Page 45 of Bargaining with the Devil

“Why have you gone after me now after I’ve lived here for two years already?”

His smile was chilling. “It was luck, really. For me; certainly not for you. I didn’t know your name at first when I started managing matters here six months ago. Had I never learned it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Lymington’s voice was reminiscent of Compton’s, but the cadence was not. Where Compton’s had been flat, almost inhuman, every word lacking intonation, Lymington’s voice was resonant and expressive. She didn’t fear it any less. The predominant tone was one of cruelty.

Keep him talking. “How did you discover my name?” Inside she trembled, but her voice did not shake at all. She had become a master of keeping everything buried deep. It was almost second nature now, tapping into that.

“I have connections. A few friends in high places, one might say. But I didn’t know where you’d gone even after I knew your name, and I didn’t care enough to go looking. I wasn’t particularly close to my brother, although we made good enough partners in certain endeavors. And I have found it quite satisfying and profitable to take over several of his roles. To take advantage of his established connections, that is, with assets of my own. But close or not, I do have family loyalty to consider after Jeremiah’s death. You also know too much about what he did. How unfortunate for you that of all the corners of Britain in which you might have settled, it happened to be along the Solway Coast. Blackmore too.”

“I knew a handful of things about your brother’s business in London,” she said. “But mostly what he did in France. I knew nothing of activities here. Do you truly believe I’d have moved here, had I? Or that I would not have told my brother-in-law at once? Or alerted the local authorities well before now?”

“But you see, until this conversation, I couldn’t be certain that you truly knew nothing, you or Blackmore. Perhaps you were merely waiting to share the information. If, that is, you are telling the truth now. Not that the truth will do you any good.”

“You think to cast aspersions on my honesty?” She forced a scornful noise. “You?”

His smile sharpened. “And isn’t it a shame for you that you knew nothing, that Blackmore suspected nothing.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Too late now for regrets or anything else.” His gaze was almost curious. “Are you not afraid of me, girl?”

She lifted her chin. “No.” She would give him nothing if it killed her. Which it very well might.

“Of course.” His lip lifted in a sneer. “You were in my brother’s care for a month or two.” His voice made something very ugly of the word care. “Jeremiah and I lived together from when I was six or so, when his father died. He was two years younger than me.” Lymington flicked idly at a speck of mud on his coat. The gun in the other hand didn’t waver. “Jeremiah was preoccupied with death. He caught butterflies expressly to rip off their beautiful wings and watched the damaged, wingless creatures crawl around in distress until they died. It delighted him. He didn’t stop with the butterflies, of course. They were only some of his earliest victims. He moved on to larger prey as we grew up.”

Her stomach churned. Of course Lymington suspected—perhaps more than suspected—that she’d been a butterfly.

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of allowing the words to visibly discompose her. “What do you intend to do with me?” Quinn would find her shortly. Surely he must have determined by now that something unforeseen had happened since she should have been long back to the hut.

Quinn will find me.

“Is it not obvious by now? Fortunately for you, I don’t have the personal taste for sadism that my brother did. But the tide floods this cave, and it’s coming in now. You’ll still be here in a few hours when this is full to the top with water. I’ll be gone. There’s a lugger anchored offshore, waiting for me. But perhaps I’ll grant you one final mercy.” He carefully leveled the gun. “Rather than merely leaving you to drown.”

A flash of movement behind Lymington tore her eyes from the gun: Quinn, creeping up silently.

A wave of intense relief weakened her knees, but then ice sluiced through her veins when her eyes met Quinn’s. The angel of death coming for its quarry.

Except he was no comforting angel, ready to wrap some godly man in soft wings and escort him on a cloud to Heaven. This was Quinn as she had never seen him, calculating and without emotion. Without mercy.

She quickly looked back to Lymington, not wanting to betray Quinn by the direction of her gaze.

“I tire of this conversation.” Lymington raised the gun higher, steadying it with his other hand. The detached cruelty on his face was so like his brother’s had been on the ship to France. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t step closer here at the end. Unlike my brother, I don’t revel in wearing the blood of my kills.”

Her heart squeezed, drawing air nearly impossible. In her life she’d faced worse than death—and she faced it alone. She wasn’t alone now. But her trembling body didn’t understand that, nor her constricted lungs, nor her racing heart. Those parts of her still knew fear.

“No final pleas?” Lymington asked.

She held Lymington’s stare.

“It’s a shame in a way,” Lymington said, tilting his head slightly. “For I begin to appreciate why my brother so valued you. But I haven’t the uses for you he did, and I cannot risk allowing you to live.”

Quinn lunged just as Lymington’s finger curled on the trigger.

The pistol’s report was deafening in the small cavern. The acrid stench of black powder burning mixed with the damp scents of the cave. The smoke in the dim light obscured the frenzy of motion at the cave’s mouth. Sounds carried despite her ringing ears, partially muffled: grunts, abbreviated breaths, and the clatter of something metallic hitting rock.

Then silence.

She squinted towards the cave’s entrance, seeking Quinn, not seeing him. Although her vision was dimming . . .

She swayed on her feet. The rope and the rock behind it to which she was tethered kept her upright, but she slipped away somewhere dark and quiet . . .

And then Quinn was there, his arms around her.