“It is quite dangerous to gallivant about on your own, Jemima. You know better,” Jasper chastised, intercepting her and Ray en route to the address Hedgehog had given Ray. An address very familiar to Jem once she saw it. The department store that had provided the very clothes she currently wore.
Despite Ray’s numerous attempts to put Jemima in a taxi back to her hotel, she clung to him with force, and he didn’t have the heart to send her away. Not when her eyes beamed up at him as if she saw nothing else—not the strange new city, not the stars spreading over the sky or the moon ribboning over the lake as they walked along.
Jasper was muttering about all of this being a terrible idea. Jem said little, trying to tuck her truant curls under her cap.
“She still looks pale,” Jasper chided to Ray, his tone surly. “She was unwell on the train, Ray. White as a sheet.”
“Motion sickness,” Jem said with finality in her tone. “And it has quite passed. You can’t think I mean for the two of you to have all of the fun!” She made to loop her arm into Ray’s, but he gently shoved it back.
“You forget you’re dressed as a man, my love.” He dipped his chin to her ear.
“You forgot quite quickly earlier,” she countered with a sarcastic twinkle in her tone.
Ray wasn’t sure what had gotten into her, but he assumed it was just her heart racing as fast as his was. It hadn’t slowed since he had first caught an unbelieving glimpse of her. Hadn’t even had a moment to tell her that as she was throwing herself at him in the middle of a public street, he had been on his way to the Palmer House to plead with her to board the first train back to Toronto.
But Ray DeLuca was only human, and even in the middling light of an overhead streetlamp, he could make out her wide eyes as blue as china, her striking profile, the dimple that pricked her cheek. He had little choice but to tell Jasper she would be accompanying them. He assumed it was safer for her to be in his line of sight and near Jasper than wherever she might find herself with Merinda.
David Ross smiled when he saw Merinda and Benny. “You came.”
“I brought a friend. This is Benny.”
“Benny?” Ross waited for a last name.
Benny shook his head. “No. First names only. We are all brothers in this present cause. That is all you need.”
“A man after my own heart.” Ross smiled and extended his hand. “David.”
“Benny is as committed to the cause as I am,” Merinda said with a side glance at Benny.
“Well, we can’t make a bang without the appropriate resources,” David said with a glance at the shadows of the warehouse. “Which is where our friend comes in.” He gave a quick call, and a middle-aged man with close-set, beady eyes stepped into the lantern light. “This is Hedgehog.”
It took all Merinda had not to snicker. The name. The man who suited it so well. Instead, she nodded curtly. “Hedgehog,” she said.
“Good shipment,” he told Ross. “Just what you need. A bit sticky.” Merinda noticed him take a grimy kerchief from the pocket of his overalls and rub at his hands. He leaned into Ross. “Sloppy, though. It came with more than we bargained for.”
“Not… ” Ross hedged.
“Yes. You tell him to be more careful. I don’t know what’s going on back there, but my job is only to make sure you have what you need.”
“And you have.” He gritted his teeth and then eased and smiled at Benny and Merinda. “Come! If we want Armageddon to arrive, it will need a bit of a push, yes?”
Hedgehog and Ross going ahead of them, Benny held up a lantern and gleamed its light over Merinda. “Armageddon?”
“I have a feeling this fellow is always going to speak hyperbolically,” she whispered. “If we get through the entire process without his comparing our enterprise to a phoenix rising from the ashes, I will be more than surprised.”
Ross led them through the warehouse, informing them of the usual method of securing the devices and telling them about the man who would arrive slightly later with a truck to take everything back to Ross’s own living room. “My landlady thinks I have a particular passion for syrup,” he said with a wink at Merinda. “She doesn’t know it’s the kind that blows up.”
A few streetlamps from the main road lent light to the back alley. The door to the warehouse, however, was cloaked in darkness, with only a single light cutting through the pitch black around them.
Ray looked to Jasper and then to Jem with a shrug. He was unsure whether to knock or to push the door open. Fortunately, just as he leaned in, the door opened and Hedgehog appeared on the other side. He gave Ray a nod and then looked to Jasper, taking in his obvious height, broad shoulders, and strong build.
A moment later, he made out Jem. “Two friends?”