Page 99 of The Hunter
Argent paused, considering the consequences of stalling. “I want to know what he’s doing with the missing boys, if they’re still alive… and why he contracted against the lives of all those women.”
“Women like Millicent LeCour?” Dorshaw’s eyes flared, and Argent fought the urge to pluck them out. “Should we ask him? He’s bleeding faster than I’d expected, he doesn’t have much time.” With a cruel yank, Fenwick’s gag fell to his throat, and Dorshaw held the knife beneath the man’s jugular. “Tell my friend Argent just why those women are dying, and how they’re connected to you.” Bending his lean, graceful frame down toward his victim, Dorshaw stage-whispered in Fenwick’s ear, his lips almost touching the man’s honey-colored hair tipped with his own blood. “Tell him justwhois responsible for all that killing, andwho,upon occasion, has actually wielded the knife.”
“You?” Argent accused, pointing his own knife at Dorshaw.
Thurston’s pallor had begun to match the marble in his fireplace. Ivory-white rimmed with blue. Dry, bloodless lips parted, and panting breaths formed his last words. “Those boys… they’re… mine.” Tears streamed down his once robust face, the wrinkles becoming more prominent as the veins beneath the skin emptied. “Jakub… my son.”
“You don’t deserve to say his name, you disgusting swine.” Argent snarled at the dying man. “Now where are the rest? Are they alive?”
“I… don’t… know…” The man’s breath dissolved into painful, sobbing coughs.
“Oh dear.” Dorshaw tsked. “I feel as though we’ve run out of time.” He petted the earl’s hair like one would an ailing dog, then his eyes brightened as though he had an idea. “I suppose I could tell you, as I know where they are, and if they are dead or alive, as I collected on half the contracts, myself.”
“Where?” Argent demanded. Thinking of Millie, of Jakub, of all the boys lost and never found, or locked away and not released until it was too late. “Where are they?”
“I said Icouldtell you, but I don’t think I will. You were unforgivably rude last time we met, and that doesn’t foster feelings of good will, does it?”
Argent brandished his own weapon. “You’re going to tell me.”
Dorshaw giggled, a high, gleeful sound, waving his own knife. “Mine’s bigger and longer, which means I don’t have to.”
“I’ll make you.” Stepping forward, he tracked Dorshaw as the wiry man ducked behind Fenwick’s chair.
“It’s not your way, torturing information out of people.”
“It is now.” Advancing, Argent tested the knife in his hand, feeling the familiar ridges, knowing how it conformed to his grip. He was going to have his pound of flesh before he put this sick bastard down.
This time, he wouldn’t be interrupted.
“Not one more step or I’ll shoot you both!” Chief Inspector Carlton Morley bellowed from the library doorway.
Goddammit.Argent froze, knowing his back was the broadest target for Morley’s pistol, and Dorshaw was partially shielded by Thurston’s fine chair and also, if the angle was correct, Argent’s body.
He’d never had much in the way of run-ins with Inspector Morley, but he did know that the Scotland Yard leader hated Blackwell.
This could end badly for him. The only advantage he had was his proximity to the French doors and thereby the closest means of escape. However, it was deucedly difficult to outrun a bullet.
“You’re here for Dorshaw,” Argent said calmly. “I have nothing to do with this.”
“I did, indeed, follow Dorshaw’s trail here,” Morley stated, his deep voice just as calm and smooth as Argent’s, touched with the air of one who wasn’t used to having his authority questioned. “But there’s a disemboweled nobleman in front of you, and you’re holding a knife.”
“He’s killed half of those women. He cuts on them. Leaves only clothing and some entrails to find. Sound familiar?” Argent dared to look over his shoulder to pinpoint Morley’s exact location. “He knows what happened to those boys.”
“Did you kill the other half of them, Christopher Argent?”
Christ.Argent gritted his teeth.
“That’s right, I know who you are and who you work for, so you’ll stay where you stand until my men show, or I’ll paint that rare book collection with your brain matter. I’m that good of a shot, so don’t even think—”
Morley didn’t see the knife Dorshaw threw until it was almost upon him. The inspector was able to turn his torso just in time to absorb the blade into the right shoulder, instead of the heart.
The gun went off. Glass shattered. Morley went down.
Argent whipped his own knife at Dorshaw, who ducked in time to miss a blade through the eye. Another blade was in Argent’s hand before the first weapon embedded in the far wall with an ominous sound.
Grinning, Dorshaw also produced a weapon from his boot, remaining where he’d crouched behind Lord Thurston’s chair. Sometime between the man’s last words and now, the earl had died, and taken his secrets with him.
Fuck.
