However, he surprised me again when he merely offered me a half smile. “Fair enough.”
I breathed a silent sigh of relief and spared a moment to wonder just where he was taking me. We’d been driving for several minutes now, long enough to travel a fair distance at our speed. Distracted as I’d been from the first and with the curtains pulled tight, I couldn’t even begin to guess our location.
Shaking the worrying thought aside, I lifted my chin. “Why have you kidnapped me? I know you’re not here for an introduction.” I tilted my head. “Not unless you just wanted to frighten Mr. Gage and Sergeant Maclean by making them realize you could get to me at any time and they couldn’t stop you.”
Bonnie Brock’s mock outrage did not fool me. “What a terrible thought. ’Specially when I’m here to give ye information.”
I eyed him doubtfully. “Information about what?”
“Your body snatchers.”
I tried to mask my interest, but from the sardonic quirk in his lips, it appeared I had not done well enough.
“That is what you’re investigatin’, isn’t it? A couple a snatches for ransom?”
“And how do you know so much about it?”
He leaned sideways into the bench cushions, bracing himself with one arm while he draped the other over the knee he’d lifted up when he propped his dirty boot on the seat. His eyes sharpened on me, narrowing slightly at the corners. “I ken aboot everythin’, lass. Nothin’ happens in my city wi’oot my ken.”
I suspected his relaxed pose was to demonstrate how little he feared me, and his penetrating gaze to show how much I should fear him. They weren’t necessary. I’d been battling against the instinct to run since the moment he revealed himself, even though the fact that we were inside a speeding carriage made that option impossible.
I wished I could appear as unruffled, as uncaring, as he did, but my limbs would not obey. So I sat stiffly across from him, grateful for the weight of the pistol over my knees, hollow as the promise of its protection might be.
“Where are you taking me?” I finally dared to ask.
He considered my question for a moment, and I couldn’t tell whether he was deciding to answer or he was thinking up a lie. “We’re just goin’ for a drive aboot the city.” My expression must have been skeptical, for he then added, “Listen. Ye can hear the cobblestones beneath the wheels.”
He was right. It did sound and feel like the jarring texture of cobblestones. If he was taking me somewhere out of the city, we should have run into dirt roads already. So perhaps he was telling the truth.
And perhaps he wasn’t. It wasn’t as if, at the moment, it made a difference.
“So what information do you have about the body snatchers? I know they’re your men.”
“Noo that ye have wrong.”
“Come now,” I replied, unwilling to be duped. “Sergeant Maclean recognized them as being part of your crew.”
“And how did he do that?” Bonnie Brock tipped his head back. “Ah, yes. How could I forget? You’ve quite a talent for drawin’ people. Alive or dead.”
I gritted my teeth against the urge to snap back at him. He was baiting me. That was abundantly clear from the nasty curl of his lip.
“Weel, Mean Maclean is wrong this time. They dinna work for me.” His eyes hardened again. “No’ anymore. They slipped town aboot two months ago.”
“Skipped out on you?” I guessed.
“Aye. And ain’t nobody who gets away wi’ that.”
His anger was clearly directed at these men, but I had a hard time convincing my nerves of that.
Was he telling the truth? Sergeant Maclean had said he hadn’t seen the men in a few months, and this would seem to corroborate that.
“Do you know where they went?”
He arched his eyebrows. “Noo if I knew that, we wouldna be havin’ this friendly conversation.”
“But you think they’re the men we’re looking for?”
He scrutinized me again from head to toe. “What do you think?”
I watched him carefully, trying to decide why he was testing me. “I think they’re not clever enough to plan these ransoms.” Not if they had lived in Edinburgh all their lives, under the thumb of this man. Bonnie Brock was far from stupid. If these men had shown anything more than average intelligence, I imagined they would have been assigned more challenging tasks in his organization than simple grave robbing.
His lips curled upward in a worryingly pleased smile. “You’re right. But then a plan like this needs men to do the mindless dirty work. And they’re certainly capable o’ that.”
“Then who’s the one giving them directions?” I tried to read his maddening expression. “Do you know?”
He rested his head back against the squabs, his posture lazy and unconcerned, but there was a watchfulness in his gaze that I didn’t make the mistake of ignoring.