Chapter 34 Kane
KANE
ZARIA HAD BETRAYED HIM.
Kane ought to have known. She wasn’t the type to let herself be easily manipulated.
He’d given her far too much leeway. Had trusted her to believe him when he said he could give her what she wanted.
After all, he was accustomed to people wanting to trust him, wasn’t he?
Zaria shouldn’t have been any different.
He’d been a goddamned fool, though, and let himself get pulled in too deep. Fletcher had been right all along.
Kane thought unwittingly of Zaria’s face.
The way she’d looked when she’d asked him to kiss her again.
How the feeble light creeping through the glass windows of the Crystal Palace made her look more goddess than girl.
He’d known he was in trouble then. Because for the second time in his pathetic life, he’d found someone he couldn’t bear to let down.
He had planned to take more than just the necklace from the Waterhouse exhibit. It wasn’t quite what he’d promised, but it was better than nothing. How could he leave Zaria with nothing after all she’d done?
Kane hadn’t known what was wrong with him—why he suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of doing exactly as he’d planned from the very beginning.
Maybe he was becoming too soft. Maybe he’d let her in just a little too far.
He’d made it a habit of caring for no one but Fletcher, and that was the way he ought to have left it.
Part of him had known what was happening when he’d heard Zaria’s footsteps. When she’d whispered his name like an incantation into the smoke.
All he could do was murmur hers in return, a furious rebuttal.
Then he’d felt nothing at all.
He was shaken awake a short while later, having been dragged away from the display—and then to his feet—by a panicked-looking Fletcher.
A splitting headache had settled itself behind his temples, and he found himself unable to form words as he looked into his friend’s worried face.
In the background, he could vaguely make out the shape of a suspended canoe, which had to mean they were near Canada’s exhibit.
“Kane. God, are you okay?” Fletcher had slapped him lightly on the cheek, but Kane scarcely felt it. All his focus was on remaining upright. “What happened?”
What was there to say? All along he’d been planning to betray Zaria, and then she’d betrayed him. The rage that uncoiled in his chest was unlike any he’d felt before. It was akin only to the type of fury Ward sometimes managed to ignite within him. His mouth tasted like bile.
Fletcher had given a dismayed shake of his head at Kane’s lack of response, grabbing Kane’s arm and flinging it over his shoulders with ease. “We need to get out of here, and not through the window—coppers are swarming on both sides. Can you walk? You’re gray.”
Kane’s strength was coming back in increments, but it took a few steps for him to get his legs back under him. No lasting effects, Zaria had claimed. He might have laughed if he hadn’t been so mutinous.
“Zaria” was the only thing he’d been able to force out. Her name sounded like a curse. It tasted like poison on his tongue.
Fletcher released an uneven breath, guiding him along a corridor toward what Kane hoped was an exit. “What about her? Speaking of which, where are she and Jules? Do you have the necklace? You’re lucky I was the first to find you—you passed out right beside the display.”
Kane loved his friend, but sometimes Fletcher excelled at missing the obvious.
He stopped walking, forcing them to halt.
“Fletch. Zaria’s long gone, and no, I don’t have the necklace.
It’s no coincidence I keeled over when I did.
” He tensed, lowering his voice as a handful of agitated coppers approached, but the copper nearest them only nodded at Fletcher.
“Any more where he came from?”
Fletcher shook his head. “Not that I could see. He must have been especially sensitive to the smoke. Found him passed out between Canada and Ireland.”
They were talking about him, Kane realized, and the nonchalant manner in which the other man addressed Fletcher must have meant Price hadn’t gotten to him yet.
If the sergeant was still unconscious in the back room, he was bound to wake up soon.
Especially if whatever Zaria had used to incapacitate him was similar to aleuite.
The thought had brought Kane up short, and he’d clenched his teeth together so tightly that it verged on painful. That was why she hadn’t told him about the guns. More likely than not, they used aleuite to incapacitate, and she hadn’t wanted him to make the connection.
“You’re having me on,” Fletcher hissed, pulling Kane toward the entrance. As they passed through the turnstiles, he added, “You really didn’t get the necklace?”
“No. Like I said, my passing out wasn’t a coincidence. She planned this, Fletch. All of it. The aleuite smoke was never safe to inhale for a prolonged period.”
Fletcher had paled, then reddened, his voice turning thunderous. “That little—”
Kane gave a limp wave of his hand. He wasn’t interested in hearing the myriad names he was sure Fletcher was about to call Zaria.
“No point. We need to find her before she gets too far. I managed to get the display case open, so I’m certain she has the necklace.
” And had entirely compromised their escape plan in the process. “Now let me go—I can walk.”
Fletcher obliged but watched Kane closely as he righted himself. When he seemed satisfied Kane wasn’t about to fall over, he said, “Why would she want it?”
It had been a good question. Why would Zaria want the necklace? Perhaps she’d somehow found out Kane was planning to double-cross her, and this was her way of making him regret it. It would be very like her to do something simply to infuriate him.
That said, she had also known Fletcher’s life was on the line. And though Zaria was a lot of things, she wasn’t the type of person to doom anyone in the name of retribution. There had to be another reason. A more important one. How long had she been planning this?
“I don’t know,” Kane admitted. “What matters is finding her. I need to get that necklace to Ward as soon as possible.”
Fletcher grimaced. “Her goal was to get out of London, right?”
“What are you suggesting?” Kane snapped, then bit down on the inside of his cheek. This wasn’t Fletcher’s fault. No, it was his fault. His own idiotic fault for putting his trust in someone he shouldn’t have. And if Fletcher paid the price for it—
Well. Zaria already thought Kane terrible. She would find out just how terrible he could truly be.
“I’m just saying,” Fletcher hedged, “what if she’s already gone?”
“No.” Kane snarled the reply. He took a breath in another attempt to calm himself. “She can’t be gone. She won’t go without Julian, and I’m willing to bet he won’t go without his father. We need to check the pawnshop before we do anything else.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
And that was how Kane found himself outside the building where he’d first met Zaria, his heart in his throat.
Every piece of him hurt in different ways.
Combined, it was enough to hollow him out completely.
He’d only wanted to make Ward happy. He’d only wanted to win Fletcher’s freedom.
And in the very end, he’d only wished he could give Zaria what he’d promised her.
Kane supposed that was what happened when you allowed yourself to care for people: It destroyed you.
It was with that hopeless thought that he finally gathered the courage to kick open the door.
The pawnshop was empty. Everything smelled like must and impending decay.
Fletcher filed in behind him, eyes narrowed, and pointed wordlessly at the ceiling.
On the second floor, Kane could hear the distinct sound of two men arguing.
Jules and his father, most likely. His lip curled in grim satisfaction—they hadn’t gotten very far, then.
“We’ll corner them upstairs,” he whispered to Fletcher. “Follow me.”
Before he could start toward the stairwell, however, he suddenly heard a third male voice.
Kane’s blood turned to ice, prickling along his veins. He knew that voice as well as he knew himself. It featured in all his nightmares, both waking and sleeping. Snapping around to look at Fletcher, he saw his own acute horror reflected in his friend’s gaze.
Ward? Fletcher mouthed, the question mark implied, and Kane nodded slowly. It didn’t make sense that the kingpin was here, and yet the light tenor was unmistakable.
Or did it make sense? After all, Ward had told Kane to cut ties with Zaria, and he’d refused.
Ward had turned Price against them. He’d been meddling in Kane’s plans from the very start.
Why shouldn’t he know that Zaria had been the one to end up with the necklace?
Why wouldn’t he have come to see things through himself?
Kane’s horror multiplied tenfold as a woman answered, barely audible. By now he was intimately familiar with Zaria’s voice as well. His fury with her was bordering on mutinous, but it was his. Not Ward’s. The kingpin did not get to kill her. Not if Kane had anything to say about it.
“Stay here,” he told Fletcher on a quiet exhale. “If Jules comes down, grab him.”
“But Ward—”
“Won’t hurt me. Stay here. Promise me, Fletch.”
There was a long pause, but then his friend dipped his head.
Kane was around the corner and down the corridor in a half-dozen steps that echoed ominously in the narrow space. The door at the end was open, and he barreled through it without stopping to think.
The world turned on its head.
He saw Ward, the necklace in one hand, a dark market revolver in the other. He saw Zaria, bent at the waist as if midway through rising. Time seemed to stretch taut, then unraveled as she met Kane’s eyes. Hers were full of true, genuine fear.