He ducked his head back in the room. “Do what they ask, Catriona. Give them the money.” He raised his voice. “¡Rápidamente!”
The door closed and she moved straight to the window. Open. And the gabled roofline did not seem too treacherous.
The window slammed shut, crushing her fingers.
She cried out and tried to jerk her hand out from under the frame. “Forgive my intrusion, señorita, but I must insist you stay.” A male voice—calm and cruel—exhaled the words on her neck. He reached around her and lifted the window sash an inch.
She jerked her hand back.
Cate turned to face a devil’s smile—as cold as ice, with dark eyes that peered out from under angled brows. Handsome in that Spaniard sort of way. He jerked her close and pressed his lower anatomy against her. “The money, Catriona, or I’m afraid you will never see your brother alive again.”
“Let me go.” She pushed against his chest to wrench herself away. Without warning, he raised his hands and let go. He leaned back against her only means of escape and smiled.
She scurried away from the fearsome, predatory man. A mouse let loose so the cat could play. “Who are you?”
* * *
“PECKER’S UP, ROGER.” Finn gave his skeleton key a half turn and a good push. He heard the clink of the inside key as it fell on the floor. He peered through the door lock to the flat beyond. Predictably seedy. He slipped the key back in the lock, lined up the levers, and . . .
The door swung open.
A narrow, unmade bed filled most of the room. Finn entered the Spartan flat and picked up a fallen wine bottle. He set the empty back on a side table. No one home. He held his hand over a pile of gray ashes in a grotty tin ashtray. Warm.
A flap of a dingy curtain led Finn to an open window and a very impressive view of the bay. There was also a near-unobstructed view of the streets below. A handy feature for the room of an ace confidence man and professional informer. Finn scanned the foot and carriage traffic in both directions. Nothing. He checked his watch. Bollocks. Sergeant MacGregor would likely arrive in the early evening, and he must arrange for a stable.
He also needed to find Cate. He’d already skulked around her room at the hotel. He’d lifted the Ne Dérangez Pas sign off the door and entered the ransacked bedchamber. He could not be certain, but from the amount of clothes and toilet items in her portmanteau, she hadn’t done much unpacking.
“Well, well, if it isn’t my old friend, Hugh Curzon—or is it Phineas Gunn this time?”
“Dé Riquet.” A grin tugged at his mouth before he turned around. “Just remember it’s Hugh Curzon to the French authorities.” Finn looked the smarmy, thimble-fingered informer up and down. “You’re looking . . . tattered, as usual.”
“Sorry I didn’t greet you at the door, but I like to have a look at my intruders before chatting it up.” The wily rat pulled a chair over to the table. “I understand you recently flew into town.”
Finn’s eyes narrowed. “Word travels fast in La Rochelle.”
“I have several reliable songbirds on the payroll.” The reed-thin chap lifted a wine bottle from his coat and popped the cork.
“Excellent news. I’m counting on you to tell me where to find—”
Dé Riquet held up his hand. “Wait. Let me guess.” The devilish runt took down two dusty glasses from a small shelf. “I’ve an idea you might be after a stately beauty—part English lass, part . . . señorita.” Dé Riquet tilted the bottle.
Finn covered his glass with his hand. “Allow me.” He registered an uptick in pulse rate as he pulled out a pocket square. “Let’s just say Miss Catriona de Dovia Willoughby is wanted by the Crown for . . .” No sense jacking up the man’s price. Finn wiped the layer of grime off his glass. “Questioning.”
He picked up the bottle and read the label. “Château Lascombes. I take it business is brisk.” He was counting on Dé Riquet to have ties to the port town’s baser elements. Cardsharps. Swindlers. Shysters of every sort. And, of course, anarchists. He laid a ten-pound note on the table. “Where is she?”
The homely little guttersnipe grinned. “I believe Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service can afford better than a tenner, monsieur.” The homunculus drummed tinny fingers on the table.
He slapped down another ten and glared. “Not another sou until I get a location.”
“There’s an old cooperage on the south side of town, behind the dry docks.”
Finn leaned forward. “She’s with the anarchists then—Los Tigres.”
“A man sought me out last week, no name, Spaniard by accent. I was to be the go-between. Pick up wires addressed to Alonso Rizal and contact the young lady when she arrived in town. They wanted assurances she wasn’t followed.”
Dé Riquet showed signs of a recent scuffle. “Might those cuts over your eye and those bruises be related, by any chance?”
The slight man shrugged. “I asked for more money. Miss Willoughby happened by the scuffle—I managed to get away. I assume the Spanish thugs saw their opportunity and hauled her off.”
Finn stared. Hauled her off. Odd choice of words. “She didn’t go willingly?”
Dé Riquet tossed up his hands. “Knocked out in the fray, possibly. One of the larger brutes carried her over his shoulder. They took the backstreets back to the docks.”
“Take me to her.” He did not miss the wary look. “Help me get Cate out of La Rochelle and I’ll double that.”
“Aiding and abetting.” The beady-eyed runt tipped his chair back. “Requires a bit of strategic collaboration. All well and good, but the breaking and entering . . .” He shook his head. “Not really my forte. Risking my neck will cost you one hundred English pounds.”
Finn kept a growl in check and passed over the banknotes. If Los Tigres failed to do so, he would personally wring the greedy little monster’s neck when this was over. “Half now, the other half—when I recover the lady.”
* * *
CATE UNFASTENED HER traveling bustle and set it down on a folded pile of her clothes. She purposefully paid no mind to the apparatus, handling the padded mound stuffed with cash as if it weighed next to nothing.
Stripped down to her corset, camisole, and pantalets, she placed her hands on her hips and exhaled audibly. “I do hope this is the end of it.” Tawny mounds nearly popped out of the top of her corset. “How on earth could thirty thousand pounds be hidden in this corset? Quite impossible, wouldn’t you say?”
“Unless we missed something.”
She glared at the new man in command. With Eduardo gone or kidnapped, what was left of Los Tigres appeared to be led by this man, Alonso. He stared—quite uncomfortably so for Cate. And this very moment he focused on the unmentionables still on her person.
Cate wasn’t about to remove another stitch. “I’d like to dress now.” He stepped in front of her clothes and continued his close inspection. Warily, she watched him out of the corner of her eye as he circled. She supposed the smart one had arrived, or was he just the most arrogant? He had dragged her back into the main office and ordered her to disrobe. Strangely humiliating for her—and arousing for him. A furtive glance about the room revealed men who tried not to ogle, but couldn’t help themselves.
Cate bit into her lower lip. At least these anarchists weren’t common thugs. She hoped. Eduardo had referred to the men as brothers who fought for a cause greater than themselves, who would readily die for their ideals.
But they were still men.
“Catriona.” He shook his head and clucked. “You dress in a flimsy costume and bare your legs to gentlemen every night, do you not?” He wasn’t quite as attractive when he smirked. Not handsome in the way Finn was—rugged and chiseled out of a great stone, but with lovely soft brown eyes and a sensuous mouth.
Cate ignored the tremble in her knees and stood her ground. Searching the faces of the men surrounding her, she appealed to their sense of loyalty. “Eduardo called you his brothers. And you allow this man, this new de facto leader, to
treat me with such disrespect?” She met every stare until each man lowered his eyes.
Abruptly, Alonso lunged closer. “The ransom, Catriona. The sooner you hand it over, the sooner we free Eduardo.”
Stunned, momentarily, she blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“I cannot deliver your brother to you if he is in prison.”
* * *
FINN STUDIED THE ramshackle old factory site. An abandoned cooperage with several outbuildings and a wharf to one end of the yard. Not a soul to be seen. Nothing. A few tall weeds rustled in the wind. He moved into the shadow of a storage shed and waved Dé Riquet up to join him. “A quick bit of mapping, if you would.”
The wiry character squinted across the yard. “There’s an upstairs office in the main building.”
“Guards?”
Dé Riquet nodded. “One at the door and one at the base of the stairs.”
Finn patted down his coat and retrieved his backup—the jeweler’s revolver. He checked the cylinder—empty. “Since you appear to invite physical danger wherever you go.” He offered, and Dé Riquet accepted, the pistol.
Finn dug in his pocket for bullets. “Six shots. Don’t waste them.” Brass casings clinked against metal digits as Dé Riquet loaded the gun. “I don’t mind so much, helping the young lady.” The male waif sniffed. “Most lovelies pay me no mind. Miss Willoughby asked after my fingers. Even ran her hand over my thimbles.”
He regarded the runt. “You knock. I’ll take care of the rest.” Finn crossed the yard and flattened himself against one side of the entrance. Dé Riquet approached the door and knocked. The expert confidence man pretended to search for the wire, drawing the guard farther outside. “Merde. Where did it go . . .?”
Finn struck the lookout with the butt of his gun and dragged the limp body behind a rain barrel. “Shoot anyone coming or going.” Finn turned toward the door. “With the exception of Miss Willoughby or myself.”
Dé Riquet nodded toward the blackness inside. “Mind your back.”
Finn slipped inside a vast, dimly lit space and tucked himself into a dark niche. Dingy skylights cast patches of light on the shop floor and the office above. There—a flicker of movement in the shadows, under the open staircase. A figure slid out from under the steps. “Who goes there?” the man called.
The guard stared into the darkness, then turned away. Silently, Finn edged out of his dim corner and struck the man on the back of the head. The figure spun into his pistol, and Finn brought him down with a second blow to the skull.
Finn caught flying coattails and eased the unconscious guard to the floor silently. A mumble of voices drifted down from the rooms above. Placing one foot behind the other, he backed away from the stairs. A crisscross of heavy beams and rafters disappeared above the second-story partitions. Battered walls ended short of the ceiling at the roof trusses. Excellent. If he could find a way up, he’d have a bird’s-eye view of the goings-on.
He found a coil of hemp and strung the rope over a beam. Hand over fist, he pulled himself into the rafters and through a maze of angled braces. He settled in just above the office space. “Go to hell—bastardo asqueroso. ¡Cerdo repugnante!”
The Spanish profanity provoked a grin. He only knew one woman with a mouth like that.
Chapter Sixteen
“I no longer trust any of you.” Cate blew a lock of hair off her face and narrowed her glare on Alonso. “Least of all this—leader of yours. Él es un matón y un usurpador.”
She saw the slap coming, but it stunned nevertheless. Her cheek blazed with heat as her head rocked back onto her shoulders. Her eyes watered and everything blurred. She blinked back tears.
She blinked again at the transverse beams, angled struts—and a man crouched in the rafters.
A familiar face peered down at her. The imposing figure dressed in long coat and slouch hat rose slowly—pistol in one hand, shotgun in the other. He winked at her.
She quickly lowered her eyes. Her heart beat erratically. Blood throbbed through her body, rivaling the heat on her cheek. She bit her lip so she might stop herself from crying out for joy. Alonso circled behind her, his eyes darting about.
He sensed something.
A blast of gunfire reverberated through the room. A few faces turned upward, most ducked for cover. Finn ran along an open beam, unloading his pistol on the men below. Bodies dropped to the ground as bullets ricocheted through the room.
The large, magnificent intruder leaped off the heavy timber and landed on a worktable. The second blast of shotgun pellets scattered the remaining men in all directions.
Seeing her chance, Cate inched toward her clothes and reached for the bustle. “Going somewhere?” Alonso pressed her against the wall and grabbed hold of the bulky padding. “Heavy for a bustle.” His eyes darted toward the fracas. “Give it up, Catriona, or you will never see your brother alive again.” He wrenched her arm and yanked the bustle out of her grasp.
Holding her against him, he dragged her toward the exit. Cate caught the leather strap of the bustle with one hand and dug her heels in. Smashing blows and gunshots told her Finn was fighting his way across the room. She caught a glimpse of one or two anarchists sprawled on the floor. Was Finn her rescuer or pursuer? At this moment, frankly, she didn’t care. Emboldened by his nervy assault, she clung hard to the bustle full of banknotes. Alonso spun her around. The back of her head slammed into the doorjamb. “I could use some help over here,” she called out.
Her gaze darted to Finn as he leveled a staggering blow to an attacker. “Be there in a jiff, darling.” A number of bodies were piling up on the floor. Her free hand clung to the molding even as Alonso attempted to pull her out onto the stair landing. Through blurred vision, she saw someone jump Finn from behind.
She had to do something. She let go of the doorjamb and swiped at her abductor’s face. Red lines slashed across his cheek. The sound of a grunt and an awful ripping noise came with his next yank. Cate watched in horror as the strap broke away from the bustle. A gaping tear revealed the stuffing inside. Hundreds of bills. Large denominations.
Alonso tucked the bundle under his arm and grabbed her by the waist. He spoke to the looming shadow over her shoulder. “Keep your distance or I’ll send her down the stairs headfirst.” He started down the stairs.
Finn charged them, gun drawn. “Might I have a word, before she takes the tumble?” The tip of his revolver stopped just short of her nose. “You never mentioned you were leaving town,” he said. Finn cocked the trigger. “We had a date.”
Cate blinked. “We had no such thing.” She shifted against the man who heaved her downward. “Besides, something quite unexpected came up.”
Alonso shoved her into Finn’s arms and vaulted over the stair rail. A scuffle of footsteps could be heard below and a door banged open. Cate looked up into deep, coffee-colored eyes. Fiercely protective eyes. “Aren’t you going to chase after him?”
“Why?” His grip on her tightened. “I’ve got what I came for.”
“But he’s got the money.” She tried wrenching away. Madre de Dios. Out of one man’s grip and into another’s. A shot fired outside.
Finn’s gaze swept from the open entry back to her. “Shall we have a look, darling?” He guided her down the stairs and out the door.
“Pss-st.” The hissing came from the shadows of an outbuilding. Finn grabbed her hand and they jogged across the paved yard. “Over here.”
That voice was familiar. Peering into the shade of the lean-to she recognized the man crouched in the shade. “Dé Riquet?”
The shifty character stepped out of the shadows and fired his pistol.
* * *
THE SOFT CREAK of floorboards and the rustle of clothes nudged Finn awake. He cracked an eye open and blinked. A blurry figure moved about, and gradually came into focus. Miss Willoughby tucked a threadbare shirt into a pair of trousers. He recognized the surroundings. They were in Dé Riquet’s seedy little flat.
The th
robbing ache at the back of his a head reminded Finn he’d been out cold, possibly for some time. Inside his skull, a flash of memory filtered through a battery of drumbeats. Dé Riquet had fired his weapon. At the time, the blow to his head had felt like a gunshot. Double-crossed and dead—the last thought that entered his mind before the fading of the light. He inhaled a gulp of air. Perhaps, there might have been one other brooding reverie . . .
Finn raised both eyelids and watched his very last reflection on life place a handgun on the table. He knew the pistol by sight: his old service revolver. Cate retrieved a box of bullets from his travel bag.
Instinctively he twitched, and discovered that he was tied down. Both hands and feet were strapped to the bedposts. The tips of his fingers tingled, a precursor to an attack of nerves—or did the bindings cut off his blood flow? Racing thoughts caused his pulse to elevate, another indicator of Soldier’s Heart.
He also happened to be naked.
Finn raised his head enough to check for injuries. No bullet holes. A few bruises and scrapes. A thin red line slashed the side of his torso. The tip of an anarchist’s knife must have caught him. And there was something else, an instant and impressive cockstand.
Rather stimulating circumstances, actually. He lowered his head and listened to the metallic clink of bullets and the spin and snap of the loaded cylinder. “You cannot fool me, Phineas Gunn—you are quite awake. I’ve heard neither a snore nor ragged breath from you in several minutes.”
“You’re sure it was the lack of a snore that gave me away?” He opened his eyes.
A side of her mouth ticked upward. He very much liked her mouth. It was well defined and expressive. The ends often quirked up and down with her mood, and the peak of her upper lip was so wonderfully . . . plump.
She didn’t return his gaze, though she appeared to be assessing his body rather closely. Her inspection descended past his navel, stopped, and lingered.
“Miss me, Cate?” A fresh supply of blood surged into his already engorged penis. Her eyes grew wider before they snapped up to meet his.
A Private Duel with Agent Gunn (The Gentlemen of Scotland Yard) Page 15
