Or possibly something more precious than a trinket or a handful of coins?
He rapped gently on the wood panel, the wall behind hollow.
“Ye can come out, lad,” he said gently.
The panel creaked, then opened a narrow space. A pale face appeared in the opening, a boy with a mop of dark hair and large, dark eyes.
“Yer safe now,” Brodie told the child.
There was a hesitant nod as the lad, small and thin for his age, stepped out of the narrow space between the wood panel and the stone wall behind it.
When he would have glanced past, Brodie stopped him.
“Dinnae look, lad.” Rory, a strong, fine name. He would need that strength now, and for all the days to come.
“Is she…?” The rest of the question caught in the boy’s throat.
Brodie pulled him against himself and held him tight, Rory’s face pressed into his shoulder.
He knew only too well what it was to have that image forever burned into one’s memory. That old memory of finding his mother’s body in a place very much like this swept back at him, painful and raw as if it was here and now. He forced it back. Back over twenty years earlier, where he kept it carefully hidden.
How did the murderer find Ellie after all these years? Did he know about the boy?
Until Brodie found who had done this, he had to assume that Rory wasn’t safe.
He heard the constable’s whistle, closer now.
“We must go,” Brodie gently told him.
Rory pushed against him, surprisingly strong.
“No! I won’t leave her!”
Brodie heard the tears along with the anger in the lad’s voice, something he knew only too well.
“There’s nothin’ to be done for her now.”
“I want to find him!” Rory cried. “I want to make him pay for what he did.”
The same words he had screamed into the shadows as a boy a long time ago.
Was it possible Rory had seen the man? In that case, he might very well be in danger.
“I will find him,” Brodie promised, as he stroked Rory’s back. “Ye have my word. But we must go now.”
The fight eased out of that thin body and ended on a sob.
“I don’t want to leave her!” Rory said as he fought the tears.
Brodie would see that her body was provided for. It was the least he could do. He couldn’t bear for this to be the boy’s last memory. But for now, they needed to go.
“Yer not leavin’ her, I am.”
One
“Mornin’,Miss Mikaela,” Mr. Cavendish greeted me as I arrived at the office on the Strand.
I smiled. It had been ‘Miss Mikaela’since our first meeting and still was, in spite of the change in my relationship with Brodie. And I was quite all right with it.
