Page 85 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
He launched up from the cot.
“We’re leaving Chicago, aren’t we? I won’t be here for the reporters to dog me.”
Cal tugged on his cotton undershirt, which Fern vividly remembered him tearing off not so long ago so their bare skin could touch. He hitched his hands on his hips, looking conflicted. He knew it would work, and yet he hated the idea of carrying through with his’s brother original threat.
“Where are the photographs?” she asked. Her father had been given copies, but he’d almost certainly have destroyed them by now. Rod would have held onto the originals. Or the negatives, at least.
Finally, Cal bent to grab his shirt from the floor. “They’re at the Den. In Rod’s office.”
Fern didn’t want him to go back there. The risk buzzed through her nerve endings more powerfully than the idea of those pictures being splashed across the front pages citywide.
“We leave Chicago tonight,” he said, buttoning up his shirt. “I need to take care of a few things first—get us some cash and new papers?—”
“New papers?”
“From Hannah Levy.”
The small storeroom, hot and stifling, closed in around her. “Why would shehave those?”
Cal tucked in his shirt and buttoned his pants. “She’s a forger. Talented and fast, and she likes you, so I know she’ll keep quiet about it.”
“But why do we need new papers?”
He paused hooking his belt. “So, Rod can’t find us, princess.”
He didn’t have to say what would happen if he did.
“I like my name.” She couldn’t imagine calling herself, or hearing anyone else call her, a different one.
Cal drew her up from the cot, the quilt wrapped loosely around her. “So do I.”
Fern ran her hands over his broad shoulders. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. However long it takes to talk to Hannah and drop the negatives at theAmerican.”
“Not theTribune?”
He shook his head. “Too uptight. TheAmericanwill stop the presses for those pictures.” Again, he closed his eyes and exhaled, long and hard. “But only if you’re sure.”
She knew it would work. Her mother, utterly humiliated, would cancel the fete, spoiling Rod’s plans—if they did, in fact, involve the Adairs’ party. It was a gamble Fern had to take. She pushed up onto her toes and kissed Cal. “Be careful at the Den.”
He took the shoulder holster from where he’d laid it on the shelf and shrugged into it. Wherever they went after Chicago, Fern hoped Cal wouldn’t have to wear that revolver anymore.
24
Helen found the glass Cal had left on the countertop, a circle of leftover milk in the bottom. She entered the kitchen at six o’clock wearing a green-and-white striped housedress, her hair pinned into its usual tight bun. Fern had been awake for an hour already and had managed to make herself tea and toast. But she hadn’t seen the glass until Helen picked it up and frowned.
Ears burning, heart stuttering, Fern said nothing as Helen glanced at her. She brought it to the sink and said, “Cal finally showed up, did he?”
She knew her nephew well.
“He did. It was late,” Fern answered.
“Is everything all right?” she asked as she pulled eggs and milk from the monitor top and a Pyrex bowl from a cupboard.
They hadn’t discussed whether they’d tell Helen about their plans to leave the city. It struck Fern then that Helen would see the lewd pictures of her when theyhit the newspapers. She hated to imagine what Helen would think of her then.
“Yes,” she whispered.
