How to Woo a Wallflower (Romancing the Rules #3)(45)

The other man straightened, whipping back his arm to strike. Gabe ducked, tucked his head, and charged at the man’s middle.

The second thug tumbled back, crashing down on his backside.

“Enough!” Rigg pointed his gun at Gabe again. “Sit down, my son.”

“I’ll stand.” Gabe swiped at the blood dribbling from the cut on his cheek. He glared at Niven, who’d scurried off to a far corner of the room. “Nice ruse.” No such thing as loyalty in Whitechapel.

“ ’Course it was, boy.” She shot him an ugly smirk. “Peg’s been dead for ages. Know it for yerself, you would, if you’d given a damn.”

Gabe swallowed down the fact of his mother’s death. He considered how Sara would take the news, then pushed the thought away. He couldn’t be distracted now.

“Never mind that, boy. Rigg ’as got a proposition for you, ’e does.” The old rotter loved to speak of himself by name, as if he was both the body and some wicked marionette pulling his own nefarious strings. Along with everyone else’s.

“Not interested.” Gabe raised his fist and grinned when Rigg shrunk back. He pointed a finger at the puppet master. “I’m done with you, old man.”

Rigg sucked on his cheroot, a fiery point of light in the room’s overwhelming murk. He blew out a cloud of smoke without removing the cigar. Bending his head to stare at the dust-covered floor, he tsked. “Stubborn as ever, are ye? Damned pity, my son.” Like a whip, his head snapped up toward the corner near his back. He nudged his chin up. “Soften ’im up a bit, boys.”

Another thug had been crouching in the darkness, but he jumped to his feet at Rigg’s signal, lunging for Gabe.

Gabe put up a forearm to fend off the man’s grab, slamming his fist into the rotter’s face with a left hook. Then a vice encircled him from behind. One of the first set of behemoths squeezed him like a twist of tobacco, nearly lifting Gabe out of his boots.

“I’ll be seeing ye, my son.” Rigg tipped his ratty top hat Gabe’s way.

“Go to hell.” After he spat the words, the man in front began pummeling his stomach in rhythmic, punishing jabs. Right fist. Left fist. Gabe kicked the beast at his back, stomping his heels on the man’s massive jack boots. Then the thug in front of him wound back and landed a blow to Gabe’s temple.

He shook off dizziness. Pushed away the blurry blackness, brought his fists down again and again on Behemoth’s hold. Then another blow came to the side of his head. And another. Then darkness. Silence.

When he opened his eyes again, Gabe struck his arms out, lashing at his attackers, but there was nothing but air in front of him and a brick wall at his back. He’d been dumped in the alley behind the lodging house. A rat skittered along the wall as he got to his feet.

After shaking the muck from his coat, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket to swipe at his bloody face. Dizziness made him stumble, but he forced himself to straighten, willed himself to keep going, one boot after another toward the main crossroad. He glanced at the corner, toward Fisk Academy.

If Rigg knew to send a messenger to Ruthven’s . . .

Around the corner, the windows of Fisk Academy and a shop nearby were the brightest along the row of buildings. Gabe picked up speed, but kept to the opposite side of the street. He couldn’t allow Clary to see him like this, but he needed to know she was all right.

He approached a closed-up shop across the street, tucking himself under its awning. Through the windows of the school, he saw several girls gathered in the main room, huddling together, but no sign of Clary.

A few yards down the street, a man burst from the narrow lane between buildings, shifting his gaze nervously up and down the pavement. When a pedestrian passed, he ducked into the shadows. Gabe didn’t need gut instinct to tell him the man was up to no good.

Tucking his head down and his collar up, Gabe ambled toward the man.

The man shifted nervously, sinking farther back into the darkened lane.

“Oy,” Gabe called to him.

“Didn’t mean to do it,” he said miserably.

“Do what?”

At a constable’s high-pitched whistle, Gabe winced, and the shifty man’s eyes ballooned. He began backing away. Gabe reached out to snag his jacket lapel, but the man ducked out of his hold and sprinted down the dark passage.

“Wot are you lingerin’ ’ere for?” the constable called to Gabe.

“A man’s run off.” He pointed toward the diminishing shadow.

“ ’As he now? And wot about you? We’ve ’ad a report of a young woman attacked hereabouts.” The constable gazed up at the sign above the school. “Right ’ere at Fisk Academy.”

“Who?”

Helen emerged from the front door of the school and approached the copper. “Thank goodness you’re here, Constable. You’ll want to go around back. He ran off from there.”

Rather than wait for the policeman to act, Gabe started toward the narrow passage the man had bolted down and broke into a run. As he splashed through a puddle of rainwater, broken glass crunched under his boot heels. Every footfall was like a fire poker to the pain in his temple, but he kept on. He told himself he could catch the bastard.

The passageway emptied into an alley behind several buildings. Gabe scanned the dimly lit lane, but the man was nowhere in sight. Then he saw a flash of movement. A boot sticking out behind a cluster of barrels near the alleyway’s mouth.