EIGHTEEN
Aly’s nerves jangled as she paced up and down the familiar path, her head jerking up at every passing pedestrian, at every scraping rustle of the tree branches above.
She’d sent Calum a note that morning asking him to meet.
For all she knew he’d arrest her, but she was gambling on him being more interested in arresting Grant.
For as long as Aly had known Grant, he’d been untouchable.
Any time the winds of a police investigation blew near him, evidence was mislaid, or the chief constable stepped in and redirected the investigation.
The City Guard was rotten to the core, and Aly had always known if she’d tried to inform, it would end with Grant still free but now fully aware of her betrayal.
But something about Calum made her want to trust him to be different.
Perhaps it was the way he cared about finding the missing people that his boss considered beneath their notice.
He listened to her, too, and even asked for her opinions.
Aly was hardly going to claim to be the best judge of people—she had, after all, trusted Grant—but Calum struck her as good, the rare guard who did it because he believed in protecting people from villains like Grant.
She wasn’t na?ve enough to think that anyone was immune to threats, but if there was a copper with a past clean enough that blackmail couldn’t touch them, she’d put money on it being Calum.
Even so, he had no reason to trust her after she’d lied to him.
And so she’d chosen a park near where she’d grown up.
It was an area of town beneath Grant’s interest—not wealthy enough to be worth cozening in, not poor enough to be a ready source of desperate workers—making it unlikely that anyone would recognise her.
At least, unlikely that anyone who had seen her in the last six years would recognise her.
More importantly, though, it was an area of town where a guard arresting someone would be bound to cause a scene, and she didn’t think Calum wanted that if he could avoid it.
She hoped it would be enough to make him hear her out.
Footsteps sounded behind Aly and she turned to see Calum approaching her. He held out a parcel wrapped in newspaper. “Fish?”
Aly took it, unwrapping it to reveal battered fish and golden chips. Her stomach rumbled. “I could kiss you.” She stuffed a chip in her mouth; it was perfectly crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside.
Calum blinked, his lips parting. Aly’s heart tightened. Of course he didn’t want to be kissed by her. The thought shouldn’t have bothered her as much as it did. He was a copper and she was a crime lord’s deputy; kissing him could hardly lead to anything good.
“I need to talk to you,” she said. Her insides writhed with nerves, the food suddenly unappetising. “I need to—explain some things.” She tilted her head at the path that led into the trees. White magic lights gave the space an eerie glow. “Walk with me?”
Aly took a breath as Calum fell into pace beside her. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
Calum made a noise that sounded like a suppressed snort. “Really.”
“All right, there’s a lot I haven’t told you.
” She scuffed her boots in the dirt path, sorting through which truths she’d share and which she’d still keep to herself.
“You probably want to arrest me for the whole blackmailing thing, but what if I told you I could give you the person who wrote that letter instead, and he’s one of the most powerful crime lords in the city? ”
Calum stopped walking. “I’m listening.”
Aly picked up a chip, tapping it against the edge of the newspaper in a nervous tattoo. “Have you heard of Grant Mercer?”
There was a rustling sound, as though Calum was shrugging. Aly couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “He owns a number of pubs, doesn’t he? Is he being blackmailed as well?”
Aly bit back a laugh. “Hardly. Maybe you’ve heard his other name—the Wulver?”
Calum grabbed Aly’s arm, twisting her to face him, the chip falling from her fingers. “Please tell me you haven’t got mixed up with him. I’ve heard stories, and, believe me, he is not someone you want to be involved with.” His gaze was sharp and urgent, his grip on her arm firm but not harsh.
Aly wet her lips, her heart hammering. “I’m his deputy.”
Calum let her go, raking his hand through his hair. “No, you can’t be—you’re his deputy? Oh, this is, this is just—” He stared at her, his eyes wide and frantic. “Aly, what have you done?”
Aly lifted her chin, squaring her shoulders. “I did what I had to in order to survive.”
Calum ran his shaking hand through his hair again, making it stick up on end. “Aly, listen to me, you have to get away from him. He’s dangerous.”
Aly barked out a laugh. “You think I don’t know that? Why do you think I’m here?”
“Is this why you agreed to help me in the first place? Did he—did he just plant you there to feed me information?”
“No, no.” Aly shook her head. “He has no idea. He’d have found out eventually, of course, and he’d have made sure I didn’t get as far as a trial. I know too much for him to risk it. If you’d charged me, he’d have made me disappear while I was on bail.”
“Disappear?” Calum’s face was pale. “You mean he’d have killed you?”
“If he’d had no further use for me, aye.” Aly’s skin went cold at the thought. “Or he’d just have found a way to take me beyond the reach of the police and still keep me around.”
“How can you be so calm about all of this?” Calum’s brow creased.
“I haven’t got any other choice. If I stopped to think about what he would do if he found out I was here, I’d be so terrified I’d be unable to walk, let alone talk.”
“So why are you here?”
Aly sucked in a trembling breath. “Because I think you might actually have the spine to put him in prison. And I want to help you.” She felt oddly weightless, her pulse quickening at the prospect of seeing Grant in prison, his life and reputation in tatters.
“No.” Calum set his jaw. “It’s too dangerous.”
Aly’s heart sank. That had been her last option. “I didn’t take you for a coward,” she snapped.
His face crumpled, and satisfaction swelled in Aly’s gut until he spoke again.
“I’m not worried about me. I can take care of myself.
” He lifted his hand, as though he was going to reach for Aly, then let it drop to his side.
“But you’re his deputy. What do you think he’ll do to you if he finds out you’re trying to bring him down? ”
Aly bristled. “What do you suggest, then? Spend the rest of my life with him until he tires of me and has me silenced? Leave town, change my name, and spend every waking hour looking over my shoulder? I tried to leave him last night, and”—her voice broke, her throat stinging as she swallowed—“and it went badly.”
“You tried to what?” His voice rose loudly enough to earn a glare from a passer by. He lowered it to a hissed whisper as they started walking again. They’d stood in one spot too long, in an area with too many trees and benches where an eavesdropper might lurk. “What were you thinking?”
Aly’s cheeks warmed. “You say that like I mustn’t have been thinking at all,” she snarled.
“That letter you showed me—he told me that it was about preventing the guilds from getting more power. He tricked me into delivering it because he knew I would refuse or—or just destroy the letter and pretend I’d delivered it if I knew what it actually said.
” She dipped her chin. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of for him, but I’ve always known what I was doing. This was . . . different.”
“Why would a crime lord want the city government to impose harsher penalties for criminals?”
A chill washed over Aly at the memory. She glanced at Calum. He was a copper; he might not care. He might even welcome the news. “Because he wants to bring back transportation.”
Calum swore under his breath. “Transportation? You’re sure?”
“Aye. He said coal is too expensive; it’s harming his brewing business.
” She didn’t hide the disdain in her voice.
“It’s a perfect solution for him. When his rivals are arrested, their life expectancy drops off a cliff, and they’re indirectly working for him when they’re sent to the mines.
And not just his rivals, most of whom probably deserve it in some way.
” Her gut tightened as she remembered the Redcap’s gloating.
“It’ll mostly be folk like me, people who were just trying to survive.
” Panic tightened her chest. Not just folk like her, it could be her, sentenced to hard labour with little hope of survival.
Her shoulders shook, her breath catching in her throat.
Calum slid an arm around her shoulders, his touch firm and soothing. The trembling in her shoulders ebbed as the constriction in her chest loosened. “We won’t let that happen,” Calum said, his voice soft. “I promise.”
Aly sniffed, stepping back. “How can you be sure?” Her back was cold where his arm had been.
The thought made her stomach tighten. She’d had enough of dangerous men to last a lifetime—and that was what Calum was, no matter how much he wanted to do the right thing, or how the thought of him made her skin flush with desire. He was still loyal to the wrong side.
“Their debates might be secret, but if the vote is going to be law it still has to happen with all fifteen burgesses present. And they don’t have fifteen.
As long as we arrest Grant before they hold a by-election in Gibson’s ward, then he won’t be able to blackmail them into—” He reached for Aly, turning her to face him. “Aly, what does Grant look like?”
Aly frowned, her skin itching. “Average height, wavy brown hair, the kind of face you’d call pretty rather than handsome. Why?”
“Those secret meetings? Edzan’s secretary told me there’s one person who’s been attending other than the burgesses. And the man he described sounds an awful lot like Grant.”
Aly’s skin prickled. “So he’s not just agitating for this law. He’s the fucking architect of it. We have to stop him.”
“We will, Aly, I promise. First of all, I need that blackmail letter again. It’s evidence. Do you still have it?”
Aly’s gut lurched. “I left it on Grant’s desk.”
“Shit,” Calum breathed. “Can you get it back?”
“If he hasn’t burnt it, aye.”
“Let’s hope he hasn’t. The seal was damaged, but it looked like some kind of animal head.”
“A wolf’s head,” Aly said. “He uses that for all his business as the Wulver.”
“That ties him to the letter.” Calum ran a hand over his jaw. “Don’t take the seal yet—we don’t want him suspecting anything—but do you know where he keeps it?”
“No, but I can try to find out.”
“If you can confirm where it is, then with the letter and description that might be enough for a warrant. We’ll search his place and turn it up, and that’ll tie him to the blackmail.”
“Just promise me one thing,” Aly said, her voice quivering. “Don’t move on him until you’re absolutely certain that you’ve got him, and not just got him, but got him well enough that you can convince a judge to deny him bail, okay? Otherwise, we’re both dead.”
“I promise. We’re going to make sure he’s in prison for the rest of his life.”
Warmth spread through Aly’s limbs and she couldn’t help grinning in response. Nor, when Calum gave her a tentative smile, could she stop the shiver that went through her, setting her nerves alight with desire.
It was dangerous, to feel this way about a copper, but it was dangerous, too, to collaborate with a copper to bring down her own crime lord. She’d set herself on a course that led only two ways: to freedom, or to her own destruction.