Alias Dragonfly by Jane Singer

way!”
    My aunt took my arm. “Get back to bed, Madeline. Right now,” she said.
    “No! I have to get out of here!”
    They surrounded me. There was no escaping them. Mr. Webster was looking tenderly at me. But who was he, really? I’d seen him in front of the Greenhow house in disguise!
    And Jake Whitestone, well, I didn’t know what he was feeling. Did I care? Yes! No, maybe. I didn’t even know what side he was on. Or my aunt, for that matter. And Nellie, with her fierce son, Isaac, putting himself and his mother in great danger? Had he left the house? And my father, where was he?
    You might be thinking right now that maybe I started screaming. You’d be wrong.
    I sat back down on the bed. I’ll get away from them, somehow, I thought.
    “Okay, I’ll rest. Just leave me alone.” I lay back with my eyes closed. I had to make a plan.
    I heard shouting from the street. “Yankee cowards!”
    My God.
    “The Rebs won the day!” My heart nearly stopped.
    But how had they won? What had happened? I sure wasn’t going to ask my aunt, or Mr. Webster, or—
    Jake Whitestone walked to the bed.
    “Stay away!”
    I felt like slapping him hard. I reached out to do just that. I figured he was a shifty Rebel. He stopped my hand and held it to his chest. I pried it away.
    “After you ran off, I was on the battlefield, Miss Madeline.”
    “Darn right you were, glad-handing a bunch of Rebels.”
    “Yes I was.”
    “Whose side are you on, Jake Whitestone?”
    “How can you ask me that?”
    “I saw you!”
    “Yes, I was with soldiers and reporters—it’s my job!”
    “Your job? Liar! You said you were a tutor.”
    “No, I’m not.” He spoke in a monotone. “Sixty men of the Second New Hampshire got captured by the Confederates, Miss Madeline,” he said. “Seven were killed. I wish I could tell you more.” His face was full of pain. “Dead boys lay so thick. My God.” He grasped my hand again, so hard my fingers were going to numbness.
    “Word is that Rebel intelligence reached Beauregard,” he said, “reporting our positions, urging reinforcements from Johnston. The Rebels were warned, but how?”
    I remembered what I’d seen in the alley. Could it be Betty and Colonel Jordan brought news of the Union position to the Rebels?
    Her masses of hair and the message it held. I just knew it, I—
    Jake Whitestone gasped. The cloth had slipped from my neck.
    “What happened to you?”
    “Wire, wire on a fence, that’s all.”
    He touched the thin line of red, no longer bleeding, a zigzagging, tiny line.
    “I’m okay.” I pulled away. His touch sent shivers through me. “I’m okay. It’s just a scratch.”
    He held some sheets of paper full of writing in his hand. “This dispatch is in today’s paper,” he said. “I figured you should see it. As soon as I go back, I’ll telegraph another one. I have to find out what happened, and why we got so badly defeated.”
    He touched my face, gently, so gently.
    “I’m a reporter, not a tutor, Miss Madeline. Mr. Horace Greely gave me a chance to write for him, even though they’d never hired anyone so young. I begged him,” he said, handed me the sheet of paper. “You asked what I was doing here? Well, I have a war to fight too.”
    Without saying another word, he left my room.
    When I read this, I was stunned, angry, and, well, with all that had happened, just plain mixed up. Jake was Pan, and he’d written about me. The fierce little creature he spoke of had to be me. I wasn’t dreaming! We were together from the time he pulled me down from the tree. He used me! Or did he? What do you think?
New York Tribune
Special from Washington City
I was heading for the battle, and along the way, I found her, or should I say rescued her. Or maybe she rescued me. Of what stuff was she made, this fierce little creature that raged at me? My bruises from the encounter notwithstanding, the being had a mighty strength, not to mention the hard right hook of a prized