A baying sound came from just ahead at the wharf. Had Rupert had found her?
The blow almost took me to the ground. Then I was dragged back to my feet, a fist wrapped around my hair, and a too-familiar smell of drink, sweat, and traces of chloroform.
I fought, but the long coat tangled about my legs as I was hauled back against a thick male body.
“What have we here?” Carney spat as I struggled to reach the revolver in my coat pocket.
Carney was taller and stronger, the beard on his face scraping my cheek, the smell of him choking me. Unable to reach the revolver, let alone the knife in my boot, I thrust my elbow back hard into his midsection and tried to spin away from him.
There was a sound of surprise as the blow took the air from his lungs. I would have escaped except for that meaty paw of a hand on the front of my coat. He hauled me back against him, his hand around my throat.
A shout, his name, and Carney spun back around, taking me with him.
Then Brodie was there.
“Let her go!”
Carney shook his head, his breath hot and foul against my cheek as his hand tightened around my throat. I could hardly breathe.
“Let her go,” Brodie repeated, a hand-held lamp in one hand, his revolver in the other pointed at Carney. “I’ll not say it again.”
I thought for a moment that Carney might release me, then his hand tightened and his other hand came wrapped around thehilt of a knife. If I could have said something past that strangle hold Carney had on me, I would have told Brodie to shoot.
I knew the risk, but I trusted him.
I looked at Brodie as Carney dragged me back with him. I saw something in the expression on his face, the bleak, dark look in his eyes, and knew what he was about to do.
Gunfire exploded in the dark, the sound echoing off nearby huts and the crumbling buildings that lined the quay.
Carney staggered as he continued to pull me with him. Brodie fired again and Carney went down, taking me with him.
I fought my way out from under that wretched body. And Brodie was there.
“Is he dead?” I whispered past my bruised throat.
He knelt down beside Carney’s body.
“Aye.”
“Good.” It came out as little more than rasping sound, yet horrible as some might think it, I was glad that he was. But what did it mean for Lily?
“The bloody hound has found the girl,” Munro announced as he reached us.
“She’s alive.”
Carney was forgotten. Brodie took my arm and we followed Munro past the hut to the wharf that ran along the riverfront. He swept the beam of a hand-held lamp across the heavy timbers of the wharf. The light found Rupert and an iron grate that he excitedly circled.
A thin voice called out from below that grate. Lily!
“Are you all right?” I asked as I knelt beside the grate.
Her face was pale in the light of the hand-held lamp, her eyes wide and dark. A slender hand was wrapped around one of the bars of the grate.
“It’s cold and there’s a lot of water. It’s getting deeper.”
“The tide is comin’ in.” Munro said in a low voice. “Ye can see just beyond, on the building along the way—high water mark. It floods during high tide, and it’s already up to her knees.”
“Aye, we have to get her out.”
