“What?” Isaac Bell had just bent over a fresh pile of clippings when Van Dorn rushed into the research offices.

“Find out what the devil she is up to.”

“Mary? What do you mean?”

“If I knew, I would not be impelled to send you after her. I have a hunch she is up to something big and I don’t like it.”

“What about her brother?”

“I suspect it has nothing to do with him.”

“But will you look out for him?”

“Of course. We gave our word. Go! Don’t let her get away. And do not let her see you.”

•   •   •

MARY HIGGINS burst from the gilded elevator. A hotel detective stared, suspicion aroused by the incongruous sight of such a tall, attractive woman in a drab costume and plain cloth hat that sported neither a ruffle nor a feather. What was such a poorly attired creature doing in such a fine establishment? An actress? Or something worse?

Mary froze the detective with a stern glare, brushed past him, passed the bowing doormen, and set a fast pace down Broadway, which veered southerly and easterly across the Tenderloin District. She walked fast, block after block, oblivious to fine hotels and theaters on the wide thoroughfare, and saloons and gambling halls along the dark and narrow cross streets, her destination a settlement house in the East Side slums where she could find shelter with the girls and women who had founded the Shirtwaist Makers’ Union.

She tried to outpace the storm in her mind. But walking didn’t help any more than stalling by the elevator. She was too confused, her brain swirling with questions about her brother and their cause of equality and justice, his vague dreams of a general strike, her sharp plan to block the river. How different Isaac Bell was than any other man she had ever met: strong, but tender; ferocious in a fight, but able to be gentle; privileged, but not obliviously; quick to laugh, but just as quick to comfort. Had she believed in some vague way that she could use Isaac to help her grand plan? Or had she really only wished they could somehow repeat a cold night on a freight train?