Page 75 of After the Spy Seduces

“Where the hell is she?” Kit pressed his arm harder against the man’s throat.

He reflexively gulped for air, his toes nearly lifted off the floor.

“What have you done with her?”

“Morgan,” the man rasped out breathlessly, his fingers clawing at Kit’s forearm to move him away. “Morgan…sent…for you.”

Kit leaned into the man with his full weight, carefully keeping his lower body positioned at an angle to make it harder for the man to suddenly find a burst of strength and kick him in the bollocks. “Why?”

“He wants to meet with you.” A second man’s voice was punctuated by the metallic click of a cocked pistol.

Kit didn’t move except to slice his gaze sideways to the man standing in the doorway, pistol drawn and pointed directly at him. “The hell I will.”

Behind his forearm, the man continued to struggle weakly, receiving just enough air to stay on his feet and keep from falling unconscious. Kit ignored him. The intruder in the doorway was now the bigger threat.

“Morgan warned us that you might not cooperate,” he drawled from behind the pistol. “He said we might have to be more persuasive. That we might have to divulge that the meeting regards his sister Diana.”

Slowly, Kit stepped back and lowered his arm. The man fell limp against the wall, then slid to the floor. His hand went to his throat, and he wheezed as he struggled to gulp back his breath.

Kit toed the man in the leg with his boot and chastised, “You should have said so sooner.”

With every muscle in his body alert and ready to spring, he faced the second man, then nodded toward the gun. “You should put that damned pistol down before it goes off and hurts someone.”

The man’s eyes glinted, yet he lowered the gun. Keeping the barrel safely pointed away, he eased down the hammer, then tucked it into the holster beneath his coat.

“Who the hell are you, and who are you working for?” Kit demanded.

One of the players in this game had taken Diana. Now it was just a matter of discovering who. And then killing the bastard when he caught him.

“Answers come later.” Gesturing into the hall, he stepped back from the doorway. “Now, we have to leave.”

“Not until you tell me about Diana.”

“She’s safe for now.” He tugged at his leather gloves. “But not if you keep delaying. Morgan will explain everything.”

Grudgingly, Kit followed him out of the room. Behind him, the other man moaned softly, still curled in a ball on the floor.

As he stepped past the man in the hall, Kit stopped and leveled his gaze on him. Hard. He leaned closer, making no mistake that he would kill him if necessary.

“Let me be clear,” Kit said slowly. “If one hair on Diana’s head is harmed, I will hunt down you and all of your associates.” His voice lowered to an icy threat. “And I will slit you open from your throat to your balls.”

The man gave a knowing nod. “We were warned about that, too.”

He stepped away from Kit, leading him out of the hotel and through the village.

They walked side by side in silence, neither man glancing at the other, but both ready to strike at a moment’s provocation. They walked not toward the docks as Kit had suspected, but up the winding street leading away from the waterfront, where stone and brick row houses lined the road.

“The last one.” The man gestured toward an abandoned weaver’s cottage, then glanced cautiously up and down the street to make certain no one was following them.

When they reached the house, the man rapped his knuckles against the blue-painted door. A knock answered from within. He silently lifted his gaze to Kit’s, then knocked three times, paused, and knocked once more.

The door opened with a soft clanking of its old metal latch and a rusty groan of its hinges. Kit could see nothing inside the dark row house as he peered into it from the footpath, but he followed the man inside, despite the wariness that prickled at his nape. He had no other choice but to follow.

“This way.” The man signaled to the guard at the door to lock it behind them, then led Kit up the narrow stairs to the attic room.

The space where a former occupant had surely once worked a loom now stood empty, except for a makeshift table near the windows that was constructed of a board laid across two tall barrels. A handful of men crowded around it and argued, pointing at a map spread across the board.

But the man in the center crossed his arms over his chest and listened intently, not saying a word. Until he glanced up at Kit.