Adrian dismounted about a block away and secured his horse to the side of a building. Who knew if it would be there when he returned, but he had to get closer.
He glanced up at Clinton. “Go find my brothers and bring them back here.”
Clinton gave him a piercing look. “You need to wait for us, sir. If you try to handle this yourself, you’ll be putting not only yourself but the ladies in danger as well.”
Adrian nodded abruptly, though anger and adrenaline pulsed through him. He hated the suggestion that he couldn’t handle this on his own, but he knew Clinton was just worried about him.
“Just hurry,” he urged, and Clinton spurred his horse back in the direction they’d just come.
Once Clinton was out of sight, Adrian began making his way down the street, glad for the shadows. He darted from one patch of darkness to the next, falling back into his role of Prometheus, wishing that he’d thought to bring the mask. It would be a fitting punishment for Roger to have that be the last thing he ever saw, just like his father.
At last, he reached the warehouse and did some reconnaissance, finding that there were only two ways in, the front door, where Roger had entered, and a loading dock in the back. All was quiet inside, and he didn’t see any lights in either the ground-floor windows or those on the second floor.
Frowning, he found a vantage point where he could see both doors and reluctantly settled in to wait for his brothers to arrive. Everything inside him chafed at the need to wait, but he knew Clinton had been right. The girls had a better chance of surviving this thing if he waited for help.
Who knew how many men Roger had in there with him? At least the one who’d been driving the coach, and he imagined a guard or two had been left behind to guard the girls.
Of course, there was also the possibility that the girls weren’t even here. If Adrian went in there, guns blazing, Roger might be killed and then they’d never know where they were.
As a dozen different scenarios flickered through his mind, a sudden scream pierced the night.
Vanessa!He’d know her voice anywhere, and the thought of what it would take for her to scream like that, after all the bravery she’d shown when a masked stranger had broken into her flat in the middle of the night, sent a shiver down his spine.
He couldn’t wait for his brothers to arrive. He had to do something now.
* * * *
VANESSA JERKED AWAKEwhen the door to her basement prison opened.
Several things assaulted her in quick secession, each one worse than the last. Her bladder was full to bursting, and her stomach growled like something was eating her from the inside out. She still held sleeping Felicity in her arms. Her mouth was dry as the Sahara, and as three men holding lanterns descended the stairs, she realized one of them was Roger.
She screamed with pure frustration. Of course! How had she not realized he was behind this?
When she thought of what had happened to Anne, whose bloody body still lay mere feet away from her, she wanted to kill him herself. She put the baby safely on the floor and launched herself to her feet, only to be backhanded across the face by one of Roger’s henchmen with a brutality that knocked her back down, cutting off her cry and effectively breaking her will.
She lay sprawled on the filthy floor next to the baby, her hand pressed to her stinging face, fighting to keep the tears burning her eyes from falling. She wouldn’t let him see her cry. She refused to be weak in front of him ever again.
Roger laughed softly. “Still feisty, aren’t you, Vanessa?”
She simply glared at him.
He strode closer until the toe of his shoe pinned her skirt. “I always liked that about you, the way you’d struggle and fight when I had you.” He glanced back up at his men. “I think I still have a scar or two from this little hellcat.”
All three of them laughed as though his comment were the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
Vanessa squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to erase the sight, only to be transported in her mind back to those horrible days she’d spent as Roger’s captive, the pain he’d inflicted and the indignities she’d endured. She opened her eyes quickly, shaking her head to try to banish those images as well.
“Bet she’s really somethin’,” one of the men said, eyeing her in a way that made her shudder.
Roger’s merriment disappeared with an abruptness that frightened her. “I might have let you have her a few times if you hadn’t killed the other one,” he snarled.
Both men fell back a bit, obviously as terrified of this madman as she was.
Roger let his gaze fall upon Anne’s crumpled body with a snort of disgust, then returned his attention to Vanessa and the baby by her side. “She delivered her brat before she died? What am I to do with the two of you now?” he asked her accusingly, as if all of this were her fault. “My stepbrothers will be out for my blood now that Morgan’s bitch is dead. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.”
“Let me and the child go,” she demanded, trying to put a bravado in her voice she was far from feeling. “You know this is going to end badly for you. Why have even more blood on your hands?”
“I don’t think so.” He shook his head, a ghastly flicker of amusement in his eyes, making her wonder why she’d even tried to get mercy from him. He’d spent his entire life brutalizing those weaker than himself. He enjoyed it.
