Page 38 of Complete Me

“I'll let you know when I know,” I promised him. Then I hung up before he could protest. I figured it was about four-to-one odds he would show up within the hour. I'd take those.

Padding into my study, I found Smith already waiting. He was still fully dressed, his hair damp from melting snowflakes. If I thought I hadn't been sleeping, he looked even worse. Bluish marks under his eyes betrayed him. Whatever he had come to tell me, he had known for a while. It had preoccupied him. But despite the weariness of his features, his eyes blazed. They sparked with a ferocity matched only by the fire that had been lit in the hearth. I waited for him to speak. As soon as the door clicked shut behind me, his mouth opened.

“Do we have him?” I asked.

Smith nodded, and it was all I needed to know. It hardly mattered who he was or why.

“Has he been arrested?” I asked. It was a stupid question. Why would Smith Price know that before I did?

But something had brought him here in the darkness to seek me out.

“No,” Smith admitted. Then he withdrew a gun from his pocket. If any other man had done so in my presence, I would have rushed him, and tackled him to the ground before he could get off a shot. But although Smith Price and I didn't always see eye to eye, we understood each other.

He turned and set it on the mantle, then drew off his leather gloves. “Would you mind keeping that for me?”

“That depends,” I said in a measured voice.

“It hasn't been used,” Smith assured me, an answer to an unspoken question. “Not by me. Not for a long time.”

“Do you always carry illegal firearms with you?” Of course a man like Price would. He'd seen the depraved side of London that most only imagined. He knew the nightmares and perversions were real, and he had something to protect.

“Why didn't you do it?” I asked him.

I knew why he was carrying the gun, and why he had brought it to me. It was part of why we understood each other. There was only one reason he would ever carry a pistol.

It was the same reason that part of me wanted to pick it up now. Smith had yet to name the man responsible for the murder of my father and the attacks on my wife, but I already wanted my hands around the man's throat. I wanted to watch him suffer. I wanted to watch him beg for his life, and then I wanted to take it from him. Perhaps I had been the wrong person to come to this evening, or maybe Smith had gone to the only person who could understand the contradictory nature of responsibility. My first impulse was to protect my wife, followed closely by the instinct for revenge.

Neither were luxuries I could afford.

“I saw the light,” he said simply, as if this was explanation enough for him turning away from the task at hand.

I nodded. Whatever had lured Smith away meant something to him. I wouldn't ask him to share the intimate details of that, but I would ask him for the name. If I couldn't deliver my own personal brand of justice, I could bring the crown to his door.

“Oliver Jacobson,” Smith told me. I searched my memory, looking for a connection I couldn't place.

“It's pathetic, really,” Smith continued. “He's such a little man that we never even considered him.

“Parliament?” I asked. Brexton had indicated their sources had led them straight to the seat of power within London.

“Yes. I believe I was told he was a vocal minority,” Smith said, as though he was recalling someone else's words.

“I hesitate to ask,” I added, “But where did you get your information?”

“Do you really want to know?” he asked. “Is this an official inquiry?”

“Consider it off the books,” I promised him.

“Our mutual acquaintance.”

Smith didn't need to say more. We'd never discussed our own private involvement with Georgia Kincaid. Whether we were linked in more intimate ways hardly mattered now.

“You were right to tell me to look out for her,” Smith said. “But not for the reason you think.”

I cocked my head and waited. I'd ask Smith to keep an eye on Georgia. Now I needed to know if she could be trusted.

“She came to me. She put the choice in my hands.”

“I'm surprised she didn't do it herself,” I said in a flat tone. Georgia was capable of it. It was one of the reasons I had hired her in the first place. She had been playing both sides then, and I'd never quite been sure who held her true allegiance. Now I knew it was the man in front of me, the last man I would've guessed.