The door opened and a large, muscled man emerged. Jasper recognized him at once.Bollocks.
“Evening, Inspector,” came a smooth greeting from within the darkened coach. “Why don’t you join me? We can have a talk.”
Jasper’s blood seemed to slow and turn to stone in his veins. He didn’t need to see who it was to know the voice’s identity.
Andrew Carter had come for him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The lamp inside the coach flickered to life once Jasper took his seat. The hired muscle climbed in, followed closely by the man in the orange bowler. He had barely closed the door before the coach tore away from Scotland Yard.
Andrew was seated across from Jasper on the forward-facing seat. The single lantern’s red glass globe cast his face and everything else in the coach in a devilish hue. Fitting, really.
“What do you want, Carter?” Jasper kept his voice firm and unaffected, though the absence of his Webley made him vulnerable; the hired muscle had taken it from its holster before ushering him into the coach. He hadn’t been given a choice in the matter, what with the man in the bowler coming to stand with them and brandishing a snub-nosed revolver of his own.
“Don’t sound so put out, Inspector,” Andrew replied smoothly. “I thought we could have a friendly conversation. It’s been a few months since we last spoke.”
“To tell you the truth, I’d much rather be having a pint at the Rising Sun,” Jasper replied.
Andrew chuckled lightly. “Not to worry, this won’t take long.”
“Good. Why don’t you start by telling me why you’ve been having me followed.”
Andrew crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands over his flat stomach. In his mid-twenties, he was smooth-shaven, well-dressed, and handsome in a slick, predatory way. “You’re not at Scotland Yard anymore, Inspector. You don’t get to ask the questions.” A sly grin curled his lips. “So, you tell me: Why did I stick a tail on you?”
Jasper had suspected the man in the orange bowler was associated with the Carters, though he’d hoped he was wrong.
“I can’t read minds, Carter.”
That sly grin spread wider. “Not even when it’s family?”
Ice splintered through Jasper’s chest and stabbed him low in his gut.Shit.
Andrew noted his reaction and laughed again. “I thought you looked familiar when you brought me in for that interview. There was something about your face, something that tugged right here.” He tapped his temple as if to indicate his memories. “I couldn’t place it. After I took care of Nelson, I let it go.”
At nearly thirty years old, Jasper looked entirely different than he had as a boy of thirteen. When meeting Andrew for that first interview, he’d worried his cousin might recognize him. But beyond a momentary second glance and asking Jasper if they’d ever met before, the worry had seemed to be unfounded.
“I might never have thought about it again if I hadn’t come across those articles on the tragic and strange Miss Leonora Spencer,” Andrew continued. Jasper gritted his molars. He’d known those articles would cause trouble. “Do you know who else was mentioned in them?”
Jasper remained silent, though he knew the answer.
In a theatrical tone, Andrew recited, “’Rescued from her family’s slaughter by the late Detective Inspector Gregory Reid.’Reid. Your father, I take it.”
Jasper said nothing. Andrew didn’t need him to.
“I asked my Aunt Myra—does her name sound familiar at all?—if she remembered the name of the officer who told her my cousin James had drowned. She did recall. Reid, it was. She also remembered that the boy was unrecognizable. Bloated. Split open and disfigured by water rot.”
The coach slowed. Jasper glanced toward the windows, but the curtains were drawn, preventing him from seeing where they were. The stink of the river made itself known.
“I did some investigating of my own,” Andrew said, his tone deceivingly friendly. “Gregory Reid’s kiddies had died the previous year. Seems to me he wanted a son. Seems to me, he found one.”
There was no use denying any of it. It would only make him look weak, and Andrew preyed on weakness. Jasper’s cousins, the sons of Patrick Carter, had all been heartless bullies. They ranged widely in age, the oldest, Sean, ten years older than Jasper. Andrew, the youngest, had been the quiet one. Observant. Thoughtful. Not prone to temper. Somehow, it made him even more dangerous than his older brothers.
“Who else knows?” Jasper asked.
Andrew’s friendly façade dropped, and Jasper was left staring into a pair of cold, calculating eyes. “You mean who else knows that you turned your back on your family, your blood, to become the son of a do-gooder policeman? And that you’re now a copper yourself? For now, just me.”
Jasper braced himself. Three against one, with no weapon, he wouldn’t stand a chance. The slightest quiver of apprehension churned in his gut. His mind went straight to Leo and what she would do, how she would cope, if she were made to look upon him, laid out on one of the morgue’s autopsy tables.
