Page 26 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
“An underground network that originated in Russia. They started smuggling opium. But their reach has expanded, and they’ve branched out.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “They’ve assassinated diplomats. Rival gang lords. Meddled in international affairs. I told you both that you might not want to hear the uncomfortable truths about who your sister aligned herself with.”
He’d seen what the Syndicate did to traitors. Bloated bodies fished from the Thames, mutilated corpses left as warnings in dark alleys. Body parts delivered to enemies in boxes. Nasty work, even for a man of his experience.
“If she were dead,” he continued, “the Syndicate wouldn’t have left her to rot in the shadows. She would have been displayed as a warning to other traitors. You’d know about it.”
He saw Emma flinch. “Will you help her, Mr Callahan? If you find Isabel?”
Callahan kept his expression neutral. Necessity had taught him to guard his tells and shutter stray emotions. He was treading a fine line with the Office right now after his cock up in Hong Kong. Sticking his neck out for a Syndicate thief might be more trouble than she was worth. Still, if she could be squeezed for information . . .
“That depends,” he said with ruthless practicality, “on whether she proves useful.”
He didn’t have the privilege of making promises he couldn’t keep.
Callahan crossed to the battered desk shoved into one corner. He rifled through the drifts of papers and empty ink bottles until he found a small notebook beneath the detritus.
“Got a mate or two still in Paris. Ones who might’ve caught wind of your sister’s exploits before she hopped the Channel. I’ll send them a wire, tell them it’s urgent. I want you to tell me what you know about her. Background, old haunts,everything. Leave nothing out.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“Thank me if I find the chit with her head still attached.”
8
The abandoned distillery was dark. Shafts of moonlight knifed through gaps in the decrepit roof, just enough to illuminate any assailant trying to sneak up on Isabel. She crouched in the deepest corner and fought not to fall asleep. Each sound scraped along her nerves. She’d spent too many nights awake. Not enough real rest.
Just a few days more. Then she’d board the steamer bound for Le Havre at first light and put the stinking cesspool of London at her back. Hopefully, crossing the Channel would throw Favreau off her scent. Then she’d—
A scuff sounded past the shaft of light.
Isabel’s heart seized behind her ribs. She pressed deeper into the blackness, straining to listen past the thunder of her pulse.
There it was again – a careful footfall.
Isabel eased her weapon out of its sheath. Her gaze raked the darkness as a large silhouette detached from the shadows.
She launched herself at the figure, aiming straight for the bastard’s jugular.
He twisted at the last second, but her blade bit deep into his shoulder.
His bellow echoed through the distillery. She ripped her dagger free, but before she could strike again, his arm clamped around her middle. He yanked. Spun her. The air punched out of her lungs as her back collided with a wall of hard muscle. Then the bastard hauled her off her feet.
“Bloody, buggering fuck, Trouble. Must you lead with the stabbing?”
The familiar timbre crashed through her wild panic. She knew that voice, whiskey-rough and insolent. Had heard it in her dreams.
“Agent Callahan,” she said. She’d never admit aloud that she was glad to see him. She’d missed that voice. Missedhim. “Fancy meeting you here. I’d say it was a pleasure, but . . .” She writhed in his crushing embrace, an exaggerated wriggle that pressed her backside to his front. “It’s rather difficult to exchange pleasantries while being so aggressively manhandled.”
He grunted and twisted his hips aside. “Stop rubbing your arse against my cock,” he snapped.
“Just testing whether it’s possible for a man who just got stabbed to still get hard. And look, the answer is yes.”
“Doesn’t erase the fact that you just tried to take off my damn arm.”
Good. If he was angry, he was distracted. Anger made men stupid and more prone to mistakes. And she would once again have to wiggle out of Ronan Callahan’s clutches.
“You snuck up on an armed woman in an abandoned distillery in the dead of night. What in the devil did you expect? Squeals of maidenly delight? Swoons into your manly arms?”
“I expected you to be holed up in the finest suite Claridge’s had to offer, not dressed in the clothes of a filthy little street lad and scuttling through the arse-end of Whitechapel like a sewer rat.”
