“And that’s a handgun,” James said. “Merriken.”
Twilight had fallen now, the line of trees like charcoal in the darkness, and a breeze came off the pond, bringing a smell of green dampness. Gloria, is that you? I thought wildly before I turned to see James shouldering his rifle.
“Stay here,” he said to me.
“Wait.”
It was George. He came closer, and I could see the urgency in his face. “Don’t do it,” he said to James. “It’s what he wants—for you to come to him, so he can pick the vantage point. Make him come to you—he will, if you have what he wants. Pick your ground, Mr. Hawley. What is the best place to meet the enemy?”
“The house,” I said.
George raised his eyebrows at me. “And what if he throws a bomb through the window, or a grenade, or a stick of dynamite? Colin is very well armed.”
The motorcycle sidecar, I thought. And the glimmer I’d traced through Colin’s mind: No reason to look in the sidecar. None at all.
James glanced around. “The trees,” he said finally. “They provide the best cover, if I know which way he’s coming.” He glanced at me, and my heart broke by a sliver. James’s eyes were dead, his emotions gone. This was the officer who had led his men into those woods in France, watched them die in the space of a moment. The man who had lain next to Fenton’s ripped-apart body, smelling the blood, listening to the agony. Some days I wonder if I’m going to wake from a dream and find myself in the trenches again.
I swallowed. I could not touch this man before me, could not reach him. There was no way, but I had to try. “What about Inspector Merriken?” I asked. “What if he’s shot, injured?”
“Merriken is a soldier,” said James. “He’ll understand.” He turned to George. “The shots came from the east, but there’s no guarantee he’ll come that way.”
“I wouldn’t if I were him,” George replied, his words fast and clipped. “The ground is wet between there and here—it became waterlogged when they put in the pond. He’ll have to skirt it, and the best way that doesn’t lead him blind is from the south.”
Over the treetops came two more shots, a fast staccato.
“This way.” James took my wrist, his grip icy, and pulled me toward the trees. He still wore his jacket, though he had left his hat in the house, and as I followed I could see the bulk of his shoulders beneath the fabric, the strong, graceful line of his body as he pulled me. I could not have removed myself from his grip if I had tried; I could do nothing but stumble along behind him on my sore, exhausted legs, trying to keep stride in my low heels. I thought of James sprawled on his sofa only this morning, laughing. I don’t intend to go around shooting people, he had said.
Behind me, I could hear George’s footsteps following us. “James, please,” I said.
“Ellie, be quiet. This is the only way.”
He stopped us at the bottom of a rise, motioned us to silence, and climbed it slowly in the darkness, peering through the trees. My head was throbbing. I blinked soddenly, panicked and terrified. Someone was going to be shot, killed, if Inspector Merriken wasn’t dead already. It wasn’t the only way; it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Darling, came a voice in my head, and I caught a whiff of perfume.
There was one thing I could do, and suddenly I knew how to do it.
I turned to George Sutter, who stood nearby watching James and waiting. He saw me turn and raised his eyebrows.
“I’d apologize for this,” I whispered to him, “but I don’t think you’ve earned it.”
He frowned. “Apologize for what, Miss Winter?”
I reached out, grasped his bare hand, and held it between mine. “Hang on,” I said into the darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Cold and wet. Darkness. She wondered whether she looked beautiful, suspended in the murky water, whether her hair flowed and her skirt pressed against her thighs like a siren of the sea. I’m finally a mermaid, she thought, though I have no tail.
It had been wrong from the beginning, and she’d known it. She should never have come, except that she didn’t care anymore, aside from a hardened, cynical curiosity. She told herself she’d said yes for the money, but almost from the first she’d known there was something wrong. Fitz had been sweating, his handsome face almost gray, and he was in deep with that drug-addled girlfriend of his. Besides, when had she ever trusted Fitz?
The headaches were explosive, like shells landing in her brain, and she’d begun to wake in the night, her hands on her scalp, moaning. Gin killed them only for an hour or so. The sessions, which had always come so easily, came harder and harder. She’d spent months under waves of anger and euphoria and denial and an abject terror that held her in a grip so hard she could barely breathe, but deep down she’d known it was almost over and the shade was being pulled down over the window. She got sentimental, which she never did, and she wanted to see her brothers one last time.