The first man didn’t make it far.
Alaric’s arm shot out like a whip, snatching the bastard by the collar and slamming him against a moss-slicked crypt wall as his fist cracked his jaw. The man grunted, twisted, shoved back, but he may as well have tried to wrestle granite. Alaric drove a forearm into his throat. “Drop it.”
The man gurgled.
“I said”—Alaric increased the pressure—“drop it.”
A rusted pickaxe clattered to the ground.
Snap.
Alaric froze. What the hell was that sound?
No, not a twig. That was metal. A buckle? A camera hinge?
No, the camera’s flash powder.
BOOM.
Thea’s camera exploded with light. A phosphorescentwumphechoed like thunder through the graveyard.
Alaric’s breath caught and he blinked from the brightness. He spun, instincts kicking in as the second man scrambled for the grave’s edge, knee-deep in stolen soil and sacrilege. He turned, mud-streaked, lantern-eyed, and raised a shovel like a threat.
Alaric’s revolver was already out. “Idareyou,” he growled, voice like smoke dragged through gravel. “Give me a reason.”
The shovel wavered. Fell.
Both men froze under the weight of Alaric’s glare—a look that had made seasoned inspectors sweat and street thugs piss themselves in corners.
“Grave robbing.” He spat the words like poison. “In broad bloody daylight. OnAll Hallow’s.From the plot of the woman I—” His voice caught. The hand not holding the revolver fisted at his side. “Fromherfamily.”
A snarl rippled beneath his skin. He wanted to hit them. Wanted to cuff them to the wrought-iron gate and leave them there for the crows. But instead, with the slow, terrifying calm of a man who’d already lost his temper, Alaric holstered his revolver and retrieved his cuffs. Two sharp clicks. “On your knees. Both of you. Now.”
They obeyed, fast. The shorter was already sniveling.
Alaric cuffed them wrist to wrist, then hauled them both to their feet with a grunt of effort and a muttered curse. “You’re going to spend All Hallows’ in lock-up,” he growled, “explaining to my chief inspector why you thought it was a good idea to desecrate the Blackwood family plot.”
As he turned them toward the gates, the fog thinned just enough to catch a faint shimmer in the corner of his eye. He paused and frowned.
The camera.
The flash plate—it had gone off. But there was no one here. No photographer. No spark cord or timer. Just that old tripod rigged exactly where he’d set it, covered in a scrap of linen that now lay flung wide open.
The angle was pointed directly at him. At the grave. At the moment he’d stood between the robbers and the women buried beneath.
And for a second—just a flicker—he could’ve sworn he heard a voice in the wind.“That’s our boy.”
It hit him like a punch to the ribs.
Alice Blackwood.
His hand tightened around the chain between the cuffs. His jaw flexed.
And he did not look back.
*
At the Blackwood family plot…
