Strike at Midnight(77)

The address was a stone’s throw away from the docks, and it was a shitty little hole above a fishmonger. I had been standing in the shadows watching the place for about an hour or so now and I could see that one of the windows had been smashed and not replaced. The odor of fish was almost overbearing, and if Billy still lived here, it didn’t look like he was getting much of a cut from the gold coins that they were taking from people.

No one had come from or gone into the property since I had been here, and I would give it another hour before breaking in to see if there was anything that would prove if he still lived there or not. It may be a dead end, but I wasn’t leaving here until I had thoroughly checked it out. It wasn’t like we had anything else to go on.

The sound of a cough knocked me out of my reverie, and I was grateful for the reprieve. I looked down the street to see a figure walking towards the building I was watching, and quickly stepped back into the shadows. The candlelight from the streetlamp was enough to highlight the figure’s features, and I couldn’t help but feel exhilarated when a young guy of Billy’s description came into view. He stopped in his tracks after he crossed the road and looked around before reaching for the handle of a side door to the building.

“Billy, is it?” I asked, stepping out of the shadows to see him jump hard at the sound of my voice. “Or is it Iain Weatherby?”

His face told a thousand stories in less than a second as he looked at me, then he pushed away from the wall and ran off through the alley next to his building.

The little shit was going to try and run from me, and boy was I glad of it. The frustration that had settled inside of me like a piece of lead needed an outlet, and I was happy to chase down my quarry this evening.

Investigating and asking questions had been a necessity of this job so far, but it was the hunt that always settled me. And it was the hunt right now that was actually making this case worthwhile.

He threw some crates in my path to try and scupper my gaining on him, but the adrenalin had kicked in fast, and I jumped over them as they hit the ground.

He yelped at the fact that they hadn’t slowed me down, then he took a sharp right at the end of the alley to a path that led down to the docks.

The stupid idiot thought he could lose me down here as he jumped over a small wall. But I knew there was a bit of a drop on the other side to the platform where the ships would often dock, and he would be in for a bit of a bump. You would think he would know that if he lived down here, but then you would also think that he would have gotten the hell out of Carena after the imposter duke had been arrested. It just went to show that greed lowered everyone’s intellectual level.

A yell of pain from the other side of the wall made me groan in frustration. It sounded like my hunt had come to an end before I was ready for it to be. Just my luck.

I climbed on the wall and slung my legs over so I could drop down like a normal person.

“Hurt yourself?” I asked as I landed down next to him, and he did look in genuine pain as he held on to his ankle.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, and I sat down by his side.

“I’ve been hired to take down the sorry ass who kidnapped the duke, and it looks like you’re it, pal.”

“What?” he asked as his face paled.

“Yep. The Prince of Carena is involved and everything. They know that you took the place of the duke’s driver before kidnapping him. They also know you did something to Lord Camembert’s horse so Lord Havenly could take his place. Oh,” I raised my finger, “and they know that it’s Helena Heartworthy who took the duke’s place so she could have her petty vengeance. She is in the Royal Dungeons as we speak.”

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head and looking at the floor. “No one was supposed to find out,” he wailed, and I had to slap the back of his head for his stupidity.

“What the hell did you think would happen, you silly fool? That you could keep replacing people and no one would notice?”

“It wasn’t me,” he said, looking up at me with panic and pain in his eyes. “I did as they asked, but that was it. I only started with the Lord Camembert job, I swear. The guy I worked for said he needed a replacement after the last one…”

“After the last one what?”

“After the last guy who worked for him had a fatal accident. He said he needed a new helper and he told me that no one would get hurt.”

“What’s the guy’s name?”

He looked back down at the floor, so I grabbed his injured ankle and squeezed.

“Stop!” he shouted, and tears streamed down his face. “He just told me to call him Piper. I don’t know who he is, only that he tells me when there is a job and what to do.”

“Then where did you take the duke?” I asked, getting a bit impatient with this whimpering little shit.

“Into the Nightmare Woods. But he has others working for him. They met me about a mile north into the woods and then I handed him over there.”

“Was he alive?” I had to make sure.

“Of course he was,” he said as if I had asked a stupid question. “I told you that no one was supposed to get hurt.”

“And how the hell do you know that?” I snapped. “Have you seen the duke since you handed him over to a bunch of ruffians who work for a man you don’t even know?”