Someone to Watch Over Me (Bow Street Runners #1)(70)

"He won't take me there," she cried, clutching at him. "He's going to kill me. Don't let me go!"

"Kill you?" the man repeated, chortling at what he clearly perceived as a wild exaggeration. "Come, dove, whatever you've done, it can't be all that bad. When you go to the bench, just give the magistrate your prettiest smile, and I've no doubt he'll let you off easy."

"Please," she said desperately, "help me to reach Sir Ross Cannon. Or Mr. Morgan. I...I'm begging for my life."

Uncertainty skittered across the man's face as he stared down at her. It seemed that whatever he read in her eyes convinced him. The arm around her strengthened. "All right," he said. "No doubt I could do worse than rescue a damsel in distress this soggy evening." He looked up at Keyes with an affable, condescending smile. "Surely it would do no harm if I accompany the girl to Bow Street," he said. "That's where you want her taken, yes? What difference does it make if I bring her there on your behalf?"

Victoria tensed as Keyes approached them, his eyes dark and lethal in his calm face. He appeared to be considering a response, in the manner of a man carrying on a reasonable conversation. "I'll show you what difference it makes," he said quietly. At the same time he spoke, he withdrew an object from inside his coat and raised it in a swift, high arc. In a flashing instant, Victoria saw that it was a neddy, a small weighted cudgel the Runners used to subdue unruly criminals. She let out a sharp cry and turned away just as Keyes struck the man about the head and shoulders, three times in rapid succession. She felt the shock of the blows resound through the man's heavy frame, and he collapsed in a moaning heap on the ground, his arm dropping away from her.

Keyes snatched her, seizing one arm and twisting it behind her until a shaft of pain seared through her back and shoulder. Victoria grunted through her clenched teeth and bent forward to ease the piercing ache. A burst of angry cries echoed throughout the room, and Keyes's voice cut through the cacophany. "If anyone else wishes to tangle with me, I'll have you charged with interfering with an officer's execution of his duty. Care for an evening's stay at Newgate?" He laughed contemptuously at the suddenly subdued crowd. "I thought not," he sneered. "Carry on, gentlemen, and put this little piece of mutton out of your minds."

"Get yer arse out o' my lister!" the bookmaker snapped, and joined the small gathering around the injured man on the floor.

"Gladly," Keyes said, tugging and pushing Victoria up the steps, back into the downpour.

"You can't kill me now," she cried, blinking against the sheet of rain that struck her in the face. "There are witnesses...they'll all say you were the one who took me away. You'll be tried...hanged..."

"I'll be long gone before an investigation has even begun," Keyes sneered, continuing to twist her arm as he ushered her along the street, around a flooding cess-trench dug in the middle.

Victoria glanced frantically about the street in the hope of finding someone to help her. Hopeless gazes stared out from the depths of crammed cellar homes. The stench of an underground slaughterhouse surrounded them as they passed the doorway, where the pelting rain was doing little to wash away layers of dried blood and fat. She felt her eyes aching and stinging, her leaking tears mingling with the rivulets of rain that coursed down her cheeks.

"Why are you doing this to me?" she cried.

Surprisingly, Keyes heard her through the tumult of the storm. "I'm too bloody old to be a Runner, and I've only a few pounds to retire on. I'll be damned if I live like a dog for the rest of my days."

"Wh-who paid you to kill me--" She broke off with a pained cry as he pushed her arm another inch upward.

"Enough yapping," he said. They turned a corner and ventured deep into a rookery. Rapidly they strode toward a deserted factory. The walls of the building appeared so decayed and unstable that no one dared occupy it, not even the poor who were tightly packed in nearby slums like rabbits in a warren. Victoria screamed and dug in her heels as Keyes tried to force her past the doorway.

A sharp pain exploded on the side of her head, and she realized dimly that he had just hit her, hard enough to subdue her resistance. Sagging against him, her mind buzzing, she fought to collect her wits. He gagged her efficiently, using his own cravat, and she recoiled at the taste of starch and sweat. Drawing her hands behind her back, Keyes snapped the cold metal rings of handcuffs around her wrists.

Helplessly Victoria stumbled forward as the Runner shoved her toward a set of broken stairs. The remnants of the steps groaned and splintered as they ascended. It would have been pitch-black in the building, except that a good part of the roof had rotted away, and there were holes and gaping fissures in the walls. The air was foul and still, every visible surface covered with oily dust that barely stirred when gusts of rain-filled wind blew inside.

No one would find her now, Victoria thought dully, gasping for breath as Keyes pushed her into a second-story factory. The floor was pebbled with rodent droppings, and the fractured walls were coated with grime and webs and bird nests. There were squeaking, flapping noises as the current occupants of the factory fled their perches. Rain leaked from the broken roof and puddled in the center of the floor. Dragging her to a corner, Keyes thrust her down until she fell back in a heap, the hem of her skirts sliding to her knees.