A Talent for Trickery

by Alissa Johnson

  “Aye.”

  As Gabriel headed around back, Owen and Samuel stole through the trees to reach the corner of the house, just out of sight of the front guard.

  He was a big man, and a restless one, lumbering back and forth along the front of the building. He went from one corner to the other, coming within just a few feet of Owen and Samuel before turning back again. In his right hand, he carried a holy water sprinkler—a large club spiked with nails. One hit and a body bled from half a dozen holes.

  Owen reached for his gun, intending to threaten the man into submission, but he paused when Samuel sent him a pleading look.

  Let me.

  Owen considered it and then put his gun away.

  It wouldn’t hurt to have the guard put out of commission without a fuss.

  The next time the guard reached their side of the house, Samuel stepped out from around the corner. Shock flashed across the guard’s broad features a split second before he began to lift his weapon. Samuel simply grabbed him by the lapels, jerked him forward, and then delivered a brutal head butt that sent the man crumpling to the ground like a sack of flour.

  “Feel better?” Owen whispered, pulling out a length of rope.

  “A bit.”

  They left the man bound and gagged in the bushes and then slipped through a side door. Inside, the house was silent but for the shuffling of footsteps upstairs. Most of the furniture was draped in sheets and covered in a fine layer of dust.

  They searched the downstairs quickly and efficiently. When every room was cleared, Samuel stepped back into the shadows at the base of the stairs to assume his position as rear guard. The last thing they needed was to be surprised by a new arrival.

  Owen crept up the back steps as Peter’s muffled voice floated down the hall. Relief flooded him. It took everything he had not to rush toward the sound. He willed his body to be calm, his mind clear and focused. Every decision, every move, had to be careful and deliberate. For Peter’s sake, there could be no mistakes.

  He checked the upstairs quickly and then stood outside the only occupied room and listened, counting voices and footsteps. The plan was to distract and ambush, and he would provide the distraction. He would make himself a target. But it was always nice to know how many armed individuals would be aiming in one’s direction before one walked through the door.

  There were at least two other men in the room with Peter.

  Could be worse, Owen thought, and he took a steadying breath. Gun in hand, he pushed through the door and quickly took stock of his surroundings—a small bedroom, plenty of light, limited furniture. And standing near the balcony doors behind Peter was not Lord Brock as expected but the young Lord Strale. Next to him was another large guard.

  All three occupants jumped at the intrusion. The guard pulled a large blade from under his coat. Strale positioned himself squarely behind Peter, lifted a gun already in his hand, and held it to the boy’s head. “Stay where you are.” He held back his man with a subtle gesture. “Everyone stay where you are.”

  Owen sized up his opponents. Strale wasn’t tall—his blond head barely topped Peter’s—but he was large boned, and years of excess had given him a wide build that left him exposed on either side of his makeshift shield. A sallow countenance and furtive, bloodshot eyes gave credence to the rumor of an opium habit. He was sneering, appearing more amused than afraid at the sudden turn of events. But the confident demeanor was an act. The hand holding the gun trembled, and there was a visible twitch in his left eye. This was a man hanging on to sanity by a thread and doing a poor job of hiding it.

  His silent companion looked quick, mean, and in complete possession of his wits. Tall and lean, with a thin scar down his left cheek, he had the hollow-eyed stare of a man who had long ago unburdened himself of a conscience.

  “I’m not moving, Strale,” Owen replied calmly. “Are you injured, Peter?”

  The young man shook his head. His face was pale, his clothes showed the wear of a long, hard ride, and he was bound at the hands and feet, but he looked otherwise uninjured.

  “Peter, is it?” Strale asked with great interest. “Do you know, he wouldn’t say. He’s Walker’s boy, isn’t he? I thought perhaps a grandson or nephew. But, no.” He leaned forward just a hair and snarled in Peter’s ear. “You’ve your father’s look about you.” His lip curled in disgust. “And his stench.”

  “Why don’t you let go of the boy?” Owen suggested. “Let us settle this as gentlemen.”

  Strale straightened again and cocked his head. “You want the boy? I want Will Walker’s journals.”

  “I have them.” Owen reached inside his coat and pulled out a leather journal. “But it’s the diamonds you really want, isn’t it?”

  The eye twitch intensified. “You found them?”

  “Maybe. You’ll never know if you shoot me or Peter.”

  Strale seemed to consider the possibility and then shook his head. “You don’t know where they are,” he decided, but he didn’t move the gun. Clearly, he wasn’t ready to completely dismiss the idea that Owen had information he might need. “Slide the journal across the floor.”

  “Let Peter go.”

  “The journal first.”

  Owen slipped the book back into his pocket. “It would appear we are at an impasse.”

  Strale jerked his chin at the guard. “Take it off him.”

  Owen raised his own gun and leveled it at the second man. “I don’t think so.”

  “If you shoot him,” Strale warned with mock regret, “I’ll be forced to shoot the boy.”

  “Then you won’t get your diamonds.”

  “Yes, my diamonds. They are my diamonds,” Strale replied impatiently, as if explaining something to a dim-witted child. “You’ve no claim to them. So, why don’t you give me what’s mine, and in exchange, I’ll not put a bullet hole through what’s yours, and there is an end to the matter.”

  “They are yours,” Owen agreed easily, as if they were holding a perfectly polite, perfectly ordinary conversation. He needed to keep that conversation going, find a way to pull the man away from Peter, and give Gabriel time to reach the balcony. “Which leads me to wonder why you went to such lengths to steal them eight years ago. Debt, was it?”

  “I can’t see how that’s any of your concern. But yes.” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “If you must know, it was debt.”

  And just like that, the very thin hope Owen had retained that he might be able to safely exchange Peter for the journals was gone. Strale was already in over his head. He wouldn’t admit to the crime of his stepmother’s kidnapping if he had any intention of leaving his enemies alive to tell the tale.

  “Didn’t your father provide for you?” he asked. “By all accounts, he was a generous man.”

  Owen wasn’t aware of a single account that marked the late Lord Strale as either generous or miserly, but the lie succeeded in further loosening Strale’s tongue.

  “Generous?” Strale forced out a bark of laughter. “Miserly goat gave me a thousand pounds a year.” He used his free hand to smooth the front of his coat with dramatic flair. “And there are appearances to maintain.”

  “So you hired Walker to steal the diamonds.”

  “I hired Gage. He sent me Walker and his daughter. They could blend in at the ball.”

  “Gage betrayed you. He made a fool of you.”

  Strale snorted and, as Owen suspected, denied the insult. “Gage did as he was told.”

  “It was your idea to kidnap your stepmother?”

  “I could get more for her than I could the diamonds,” he replied without a hint of shame. “Even more for both.”

  “Didn’t work out quite as you had hoped, though, did it?”

  The twitch returned as Strale became more agitated. “Paste,” he spat, and he snarled against Peter’s cheek. “Your whoreson of
a father left me with paste.”

  “And no one noticed? All these years, and no one but you knew the diamonds were fakes?”

  Strale said nothing, but his face flushed with the heat of old anger and humiliation.

  “Ah.” Owen drew the word out, just a little. “Your father figured it out. Because it was you who issued the invitations to the ball. You who promised Lady Strale was being cared for that night. What did he do when he discovered his son was a common thief and kidnapper? Not a proud moment for any father.”

  The confident facade slipped a little further, and Strale finally turned the gun on Owen. “Shut up.”

  “He paid your debts, didn’t he? Then he put the paste jewels away for good, so no one else would know what you’d done. Just the two of you. I wager he wielded that knife often and well.”

  No doubt, he’d used that knife to keep his son in line. Strale hadn’t been imprisoned nor pushed to desperate measures after years of failing to find the Walkers. He’d come for the diamonds now because, for the first time in years, he no longer had a mistrustful and powerful father watching over him like a hawk.

  Eight years, Owen thought. Eight years of being trapped under the thumb of a father he detested. And all because he’d been outsmarted by Will Walker, a common man. A lowly criminal.

  That was a long time for humiliation and bitterness to fester. Plenty of time for it to grow into something sinister, something deadly. The recent opium habit had likely pushed him over the edge.

  “Did you kill him?” Owen asked. “The way you killed Mrs. Popple?”

  Strale’s angry expression softened, and his mouth curved into a sly smile. “My father died in his sleep. Everyone knows that. He simply…stopped breathing.”

  “A pillow to the face will do that.”

  “Well”—Strale returned his aim to Peter and pointedly tapped the muzzle of the gun against the boy’s head—“one does grow weary of waiting.”

  Owen tensed as Peter squeezed his eyes shut. He had to divert Strale’s attention, keep him focused on something other than his captive. And he needed to push him into making a mistake. But it was a fine line between antagonizing a madman into switching targets and antagonizing a madman into shooting.

  “And Mrs. Popple? Did you grow weary of her?”

  “No, not at all,” Strale drawled with affected feeling. “Lovely woman, our Mrs. Popple. Poor dear fell and hit her head… I’m not a monster,” he offered almost as an afterthought, and then he proceeded to wag the gun back and forth as if it was an extension of his hand. “I don’t go about murdering people willy-nilly.”

  “You strangled her.”

  “Only a little. I wanted answers. She knew where to find the Walkers. And the Walkers knew where to find the journals.”

  Only a little. Christ. “She didn’t know.”

  “No? Ah, well, you did.” Strale’s face lit with giddy humor. “Oh, Walker did like bragging to the son of a duke. He was ever so eager to tell me how he was keeping Scotland Yard out of our hair. Pretending to help Detective Inspector Renderwell with those tricky ciphers. That’s how I knew my letters—after I caught your attention—would force you to lead me to Will Walker’s journals. They were written in a cipher of his own making, with my own clever twist, of course—”

  Strale and his man both flinched and whipped their heads around at the sound of the balcony doors lightly rattling.

  Gabriel. Finally.

  Strale’s gaze flew back to Owen. “Your men, I suppose?” He jerked his chin at the quiet man. “Get rid of them.”

  The guard adjusted his grip on his blade as he strode to the balcony and pushed open the doors.

  Owen shifted, ready to charge when Gabriel came rushing inside.

  But only the wind blew in.

  The guard stepped outside, looked about, and stepped back in again. “Nothing there.”

  Owen swore silently and viciously. Gabriel must have run into trouble, been delayed somehow. A surprise ambush was no longer possible. With the balcony doors left cracked open, there was no way for Gabriel to sneak up without being heard. He’d have to climb up the damned tree.

  Strale turned suspicious eyes on Owen. “You came without your men?”

  “You shot one of my men.”

  “That wasn’t me. Where is the other one? Sir Gabriel.”

  “I couldn’t leave two women and a wounded man unguarded, could I? Not with your man still lurking in the woods.”

  “Slippery fellow, isn’t he?” Strale teased. “Extraordinarily useful chap.”

  “Did you use him to kill Walker and pin the murder on Gage?” Owen asked. He had to keep stalling, keep pushing. “Or did you take care of the matter yourself?”

  “Regrettably, it was Gage who had the pleasure of pulling the trigger. Shot Walker in the back as he ran.” His eyes danced with unholy glee. “I heard the bastard made it four blocks carrying the duchess before he fell.”

  “Four and a half. How did he get in?”

  For the first time, Strale laughed with real humor. The unnatural sound sent a chill down Owen’s back. “The front door,” Strale chortled. “Idiot talked his way in the front door. He said he’d hidden the diamonds. Left their location in an encrypted letter and left the letter with someone he could trust. If we let the duchess go, he’d send us the letter.”

  “You didn’t like the deal?”

  “I agreed to it. Gage did as well, until Walker made it to the street, and then he changed his mind.”

  Gage hadn’t changed his mind. It had been a lesson and a message. No one crossed Horatio Gage. “He didn’t expect Walker to keep moving.”

  “I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t care. My only regret is that I didn’t follow Walker and watch him bleed to death on the sidewalk like a dog. Happily, I can still relive the experience through his son.” He turned the gun on Owen once more. “The journals. Now. Or I kill you first and let Jim here pluck the journals from your corpse.”

  “Grown weary of me, have you?”

  “Oh, quite.”

  They were out of time. Talking had nudged Strale a little closer to losing control—remembering Walker’s betrayal and his father’s crushing dominance had brought him to the brink. But he wasn’t quite where Owen needed him. He needed one more push. He needed Strale to make just one mistake. And he needed Gabriel to be in position.

  “Well, as I said, it’s not the journals you want.” He pulled a single diamond earring from his pocket and held it up. “It’s the diamonds.”

  Strale’s eyes grew as round as saucers. The twitch grew into a full-blown spasm, and his cheeks turned scarlet as he gazed at the glittering diamonds with wild desire. And no small amount of loathing.

  They weren’t just jewels to him, Owen thought. They were the symbol of betrayal. A reminder of his humiliation. He hated them every bit as much as he craved them.

  “You do have them.” Strale licked his lips. “You found them.”

  “I found them. I have some of them with me. If you want to know where to find the rest, you’ll let Peter go.”

  “Give me your knife,” Strale snapped at Jim. “Bring it to me!” He snatched the blade out of Jim’s hand and shoved the gun at him. “Now,” he barked at Owen, and he brought the point of the blade to Peter’s ear. “You give me what you have, or I start giving you the boy in bits and pieces.”

  And there it was. The mistake. No man in his right mind traded a gun for a knife.

  “All right.” Owen held up both hands. “All right. You can have them”

  “See what he has,” Strale ordered Jim. “Search him. I have waited years for this. Years.” He tapped the flat of the blade against Peter’s cheek. “Your father loses after all.”

  Jim aimed his gun at Owen. “Gun on the floor. Kick it ’ere.”

  Owen crouched, set down his gun, a
nd then rose smoothly and kicked the weapon across the room. It slid across the floor and under the bed, out of his opponent’s reach.

  “No matter to me,” Jim commented with a shrug. “What I need two for? Keep your ’ands where I can see ’em.” He made a prompting motion with his left hand as he approached. “Give me the bauble, then.”

  Owen held up the earring as Jim stepped closer.

  It was now or never.

  The moment Jim reached for the piece of jewelry, Owen dropped it, caught the man by the wrist, and yanked him forward. He sidestepped Jim’s lurching form, threw a kidney punch to his exposed back, and then knocked Jim’s legs out from under him with a hard kick to the back of the knee. Jim twisted as he fell, bringing the gun around, but Owen caught his wrist again and twisted with enough force to break bone. The man relinquished the weapon with a howl of pain. The noise blended with the sound of Samuel charging down the hall and Strale’s bellow of fury.

  “No! Stop it! Stop!”

  Jim leaped back to his feet and swung wide with his good arm. Owen dodged, balled his fist, and sent him to the ground again just as Samuel stepped inside.

  Leaving Samuel to keep Jim on the floor, he turned his attention to Strale.

  “Stop!” Strale pressed the knife to Peter’s throat. “Stop or I kill the boy!”

  Owen aimed the gun at Strale, but he didn’t have a clear shot and couldn’t risk hitting Peter. “Let him go, Strale. You’re surrounded. Your men can’t help you, and your mounts are gone. There’s no way out of this.”

  “No. No. You think I’ll let a Walker have the diamonds again?”

  “The diamonds will be returned to your family.”

  “He still wins,” Strale all but bellowed. “If I lose, he wins. You think I’ll let that happen again?”

  He didn’t have a choice. All he had was a knife. Even if he managed to make it out of the house using Peter as a shield, there was nowhere for him to go, no way for him to escape the area. He had lost, and he knew it. Owen saw the moment Strale accepted it. Accepted that he had been bested. A dark and terrifying resolve settled over his features.