Free Crow Hollow by Michael Wallace

why?
    Prudence sprang to her feet and ran across the snowy pasture to intercept the coach before it passed the Common. She scrambled over the rail fence and came into the road waving her arms as it approached.
    The horses were snorting, pulling already, nervous at being out in such poor light. When they saw her emerging from the darkness, they reared and snorted. The driver cursed and cracked his whip. He hadn’t yet spotted her. In a moment they’d be past.
    “Over here!”
    “What the devil?” The man jerked back on the reins, dropped the whip, and fumbled in his cloak to remove a pistol, which he lowered when she came into the circle of lantern light.
    “What is it, man?” a voice called from inside the coach. It sounded like James.
    “A lady.” Then, to Prudence: “Out of the way, good woman. We’re in a hurry.” He groped around for his whip, but by the time he found it, tangled in the horses’ harness, she’d stepped in front of the coach to block it.
    “Master Bailey!” she cried. “Where are you going?”
    The coach door swung open and he leaned out. “You! What are you doing here?”
    “You told me to come!”
    “Oh. Well, you said no, so I supposed that . . . Anyway, matters have changed. Out of the way.”
    “You’re leaving Boston, aren’t you? You’re going to Winton! You . . . you lied to me.”
    “Oh, by all the saints—of course I did. Don’t you want me to find out who killed Sir Benjamin?”
    “I know who killed my husband. I want you to find my daughter.”
    “Not my business. Now clear off.”
    “Is Peter with you?”
    “Driver, move! Throw her from the road if you must.”
    The driver lifted his whip to drive the horses forward, but before James could pull the door shut, a bell clanked from the direction of the town. Dogs barked. A man’s shout carried through the air, then swept away in the wind.
    James leaned out and craned back toward the town. “Damn. How did they know?”
    “As I warned thee,” Peter’s voice spoke from the darkened interior.
    The driver cupped a hand to his ear. “’Tisn’t the general alarm.”
    The man was so bundled in cloaks and scarves that she hadn’t recognized him, but she knew his gravelly voice. It was Robert Woory, an unmarried man who kept stables in the North End and ran an overland transport service to Gloucester and Plymouth. His custom had been devastated by the war with King Philip, which explained why he’d break the Sabbath to carry James and Peter out of town.
    “Well if not that,” James said, “then what—”
    “It’s the initial alarm,” Prudence cut in. “Soon they’ll have twenty armed men on horse. Then they’ll sound the general alarm.”
    Woory grunted. “Eh? What is that you’re saying?”
    What it was was a lie of the worst kind, and she burned with shame to utter it. But James had started it, lying to her first. And she was desperate.
    Before Woory could overturn her story, she rushed around to the coach door and blocked James from closing it. “Take me with you. I know a side road through Cambridge that will get you off the highway. I’ll show you.”
    “What kind of road is that?” Woory said, thankfully put off the subject of the bells for the moment. “Never heard of it.”
    “And I can get you through the gates.” She didn’t speak to Woory, but directly to James. “But you must hurry.”
    James grabbed her wrist and pulled her up to the coach. He stared hard into her eyes, and she thought he’d throw her aside, calling her a liar and a wretch. Instead, he nodded.
    “Get in.”

C HAPTER E IGHT
    James checked the load on his flintlock pistols as the coach approached the gates. He was almost, but not quite, certain the widow was lying to him about the bells raising the general alarm. But if she had told the truth, he might have to blast his way out. The men at the gates would have heard the alarm as well and would react appropriately.
    Woory slowed the coach. James tucked his