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London – April 1902
“You’ve gone mad!” Heather Fields backed slowly away from Jacob Lindon, shaking her head in dismay at the preposterous idea he’d just proposed. “I can’t do that. Jacob... You know I can’t.”
She stood in the headquarters of the Citizens Committee, though headquarters was perhaps too grand a word to describe the rundown warehouse near the docks that had been all they could afford. Jacob had summoned her here this morning, then immediately taken her aside in an attempt to gain her assistance for his newest wild plan to take down the establishment.
When she’d first joined the Citizens Committee, she’d been completely enamored with the group’s rakish leader. Her interest in the Communist Party had been fueled by his passionate speeches and dark good looks. She’d previously participated in the Suffragist movement and had found that very fulfilling, and she’d expected her involvement with the Citizens Committee to be very similar.
However, in the past few months, she’d found herself in over her head. Jacob and the others had roped her into more and more dangerous and illegal activities—vandalism, trespassing, and intimidation— nothing like the pacifism and sign-holding she’d been used to. But now... What they wanted to do now was beyond stupid. It would get them all imprisoned or killed.
“He’ll never know you were in on it,” Jacob coaxed, his green eyes shining with reckless glee. “That’s the beauty of it. He’ll want to protect you, like the hero he thinks he is, and we can use that weakness to make him do whatever we want.”
“But... the assistant police commissioner? All of Scotland Yard will be looking for him! And I’ve met him before. He knows me!” In all honesty, she wasn’t at all certain that Mandrake Blackstone would remember her. Their meeting had been brief, only a few seconds, and he’d seemed as though he had more pressing things on his mind than being introduced to a lady’s maid. In fact, he’d seemed surprised that his friend Quinn O’Brien had bothered to introduce him to one of his servants at all.
Still, Commissioner Blackstone had made an impression on her. Tall and broad-shouldered, with inky black hair and dark, penetrating eyes, he’d definitely given off an air of power and capability.
She shivered at the thought of getting on his bad side. And what Jacob wanted her to do would definitely put her on his bad side.
“Well, that’s even better. If he knows you, he’ll be even more interested in keeping you safe.” Jacob gave her a cold smile. “I’m starting to think you’re losing your nerve, love.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with the cause,” she snapped back, the chill inside her intensifying.
Their last mission had finally made her see that she couldn’t be a part of this any longer. Jacob had enlisted her to be a lookout, but she hadn’t realized that their plan had been to blow up a business the Committee felt had been engaging in unfair labor practices. The moment she’d heard the explosion and seen the burst of flames down the alley, she’d known she’d been duped, that her desire to help the common man had been turned against her.
She’d found out later that the owner had just been someone Jacob had a grudge against, and it had nothing to do with the Communist movement at all.
By some miracle, no one had been killed, although several people had been seriously injured. She still found herself constantly looking over her shoulder, expecting the police to come knocking on her door. She’d been trying to break ties with the group ever since, but these were dangerous men, and she knew far too much about them.
She very much feared they would never let her go, and she’d be drawn into even more terrible things. This latest mad plan was the perfect example. Jacob planned to kidnap Mandrake Blackstone and throw her into the man’s prison with him, making her pretend she was also a captive. Jacob believed that Blackstone would either tell her what the police knew about their organization or they could threaten that they’d hurt her if he didn’t give them what they wanted.
“You know they’re closing in on us,” Jacob said, his eyes darkening. “If anyone can tell us what they know, it will be that bastard.”
“But what happens afterward?” she asked, though she was afraid she already knew. “He’ll be able to identify us all after we do this. It will make matters far worse.”
“He’ll only be able to identify you,” Jacob said coldly. “The rest of us will be masked when we talk to him. And that’s why you’d better make him believe you’re just an innocent victim too. If you give him any reason to doubt that you’ve also been taken captive, you’ll be arrested for certain.”
She shook her head, her unease growing. “So, you’re just going to let him go in the end? After he’s given you what you want?”
Jacob laughed uproariously, and she wondered why she hadn’t seen that spark of madness in his beautiful green eyes from the beginning. How could she have ever believed that he wanted to help people? “Of course, love. What else would we do with him?”
“Kill him,” she said daringly, her heart thundering in her chest as she finally voiced her deepest fear. “That’s what you do to other people who get in your way, isn’t it?”
He sobered, reaching out to grab her forearms, shaking her roughly as he looked into her eyes. “You’d better not get in my way, Heather. The lads have already been telling me that you can’t be trusted, that you don’t have what it takes to do what needs to be done. Have I made a mistake in letting you so far into the organization?”
No. I’m the one who’s made a mistake.
She swallowed, finding it hard to believe that she’d once thought herself in love with this man. She’d let him into her heart, into her body, only to realize that he was not the revolutionary hero she’d thought but a small, petty man who enjoyed violence and anarchy and didn’t care about the body count he left in his wake.
“You haven’t made a mistake,” she said nervously, knowing she had no other choice. If she didn’t do what he wanted, he’d make certain she never told anyone of the things he’d done, the atrocities he’d committed.
He squeezed her arms until tears stung her eyes, then flung her away from him with a laugh. “Good girl. I knew you’d come around.” He let his gaze rake her from head to toe. “Blackstone won’t be able to resist you, love. You’re a gorgeous little tart, and I expect you to give him some of what you gave to me if it will get the results we need.”
She gasped, nausea twisting her belly. “You want me to...?”
He smiled coldly. “What does it matter? Not as though you can get it back, is it?”
My virginity. He is talking about my virginity. A rush of stinging tears threatened to spill over, and she blinked rapidly, determined not to let him see how much his cruel words had affected her. That’s what he wanted, after all.
When he’d set out to seduce her into both his cause and his bed, he’d been all sweet words and charm. But from the very night he’d first had her, he’d lost interest. She felt like a discarded plaything, and he hadn’t bothered to try and make it any easier on her. In fact, he’d become intentionally vicious, teasing her about giving her to his men, telling her that she hadn’t satisfied him, that he shouldn’t have wasted his time on a virgin.
She’d been a fool to ever have believed he cared about her. She’d been so stupid about so many things.
“I can’t do this,” she said, shaking her head, looking across the room to where a dozen other Committee members were laughing and drinking toasts to their plan. Perhaps she was being even more foolish to defy him, but she couldn’t continue on this way. She had to escape this life before it caused her to lose more than her virginity. “You can find someone else. Someone who would be better at seducing Blackstone. You told me yourself that I’m lacking in that area. And perhaps I’m no longer a virgin, but I’m also not the kind of woman who would seduce a man just to get some information.”
What he’d originally asked—that she cozy up to the man and pretend to be a victim herself—had been bad enough. But this... Now he wanted her to prostitute herself for his cause. His threats terrified her, but she did have a little pride left, a few morals that he hadn’t destroyed.
He suddenly grabbed a hank of her dark hair, twisting it around his wrist until she felt as though he were going to pull it out by the roots. “You little bitch,” he hissed, dragging her out of the main room and toward the stairs that led to the dank, cavernous cellar. “Do you think I give a fuck what you want?”
She stumbled to keep up just so that he wouldn’t literally scalp her, but her terror intensified when he started shoving her down the stairs that led to the storage room where some of the men slept when they were hiding out. She was pretty sure that was where they meant to imprison Blackstone.
“Please, Jacob,” she begged, trying to appeal to some shred of goodness in him. “Please, don’t do this.”
He stopped in front of the thick, oak door at the bottom of the stairs. “You’re lucky I’m giving you this opportunity to redeem yourself, Heather. The rest of the boys think I should get rid of you.”
Opening the door, he shoved her inside, finally releasing her hair as she fell in a heap on the dirt floor. The room was deep and dark, a windowless cell with several cots, a table with two chairs, and a chamber pot behind a screen in the corner.
“If you tell him anything, anything at all, about our organization, I’ll kill you both,” he told her coldly. Then he shut the door, trapping her in the darkness.
* * *
MANDRAKE BLACKSTONE stepped out of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, better known as Scotland Yard, and pulled his coat up around his ears as an icy blast of wintry air hit him. Spring seemed to be taking forever to arrive this year, but perhaps that had more to do with his mood than the actual weather.
With a sigh, he looked around for his carriage, surprised his driver hadn’t already arrived. Drake was nothing if not punctual, and he expected those who worked for him to be the same. He thought longingly of the shiny red motorcar his friend Lucien Strathmore, the Earl of Hawkesmere, owned. Perhaps he should get one of his own. He couldn’t imagine the freedom of being able to drive oneself at the precise moment one wanted to leave, instead of waiting endlessly for others.
Muttering under his breath, he turned around to head back inside, intending to phone home and demand to know why there’d been a delay. Before he’d taken more than a few steps, however, his carriage finally arrived, his coachman huddled on the box, covered head to toe to keep out the cold.
“You’re late,” Drake snapped, reaching for the door.
He’d swung halfway inside before he realized it was already occupied. Two hulking forms waited ominously in the dark interior. Confused and alarmed, wondering if he’d gotten into the wrong carriage, he tried to step back down, but the men inside lunged toward him, looping their arms around his shoulders and dragging him fully into the vehicle.
He sprawled across the coach floor as one of the men sat squarely on his back, knocking the breath out of him. The other wrenched his arms behind him, tying his wrists together. Before he could cry out, they shoved an acrid-smelling piece of cloth into his mouth.
The whole incident had lasted only a few seconds, but as the coach rocked into motion, he realized that he, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was being kidnapped from in front of Scotland Yard. How the hell could this be happening?
He stopped fighting, knowing that for the moment at least, he was well and truly caught. Whoever was behind this had planned it well, giving him no chance to fight back or raise an alarm. But a time would come when he had an opportunity to escape, and he had to be ready for it.
Taking a few deep breaths through his nose, he tried to focus his mind, clear the panic, and figure out who the hell had taken him.
He hated that his first thoughts went to his brother.
Mortimer, Viscount Danbury, definitely had the resources to hire someone to do this. And it was in his nature to take the coward’s way out of every situation. Had he found out that Drake was investigating him? Would this carriage ride end with a bullet to Drake’s head so that he could never expose Danbury for the murderous bastard he was?
The mere thought made him wild with impotent rage. Inspector Sebastian Ness and retired Inspector Quinn O’Brien also knew of his brother’s foul deeds, and he knew they’d do their best to bring Danbury to justice, but without him, they wouldn’t have a chance. Even from his lofty position, it was proving to be incredibly difficult to bring a case against a peer.
Truth be told, he still wasn’t certain he could find a magistrate to sign off on a warrant. So much rested on which one was assigned to the case. Some were more easily influenced by a title than others. But either way, this couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
Of course, there was always the possibility that Danbury had nothing to do with this. God knows Drake had plenty of other enemies out there. The men he could hear breathing heavily above him could belong to any of a dozen organizations who’d like to see him dead.
Craning his head, he tried to see the men who’d so handily immobilized him, but they’d planned well. The window shades inside the carriage had been pulled shut, so when he’d entered it had been too dark to make out the men’s features. They’d immediately planted him face-first on the floor, tying his hands and feet. Their positions on the seats above him made it impossible to see their faces, and the foot planted squarely in the small of his back kept him from moving.
Since there seemed to be no way to see them or escape, he tried to focus on figuring out where the carriage was headed. He was pretty sure they were still heading east, but it was impossible to say for certain. The driver, who was obviously not his man Edgar, could have made a turn while he was still struggling and not paying attention. He hoped that they hadn’t harmed Edgar when they’d stolen his coach but feared the worst.
If only they hadn’t gagged him. These men seemed to be hired thugs, and men like that were susceptible to bribes or leaking information. Drake had always been very good at using his quick wit and silver tongue to find out what he needed to know. So if he could just talk to them, ask some questions...
A huge pothole made his face leave the floor then slam against it again, and the men above him laughed uproariously.
Cheek stinging and ear ringing, he ignored them. He couldn’t let bastards like these—nor his brother, for that matter—get the best of him.
Think. Think. How the hell do I get out of this?
His mind whirled with one idea after another, but there were simply too many variables to know which, if any, he’d actually be able to implement once the carriage stopped. He’d never felt so helpless.
Other than their laughter, and an occasional cough or burp, the men who’d captured him weren’t making any noise at all. Obviously, they’d been warned not to say anything that would give their identities away. As much as it chafed, Drake had to give them points for that. They were executing their plan flawlessly.
But whose plan was it?
By his calculations, they’d been traveling for about twenty minutes when the coach finally came to a stop. Twenty minutes east. The docks, perhaps?
To his horror, one of the men placed some sort of black bag over his head, taking away his sight along with his freedom. With the gag in his mouth, it had been difficult enough to breathe, but now the material clung to his nose, making it almost impossible. He fought to stay calm, even though he felt like he was suffocating.
The next few minutes could very well be the end of him. He had to wait for these men to make a mistake and then be instantly ready to capitalize on it if he was going to make it through this alive.