The Prince of Spies (Hope and Glory #3) - Elizabeth Camden Page 0,31

his personal nightmare to be at her side.

“Look, can you forget everything you just saw?” he asked. “Having an attack of the vapors over a few jarring noises isn’t something I’m proud of. Pretend it never happened. I’ll be myself again shortly. I’m not a coward.”

“I knew that the moment you stepped onto the ice to save Bandit,” she said. “Why do you keep pushing yourself into reckless things? The ice. The Poison Squad. Now walking back into a jail.”

Luke gazed into the bleak landscape while considering his answer. “I don’t know. I’ve got this churning desire to venture out and conquer. I need to accomplish things. It’s what a man does.”

I need to accomplish things. His words resonated, because she felt the same way. Her hands tightened around her camera, and she glanced back toward the jail. She found it unpleasant but not truly frightening, and she needed to get those photographs.

Luke must have noticed her glance toward the door. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll wait for you out here.”

“Are you sure?”

He sent her a semi-scolding look. “Please don’t emasculate me any more than I already have been. Go do your job. I’ll be fine.”

He managed a smile, so she went, but what had just happened lingered the entire time she moved throughout the jail. The superintendent brought her to see the cells, where men were caged like animals and had an exhausted, hopeless look in their eyes. She asked two men permission to take their photographs, and both agreed. Throughout the afternoon she wondered about Luke’s time in jail. Had he looked like these men? Used the same foul facilities and suffered the same sense of helplessness?

Marianne breathed a sigh of relief as she concluded the assignment. Her supervisor wasn’t going to be pleased with these pictures, but there was no way she could sugarcoat what she’d just seen. Not after knowing that Luke had been locked up in a similar situation.

He was in a better frame of mind when she rejoined him to ride the streetcar back into the center of town.

“You’ll still come to photograph my office?” he asked, a hint of unease back in his face. Maybe he feared she would think less of him for his fit of nerves in the jail, when nothing could be further from the truth.

“Of course,” she said lightly, but inside was the growing fear she was stepping into dangerous territory.

Eight

Luke had to sprint the last few blocks to make it to the boardinghouse in time for dinner. The trip to the jail had taken longer than expected due to his humiliating collapse in the detention hall. He’d known visiting a jail might prove difficult and had braced himself for what he might see, but it was the sounds that caught him by surprise. An overwhelming sense of claustrophobia roared to life the moment he heard that dead bolt clang into place. Even now the memory of that noise made him feel ill.

Well. It was best not to think about it.

“What’s on the menu, today?” he asked Nurse Hollister as he took his seat between Big Rollins and Nicolo.

“Meatloaf, buttered peas, and mashed potatoes,” the nurse said, setting a plate with the measured portions before him. Days of suffering from a slight but persistent headache made him almost certain he was in the test group. The chemicals were either in the meatloaf or the mashed potatoes.

Nicolo must have been thinking the same thing. “Want my potatoes?”

Dr. Wiley’s head jerked up. “Everyone is to eat their own meals,” he said, even though Nicolo had only been teasing. As far as Luke could tell, no one had been shirking their duties, and in truth, the food didn’t taste bad. He tried not to think about it as he lowered his head and said a quick, silent prayer. The men of the Poison Squad were a rowdy bunch, and prayer had never been a part of their routine, but Luke vowed not to take a single meal for granted.

“Who’s up for a snowball fight after dinner?” St. Louis asked from the neighboring table.

Half the men in the room raised their hands. They shouted insults at the others for declining. Dr. Wiley insisted they wait half an hour after the meal, lest the roughhousing cause someone to lose their dinner, which provoked another round of boasting about whose stomach was tougher.

This was typical of the evenings Luke had spent in the boardinghouse. Some of the men indulged in sport, others a game