Page 102 of A Fearless Heart
“You won’t, sir. She’s not ready to see anyone, and she’s quite clear that she doesn’t want to see you.” For such a slender and sweet-looking woman, Minnie could be intimidating when she chose—plus, Gabe knew she usually had several small knives on her person and could do a lot of damage with them.
“She needs to be aware of certain things.”
“Bond has already told her most of them. Why don’t you work on your own and come back later?”
Gabe did that. He came back in the afternoon. Cady still wasn’t at home.
He came back in the evening. Cady wasn’t at home.
He stopped by Trevor’s club, only to be told that his name was not on the list. He hadn’t even known therewasa list.
He came back to the town house the next morning. The same message awaited him.
That next night, when he decided to let himself in, Jem and Bond were waiting for him. Jem very politely relieved him of the key Cady had previously given, and Bond told him that there was a message for him…but it wasn’t from Cady.
“Aries would like a word, sir. Tomorrow at four in the afternoon, at the usual location.”
Gabe did not like the Disreputables knowing more than he did about his appointments, but he was too frustrated to object. All he wanted was to see Cady, to know she was physically recovering from her attack. And to hold her and tell her everything on his mind, so that she knew the whole truth, not the outdated facts and the smatterings of half-truths she’s been given so far.
Denied the one thing he needed, Gabe was forced to work on his own, turning the clues he’d gathered over and over in his mind, trying to find the thing that was missing, the thing that didn’t fit. He read over all his notes, from the very first moment Aries handed him the assignment.
Nothing. The words he wrote had been read over so many times that they didn’t even look like words anymore. His brain refused to process them.
Frustrated, Gabe threw the journal across the room. It fluttered open and landed softly in the middle of the rug. He decided that he needed to get out and breathe some fresh air. Dressing in one of his usual, unremarkable outfits, he walked the streets, hoping that the movement would clear his head.
He walked for hours, his mood foul. The sky matched his mood, but when rain started pelting down, it drove Gabe into a nearby tavern to wait it out.
He sat at a table facing the long counter. Since few men were drinking in the middle of the day, the counter was mostly clear and he could watch the barman working on the other side. When he wasn’t drawing a beer for a customer, he either dried off glasses or performed other little tasks all necessary to the smooth operation of the tavern when the rush would come later as men left their work. Gabe sipped his drink slowly, brooding over the maddening aspects of his assignment, all the little details that refused to fit into a neat and tidy pattern pointing to the end.
The barman had started to decant some ruby-colored liquid from a large glass jug into a few smaller containers. He did it all expertly, without fuss or stress or a drop spilled, just a stream of claret falling, falling, falling. It was very graceful in a way, this transfer from one container to another, thanks to endless practice on the part of the barman. If only Gabe’s job allowed for such a clean and simple process.
One of the tavern’s workers replaced Gabe’s empty glass with a full one. Gabe was so focused on his brooding that he didn’t even see who it was, he just grunted an acknowledgment and seized on the new glass. God bless a barkeep who kept the drinks coming.
He took a sip, the alcohol setting up a warm burn in his throat. Did the victims know they were drinking poison when they sipped from the tainted glass? Did they taste even a hint of the death that was waiting for them?
At least they wouldn’t have suffered. Cady had explained that a fatal dose of the “fear-stealer” would have been like falling asleep. At worst, some of the victims, like Parrish, might have been aware of an unnatural sluggishness, an inability to rise and take action which might have been torture in its own way. But mostly all fell to sleep, and then to a gentle death. There were worse ways to go. On a battlefield, or in hospital afterward, for those who weren’t lucky enough to die quickly in the fight.
Had Parrish fought? Gabe never asked Aries about the man’s background. He should have. It seemed like the thing one ought to know. Had Parrish known he was dying before the lassitude took him and it was too late to do anything about it, other than to write one word on one piece of paper?
Gabe frowned, remembering Cady’s disquiet about that. Her questions. Why that word? Why writeanyword when you could have instead called for help? Why stop there, with “Calderwood”? Gabe would have kept writing until his hand went numb or his face slammed down on the desk, too tired to go on…
He frowned, thinking back. He’d read all about Pisces’s death, how he was found with the note beside him on the floor of the study. His jaw twitched. Little things, out of place.
Across the way, the barman was decanting another liquor, this one a pale amber.
Suddenly, Gabe sat up straight, dizzy with the revelation. He swore under his breath.
Could it be so simple?
What if a few clues had been read wrong? A few things they had all known to be facts were not facts, but falsehoods.
It could fit. It could all fit, and he just needed to answer one question before he’d have the only answer he needed.
The name of the killer.
With a burst of energy, Gabe grabbed his hat and left the tavern almost at a run.
He stumbled a bit, feeling suddenly clumsy and strange. He looked down, but there was nothing there he could have tripped on.
