His men surged forward and out of sight.
Iain guided Abby back down the road and rounded another corner into the main thoroughfare. Wagons, horses, and people were hurrying in all directions. Some arriving, some leaving, some going home to their dinners and family, and some making their way to inns.
Abby was glad to see the road so busy. Surely Thomas wouldn’t risk firing guns in the crowd.
Iain and Abby moved into a group of loud ruffians, trying to lose themselves in the throng.
Finally, Iain shoved his way through the door of a store, dragging her behind him. “Act naturally,” he whispered. “Ye don’t know who ye can trust.”
He plucked fresh bread from the baskets and plopped them on the counter and grated out the rest of his list. “Two pounds of dried meat and one pound of cheese.”
The bell above the door sounded, and Abby glanced up. Thomas and two soldiers stood there. Thomas laughed, his eyes sinister and bloodthirsty.
Before Abby could react, Iain threw a bread basket atThomas’s face with one hand, drew his sword with the other, and lunged forward. Thomas sidestepped but soon regained his balance and leapt out of the way. Iain fought the two soldiers, baskets and shelves falling in their wake. The storekeeper kept shouting, “Nay. Ma store. Ma store.”
Thomas was edging around behind Iain. Abby threw her hand over her mouth. The bastard was going to attack from behind. Coward. Abby snapped her head around, looking for a weapon, anything that would stop Thomas’s advance.
She grabbed a poker that was leaning against some shelving and crept forward. Thomas lifted his sword high, and as his shoulder twitched to bring the blade down, Abby whopped him over the head with the poker.
He cried out and spun around on his shaky heels. His face raged red, and he brought his sword around, ready to lop off Abby’s head, but stayed his hand at the last moment. His beady eyes ogled Abigail’s torn shirt.
Abby knew she should have hit him harder, but at the last minute, she had instinctively reduced the impact. Stupid. She was in a kill-or-be-killed situation, and she didn’t knock the creep out? If she were there, Max would be furious with her.
Thomas turned back to the fight, and Abby’s gaze caught the top of a white object poking out of his pants pocket. Her orb. Abby glanced up. Iain had felled one soldier, but the other one had him up against the wall.
“Kill him, soldier,” Thomas demanded. “This on—”
Before he’d finished talking, not making the same mistake again, Abby swung the poker through the air and landed it full force against his left shoulder.
Darn.
She had aimed for his head.
Thomas side-skipped into a great bag leaning on the wall. The jars above tottered and then fell off the shelf. Glass and honey shattered over his dirty coiffured wig. His eyes wereopen but glazed. Abby took her chance. She plucked the orb out of his pocket. “This is mine, you jerk.”
Iain used the snag in his opponent’s concentration to haul a heavy rope Abby recognized as a ship’s hawser around the soldier’s neck and disarm him.
Abby scooted past Thomas and into Iain’s arms.
“Is that your treasure?” he asked, nodding to her orb.
“Yes,” she said, and grinned.
Not having time to explain any further, Abby took Iain’s hand, and they fled the store where more soldiers waited for their commander. With her nails biting into Iain’s hand, Abby kept her hold on the orb as if she would die if she were to lose it again.
Thomas must have gotten his wits back, because his voice bawled out behind them, “Get them!”
Boots pounded the dirt road, and guns fired. Iain and Abby dodged and swerved, swerved and dodged, yelling all the while for people to take cover just as a horse’s clomping hoofbeats echoed in the air around them.
“Sir Thomas, Sir Thomas!” someone shouted.
“What?” Thomas’s voice bellowed over the top of the gunshots.
The first voice answered, but Abby couldn’t make out his words above the sound of the muskets, and her thundering heart. Thomas couldn’t have either, because he yelled for his men to halt.
Iain wasn’t going to let the chance go by. He yanked Abby closer to his side, and they skidded around the corner at the end of the street.
They stopped and listened. No bootsteps followed them. Abby panted, taking great gulps of air into her burning lungs.
