Page 69 of Courier of Death
Emma’s mouth twisted into a deranged expression of loathing as she loomed over Leo.
The blare of a police whistle came from within the prison walls. It shivered up Leo’s spine as she lay on the cold, gravel path. Emma’s face went stark white.
“You have no chance of escaping,” Leo said, her heartbeat threatening to rip straight out of her chest. “Put down your knife and turn yourself over to Inspector Reid.”
Emma looked toward the constable with a truncheon in his hand. He’d come closer. The knife touched the underside of Leo’s chin. “I said stay back!”
He obeyed, taking a few steps in reverse. It wasn’t the first time Leo had been held at knifepoint. In March, Andrew Carter had pressed his knife just below her eye, demanding that Jasper relinquish a suspect he’d arrested so that Andrew could kill him. Andrew Carter’s hand had been steady with deadly intent, while Emma’s was now trembling with panic. Oddly enough, it was Emma, not the East Rip, who struck Leo as more dangerous with a weapon. However, Jasper had his revolver. If he came through the porter’s gate and saw Emma Bates with a knife to Leo’s throat, he would use it.
Even as unstable as Emma was, even with all the pain and destruction she had wrought, Leo did not want to see her killed. She was a disturbed woman, a woman who had fallen in love with the wrong man and gone to extremes to attain him. A woman who’d been raised by criminals. Perhaps there had never been any hope that she might break free from a life of lawlessness.
None of that, however, excused what she’d done.
“You stole that valise. You arranged for the bomb,” Leo said as shouts within the prison wall grew closer. Emma’s rattled gaze clapped onto the porter’s gate as it began to groan open.
“I’m sure your family even selected Constable Lloyd to deliver it by means of coercion. He was on the take, after all,indebted to the Angels. What did they do? Bribe him? Threaten his family?”
“He was a rotten copper, with no allegiance to anyone,” Emma sneered. “He was just supposed to plant the bomb. It wasn’t supposed to go off when the fool was carrying it. But I’m not sorry.”
The void of feeling in the other woman’s eyes left Leo feeling cold pity.
“I imagine you’re not sorry about Niles Foster either. He tried to blackmail Mr. Stewart, so you tapped your family again to eliminate the threat he posed to the man you love. You will be found guilty of both murders, Mrs. Bates. But if you do not lay down that knife, I swear to you, the Inspector will shoot you as soon as he has you in his sights.”
Leo knew this as keenly as she knew the moon would rise that evening, and the sun would chase it come morning. Jasper would stop at nothing to protect her.
The resounding commotion cleared the porter’s gate and flowed into the courtyard.
“Drop your weapon!” Jasper’s deep-throated command rang out, and from her peripheral vision, she saw he had, in fact, aimed his Webley at Emma Bates.
“Don’t shoot her! Please!” Leo called out.
“Get off Miss Spencer,” Jasper commanded as several uniformed warders fanned out around him. “Now!”
Emma bared her teeth in a grimace—and then held out her arm and opened her fingers. The knife fell onto the ground, and Emma released a sob as she collapsed to the side. Leo sucked in a breath and rolled to a sitting position, her side stabbing with pain.
“Cuff her,” Jasper ordered the constables as he holstered his revolver and rushed toward Leo. He crouched to grasp her arms and help her to her feet. His eyes slid over her, his honey-blond brows pulling taut as he peered at her side. “Christ, you’re bleeding.”
She put a hand to her waist. Her palm came away with blood, though less than she’d anticipated. Pulling up the hem of her short coat, she opened the ripped fabric of her shirtwaist and saw just how shallow the wound was.
“I’m all right,” she said. “It looks and feels worse than it is.”
He crouched again, this time to look closer at the wound. Worry still etched his brow. “Are you certain?”
“Positive. It’s just a slice, nothing deep,” she said. “But what happened inside? How is Mrs. Stewart?”
“Miss Hartley was in the cell when we arrived, but she didn’t have the chance to harm Mrs. Stewart. She’s been taken into custody.” He grasped Leo’s hips and pulled aside the sliced and bloody fabric. “This isn’t shallow. I’m taking you to the prison’s doctor. You need sutures.”
“I amfine.” She took hold of his wrists. As if realizing the intimacy of being on bent knee, her hips in his palms, Jasper got to his feet and released her.
“You are sure?” he asked.
Leo nodded. “Although it might have been better for me to come into the prison with you, after all. Do you see what happens when I’m forced to stay back?”
He laughed, a grin trembling over his lips. “I don’t know why I even bother.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
In the hall leading to the detective department, several passing constables peered at Jasper with notable alarm before darting their eyes in another direction. They moved swiftly along as if trying to put distance between themselves and the detective inspector.
