“There has to be a way for us, Quinn.”

“I’ll find it. After all, I found you, didn’t I?” Quinn looked at Nora with wonder, as if the thought just struck him anew. “In all the city, after all this, I found you.”

Nora let her head fall against his strong hand. “Find us a way, Quinn.”

It was as if the topaz in his eyes ignited, as if she’d unleashed something fierce and powerful in him. Quinn took both Nora’s hands in his and kissed them gallantly. “There’s not a thing can stop me now. I reckon we have about a minute left.” He stole a look to the door behind him. “Say my name one more time.”

“You’re being…”

“Fifty seconds. Say it.”

“Quinn, be careful.”

“Not at all. I’m done being careful. Can’t you see that?”

His defiance lit fire to hers. Nora brought both his hands to her lips and kissed them tenderly. Quinn melted under her touch the way she had under his and began to pull her closer….

ALLIE PLEITER

Enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, RITA® Award finalist Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and nonfiction. An avid knitter and unreformed chocoholic, she spends her days writing books, drinking coffee and finding new ways to avoid housework. Allie grew up in Connecticut, holds a BS in Speech from Northwestern University and spent fifteen years in the field of professional fundraising. She lives with her husband, children and a Havanese dog named Bella in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.

Mission of Hope
Allie Pleiter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

—Philippians 1:6

For Nora

May your future always be the best of adventures

Acknowledgments

One does not tackle the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 without backup. And while people look at you sideways when you get on an airplane with a dozen disaster books, I am grateful to all the fine texts out there that made my research complete. Thanks galore to historian and general good sport Eileen Keremitsis for enduring questions, finding obscure facts, and graciously unearthing errors. Any historical errors in this book can only be laid at my own stubborn and ignorant feet, certainly not at hers. Special thanks go to my local and national buddies from American Christian Fiction Writers for befriending me despite my many oddities. Krista Stroever continues to be the finest editor God ever gave me, and I could never have survived this cyclone of a publishing career without the careful guidance of my agent Karen Solem. And you, my dear readers; God bless you all.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Historical Note

Letter to Reader

Questions for Discussion

Prologue

San Francisco, July 1906

The world rumbled and heaved. Screams and moans pierced the thundering roar, the staccato breaking and snapping, drowning out her own cries for help as the earth swallowed her up like a hungry beast. Nora Longstreet grasped for any hold she could reach, but everything dissolved at her touch so that nothing stopped her fall.

Something soft smothered her face, and she shot upright, clawing at the thing. “Annette!” she screamed for her cousin who’d been beside her just moments before. “Annette!” The monster was eating her, devouring her.

A hand clasped her shoulder. “Hush, Nora. Wake up, love, and be still.”

Nora opened her eyes to find no beast, no rumbling, no danger. “I…”

“We’re safe. We’re at Aunt Julia’s and we’re safe. Breathe now, there’s nothing to harm you.” Mama pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her nightshift and dabbed at Nora’s brow.

“Oh, Mama, she was there. Right beside me, asleep, I could hear her breathing. And then…”

Why must she live that horrible morning over and over when she closed her eyes? Nora moaned and leaned back against her pallet in the parlor of her aunt’s Lafayette Park home where she’d been camped since the earthquake. She was soaked with sweat, and although it was nearly dawn, she felt as if she had not slept at all. Still, she couldn’t let that stop her. Today was too important a day. Nora swung her legs over the edge of the cot and raked her fingers through her hair. “I’m going to the rally,” she said to her mother. “I think Papa needs me.”

Chapter One

It was her. It had to be. It was the eyes that made him certain, even from this distance.

Quinn Freeman stared harder at the young woman—not much more than twenty from the look of it—sitting uncomfortably onstage. She was trying to pay attention to the long rally speeches honoring the city’s recovery, but not quite succeeding. And the speeches were surely long. Politicians fought banks who fought insurance companies and everyone nursed a grudge over how things had been handled. The most eloquent speech on God’s green earth couldn’t explain how one man was still alive while another’s life had come to an end. The uncertainty of everything made for chaos.

Still, she was here. By some astounding act of God, she was here. And what a sight she was. Even in the gray light of this cloudy morning, she looked clean and pretty, and he hadn’t seen anything clean and pretty in days.

It was the eyes, really, that captured his attention. Round and wide, framed with golden lashes. Even in the brown tint of the charred photo he’d found, he’d somehow known they were an unusual color. Something between a blue and a violet, now that he saw them. The color of the irises Ma was fond of in one of the city gardens.

Quinn fished into his pocket for the battered locket he’d found last week as he walked home from yet another insufferably long bread line. He’d seen it glint in the corner of a rubble pile just south of Nob Hill, a tiny sparkle in a pile of black and brown timber. Usually, Quinn was looking up; he was always looking up at the buildings—or parts of buildings—still standing, admiring how they’d survived with so much rubble marking where others had fallen. It wasn’t as if bits of lives couldn’t still be found all over the city—even months out as it was, Quinn was forever picking up one shoe or a bit of a cup or a chipped doorknob.

This was different. There was something amazing about the fact that the locket was still shut, and that despite the soot and dents, there were still two tiny photographs inside. Two young women about his own age. Sisters? Cousins? He kept the charm in his pocket, making up a dozen stories as he worked or walked or waited, because everything now took hours longer than it had before. Yes, it was dirty and dented and the chain was broken, but the faces inside had survived an earthquake and a fire. And now he knew the people had, as well. Or at least one of them. Quinn just couldn’t ignore the hope in that.

Reverend Bauers never called anything a coincidence. No one was ever “lucky” to Reverend Bauers—they were “called” or “blessed.” Quinn had survived the earthquake and the fire. His mother had, too. But he was beginning to wonder if he’d survive the next two months. A few months ago he’d been just another grunt down at the printing press, scratching out a living, trying to hang on to his big dreams. Then the world shook and fell over. He’d survived, but why had God kept him alive while scores of others died?

“God does not deal in luck or happenstance,” Bauers always said to Quinn when something went their way or a need miraculously became met. “He directs, He provides and He is very fond of surprising His children.” The saying rang in Quinn’s ears when he saw the familiar face on the stage this morning. And he knew, even before he pulled the locket from his pocket and squinted as he held it up to her profile, that it was her. Well, Lord, I’m surprised, I’ll grant You that.

When that pretty woman saw him hold up the locket, her eyes wide with amazement, he made the decision right there and then to do whatever it took to return the locket to her, to bring one thing home.

The man fished something out of his pocket and held it up, comparing it to the face—her face—before him.

Annette’s locket. With the elongated heart shape that was so unusual, the one Annette had picked out for her birthday last year, it just had to be. He had Annette’s locket!

It took forever for the rally to end. The moment she could, Nora swept off her chair in search of the fastest way into the crowd. He couldn’t have missed her intent given how hard he seemed to be staring at her. Surely he would wait, perhaps even make his way toward the stage.

The crowd milled exasperatingly thick, and Nora began to fear the man would be lost to her forever—and that last piece of Annette with him. Nora pushed as fiercely as she dared through the clusters of people, dodging around shoulders and darting through gaps.

She could not find him. Her throat tight and one hand holding her hat to the mass of blond waves that was her unruly hair, she turned in circles, straining to see over one large man’s shoulders and finding no one.

“This is you, isn’t it?” came a voice from behind her, and she turned with such a start that she nearly knocked the man over. He held up the locket. Nora let out a small gasp—it was so battered now that she saw it up close. The delicate gold heart was dented on one side, black soot scars still clinging to the fancy engraving and the broken chain.

Soot. A fire seemed such a terrible, awful way to die. Nora clutched at the locket with both hands, her grief not allowing any thought for manners. The two halves of the dented heart had already been opened, revealing the remains of a pair of tiny photographs—one of her, the other of Annette. Nora put her finger to the image of Annette and thought she would cry. “Yes,” she said unsteadily, “that’s me, and that’s my cousin, Annette. However did you get this?”

The man pushed back his hat, and a shock of straw-colored hair splashed across his forehead. “I found it last week. I’ve been looking for either one of you since then, but I didn’t really think I’d find you. I just about fell over when you walked onto the stage this morning, Miss…Longstreet, was it? The postmaster’s daughter?”

Nora suddenly remembered her manners. “Nora Longstreet. I’m so very pleased to meet you. And so very pleased to have this back…although it isn’t…actually mine.” She felt her throat tighten up, and paused for a moment. “It’s Annette’s, and she isn’t…she’s isn’t here. Anymore.” She pulled in a shaky breath. “She died…in it.”

“I’m sorry. Seems like everybody lost someone, doesn’t it?” He tipped the corner of his hat. “Quinn Freeman.”

“Thank you for finding this, Mr. Freeman. It means a great deal to me.”

Quinn tucked his hands in his pockets. He wore a simple white shirt, brown pants that had seen considerable wear and scuffed shoes, but someone had taken care to make sure they were all still clean and in the best repair possible given the circumstances. “I’m sure she would have wanted you to have it, seeing as it’s you in there and all.”

“I’m sure my father would be happy to give you some kind of reward for returning it. Come meet him, why don’t you?”

Quinn smiled—a slanted, humble grin that confirmed the charm his eyes conveyed—and shrugged. “I couldn’t take anything for it. I’m just glad it found its way home. Too many people lost too much not to see something back where it belongs.”

Nora ran her thumb across the scratched surface of the locket. “Surely I can give you some reward for your kindness.”

He stared at her again. The gaze was unnerving from up on the stage, but it was tenfold more standing mere feet from him. “You just did. It’s nice to see someone so happy. A pretty smile is a fine thing to take home.” He stared for a long moment more before tipping his hat. “G’mornin’, Miss Longstreet. It’s been a pleasure.”

“Thank you, Mr. Freeman. Thank you again.” Nora clutched the locket to her chest and dashed off to find her father.

She found him near the stage, talking with a cluster of men in dark coats and serious expressions. “Papa!” She caught his elbow as he pulled himself from the conversation. “The most extraordinary thing has happened!”

“Where have you been? You shouldn’t have dashed off like that.”

“Oh, Papa, I’ve survived an earthquake and a fire. What could possibly happen to me now?”

“A great deal more than I’d care to consider.” He scowled at her, but there was a glint of teasing in his eye. She was glad to see it—he hadn’t had much humor about him lately.

She held up the battered charm. “Look! Can you believe it? I thought it lost forever.”

Her father took the locket from Nora’s hand and held it up, turning it to examine it. “Is this Annette’s locket? That’s astounding! However did you find it?”

“A man gave it to me, just now. He said he recognized me from the photo inside. The photographs hadn’t fully burned. Can you imagine? I knew there was a reason I needed to come with you this morning. I knew I should be beside you up there. Now I know why!” Right now that dented piece of gold was just about the most precious thing in all the world. The moment she fixed the broken chain, she’d never take it off ever again.

“Well, where is this man?” Her father looked over her shoulder. “I’d say we owe him a debt of thanks.”

“I tried to get him to come over and meet you—he knew who I was and who you were—but he said he didn’t need any thanks.” She left out the bit about her smile. Oh, thank You, Lord, Nora prayed as she took the locket back from her father. Thank You so much!

“Did you at least get his name?”

“Freeman,” Nora said, thinking about the bold stare he’d given her at first, “Quinn Freeman.”

Chapter Two

The mail had always been mundane to Nora. A perfunctory business. Hardly the stuff of heroes and lifesaving deeds. Papa had told her stories of how they’d soaked mailbags in water and beaten back the fire to save the post office. And now, the mail had become just that—lifesaving. Thanks to Papa’s promise to deliver all kinds of mail—postage or no postage—mail had become the one constant. The only thing that still worked the way it had worked before. It was amazing how people clung to that.

No one, however, could have foreseen what “all kinds of mail” would be: sticks, wood, shirt cuffs and collars, tiles and margins of salvaged books or newspaper had been pressed into service as writing paper. Each morning Papa would take her to the edge of an “official” refugee camp—for several questionable “unofficial” camps had sprung up—and they would take in the mail. Standing on an older mail cart now pressed into heavy service, Nora took in heart-wrenching messages such as “We’re alive” or “Eddie is gone” or “Send anything” and piled them into bags headed back to the post office.

Nora—and any other female—could only accept mail, for mail delivery had become a dangerous task. Arriving mail consisted of packages of food or clothes or whatever supplies could be sent quickly, and that made it highly desirable. The massive logistics of distributing such things had necessitated army escorts in order to keep the peace. Even after months of relief, so much was still missing, so much was still needed, and San Francisco was discovering just how impossible it was to sprout a city from scratch. The nearly three months of continual scrounging, loss and pain turned civil people angry, and there had even been a few close scrapes for Nora in the simple act of accepting mail. Those incidents usually made her father nervous, but today they made Nora all the more determined to help. Someone had delivered something precious to her, and she would do the same. It was not her fault the postmaster had not been blessed with a son who could better face the danger. If God had given Postmaster Longstreet a daughter, then God would have to work through a daughter. Father had always said, “We do what we can with what we have.” What better time or place to put that belief into practice?

“Please,” a young boy pleaded as he pressed a strip of cloth into Nora’s hand. Its author had scrawled a message and rolled up a shirtsleeve like a scroll, tied with what looked like the remnants of a shoelace. “Martin Lovejoy, Applewood, Wisconsin” was printed on the outside. “All we got is the clothes we’re wearing,” the lad said, “but Uncle Martin can send more.”

“Is your tent number on the scroll? Your uncle Martin needs to know where to send the clothes.”

“Don’t know,” the boy said, turning the scroll over in his hands. He held it up to Nora again. “I don’t read. Is it?”

The scroll held none of its sender’s information. “What’s your tent number?”

The tiny lip trembled. “It’s over there.”

The boy pointed across the street to the very large “unofficial” encampment that had taken over Dolores Park. Nora bent down and took the boy’s hand. “Which…” she hesitated to even use the word in front of him, “…shack is yours?”

He pointed to a line of slapped-together shelters just across the street. “There.”

The shack stood near the edge of the camp, but still, he was so small to be here by himself. Nora looked around for someone to send back with him—the unofficial camp was not a safe place to go—but everyone was engrossed in their own tasks. The little boy looked completely helpless and more than a little desperate. It was by the edge, not forty feet away, and perhaps it wasn’t as dangerous as Papa made it out to be. Taking a deep breath, Nora made a decision and hopped down off the wagon. Five minutes to help one little boy couldn’t possibly put her in any danger, and her father looked too busy to even notice her absence. Nora held out her hand. “Let’s walk back together and we’ll sort it out. We can ask your mama to help us.”

The little boy looked away and swiped his eye bravely with the back of his other hand. “Mama’s gone,” he said in an unsteady voice. “My daddy wrote it.”

Nora gripped the little hand tighter. “All the more reason that note should get through. We’ll do what it takes to reach your uncle. It’ll be all right, I promise. What’s your name?”

“Sam.” The boy headed into a small alleyway of sorts between two of the shelters.

The official refugee camps were surprisingly orderly. Straight rows of identical tents, laid out with military precision in specific parts of the city. Pairs of white muslin boxes faced each other like tiny grassy streets.

The sights and sounds of another world rose up, though, as Nora crossed the street into the unofficial camp. An older man to her left coughed violently into a scrap of bandage he held to his mouth in place of a handkerchief. The thin material was already red-brown with blood. He looked up at her clean clothes with a weary glare. Even though the blouse she wore was three days old and the hem of her skirt was caked with dirt, she looked nothing like the people she passed. The scents—so full of smoke and char everywhere else—were also different here. Intensely, almost violently human smells: food, filth, sweat. A hundred other odors came at her with such force that she wondered how she had not smelled them from the other side of the street. She realized, with a clarity that was almost a physical shock, that her concept of how bad things were paled in comparison to how bad things actually were. Nora felt a powerful urge to run. To retreat back to the official, orderly camp and its neat rows of tents before the depth of the unofficial squalor overtook her like the beast in her nightmares. This felt too close to the awful hours of that first morning.

It wasn’t as if Nora didn’t understand the scope of the catastrophe before. She did. But she’d somehow never grasped the sheer quantity of lives destroyed. Walking down this “alley,” the real-life details pushed her into awareness. The air seemed to choke her. Her clothes felt hot and tight.

The lad pointed to what passed for his front door, saying, “It’s just there.”

Nora’s brain shook itself to attention just enough to notice a small crowd had gathered at her appearance. It was not a friendly-feeling crowd—it had an air that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end—and she understood all too clearly why her father had not allowed her to venture off the cart before.

A young man to her right fitted scraps of cardboard into the holed soles of his shoes. Sam rattled off a list as he pointed to the surrounding shelters. “Elliot went for bread, Mrs. Watkins for bandages, Papa for water and me for mail.” It seemed an awful lot to manage at his young age, but he spoke the list with such an everyday dryness that Nora’s heart twisted to hear it.

“Papa!” Sam ducked into the shack, calling for his father. It left Nora standing in the aisle alone, listening to the shuffle of feet come to a stop behind her. “Papa!” Sam cried again from inside the shack, but no one answered.

A man came out from the next shelter. “He went back for more water, Sam.” He eyed Nora, his expression confirming how out of place she already felt. His eyes fell to the scroll in her hand.

“I need Sam’s tent number so I can add it to his father’s letter.”

“Who’re you? The postmaster?” It was more a hollow joke than any kind of inquiry. The man took a step closer while two more even shadier characters came out from between two battered structures on the other side of the alley.

“My father’s office is doing everything they can.” She had to work to keep a calm voice.

“He is, is he? And how about you?” A skinny, greasy-looking young man smiled as he wandered closer. “You doin’ all you can?”

“Of course,” Nora answered, until the glint in his eyes turned the question into something she didn’t want to answer. The wind picked up and made a shiver chase down her neck.

The man twisted a piece of string around his fingers in a fidgety gesture. “Really?” He stretched out the word in a most unsavory way. “You sure?”

“I am,” came a deep voice from behind Nora. She spun around to see Quinn Freeman step solidly between her and the leering man. He hoisted a large piece of steel in one hand with a defensive air. “I’m really sure, Ollie. Want to find out how sure I am?”

“Charity’s a virtue, Freeman.” Ollie grinned, but it was more of a sneer.

“Just make sure it’s virtue you got in mind. Miss Longstreet was just helping out, I imagine, and I’ll make sure she gets back to the mail wagon safe and sound, don’t you worry.” Quinn nodded at Nora, taking the scroll from her as if to personally see to its security.

“You do that.” Ollie kicked a stone in his path and started walking back down the alley. “You just go ahead and do that.”

With Ollie’s retreat, Nora felt the rest of the gathered crowd sink back to wherever they had come from. She let out the breath she had been holding. “It seems I owe you yet another debt, Mr. Freeman.”

He put down the piece of steel and handed her back Sam’s scroll. “I’m not so sure it was a smart idea for you to wander over here like that. Even to help Sam. Things can get a little…rough around here if you’re not careful.”

“My father would agree heartily. He’ll probably be rather sore at me for trying. I hadn’t realized…thank you again. First the locket, and now this. Surely there’s some way to thank you.”

He smiled the engaging grin he’d shown her back at the rally. His eyes were a light brown, an almost golden color that picked up the straw shades of his hair. He had a strong, square jaw that framed his easy grin—the sort of face at home with a frequent smile. “Like I said, Miss Longstreet, I was happy to see something find its way home.” The sadness in the edge of his voice—the sadness that caught the edge of so many voices all around her—undercut the cheer of his words. “But there is something I’d like to show you. Something you ought to see before you leave with Ollie’s version of how things are in here.”

“Do you live nearby?” She realized what a ludicrous question that was, as if he had a house just up the street instead of a shack somewhere in this makeshift camp.

He tucked his hands into his pockets and nodded over his left shoulder. “Two rows down. The charming cottage on the left.” When Nora blushed, feeling like an insensitive clod for asking such a useless question, he merely chuckled. “It’s okay, really. I’ve seen worse. My uncle Mike says we might get back into a house next month. Just come see this and I’ll walk you back across the street before your papa begins to worry.”

He led Nora through one more row of shacks to where a cluster of children gathered. The gaggle of tots surged toward Quinn when they saw him, parting the crowd to reveal a rough-hewn teeter-totter pieced together out of scrap and an old barrel. She knew, instantly, that the makeshift toy had been Quinn’s doing.

“Mister Kin, Mister Kin!” a chubby blond-haired girl greeted. Nora guessed it to be her approximation of Mr. Freeman’s given name. “It works!”

Quinn hunched down and tenderly touched the tot’s nose. “Told you it would.” Nora smiled. How long had it been since she had heard children’s laughter?

The girl giggled. “You’re smart.”

“Only just. Go ahead and take another turn, then. It’ll be time to get on back to your ma soon, anyway.”

Nora stood awed for a moment. Quinn Freeman had handed her the smallest patch of happiness, but it did the trick. “Thank you.” She looked up at him, for he was a good foot taller than she if only a few years older, and thought that he was indeed clever to recognize a slapped-together toy would do so much good. “I did need to see this—you were right.”

“Most people are afraid to really build anything here, thinking it’ll make it feel like we’ll be here forever, but even I know lads with nothing to do usually find something bad to fill their time.”

“You’ll be here another month?” Many families were talking of pulling up stakes and starting over somewhere else just as soon as circumstances would allow. Others refused to even think past their next meal.

“That’s my guess. Don’t pay much to peer too far into the future these days. God’s got His hands full in the present, I’d say.”

“He does.” And he talks about God. In a calm way. Many people—her own family pastor Reverend Mansfield included—were shouting about the awful judgment God had “sent down” upon the sinful city of San Francisco. It wasn’t so hard a thought to hold. With dust and destruction everywhere, it was easy to wonder if the Lord Almighty hadn’t indeed turned His head away.

By this time they’d reached the mail wagon, and Papa was standing with a sour and alarmed look on his face. “Thank heavens you’re all right. Just what do you think…?”

“I’ve seen her back safely, Mr. Longstreet, and told her not to venture over here like that again,” Quinn cut in.

“Papa, this is Mr. Freeman. The man who returned Annette’s locket. Now you can thank him in person.”

The announcement took the wind out of Papa’s scorn. Her father stepped down off the mail wagon and extended a hand to Quinn. “Seems I owe you.”

The two men shook hands. “You don’t owe me a thing. I was glad to help.”

Papa looked at Nora. “Don’t you go needing help again. I’ll not let you come back if you wander off like that again. It’s only by God’s grace that Mr. Freeman was here to keep you from any trouble.”

“Grace indeed,” Quinn said, shooting a sideways smile at Nora as he tipped his hat at Papa. “Don’t let it happen again, Miss Longstreet.” As he turned, he added quietly over Nora’s shoulder, “At least not until tomorrow around two.”

Nora climbed back on the wagon to join her father. Perhaps the mail would not be so perfunctory from now on.

Chapter Three

Ah, but she was a beauty.

Quinn stood mesmerized by the way she held her ground. Tall and proud, with defiant lines he wanted to catch from every angle.

Quinn was vaguely aware of an elbow to his ribs. “Nephew, ya look foolish just standing there like that.”

Rough hands grabbed his face on both sides and pulled his gaze to the dusty, whiskered sight of his uncle Michael. “There’s something wrong with you, man. It ain’t natural, the way you look at buildings.”

“Architecture. It’s called architecture. I’d give anything to study.”

Uncle Mike snorted. “You need a wife.”

Quinn shifted his sore feet as his mind catapulted back to the rows of tiny black buttons that ran up the sides of Nora Longstreet’s boots. He’d stared then, too, liking their lines as much if not more. “I need to learn,” he said impatiently to his uncle, who simply rolled his eyes at the speech he’d heard every day even before the earthquake. “Apprentice an architect. Only there’s no time to learn anymore. We need loads of builders, but we need them now.” Everything took so much time these days. Lord Jesus, You know I’m thankful to be alive, but this bread line feels two thousand miles long. I’m in no mood to learn no more patience, if You please. He felt he’d die if he wasn’t back at the camp edge by two. He had to see her again. Had to see that dented locket that he just knew would be polished up and hanging around her neck. He’d miss half a week’s worth of bread to make sure he caught that sight—even if it meant he’d catch a whole lot more from his ma for returning without bread.

By the time the sun was high in the sky and the police officer on the corner said it was one-fifteen, Quinn still was looking at forty or so people in line in front of him. Without so much as an explanation, Quinn nudged his uncle and said, “I’m off.”

“And just what do you think you’re doin’?” the man balked as Quinn strode off in the direction of home, his feet no longer feeling the holes that burst through his shoes yesterday.

“I ain’t sure yet,” Quinn replied with a grin, tipping his hat as his uncle stood slack-jawed, “but I’ll let you know.”

Nora sat beside her father in the mail cart, her heart thumping like the hooves of the horse in front of them. Since the earthquake, she’d barely looked forward to anything or been excited about anything.

She wanted to see him. To feel that tug on her pulse when he caught sight of her. He seemed so happy to see her. She knew, just by the tilt of his head, that she brightened his day. There was a deep satisfaction in that; something that went beyond filling a hungry belly. Still, that hadn’t stopped her from bringing a loaf of bread she’d charmed out of the cook this morning.

He was a very clever man. He stood on the other side of the street, far enough from the cart to be unobtrusive, near enough to make sure she caught sight of him almost immediately. His eyes held the same fixation they had at the ceremony, and Nora felt a bit on display as she went about her duties.

He watched her. His gaze was almost a physical sensation, like heat or wind. He made no attempts to hide his attentions, and the frank honesty of his stare rattled her a bit, but not the way that man Ollie’s stare had. She might be all of twenty-two, but Nora had lived long enough to judge when a man’s intentions were not what they should be. Simply put, Quinn looked exceedingly glad to see her again. And there was something wonderful about that.

“You’ll stay by the cart today,” Quinn said, walking across the street when the line finally thinned out. “Mind your papa and all.”

“I should,” she admitted. “However, I would like very much to see the teeter-totter again. It seemed a very clever thing to do, and I wonder if there aren’t some things back at my aunt’s house that we could add to your contraption.”

A bright grin swept over his face. “My contraption. I like that a far sight better than that thing Quinn built.” He pushed his hat back on his head as he looked up at her, squinting in the sunlight. It gave Nora an excuse to settle herself down on the cart, bringing her closer to eye level with the man. “A contraption sounds important. I’ll have to build another just to say I am a man of contraptions.”

They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and Nora felt it rush down her spine. It was powerful stuff these days to see someone happy—they’d barely left misery behind, and there was so much yet to endure ahead of them. She’d taken the streetcars completely for granted before. Now, everyone’s shoes—and feet—had suffered far too much walking. She imagined his smile would be striking anywhere, but here and now, it was dashing.

“Still,” he said, “it’s best we don’t wander off today. I wouldn’t want your papa thinking poorly of me.”

“Oh, I’m sure he couldn’t do that.” Nora fingered the locket now fastened around her neck. Something flickered in his eyes when she touched it. “You brought me back Annette’s locket, and that was a fine thing to do.”

“The pleasure’s mostly mine, Miss. I think it made me as happy as it made you. And good news is as hard to come by as good food these days.”

“Oh,” Nora shot to her feet, remembering the loaf of bread tucked away behind her. “That reminds me. I know you said you didn’t need a reward, but I just didn’t feel right without doing something.” She pulled out the loaf, wrapped in an old napkin. “Cook makes the best bread, even missing half her kitchen.” She held it out.

“Glory,” Quinn said, his grin getting wider, “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see a loaf of bread. Especially today.”

“Aren’t you able to get any?”

She thought she saw him wink. “That’s a long story. Just know you couldn’t have picked a better day to give me a loaf of bread.”

That felt simply grand, to know she’d done something he appreciated so much. “I’m glad, then. We’re even.”

“Hardly,” he said, settling his hat down on to his head again. “I’m still ahead of you, Miss Longstreet. By miles.” He bent his nose to the bread and sniffed. “I’d best get this home before it gets all shared away. Thank you, Miss Longstreet. Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure,” Nora said, meaning it. Taking a deep breath, she bolstered her courage and offered, “Tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.”

The only sad thing about the entire exchange was that three months ago, Nora would have rushed home to tell every little detail to Annette. Today, she didn’t mind the trickle of mail customers that still came to the wagon, for there was only Mama waiting at home. Nora laid her hand across the locket, hoping her thoughts could soar to where Annette could hear them. Is heaven lovely? I miss you so much.

Reverend Bauers tried to lift the large dusty box, but couldn’t budge the heavy load at his advanced years. He huffed, batted at the resulting cloud of dust that had wafted up around him and threw Quinn a disgusted glance. “I’m too old for this.”

Quinn wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. It was stale and dusty down here in the Grace Mission House basement, and he’d already had a long day’s work, but he’d be hanged if he’d let Reverend Bauers attempt cleaning up the rubble on his own. The man was nearly eighty, and although he showed little signs of slowing down his service to God, his body occasionally reminded him of the truth in “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

“Didn’t I just get through telling you the very same thing? Reverend, I don’t think when God spared you and Grace House through the earthquake and the fire that He did it all to have you collapse in the basement. You’ve got to slow down. You’ll do no good to anyone if you hurt yourself.”

His long and fast friendship with the pastor—since boyhood, going on twenty years now—had given him leave to speak freely with Reverend Bauers, but even Quinn knew when too far was too far. And even if the reverend’s insistence on ordering the Grace House basement was a bit misguided, Quinn wasn’t entirely sure he should be the soul to point it out. People reacted in funny ways to the overwhelming scale of destruction. His own ma bent over her tatting every night, even though Quinn was certain there’d be little use for lace in the coming months. Many people focused on ordering one little segment of their lives, because they could and because so much of the rest of their lives was spinning in chaos.

“I can’t seem to stay away,” Reverend Bauers said, giving a look that was part understanding, part defiance. “I keep getting nudges to tidy up down here, and you know I make it a policy not to ignore nudges.” Reverend Bauers was forever getting “nudges” from God. And Quinn believed God did indeed nudge the portly old German—he’d seen far too much evidence of it to dismiss the man’s connection with The Almighty. Only no one else ever just got “nudged.” God seemed to be shouting at everyone else—or so they said. People were talking everywhere about God’s judgment on San Francisco or claiming they’d heard God’s command to destroy the city—and/or rebuild it, depending on who you talked to.

Only, after twenty-six years, God had yet to nudge or shout at Quinn. Reverend Bauers was always going on about purpose and providence and such, and he’d so vehemently declared that God had spared Quinn for some great reason that Quinn mostly believed him. The reason just hadn’t shown itself yet, nor had any of God’s nudges.

Quinn sighed as Bauers slid yet another box out of his way, poking through the cluttered basement. “There must be something down here,” Bauers said, almost to himself. “Over there, perhaps.” He pointed to a stack of shelving that had toppled over in the far corner of the room and motioned for Quinn to clear a path.

It took nearly ten minutes, and Quinn was tempted to offer up a nudge of his own to God about how dinner might be soon, when suddenly Bauers went still.

Quinn looked up from the shelf he was righting to see the reverend staring intently at an upended chest. “Oh, my,” Bauers said in the most peculiar tone of voice. “Goodness. I hadn’t even remembered this was down here.”

“What?” Quinn cleared a path to it.

“That’s it, isn’t it? And there should be another one—a long, narrow one—right beside it somewhere.”

Quinn stared from Bauers to the pair of chests, his heart thumping as he recognized the shape of the long narrow box. He must have been, what, twelve? Surely not much older. He caught Bauers’s gaze, the old man’s eyes crinkling up when he read Quinn’s expression.

“Mr. Covington’s things.” Quinn began tearing through the boxes, bags and beams between him and the pair of chests. “Those are Mr. Covington’s…”

“No, man, not just Mr. Covington’s, and you know that. Those belong to the Bandit.”

Quinn had reached the chests, fingering the latch on the longer box. He remembered what was inside now. He remembered thinking that that sword and that whip were the most powerful weapons on earth. He blew the dust off the box and set it atop a crate. “Do you think it lasted?”

“I see no scorch marks or dents. I’d venture to say it’s in perfect shape.” He picked his way quickly through the room until he stood next to Quinn. “But we’ll not know a thing until you open it.”

Chapter Four

With a deep breath, Quinn undid the pair of latches on either side of the long wooden box. Inside, carefully nestled in their places on a bed of still amazingly blue velvet, lay a pair of swords. Even with the patina of twenty years, they gleamed in the basement’s faint light. “His swords,” Quinn remarked, not hiding his amazement. “The Bandit’s swords.”

Reverend Bauers’s hand came to rest on Quinn’s shoulder. “So many years. Such a long time ago—for both of us.”

Quinn could hear the smile in Reverend Bauers’s voice, sure it matched his own as he remembered the daring heroic feats of the Black Bandit that had once captured his young imagination. A dark hero who roamed the streets at night, offering aid to those who had none, supplying food to needy families, even sending money once to fix Grace House. The Black Bandit legend had woven its way into San Francisco’s history—everyone’s mother and grandmother had a Black Bandit story—but Quinn and the reverend were two of the only four people in the world who knew Matthew Covington had been the man behind the mask. He cocked his head in the clergyman’s direction. “Wouldn’t we like to have our Bandit back now, hmm?”

Quinn picked up the sword, turning it to catch the light. When he was twelve, this sword had seemed enormous. Too heavy and long for a slight boy. Time and trials had done their work on Quinn, however, and he was a tall man of considerable strength. He wondered, for a moment, if he remembered any of the moves Mr. Covington had taught him. “Do you remember that day, Reverend?”

There was no need to explain “that day.” Bauers would know Quinn was referring to the day he met—and marred—the noble English businessman. Bauers’s smile and nod confirmed his understanding. “Evidently, I’ve remembered it better than you. You, who have the most reason of all to remember that day.”

Quinn’s introduction to Matthew Covington had been, in fact, by injury. He’d taken a knife to Covington’s arm as the Englishman tried to stop a robbery. A crime Quinn and his buddy were attempting—stealing from Grace House. It was amusing, in a sad sort of way, to think they’d thought times hard enough to steal from a church back then. Those times were nothing compared to what they were now.

Still, Quinn was young, impressionable and desperate for decent food. His father’s love of the whiskey bottle hadn’t made for much of a steady home life. Trying to steal from Grace House Mission—an organization bent on helping his impoverished neighborhood—had been the low point of his life.

It had also been the turning point. Back in that garden, watching Matthew Covington bleed, Quinn had realized he had two choices in life: up or down. Dark or light. Hard or easy. And, when it came right down to it, destruction or redemption. That day Quinn chose to climb his way out of the mess his young life had become, and Reverend Bauers had been the first to recognize it. That troublesome day, and the tense ones that followed it, marked the beginning of Quinn’s unusually close relationship with the reverend. Uncle Mike had been known to say that Bauers was the real father Quinn never had; and it was true.

Quinn swung the sword in a gentle arc. It felt so light now. “Do you think he knows? Everything that’s happened here?”

Bauers smiled. “Matthew and Georgia wired money last week and asked that we wire back a list of needed supplies. His own son is fifteen now.”

Quinn tilted the sword again, admiring it. Even though Bauers had only been able to secure him a year or two of fencing lessons, he knew it was an outstanding weapon. It had a graceful balance and tremendous strength.

As wondrous as the sword was, it wasn’t the weapon most people associated with the Black Bandit. Catching Bauers’s eye, Quinn flipped open the second chest. There it lay, on top, carefully coiled; the Bandit’s leather whip. His mind wandered back to the summer afternoons where Quinn would swish a length of rope around the Grace House garden, pretending at the Bandit’s skill with his whip. Quinn lifted it carefully—it hadn’t survived the years as well as the swords. Bits of leather disintegrated with every flex, and the rich black braids were a stiff and crackled gray. He found himself afraid to uncoil it, simply moving it to the side to gain access to the rest of the chest’s contents. It contained exactly what he knew it would: a pair of black boots with a small silver B imbedded in each calf, a trio of dark gray shirts—voluminous, almost piratelike in appearance—and a black hat with the remnants of a white feather beside it.

And there, at the bottom of the chest, lay the mask. An ingenious thing, the Bandit’s mask was almost a leather helmet with a strip that could either come down over the eyes or fold up into the hat. Covington had let him try the mask on once, and the thing had nearly slid off his head. Quinn raised the mask into the light, inspecting it. It had held up much better than the whip, still surprisingly supple even after so much time. He couldn’t help but smile at the memory of the Bandit’s myriad of adventures. “Mr. Covington should have kept these.”

The reverend’s expression changed. “I don’t think that was the plan. He gave those to you. And Matthew Covington did everything for a very good reason.”

That made Quinn laugh. “I’ve not much use for a sword and whip, now do I? Although I could put the boots to good use.”

Reverend Bauers leaned his heavy frame against a dusty chest of drawers. “It makes one wonder.”

“What?”

“What else you could put to good use.”

It took Quinn a full ten seconds to gain the man’s meaning, at which point he dropped the mask. “You’re not serious.”

The sparkle in Reverend Bauers’s eye was unmistakable. “Why not?”

Quinn squared off at the man. “I’m a bit old for adventure stories. And times are a mite harder now.”

Bauers folded his arms across his chest. It was a gesture Quinn knew all too well, and he did not like the look of it.

“Matthew was close to your age when it all started. And it all started with a story.” He caught Quinn’s glare. “Stories are meant to be told. And retold.”

“I’m not Matthew Covington,” he said, because it needed saying. Covington was a clever, wealthy man who’d done remarkable things.

“No, Quinn. You’re you. Matthew knew that, too. What if you are exactly the man we need? Do you really think we’re down here digging in the basement for no reason at all?”

Quinn sank down on a crate. “I hardly think God brought me down to your cellar to ask me to be the Black Bandit.”

It was a long moment before Bauers answered simply, “How do you know?”

“Because it’s insane. I’ve barely enough food to eat, my shoes have twelve holes in them, the city’s barely getting through the day, I’ve no money, no influence and barely a spare hour to think.”

Bauers’s face split into a satisfied grin. “But you found enough time to help an old man go through his cellar. You found enough time to build those little ones that toy you told me about. You know what I always say—there’s always enough time to do God’s will.”

Even as the mail cart bounced its way a block from Aunt Julia’s house, Nora could tell something was happening. The house seemed almost bustling, with Mama and Aunt Julia scurrying around the yard and porch with a speed and energy Nora hadn’t seen in a while. A gracious table—or as gracious a table as one could manage these days—was set up on the porch.

Tea. Mama and Julia were setting out afternoon tea. And while afternoon tea had recently meant cups and saucers on mismatched plates with whatever crackers could be managed, this tea was different. It took a moment for Nora to realize what Mama and Aunt Julia were actually doing; they were entertaining.

“There you are,” said Mama hurriedly as the cart rattled its way into the drive. “Goodness, I thought you’d miss it altogether. Run upstairs, find whichever dress is the most clean and put it on. She’ll be here soon.”

“Who?” Nora and her father asked at the same time.

“Mrs. Hastings.”

“Dorothy Hastings? Here?” Papa asked. “I didn’t think she was still in town.”

“She’s returned.” Mama said it almost victoriously, as if it were as significant a societal achievement as the streetcar lines coming back into service. “And she’s coming here.”

The Hastings family was a social pillar of San Francisco. Mr. Hastings was on the Committee of Fifty—the emergency governing body that Papa served. Mrs. Hastings, like many of the city’s finer families, had removed herself from the city to safer environs. Why she was in town at all, much less at Aunt Julia’s house, Nora could only guess. Still, it was clear her visit was important to Mama. Perhaps even more than that, the opportunity to host someone, especially someone so important, seemed to light a spark in Mama and Aunt Julia that had been gone since the earthquake. A spark, when Nora was honest with herself, she hadn’t been sure would return. That relief made Nora practically dance up the stairs to find whatever dress seemed the least tattered.

She found a frock—a deep rose that hid dust and dirt especially well and whose neckline showed off the locket to particular advantage—and a small pink flower that had fallen off a hatpin to tuck into her hair. It did feel wonderful to “dress up,” even just this small bit. She had no idea how Mama and Aunt Julia could pull together any kind of tea under the circumstances, but they were highly motivated and resourceful women. And the combined skills of the two household cooks had managed some wondrous meals given the lack of foodstuffs. Half of Nora understood her father’s amused scowl at the whole thing. She was sure Papa found the whole exercise to be simply a diversion for his wife. Even if Mr. Hastings was in charge of city services, tea seemed rather pointless.

Still, the other half of Nora understood how valuable it could be right now. To engage in something—anything—for the mere pleasure of it seemed a dear luxury. A tiny, beautiful shield against the endless, tiresome obstacles of rebuilding. Not unlike, she realized as she fixed the small flower into the corner of her chignon, Quinn’s teeter-totter. Papa might consider that a pointless diversion as well, and yet she recognized the plaything’s value.

Nora was just dusting off her skirts a second time when Mama entered the room. The real Mama, not the wisp of a woman who had seemed to occupy Mama’s skin for the last few months. She’d been praying nightly for God to return the light to Mama’s eyes. Today, those prayers had been answered.

For days after the earthquake, Mama had carried all her good jewelry around in a pocket tied inside her skirts. There was no safe place to put anything, and no one knew, as the fires ate up more and more of the city in an arsenal hunger no one could quite believe, when a hasty exit might be required. Over and over again during those first weeks, Nora had watched her mama lay her hand over the lump in her skirts. Checking to be sure it was still there or perhaps just shielding the trinkets from the horrors of the outside world. Eventually, Uncle Lawrence had produced a lockbox for Mama and Papa, and their valuables went in there. Nora thought it was far too tiny a thing to hold a life’s valued possessions, but then again, Nora had had to rethink a lot about life’s valued possessions in recent weeks.

Today, Mama had her pearls around her neck. And Grandmama’s pearl ring—a piece that belonged to Mama and Aunt Julia’s own mother—graced her right hand. It wasn’t the beauty of the jewelry that made Nora smile, it was the way Mama carried herself when she wore it.

Mama came over and readjusted a curling tendril that fell from Nora’s chignon. “You look lovely,” Mama said. “But I think,” she said delicately, “that it would be kindest to tuck the locket inside your dress.”

Nora’s hand came up to touch the locket. She’d already been gratefully amazed that Aunt Julia let her keep it. In her joy over recovering the locket, she hadn’t even considered that Aunt Julia might want her lost daughter’s necklace for herself until Papa brought it up on the ride home. He’d gone with Nora to show the locket to Aunt Julia, and it had taken every ounce of will Nora had not to beg Aunt Julia to let her keep it. It would be wrong to deny a grieving woman any remnant of her daughter, but the necklace couldn’t come close to meaning to Aunt Julia what it meant to Nora. She needed to have it. Needed to feel the only tangible evidence of that sweet friendship around her neck, close to her heart.

Aunt Julia had clutched the locket for a long moment that made everyone in the room hold their breath. Papa kept his hand on Nora’s shoulder, as if to say, be strong, but said nothing. After a hollow-sounding breath, Aunt Julia let it slide back into Nora’s hand. “You keep it, dear,” she said with an unnatural calm. Nora and Papa waited there for a moment, thinking she meant to say something else, perhaps to cry or to say how glad she was to have the locket found, but she never said anything else. She just straightened her shoulders, touched Nora’s cheek in a way that made her shiver and walked on to the porch to sit staring out over the city.

Nora went after her to thank her, but Papa’s hand held her back. “Let her be,” Papa said quietly. “It is a terrible thing to bury a daughter. And it is a far more terrible thing to not have a daughter to bury.”

Of course Nora would tuck the locket out of sight. And Mama was right—it was by far the kindest thing to do.

Chapter Five

“It’s hopeless.” Quinn’s ma stood at the opening of their shack and rewound her graying red hair up into the ever-present knot at the base of her neck. “You can’t expect children to run around such filth all day long without shoes and not cut their feet to ribbons.” She looked up and saw Uncle Mike coming up the path. “Did you find any, Michael?”

“It’s just as I thought, Mary. Only the sisters in the other camp have any iodine left.”

His mother blew out a breath. “The sisters. Well, that’s all well and good for them, but we’re on the wrong side of the street to get much of that, aren’t we?”

“And they don’t come over here ’til Thursday.”

Quinn watched his ma look at poor Sam. He’d cut his foot yesterday morning on a nail, and it was an angry red this afternoon—a bad sign. “It hurts you, don’t it, boy?”

Sam, smart enough to see the bad news in Ma’s eyes, put on a brave face. “Not so much.”

Quinn sat down next to the boy. “Your limp says different, Sam. If it hurts a lot, my ma should know. Ma’s are smart that way, besides. No use fooling them about things like this.”

Sam swallowed hard. “It hurts a lot,” he admitted.

“I reckon it does,” Ma said, her smile softening. “You’ve got a man-sized wound in your foot, and you’re just a tiny one, you are.” She put Sam’s foot back into the bucket, which was really just a large tin Uncle Mike had found and washed, and motioned for Quinn to stand.

“I’ll take it you’d know where to find a shot or two of whiskey,” she asked.

Quinn raised an eyebrow at his mother. Given the damage alcohol had done in this household, he knew his mother’s disapproval of drinking. “For the wound,” she clarified in an exasperated tone. “Iodine would be better, but we can hardly get persnickety now, can we?”

Uncle Mike put his hands into his pockets while Ma reached for the small pine box she kept under her trunk. Quinn knew they were searching for a coin or two—the man at the far corner of Dolores Park, who’d opened an undercover tavern, brooked no charity whatsoever. Even if he carried Sam bleeding and screaming in pain to the man, Quinn doubted the profiteer would spare a tablespoon for medicinal purposes. “I’ve got one,” Quinn said, producing the silver coin he’d found under a beam two days ago. He’d had his eye on a pair of hose for his mother—her fifty-first birthday was next week—but Sam seemed a more pressing cause.

Ma sighed. “That’d buy a whole bottle of iodine before.”

“Before.” Quinn echoed her sigh, tucking the coin back in his pocket and tussling Sam’s hair. “Before” didn’t even need words around it anymore. It had become an expression unto itself. Everybody knew what you meant when you said “before,” especially when you said it that way. As he walked out of the tent toward the rowdier edge of the camp, Quinn wondered if the time would come when someone said “before” like it was a bad thing. Like things were so much better now. That day will come, won’t it, Lord?

As he picked his way through the moonlit alleys—lamps or any other open flames were scarce and outlawed after sundown besides—Quinn was almost sorry he’d said that prayer. It kept ricocheting back to him somehow, as if the answer to it lay within his own reach. He was one man, barely able to scrape up enough whiskey to treat a boy’s wound, much less make things better than before. Right now, with the wind rousting up an uncomfortable chill, San Francisco was a problem that felt even too big for God, and Reverend Bauers would surely scold him for thinking that way.

Reverend Bauers.

Quinn thought of the boxes they’d discovered in the Grace House cellar. Did he even dare think one man could make things better?

Bauers would undoubtedly argue that Quinn did know one man who had made things better than before. Quinn shrugged and pulled his thin coat tighter around him. Had he really? Or was he just remembering the daring Black Bandit exploits with the easily impressionable eyes of youth? He’d thought the Bandit’s weapons giant-sized, but they weren’t when he held them yesterday. Matthew Covington was clever, yet hadn’t Nora Longstreet called him clever to realize the children needed playthings?

Am I clever enough, Lord? The question seemed to shoot right through him, like an electric current. Donated medical supplies were supposedly pouring into the city. They had to be going somewhere. Perhaps a clever man need only help get such things from one place to another. And these days, with as few people watching as possible. That, Quinn surmised with a low churning in his chest, was most definitely the job for one clever man.

Quinn Freeman couldn’t really be the Black Bandit. That was fine, however, because San Francisco didn’t need a Bandit. It needed a messenger. An invisible transporter, getting things from those who sent them to those who needed them. He could do that.

I can do that. Quinn had to stop for a moment, reeling from the weight of the idea. Actually, he reeled from the lightness of the idea. Quinn had just answered the question burning in the corner of his heart since the fires. The question everyone asked but no one dared to voice. The thing niggling at him, keeping him up nights, making him stare off into space for hours instead of sleeping: Why am I still here?

“That’s why I’m still here?” His chest began to lift as he said the words aloud to himself. It made perfect, ridiculous sense. He knew the streets in a way a wealthier man never could. He had size and speed and the kind of wit that can get a man from one point to another without being seen. He had weapons to defend himself and the unfaltering faith of Reverend Bauers at his back.

And he’d been chosen. Decades ago. By the one man most qualified to choose.

That’s why I’m still here. That’s why I survived. That’s why the chest survived and why we found it again yesterday. Quinn could almost feel God’s eyes looking down on him, waiting with a stare twenty years long. Poised to launch him into an unimaginable adventure.

Quinn looked quickly around, somehow sure he’d changed physically, that those around could see the earth-shattering moment that just took place.

The world shuffled by dark and unawares. There seemed no other words to use. Quinn squeezed his eyes tight and prayed. Here I am, Lord, send me.

Nora examined Sam’s injured foot as he poked it toward her. An angry red gash ran down the soft pink flesh; far too large a cut for such a fidgety, innocent foot. And to call it clean was a bit of a stretch, given the grime on the rest of the boy. She had no doubt Mrs. Freeman struggled to get the boy as clean as he was. “They make me sit here all the time,” he pouted. With youth’s astounding flexibility, Sam pulled the foot up practically to his nose and squinted at it. Nora’s hip joints hurt just watching the contortion.

Comically, Sam sniffed at his foot and wiggled his toes. “Smells fine,” he pronounced, giving the tiny jar of whiskey on Mrs. Freeman’s trunk a suspicious glare. “I’m okay now.” He put the foot down, stuffing it back into the single enormous sock—one of Quinn’s, Nora supposed. Mrs. Freeman had tried to make Sam wear it in a last-ditch effort to keep out the constant dust.

He made to stand up, until Quinn’s hand came down on his shoulder. “I thought you said you wanted a visit from Miss Longstreet here. It took a fair amount of promises and convincing to get her to come over here.” Quinn pulled the huge sock back off Sam’s foot. “You can’t just up and leave now that she’s been nice enough to come and call, now can you?”

Sam’s wiggles suggested that he intended to do just that, and Nora wondered if her visit had been meant to distract Quinn, not Sam himself. “Oh, no, Sam, I came to see you.” Nora paid careful attention not to catch Quinn’s eyes as she spoke that last bit. “I wanted to make sure you were all right. After all, you’ve entrusted your mail into my care, and that means we’re friends now.”

“It was fine of your father to let you come.” Mrs. Freeman nodded toward Sam, who didn’t relax until she put the jar of alcohol away back inside the trunk. She handed Nora a roll of makeshift bandages, much like the strips of sheets and cloth Nora had made with her mother and Aunt Julia nearly every week since the earthquake. Nora’s family—and most of San Francisco’s female population—was down to one petticoat in the name of bandage making. “He was just a bit less wild with the promise of a visit from you.” She shook her head and motioned for Nora to begin wrapping Sam’s foot. “’Tis a crime to be treating lads with whiskey.” She spoke sharply as she slammed the trunk shut. “But I suppose we should say a prayer of thanks that we’ve got anything at all.” Mama might have taken Mrs. Freeman’s sharp tone as an accusation, but Nora could see it was just frustration at how slow relief seemed to be moving. Everyone—Nora included—had thought things would be so much more settled by now. Mrs. Freeman turned to Sam with a mother’s piercing glare. “You say a prayer of thanks, young Sam, that Miss Longstreet brought you those fine sweets to suck on while we tended your foot.”

“I did,” Sam replied quickly. Under Mrs. Freeman’s suspiciously raised eyebrow, he added, “Sort of.”

Quinn hunkered down to Sam’s height as Nora tied off the end of Sam’s new bandage. “I’d change that ‘sort of’ into a ‘thank You, Father God’ tonight, if I were you. My ma talks to God all the time, so she’ll know if you don’t.”

Sam nodded.

“You’ve still no real bandages?” Nora asked, straightening up. She’d caught sight of Quinn staring at her hands as she wrapped Sam’s foot. Even though it was a quick glance out of the corner of her eye, she found it unnerving. That man watched things far too intensely. “No things to treat wounds? My father said supplies like that are coming in from the army all the time.” She handed back the bandage roll while Quinn tied the enormous sock in place with a piece of string. The makeshift footwear looked absurd, the toe of the sock flopping about as Sam jiggled his foot.

“Your father would know that more than I, miss, and it may be true.” Mrs. Freeman opened the trunk once more, tucking the roll of cloth strips inside. “The nuns and the official camps have supplies, surely, but they only come over here once a week. You can’t very well ask people to only cut themselves on Wednesdays, now can you?”

“It’s just iodine,” Nora said, amazed. “There must be bottles and bottles of it at the other camps by now. Papa says crates of supplies come through his office every day.”

“And you can see how much of it makes its way to us out here.” She softened her hard stare. “We can’t all fit into the official camps, no matter what those men in suits say. But that’s none of your doing, Miss Longstreet. I’ve not meant to grouse at you. I don’t know where they expect us to go or how they expect us to get by. So much making do and doing without wears on a soul.”

Obviously cued by Quinn, Sam stood up straight and extended a chubby hand. “Thanks for my licorice, Miss Longstreet. And for coming.”

Nora shook Sam’s hand with grand formality. “You’re welcome, young master Sam. And thank you for the invitation. I do hope you’re feeling better soon.”

Sam was evidently feeling better now, for he tumbled through the door as soon as Quinn’s hand released his shoulder. A limping tumble, but an energetic one just the same. Nora watched him go. “What else do you need? I have to think there is something I or my family can do.”

Mrs. Freeman planted her hands on her hips. “What don’t folks need? We need everything. Bandages, iodine, wood, water, socks, pins, string…I could rattle on for days.”

“Wait a minute.” Nora fished into her pockets for the bits of paper and the stub of a pencil she’d begun keeping in there during her mail cart visits. “Let me write this down.” Mrs. Freeman rattled off the surprisingly long list of basic items needed in the makeshift camps. Many of these things showed up regularly in the official camps. How had things become so segregated?—everyone suffered. It made no sense. Two or three of the items she could provide from her own household. Surely in the name of Christian mercy Mama and Aunt Julia—with a little help from Mrs. Hastings, perhaps—might scour up the rest.

“Could you make another copy of that list?” Quinn asked, holding out his hand. “Reverend Bauers could put one to good use, I’d guess.”

“Of course.” Nora found another scrap of paper—this one a page torn out of a cookery book—and copied down the list.

Quinn folded it carefully and tucked it into a pocket of his shirt. He had the most peculiar smile on his face, as if he’d just learned a great secret. “I should get you back, Miss Longstreet, before your father worries.”

Quinn stared at the list. Miss Longstreet did a funny, curvy thing with the dots on her i’s. A delicate little backward slant. He ran his fingers across the writing again, careful not to smudge it.

He had his first challenge. A list of basic supplies.

It was in her handwriting. That shouldn’t have mattered much, but it did. There was a generosity about her that stuck in the back of his mind. She was kind to Sam, but not out of pity—the sort that he had seen far too much of lately. That version—a superior, ingratiating sort of assistance—bred the hopelessness that was already running rampant in the camp. Nora’s kind of help was respectful. She grasped the truth that made so many people uncomfortable in this disaster: fire was no respecter of privilege. Those now without homes had done nothing but live on the wrong street corner at the wrong time. The firestorm and the earthquake destroyed nice homes as eagerly as they consumed shanties. Bricks fell just as hard on good men as they did on criminals. Certain people had begun to sort victims into worthy and unworthy categories. Official camp refugees and squatters. Implying reasons why the refugees were in the positions they were. It was, Quinn supposed, a perfectly human reaction to death and destruction’s random natures. A desire to seek order amidst chaos.

It was just very irritating to be on the receiving end. And Quinn, like most of Dolores Park’s residents, had come to see it a mile off.

Nora wasn’t like that. And yes, he had come to think of her as Nora, even though he’d always address her as “Miss Longstreet,” of course. Quinn felt as if he could read all her thoughts in those violet eyes. It seemed such a cliché to say “there was something about her,” but he could get no more specific than that—something about her tugged at his imagination constantly. Little details, like the gentleness of how she bandaged Sam’s foot. The delicacy of her handwriting or the way her fingers fluttered over the locket when she was thinking.

He could no longer lie to himself: Nora Longstreet had caught his eye.

Chapter Six

“I’ve laid it all out in my head, Reverend. It wouldn’t be that hard, actually.”

Reverend Bauers sat back in his chair, ready to listen. Quinn had once loved the meticulous order of the reverend’s study—it had seemed to him like an enormous library, although he’d never actually seen a true library. Today, Bauers reclined between tall stacks of linens and a tottering tower of pots and pans. The neatness of his study had been overthrown by the new demands on the Grace House kitchen, which had suffered damage in the earthquake but now had even more mouths to feed. As such, the study now doubled as an extra pantry, so the books shared their shelves with tins of tomatoes, jars of syrup, and whatever foodstuffs Bauers had managed to find to feed his flock.

“I expected as much, Quinn.”

Quinn again had the sensation of being the center of a story that had begun before he arrived. As if everyone around him knew more of his own future than he himself did. It was the kind of thoughts that could make a man edgy. And bold. “If we could get them from the army or the hospital, it’d be easy as pie.”

Reverend Bauers frowned. “If you could get them easily from those places, you’d have them already.”

Quinn leaned one shoulder against the wall. “You’re right. And that’s wrong. Even I can see we can’t fit in those official camps. Why bother to divide us at all unless someone wants the groups to start fighting each other?”

“Just to make things clear here, man, stealing will not be an option. I admit we might have to stretch our definition of ‘procurement,’ but there will be no taking of supplies against the will of those who have them. You must become an agent of expediting, not a thief.”

Quinn furrowed a brow at the long word. “Expediting?”

“The art of expediting is the art of getting things where they need to go quickly. Efficiently. And, I’ve no doubt in this case, rather creatively. You possess the creativity in spades. We just need someone very well-connected. And, you’ll be happy to know, God has been kind enough to present us with an ally. Can you be at Fort Mason tomorrow afternoon at two?”

Quinn winced. There was only one place he ever wanted to be at two in the afternoon, and it wasn’t anywhere near the army base. “I’ve got someplace to be at two, but make it three and I’ll be there.”

“Two minutes after three,” said a dark-haired man in uniform with a precise mustache and an even more precise snap of his pocket watch. “He’s punctual, at least. That’s something.” Quinn found himself nose to nose with a meticulously dressed man with dark, sharp eyes.

“I’m told you run fast.” The man pocketed his watch.

“I do.”

“Have you a steady hand?”

Quinn wasn’t entirely sure where this was heading. “So they tell me.”

“Quinn Freeman,” Reverend Bauers cut in, “may I present Army Major Albert Simon. Major Simon, this is Quinn Freeman, the man I’ve been telling you about.”

Major Simon walked around him, appraising him as if he were buying a horse. “Tall, strong, good reach, I’d expect.” He turned to Bauers. “He’s had some training in fencing?”

“Two years,” Quinn stepped in, not liking the idea of Bauers and Simon talking about him as if he weren’t in the room. “It was a long time ago, but I still remember most of it.”

Simon stroked one hand down either tip of his mustache. “Ever shot a pistol, Freeman?”

“I’ve been fired at,” Quinn offered, “but I don’t own a gun.”

“It’s harder than you think.”

“So is a lot of life, Major. Especially now.”

“Which is why we’re here,” Bauers declared. “Major Simon,” he said in a lower tone, “has agreed to be in on our little scheme.”

Quinn looked at the man. He was fit but a bit on the heavy side, somewhere in his late thirties from the looks of it and alarmingly serious. He didn’t seem at all like the scheming type. “The Bandit—”

“Is not a name I’d mention in loud tones around here,” the major cut in sharply. “Not everyone in the army is a fan of such…resourceful measures.”

“I think you’ll find Major Simon a most extraordinary fellow.” Reverend Bauers walked over to a large sack Quinn only just then realized sat on a table in the center of the room. “With some very considerable resources.” He pulled open the drawstring and tilted the top for Quinn to peer inside.

The sack held half of what had been on his list. On Nora’s list, that is. Bandages, iodine, salt, a few tins of meat, needles and thread and half a dozen other various supplies. Major Simon went up a few notches in Quinn’s book, to be sure. More than a few.

“Where’d you get all that?”

“No need for you to know,” Simon said slyly.

“You stole it. Why else would you answer like that?”

“Would you take it no matter where it came from?”

“I’m smarter than that. I don’t know you, even if Reverend Bauers does.”

“They were ‘procured,’ perhaps, or more precisely, ‘diverted,’ but ready for you to put to good use.” Simon pulled the string shut, placing the sack into a crate that sat under the table. “And no, you don’t know me. Yet.”

“The major has arranged a discreet drop-off point,” Bauers said, clearly enjoying the adventure of it all. With that look in his eye, Quinn could easily imagine the days when Reverend Bauers had been the Black Bandit’s trusted accomplice. He seemed delighted to step into those shoes again. “You’re to return tonight and get it back to camp by…well…whatever means you find necessary.”

His first mission. It hummed through Quinn’s veins. Suddenly, he couldn’t get the Bandit’s old gray shirt on fast enough. He longed to strap on the sword and take the world by storm. Now.

“You have a fire in your eye, Freeman,” Major Simon said to him. “I’ve found our friend the reverend is rarely wrong on such things. But you’ll need far more than good intentions if you really want to do what you say. You’ll need training and cunning and several very particular skills. Skills I’ve offered to teach you. But you’ll have to be both patient and discreet.”

“I am.”

“You don’t strike me as patient in the least.”

“Would you be patient if your family didn’t have enough to eat or a real roof over their heads?”

Simon chuckled and clapped Quinn hard on the back. “Bold as brass. You’re right, Bauers, he’s just the man for the job. If he doesn’t get himself killed first.”

“You’ve no idea where all this came from?” Nora asked as she peered at the supplies that had appeared overnight at the Freeman shack.

Mrs. Freeman squinted at the cut on Sam’s foot, paused, and then dabbed it with a bit more iodine. “None at all,” she said over the resulting protests from Sam. “Quinn said he’d put the list up on a fence post across the street last night, asking for help. That’s all we know.” She turned to the boy. “Hush, lad, it’ll hurt far more than that if it don’t heal properly.” Her words were harsh, but her eyes were kind.

“It is amazing, isn’t it?” Nora examined the items again, grateful her father had allowed her to come over to Dolores Park to inspect this surprise package—provided, of course, that she was properly escorted, which wasn’t at all an unpleasant requirement. Nora turned over the tins of meats, looking for any clue. She’d shown the list to several people, and obviously someone else had now seen the list, but still no one seemed to know who’d found the rare items and delivered them to camp. It was a feat. As common as the items were, Nora could only manage to scare up two needles and three spools of thread. Before the earthquake, it might have taken her all of fifteen minutes to secure the entire list. How scarce life’s necessities had become.

“You’d best listen to my ma,” Quinn said, planting himself down on the chest next to a squirming Sam, whose bottom lip threatened tears at any moment. “You strike me as a smart lad. And a brave one. We’ll need you fit and strong to help out. You’ll be no use to me limping around like a goat, now will you?”

“I’ll need you to escort me,” Nora whispered to Sam, grinning. “I shouldn’t trouble Mr. Freeman much longer. He’s a busy man and he’s likely to tire of leading me to and fro.”

Quinn applied a mock frown, but his eyes told a far different story. While he’d refused her any details, she knew he’d gone to great lengths to meet the two o’clock mail run yesterday. When they were late because one of the cart’s finicky wheels had jammed, she’d found him practically pacing the street in a state she could only describe as panic. And while he’d walked calmly—perhaps it wasn’t too much of an exaggeration to say he swaggered slightly—back to the edge of the camp, she’d noticed he broke into a flat-out run once he turned the corner. Yes, sir, Quinn Freeman was very late for something yesterday, and she could not deny what his tarrying had done to that sparkling spot just above her stomach. He looked at her as if she were the best part of his day, and she was not at all certain she hid her own pleasure at seeing him.

“She’s far too much work, this one,” Quinn said. The sour notes in his voice were no match at all for the spark in his eyes. “Take her off my hands as fast as you can, man.” He ruffled Sam’s moppish hair.

Mrs. Freeman gave the quickest of glances back and forth between her son and Nora. “When the foot’s ready, and not a moment before. Iodine and bandages are too rare to go wasting with foolishness. Put that sock back on, young man, and mind you stay out of the dust as best you can. Come back tomorrow and I’ll have a look at it again.”

“Yep,” said Sam, sliding off the trunk.

Quinn snagged the boy’s elbow as he went to leave. “Yes, ma’am, and say thank you.”

“Thanks, ma’am.” Sam punctuated his attempt at manners by wiping his nose on his sleeve.

Mrs. Freeman moaned. “I’m climbin’ uphill both ways to keep anything clean here.” She rubbed the back of her neck with her hand and sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a true sink and a clean set of sheets.”

Quinn gave his mother a quick peck on the cheek. “You’ve worked wonders as it is, Ma.” He pointed to the stock of supplies. “And somebody’s taken notice.”

“And wouldn’t I like to know who?” his mother said, smiling. “And what else they’ve got. Father Christmas coming in July. Who’d have thought?” She wiped her hands on her apron and began loading the supplies back into the trunk. “Get her back now, Quinn, before her father starts to worrying about where she is.”

Quinn shrugged his coat back on as they walked. “So your father’s office didn’t deliver that package? I thought surely you’d done it. You had the list, after all.”

“So did you,” Nora replied. “And you posted it. Someone with the things must have seen the one you tacked up. Still, what showed up didn’t really match up to the list we’d made.”

“It’s a mystery, to be sure.” He went to do the button on his coat, found no button to do, and gave out a little hrrmph as he was forced to let it hang open. “I may have to beg Ma for a little of that thread, won’t I?” They walked on, and Nora made a note to dig through her father’s coats for a spare button tonight. “Everyone needs everything, it seems,” Quinn sighed. “Reverend Bauers at Grace House can be a resourceful man, but he needs all of those things as much as we do, if not more.”

“I’ve heard stories about Grace House. Is it still standing?

“It is,” Quinn replied. “The building next door fell to the ground, but Grace House is mostly fine.”

Nora let out a long sigh. “It’s hard not to wonder how He’s let all this happen and why. I can’t get my mind around anything that makes sense, no matter how many prayers I say.”

“No sense to be made, if you ask me. Some things just are. You could stand around all day trying to figure out why, and it still won’t find you dinner or get your house rebuilt. It’s not the whys we need to worry about now, Miss Longstreet, it’s the hows that matter most.”

“How, then, do you think those things found their way to your mother?”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t rightly know.”

“Someone, somewhere, has played the hero. I think it’s perfectly grand. I hope everyone hears about it and twenty other people do the same. What a wonderful thing that would be, don’t you think?”

Quinn laughed. He had a very delightful, forthright laugh. “I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, miss. It’s not smart to make so much of one good deed.”

“One good deed like a teeter-totter? Oh, I think you know the power of one good deed far more than you let on.” She didn’t hide the broad smile that crept up from somewhere near her heart.

“Grace House does the important work, not me. But even they’re busting under the load right now, or so Reverend Bauers says. He’s got a few benefactors who can help out, you know, friends in high places and all, but not nearly enough.”

Why hadn’t she thought of it before now? “I can help with that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I think you’re helping as much as you can now. Your pa’ll be sore at your being gone as long as you have, if not worse.”

“No, I mean with the benefactors. I know someone who can help. We had a wealthy woman named Mrs. Hastings to tea at the house the other day. She’s wanted to see the ruined city but her husband won’t let her come any farther than our house.” Nora looked at Quinn. “What if we could get Mrs. Hastings to tour Grace House? Surely her husband couldn’t object to something like that? Then she could meet people. She could meet Reverend Bauers. I’ve heard so much about him, even I’d like to meet Reverend Bauers. It’s the perfect solution.”

Quinn stopped walking and looked at her. “You’ve never met Reverend Bauers?”

He made it sound as if her social upbringing lacked a crucial element. “Well, of course I’ve shaken his hand at some city ceremony at some time or another, but I don’t really know him. I only know of him. Papa knows him, I think, but not socially.”

Those words came out wrong. As if people like Papa didn’t socialize with people like Reverend Bauers. It was true, in some ways, but not in the way her words made it sound. Quinn had noticed. He stood up straighter, started walking again, and the set of his jaw hardened just enough for her to notice.

Nora reached out and caught his elbow. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No one ever does.” The edge in his voice betrayed the wound her words had caused.

“No, really. It was a horrid way to put it. I just meant…” What did she just mean? She’d said it without thinking, without consideration, of what Mama would have called “their differences in station.” Why consider some great foolish gulf between them—especially now, when all that seemed to matter so very little? She dropped her hand. “I don’t know what I meant. But I’ve not met Reverend Bauers and I would very much like to. And I want to help. I believe Mrs. Hastings will want to help, too, if we can show her Grace House. Please. I know she will.”

“If she honestly wants to help, and not just gawk at other folks’ hardship. I’ve seen those types. Riding in carriages around the edge of our camp with hankies pressed to their noses. As if we’re all some odd entertainment.”

“Mrs. Hastings can be a bit stuffy, but I think she truly does want to help. She just doesn’t know how. Or maybe just where to start. I know something good would come of it if we could just make the arrangements.” Suddenly, it had become the most urgent thing in the world. Something large and important she could do to make things better. And surely, once she’d been to Grace House with Mrs. Hastings, Papa might let her do more than just sit around and wind bandages. Mrs. Hastings had loads of friends with all sorts of connections. Even Mama would be delighted to work on projects with someone of the Hastingses’ stature. It was the most perfect of ideas.

Quinn’s expression softened. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Chapter Seven

“You’ve left your side unprotected,” Major Simon warned. “I could have run you through four minutes ago.”

“So you said,” Quinn panted as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. Major Simon was proving to be a merciless teacher. Just a moment ago he’d planted the tip of his sword over Quinn’s pounding heart and declared with an annoying calm that in a real duel, Quinn’s life would have come to an abrupt end. Something in his eyes made Quinn believe he could do it. Part of him suspected the major had taken more than one life—in battle or otherwise—but the wiser part of him decided he didn’t really want to know.

“Die? Right here?” Quinn challenged as he regained his footing. It was useful to discover he didn’t at all like being on what Mr. Covington had once called “the business end” of a sword. Quinn vowed to remember the unpleasant sensation of having a blade planted gingerly on his chest—and vowed it would never happen again.

“Hardly sporting of me, I know,” Simon pronounced as he flicked the blade away.

“Speaking of sporting…” With a swift move, Quinn skidded down and forward, making sure his tattered boot collided with Major Simon’s foot, sending the stocky officer off balance. With another kick, he knocked Simon’s remaining knee sideways so that the major came down to the floor in a crash of weapons.

He shot Quinn a nasty look, then laughed. “One does not kick in fencing!”

Quinn held out a hand, telling himself it would be unsporting to enjoy the moment but enjoying it immensely. Simon had kept the upper hand for most of the hour, anyway. “Were we fencing?”

Simon took Quinn’s extended hand and pulled himself to his feet. “That was entirely uncalled for. And downright clever. An old general of mine used to say that the best use for rules was knowing when to break them.” He slid the foil into the holder at his hip. “I dare say it’s a lesson you already know.”

“Life can be a good teacher of some things.”

“And not others. You kicked me because you were angry, not because it was a good strategy. It worked this time. It won’t the next.” He pointed a finger at Quinn as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “You fight with too much emotion, Freeman. We’ll have to work to cool that temper of yours. Give me your hand.” He held out his hand to shake Quinn’s.

Matthew Covington had insisted they shake hands at the end of every fencing lesson or duel as well. Quinn pulled off his glove and held out his hand.

At which point Simon grabbed it, held it, and before Quinn could even blink, had produced a short dagger from his boot and dragged it sharply down Quinn’s forearm.

“Ouch!” Quinn yelled as a thick line of blood pooled where Simon had scratched—no, sliced him. He just barely bit back a retort that would have made Ma’s ears burn. “What the…”

“No broken rule goes without consequences. Every knife hurts, especially the one you didn’t see coming.” Simon handed Quinn the handkerchief. “Next time you face me, you’ll think twice. A small price to pay for wisdom.”

Quinn stood, staring at the man, unable to piece together the gentleman with the savage who’d just calmly cut him.

“It’s but a scratch,” Simon said, “and the first lesson I give all my best students.”

“Some compliment,” Quinn muttered. “What will happen to me if you really like me?”

Simon looked him straight in the eye. “You’ll live.”

As he stood in Reverend Bauers’s study that afternoon, wincing at the excess of iodine the pastor dabbed over his forearm, Quinn recounted the major’s painful lesson.

“I can’t say I care for his methods, but Simon makes an important point.” The reverend smiled. “No pun intended.”

Quinn thought about the tip of Simon’s foil skewered into his chest. “He’s a wild sort, he is. Dangerous.”

“No, I think that Major Simon is just a man aware of how dangerous a game we aim to play here. The moment you forget yourself in the name of playing hero, that’s the moment any fool could come out of the shadows and take you.” He put a clean bandage over the wound. “How’ll you explain that cut to your ma?”

“I’ll worry about that later.” Quinn looked at the reverend. “Are you saying I shouldn’t be doing this now? Changing your mind?”

“Not at all. I’m only saying we can’t be too careful. ‘Wise as serpents,’ the Bible says. Taking on evil—even with the best of intentions—is always a dangerous endeavor.”

Quinn muttered a thing or two about the snakelike nature of a certain army major as Bauers bound off the bandage. The wound smarted for a dozen different reasons, only half of which could be attributed to Reverend Bauers’s enthusiastic doctoring.

“Think of it as a repayment,” Bauers said, raising a disapproving eyebrow to Quinn’s muttered insults. “You do remember the very nasty gash you gave Mr. Covington on your first meeting? The cut you lads gave Matthew was much bigger and twice as deep. All for his noble effort to try and stop you two hooligans from stealing from Grace House. Why, I stitched up his arm in the very next room. After twenty-odd years, has a bit of balance to it, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t.” Quinn flexed his arm. “And this hurts.”

“Good. Now—” Bauers changed his tone as he put the medical supplies back in their box “—have you given thought to the message system?”

“It’ll go up just before dark tonight,” Quinn replied. “If I’ve got both arms to use by then. I found the wood yesterday, and with a bit of help I can have the post up in an hour. Right across the street from where the mail cart comes in.”

Bauers smiled. “By the mail cart. What an extraordinary coincidence.”

When the mail cart pulled up the next day, Nora noticed a large square post had been erected across the street. A sort of column made from pieced-together planks of wood now stood in the passageway between two shacks. People crowded around it, and it was a minute or so before Nora realized small pieces of paper and scraps of wood and material were stuck to the thing.

She’d heard about a fountain downtown that had become a message board of sorts. People fastened messages or notices or sad notes like “Can’t find Erin Gray since Tuesday” on Lotta’s fountain at Kearny and Market streets. It had become a vital communication place, a gathering spot for the lost and those who had been found. Logistically and emotionally the center point of town. Someone—someone very clever—had thought to do the same here.

When Nora looked out over the crowd, her suspicions proved correct, for her one raised eyebrow of silent inquiry was met with Quinn Freeman’s grinning nod.

“The mail can’t all be headed out of town,” he said when he ambled across the street. “Folks here need to send messages of a smaller sort, too. Took all of an hour, once I found the wood.”

She noticed he had a bandage on his right forearm. “It took a bit more than that, it seems,” she said, pointing to the wound. “That wasn’t there yesterday.”

From behind her at the mail cart, Nora heard her father make a grumbling sort of noise, as if he wasn’t much fond of his daughter noticing the state of some man’s forearms. When she turned, he shot a look of warning between them, as if telling her to stay on the cart while he climbed down to hoist another mailbag off.

“A fencing injury,” he said, pleased at her concern. “I won the duel, anyway.”

What a wit he had. “Now, Mr. Freeman, what sort of man has time for fencing these days?”

“You’d be surprised.” His eyes fairly sparkled. He had the most extraordinary vitality about him. An energy, an inner source of power that stood out like the noonday sun in such a sea of weary souls. And when he looked at her like that, a spark of that power lit up inside her own soul. It was at once thrilling and dangerous.

Nora hid the blush she felt creeping up her face by changing subjects. “How is Sam?” she said brightly, fiddling with a stack of mail. “All healed?”

“Soon enough. He was asking to come over here this morning, but Ma held him off one more day. Fairly bursting to run around, he is. Ma threatened to put him on a leash yesterday afternoon after you left.”

“How resilient children are,” she sighed, sitting down on the edge of the cart. “I think they’ve fared the best of all of us.” Mrs. Hastings’s visit had cheered Mother and Aunt Julia for a little while after, but the dark melancholy had returned within a few days.

“We do fine. Well, as much as we can. You should come over and look at the post. There’s happy news there, as well as the sad news.” He pointed toward the wooden column and extended a hand to help her out of the cart.

Her father didn’t look pleased, but neither did he voice an open objection—that would have to do for now. Nora took Quinn’s hand, forgetting she’d removed her gloves, for it was nearly impossible to handle stacks of paper and the other odd forms of mail with gloves on. He clasped her hand, stunning her with the touch of his rough palms. They were working hands, large and calloused, yet strong and steady. Warm. Something unnamed shot through her, something far more alarming than what his eyes had done. Nora tried to brush it off as something from a dime-store novel, a juvenile thrill, but it felt so…important.

A touch. Quinn Freeman had touched her. Papa was undoubtedly cross, even though it was something as genteel as helping her out of the wagon. Still, she wasn’t the least bit sorry she wasn’t wearing gloves.

He winced, and she realized he had helped her out of the wagon with his injured arm. “Goodness,” she said, “You really are injured there.”

“Only just,” he said, still smiling. “I’ll be fine.” She knew by the way he looked at her that he was as aware of their touch as she was. He held her hand for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary before letting it go and motioning toward the post. She felt that tiny linger—a trembling sensation in her hand—as if her palm would somehow be able to retain the feeling. Nora felt as if she would look at her hand an hour from now and find it physically changed.

She saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Quinn ran his thumb along the tip of each finger. He felt it, too. They walked quietly toward the post, each of them a little bit stunned, pretending at normalcy when nothing at all seemed normal.

Notes of every description, on every kind of material, had begun to cover the post, tacked and pinned or stuffed into cracks. One small corner of a newspaper held the message “Looking for Robert Morris.” Another read “A.D.—I’m fine—M.T.” One heart-wrenching note read “Josiah Edwards born Tuesday morning.” Nora hadn’t even thought about the fact that babies were still arriving. It was cheering to know life went on, but what sort of anguish gripped a mother bringing a precious new life into the wake of catastrophe?

Quinn noticed her eyes on the announcement and nodded at her. “I saw little Josiah yesterday morning. Fine and healthy and hungry as any baby ever was. He’s hurting for a few necessities, but I gather he’ll make out just fine.”

Nora thought of all the soft, clean pampering that surrounded the last baby she’d seen. Babies should never know hardship—it was just wrong. “What’s he missing?”

Adjusting his hat, Quinn pursed his lips in thought. “The usual things—diapers, cloths, jumpers and such. Soap, too, I suppose.” Getting an idea, he began to walk around the post, one hand roaming over the fluttering papers. “Oh, here’s one. ‘Baby arrived. Need sheets, shirts, cloths and pins.’ You know, that sort of thing. Ma found a clean pillowcase they cut down for Josiah to wear and a pair of little socks from a doll somewhere, so things find their way.”

Nora began to look all over the post now, scanning for any requests like the baby’s. There were half a dozen, maybe more, and the post had only been up one day. “I want to write these down, like I did the others. Surely we can find some of these things.”

“Could you make me a copy, like you did before?”

“Of course I could. Do you have any ideas where we might find some of this?” The “we” had slipped out of her mouth unawares.

“I’ve a few thoughts,” he replied. His eyes glowed again, and Nora felt surely Papa would storm across the street this very second and plant her back on the cart.

“Let me get a page from Papa’s ledger,” she said, needing to turn away from the way Quinn smiled at her, trying to wipe the smile from her own face as well.

Nora could barely keep her eyes on the page as she copied down the posted needs Quinn read out. There was an enthralling partnership in this, as though she were grafting herself into something far bigger than her own tiny problems. Here was something—something concrete and important—that she could do. The first list had been just a product of her being in the same tent as Sam and Mrs. Freeman. This felt more deliberate. Help me, Lord, she prayed as she worked the pencil and paper. I’ll move Heaven and earth to get these things to these people.

Her plan hadn’t worked. Quinn knew just by the set of her shoulders when the cart pulled into sight a day or so later. He’d feared as much, suspected that Nora Longstreet hadn’t yet realized just how hard supplies still were to come by. And while a huge chunk of him wanted her to wheel in here victorious, his practical side knew she had always stood a far bigger chance of wheeling in here sad and frustrated.

She was even prettier when she pouted. Her delicate frown whipped up something fierce inside him, some heroic urge to see her smile again and to do whatever it took to produce that smile. She didn’t know he had the means to do it. She didn’t know how much he’d stared at his hand yesterday, trying to recall the softness of her palm and the distractingly soapy scent that seemed to float around her.

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