Page 58 of Who Cries for the Lost

“He was young—quite young; maybe twenty or twenty-two. Healthy, his hands nicely manicured. That’s about it. Bow Street has his pantaloons and are trying to find the tailor, but if they’ve learned anything, I haven’t heard about it.”

Sebastian studied his friend’s half-averted profile. Gibson’s face was pale, his eyes dark bruises, his graying hair a windblown mess. But he seemed fiercely, almost brutally free of any signs of an opium-induced haze. “Is Alexi off delivering another baby?”

“No, she’s got some other project she’s working on. Why?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Just wanted to ask her something about Sedgewick. It can wait.”

Gibson sucked in a deep breath. “She’s got this idea that she can get rid of the phantom pains from my missing leg by using some crazy setup with a box and mirrors that tricks the brain. She keeps pressing me to try it.”

“So why don’t you? What can it hurt? If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t. But if you can get rid of the pains, you can quit taking that bloody opium. Before it kills you.”

Gibson kept his gaze on the river. “That’s just it. What if it does work? What if it does somehow trick my mind into realizing that the pains it thinks I’m feeling are just an illusion? Then I won’t need the opium anymore. But what if—” His voice broke, and he had to swallow hard before he could continue. “What if I can’t stop?”

Oh, hell, thought Sebastian.

“I started taking the opium to dull the pain,” Gibson was saying. “But it’s reached the point that a part of me is afraid to lose the pains because then I’ll lose my excuse for taking the opium.”

“And you don’t think you can stop?”

“No.”

Sebastian was silent for a moment. “God knows it won’t be easy. In fact, it’s probably going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do. But if you fail, you fail; at least you’ll have tried, and you can always try again. No one is going to fault you or judge you for it.”

A muscle jumped along the Irishman’s set jaw. “I’m afraid Alexi would leave me.”

“If you can’t stop taking the opium, you mean? You honestly think she might?”

Gibson dropped his gaze to his feet. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“Because she loves you?” Sebastian suggested.

Gibson shook his head. “Who could blame her? Hell, I’d leave me.”

“Do you want her to stay?”

Gibson looked up at him. “More than anything in this world and the next.”

Sebastian met his friend’s tortured gaze. “More than you want to keep taking the opium? Because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Which do you love the most? The opium, or Alexi?”

But Gibson simply stared back at him, his dark green eyes glittering as if with broken shards of pain and fear and hopeless longing.

Chapter 35

Sunday, 18 June

Sebastian awoke the next day before dawn.

He was standing at the bedroom window, his gaze on the rich morning light striking the chimneys and rooftops of the houses across the street, when Hero came to rest her hand on the small of his back. “What is it?” she asked softly.

He shook his head, unable to put any of it into words. He felt as if someone had fastened a metal band around his forehead, a band that kept getting tighter and tighter. Part of it, he knew, came from his frustration over his inability to identify whatever sick killer had decided to make the Thames the dumping ground for his victims. But it was more than that. There was a hum in the air, as if all of London were holding its breath along with him, waiting for news from across the Channel.

After a moment, she said, “You feel it, don’t you? Whatever is happening over there, I mean.”

He looked at her. “You, too?” It was like a palpable turmoil in the atmosphere, born of the collective rage, agony, fear, and despair rising up from the tens of thousands of men who were surely at that very moment fighting, bleeding, and dying.

“Not as much as you, I suspect. But yes.”

She was silent, her gaze on a milkmaid turning down the street, two heavy pails hanging from the yoke balanced across her shoulders. Then she said, “You can’t suspect Alexi and Gibson of killing Sedgewick.”

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