by James Allen
It was not her sternest tone and even Hannah realized it and smiled at me with a bit of girlish triumph. Deciding I'd better cool it before I turned Hannah into a top-notch twenty-first century rebellious teenager, I turned to ask Ezra where we should get some supper. I knew the moment I saw his face that his thoughts were elsewhere--and not a good elsewhere. Careful to not startle him, I put a hand on his arm. "Ez?"
The blue gaze remained fixed on some point beyond my shoulder. I tightened my grip and he let out a breath and with it, two quiet words. "He's here."
Chapter Eighteen
I slipped a hand under my coat, then realized I'd better not draw my gun until I absolutely had to. "Where?"
Ezra's attention shifted without focusing on any of the people around us. Any of the people we could see, anyway. With increasing consternation, he shook his head. "I don't..."
"Stay calm. Who do you see? Catherine? Elizabeth?"
"All of them," Ezra whispered.
I scanned the lobby, not in the hope of seeing ghostly prostitutes, but the killer who'd cut them up. All I saw was a sea of smiling, laughing theater-goers. "Okay. All right. Ezra, just tell me where the hell he is. That's all you have to do."
"Morgan," Derry started in an anxious tone, the others chiming in with hushed uneasiness.
"Hang on a minute, guys. Don't break his concentration. Ez..." I turned back just as Ezra sprinted away into the crowd. "Ezra! Goddamnit." What the hell did he think he was doing? Reaching for my gun, I swung back to Derry. "Stay here and stay together."
He stared at me in distress, but managed a quick nod. "Aye, we will."
I took off after Ezra, keeping the Glock in hand but low and partially hidden by my dress coat. I could see Ezra several feet ahead, weaving through the crowd without the slightest notice of the concern he was causing in his mad dash. I couldn't push through with the same abandon but I moved as fast as I could, ignoring the indignant exclamations directed my way and the glare from a guy whose top hat got knocked to the carpet.
I caught up with Ezra in a long hallway and getting an arm around him, hauled him out of the crowd and into the doorway of a dressing room. He tried to pull out of my grasp and I pressed him against the doorframe. "Ezra, take a deep breath and listen to me. You're not going after him. Are you armed?"
"No, but--"
"But nothing. Did you stop to think maybe he is?"
"Well, no."
"I didn't think so." I checked the clip. I was ready to go. "Which way?"
"Heading for the stage door. All of them. Morgan--"
"Okay. Stay here." I didn't kid myself that he'd actually listen, but I left him and ran down to the door, pushing into a narrow street lit by one flickering gas lamp. The footsteps I could hear off to my left began to pick up and I knew he'd heard me come out. The son of a bitch was going exactly nowhere tonight except a cozy cell in Newgate--assuming no one lynched him beforehand. I ran into the fog, knowing I'd probably get lost in the process and not giving a damn. Boots striking the cobblestones led me around a corner into a pitch black side street.
What I wouldn't have given for one crummy little flashlight. I slowed, trying to see more than two feet ahead, and became aware that Jack had stopped running. If he wanted to stand and fight, that was fine with me. Fingers firm around the gun, I stilled my breathing and listened. Far in the distance I could hear the rumble of carriage wheels and fainter din of voices as people left the theater. But right around me, all stayed quiet. I was tempted to fire my gun, to startle him into reacting, but I didn't want to waste the ammo and I certainly didn't want to take down an innocent bystander. Then I heard it, the shuffle of a boot on the pavement, about two seconds too late.
The blow came from behind and my vision shut down. The shove came right after, and I fell what felt like miles until I hit the ground. Pressing my palms to the wet pavement under me, I tried to push myself up. A hand fisted in my hair and yanked my head back. My rattled brain whispered a warning to protect my throat. As I brought my arm up, I heard the softest laugh in my ear. "No need to fuss. The gentleman won't hurt you much."
I caught the flash of metal and twisted away from it, getting an arm around his legs. He staggered, then wrenched out of my hold. My head throbbed, stealing my ability to focus. If he took another shot at cutting my throat, the second time would be the charm. Knowing it, I still couldn't keep my grip on consciousness. Then someone yelled my name, with a desperation that pulled me back from the edge.
Oh God, it was Ez. Where had Jack gone? Pushing myself to hands and knees, I reached out for a handhold and knocked over what looked like a milk can. As it rolled away, I slumped back down and wished heartily that I could slip into oblivion.
"Morgan?" I could hear him breathing hard as if he'd been running--or scared shitless. Maybe both. A hand cupped my head, a second hand brushing gently through my hair. "Dear fellow," he whispered. "What the devil did you do to yourself?"
As a handkerchief replaced the hand, I winced. Opening my eyes, I tried to get a look at him. His brows were knitted, his mouth turned down as he concentrated on pressing the kerchief exactly where I didn't want it pressed. "Ow. Shit. Goddamn, Ez, stop." I got a hand around his wrist. "That hurts."
"Be still." The command was quiet and unyielding. I let go with reluctance and let him finish poking at me. "Do you think you can stand?"
The underlying tension in the soft words finally registered. Not wanting him to worry further, I put my arm around his shoulders to let him help me to my feet. Mildly dizzy, I stood for a moment holding onto him. "Ez? You all right?"
"Well enough." I'd never heard him sound so exasperated. "You're the one who went running after the fellow on your own, only to be solidly crowned for your trouble."
"I had my gun," I muttered half-heartedly.
Ezra scooped up something out of a pile of refuse. "This one?"
I'd hardly realized it had been knocked out of my hand. If Jack had picked it up...
"Can we get out of here, please?"
It took me longer to ascend the short flight of basement steps to the sidewalk than it'd taken me going down. Ezra hovered and I let him, though I was steady enough to walk on my own. As we slipped back inside the theater, he asked what had happened. I told him what I could remember, which wasn't much beyond getting knocked on the head. Just like the last time I'd screwed up, my failure to nail the son of a bitch was going to prove fatal for someone. No wonder Sully wanted me off the case. He knew I'd end up as part of the legend and not in a good way.
I realized I was storming down the hallway at a furious speed only when Ezra dragged me to a halt and pushed me into an empty dressing room. Closing the door, he steered me to the dressing table bench and pushed me to sit. "Take a deep breath, dear fellow. You'll frighten Kathleen and Hannah, flying about like that, if you don't faint away first." Leaning over, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and studied the pale face next to his in the mirror. "You said you hadn't anything you needed to help in the capture of this creature. But you have me. Even the police go about in pairs now to safeguard each other. Why will you not let me do as much?"
He had a point. If he'd been with me, we might've overpowered the Ripper and turned him in. I sighed. "Sully mentioned I don't really work well with others, huh?"
The corners of Ezra's mouth quirked up. "Verily I would have concluded as much, myself, by now. Morgan, it is no failing to allow yourself to trust someone else."
"I trust you."
"To look after myself?"
"Well, yeah. Sure."
"Said with the conviction of a man who believes the saving of the world falls to him alone. Arrogant bastard," he murmured fondly and kissed my cheek. "We will progress to the lobby at an intelligent pace, if you please, so that I do not have to carry you to the street."
Crawling along at Ezra's assigned speed, we finally reached the lobby, to find a very worried group discussing whether to summon the police. Though my injury wasn't all that noticeable, I must have
been looking worse for wear. Derry suggested a doctor and I vetoed that immediately. My head was pounding and I'd had all the humiliation I could tolerate.
Once home, Ezra spirited me upstairs and despite feeling sure that Kathleen would be up in a few minutes with food, bandages, and God knew what else, I stripped down to my briefs and buried myself under the blankets and quilt. The cool pillow soothed my head, and even better was the gentle hand that brushed my brow. "I will get you a powder," he said and started to rise.
I caught his hand and squinted up at him. "Don't go."
"Is your head very bad?"
"It's just a headache. Quit with the mother henning already."
"You seem to require some taking care of."
"I need taking care of? I'm not the only one."
There was a knock at the door. "Ah, rescue," Ezra said with dry good humor and kissing my forehead, got up to let Kathleen in. Derry had followed her and stood in the doorway watching as she put a tray down and brought over a bowl and washcloth.
I slitted my eyes to look into her somber face and waited for the lecture on the foolhardiness of chasing serial killers down fog-bound streets you aren't familiar with. To my surprise, she merely draped the cool damp cloth over my forehead and poured me a cup of tea.
"You'll both have a bite, since you've had no supper. Dr. Gilbride is out--"
"I'll go for Dr. Braddock down the road," Derry suggested.
Not up for arguing with both of them, I looked at Ezra beseechingly. He intervened on my behalf, persuading Kathleen and Derry that he could see me through the night. Kathleen reluctantly accepted that a doctor might be called in the morning if I wasn't myself again and the two of them left.
As Ezra sat on the bed beside me, I snagged his shirtfront and pulled him down for a kiss. "Thanks."
He smiled and turned the cloth over. I drew him down within kissing range again and kept him there for something more than a thank-you kiss.
He broke the kiss and breathed a soft laugh against my lips. "Morgan, after what you've been through this evening--"
"I'd like to forget this evening. At least, the last part of it. Anyway, I got hit on the head. The rest of me is in perfect working order."
His lips twitched. "I daresay there is no occasion upon which it isn't." He handed me a sandwich and got up to undress. "You could come down with typhoid or pneumonia or any number of debilitations and you would still assert you've energy enough to..."
He fell quiet just as it was getting interesting and I lifted drooping lids to peer over at him. "Ez?" I knew that look on his face. "Who's here?"
Not even the intrigued expression prepared me for the answer. "Archie Nash."
I didn't know why that alarmed instead of cheered me. I struggled to sit up. "Why? Something wrong? It's not my mom, is it?"
"Calm down," he said gently and I wondered just who was giving that advice. Ezra sat beside me and, head cocked, listened. Some small part of me still insisted this was some parlor trick and Ezra was especially good at it. But when he gave me back the people I missed, even for a few minutes, it was harder to not believe it. "Archie isn't as vocal as your Sully," Ezra said after a moment and looked at me. "He merely says that you not go--his way?" His brows drew together and he shook his head. "I don't know what that may mean but he..." Ezra paused, slipping a hand over mine as he leaned forward. "I believe it must be very important," he whispered. "There are tears in his eyes."
His weren't the only ones. "I'm not going his way," I muttered, a reaction that was still instinctive after all these years, then indulged in a string of swear words, keeping them to myself. As usual, Dad had impeccable timing. "Can you tell him--"
"You can," Ezra reminded me with a gentle squeeze of my hand.
I tried to grin. "He'll more likely listen to you."
"Nonsense. He loves you."
"He told you that?" In the fourteen years my dad had been a part of my life, those particular words hadn't been in his vocabulary. When Ezra hesitated, I half-expected him to lie out of kindness.
"He didn't need to tell me."
I swallowed against the ache in my throat and it only determinedly spread to my chest. "Yeah, he didn't need to tell anyone. So where is he?"
Ezra's own eyes were suspiciously bright. He didn't persist in trying to convince me Dad loved me. He just nodded toward the foot of the bed. I let my gaze shift but there was nothing to be seen.
What the hell.
"Hey, Dad. I'm doing my job, all right?" On that, I wasn't about to be budged. "Didn't you always say hard work never killed anyone?"
"He says this isn't your job."
I snorted. "Yeah, Sully put him up to it. Look, I won't go barging into trouble on my own anymore--so that pretty much means I'm not going your way." Goddamnit. I really didn't mean to sound so angry, did I? I checked a sigh and opened my mouth to apologize, but Ezra was shaking his head.
"He's gone, Morgan."
I let out a breath and sat back on the pillows. "Yeah, well, I can't say I'm surprised."
Ezra's thumb brushed back and forth over my wrist and I could feel his worried eyes on me. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Really, that went about as well as all our other conversations."
Ezra shucked off the rest of his clothes and, persuading me to lie down, moved close enough that I could feel his breath in my ear. "Are you all right?" he repeated, this time with an emphasis that let me know he wasn't going to drop it until I answered honestly.
"You know, he really doesn't have any business giving me hell for doing my job. He was always working."
"Farming?"
I nodded. "Did he tell you he was a sheriff's deputy, too? I think in the end he preferred it to farming. Even though it got him killed."
Ezra cupped my cheek, turning my face toward his. "I'm so sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned he was here, not after the day you've already had. He seemed so worried."
"Yeah, I'm familiar with the feeling."
"You were fourteen?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah. He pulled over a trucker transporting drugs and got a bullet in the head. Just like that, he was gone."
"Why are you blaming yourself?" came the next question, even more quietly.
"He took me with him sometimes, in the car. Not often. Not when we were fighting about something--but once in a while. We'd drive through town and he'd stop and talk to people. Kept up with things and knew what was going on, knew who the troublemakers were so he could keep them in line. A woman I didn't know came up to me after the funeral. Said she'd never felt more reassured than when she saw Archie Nash driving by. I didn't tell her he might still be alive if he and I hadn't fought over my grades the Friday before. That if I'd been with him in the car, I'd have seen the gun. I'd have warned him and he would've had a fighting chance."
Too close to breaking down altogether, I shut up and stared at the fluttering leaf shadows on a moonlit wall that was a hundred years from home. I didn't know why I'd told Ezra all that. I'd never told anyone else, not even Sully.
Ezra didn't say anything. Arms still around me, he pressed a comforting kiss on my cheek and as I turned to him, another, warm on my lips. The hand on my back moved in slow tender circles but, plastered together as we were, the slow kisses progressed to something a little more heated. The tenderness remained in the way we touched and, even though neither of us spoke, in everything that was said when our eyes met. The comfort remained and we both needed it. Sully and my mom had been around to keep me together after Archie's death. I had a feeling no one had been around to pick up Ezra's pieces after he'd lost his mom.
I wanted to ask but, curled around him a little while later, I fell asleep without remembering to. I must have drifted off thinking about Archie, because I dreamt of him as I'd seen him so many times, riding his horse in the golden light before sunset. I rode with him a ways, cantering along the dirt road that stretched past the fields and on to the horizon. With the scent of mown grass in the fr
esh wind and the hum of bugs all around, I kept up with him and though we didn't talk, I felt close to him in a way I'd seldom ever felt. The lack of good-byes didn't seem to matter as much as they had in the past.
The next morning was as fog-bound as the night before. Ezra was up and out already but he had gone quietly, letting me sleep in. Emerging from the cocoon of blankets, I sat on the edge of the overstuffed mattress and contemplated the mistakes I'd made, topped off with last night's disaster. True, I wasn't familiar with the area but that hadn't stopped me in the past from tracking down a suspect. I was underestimating this one, despite the legend; he was quick and smart and knew how to escape. Others had come as close as I had to capturing him and he'd gotten away from us all.
Jack had to be known to all the women he'd killed. My list of suspects began with that conviction and I intended to eliminate those suspects before extending my search. I began the day with another inquest, Catherine's. Ezra joined me and afterward we continued with our own interviews, collecting another half-dozen sets of prints in the process.
Ezra, I noted with amusement, had gained a certain confidence and with it an impressive authority that kept down any objections to our questions and print collecting. In another era--mine--he might have done all right in law enforcement or even British Intelligence. He had a way of phrasing even the most probing questions with a sympathy that gained trust. It was work he might enjoy more than cataloging books, assuming he planned to return to his old job once he was free of the responsibility of watching after me.
It was an idea I mentioned to him over beer and sandwiches at lunch and all it got me was a hearty laugh. "A detective? I don't have the temperament to put the fear of God into the rogues. And I don't believe I could bat a fellow over the head, no matter how he'd misbehaved."
"He'd probably prefer it to a good talking-to." I grinned. "Anyway, you've got a real advantage, with your connections. And I don't mean the earthly kind."
"All the more reason they'll want none of me," Ezra retorted with dark cheer. "I think they should rather like to have you, though, with your fingerprinting and--what did you call it--profiling? If anything should happen and you must stay, that is."