City of Darkness

Chapter FORTY-FOUR

8:17 PM



Tom had warred within himself as he followed John into the shabby room. He felt he should explain that Leanna and Emma might be in danger… but then again, Trevor had undoubtedly intercepted the girls by now and was transporting them home to Mayfair while this woman writhing on the bed was most clearly in need of assistance. So he had pushed up his sleeves and worked beside John and within minutes the two of them managed to maneuver the child feet first into the world. They left the baby and mother in the care of the other woman, who had turned out to be her sister, and stepped back into the misty night.

“Come with me,” Tom said. “We need to walk and I’ll tell you where we’re going on the way.”

“You’re limping,” John said. “Why?”

Tom told John an abbreviated version of the story and when he got to the part about Leanna and Emma, John jerked to attention. “My God, you’re just now telling me this?”

“They’re undoubtedly home as we speak, sleeping in their beds. I just want to go back to the pub and see if I can find Trevor or Mabrey, explain to them why I disappeared.”

“You shouldn’t be on that ankle.”

“It doesn’t hurt as bad as my shoulder, to be truthful. I think I dislocated it trying to break down the door.”

“Do you want to ride on my back?”

Tom looked at him, surprised and offended. “Of course not.”





8:22 PM



“Emma,” Leanna said breathlessly “What’s that smell? It’s fish, is it not? Dead and rotting fish, thank God, and it may as well be roses. That means we’re getting close.”



8:22 PM



It would seem impossible to lose a man as large as Micha, but Cecil had managed to do just that. He had followed his lumbering shape for several blocks and then lost sight of him. Leanna and Emma were trodding along as steadily as lambs to the slaughter, but the man he’d paid to slaughter them seemed to have disappeared. Cecil could only assume he’d elected to take another street and lie in wait for them down by the waterfront. At least that’s what he hoped. For all he knew the man had taken his coins and was drinking Polish champagne in a bar somewhere.

But just as Cecil had stepped into one of those infernal streetlights, something unexpected had happened. The girls stopped and the Kelly chit had turned on her heel and faced him. The sight of her staring up the street so directly and boldly startled Cecil and he had stood frozen in the circular light beneath the lamppost like an actor on a stage. If it had been Leanna who had whirled about to look, she doubtless would have recognized him, and then what would he have done?

He was following far too closely. Best to slip into an alley for a second and let them get a bit farther down the street.

Cecil had no sooner stepped into the shadows before he realized he was not alone. A man was standing there. Ah, the man from the bar, the one with the mustache. The one who was dillying and probably beating the barmaid, the one who stayed sober while everyone around him drank, the one who had so obligingly sent Leanna to the waterfront and to her doom. Now this was a strange coincidence. Why was this man lurking in an alleyway, and not Micha? Was he supposed to greet the fellow?

“Hello,” he said. “Fancy finding you here. Name’s Severin, isn’t it?”

And then Cecil saw the knife.