The Lover Switch (The Star Elite's Highwaymen Investigation Book 4)

by Rebecca King

  Mark lifted his brows. “Have they done it then?” He grinned and watched the man turn shifty.

  “It’s best not to discuss it out here, lad,” the man muttered.

  “Make sure you lose the horse,” Mark warned. “I’ll take him. I can stash it at my uncle’s farm.”

  “Aye, well, I think Rointon has it,” the man replied. “You get yourself home now and leave the fools to us.”

  “I heard that you got them both,” Mark grinned before the man could disappear inside.

  “Aye, well, Rointon likes a job doing well,” the man muttered before disappearing inside the tavern.

  The slamming of the door was immediately followed by a single gunshot that came from somewhere in the depths of the woods. It was so unexpected that Elias flinched. He jolted out of his daze instantly. While he had been listening intently to what was being said, he hadn’t been expecting the gunshot. Deep inside, he went cold. He hated it when his thoughts immediately turned to what that single gunshot could mean together with Morgan’s disappearance.

  “God, no,” Ruth moaned, battling tears. She closed her eyes and struggled not to cry. “We are too late.”

  When Mark appeared around the corner of the building, he looked almost sorrowful. “We have to get out of here, miss. If they catch us, we will be next.”

  “Next? Who did they shoot?” Elias demanded, even though he suspected he already knew. His fear grew because neither the woman nor the lad answered him.

  When the woman compelled him to move, Elias almost fought her. It was only their proximity to the tavern that made him comply with her persistent urges to leave. As soon as the tavern disappeared, though, Elias planted his feet firmly in the snow and slammed to a stop. Because he was struggling to stay awake, he bent over, scooped up a handful of icy snow, and wiped it over his face. The shock of the cold water against his skin removed the warmth from his flesh, and made him jerk, but did little to clear the fogginess of his mind. He hated it – that difficult inability to concentrate, to focus on what he knew was important. Still, he knew he had to get information – and quickly.

  “What was that gunshot? Who was it they shot? Have the highwaymen struck again?” Elias snapped.

  “They are going out to rob another carriage tonight,” Mark replied, throwing a dark look at Ruth who shook her head, silently warning Mark not to tell the investigator anything.

  “Where is Morgan?” Elias’s voice was sinister. “Tell me,” he growled when Ruth didn’t answer him.

  When she refused to look at him, Elias slid a hand into her hair and forced her to meet his eyes. He knew from the sadness on her gorgeous face that Morgan had just been executed.

  “Tell me,” Elias demanded. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I-I think they shot him. They wanted to kill one of you to warn the Star Elite not to try to capture them,” Ruth whispered miserably.

  Elias cursed fluidly and looked at the young lad, who nodded briskly to confirm it was true. “Where? Where are they? Where is he? Where did they take my friend?” Elias had to find Morgan. He had to find his friend, his colleague. No matter how ill he felt, what drug he had taken, or what it meant for his own safety or future, he had to see his friend. He had to find him. “We can’t leave him out here.”

  “You don’t understand,” Mark announced. “They won’t just shoot him. They will use his body as a warning. He isn’t likely to be where he was shot. They will have taken him.”

  “Find him. I want him found,” Elias growled. He studied the stable yard barely visible through the trees. “Go and check the stables. See if our horses are still there.”

  “Go,” Ruth ordered Mark when he looked at her as if silently asking her for permission. “I can’t do it.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Elias asked once he was alone with her. “Why are you risking them killing you to help me like this?”

  “I couldn’t just sit back and let you die. When I overheard their conversation, I didn’t have the time to fetch the magistrate, or warn you or your friends. I had to help you myself,” Ruth whispered.

  “You are in danger now,” Elias warned as if she didn’t already know.

  Ruth whispered miserably: “If we both get out of this alive, you can thank me later. For now, let’s just leave. I want to leave this place far behind. Your friend-”

  “I have to find him,” Elias announced firmly. “We have to find him.”

  Ruth had no idea what made her look at the floor. It might have been that her gaze was drawn to the ground beneath her boots in misery but when she did glance at the snow, she realised then that they were leaving a trail for the highwaymen to follow.

  “Oh, no,” she moaned.

  “What is it?” When the woman pointed to the ground, Elias cursed fluidly. “What’s your name?”

  Ruth looked askance at him. “What?”

  “Tell me,” Elias insisted. “Your name.”

  “Ruth. Ruth Felton.”

  “Elias Dunn,” he whispered. “My friend’s name is Morgan. He came to the tavern with me. I don’t know what they did with him.” He couldn’t believe that the highwaymen might have dragged Morgan out of the tavern and executed him in the woods. He hoped to God that Ruth and the lad were wrong. “What about him? Can you trust him – the young lad?”

  “I – we - have to,” Ruth whispered. “He has been working with them, but he didn’t want to get involved with murdering the Star Elite.”

  Elias nodded, but couldn’t see the stable block from where they were standing. “We can’t run the risk that he has gone to tell them we have escaped.” Elias glanced around the woods. “We have to keep moving. Whoever fired that gun is still out here with us.”

  “It doesn’t matter where we go, we are going to leave a trail for them, aren’t we?” Ruth moaned.

  “We have to get out onto a road, or somewhere that has been used throughout the day by others. That way, our footsteps will blend in with everyone else’s and they won’t be able to track us as easily,” Elias warned.

  “But then we will be out on the street and they will know where we are and what you look like,” Ruth argued. She knew that the man had been drugged and wasn’t thinking clearly but it was a nonsensical suggestion even to her.

  “There are no horses in the yard,” Mark announced when he returned moments later. “Rointon and the gang have left. The other patrons are leaving now that the meeting is over.”

  “It isn’t operating as a tavern, is it?” Elias asked. “It is just made to look like that so the people who are helping the highwaymen can meet up.”

  Mark nodded slowly. “When the old inn keeper was arrested, Rointon struggled to find someone who knew what they were doing and could open the place up for him again. The locals know to stay away from the place because of its association with the highwaymen. Anyone who does mistakenly venture in there for an ale or two are soon warned to leave.”

  “We were told about the highwaymen being here tonight by someone who wanted us to visit the place and be trapped in there by them.” It wasn’t really a question. Elias knew that the information Al had been given had come from a local, and he suspected that local had been sitting in the tavern tonight. “Jesus, everyone in the bloody village must be involved.”

  “They don’t all come from this village,” Mark warned. “They come from other villages for miles around, including town. They are mostly criminals. Others are just men who want to make a bit of easy money. They don’t hold up carriages and kill people but aren’t averse to helping Rointon smuggle the stolen goods out of the county.”

  “Damn,” Elias cursed in disgust. “I don’t really care about the intricacies of the investigation right now. I just want to find Morgan. I need to know if he is still alive.” He dreaded the moment that someone had to sit Lucy down and tell her that Morgan had been murdered in cold blood by the highwaymen. Lucy had already lost her parents to the murderous highwaymen. It seemed like a cruel twist of fate that she should
lose the man she loved to them too. “He has to be alive.”

  “How do we find him?” Mark asked.

  “Do you know where they would take him? If they wanted to bring him out here to kill him, where would they take him?” Elias pressed.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t around to see which way they went,” Mark whispered.

  “We could follow one of these trails,” Ruth suggested. “But we don’t know if someone will be heading toward us, who made the trail, or where it is going to take us. We don’t want to run across the killer out here.” Ruth shrugged when Elias turned beseeching eyes on her. “Look, the best thing we can do is get you away from here and then come back and find him. We can’t get the two of you to safety together anyway. We have to get you safe first, and then can come back and try to find your friend.”

  If she was honest, Ruth hadn’t stopped to think about what she was going to do with the men once she had gotten them free. She had just assumed that they would want to and be able to return to their colleagues - other Star Elite investigators would know what to do.

  “You are going to have to help me get back to the safe house,” Elias informed them. “It is miles away, though.”

  “We are going to freeze if we stay out in this weather. You can’t walk far on foot. You will fall asleep first. You need your horse but Rointon has it,” Mark replied.

  “I have to get home,” Ruth argued.

  Maud was going to be worried sick if she wasn’t in the house by dawn. She had no idea what Ruth had planned this evening and was going to be horrified when she learnt of how her niece had spent her night. However, Maud would be even more alarmed if Rointon turned up on the doorstep demanding to see Ruth.

  “You can’t go home,” Elias warned. “Neither of you can go home now. You are going to have to stay with the Star Elite.”

  Mark didn’t object because he knew that staying with the Star Elite was better than being executed like the man’s friend had been. “Do you think you can catch them?” he asked quietly.

  Elias nodded. “Given what I have seen in that tavern tonight, we will need to call in as many Star Elite reinforcements as we can muster. I don’t give a damn if we have to arrest the whole damned county, the men responsible for this have to go to gaol or die trying to keep their freedom.”

  His tone warned Ruth that Elias that he meant every word.

  “What do we do?” Mark pressed.

  Elias struggled to think. He wanted to clutch his hair and wail out his grief. It was galling that he had been so lapse in his judgement and had misread the situation in the tavern so badly. Because he had, Morgan had lost his life. “I need to find him.”

  There was an air of vulnerability about the man’s statement that made Ruth want to cry. She stepped closer to him and placed a gentle hand on his arm.

  “Where do we take him?” Mark whispered with a nod at Elias.

  Ruth studied the ground they were walking on. “They will try to follow the trail, right?”

  Mark nodded.

  “So, let’s make more trails.” She looked at Elias. “Do you think you can stay here by yourself without falling over?”

  “What are you going to do?” Elias frowned.

  “Stomp around here in as many different directions as we can. If we leave one trail for them to follow, they will find it easy to follow us. We may as well stay where we are and wait for them to catch up. But if we make as much of a mess of this smooth snow as we can, they won’t have any clue which way we have gone. We can then take a random route to get out of here.”

  “Do you have somewhere we can go?” Mark pressed.

  “Yes, but we are going to have to walk a random route to get there. Hopefully, by walking around we can also search the area for your friend,” Ruth muttered. She lifted the gun and held it out to Elias, eager to be rid of it. “All you have to do is keep watch and make sure that nobody sneaks up on us.”

  Mark grinned and watched Elias shake his head in amazement. Without saying a word, Elias took the gun off her. Before Ruth could turn away, he caught her wrist. “Thank you. You are a very clever lady. Do you know that?”

  Ruth rolled her eyes and for once was glad that it was dark and he couldn’t see her blushes. Without saying a word, she and Mark set off and began to trudge through the woods in random directions. Once or twice, Ruth lost her bearings and had to walk around randomly until she found a path again. Eventually, she found her way back to Elias, but found him alone.

  “Is there any sign of him?” Elias asked although knew the answer seeing as she was all alone.

  Ruth shook her head. “Let’s move you a little further away from the tavern, shall we?” Without saying a word, she wedged her shoulder under his arm and helped Elias stagger deeper into the woods. They stayed on the trails she had already made until they eventually reached untouched snow. “Wait here.”

  “Where is the lad?” Elias asked.

  As if summoned from the afterlife, Mark appeared beside them as silent as a wraith. His face was grim as he looked at Elias almost solemnly. Elias cocked his gun.

  “Ruth,” Mark muttered, throwing Elias one last look before he turned away.

  “Stay here,” Ruth ordered.

  “I am coming,” Elias bit out.

  “You don’t know where you are going,” Ruth argued. “We have both been born in this area and know these woods well. Stay here.” Ruth then followed Mark through the trees. “Well?”

  Mark silently pointed to a group of men who were huddled together in the corner of a field bordering a road about half a mile away.

  “Do you think they are waiting for a carriage?” she whispered.

  “I don’t doubt it. Do you see the big, burly man? That’s Archie Hammond, the one who kills the victims,” Mark murmured. “He has been out here, Ruth. It was him who probably killed Elias’s friend.”

  “Do you see Bob?” Ruth asked, peering at the group of men with a suspicious squint. They were too far away for her to identify any of them, though. It didn’t help that they were all wearing hats and cloaks.

  Mark looked sad when he nodded. “He is the one who is still on the horse.”

  Ruth placed her hand on his shoulder in silent comfort. “You did the right thing tonight. The Star Elite won’t forget that you saved one of them.”

  “It should have been two, though, shouldn’t it?” Mark countered. “The other one shouldn’t have died.”

  “We couldn’t save them both, Mark,” Ruth whispered. “We can’t be in two places at once. There was nothing we could do.” Despite her best efforts not to, Ruth felt a tear trickle slowly down her cheek. She kept her face averted so Mark didn’t see her distress. “I too feel like I have failed. I have failed them both.”

  “No, you haven’t,” Elias growled from behind them. “Neither of you have. What you did tonight was brave. Stupid, yes, but brave.”

  Mark grinned and looked over his shoulder at the man from the Star Elite. “You really are one of them, aren’t you?”

  Elias nodded. “So was my friend.”

  “We have to find him,” Ruth muttered. She had no idea if it was the cold, or exhaustion, or sheer gut-wrenching determination that made her forget all about her fears, but it squared her shoulders. She resolved right there and then to find the missing investigator. “If they are down there, they aren’t concerned about your friend. Why?”

  Mark looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “If they know he is dead, they would be looking at delivering his body to the Star Elite’s safe house, or base, or whatever you want to call it,” Ruth reasoned.

  Elias stepped closer but didn’t interrupt. He was intrigued. His heart began to pound.

  “The fact that Rointon has gone straight back out to rob another carriage suggests to me that he doesn’t have an advantage he can hold over the Star Elite-”

  “Morgan is dead,” Elias whispered. “We heard the gunshot.”

  “No, she is right,” Mark argue
d, looking excited. “If Rointon had your friend’s body, he would be parading it around the village. He wanted to prove his criminality to the Star Elite, and the village, which is why he wanted you killed in the tavern. Your death was supposed to be a warning to the rest of the gang members not to defy or betray him.”

  “Your friend has to be alive then,” Ruth muttered. She met Mark’s direct look. Together, they turned to study the woods behind them. It was large, but searchable.

  “They are busy,” Mark shrugged. “And we do need to make plenty of tracks.”

  “I’ll stay and keep an eye on that lot,” Elias offered, watching the men who were waiting for a carriage. He had no intention of watching them not just stop a carriage but murder its occupants. However, he had no idea yet what he was going to do to stop the robbery in a way that wouldn’t draw the attention of every killer in the gang. While he contemplated what to do, he temporarily forgot about Ruth and Mark.

  Ruth studied Elias for a moment but decided to leave him to his thoughts. He looked cold, aloof, fierce even, and someone she didn’t want to venture anywhere near right now.

  “Come on. Let’s go and see if we can find him,” Mark suggested.

  With one last worried look at Elias, Ruth followed Mark into the woods and began to create fresh trails while praying that they would eventually find the missing investigator – and that he would still be alive when they did.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Stay right where you are.”

  Ruth immediately did as she was told when she heard that low growl. She still found the courage to turn around and look for the voice’s owner. At first, she couldn’t see him. It was the dark spots in the snow that led her to the man lying slumped against the base of an outcropping of rocks. Ruth knew the instant that she saw him who it was. “M-Morgan?” She was so relieved she began to physically tremble.

  Morgan scowled.

  “Elias is looking for you,” Ruth continued gently. “Are you Morgan?” She stepped closer still even though the man still had his gun trained on her. When he didn’t shoot her, she stepped even closer.