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“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
“You’re not the first to say so. ”
He shook his head and put his hands on his hips, and said, “Fine. Risk your own neck, if that’s how you want it. I’ll cover you if I can, but if you take too long, I’m getting my men and turning this patch of Kentucky into a fire pit that’ll burn until Jesus comes back. ”
“Works for me,” she said. She gave the outbuilding and its guards a hard glance, made a decision, and said to Hainey before she left, “Give me two minutes before you get your gang. ”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Only two minutes?”
“If this takes any longer, it won’t work at all. Trust me. I move fast. Do you have a watch?”
“Not on me, but I can count to sixty twice. ”
“Good enough. ” Maria shoved one of the Colts back under her shawl and held the other one in her hand, covered by the handbag. She reached to the neckline of her dress and gave it a tug that started a revealing rip, and dropped her carpetbag at her feet.
“What are you doing?” Hainey asked.
“Getting my story in order. ” She took a deep breath. She said, “Captain, start counting. ”
“Wait. ”
“What?” she asked.
“Do me one favor. Leave Brink for me. Don’t shoot him unless you have to,” he requested.
She nodded.
And after scooting away from Hainey by ten or fifteen yards, she leaped out of the woods into the clearing as if she had a pack of wolves on her heels.
She fired off a blood-curdling scream of feminine terror and, as the two guards in front of the outbuilding furrowed their brows, she wailed, “Help me! Oh help me, gentlemen, you must!”
She flung her body up against the nearest guard and wept piteously. Between great sobs she gasped to the other guard, “You there! Your weapon! Ready it, man—he’s out there! He’s right behind me!”
The guard she clung to held her back at an arm’s reach, took in the sight of a woman in a torn dress and got a glimpse of what lay beneath it. He stammered, “Ma’am, please, contain yourself!”
But she would not be soothed so easily. She gulped, “But sir! There’s a horrible man—a hideous Negro with a terrible scar—he accosted me in the woods! He assaulted me!”
Behind the cover of the woods’ edge, Croggon Hainey rolled his eyes.
The second guard demanded to know, “Where is this man?”
And as the first untangled himself from Maria’s clutched embrace, the first guard said, “Which way did he come from?”
“Over there!” she indicated a position approximately ninety degrees away from Hainey’s precise locale.
The guards exchanged a set of knowing looks that did not go unnoticed by the spy, who stayed in character to such an extent that she required a handkerchief—which was provided by her first choice of guards. He said, “We’d better put her inside. ”
“But Steen…?” It was a feeble objection, and when the door was flung open to reveal the Union officer, both men snapped to attention while Maria wibbled convincingly.
“What’s going on out here?” he demanded, and seeing Maria his eyes narrowed into a look of confused concentration. “Do I know you?”
She shook her head, flinging a stray tear loose.
The nearest of the guards said in a stiff voice, “Sir, she was assaulted in the woods by a hideous Negro with a terrible scar!”
Maria bobbed her head and said, “Please, sir, let me come inside. Protect me, I beg you!”
One of the guards declared, “He came from that way, sir!” and repeated Maria’s lie.
