A hound barked again.
The sound roused him from self-pity.Escape—I must escape.He wasn’t the only one at risk.
After easing the latch up, Hessian Boots opened the door a crack and ventured a peek. And thankfully saw naught but a shadowy gloom. Darkness, he realized, was now a blessing, not a curse.
Spotting no sign of life, he darted to the corner of the warehouses and after a small pause, ducked low and ran to take cover among the hogshead barrels stacked by the loading area.
The gate where he had entered wasn’t far. Another few minutes. . .
But then a blade of lantern light sliced through the thick fog, stirring pale curls of mist.
Heart hammering, Hessian Boots held his breath as fear suddenly fisted around his chest. It had to be a ruse! His partners had warned him that jealous rivals would seek to stop the venture if word of it somehow got out. Black Gloves had likely passed on falsely incriminating documents in order to foment mistrust and dissention. Or . . .
He forced himself to swallow his terror. Or perhaps there was an even darker explanation....
His thoughts began to spin, specters tangling with suspicions. Nothing was making any sense.
It seemed to take forever, but at last the sounds of the patrolling guard faded away. Which seemed only to amplify the ominous groans and creaks from the nearby wharves.Rusty metal . . . rotting wood . . .Hessian Boots released a sigh as another menacing thought crept into his head....
The worn-out bones of those who toiled in endless misery to make the rich even more obscenely rich.
“What a bloody fool I’ve been,” he moaned.
Water slurped against the barnacled pilings, the receding tide giving way to the stench of decay.
Hessian Boots slipped free of the barrels and hurried to a narrow cart path that led through another warren of windowless warehouses and out to the side gate set in the dockyard’s perimeter wall. Hugging close to the shadows, he quickened his steps.
A right turn and then a left turn . . .
A shove knocked him off-balance, and suddenly he was falling, falling—
“You can’t go that way,” warned Black Gloves, yanking him upright and pushing him back into the shadows. His shoulder hit hard against jagged brick as smooth leather-clad hands forced him into a narrow passageway between two windowless buildings.
“They’re waiting at the gate,” added Black Gloves. “There’s another way out. Follow me. The stone landing ramp can be crossed at low tide.”
Digging in his heels, Hessian Boots tried to shake loose from the other man’s hold. “Let go of me! I’m not playing any more of your filthy games.” He fumbled at his pocket, trying to reach the packet of papers and fling it into the mud.
“Don’t be daft.” Black Gloves tightened his grip and pulled him closer. “Trust me, if we try to leave by the gate, we’re dead men.”
“I don’t believe—” His words died in a gasp as a dribble of moonlight caught the lethal flash of steel.
Black Gloves had pulled a knife and was angling the blade upward.
“Damn you to hell,” rasped Hessian Boots, fear turning to fury as he heard someone else scrabble into the narrow passageway.
A trap!
He lashed out a kick that buckled his captor’s knee, then lunged and seized the hand holding the knife.
Punching, kicking shoving, swearing—Hessian Boots was vaguely aware of a third man joining the fray.Friend or foe?Impossible to tell. Reason had given way to the primal, primitive instinct to survive.
Steel sliced a gash across his knuckles. Recoiling, he swung a wild punch and heard a grunt of pain. The blade flickered, a quicksilver gleam against the dark blur of bodies.
Hessian Boots punched again and for an instant felt a sticky wetness beneath his fingers before a blow from behind knocked the wind from his lungs and sent him careening into the wall.
Run!
Was it a shout from Black Gloves or merely his inner voice of self-preservation?
