“If you can’t find something,” Wingate said slowly, as if he were speaking to a halfwit, “then make something up. I want the man thrown in jail by the end of the week.”
The polite scaffolding he’d built for the conversation crumbled. He had come willing to be dismissed, to take the loss of a partnership with dignity. He had not come to do a man’s dirty work. The time to indulge Wingate’s antics was over.
“Absolutely not. I won’t do that.”
“I hired you, so you will. Gunn and that Japanese partner of his are a threat that must be put down. All these newcomers are. Changing our customs. Buying land, building neighborhoods, attracting more of their kind. If we don’t hold the line, this city will become unrecognizable.”
Ah. The truth was finally spilling out.
“Newcomers? Or immigrants?”
Wingate eyed him warily. “Newcomers.”
“Immigrants—sorry, newcomers—like my family? We own a business in Ballard.”
“Your father’s status doesn’t matter. You were born here?—”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Wingate’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “That so?”
“Ellis Island, 1883.”
“That can’t be. I... I assumed?—”
“That I was safe? That I passed well enough for you to forget your prejudices?”
Wingate’s jaw clenched. “You’re twisting my words.”
“No. I’m laying them bare.”
A tense silence filled the room. Wingate’s stare was cold and calculating again, the rage now masked beneath strategy. Emil stared him down, refusing to budge.
“You’re done in Seattle,” Wingate said finally. “You’ll never work for anyone respectable again. Not the department, not the papers. Certainly not the men with real money.”
Emil rose to his feet. “Men like you?”
“Yes. The ones building this city. Truly building it, not tearing it apart.”
Emil wondered how much of Seattle Wingate really thought he owned. How much of it he believed owed him loyalty simply for being here first. The city was changing faster than men like Wingate could stomach. Brick by brick, vote by vote, hand by immigrant hand. And Emil knew exactly where he stood.
He turned and walked away.
The wind outside was sharp with salt and soot. He walked several blocks without direction, just to burn off the fury boiling beneath his collar. He’d seen enough of the old world to know it needed replacing. Let Wingate choke on his plans.
The future belonged to those willing to build it.
Later that day, Emil squinted at the address he’d scrawled on a scrap of paper, then doubtfully up at the residence in Queen Anne Hill. The mansion was a three-story, gabled monstrosity painted mustard yellow and steel grey. The curtains were drawn, the interior unlit. The front yard—a generous term, in this case—had been torn out, replaced by a cold expanse of gravel. The only hint someone lived within was the steady puff of smoke rising from the dual chimneys, and even it seemed to twist and writhe into a message in the sky: enter ye, at your own peril.
“This should be interesting.”
Emil tucked the paper into his pocket and crunched his way to the front door. He raised his hand, then paused. The doorknocker was the head of Medusa, her snake hair grasped by two fists. Her presence likely chased away many who dared call upon the beast within. He let the knocker fall with a heavy thud. No one came to the door. Another attempt with the same result. He was on the verge of giving up when the door was thrown open.
“What the hell are you wanting?”
The words, snarled in a Scottish brogue, raised Emil’s brows. He raked his gaze over the man—no servant, this one—taking in his shorter, but tightly coiled stature, the unkempt suit and overgrown beard. A scowl that could inspire poems, if one dared to risk their own death. There was only one such man Emil knew of that fit the description.
“Mr. Gunn, I’m Emil?—”
