“What do ye want to do?” Munro asked from where he stood at the open doorway. He had heard the message given to the woman to deliver.
“I need to go to Mayfair,” Brodie replied, a familiar coldness tightening inside him.
That message—that Blackwood would take from him what he had taken from the man—was even grimmer with drugs and the cancer feeding the insanity.
Such viciousness was no stranger to Brodie. He had encountered it before on the streets, driven by hunger, poverty, and desperation. But he had closed the door on that life, on people like Blackwood, for which there was only depravity and revenge. Blackwood had thrown the door open.
What would he find when he got to Mayfair?
Munro saw the grim expression on the face of the man who was like a brother.
Nothing was said as Brodie pushed past him and then strode down the stairs in the pouring rain to the street below. It wasn’t necessary.
There were too many years between them, too many cold nights shared in a rat-infested hideaway trying to survive, a loaf of bread stolen and shared, a bond that went beyond blood.
Mr. Cavendish was there at the bottom of the stairs, with the hound beside him. He nodded and whistled sharply for a driver.
He greeted the man who swung his rig about and pulled to the curb. Brodie climbed inside before the coach came to a full stop.
“Take the hound with you,” Mr. Cavendish said, not a question, as Munro swung up into the coach.
“Get on with you now,” he told Rupert, and the hound quickly followed.
Brodie shouted their destination. Mr. Jarvis swung the team about and sent waves of water exploding beneath the wheels from the driving rain.
Brodie saw the smoke before they reached Hanover Place. Then the fire at the townhouse, the street before it filled with the wagons and water tenders of the fire brigade.
“I will take from you what you have taken from me!”A desperate last threat as Blackwood screamed from the dock at the court.
That knot inside Brodie tightened into a hard, cold fist as he vaulted out of the coach and ran toward that fire.
He threw off the hand on his arm as he reached the steps.
“She’s not there!” Munro shouted over the roar of the fire and the explosion of water from a pumper truck as Brodie pulled him back.
“She was taken away by the man the housekeeper spoke of!”
A crewman from the fire brigade was there, his face smudged from the smoke as he shouted.
“A gentleman across the way informed us when we arrived. He saw a coach leave just as the fire began. Sorry, sir,” he apologized, as he no doubt assumed it was his residence.
Not his, but near enough in the time they had been together there, Brodie thought.
“The best we can hope for now, sir, is to prevent it spreading to the other residences,” he said in parting as he ran and rejoined his men as the fire engulfed the townhouse.
‘I will take from you…’
Beside them, the hound whined pitifully, as Brodie stared at the flames. He suddenly turned and ran back to the coach.
“I know where Blackwood has taken her.”
When he reached the coach, he shouted up to Mr. Jarvis.
“Victoria Station! And hurry!”
MIKAELA, VICTORIA STATION
He was mad, I was certain of it, as he pushed me ahead of him through the crowd of arriving and departing passengers. His hand tightly clasped my arm, the revolver in his other hand concealed in the pocket of his coat, its barrel pressed against my back.
