Chapter Thirty-Six. Boom
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Boom
“YOU truly are the most impossible woman…” Frederick Reaver growled, dragging me backward away from the boat and the truck full of what I could only guess was actually cocaine.
I stumbled, falling into his sturdy form.
Reaver was more fortress than man—a fortress who presently had a gun pressed into my freshly scabbed wound.
The cold metal disturbed the healing flesh, sending a warm trickle of blood down my cheek.
“And do not even think of warning your friends or I will shoot you now.”
Friends? Good grief, Reaver must think I’m somehow working with the dreadful inspector.
“Let me go. You misunderstand.” I wriggled against him, but he simply tightened his grasp upon my upper arm, pulling me along beside him until we were back under the shelter of the large willow tree that I’d paused beneath earlier.
“I think not. I finally understand all too well.” He let out a dark and angry sound.
My mind raced over the past few days, over every single clue.
Every crumb I’d collected that led us to this point, and I came up empty.
I’d not once done anything to give the impression that I was in league with the inspector.
“Where is Leona? What have you done to her?” I growled, wriggling again—but he jerked me tighter against him.
“That is what I’m hoping you will be able to tell me.” He pressed the gun tighter to my temple.
My breath hitched in my chest. Reaver was also looking for Leona. “I don’t know. But I am looking—”
He shushed me angrily. “Be quiet, I’m trying to concentrate.”
Concentrate on what? I followed his gaze, struggling to make sense of him.
Of this. A shadowed figure appeared in the distance, pausing alongside the lorry.
There was a shout, then a second and third fellow arrived to assist with bringing in the final boxes from the truck.
I could scarcely believe my eyes. Julius Harker must have managed to intercept the shipment of cocaine, as Leona feared.
It was the only thing that made sense, especially in light of the crates I found inside the truck.
And these men, whoever they might be, had stolen it right back.
But I still did not understand how Frederick Reaver and Leona figured in.
Were they truly in league with Harker? As the former currently had his pistol digging into my flesh, it certainly was a plausible theory.
I also doubted he’d enlighten me anytime soon.
I ought to be afraid. And yet I could not summon the sentiment. Not with both Leona and Ruan still out there. They needed me, and I had to keep focused on escaping. On saving them.
Within seconds, all the inspector’s men, along with the remaining boxes from Harker’s museum, had disappeared into the belly of the canal boat.
Reaver exhaled loudly against my skin, warming the side of my neck as another trickle of blood oozed out from my raw scab. My eyes pricked from the cold wind.
“Now,” he murmured.
But before I could comprehend the word he uttered, Reaver jerked me to the side, thrust me hard upon the ground, and covered me with his own body. We landed with a grunt, his weight crushing the air from my lungs.
The ground beneath us shook as a blinding flash lit the night sky bright as day.
A rush of heat chased after with the ferocious roar of a munition going off.
The intensity of the blast whirred loud enough that my eyes watered.
Something hot and sticky oozed from my right ear, slowly making its way down to the collar of my cream dress, soaking through to my skin.
For a moment—only that—I thought I’d been blown back to France and was lying there on the muddy ground.
That the last few years had been a fever dream from which I’d finally awoken.
Dazed, I stared into Frederick Reaver’s face.
His own eyes were closed. He lay like a stone atop me.
While he’d anticipated the blast, he’d evidently not expected the intensity of it.
With a grunt he rolled off me, lying flat on his back in the wet snow, gulping in the acrid air.
Reaver was as disoriented as I. The ringing in my ear blotted out everything else.
I couldn’t think. Could scarcely hear over the sound inside my own head.
The pain burned itself into my brain. Small pieces of debris from the sky fell like singed snowflakes making their way to the earth.
The small vessel had been reduced to little more than flames and flotsam floating atop the water. My chest seized up as I pulled myself to standing and stumbled a few steps toward the water. My legs unsteady beneath me. Had Leona and Ruan been on that boat?
Reaver snagged me again by the arm, jamming the metal of his gun back into my side, and pulled me into the woods. “Don’t think your tears move me, Miss Vaughn. I may have been fooled before, but I know precisely what you are.”
Thickness grew in my throat as I stared at the dark waters, scarcely registering his words. “What have you done?”
“Solved two problems at once,” he grumbled.
“Come now, Miss Vaughn. I was told you were terribly clever. Solve this puzzle, mmm? I find you in the bloody lorry up to your elbows in cocaine and you ask me what I have done? I thought your concern for Leona true at first, but then I saw you with him. Cozied up with that murderous swine. Now…” He leaned closer, his hot breath at my neck smelling sweetly of peppermint. “Now I know better.”
Leona. I’d nearly forgotten his words from before.
Reaver was also looking for Leona. That stray bubble of hope returned.
Faint, but there all the same. If Reaver wanted to protect Leona, then she couldn’t have been on the boat he destroyed.
She just couldn’t have been. “Do you know where she is? I can help you, please. Please tell me that she’s safe. ”
“You had better hope she is safe and whole, for your own sake,” Reaver muttered, jerking a coarse burlap sack over my head as my vision went dark.
He tightened it around my throat, shutting off all light as he pulled me along beside him.
With the loss of my sight, panic finally set in.
I was well and truly caught. I stumbled, tripping on roots and debris, as Reaver led me at a breakneck pace away from the boat’s debris.
My senses blunted. Disoriented. Despite being at a severe disadvantage—bound and unable to see, bleeding from goodness only knew where—I could not help but grasp onto the slightest glimmer of light in this dreadful situation.
For Frederick Reaver was not the villain.
Oh, he was certainly a rotten scoundrel, but he hadn’t killed me yet.
And more than that—he was also looking for Leona, which meant that, as improbable as it seemed, Frederick Reaver and I were on the same side in all this. If only I could make him realize it.
Suddenly his words took on new meaning, striking a chord in my memory.
Reaver said I’d “cozied up” with the killer.
It must have been Amberley’s dinner party.
My throat grew thick. Lord Amberley. Of course.
How could I have been such a fool? Amberley had been there from the start.
At the antiquarian meeting. Butting heads with Harker.
At the museum the night Harker’s body was discovered. At the Ashmolean.
The final pieces clicked into place. That must have been why Reaver agreed to go to Amberley’s dinner party. Why he left the museum so quickly after Amberley and his son arrived. Reaver had been after Lord Amberley all along.
The strong calloused hands that had painfully gripped my wrists were replaced by a rough rope.
Twisting once, then again as he fastened my hands together.
My palms grew slippery with my own blood.
If only I could get him to understand, to listen to reason.
Then perhaps we might stand a chance of saving her.
“I am on your side in this!” I tried again.
He responded, but I couldn’t make out his words between the whirring in my ear and the sack muting the sound. “I want to help Leona too. I’m not what you think I am!”
But no matter my protests, it was no use.
Reaver wouldn’t listen. He continued to drag me along beside him to God only knew where.
Occasionally a flicker of light would come through the loose weave of my sack.
We must be going back to town. It was the only explanation for the brightness.
Was he taking me to Amberley thinking he could make a trade for Leona’s life? Good God, it would get us all killed.
“You mean to bargain me, don’t you?” Panic began to rise within me. “I am on your side, Reaver. We want the same things!”
To that he let out a muffled curse and gave me another stout jerk. “Your lies do you no favors, Miss Vaughn.” I stumbled again, jamming my toe on a curbstone.
Yes. We were definitely back in Oxford.
My hands were nearly frozen from the cold air congealing my sticky blood.
I flexed my fingers, unable to feel them.
At least the hot moisture had stopped oozing from my ear—that, or I’d simply grown numb enough I couldn’t feel it.
Suddenly, through my sack and over the ringing in my ear, I heard the muffled crack of a gunshot.
Reaver tensed before throwing me down on a step. I struck the stone hard, swearing loudly at the impact.
A great crash followed. Splintering wood from what must have been a door rained over my body. I flinched, waiting for a blow that did not come. Instead of striking me as I’d expected, Reaver hoisted me back up onto my feet and dragged me inside to meet my sorry fate.