Midnight Capers

by Rebecca King

  Dean vaulted over the low stone wall on the outskirts of the village. From his position on the road leading into the village he could see another road which led to Oakley Bridge, and a solitary figure, dressed in black, running down the lane toward the centre of the village.

  “Do you see him?” Hamish called.

  “Go,” Roger snapped, digging his heels into his horse’s sides.

  Dean didn’t bother to slow down so his colleagues could catch up. In his mind, he was plotting which route he had to take to get to Pheony.

  “There. Over there,” Hamish called, pointing to two figures who were racing down the main street toward a small Norman church.

  Dean cursed when he saw the woman because he knew it was Pheony. Rather than focus on reaching her, though, Dean targeted her enemy. “Morton,” he bellowed even though he was several feet away.

  Ronan hauled his horse to a stop and tried to aim at him.

  “Don’t risk shooting her,” Dean shouted at him, moving his horse so he blocked Ronan’s aim. He watched Morton glance behind him, realise that Dean was narrowing the distance between them, and promptly change direction. “I’ll go after Pheony. You get Morton,” Dean called to any of his friends who could hear him.

  Nobody answered, but he didn’t care.

  A possessive streak he never knew he possessed suddenly overwhelmed Dean when he focused on chasing Pheony. He wasn’t chasing her just to protect an innocent young woman. He was chasing her because he needed to make himself happy. He needed her to secure his future happiness, his life.

  “God knows I have been a miserable bastard without her,” he muttered. But by the time he reached the place where he had last seen her, she had disappeared – again.

  “Do you see her?” Hamish gasped when Dean reached him.

  Somewhere in the village, gunfire shattered the silence. Dean and Hamish knew that their colleagues had found Morton but didn’t rush to help them.

  “She has to be going back to the cottage.”

  “The grocer said the track was around here somewhere, but I will be damned if I can see it.” Hamish rode his horse up and down the side of the road but couldn’t see anything except the darkness of shrubbery. “It has to be around here somewhere.”

  Dean struggled to contain his temper. He dismounted and stalked into the shrubs, forcing his way through thick bramble and hedgerow while he searched for the cart track. He walked around in random directions until he eventually found two narrow paths cutting through the thicket.

  “I have found the path,” Dean called to Hamish, who was standing on the road with the horses. When he appeared through the trees, Hamish led the horses toward his colleague. He didn’t say as much but found it disconcerting that the woods were still and quiet. His gut instinct was warning him that there was something wrong. “How do you want to do this? Do you want to find the cottage or call out to her in case she is hiding?”

  “She probably won’t answer us even if we call out, especially if she is hiding from Morton. She has to be terrified,” Dean muttered. He was annoyed with Morton for being stupid enough to target her.

  As if summoned by the dark arts, the outline of a ghoulish figure appeared silently out of the graveyard. He popped up as if he had been hiding behind one of the gravestones, vaulted over the stone wall bordering the churchyard, and raced across the road. Hamish removed his gun, took aim, and fired, but the bullet lodged itself into a tree next to him rather than in Morton.

  “Damn it. We must go after him. There is no point going to the cottage if he is out here. The last thing we need is a gun battle in her house,” Hamish growled before promptly disappearing into the trees beside them.

  Dean stepped into the road and signalled to his colleagues who appeared at the end of the main street. A few quick jerks of his hands warned them that they had to hunt for Morton in the trees Dean was standing beside. Within minutes the search was on.

  “Go and find her, Dean,” Roger ordered. “Stay with her. We will flush him out.”

  Wiping rainwater out of his eyes, Dean began to jog down the cart track. He barely managed to get six feet before Morton began to fire at him. Cursing fluidly, Dean was forced to use the trees for protection. He knew that for each moment he was left hiding in the woods, Morton was edging steadily closer to Pheony’s cottage. It was nearby, Dean was sure of it because he could smell woodsmoke and thought he could see the dark outline of a rooftop through the trees.

  “Go,” Roger snapped, shoving Dean away from a tree but only so he could open fire on the spot where he had last seen Morton.

  Hamish whistled to warn his colleagues that he was moving position. They all knew that it was easy to mistake a suspect for a colleague in the darkness, and shoot the wrong person, so used a variety of different animal sounds and whistles to warn each other of what they were doing. Together, the men moved steadily through the trees, slowly creeping toward the cottage Pheony called home.

  Unfortunately, Pheony hadn’t managed to get there yet. She was too scared to move. Each time she contemplated it, something moved around her, but it was impossible to see what it was. Now, she could hear strange animal sounds, but couldn’t identify what animals made noises like those she was hearing. Pheony studied the trees but with the wind shaking the branches above her head, and the steady patter of rainwater splattering all about her, she struggled to hear anything.

  “If Morton is around, I can’t see him, or hear him. It is now or never,” she whispered.

  “No, you don’t,” Dean growled, sliding one long arm around her to keep her in front of him.

  Dean’s entire world changed the second he touched her. It felt as if someone had put a light on inside him. The way she fit against him felt as if she had been created just for him. He breathed in the delicate scent of her that was so temptingly delightful that for a moment, all he could do was bury his face in her hair and savour the fact that she was before him. “Stand still,” he whispered, trying to ignore the yearning of his body.

  “Dean?” Pheony’s heart leapt. Tears stung her eyes. Despite his gentle command, she slowly turned around and looked up into his face. In the darkness, the shadows clung to each dip and hollow of his handsome features and made him look almost spectral but to her he looked incredibly handsome. The rainwater clung lovingly to his lean cheeks and hovered tantalisingly on his long lashes. She wanted nothing more than to reach up and touch him, just to make sure that he wasn’t a figment of her imagination.

  “Stand still,” Dean breathed.

  “Where is he?”

  “Nearby.” Dean had no idea where Morton was but wasn’t going to tell her that. He stared down at her beautiful face and fell more deeply in love than he had ever believed it was possible to love someone. “Where is the house?”

  Pheony looked down the lane. “About five hundred yards down there.”

  “We are going to move slowly toward it but use the trees for protection.” The second he finished talking, gunfire exploded in the undergrowth several feet away. Dean held her tightly against him and backed her against a tree. Pheony clung to him and buried her face in his neck. She expected him to push her away and put some distance between them but instead, Dean cupped the back of her head. She thought she felt him press a kiss into her hair and looked up.

  “We have to move,” he whispered before she could speak. “Ready?”

  Reluctantly, and extremely disappointed, Pheony nodded.

  Roger cursed and ducked when bullets were fired back at him, but Hamish, Ronan, and Daniel forced Morton to stop by unleashing a volley of gunfire back at him which resulted in a dull cry. It was barely audible in the storm, but it was the sound of someone being injured.

  “Don’t speak, just move as quickly as possible.” Dean relieved her of one of the baskets. “You carry the other. I need a hand free for my gun.”

  Pheony nodded but wasn’t sure if he could see her in the dark. She tried to pick a path through the undergrowth but barely made
any headway because each time she tried to move her skirts got caught on shrubs, bramble, and fallen logs and branches. While Dean waited patiently for her to battle through the thicket, Pheony eventually lost patience. With a muttered curse she stepped out onto the path and began to stomp toward the house.

  “What are you doing?” Dean demanded.

  “Going home,” Pheony snapped, throwing him a dark look as if challenging him to stop her.

  Before Dean could drag her back into the trees, Hamish emitted several whistles in a strange sequence only the Star Elite could understand. A series of whistles then came from various locations around the woods. Dean grinned at her when Pheony lifted her brows at him. “Well, we understand it,” he shrugged.

  Shaking her head in disbelief, Pheony resumed her journey to the house. Dean followed her but became alarmed at just how isolated the cottage was the longer they walked down the path. He was stonily silent by the time they reached the front door and remained that way until his colleagues joined them. By the time Pheony unlocked the door and stepped into the house, a heavy tension hung over everyone.

  “Where is he?” Dean demanded of Roger.

  “In the trees.”

  “He is hurt quite badly so can’t get far but I have just followed his trail a little way. He is going in the opposite direction,” Joshua warned. “There isn’t any urgency to finding him. He isn’t likely to vanish.”

  Dean’s lifted his brows at his friend and watched Joshua slide a knowing look at Pheony before slowly shaking his head. Dean knew then that Morton wasn’t going to survive. Whoever had managed to shoot him had caused a severe enough injury to Morton that the man was going to bleed to death relatively quickly.

  Together, the men followed Dean and Pheony into the tiny house and immediately set about searching the property and making sure that all the doors and windows were still locked.

  “I think he has been trying to break in here,” Pheony announced once she had deposited her baskets onto the kitchen table. She turned to study the men, a little surprised by how sinister they all looked. They too were completely soaked from head to foot but had a stern countenance about them that she hadn’t seen before. There wasn’t a hint of a smile on their faces, which remained stark and almost grave as they studied the house that she had been calling home.

  “You can’t stay here. While we know what Morton was doing, we don’t know how many more people helped him commit his crimes,” Roger announced.

  “When did you last hear someone trying to get in?” Hamish demanded.

  “Last night. Thankfully, Bert called by to offer to take me to see Mr Abraham this morning, and I think must have scared him away because I didn’t hear anything after that.” Pheony didn’t like the way that Roger was studying the room as if finding what he saw offensive. “It is a nice house,” she protested before he could say anything.

  “It is far too remote for someone like you to stay in, especially given that Morton is in the area.”

  “But he is injured,” Pheony argued.

  Dean stomped past her and raced up the stairs. He didn’t stop to ask her for her permission. He didn’t care if she screamed, protested, shouted, argued, and refused to leave. Dean hurriedly shoved her few belongings into a bag and slammed out of the bed chamber. Minutes later, he dropped the bag beside the front door.

  “What are you doing?” Pheony demanded.

  “You are coming with me,” Dean growled.

  “I can’t go back to your safe house.”

  Sensing an argument was brewing, Roger stepped forward. “I take it that you have been to see Mr Abraham then and know that you no longer have a guardian.”

  “Yes, but I only found out about it this morning.” Pheony frowned when Dean stomped into the kitchen, fetched the baskets, and plonked them onto the floor beside her bag.

  “Is there anything else in the house that is yours?” he demanded.

  “I can’t just leave here,” Pheony snapped. “I can’t go back to the safe house.”

  “Well, you can’t go anywhere else,” Dean argued. “Let me rephrase that, you are not going anywhere else. You are coming home with me.”

  Pheony struggled not to cry. Her chin quivered and tears gathered on her lashes to the point that Joshua tutted and sighed and elbowed past Dean and growled: “Shut up, you are scaring her.”

  Softening his tone like he would when he had to wheedle his way into Annalisa’s good books, Joshua offered Pheony a soft smile. “What my bumbling buffoon of a colleague is trying to say is that you have been targeted by Morton for some reason, but we don’t know why. Do you know him?”

  “No. I have no idea why he was staring at me earlier.”

  “Earlier?” Dean cursed.

  Roger threw him a warning look which he ignored.

  “Yes, after I left Mr Abraham’s office. I went shopping and then caught the public carriage back to the village but then couldn’t find the track and had to ask someone. It was early evening by the time I found it, but then I realised that Morton was behind me. I think he had followed me here. He just stood in the street staring at me as if he knew me, but I have never seen him before.”

  “What made you think it was Morton?” Hamish asked.

  “I don’t know. He just stared at me, but didn’t move, didn’t speak, and was dressed head to toe in black. He was sinister, and unnerving. Thankfully, someone came out of the church and I stayed with them.”

  “Is Bert staying here?” Dean demanded.

  “Here? No,” Pheony protested, horrified at the thought that Dean would think she would share the house with a single man.

  “Bert works for the farrier in Willenshaw then,” Ronan prompted.

  “Well, yes, but I went to the farrier’s house and he wasn’t there. By the time I found the house, it was dark. Then Morton appeared again. I think he has been following me, waiting for me to come back here.”

  “Which is why you are not going to stay. Joshua can track him, but it is dark and stormy. Even bleeding, Morton’s trail will be difficult to find. Blood can be washed away by the rainwater. There is nothing to say that the rainwater hasn’t made it look like Morton has been mortally injured.” While he said that, Joshua started to nod.

  “It will be difficult to find his trail in the morning. Meantime, we have no idea what Morton is going to do. He knows that this house is here, and that you have been here all alone,” Daniel warned. “You can’t stay.”

  “But going back out there is dangerous,” Pheony muttered, even though she had the horrible feeling that she was going to have to leave anyway.

  “We can get you out of here,” Luke announced.

  “Go and get the horses,” Roger ordered Daniel and Hamish. “Luke, you take Ronan and Joshua and go and search the nearby woodland. Once we know he isn’t near here we will leave. I don’t care if he sleeps under a hedge tonight. We aren’t going to risk our necks going after him.”

  “What if he breaks in here?” Pheony demanded.

  “Then we are going to have to fix a broken door,” Hamish replied. “We can repair a door. It is a damned sight harder to repair a ruined life.” With that, he threw a dark look at Dean before slamming out of the house.

  Roger pointed one long finger at Dean. “Stay here. Round up the rest of her things and make sure that you are ready. She rides with you.”

  Dean didn’t move or speak while Roger slammed out of the house.

  In the hallway, with just the two of them, the silence became oppressive quickly.

  “Do you have any other belongings in the house?” Dean prompted.

  Pheony knew that stalling her departure was going to mean that the men lingered in the house, or outside, far longer than was safe, and that Morton could appear at any moment and start shooting at them again. It really was safer for everyone if she went with them.

  “I have to tell Bert where I have gone,” Pheony announced.

  “Write him a note. Leave it on the kitchen table. Roger
will probably want to go and see him in the morning to explain where you have gone, or I will,” Dean reported dismissively. “Now, hurry up. The men are ready.”

  As if to prove it, the jangling of harnesses outside broke the silence. Pheony stared at Dean, and longed for him to say something gentle, intimate, or soothing. A smile would have sufficed, but his face remained an implacable mask of calmness that was difficult to read. It didn’t help that he wouldn’t look at her. Instead, he eyed the baskets and muttered something about having to get someone to hold them or fetch them in the morning.

  “Ready?”

  Before Pheony could answer, he picked up the baskets, carried them outside, and then returned for her bag which he secured to the back of his horse. Pheony stood in the hallway and watched him. When he returned to the house he stood in the doorway and positively towered over her. Without saying a word, he reached out and slid his hand into hers before gently tugging her out of the house. When she was standing on the front step before him, he slid a protective arm around her waist and held her firmly against him while he closed the door.

  “Shouldn’t you lock that?” Pheony whispered hoarsely when he turned to leave.

  “If Morton tries to break in, he might try the door latches first. If it opens, he won’t cause any damage when he gets into the house. He is injured, so won’t climb through any windows unless he absolutely must. He might use the house, but will be a sitting target in the morning,” Dean replied.

  He bent down, picked up a stray leaf then slowly slid it in between the door and the jamb at floor level so that anybody who opened the door would dislodge the leaf. Shaking her head in disbelief, Pheony stared at it until Dean recaptured her hand and tugged her toward his horse.

  With effortless ease, he lifted her onto the saddle and vaulted up behind her. Once she was settled in his arms, he guided his horse back onto the track. Pheony clung to him and buried her face in his neck. She peeked into the darkness over his shoulder and was amazed to see Dean’s friends riding around them as if protecting them. She glanced behind them and looked at Roger and Hamish, who kept glancing at the track behind them. Beside them, Luke and Ronan were studying the trees they passed. In front, Peregrine studied the track, trotted forward a little, turned his horse around, and then returned to the group but only so he could continue to lead them. He kept going around and around in circles, slowly but steadily guiding the group out onto the main road. It was impressive but terrifying because it reminded her that they considered the danger Morton posed was still very real.