his care,” Mr. Gordon said, his hands creating a steeple under his chin. “We’ll put on on the next train to Nebraska if you’re willing.”

  “I’m ready,” Lucas said with a firm nod and then both gentlemen turned their gazes on Savannah.

  Savannah gaped at them both for a moment. “Of... of course I’m ready.”

  “Excellent,” Mr. Gordon said as he slapped his hands on the desk and stood from his seat. “Let’s make arrangements for travel immediately.”

  Lucas sat across from Savannah on the train and waited. And waited. The girl had been silent since they’d started the trip, keeping her gaze locked to whatever scene was outside the window, occasionally chewing on her thumbnail. After two full hours of silence, Lucas had had enough. “So, what made you decide to become a Pinkerton agent?”

  That finally got Savannah to pull her gaze from the window and fix it upon him. She pulled her hand from her face as if only noticing for the first time that she’d been chewing at her nails. She swallowed and then said, “The advertisement from May of last year. I found it in the newspaper and clipped it. At first I used it as a bookmark and thought about what it might be like to answer it. But then it grew a bit ragged, so I... I saved it in a safe place in my room. Honestly, I didn’t intend to answer it—at least, not exactly. I continued with my studies at the ladies’ college, and tried to forget about it, but it continued to come up again into my thoughts, do you know what I mean?”

  Lucas nodded, afraid to say a word for fear that she might stop talking.

  “Then one thing led to another and my mother encouraged me to finally answer the advertisement. She even wrote letters of introduction to Marianne and began a correspondence with her.”

  When Savannah had been silent for a few seconds, Lucas felt it was safe to follow-up. “Then, you said your mother encouraged you to become a Pinkerton? That seems quite extraordinary.”

  A smile finally tugged at Savannah’s lip and her eyes became half-moons. “My mother is an extraordinary woman. Just when you think you know how she’s going to behave or what decision she’s going to make, she surprises you.”

  Lucas thought back to how Savannah had surprised him in the train station before they’d even met. She had seemed like the type to get suckered and taken advantage of, but instead she’d proved herself to be brave and shrewd. Even know her, mannerisms seemed to imply that she was nervous and shy, yet once the girl began talking, the truth seemed to just spill out of her. He wondered if she was prone to talking about things too much. He hoped not. If they were to guard these children, they needed to be alert to anyone who might be suspected as an attacker or kidnapper. The last thing they needed was to tell the culprit their every move. He sighed and leaned back. “How did your father feel about your decision to become a Pinkerton?”

  She lifted a brow, suddenly studying him in a way th
at was opposed to the way she’d just been talking about her mother. Then she shrugged and looked back out the window. “He doesn’t know. And for now, it will stay that way.”

  Lucas’s eyes widened at the sudden change in Savannah’s demeanor and the way she’d closed off that direction of conversation with such finality. No. He needn’t have worried about Savannah being the kind who would give to much information to a stranger. She was quite the extraordinary woman herself, at least by her own definition. A smile tugged at his lip. He wondered if she took after her mother in appearance as well as personality. That there would be two women in the world with such unpredictable natures made him chuckle.

  Narrowed eyes turned on him as Savannah glared. “Is there something funny about that?”

  He shook his head, but the laughter continued to spill out. “Not at all. No. Not at all,” he assured her. “It’s just that awkward moments can sometimes bring out the darkness of my sense of humor.”

  Though the frown left, she still tilted her head and studied him. “So, Mr. McKay. What made you decide to become a Pinkerton agent?”

  “It’s Lucas,” he whispered toward her, leaning in. “As my wife, you should always refer to me as Lucas.”

  Blinking at him, she rolled her eyes afterward. “Fine. Lucas. What made you decide to become a Pinkerton?”

  What she didn’t know was that he was only stalling as he thought of how to answer. He hadn’t expected her to ask the same question in return of him. His history had been an ugly one, and how much he did he want to share? Letting out a deep sigh, he leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “I killed a man.”

  She lifted a brow, but her expression hardly changed. He’d expected her to gasp or show some sense of surprise. He’d expected her to be horrified, and want to get away from him. Instead, she leaned forward and placed her own elbows on her knees. “What happened?”

  There was something about the way she didn’t judge him. The way she hadn’t seemed to change the way that she felt about him after being told his deepest secret, that made him want to open up to her and tell her everything. “He’d sullied my sister. The man was supposed to be taking care of her—of us both, but he’d behaved in an untoward manner with her. And though I wasn’t able to stop him before the... act. I stopped him in the midst of it.”

  Savannah blinked hard, but nodded, not saying a word.

  A shiver ran through Lucas as he almost felt as if he’d returned to that time, nearly fifteen years ago. “I was only thirteen years old, barely more than a kid. Yet when I punched the man, he’d fallen into a pile of debris and died.”

  Wrinkles appeared on Savannah’s forehead. “That’s not your fault.”

  He nodded. “That’s debatable, but at the time, I felt as guilty as I could be. I ran for it, grabbed my sister’s hand and ran. What I didn’t know, was the man was an important businessman in Chicago, and his family would hire Allan Pinkerton himself to search for the culprit in his murder.”

  She blinked again, her eyes widening a bit this time, but she didn’t say a word.

  “It wasn’t long before Allan found me, discovered the full story about what that man did—what I did. And instead of turning me into the authorities, Allan took me under his wing and trained me to become an agent, just like him.” Lucas’s voice trailed off a bit and by the time he’d finished, he’d been speaking in little more than a whisper.

  “And your sister?” Savannah asked.

  It was Lucas’s turn to blink at her. The fact that she’d asked about his sister made Lucas’s heart feel warm in his chest. “She’s married to one of Allan’s sons.”

  “Wow,” she said as she leaned back in her seat across from him. “That was an intense and surprising story. I had no idea that your road to where you are had so much tragedy and hardship in it.”

  Lucas also leaned back, studying the woman across from him as she nodded to him and then went back to peering out the window. Her feelings for him had remained unchanged, and that in itself was remarkable. Most ladies would have written him off as a lost cause just from his opening statement, and likely wouldn’t have stayed to listen to the rest of the story. And she’d cared enough to ask about his sister. Savannah was different than most ladies, he was coming to realize. Perplexing and extraordinary. He hoped that he would be able to at least predict her enough to follow her on this case, and whatever adventure she might lead him through. For without question, he knew he’d be following her rather than the other way around.

  Chapter 5

  Savannah spent much of the train ride on the way to pick up the children in Nebraska feeling both nervous and excited for what lay ahead of them. Occasionally she and Lucas would have a bit of conversation. Overall, he was a good storyteller, and Savannah found that very appealing. When he would talk about the different adventures he’d had as a Pinkerton agent in Chicago, Savannah had listened in wonder. As an agent, she’d be living those same adventures that she’d only read about before. Her stomach flipped. She’d become not just the reader, but the storyteller, too. Excitement rolled through her insides and made her shiver.

  “Are you all right?” Lucas asked from the seat across from her

  Outside the window, she could only see the occasional lantern light hanging in windows of homes through the darkness that had settled over the countryside like a blanket. But still her eyes had been fixed on the horizon until the sunlight had finally faded fully away, her thoughts captured by her uncertain future. She finally pulled her gaze from the window and smiled at her partner. “I’m fine,” she answered and then watched his eyes in the dim light. “How do you do this? I mean... don’t you get nervous?”

  His brows furrowed a bit and then he shrugged. “No sense in getting nervous. It’s just a case, and getting nervous isn’t going to help us solve it. As agents we need to be calm and rational. Nervousness tends to come from thinking irrationally about what might happen instead of relaxing and letting things be.”

  Savannah wrapped her arms around herself as she thought a moment about what her partner had said. Slowly she nodded. “I understand that. I hope that I will stay calm and think rationally when the time comes. I know that my father did not raise his children to be overly emotional. He prided in himself for the fact that all three of his daughters were smarter than most and all of us were admitted to Vassar Women’s College. I graduated this past summer.”

  “I wasn’t meaning to imply that you were irrational or unintelligent.” He frowned. “Honestly, I was only trying to help you change your thoughts on it. If you think about the situation differently, then perhaps you would be able to overcome any nervousness you might be experiencing.”

  She nodded. “I understood that was what you were doing, Mr... Lucas. I just wanted to clarify where I come from so that we can gain a better understanding of each other. Where did you go to college?”

  “I studied for two years at Loyola, but didn’t gain a degree. At first, Allan wanted me to try to become a doctor, since I had some interest in medicine. Then the war broke out, and I decided to serve my country as Union officer instead. I watched many a doctor give up serving the community after the horrors they’d seen in the war.” His eyes got a faraway look. “I even had to help or order men to help with amputations. It made me that much more certain that I didn’t want to become a doctor after the war, so I didn’t return to Loyola, and instead, became a Pinkerton agent with Allan.”

  Again. Another incredible story of adventures past. Nearly everything that Lucas said was fascinating and engrossing. And his deep voice had a soothing quality. As he continued to tell her about the one time he and Allan broke up an illegal slave trade market, she found her eyelids getting heavy as the sound of his baritone made her feel comforted and sleepy. She woke with a start, disoriented and unsure of where she was. She stayed perfectly still, her eyes moving about, trying to figure out where she was as her heart raced in her chest. Darkness enveloped the train car within. Lucas sat across from he
r with his feet up beside her on her seat, and her feet rested upon his lap. His jacket had been draped over her shoulders. She swallowed and slowly pulled her feet from Lucas’s lap, hoping not to wake him. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his head tilted to the side as he remained unconscious. Slowly, she placed her feet on the floor and pulled the jacket from her shoulders. Outside it was still fully dark. Within the car, the other nine passengers were also asleep. She moved forward to put Logan’s suit jacket back over his shoulders, when the light caught his face just so. His red lips looked full and feminine next to his manly, square jaw with a bit of stubble making the edges rough. Because his eyes were closed, it was easier to see that his lashes were impossibly long and pretty, too. It almost made Savannah jealous.

  Holding her breath, and hoping not to wake him. She shifted and began placing the jacket on his torso.

  One of his eyes cracked open, and he whispered, “I’m fine. Keep the jacket and go back to sleep.”

  Her heart rate picked up again as she pulled her hands away, holding the jacket to her chest. “You’re awake?”

  Both his eyes were open now. He offered her a crooked half-smile. “Don’t you know the Pinkerton motto?”

  “We never sleep,” she whispered as her heart sank toward her stomach. She leaned in toward him. “But I was asleep.”

  He chuckled quietly and then shook his head. “I’m only joking with you. It’s fine to sleep right now. We are not yet on the case. Once we pick up the children, we’ll have to alternate our sleeping schedules. Because of that, it’s best that you get as much rest as possible right now.”

  Slowly, Savannah sat back down in her seat, next to Lucas’s feet. He patted the seat next to him, offering for her to set her feet on the bench. Which she did, slowly, feeling a bit out of sorts while she did it and heat rushed to her cheeks. Then she realized she still had Lucas’s jacket in her hands. She pushed it out toward him. “Here.”