by Rebecca King
With that, the men from the Star Elite left the safe house and headed off into the night in search of the woman who had unsettled Phillip unlike anyone else he had ever met.
‘This is the hard part,’ Oliver warned then they were about half a mile away from the safe house.
They had stopped once again to wait for Angus to pick up the trail Carlotta had left. When he briskly nodded and pointed in the direction she had taken, Angus remounted his horse and they all set off again. They were still going far faster than Carlotta would be able to walk but had yet to see her.
‘It’s getting so dark we have to make sure that we don’t pass her without realising it.’ Jasper turned to look back at the safe house, which was now nothing more than a small blot on the landscape.
‘What is it?’ Callum murmured, turning in his saddle to see for himself what had captured Jasper’s interest.
‘I don’t know,’ Jasper replied. ‘I thought I saw something back there.’
‘Wait.’ Justin lifted a hand to stop everyone. They all turned to look back at the safe house. ‘I thought I saw something near the barn.’
They watched. Within seconds, the dull and distant sound of gunfire broke the silence. Brief flashes of light flickered around the property as the men the Star Elite had fought last night attacked the property from all sides.
‘Mother of God,’ Phillip hissed. ‘We only just escaped.’
‘They followed us,’ Oliver growled, a little shaken himself at just how close they had come to being ambushed again.
‘They aren’t highly trained, or they would have scouted the area and made sure that we were at home before they tried to attack us,’ Oliver assured them.
‘They are persistent,’ Niall sighed. ‘Thankfully, on this occasion we are one step ahead of them. Now all we have to do is stay that way.’
‘Do you want to go back and flush them out?’ Callum asked. ‘They must think we are in there.’
‘No, they will know we have already left soon enough, and will start to search for us. We can use their delay to take up position and be waiting for them when they find us. I think it is about time that we created a little ambush of our own,’ Oliver drawled thoughtfully.
Phillip looked down at the ground beneath their horses’ hooves. ‘It is kind of difficult to cover our tracks now anyway.’
‘Let them follow us. We can use the cover of darkness to go to the woods, or wherever it is Carlotta is taking us. We can then settle down and wait for them to come to us,’ Oliver mused.
The men settled into silence and fanned out as they scanned the area of Carlotta, the woman who had become the Star Elite’s most wanted runaway.
Carlotta tried not to allow fear to get the better of her. But it was difficult when every snap of a twig, every rustle of a leaf in the eerily quiet woods threatened to make her jump right out of her skin. She was so cold it was hard to stop her teeth from clattering together. She was shivering so badly she had to cross her arms and cup her elbows, but her fingers were still numb. At some point a stiff breeze had started to build and it snatched what was left of her warmth cruelly away. It was so dark she struggled to see where she was putting her feet, but she refused to stop. Thankfully, she had managed to head in the right direction. The cliff tops had appeared to her right a few minutes ago and were getting steadily closer with each step she took. While she didn’t recognise the area near the house yet, she knew it couldn’t be all that far away.
I must keep putting one foot in front of the other. I will get there. I just need to keep moving, stay out of sight, and everything will be all right.
It had to be because she was well and truly on her own now. She was scared witless and struggled to contain the urge to turn around and run back to Phillip. It was only the thought that even he might betray her and hand her over to her father that stopped her. It forced her to straighten her shoulders and forge ahead when she wanted to just lie down for a while and let the night pass.
‘I have to get to the house to get warm again. I am so cold. There must be clothing in the cupboards. There has to be something I can use.’ Carlotta contemplated the thick covers on the bed she had used and knew that even one of them would stop her freezing to death before she managed to find somewhere else to stay.
‘For now, just focus on getting to the house,’ she hissed before quickly shoving aside the small nagging voice in the back of her mind that asked her what she was going to do when she got to Cliff House because Phillip had the key to the property as well. To try to get her mind off how black it was in the woods she was walking through, Carlotta tried to remember the conversation she had had with Henrietta the day she had arrived at her friend’s house, tired and just as dishevelled as she was now.
‘You must stay here,’ Henrietta had insisted.
‘But I can’t. You have only recently wed. It is too soon for you to entertain. Moreover, here is the first place that father will look for me,’ Carlotta had insisted.
‘We do have a house you might use,’ Henrietta’s husband, Henry, had interrupted. ‘I have just inherited it but haven’t got the time to go there to look over it.’ He had smiled fondly at his wife, making it clear that neither of them was going anywhere while they enjoyed the first few months of marital bliss. Henrietta had smiled and blushed prettily leaving Carlotta in no doubt whatsoever she was making the right decision by turning down their generous offer. ‘It is a little remote I am afraid, but it will give you a place to stay that will be warm and dry.’
Carlotta had readily agreed and gratefully accepted Henry’s the further offer of a carriage to take her to her new home.
‘It has been a blessing but also a curse,’ she whispered as she closed the thoughts of that evening down.
In that moment, in a cold, windswept field in the middle of nowhere, Carlotta had a horrifying thought slam into her that was so shocking, so startling, that she struggled to comprehend it. She stared blankly at the outline of the house on the hill that she had presumed she would be safe in and asked herself the one question that she had, until now, not even realised was important: ‘How had her father’s thugs known where to find her?’
Immediately, her thoughts turned to Henry. Without realising she was saying her thoughts aloud she murmured: ‘Have you told me to come here so I am away from everyone who knows me so that nobody will be able to hear me object or witness anything when my father arrives to force me home?’
The thought that she might have been betrayed by her friends, the only people she had thought she could rely on, was staring at her so boldly that Carlotta felt like several kinds of fool for not having realised the reality of her situation. Henry had told her that it was a house he had recently inherited and as such nobody would know it belonged to him. Moreover, he had said he had no intention of using it, so it wasn’t somewhere he had previously frequented. Out of all the places her father might search for her, it would be Henry and Henrietta’s house.
‘The only way he could possibly know I am here is if one of them told him,’ she whispered in disbelief, feeling every kind of fool for not having seen it before.
Battling tears, Carlotta stared at the ground beneath her boots. She dreaded the thought of what that might mean to her future. In that moment, the stark reality of her situation brought her an acute sense of loneliness that was suffocating.
I could die right now, and nobody would hear or see anything. Nobody would care.
She eyed the cliffs and, for one brief and very telling moment, wondered if it might be better if she just jumped off it. The thought of having to survive alone without a penny or possession to her name was simply staggering. But she knew she had to. She had to find a way to do what she needed to do.
At least I now know that I cannot go to Henrietta’s. I cannot stay at Cliff House either. I must find somewhere else.
But for the first time in her entire life, Carlotta had no place else she could go. There was nobody else to turn to either.
; CHAPTER NINE
Carlotta closed the back door to the house and leaned against it while she listened intently to the silence within the property. She was so scared her knees positively trembled, but it was too late to go back outside now. When she had arrived, she had done what Phillip had earlier with the safe house. She had walked from one side of the garden, around the perimeter hedge to the far side and back again, searching every shadow while making sure to stay away from the area where she had found Smidgley’s body. Only when she had been sure that there wasn’t anybody in either the garden or the house had she ventured closer to the property. Now that she was inside she still wasn’t at all sure it was the right place to be even temporarily, but she had to fetch something to help her survive.
‘First a blanket, then I need to fetch the rest of my food.’ Eyeing the dresser where she had left the remains of her food, Carlotta hurried into the main body of the house.
It was close to midnight and everything was still. The only sound she could hear was the heavy thudding of her own heart. She forced herself not to look at the shadows as she made her way up the long winding stairs. This house had, until now, been her sanctuary. A part of her was angry that she should feel unsafe in it; that someone might have broken into it. It felt so much like her home, more than her home with her parents ever had, that Carlotta hated to think of the moment she had to leave it for good. Despite the dangers that surrounded her, she knew it was the only place she could call her refuge.
‘But I have to go,’ she whispered. ‘Again.’
When her words threatened to choke her, Carlotta focused on the top of the stairs. She was half-way up when she heard the faint creak of a floorboard behind her. She paused. Moonlight filtered through from the sitting room and chased away enough of the darkness to assure her that she was still alone in the hallway. But something, or someone, had made that noise. Warily, she completed the climb and hurried into the bed chamber she had used since she had arrived. Quickly gathering up a few things she would need, she placed them into a makeshift pouch and secured it with a knot. With it clasped tightly in her hand, she crept back to the bed chamber door. She eased it open in time to listen to that faint creak once again. She knew from her previous stay at the property that there wasn’t usually any noise overnight. The house didn’t usually creak and groan as it settled like most properties did. Tonight, the house felt almost alive, as it if was a huge beast waking up after a long hibernation.
‘Someone else is in the house.’ Saying the words aloud didn’t make her feel any better, especially when she heard a click of what sounded like a door closing. Nevertheless, Carlotta left the bed chamber and made her way to the top of the stairs.
She felt, rather than saw, the shadows move behind her. Without even glancing over her shoulder to see who it was she pelted down the stairs. When she turned toward the kitchen, she saw out of the corner of her eye someone running down the stairs after her. She knew the second she saw him that it was the man she had seen in the woods. The same man who had shot at her and Phillip, and murdered Claude Smidgley.
Slamming the kitchen door closed behind her, Carlotta raced across the kitchen and across the garden. Thankfully, she was swallowed by the trees. Rather than keep running, she founded the thickest tree she could and waited. Her heart pounded as she watched the house intently. Within seconds, a man charged out of the house and raced toward the path that led back to the village.
Carlotta didn’t move, even when it became apparent that the intruder had left. Almost an hour passed before she found the strength to stand up, brush herself off, and leave her temporary hiding place. ‘Now what?’ she breathed.
To one side of the woods lay the village; the place where the intruder had just disappeared. To the other side of the woods were the Star Elite and the village where the thugs who had tried to kill them were hiding. The house was no longer a refuge because the man had managed to get inside. Slowly, she turned to study the sea. Of course, she had no hope of ever being able to swim to safety like Phillip had. But she could go down to the beach and hopefully hide amongst the rocks at the base of the cliff until it was light enough to be able to see properly.
‘I should be able to walk along the beach to another village even if the tide is in,’ she whispered. ‘As soon as it goes out, I might be able to walk to freedom.’
When a loud snap of a nearby twig interrupted her thoughts, Carlotta realised it was time to leave. Keeping to the trees as much as possible, she hurried toward the cliff path and began to descend to the beach.
Phillip studied the house before him. Before any of the Star Elite could move, the rustle of the undergrowth nearby drew their attention. The men signalled to each other that they were going to fan out and promptly disappeared.
‘Go to the house. See if she is there. Stay inside and keep watch in case she runs into the house for safety,’ Oliver breathed into his ear.
Phillip nodded and headed toward the house that was strangely starting to feel like home. He hoped and prayed that Carlotta would be there, hidden in one of the bed chambers or the attic. He had no idea what he was going to do if she wasn’t.
She wasn’t. And he had no idea what to do.
‘Damn it,’ Oliver growled when he stomped into the kitchen half an hour later only for Phillip to shake his head.
‘I have been over this damned place twice. Someone has been here recently, though, and it isn’t her. Those boot prints are too big to have been made by her feet.’ Phillip pointed to a boot print next to the scullery door. ‘He came in through the same scullery window I used.’
Oliver puffed his cheeks out and shook his head. ‘We need to fetch the horses now that we know it is clear of gunmen. I don’t know what the others have found but the back of the garden and the garden overlooking the village are free of trespassers.’
Callum stomped in, a dark scowl on his face.
‘Well?’ Oliver demanded.
Callum stepped aside to allow Niall, Jasper, Justin and Aaron into the house. ‘It’s like chasing a damned ghost. There was a man in the woods, but he vanished on us. We have flushed through everywhere, but he has escaped.’
‘He has probably gone to the village. It is only along a narrow path,’ Phillip reasoned.
‘We have found Smidgley’s body,’ Justin informed them.
Phillip nodded. ‘Have you cut him down?’
‘Nope. The last thing we need is to be tripping over a corpse,’ Aaron snorted. ‘We can send someone to fetch him in the morning. Right now, I don’t think it is at all wise that anybody goes stumbling around those woods. Someone is out there but it isn’t the thugs that Smidgley hired or Carlotta.’
‘But she has to be here,’ Phillip growled. ‘This is the first place she would head to. There is no place else for her to go.’
‘Do you think they might have snuck her out of the house when we weren’t looking and be hiding here with them?’ Justin asked.
‘There was only one set of footprints,’ Aaron reported. ‘We would have seen scuffle marks. There weren’t any. Carlotta left the house alone. Because it is evident that she came here alone, and the murderer has just left, she is not working with them either.’
Justin nodded when he heard the warning tone in Aaron’s voice. Nobody believed that Carlotta was anything more than she claimed she was now. Therefore, she was innocent and had to be protected. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t think she was linked to Smidgley’s crimes either, but he had to raise the possibility if only so his colleagues contemplated it before dismissing it.
‘Maybe she is in the woods, but we have missed her,’ Niall suggested. ‘Maybe she stayed away because she saw the man in here.’
‘Why is he here, though? What is he looking for? Why would he break into a house like this?’ Phillip demanded.
‘To see if you are here. Or if Carlotta is here,’ Oliver suggested. ‘He may be the thug we didn’t shoot earlier.’
Phillip was already shaking his head
. ‘The man I just saw wasn’t as stocky as the thug who escaped us.’
Oliver puffed his cheeks out. ‘Can you remember something of significance that might help you find out if she has been back? Are there any of her personal possessions that might have disappeared? Can you think of something she might want to return here to fetch?’
Phillip shook his head. Eventually, he stood up and yanked open the dresser. Squatting down he peered into its empty depths. ‘Unless our man was carrying a basket, someone has been back to fetch her food. She kept a small stash in here in a basket. It’s gone.’
‘She might have returned to fetch it and something to wear that would keep her warm.’ Callum said.
Phillip picked up her bag that Niall had carried into the house and dropped beside the door. He snatched it open and rummaged through it but found nothing more than clothing. ‘She might have come back to fetch a cloak or something. She was inadequately dressed. She had only a shawl to wear. Without a cloak she could die from the cold or rain.’
‘We have to assume she is still around here somewhere,’ Oliver said.
‘It’s too dark out there to see tracks,’ Aaron warned.
‘I doubt she would be walking around out there alone in the dark anyway. Not after what happened when she was with you. Maybe she has just curled up somewhere to wait for daylight,’ Justin suggested. ‘As soon as this darkness starts to lift, we can get out there and try to find her. For now, we have to keep watch and make sure that the thugs don’t manage to use the trees as cover while they get into position to ambush us again.’
‘I’ll take first watch,’ Phillip offered.
‘No, you won’t. You will get those wounds of yours seen to, a change of clothing, something to eat and then some rest. If you don’t you are going to be no good to anyone. We have all got to try to find her at first light. Callum, Aaron, go on first watch. Then Justin and Niall,’ Oliver ordered. ‘We will head out at first light,’ he then said to Phillip.