Forged by Desire
Page 14

After all, what were the lives of two young girls compared to the Echelon’s needs?
She followed Byrnes, gaze locking directly on the spot where they’d found the bodies. His words finally got the better of her. “What do you mean he’s been much changed since the opera?”
“You haven’t noticed?”
“No.” Her cheeks grew hotter. “Yes. I don’t know—”
Crouching low, Byrnes examined the bloodstain on the floor. It had long since leached into the timber floorboards. “I think that you finally played your hand.”
Perry could barely breathe through the sudden scorching embarrassment that bit into her. If Byrnes had guessed the truth of her feelings, then she would never live it down. “My hand? What the devil do you mean?”
Byrnes held up a hand. His brows drew together. “Frankly I don’t give a damn, although it’s proving to be rather entertaining.” Cocking his head, he lowered it toward the floor. “The entire factory is meant to be off-limits until we clear it, yes?”
Ignoring her embarrassment, Perry nodded. “Yes.”
“Then why is a furnace rumbling?”
Perry knelt down, listening intently. Beneath the floorboards, she could just make out the whispering sound of some machine. Beneath her fingers, the floorboards vibrated, just slightly. As she watched, dust skittered across the floor.
Her heart leaped into her throat. “There’s something beneath the main factory.”
“A boiler or furnace somewhere.” Byrnes flashed her a grin. “One that’s not on the schematics.”
Behind him, she caught a glimpse of something moving. Her mind fought to recognize it, then Perry leaped forward, hitting Byrnes hard in the shoulder. They catapulted backward just as a winch screamed through the air where his head had been.
Perry rolled to her feet, looking up. The winch was suspended from an overhead crane. It reached the end of its swing and began the return journey, sweeping back toward the walkway that it had come from. The flap of a coat vanished around the edge of the offices overhead, footsteps echoing on the tin walkway.
“Someone’s there!” she yelled, holding her arm up and pointing her wrist toward the railing. The pistol strapped there jolted forward into her palm, the magazine whirring as the mechanism readied itself. “Stop! Or I’ll shoot!”
The ring around her thumb tightened as she curled it toward her palm. Almost enough tension to pull the trigger. The footsteps receded and Perry swore, darting around the swinging winch as she tried to get a better vantage.
“Strike me blind,” Byrnes cursed, rolling to his feet. “I’ll go up after him. Cover the other set of steps. He has to come down somehow.”
Perry ran toward the filtration devices at the back of the factory, her boots echoing the fleeing footsteps. It was darker back here, the enormous glass beakers distorting the shadows. She slowed, one hand dropping to the knife at her hip and her other wrist leading, with the wrist pistol pointing up into the darkness. The footsteps had slowed too. She couldn’t see through the thin tin sheeting, though.
“Byrnes?” she called.
In the distance she heard him hammering up the stairs toward the walkway. “Got him covered.”
Above her a shadow rippled along the wall. Perry ducked to the side, moving silently. The shadow took a step, almost as if he was aware of her. What the hell is he doing?
Moving slowly, as if…as if he was luring her forward…
Perry froze, gently placing her foot down. The moment she did, a grinding noise sounded in the walls and she felt the floor give way beneath her.
“Byrnes!” she screamed as she vanished into the darkness below.
Nine
Garrett spent most of the afternoon going through the paperwork on the Keller-Fortescue case in his study—or Lynch’s study. It still bore the echo of the former Master of the Nighthawks, from the heavy, leather-bound tomes that lined the bookshelves to the case files he still hadn’t managed to put away and the ebony-framed map of the Empire that hung over the fireplace.
Scraping at the stubble on his chin, Garrett tried to clear his mind. The press had been dealt with and Hayes had made a brief report earlier. Miss Keller’s only link to the East End was a charity she dealt with—a lending library for impoverished children. Miss Fortescue had never set foot in the place. Not a single person had seen them disappear from their homes.
As for the Russians, they’d arrived in England three days before the tour through the factory. He had a list of events they’d attended and was trying to match them against functions either of the girls had been to.
Garrett rubbed at his temples. He was reaching the point where the facts were becoming a useless jumble of information. God, he was tired. Every time he shut his eyes he could almost feel the dreams sucking him under.
Concentrate.
Miss Keller had died in the early hours of Monday morning, which at least gave him a timeline. Now he just needed to question the Russian party to discover where they’d been at the time of the murder.
The tick of the clock was a slow beat that only highlighted the silence. Garrett could stand it no more. He lowered his hand from his eyes and glared at the stacked bookshelves. If he couldn’t damn well sleep or think, then it seemed past time to rid himself of at least one ghost.
Hours later, a swift rap at the door drew his attention. Books were stacked in piles by the door, along with all of Lynch’s collection of necessities—lamps, maps, and even his inkwell. The room was bare.
“Come in,” he called, dumping another pile of books by the door.
Doyle’s eyebrow arched when he saw the mess. “We’ve got maids for this sort o’ thing.”
“Excellent. Have them box the books and all of the duke’s personal belongings, and send them his way. I want the case files returned to the filing room and all these shelves swept clear of dust.”
Doyle’s gaze slowly took in the bare furnishings. “There’s been a call of distress come in via telegraph from the garrison on Hart Street.” He held out the small rolled sheaf that the message was printed on.
Hart Street. A ring of cold circled the back of Garrett’s neck. The garrison was close to the draining factories. Tearing the piece of parchment open, he scraped his thumb over the small black ink letters.
Urgent attention: Guild Master. Nighthawk missing at draining factory five. Request immediate assistance.
“No,” he whispered under his breath, knowing instantly who the missive had come from. Perry would have used longer sentences—and names. “No, no, no.” He snatched his coat off the back of a chair and swung it over his shoulders, his gut tight with dread.
“Sir?” Doyle called. “Do you want the carriage?”
“I’ll go on foot.” It would be quicker over the rooftops. He was moving, throwing the words over his shoulder. “Send a regiment of Nighthawks to the factory, and tell them they have twenty minutes to get there or I’ll have their heads.”
***
Sensation returned slowly, pain spearing through the back of her skull. Perry blinked and carefully lifted her head. Her vision swam, and when she pressed her fingertips to the back of her scalp, they came away sticky. Blood.
Where the devil was she? A gaslight flickered, highlighting a long, narrow room. An enormous steel examination table dominated the room, the gaslight gleaming on its edges. The moment she saw it, she rolled to her hands and knees, cold dread spiraling through her. Her stomach lurched at the movement, but Perry fought to stay upright.
The man—the killer, she suspected—running overhead. The floor giving way. Hitting hard on the stone floor. Perry swallowed the fist of nausea lodged in her throat as memory sank its greedy claws through her throbbing head. Nothing moved in the shadows, but she could almost sense someone watching her.
The thought was enough to send her scrambling for her knife. Her hands shook as she held it in front of her and staggered to her feet, leaning heavily against the smooth glass panel of the wall.
Until something moved behind the glass.
Perry jerked away, stumbling over her feet and staggering into the examination table. Blast it. Her heart pounded. “Byrnes!” she screamed as she stared in horror.
Glazed blue eyes blinked hazily at her through the bluish cast of the liquid behind the glass. A brass mask, much like those the poorer Londoners wore to help with the black lung, locked over the girl’s face, with a tube leading out from it.
Perry took a step back as those eyes met hers and she sucked back another scream. Still alive. Her gaze lowered. To the woman’s na**d br**sts and the long thin scar down the center of her chest. In the flickering light, it almost seemed she could see a shadow lodged like a fist in the stranger’s chest.
Something skittered in the darkness. A rat, perhaps. As Perry’s vision cleared, she realized there were half a dozen of the strange aquariums lining the room. Figures hung suspended in the clear blue water, their hair streaming around them like mermaids. Hanging there. Floating. Four of them in all, with two empty glass cases at the end.
Her breath came, short and sharp, her lungs clamping in her chest as if someone had knotted her corset far too tight. No. No, she wasn’t back there. She’d escaped Hague and what he’d planned to do with her. This wasn’t like her nightmares. She was free and she was strong. She could fight now, the way she hadn’t been able to do back then.
It didn’t matter a damn to her body. Her feet refused to move, nothing but a strangled sound choking out of her throat. In that moment she was just a young girl again, frightened and alone and useless. No air in her lungs. Nothing.
Stop it. She curled her fingernails into her palms, forcing them to cut into her skin. Breathe. Just breathe. You’re a damned Nighthawk now.
Something shifted in the shadows behind her.
Perry screamed.
***
Garrett slammed through the factory doors, breathing hard. The cold, gray light hit him, as well as the stale scent of the factory. He raked the scene with a glance, taking in the three men at the back of the factory. Byrnes looked up, no expression on his face. The other two Nighthawks kept hammering on the floor. Stomping on the floorboards as if to break through them.
There was no sign of her.
Darkness descended. He was halfway across the factory before he realized, his gaze locked on Byrnes’s throat. Fingers curled into his palms, itching to strike out.
“Where the hell is she? Perry?” Looking around. “Perry!”
“The floor opened up beneath her. There’s some kind of hydraulic system in it. By the time I got back down here, she was gone. I left for just a few minutes to get help. I—”
The next thing Garrett knew, he had his fists curled in the front of Byrnes’s leather uniform, throwing him back into the glass beakers they stored the blood in. The sound shattered the silence, glass spewing across the floor as Byrnes grunted and rolled, coming to his feet with a dangerous grace.
“Feel better?” Byrnes spat blood, his eyes narrowing to cold blue chips of ice.
“Where were you?” Garrett roared. “Where were you when she was taken?”
“Chasing the man who tried to kill me!”
Garrett took a step forward.
Byrnes fell back into a defensive stance, his fists curled in front of him. “You only get one free hit.”
“That’s all I’ll damned well need.”
“Sir? Sir!”
Both of them looked aside, breathing hard.
The pair of Nighthawks from the garrison on Hart Street were watching. Garrett took a rasping breath, trying to hold on to himself. All he needed was word circulating through the guild about the division between him and Byrnes. And this wasn’t about Byrnes. This was about Perry. He had to find her.
“Thomas.” Garrett put a name to the face. “Can you hear her?” He crossed the room in long strides, examining the floor. “Can we get this open?”
“It’s a trapdoor of sorts,” Byrnes said, dusting glass shards out of his sleeve. “The floorboards are reinforced with steel. We’re not going to get through it in a hurry.”
“Then find the damned contraption that will open it.” Garrett slipped a small tracking device from his pocket and wound it. It gave a steady blip as he released the clockwork mechanism, picking up the matching signal from the tracing device he’d planted on her years ago. “She’s here somewhere.” Damned thing wasn’t more specific than that.
Byrnes looked up at the walkways above them. “He was up there. He must have pressed some mechanism.”
“Keep working on the floor,” Garrett snapped. “Get hammers, the crane… Anything. Just get it bloody open.” He met Byrnes’s eyes. It was easier to hold on to the anger and the darkness within him if he had another focus. Right now that focus was on finding Perry. “We need to locate the mechanism he used.”
Twenty minutes later they were no closer to finding it. Garrett swore, kicking at the railing on the upper walkways. Christ, if she’s already… No. He swallowed hard. She was alive. She had to be. He’d know somehow if she wasn’t…
“We’ll find her.” Byrnes looked up from where he knelt near the fuse box. “She’s clever enough to find her way out.”
Garrett simply stared at him, devoid of…anything. If I lose her… It choked him, rising up in his throat like a fist, and he turned away, sucking in air. He’d been pushing her away for the last month, so worried about the progression of his disease that he’d never given a thought to how he’d feel if he lost her.
The truth hit him like the sledgehammers the men were using to tear up the floorboards downstairs. Perry was the only thing holding him together. The only one he trusted, truly trusted… He couldn’t lose her. She was his everything.