The soles of my shoes step to the same staccato as the anxious ringing in my ears. Hand to the brass knob, I push the office door open and—
My eyes go wide at the figure standing behind the desk, one hand rifling through a drawer. I know that bushy gray beard. Those brown eyes stinging with animosity. The craggy features that declared war before we’d even been formally introduced.
As if he doesn’t care that he’s been caught, Jack offers an indulgent smile. “Well, well, look who’s come to join the party.”
“You shouldn’t be in here.”
“The same could be said for you.”
“What were you doing?” I ask, leaving the door ajar as I step inside the office.
His smile turns brittle, all trace of indulgence gone. He looks old—older, even, than the last time I saw him. Beard straggly and unkempt. A red mark extending from the underside of his chin to halfway down his neck. With a quirk of his gray brows, he plants his arse on the corner of the desk, as if he owns it. Beside him, the drawer remains open as he treats me to a once-over.
“Body like a twig, personality like a rock,” he drawls, fiddling with the corner of the desk. “Priest’s lost his damn mind over ye, and for nothin’.”
Coming from anyone else, the insult might land a solid jab to my self-esteem, but Jack is the last person whose opinion I care about. Chauvinistic bastard. “Jealousy isn’t a good look on you.”
“Trust me, I ain’t jealous.” Sneering, his crowded front teeth make an appearance. “Not of you.”
“Of course not.”
At my dismissive shrug, he pushes away from the desk with the backs of his thighs. “That right there?” He jabs a bandaged finger in my direction. “That’s why I don’t like ye. High and mighty, thinkin’ you’re better than e’eryone else. You ain’t the queen, love. You ain’t even the dirt beneath her shoes.”
“I wouldn’t dare to think I am.” The second his features turn rapier sharp, I know that I should have ditched the sarcasm. Shite. Clearing my throat, I send a sideways glance to the drawer he’s yet to close. “You really shouldn’t be here.” A small pause then, with a step to the left, closer to that desk, I add gently, “You were let go.”
“Because of you.”
He spits out the words with such force that actual spittle flies from his mouth. Instinct begs me to turn around and escape out the door, but pride, fickle emotion that it is, cements me in place. “Blaming me won’t do you any good. I don’t even work here, so whatever problem you think you have with me, I suggest that you shelve it.”
“Shelve it, eh?”
“Or don’t,” I say, palms lifting to the ceiling. “We aren’t mates. I honestly don’t care what you think of me, but if you think I won’t tell Saxon that you’ve been here, going through his office, then you have another—”
“Bints like you, thinkin’ you can come in and change things”—the tips of his boots graze my shoes, intimidation charging the air with high-voltage friction—“but I’ve been workin’ this place for years now. There ain’t one thing about this pub I don’t know.”
“Then maybe you ought to take what you’ve learned and apply it someplace new.”
“I had plans here. Big plans.”
When his hand presumptuously touches my shoulder, I duck away on light feet. Meet his stare, head-on. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”
“Or what?” Jack watches my backward trajectory with nary a blink. But he follows. One step, two, tracking me across the room. I feel the hair raise on the backs of my arms. “You think Priest will be here to save ye?” he taunts, moving closer. “It’s me and you, little bird. Me. And. You.”
“I’ll scream.”
An unidentifiable emotion nips away his earlier frustration, something cold and deranged settling in its place. Trailing a finger along the desk as he nears, he goes so far as to close the drawer with an audible snick. And then, “Will you scream as loud as last time?”
As loud as last time?
A sick sensation lands in my gut, twisting, mounting. I stare at him, visualizing his face in an entirely different setting. One with gorgeous herringbone floors and octagonal walls and galleries that allow secret visitors to never show their faces to those down on the ground floor.
But there’s no way . . .
We would have seen him. Heard him, at the least. Right?
Those astute brown eyes shine with delight as I shuffle backward, adding another meter between us. And they positively gleam when I shoot a hasty look toward the door, marking the number of steps it would take me to flee.
One.
Two.
“Screaming—really?” I swallow, as I make step number three. “I hate to say this, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“A little reminder, then.”
I don’t move fast enough.
He launches toward me, catching me around the middle, and drives me to the ground with so much power that we skid, together, across the tile. My head glances off the desk’s corner leg.
Pain ricochets though my skull and the ceiling, it spins and spins and—
A hand seizes my nape, his thumb digging into my pulse while my fingers scrape the floor, determined to drag myself away.
“Get off! Get off!”
“Won’t you scream for me?” The question comes in a heavy pant beside my ear. “The way you did for Ian?” When I stiffen at the name, the implication truly settling in, Jack releases a noisy, sinister laugh. “Oh, yes, I was there. Up on the gallery. I watched you fight to live, little bird. Shaking legs. Graspin’ hands. Even from up there, I could see it all.”
My lungs pump for oxygen, dragging in air through my nose.
Saliva builds in my mouth, from his hand locked around my throat, but still I manage a choked, “A-a loyalist.”
Another laugh, this one accompanied with more spittle that lands on my cheek. “An opportunist. I go where the money takes me, and I had it real good, workin’ them both. But then Priest sacked me because of you.”
“J-jealous.”
His other elbow clamps down across my back, roughly angling my cheek into the hard floor. “I turned on him before he even met you,” he hisses. “You think you know e’erythin’, and I already told ye”—he squeezes my neck, and a gurgling noise erupts from my throat—“I ain’t jealous. Now scream for me, little bird, just like your priest did.”
Father Bootham.
Oh, God. Oh, God. OhGod.
“You k-killed him—”
Lips land on my temple. Wet. Chilled. They part to whisper, “Suppose I am a little jealous. The good father did nothin’ to me. Always said ’ello when I saw him. But it’s yer fault, anyway.” Panic wells within me, and I thrash my legs beneath the weight of his, barely able to raise my hips from the floor. “Had you just been in your flat when I showed up, the priest wouldn’t be dead. How was I goin’ to get information for the lads when I was sacked? No information, no money. You had to go. You have to go.”
My vision blurs.
My heart stampedes.
I’ve crossed Lady Luck too many times now to expect another slice of mercy.