“Mr. Conway,” she called, “it’s me, Zaira Shanahan. And I’ve caught the mastermind behind the robbery, Mr. Wright.”
Mr. Conway halted beside her. “Zaira Shanahan. My word, child. What are you doing down here?”
Thankfully, a police constable was one of the other men striding down the hallway. He’d probably been nearby, patrolling the streets when the bank workers discovered the robbery. Zaira was never more relieved than at that moment to have him arrest Mr. Wright.
“Mr. Wright not only orchestrated the robbery,” Zaira said as she handed over the gun to the constable, “but he tried to kill Bellamy.”
Without waiting to find out what Mr. Conway and the police did with Mr. Wright, Zaira rushed over to where Bellamy had fallen. Her heart pounding, she lowered herself to his side. “Bellamy. Talk to me.”
He lay face down and didn’t move.
“Bellamy!” She began to tremble but somehow got her hands to work to roll him over. Blood was everywhere. It was pooled on the floor, saturated his shirt, and even smeared across his face.
“Bellamy needs a doctor!” she called out as she ran her hand over his chest, searching for an injury, frantic to stop the bleeding.
She suspected he’d been hit by the first gunshot, but he hadn’t acted as though he’d been in pain. Instead, he’d charged toward Mr. Wright, then had stabbed the fellow and disarmed him in no time.
Mr. Conway crouched on the other side of Bellamy andspoke curtly to a worker down the hallway. “Send someone for the physician.” As he turned back to Zaira, thankfully he didn’t ask her again why she and Bellamy were there at the early morning hour.
Hopefully, no one else heard what she and Bellamy had told Mr. Wright about spending the night in the bank storage room. Hopefully, instead, they would be able to assure everyone that their stay had been accidental, that they’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time—or the right place at the right time, if one wanted to solve a crime, which she did.
No matter the excuses, she wouldn’t be able to hide the fact she’d spent an entire night alone with Bellamy McKenna. People would hear of it.
Perhaps the gossipers would be more forgiving since she was engaged to him. Perhaps the scandal wouldn’t tarnish the Shanahan name. Perhaps she’d find a way to avoid disappointing her parents.
Whatever the case, she and Bellamy wouldn’t be able to put an end to their match. Not anymore. After all that had happened, she wouldn’t be surprised if her da and mam pushed her to get married sooner.
If Bellamy lived...
She again skimmed her fingers over him, peeling back his coat and vest and finding a bloody hole in his shirt at his shoulder. From what she could tell, the bullet hadn’t gone all the way through his body, but blood was still bubbling out of the wound.
She wasted no time lifting her petticoat, pressing it to the bullet hole, and attempting to stanch the flow of blood.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat on the basement floorbeside Bellamy, holding his wound tightly, but Mr. Conway stood and spoke with the constable and Mr. Wright, who was sitting against the wall a dozen paces away, moaning from his knife wounds.
At some point, the older physician who usually looked after her family hurried down the hallway and knelt beside her with his leather satchel. Someone else had already lit a lantern and now moved it closer at the physician’s command.
As the light splayed across Bellamy’s face and revealed the pallor of his skin and his shallow breathing, tears pricked Zaira’s eyes. She didn’t want Bellamy to die. Even if she could never gain his approval or love, she would still always care about him.
The tears spilled over. She was pathetic to care about a man so much when he didn’t reciprocate and had basically told her she wasn’t the woman for him. Aye, she was very pathetic. She needed to build a few walls around her heart to protect it from being broken. But she couldn’t keep herself from liking him, maybe even being in love with him.
Was she in love with Bellamy McKenna?
She’d never been in love before, not even close. Probably because she’d always been so taken with Bellamy and never had eyes for any other man.
The physician worked swiftly to remove the bullet from Bellamy’s shoulder. Then he carefully cleaned and sutured the spot. Throughout it all, Bellamy remained unconscious and at times hardly seemed to be breathing. Zaira hardly seemed to breathe either. But the doctor assured her Bellamy would live, even with all the blood loss. He would be weak and tired and have a great deal of pain, but he’d been fortunate the bullet hadn’t caused much damage.
“Zaira!”
At the call of her name, Zaira glanced up to find Alannah and Kiernan hurrying toward her down the hallway. At the sight of the concern creasing both of their faces, tears welled up again.
“There you are.” Kiernan’s tone contained frustration.
“We’ve been so worried about you.” Alannah stopped and held out a hand to Zaira. “Kiernan found your horses wandering around an alley near Front Street, but there was no sign of either you or Bellamy.”
“We’ve been here all night.” Zaira wiped her hands on her skirt, then allowed Alannah to help her to her feet. “We got trapped in the bank storage room.”
“We know that now.” Kiernan cocked his head toward Mr. Conway, who was down the hallway on the other side of the doorway where a couple of constables were now leading away Mr. Wright.
