by Rebecca King
‘But I own this factory so I can take this to read at home.’ Quickly gathering up all the papers, Tabitha created a haphazard pile on the desk before turning to rummage through the drawers. Removing anything with writing on she then gathered up what she needed, checked to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind, and quietly left the room. It was awkward and slow going to cross the room while juggling the papers and the candle, but she refused to snuff the light out and stumble around in the dark.
‘Daniel?’ she whispered when she thought she heard movement nearby.
Shaking her head in disgust, Tabitha hurried out of the stockroom and into the stairwell. She wondered if the gunshot had come from Daniel, or if Daniel had been on the receiving end of it. Tabitha was hesitant to go upstairs to see for herself but couldn’t simply leave without him. With a sigh, she began to climb the stairs only for the sounds of a chase to reach her when she was half-way up. Whoever Daniel was chasing hadn’t been caught yet. Quickly retreating, she returned to the offices instead. Bracing herself, she placed the papers behind a chair and reluctantly turned to face Muldoon’s office. Going in there was the last thing she wanted to do but she couldn’t simply sit doing nothing anymore.
‘Besides, this is my factory. I have every right to know what is going on here,’ she muttered aloud, and truly didn’t care who heard her. Before she could step toward Muldoon’s office, though, Daniel slammed into the room.
‘Where in the Hell did you go?’ he thundered. ‘I have just spent the last ten damned minutes searching for you. I was about to go and find my friends to start a search for you.’ Furious, he stomped toward her and grabbed her by the shoulders, giving her a swift shake. ‘Don’t you ever go anywhere without telling me again. I have even checked out of the damned window to see if they threw you out. Do you know that? Do you have any idea what I would have done if they had?’
Stunned, Tabitha mutely shook her head. Before she could open her mouth to tell him where she had been, Daniel hauled her into his arms and kissed her.
It wasn’t anything tentative, nor was it particularly gentle. But when his lips touched hers they ignited flames of desire that quickly consumed them both. Daniel slid his arms around her, but his hold wasn’t gentle. It allowed no distance between them. Neither were going to shy away from the kiss he gave her. This was the first time he had ever allowed a woman to truly see any hint of emotion from him, but he couldn’t help it. The fear he had felt when he had realised that Tabitha had disappeared had been compelled into action by the knowledge that the thugs were in the building with them. It created a wealth of feelings that were compounded by the worry and his growing adoration of her.
Growing adoration indeed. I have always adored her.
Daniel knew it to be true although had yet to put a name to the emotions that were now an intrinsic part of him. It felt right to be with Tabitha like this. Natural that they should be together, wrapped in each other’s arms, savouring this moment of unity, of comfort, of passionate desire. He would later contemplate whether it was the darkness that removed the normal restraints he would usually respect, or the dark and dangerous situation they had been plunged into. Whatever it was, Daniel was compelled not to waste a single moment of showing her what she did to him. While he wasn’t prepared to tell her how he felt just yet, mostly because he knew speaking the words would change both their lives, he had no qualms about pouring every ounce of constrained emotion he felt into that one precious kiss.
When he did lift his head, it was only so he could look down into her somewhat dazed eyes. Bathed in the moonlight as she was, Tabitha looked infinitely fragile, as if a faint breath of air would make her shatter into a thousand tiny pieces.
‘Don’t ever do that to me again,’ he demanded.
‘But you kissed me,’ she breathed, a little stunned from the ferocity of the passion she had just experienced. It still hovered between them so strongly she suspected that if she looked up, she would see it like a golden halo above their heads. But Tabitha couldn’t tear her avid gaze away from him.
‘I did, didn’t I?’ he murmured in wonderment before lowering his head once more.
Tabitha clung to his strength and gave herself over to the moment. She couldn’t find an ounce of protest within her. She wanted this. If she was truly honest with herself, she had wanted Daniel to do this ever since they had been sixteen years old. He had been the object of her girlish fantasies and her womanly dreams. He had always been in the back of her mind. For as long as she could remember, every day she had woken up her first instinctive thought had been for him; where he was, what he was doing, if he was happy, or thinking about her. She doubted he had ever done the same, but she wasn’t angry or disappointed about it. Given what she knew now he had been busy turning his life around and blossoming into the handsome, successful man he was today. Besides, this was Daniel, the man she loved regardless of his feelings for her.
But he has feelings for me, or he wouldn’t be kissing me like this.
Tabitha wanted his kisses despite knowing that he was likely to ride out of her life just as soon as his investigation was over. She doubted there would ever be another occasion like this that would warrant him returning to her. Savouring this precious moment was essential.
He will leave again, and I will be just as broken hearted as the last time he walked out of my life.
Because she knew that they didn’t have forever together, Tabitha kissed him back with all the unleashed emotion she had harboured. Consequently, she withheld nothing. When he tugged her closer, she willingly took that small step that pressed her even more tightly against him. When he deepened the kiss, she obligingly tipped her head back to allow him greater access. When his hands began to search each dip and hollow of her body, she instinctively shifted to allow him to. She had no doubts about whether this was right. She felt as if she had been waiting for this very moment all her life. In just a few moments, Daniel had brought every dream she had ever had to life. He had made her feel alive again. How could she regret it?
‘We have to stop,’ he whispered, his lips hovering temptingly close to hers.
Tabitha merely looked up at him.
Daniel saw that beseeching look and mentally cursed because he couldn’t deny her anything when she looked at him like that. He was lowering his head to accede to her wishes when a heavy thud of something in the hallway outside of the door interrupted them. Muttering epithets beneath his breath, Daniel forced himself to step away from her. Turning around, he positioned himself between her and the door and withdrew his gun for the second time that evening. Tabitha glanced down at whatever it was Daniel was fiddling with and gasped when she saw the metalwork of his gun glistening menacingly in the moonlight.
‘Stand still,’ he urged, placing a calming hand on her hip in an intimately possessive movement he didn’t stop to think about.
Tabitha dutifully became motionless. Together they stood and watched the door slowly open. Daniel pointed his gun at his widening view of the stairwell beyond the door and watched a man emerge out of the gloom.
‘Damn it, Hamish, I should put a sodding bell around your neck,’ he spat when he recognised the factory’s latest intruder.
‘I heard gunfire,’ Hamish whispered. ‘Shut up. They are still here.’
‘Where?’ Daniel watched Hamish point to the floor above. ‘Two up.’
‘The top floor?’ Tabitha murmured only to watch Hamish press a finger to his lips before pointing at her. ‘Stay here.’
‘Not again,’ Tabitha sighed. ‘Why do you two expect me to stand still and just wait for you all the time while you go charging around here? No, I am not going to stay here and go quietly out of my mind. The last time I tried it I was accosted by that thug.’
‘No, the last time you tried it you disappeared, remember?’ Daniel argued.
‘Now is not the time for semantics,’ Tabitha retorted.
Daniel looked askance at Hamish as if to ask what he should do with h
er. Hamish’s lips twitched but he was a wise man so remained quiet. Instead, he nodded toward the stairs behind him and promptly disappeared.
Now that he was not battling several armed intruders alone, Daniel captured Tabitha’s hand in his and tugged her with him. Given the fright he had just had he was reluctant to leave her behind again anyway and so kept his gun in his hand as they climbed the stairs back up to the third floor. Tabitha didn’t bother to tell the men that she had already searched the office.
‘What is at the far end of here?’ she asked eyeing the long bank of doors along the back wall once they reached the stock room she had found earlier.
‘There are winches and pulleys and another staircase which goes down to the loading yard at the back,’ Hamish explained. ‘But the doors are chained from the inside. Nobody has left through there.’
‘Have you checked?’ Tabitha demanded; her voice sharp.
Hamish nodded. ‘Why?’
‘I was in here a little while ago, in that office to be precise. A man walked through here and went through those doors.’
‘I will go and check if the doors have been broken open,’ Hamish announced.
Tabitha looked around the rest of the floor, but nothing appeared to have been disturbed.
When he returned, Hamish was shaking his head. ‘Did you see the man open the outer doors?’
‘No, he just went through the inner doors, but it was too dark to see where he went after that. He didn’t come back out, though,’ Tabitha replied.
‘Well the doors are chained from the inside,’ Hamish insisted. ‘Nobody has been out that way. Maybe he was checking to see if there was a way out through there.’
‘I don’t care. Can we leave now?’ she asked hopefully. Her hopes were dashed when Daniel slowly shook his head.
‘We can’t leave the factory full of intruders and a corpse,’ he announced.
‘Damn it,’ Hamish growled.
Daniel looked at his colleague. ‘We need reinforcements.’
‘These thugs are locals. They know where they are going,’ Hamish warned. ‘Best stay here. I will go and fetch the others.’
‘How will you get about without them catching you?’ Tabitha cried. ‘They are dangerous.’
Hamish grinned unconcernedly at her. ‘I can manage.’ To prove it he withdrew a gun that was identical to Daniel’s and smirked at her.
Tabitha edged closer to Daniel’s reassuring bulk and immediately felt his hand slide around her waist. Together they stood, a picture of unity, and watched Hamish leave.
‘Now what do we do?’ she whispered casting a wary eye around the empty room.
‘We return to Muldoon’s office and wait for Hamish to return. The men are nearby so he won’t be long.’
They made their way down to the office.
‘What are you doing?’ Tabitha hissed when Daniel entered Muldoon’s office.
‘I am going to take a good look around this desk,’ Daniel informed her.
‘Someone has already been in there.’ Tabitha told him about the intruder she had seen earlier. ‘What do you think he is looking for?’
‘I don’t know, but we are certainly going to find out,’ Daniel growled. With that, he began to rummage through the desk.
‘Do you want me to light the candle?’ Tabitha asked as she watched him tip several papers toward the moonlight to study them a little better.
‘No, thank you. We cannot alert anybody to where we are. They already know but we aren’t going to confirm it by lighting the room. They are going to be at an advantage when we leave here and are blinded by the darkness that they are hiding in.’ Daniel continued rifling through the drawers as he spoke but found nothing of significance.
‘Do you think there might be something under him?’ Tabitha asked. ‘I cannot say that I am ever going to get used to being near a dead body, especially one that has been murdered, but I am not as sickened by it as I was. What does that mean?’
‘It means that you aren’t as squeamish as you perhaps thought you were,’ Daniel murmured.
‘I have some of those,’ Tabitha announced when Daniel began to accumulate a pile of papers that looked intriguing.
‘What?’ He blinked in astonishment when Tabitha left the room. He watched her heave a heavy pile of papers off the floor and drop them onto the desk beside the body. ‘They are from the office upstairs. I think they are tallies of stock and orders but won’t know until I have taken a better look at them.’
But it wasn’t the ledgers and papers that captured Daniel’s interest.
When he looked at her, it was clear to Tabitha that he was furious.
‘You did what?’ he demanded coldly.
‘I found them. Upstairs. In that stock room we were just in. I told you, remember? About the man I saw?’
‘You stayed to rummage around in the office without being sure whether he had left or not?’ Daniel mentally ran through every cuss word he had ever learnt and tried hard to rein his temper in.
‘He left, or so I thought.’
‘Have you ever considered that maybe he knew you were there and was watching you through the windows? Did you see that bank of windows? How do you know he wasn’t standing in the shadows watching what you were doing? You do know that if he suspects you have something incriminating, he is going to come after you, don’t you?’ The very thought of it was enough to make Daniel mentally count every gun the Star Elite had in their arsenal and contemplate how long it would take to go and fetch them.
‘But they are my papers. I have every right to take them if I want to,’ she announced boldly, refusing to consider that she had done anything wrong. Inside, though, she knew he was right. Besides, the thought that the tall, silent stranger might have been watching her was creepy. She instantly lost some of her bravado. ‘You don’t think he really was watching me, do you?’
Daniel was slowly nodding before she had finished asking him. Tabitha gulped. She was glad that the intruder hadn’t reappeared. Now that she looked back on what she had done even she could see that lingering on the upper floor had been foolish.
‘We have to assume that he knows you have incriminating evidence against him,’ Daniel announced. ‘That means we have to take anything that might be significant from here now. Tonight. The solicitor said that there is a safe in the office, but he didn’t have the sequence for it. Do you have that note he gave you?’
Tabitha nodded and dug around in her cloak pocket for the sealed letter the solicitor had given her from Muldoon only that afternoon. So much had happened since then that it felt like a lifetime had passed since she had been standing in his offices. Rather than hand it to him she crossed the room to the large bank of shelving along the far wall. Standing directly before the portrait, just like the solicitor had said, Tabitha pressed against the third shelf down and heard something click. The shelf immediately dislodged from the wall and swung open under her hand. She stared at the shiny dial of the safe neatly built into its secret hiding place. Unfolding the paper in her hand she read the codes, twisted the dial, and slowly opened the door.
Her mouth fell open when she saw that the safe was stuffed full to the brim with all sorts of paraphernalia. Notes, folded scrolls, boxes, money, and books were all jammed into the space and began to tumble out onto the floor as soon as the door was no longer there to support them.
‘We have to take the lot but need something to carry them in,’ Daniel announced.
Hurrying across the room, he emptied candles and various bits out of a large trunk underneath the window and dragged it toward the safe. Together, they began to fill it before adding the papers Tabitha had found. Daniel slammed the lid closed and quickly began to rifle through the rest of the desk.
‘It might be under him. If he was working at the desk and was interrupted, he might have fallen onto the papers he was working on,’ Tabitha suggested.
‘He is rigid, though. Rigor mortis has set in. It is going to be a while before he is limp en
ough to be moved.’ Daniel tried to move the body but by himself it was damned difficult to lift the dead weight.
‘We will have to wait for your colleagues. Can you see anything?’ She watched Daniel poke around under the body as far as he was able to, but he eventually gave up and shook his head.
‘Now what?’
‘Now we settle down to wait,’ Daniel announced.
Tabitha sniffed miserably. Together they listened to the tinny chimes of the large grandfather clock in the meeting room.
‘It is not even midnight,’ she moaned. ‘I am cold, tired, and hungry, and sick of running around this building. I had no interest in the factory before now and have even less now.’
‘Don’t you want to do right by the workers?’ Daniel asked quietly. He knew why it mattered so much that she did, not least because he fully understood just how much the factory’s employees relied on their pay. ‘Even one week without any money coming into the house can cause starvation. These people live hand to mouth. There is rarely such a thing as savings, Tabitha.’
‘Please believe me when I say that if I could run this factory I would, but I don’t know how. I have no idea even where to begin. It would be possible if there was a foreman, or a factory manager, or someone who could run the place in my stead, but I strongly suspect that the man I need is him.’ She pointed one long finger at the corpse.
Daniel turned to look at the body, in particular the neat cuffs beneath a slightly too small jacket. ‘He is certainly not wearing the kind of fashionably expensive clothing Muldoon would wear.’ He tipped his head to look at the stockinged legs above which were the well-worn boots of a labourer. ‘He might be the factory manager.’
‘How do we find out?’
‘We are going to have to get someone who works at the factory to identify him,’ Daniel said before giving her a pointed look. ‘But that is the work of the Star Elite. You are not going to get involved in it.’
He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t allow the distance between them to remain in place for a second longer. Crossing the room, he gathered her into his arms again. Thankfully, after only a moment of hesitation, Tabitha willingly obliged and nestled against him as if made to be there. Together they savoured this time together, both aware that it might be the last they had for a very long while yet – if ever again.