Chapter 28 #2
Then he noticed Ruby wasn’t walking beside him. He turned, frustration rankling him, and found her still where he’d left her—crouched, eyes downcast into the dirt. His boots kicked up small clouds of dust as he stepped back toward her. “What?”
“I know you’re right,” she whispered softly.
“The first time I ever stole anything from anyone my hands shook so badly afterward—they didn’t stop shaking for hours.
It was a locket. A locket that I noticed a woman had hanging out of her pocketbook.
I found out after I took it that the clasp was broken.
And inside …” Ruby hung her head for several moments, and when she lifted it her eyelashes were wet with tears.
“Inside was a picture of a baby boy. A ringlet of hair was on the other side. And I just kept thinking, kept wondering, what if that locket was all she had left of him? What if I’d stolen her only memory? ”
A tear worked its way down her cheek, and she stood wiping it away with her fingertips. Jack didn’t move to comfort her, much as it was his instinct. Because … what can I say?
Maybe she even deserved her guilt.
But, at the same time, he’d peeled back the layers behind that persona enough to understand that she wasn’t just some unfeeling, cold criminal without a heart.
“Someone I once knew used to tell me, ‘Tomorrow is an opportunity. A new chance to mend what we’ve broken and to move forward. Let’s not waste our todays mourning our yesterdays when we’ve been given the gift of tomorrows.’”
“That’s a mouthful,” she said with a dry, tearful laugh. She sniffed. “And I’m not sure I can fix what I’ve broken. I can’t replace everything I’ve stolen, Jack.”
He sighed, then pulled her into his arms. Maybe against his better judgment.
But her tears had already soothed his irritation at her.
Theo might be a damned irredeemable bastard, but that didn’t mean Ruby was.
“The fact that you can shed tears about it is proof enough that you’re not a bad person, Ruby.
You have a conscience, and that’s a good thing.
It’d all be a whole lot worse if you didn’t give a damn who you hurt. ”
When she pulled away, her tears had slowed, but the brightness that had crept into her pretty face during the flight had all but withered. They started walking again, in silence this time—as though neither of them knew quite what to say.
They exited the field through a side gate without incident, bypassing a British officer there who paid them no notice. A few piastres to a local boy with a cart got them a ride to the city proper. Jack kept his head low, his collar turned up.
The cart dropped them just past the old Ottoman barracks, near where the river curved through the eastern side of the city. From there, Jack and Ruby walked, careful in their steps along the uneven flagstones.
Baghdad, for all its heat and haze, was a city trying to stand taller.
There were signs of ambition everywhere: freshly plastered walls, scaffolded facades, new telephone wires stretched above the narrow lanes like string over a chessboard.
But beneath the veneer it still felt like a city caught between worlds—straining toward modernity while its bones remained ancient, stubborn, and unpredictable.
They passed the king’s administrative district, a series of squat buildings trimmed with both Hashemite emblems and lingering British signage.
It was quieter here. The scent of diesel faded into the faint perfume of jasmine from a garden wall.
Uniformed guards leaned in shaded doorways, their rifles slung casually but their eyes sharp.
Jack paused at the corner of a pale stone building near Hindenburg Street—a place that might once have been a merchant’s house, now converted with modernity in mind. A rusted brass plate affixed beside the arched doorway read “Post and Telegraph Office.”
The Union Jack fluttered limply above the entrance, its colors dulled by the sun.
Jack hesitated. The weight of being here pressed in, making him ever more aware of the heat, the fatigue, and the uncertainty. The fear that he’d made a mistake coming here. That he wouldn’t find Kit at all. That he’d only unearth more ghosts.
“Something wrong?” Ruby asked, glancing at the entrance.
Jack gave a small nod.
“So much for independence, right?” Ruby tilted her head toward the flag. “If Iraq joined the League of Nations a couple years ago, you’d think the British would be a little less obvious.”
“The empire doesn’t leave that quietly.” He gave one last glance toward the street behind them, then moved through the door.
The moment Jack pushed open the iron-framed glass door, a wave of thick, dusty warmth wrapped around him like a wool blanket soaked in ink and sweat. The scent of paper and hot metal was unmistakable—cut through faintly by the tang of old citrus polish clinging to the wooden counters and desks.
The room was narrow and high-ceilinged, its plaster walls once whitewashed but now faded to the color of old parchment. Rows of battered stools lined the front wall beneath arched windows, their slatted shutters cracked open to let in ribbons of sunlight and noise from Hindenburg Street.
To their left, a door stood slightly ajar, revealing the rhythmic click-tap-click of a Morse key from the telegraph room beyond. Somewhere inside, a telegraphist was tapping out someone’s news to another corner of the empire.
Against the opposite wall stood the long service counter, a waist-high barrier of dark-stained wood topped with brass grilles.
Behind a desk sat a pale middle-aged man with a pinched mouth sporting a pair of wire spectacles perched halfway down his nose, a pencil behind one ear.
The clerk didn’t look up until they were at the counter. “For domestic or international?”
“Neither.” He looked past the counter to the open ledger. Names, destinations, and reference numbers marched across the page in tight, hurried script.
Then his heart thumped. He had no doubt Gretchen had been here. Somewhere, her words had passed through this desk, these cables, this room.
The clerk frowned at him, as though annoyed by his answer. “How can I help you, then?”
Jack smiled as pleasantly as he could. “Connor Smith. I’m hoping to inquire about an American journalist I’ve been sent to find—Gretchen Herbert. She was working in Baghdad over the past few months.”
The clerk’s eyes flicked between him and Ruby. “Then why haven’t you gone to the American Legation?”
“I have. They sent me here. Said you might have more information to offer me.”
The clerk frowned. “We’re not in the business of providing information on foreign nationals.” Then curiosity seemed to get the best of him. “Is she in trouble?”
“No. Not unless you count being overdue on a deadline.” Jack offered the smallest, most harmless chuckle he could manage. “I’m from the New York Times. She was freelancing under our masthead and then stopped all contact. We’re concerned. Do you remember when you last saw her?”
The clerk stared another moment, his face giving nothing away.
Ruby exchanged a look with him, then asked in a sweet and polished English tone, “Do you remember her at all, sir? We’ve come all this way.”
Her feminine charm seemed to work, as his expression softened—slightly. “Yes, I remember her. Bit of a firebrand, if you ask me. Rude.”
Jack kept his face blank. That sounded like Kit.
The bell at the door jingled as another customer came into the building, stepping in line behind Jack and Ruby.
“Do you know if she listed an address in her cables?” Jack asked, forcing a polite tone.
“I can’t tell you about a home address. The logbooks aren’t accessible to the public, no matter your press credentials. If you’ll excuse me.” The clerk waved the customer behind them forward, clearly dismissing them.
Logbooks. Yes, those would be key. The telegraph offices were required to keep a copy of all messages sent, including the recipient’s and sender’s information.
His heart rate kicked up a notch as he and Ruby stepped away from the counter.
“What do we do?” Ruby asked in a whisper, searching his gaze.
“I don’t know, but we need those logbooks,” he answered, his voice so low he could barely hear himself.
She nodded. “Where do they keep them?”
“Under lock and key in a file cabinet. Probably in a back office. The clerk will probably have the key, though.”
Ruby’s eyes glinted, then she tipped her mouth in a smile. “Follow my lead.”
She marched back up to the counter, pushing past the customer. “Excuse me, sir, but we simply must have a bit more information. Anything you could tell us about Miss Herbert would be invaluable. Please.”
The man pushed his spectacles up, annoyance flickering clearly through his expression.
Then he gave a long, exaggerated sigh. “She spent an awful lot of time with that German journalist, Rudolf Meyer, at Café Shahbandar. Down on Hindenburg Street. He was her fiancé, if I’m not mistaken. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
Jack sucked a breath in through his teeth, the only outward sign of the punch to his gut.
Fiancé?
German fiancé?
His mouth went dry, and for the next several moments he heard nothing the man continued to say.
Gretchen—Kit—was engaged?
The news shouldn’t have come as a surprise. She’d been married once before, after all. Her husband had been killed though.
What did he think—that she’d spent all this time waiting for him?
So why did it feel as if he were losing her all over again?
He couldn’t let himself get sidetracked. There wasn’t time to overthink this.
He swallowed hard and joined Ruby back over by the counter. “Is Meyer still in the country?” he demanded. The other customer, an older English gentleman, shook his head and muttered something under his breath.
The clerk’s face pinched, his eyes flashing. “Do I look like an address book, sir? Now if you have no legitimate business here, please step aside.”
“There’s no need for such a tone—” Ruby gasped, then set her hands to her stomach. “Oh!” She stumbled, folding over.
The three men all watched her with caution.
Jack was at her side a moment later, taking her by the elbow. “What’s wrong?”
“I-I don’t know.” Ruby released another gasp. “Darling, I think it might be the baby. All this discord a-and the heat …”
The baby?
Jack fought the urge to raise a brow. But, truth was, her acting was clever enough that she had fooled him at first. Jack took her by the arms, then shot a look at the clerk. “A chair, man! Get my wife a chair.”
A red flush crept into the clerk’s face, and he spun on his heel, then came out from behind the counter and dragged a chair toward them.
The other customer stiffened. “I’ll return in another hour,” he said, then fled from the front office.
As the clerk set the chair beside Ruby and she released Jack, she gave another cry, stumbling once more—this time, directly into the clerk’s chest. He barely caught her, then helped her into the seat.
“Water,” Ruby rasped. “A sip of water.”
The clerk nodded, then hurried away, back behind the counter.
Ruby held a hand out toward Jack, her eyes pained, and he came closer. “Are you all right?” he asked, still keeping up the ruse.
Her chest heaved with deep breaths. “Better.”
Then he felt her hand slip into his pocket—and a sudden weight settle there.
Something heavy. Metal.
What on earth?
It wasn’t until several minutes later—once Ruby had sipped on her water, and then recovered enough to excuse them both—that Jack dared to reach into his pocket.
As they stepped onto Hindenburg Street, he pulled a key ring out.
Jack quirked a brow at Ruby and she smiled, all traces of the ailing patient left behind.
“You said you needed the man’s keys—I got you his keys.
” She looped her arm through his. “You didn’t hire a thief for nothing.
I figured it’s about time I put those skills to good use.
We can come back later and break in. Get the logbooks. ”
He fought the urge to kiss her.
He looked down at Ruby, warm and alive beside him—and in his mind, Kit flickered beside him on a moonlit street in Malta, her arm looped through his, her laughter echoing against stone.
But that was years ago. And she hadn’t come looking for him. Maybe it was time he stopped holding on to something that had already died.