His question confused me. We had met months ago, on that awful train ride from Alexandria to Cairo. I frowned at him. “In what sense?”
Mr. Sterling smiled faintly. “In the sense that matters.” He reached up and tossed his hat to the floor. I stared at it, completely taken aback.
I hadn’t expected him to—
He lifted his hands to his balding head and began peeling the skin. I watched, half-transfixed, half-disgusted, as he kept pulling at his scalp to reveal dark hair, shot through with silver, covered by a bald cap. He regarded me intently, light eyes fixed on mine. His hair fell in disorderly curls across his brow, and a feeling of trepidation stole over me.
Mr. Sterling fingered the end of his mustache and slowly tugged it off. He dropped the mustache onto the floor, but I barely noticed. A shimmer of magical energy pulsed between us, faint, like the softest brush of cloth against skin. His light eyes, a cool green, darkened into a rich brown.
I watched in horrified silence as Mr. Sterling became someone else entirely.
WHIT
I wiped the sweat off my brow as I peered around the corner of the same back alley I’d stood in in Turkish Town, mentally cataloguing my injuries. The gunshot wound was taken care of, thanks to the ink bottle. The brawl outside the hotel had left me with a sore jaw and bleeding knuckles. There might be some damage to my ribs—I felt a tug deep in my side.
So essentially, I was fine.
Sterling’s building looked innocuous, but I knew my wife was inside. I ducked out of the alley and crept closer. The front door opened, and I quickly ran to the other side of a donkey cart, parked close to the entrance. Mr. Graves stepped out of the house.
“Send messages out now,” he said. “I can have ten men meet us at the entry point. If the girl isn’t lying, that is.”
“I don’t think so,” Sterling said, appearing behind Mr. Graves. “Where is the carriage?”
“Just around the corner,” Mr. Graves replied.
My eyes flicked to the front door, left open. I hadn’t seen Inez come out.
“Do you want me to take her with us?”
Sterling shook his head. “No. She’ll stay behind in the house with me. We’ll bring her later once I understand what we’re dealing with. I’ll wait for your return before I speak with her again. Don’t be gone too long; I’m impatient to finish this.” He turned away and disappeared into the house.
The carriage pulled up behind the cart. I shifted, moving around so as not to be seen while Graves climbed into his transport.
I could run inside that house and shoot anyone who crossed my path to save Inez. But it was risky, and she could be caught in the cross fire.
Or I could follow Mr. Graves and see where he would be taking her.
The driver clicked his teeth, and the horses lurched forward. Once again, I moved out of the way, considering my options.
Just as the carriage made a turn down the street, I took off after it in a dead run.
CAPÍTULO VEINTICINCO
Thunder roared in my head. I blinked once, twice, as the room spun again. Mr. Sterling became a man I had loved all my life. A man I had looked up to, a man I’d played with as a young girl, dressing up to perform Shakespeare for the household running the estate in Buenos Aires.
He removed his jacket and the padded belly around his middle, balling them up and tossing them over his shoulder, revealing his rangy build. Tears burned in my eyes, scalding my cheeks as they dribbled down to my chin while I stared into his face.
My father looked back at me, smiling slightly. In his soft voice that I would recognize anywhere, he said, “Hola, hijita.”
I bent forward, cradling my stomach. My breath caught in my throat, and I struggled to remain on my feet. I remembered the moment when I’d first read Ricardo’s letter back in Argentina, how my throat had felt tight, as if I’d been screaming for hours. It was the same now, and I couldn’t get a word out, couldn’t take a deep enough breath.
Papá was alive. Alive exactly like I’d hoped. Except he was Basil Sterling, someone Ihated. The man who had founded Tradesman’s Gate.
A criminal, a liar, a con artist. A thief and akiller: I recalled Whit’s words from the other night when Mr. Sterling—Dios, whenPapá—had given the order to kill that young man in the street.
Papá coaxed me to the chair, and I dropped into it, the weight of my realization sitting on my shoulders like granite. He laid his handkerchief onto my lap, and I wiped my face and blew my nose. Then he bent and slidhis arm around my shoulders. He smelled different, astringent and slightly chemical; instead of a library, I pictured a laboratory. Papá rubbed my back, but I pushed him away.
“Don’t touch me,” I said.
