Chapter Thirty-Four. Missing Men #2
The dressing was hours old. Likely from when Ruan saw to it this morning before leaving for the hotel. Fluid had seeped through the linen, staining the fabric.
I hurried to his haversack, reaching for the clean bandages he’d rerolled last night.
With clumsy movements, I pulled that and a bottle of antiseptic, along with one of his salves.
I uncorked the jar, taking in a heady sniff of the liniment to be sure it was the one I needed.
Mint and honey. Calendula too, I thought.
I knew this one well. It was the same one he’d put on my wounds in Cornwall when I’d been stoned by the angry mob. My fingers tightened around the jar. First Leona. Now Ruan. Their disappearances had to be connected. He would not leave this place willingly.
He would not leave me.
And he most certainly wouldn’t leave Annabelle in this condition.
The Radix. If the killer was after the Radix, then it was only logical he’d want the last person known to have held it. Stupid. Stupid girl. I bit the inside of my cheek.
I’d been incautious, had not even dreamt that he would be in any real danger or else I’d have never let him out of my sight. Better yet, I’d have sent him back to Cornwall, where I knew he’d be safe.
Safe.
Four letters that meant everything in this moment.
I squeezed my eyes shut, blotting out the unhelpful sentiment. Ruan would never forgive me if I allowed Annabelle’s wound to go putrid. I peeled away the bandage tenderly. The girl mumbled something as I removed the soiled cloth from her soft warm skin.
“It’s all right, darling. It’ll only sting for a moment.” I laid a clean piece of linen soaked in the antiseptic mixture on her skin, mindful of the stitches, and dabbed away at the clear fluid that had oozed from the sutures.
“I dreamt of the man,” she whimpered as I finished cleaning the incision and began to apply the sweet-smelling ointment to her damaged flesh.
“What sort of a man?” I asked absently, wiping the excess liniment on my skirt and placing a clean bandage over the stitches.
“I saw him again…” She groaned, pushing herself up by her elbows to ease my passing the bandage back around her.
My ears pricked. “Who did you see, Annabelle? Was it the man that attacked you?”
“Ye—” She sucked in a pained breath as I helped her back onto the pillows. “I saw him again in my dreams. With eyes. Eyes cold and black like ice.”
“Was that the man who took Leona?” I grabbed the pitcher on the nearby table and poured water into a tin cup before handing it to her. She drank greedily, a dribble running down her chin to settle in the shallow hollow of her throat. “Yes. There were two … two of them.”
I took the cup from her trembling fingers and set it on the nightstand, grabbing a clean cloth to dab at the dampness at her throat. Her hand shot up, latching onto my wrist with unnatural strength. “He took Leona. He was here. I saw him.”
“Who took her, Annabelle? Was Leona still alive?” I needed every drop of information she had. The wind rattled the glass in the windows, sending a draft into the airy damp attic room.
“I don’t know.” She winced with a subtle bob of her head. “He stabbed her with a syringe. I tried to stop him and he…”
I pulled a soft, quilted blanket from the nearby table and spread it over her as a bulwark against the winter winds battering the windows.
How very strange. Annabelle had been stabbed—with a knife—but Leona had been stuck with a syringe and then taken. “A syringe? Like a doctor would use? Had you ever seen this man before? Was there anything unusual about him?”
But the girl had already fallen back asleep.
Probably for the best, as the pain must have been unbearable.
I would simply have to wait until she was stronger to probe more.
I stroked her brow gently, wishing I possessed an ounce of the healing power Ruan did, before tucking the blankets around her slight form.
If the attacker had drugged Leona, it gave me hope that she might still be alive.
Cold black eyes.
My nostrils flared. I closed the door quietly behind me and started down the back stair to the ground floor when I heard a knock at the kitchen door.
Quickening my step, I arrived as Mrs. Penrose opened it.
A cold wind blew in, lifting the cloth on the table.
Hari stood on the other side, fist raised ready to rap upon it a second time—his expression as bleak as I’d ever seen it.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
He stepped over the threshold with a frown and reached into his pocket, pulling out a familiar silver half hunter. Ruan’s watch. I closed the distance between us, taking the dented pocket watch into my hand—turning it over, running my thumb over the simple engraved letters, R. KIVELL.
My eyes pricked.
It was the same watch Mr. Owen had given him when he sent him to Oxford as a young man.
“Where did you…”
“On the street outside the hotel. A boy found it and had brought it to the front desk as I was leaving. I asked to see it and recognized the name. I’ve been searching for you all over town. They said you had gone to the museum. I followed after.”
I stared at him, fingers closing around the cold metal. “What do you mean he found it? Where’s Ruan?”
Hari’s worried eyes met mine. “Sit, Ruby. Please.”
“I do not need to sit,” I bit out. “And do not treat me like I’m some wilting flower in need of tending. If you have something to tell me, tell me.”
“Very well. A man matching your Cornishman’s description was seen by a porter conversing with a gentleman outside the hotel this morning. I am to understand that your Cornishman checked his watch and within seconds stumbled, overcome by some fit, unable to stand on his own two feet.”
“That’s not possible. Ruan doesn’t get sick … he doesn’t … stumble…” And though I said the words, my mind had already connected the pieces my heart refused to countenance.
“That’s what they saw. He was suddenly overcome by weakness and was aided into a nearby vehicle.”
The person who took Leona had injected her with something before kidnapping her. She’d been drugged. Likely the same thing had happened to Ruan.
“Ruby. Say something.”
I shook my head, chewing on my lower lip.
But who could have done it? The inspector was currently tied up on the other side of the hall, under the watchful eye of Mr. Owen.
I seriously doubted that Lord Amberley or his son had the mettle to do it, even if they were behind it all.
Not to mention the method was too clinical, too precise.
Harker’s killer might be the same person to take Leona and Ruan, but what if he was not?
The specter of the scarred man that Hari spied outside the museum returned to my mind in full force.
Hari wet his lips hesitantly. “The porter said that your man could hardly keep his head up when he was put into the vehicle.”
“My poor lad!” Mrs. Penrose exclaimed, her hands at her own throat in shock. I’d nearly forgotten she was even in the room.
My voice came out oddly calm. Resolved, despite the bone-deep ache forming in my chest. “Did anyone recognize the person who took him? Was there … any scar or distinctive marking?” I gestured to my cheekbone.
Hari shook his head, understanding at once my meaning. “I asked the same. The doorman didn’t get a good look at the other fellow, but he was finely dressed.”
“The car?” I whispered, reaching for anything at all to help me find both Ruan and Leona.
“A Morris Cowley.”
That was no help at all. There were dozens of those on the road. Ruan could have been put into any number of vehicles. I slowly looked up, meeting Hari’s worried hazel eyes.
He reached out and wrapped me in his arms, hugging me tight. “We shall find him, Ruby. We shall find them both.”
I swallowed hard, rested my cheek on Hari’s shoulder, and closed my eyes, inhaling the faint vetiver on his clothes.
It was all wrong. “Whoever took Leona has him too. It’s all my fault…
” My mind darted back to the page in my notebook.
The killer had stolen the page with Hari’s address from my journal because they knew I would be seeing him again.
I stepped back, raking my hands through my hair, and gave my head a good shake before beginning to pace the kitchen. Feeling sorry for myself wouldn’t bring either of them home. I’d simply have to go get them.
“You have a look, Ruby…” Hari murmured.
The edge of my mouth curved up into a dark smile. “Am I that easy to read?” I glanced from Mrs. Penrose back to Hari. “Can you forget, for a time, that you are a man of the law?”
He flashed me a quicksilver grin, the same one I’d seen many times during the war. “How much trouble are you truly in, Ruby? As your friend this time.”
Mrs. Penrose disappeared through the door into the snug as I began to tell Hari all the things I’d kept from him these last few days. Mr. Owen wasn’t the only one good at keeping secrets.