by Rebecca King
She had never been so eager to get rid of anybody in her life and wished now she had never answered the door in the first place.
“Where is your brother?” Lloyd asked as he teetered on the doorstep.
Jessica stood beside the door. Now that several feet were between them she felt infinitely safer, especially with the door at her back. Although there had never been any rumours to support her theory, Jess suspected the magistrate wasn’t above flouting the law to get what he wanted. She just hoped he didn’t want her.
“He is out at the moment,” she replied carefully. “He has gone to the tavern for a drink.”
She sent a silent prayer that Ben had overheard everything. If he had, and understood the magistrate was on to him, then she hadn’t suffered without reason this afternoon. After the last ten minutes, as far as she was concerned, Ben needed to suffer a little as well. He needed to be the one to feel the stark emotions flowing through her right now.
She felt battered; all alone, and lost at sea. In a world of doubt, insecurity, fear, and worry, there was nothing holding a lifeline of hope. While it wasn’t all Ben’s fault, he hadn’t helped matters either. He could have come out to speak to the magistrate himself, but he hadn’t.
“Tell him we have called and want to talk to him,” Lloyd drawled.
“He won’t be able to help you. He has been here, helping me with the house,” Jess informed him briskly.
Rather than leave, Lloyd stepped forward and leaned toward her. Jess leaned back and kept her gaze averted, but could feel his fetid breath brush her cheek as he inched closer to her ear. She shuddered with revulsion.
“It is a big house for a young woman to run alone,” Lloyd murmured silkily. He glanced uninterestedly outside before he turned his lecherous gaze back to her.
“I am not alone. I have Ben,” she replied.
She began to suspect that his predatory interest in her was the reason why Lloyd wanted Ben out of the house. The thought of being at the mercy of such an odious toad as the magistrate made her feel sick.
It wasn’t that he was old, or overweight, or suffering from offensive looks. At some point in his life, he might once have been considered a handsome man. Not now, though. Years of excess hadn’t taken their toll on his pock-marked skin. Together with his thinning hair and rather stooped build, and the fact that he was at least twenty years older than her, he was about as attractive to Jess as the dead pheasants hanging in the scullery.
“I also have the guests,” she added desperately. “See? I am not alone.”
“I hope your services don’t go further than providing board and the occasional meal,” Lloyd drawled as his gaze slid down the length of her. “It would be a shame to see youth tainted by such sordid endeavours, especially with your lodgers.”
“How dare you suggest such a thing?” she demanded, outraged at the notion.
“I am not saying you are,” he smirked; pleased at the response his baiting earned him.
She mentally cursed when she realised he had gotten the response he had wanted – to prod her until she snapped. Determined not to let him get the better of her, she glared balefully at him and sucked in a calming breath.
“You would know more about sordid endeavours than I,” she snapped.
The immediate flash of anger on the magistrate’s face warned her that she had gone too far.
“Seeing as you deal with criminals and all,” she added snidely in a rather vague attempt to take the sting out of her snipe.
The magistrate nodded his appreciation of her play on words and smirked as he turned to study the road in front of the house.
“I will return when your brother is home,” he warned.
As if to show her that he didn’t believe her claims her brother was not in the house, he glanced over her shoulder into the house.
Unfortunately, just then, a barely audible thump came from the direction of the kitchen.
Jessica sighed and wondered if Ben wanted to go to prison. If he carried on the way he was, that was exactly where Lloyd and Carruthers would put him. To her delight, Rupert, the cat, chose that moment to push through the kitchen door.
“Rupert,” she chided. She could have wept as she watched him prance with ultimate feline arrogance toward her. “Have you been knocking food off the table again?”
She bent down and swept him into her arms. Having a bundle of wriggling fur between her and the magistrate made her feel a little safer. She nuzzled Rupert’s hair for a moment, and surreptitiously watched Lloyd signal to Carruthers that it was time to leave.
“Later,” Lloyd warned briskly.
Jessica didn’t bother to answer him and kept her attention on the cat in her arms. She waited by the door until Carruthers stepped across the threshold. He had barely cleared the doorway before she stepped back and kicked the door closed with considerably more force than necessary and slid the bolt home with a resounding thud.
Satisfied that the magistrate had gotten the message, she wandered back to the kitchen in search of Ben, whom she hoped was now hiding.
He wasn’t.
He sat at the kitchen table with his crossed ankles propped up on one corner, slicing into an apple as he ate.
“Have they gone?” he drawled nonchalantly.
Jessica was incensed. She was physically trembling with terror yet here he was, eating without a care in the world.
“How could you be so selfish?” Jessica asked as she dumped Rupert into Ben’s lap and snatched the knife from him.
It wasn’t for her safety that she took it; it was for his. Right now, she was so angry with him she wondered whether a good, long, stint in gaol was just what he needed. If only to snap him out of his careless disregard for, well, everything.
“What?” Ben’s brows lifted as though he hadn’t got a clue what was bothering her.
“He is going to come back, Ben,” she warned.
Ben shrugged. “They are all bluster, sis. They won’t be back. Lloyd hasn’t got anything he can pin on me, and he knows it.”
“Why did they come here in the first place then?” She countered, unwilling to let Ben dismiss what had happened so casually. “If you think they can’t touch you, why did you hide in here like a coward?”
Ben’s eyes flashed with anger as he stood.
Jess was too lost in her fury to notice. “I mean it. Think about it. If they don’t have anything on you, why did they not go to Billy’s house, or Craig’s, or Smithers’? Of all of the places in the village, why did they choose to come here?”
Ben stared at the apple in his hand as though it was going to provide him with the answers he couldn’t give himself.
Jessica’s frustration grew as she watched him shrug. She knew from the thoughtful expression on his face that he couldn’t be entirely sure if the magistrate had seen him with the pheasants or not. He was trying to bluff his way out of trouble. His response warned her that he had no understanding of what would happen if they got caught either. Nor was he particularly interested in what it felt like to be her, pestered by those horrible letches; Lloyd and Carruthers.
“Do you give a damn what happens to me?” she asked quietly. “Lloyd came to threaten me – not you – me. I am easy pickings for the likes of him if you are behind bars,” Jessica ground out. “God, you selfish ingrate.”
Tears gathered on her lashes at the thought of being in the house with the magistrate circling like a vulture outside. She would have to sell the place if that happened because the consequences to her future would be dire if she didn’t.
She wasn’t usually a violent person but, at that moment, wanted to smack her brother on the head for making her already insecure life even more uncertain.
“I won’t end up behind bars,” Ben said a little less cockily.
While the look on his face was doubtful, there was just something in his voice that made her study him a bit more closely. She knew that look and stepped closer. Her voice dipped to a menacing whisper so unlike
her natural voice that Ben’s shocked gaze flew up to hers.
“Seeing as you are so confident in your ability to evade justice, you can meet the magistrate when he returns. I certainly won’t. I am done covering for you.”
“Jess,” Ben whined, but then leaned back when she pointed one long finger at him.
“I am telling you now that if you get yourself arrested, you are on your own. I will have no alternative but to sell up, and shall have to leave the area. If you are so selfish that you will not stop to consider the impact your crimes have on me, then I shall not stop to consider you when it comes to choosing somewhere else to live. For now, there are the vegetables to prepare for dinner so get busy. I don’t expect you to go anywhere until Lloyd has returned to speak with you. And get rid of those pheasants.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t stop to listen. She spun on her heel and left the room. Once inside her bedroom, she let the tears fall while she tried to decide what to do next.
CHAPTER TWO
Marcus ran until he felt as though his lungs were going to burst. He refused to surrender to the desperate need to rest. Instead, he lengthened his stride just that little bit more and forced himself to go faster. Being taller than his quarry gave him an advantage, and he wasn’t prepared to waste it. Every inch gained brought him closer to being able to capture the man racing through the woods ahead of him.
Minutes later, they came upon two tethered horses Marcus suspected had been tethered in the trees so the thieves could leave the area quickly. Sure enough, the man vaulted onto one and wheeled it around. Before he disappeared into the darkness, he untethered the second animal. He tried to slap it on the backside, but the horse danced away and continued to munch the bush it was eating instead.
“Damn it,” the man cursed when he realised Marcus was nearly upon him. Within seconds he vanished into the trees.
“Not while I have breath in my body,” Marcus ground out.
He jumped into the saddle of the second horse and fought with the startled beast for a few precious moments before it suddenly broke into a canter.
The stirrups were too short, so he had no purchase with his feet, but it was of little consequence to Marcus. Nothing mattered except being able to close the distance with the man up ahead.
“Where are you?” he gasped as he studied the path through the trees.
He had hoped that Joe would be somewhere nearby, and able to intercept the fugitive, but there was no sign of him. Had he been taken down by Rawdon Bamber, the man they had just caught stealing some very valuable jewels from the recently murdered Squire’s house?
“God, I hope not,” Marcus cursed, and swore again when a low-lying branch slapped him cruelly in the face.
Settling low in the saddle, he kicked his horse to go faster. He had no idea where he was now, but that didn’t matter. As long as the escapee didn’t vanish, or meet another contact, he and Joe could – and would – follow for as long as they needed to.
“Keep after him,” Joe called suddenly from behind him. “I will see if I can intercept him up ahead.”
“Hurry,” Marcus called after him.
With everybody else back at the Squire’s house, it was now down to him and Joe, to capture Bamber’s associate. He just hoped luck was on his side for once, and he could do so before they got too far away from Framley Meadows.
Now that the organisation had turned its attention to one of London’s most vile gangsters: Terence Sayers, Marcus’ life had been chaotic. Since the investigation had started many months ago, the Star Elite had rapidly learned that Sayers’ network of crime stretched far wider than they had first thought. Investigating his crimes so they could close the network down, and put Sayers before a judge, had rapidly turned into one of the hardest investigations they had ever tackled. It had not only thrown them practically every kind of crime it was possible to commit, but it was seemingly endless work. As soon as one crime was solved, three more were uncovered.
As a result, Marcus had spent the better part of six months racing up and down the country, chasing leads into the man’s seemingly vast network of criminals involved in all sorts of crimes.
“I just wish it weren't so fraught all the time,” Marcus grumbled.
He wiped moisture off his face and shook his head to clear his vision. He was exhausted yet refused to give up. No matter where this lead took him, he would adjust and do whatever was necessary to capture the thief. He would be a veritable treasure-trove of information the Star Elite desperately needed right now.
He just didn’t expect his attempts to capture this particular thief would take so long.
“Curses,” Marcus whispered several hours later.
Even when he yawned widely, he didn’t take his eyes off the man he had been following for what felt like his entire life. Having spent most of the night still in pursuit of the escapee, he was tired, hungry, and in desperate need to get off his horse so they could both rest for a while.
He had no idea what the time was now but was positive that dawn couldn’t be too far away. His head ached from trying to peer through the darkness for so long. His back was numb from the many hours in the hard, unrelenting saddle. The horse kept trying desperately to stop, which made his job as a rider even harder because he had to keep coaxing the animal to carry on.
“What the hell?” he muttered under his breath when he caught sight of a silver sparkle of water up ahead.
It wasn’t only the water that captured his attention. It was the cluster of rooftops alongside it which drew his horrified gaze. He had no idea which village it was, but that was insignificant given the dangers that could lie within the shadowed and unfamiliar streets. If the man lived in the village, he would undoubtedly know every nook and cranny, hiding hole and shadow anyone could hide in. That would give their quarry a distinct advantage, and potentially leave Marcus and Joe unable to find him again, especially since neither had seen the man’s face.
As yet, Marcus had only ever seen the back of him, so he had no idea what hair or eye colour he had. In a village the size of the one up ahead, it would be impossible to find someone he had only ever seen from the back, on a horse, shrouded by a voluminous cloak.
“The last thing we need is a blasted village,” he grunted.
Joe cursed and studied the area around them.
“I don’t know how much longer we can carry on,” he murmured. “These horses are exhausted.”
Marcus had to agree with him. He was weary as well. So tired, in fact, that it was difficult to stay upright in the saddle. The work of late had involved long, arduous hours, and the strain was starting to show on all of the men from the Star Elite.
“What the hell?” he growled as he frowned off into the distance, and tried to remember when he had last slept.
“What’s that?” Joe asked, tugging the hood of his cloak over his head to protect himself from the rain that had started to fall around them.
“I am just trying to remember when I last had a good night’s sleep.” He stared into space as he counted the number of nights it had been since had been at Jeb’s father’s house. “I can’t remember.”
“Neither can I,” Joe sighed.
“What do we do?” Marcus whispered.
The man, now several feet away, took a bend in the path that led to the village.
“It appears that our boy is heading home,” Joe murmured softly.
“Or he is going for a change of horses?” Marcus replied.
He wished he could ride up ahead, get the man off his horse, hand him over to the magistrate, and then go to sleep for a while.
“Smothey,” Joe murmured, nodding toward the small road sign nestled in the undergrowth beside them.
Marcus barely gave it a second look. His gaze remained on the man who had just turned into the yard of a small inn up ahead.
The village was deathly quiet. The only sound they could hear was the soft snicker of a horse in the stable yard. Was the thief wait
ing for them to ride past? Did he plan to try to ambush them?
Marcus checked his gun, and flicked his cloak back so that it was accessible should he need it. With a nod to Joe, they quickly dismounted and hurried on foot toward the tavern. Thankfully, the gates had been left open, which afforded them a good view of the interior without venturing too close.
Either the villagers are extremely trusting, or the tavern owner is expecting someone to arrive in the middle of the night, Marcus noted thoughtfully.
He crossed the quiet street and buried himself in the shadows as close to the tavern entrance as he could get. His annoyance grew when he took a look inside the cobbled courtyard and found it empty.
“For the love of -” He listened for the sound of footsteps, but there were none.
Wondering if the man had decided to spend the night in a stable, Marcus swiftly crossed the road again. Before he got half way across, he caught sight of the flurry of movement at the far end of the street.
The man stopped still in the middle of the road and stared at him. Marcus wondered if he was taunting him. Before he could move, the man spun around and disappeared down a side street. Joe immediately left the shadows further down the road and went after him.
Marcus stopped only long enough to check the stables. As soon as he saw that the tavern yard was empty, and only horses lurked in the stables, he hurried after Joe.
It was a good half hour by the time he caught up with him, bent over at the waist, panting heavily on the far edge of the village. He knew from the look on his face that Joe had lost the man in the dense woods on the other side of the stream.
Without searching the undergrowth, there was nothing they could do unless they waited and hoped the man would reappear. He could, of course, go through the woods and come out on the other side. Neither man wanted to admit it, but they had effectively lost their target.
“I have no idea where we are,” Joe whispered. “I don’t know this area at all.”
“Neither do I. However, our man does. He knew these woods were here. He knew what would be at the end of this road, and it would give him the best place to hide.”