Haunting Jordan Read Online Free PDF Page B

found a chapter on historic fires. The author had interspersed text with pictures of the valiant fire crews, standing somberly in their old-fashioned uniforms and helmets.
    A photocopied newspaper article on a huge waterfront fire caught her eye, and she settled down to read, the dog snoozing in the sun at her feet.

The Great Fire
    May 25, 1890, two weeks earlier
    “THEY say an entire block is already in flames,” Hattie Longren murmured to Eleanor Canby. “Five are dead, with more to be found.”
    Though midnight had come and gone, they stood next to the bell tower at the top of the bluff with their neighbors, watching as the inferno raged below them on the waterfront. Orange flames leapt high against a smoke-filled, black sky, writhing and reaching out on the wind.
    “Good riddance, I say.” Eleanor folded her arms over her ample bosom. Tall and matronly, she wore her gray serge as if it were a suit of armor in a war against loose morals. “We both know that area was nothing but saloons and brothels.”
    As the owner of the Port Chatham Weekly Gazette , Eleanor frequently wrote editorials with strong views regarding the lawlessness and temptations of the waterfront. Rigid, old-fashioned views, in Hattie’s opinion.
    She shivered, holding the folds of her cape tightlyclosed against the damp night air. “No one deserves to die that way.”
    The bell had begun ringing at ten, a full half hour after the first spiral of smoke had been spotted, according to one neighbor. The blaze had quickly spread. Hattie suspected the fire was no accident, and that the initial report had been intentionally delayed. Someone had been sending a message: Do as we say, or see your business destroyed . But whoever had started the fire hadn’t counted on the strong wind from the south, and other businesses were now at risk.
    A murmur rose from the crowd as several adjoining buildings, black silhouettes half eaten through, teetered, then fell, consumed instantly in a roiling mass of crimson sparks. A silver stream of salt water arced from a tugboat anchored in the harbor, dousing roofs and flooding the streets. Hattie could see the dark shapes of men racing to and fro in a desperate attempt to save the records from City Hall. Working to save City Hall, but making no effort to save the people in buildings facing the waterfront, she thought in disgust.
    “Will the fire spread up here?” Charlotte’s delicate features were pale from anxiety.
    “No.” Hattie placed a hand on her sister’s trembling shoulder. “There’s no chance of that. They’ll have it under control before then.”
    “Don’t be too sure,” Eleanor retorted. “Sparks could find their way to us.”
    “If they do, we’ll extinguish them,” Hattie said firmly. At the impressionable age of fifteen, Charlotte was proneto wild mood swings. Hattie didn’t need her frightened by Eleanor’s tendency toward dour predictions.
    After their parents died in a carriage accident in Boston, Charlotte and her beloved lady’s maid, Tabitha, had come to live with Hattie. Charlotte had proven to be more of a handful than Hattie had anticipated. Charlotte yearns for adventure as you once did , their mother had written in a letter to be delivered upon the event of her death, but she hasn’t your innate good judgment. We’re counting on you to keep her safe .
    Innate good judgment. Hattie sighed. If only her mother knew the truth about her short marriage. The tension between her and Charles had driven him to sea, where he perished at the hands of a mutinous crew, leaving her with a struggling shipping business she was ill prepared to manage. And now she had Charlotte depending on her as well. A familiar sense of panic threatened to overwhelm her.
    “That fire was started by a drunken prostitute, mark my words.” Eleanor’s voice snapped her back to the present. “I can find no sympathy for those of her ilk. Painted harlots, flaunting their wares and infatuating our decent young