Page 63 of The Journal of a Thousand Years
“I wasn’t there. I was still in France.”
“But you did see her, later. I’m sure the pain of losing her son didn’t dull in that time. I’m sure it still feels very raw for her, and very painful.” He lowered the gun a few inches, as if it were suddenly heavy. “Would you inflict that pain on Gabe’s parents? He’s their only child.”
The gun lowered further. It was now aimed at my legs in a loose grip. Alcott’s gaze turned distant, and immeasurably sad.
I tilted my head in the direction of Alex and Willie. “Would you inflict that pain on his friends? On his…his fiancée?”
He gave no sign that he knew it was a lie, and that Gabe had ended his engagement. He simply lowered the gun all the way to his side.
Alex rushed forward and grabbed Alcott’s wrist. He disarmed Alcott before I’d even moved.
Willie raced to the bed and pressed a hand on the gash at Gabe’s inner elbow, then raised his arm to direct the blood to flow back the other way. As an ambulance driver in the war, she’d picked up a thing or two from the medical staff.
“Find something to use as a tourniquet,” she said as she set aside the blood-filled bowl. “Sylvia!”
Her bark snapped me to attention. The knot securing the rope tying Gabe to the bedhead was complicated, but I managed to undo it. I wrapped it around his arm, making sure it was tight, then tied it. Now that I was close, I could see the web of blue veins on his pale eyelids and feel his clammy skin. He was cold.
I fetched his jacket from where it had slipped off the chair to the floor and placed it over him, then I sat beside him on the bed and drew him against me, tucking his head under my chin. I wrapped my arms around him, holding him there, warming him, willing him to wake up and reassure me that he was fine. But his eyes remained closed, and his heart fluttered like a trapped butterfly’s wings, weak yet dangerously rapid.
Willie removed her jacket, too, and settled it around him. Then she marched up to Frank Alcott, held at gunpoint by Alex, and punched him in the stomach.
He grunted and doubled over.
Outside, a woman shouted, “Oi! This is private property!”
A male voice responded, but I couldn’t hear what he said. Moments later, footsteps thundered up the staircase.
Alex moved so he could keep Alcott in his line of sight while pointing the gun at the door. He lowered it when a constable barged into the room, followed by two more and a sergeant.
Willie thrust her hands on her hips. “It’s about time!”
The sergeant nodded at Alcott. “Is this the perpetrator?”
“One of them,” Alex said. “He was just about to tell us where his colleague is.”
Alcott shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
Willie balled her hand into a fist, ready to strike again. “You damn well can!”
“I mean I don’t know where he is. He didn’t tell me where he was going.”
“Is he at the Royal London Hospital? In their research laboratories, testing the first batch of Gabe’s blood?”
Alcott shrugged.
I glanced at the bowl. My stomach rolled violently, but I managed not to throw up. I tightened my arms around Gabe. “Speaking of hospitals, Gabe needs a doctor.”
The vibration of my voice must have stirred him. He murmured something I couldn’t quite hear and lifted his head, but the effort seemed too much for him and he rested it against my chest again. That small movement made my heart explode with relief.
I cupped his face and titled it so I could look at him better. Seeing his clear green eyes peer back at me shattered the remaining vestiges of my self-control. Tears rolled down my cheeks. “Hello.”
“Hello.” His voice was barely audible, but it was the most wonderful sound. “Where…?”
“You’re sitting on a filthy bed in a Whitechapel tenement owned by Stanley Greville. Frank Alcott, a former orderly who worked at Rosebank, is being arrested as we speak, and we’re about to take you to hospital. You’ve lost a lot of blood.
“Stanley…” he murmured. “Why?”
“It’s a long story, but you can ask him yourself when you’re better.”
