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Chapter Six
“They’re coming,” Drakesaid as he surged away from Heather. “Make yourself decent.”
For a moment, she just laid there, her breath coming in short gasps as she tried to understand what was going on. One moment, she’d been experiencing the most amazing desire she’d ever known. Drake’s hands and mouth had been all over her, and passion had surged through her in waves. The next, she was alone, her breasts hanging out of her dress as she stared up at the ceiling in confusion. Why had he stopped?
Drake stood above her, sheltering her protectively, his entire body vibrating with tension.
Then she heard it, the door unlocking. Gasping, she pushed to a sitting position and turned her back to the door, trying to shove her breasts back into her bodice.“Make yourself decent,”he’d said, and she felt anything but decent at the moment.
How had she let things get so out of hand? She’d meant to share one kiss with him, nothing more. But the moment their lips had touched, a fire had erupted between them.
If their captors hadn’t chosen that moment to enter the cellar, who knows what she might have let him do? Maybe she truly was the whore Jacob had accused her of being, though she’d certainly never felt anything like this for him.
The door swung open, and she heard heavy footsteps and then something being set down on the table. Taking a deep breath, she turned around and saw a masked man she believed to be Oscar setting another tray down and picking up the one they’d left earlier. In the doorway stood Jacob and another of his men.
“What the bloody hell do you want with us?” Drake asked, looming over Oscar as he turned back toward the door. “We’ve been down here for an entire day. When are you going to tell me why?”
Oscar shrugged. “It’s not my place to talk to you. I’m just supposed to see that you’re fed.”
Drake’s frustration was palpable as he slammed his hands down on the table, making the new tray shake. “Tell whoever you work for that I want to speak to them immediately.”
Oscar just laughed. “He’ll talk to you when he’s good and ready. Ain’t nothing you can do till then.”
Backing up, the old tray in his hands, Oscar exited, but then Jacob stepped forward.
“You have two members of the Citizens Committee in your stinking jail,” Jacob said at last, finally getting to the heart of the matter. “Have either of them given up the rest of the group?”
Drake stalked toward Jacob, his large body vibrating with menace. “That’s why you took me? Because you’re afraid some of your men have ratted you out? Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You condemned yourselves all to jail or worse!”
Jacob gave some sort of signal to the man beside him, and he lifted a gun and pointed it squarely at Drake’s chest. Drake froze, and Jacob laughed, moving around him and crossing the room toward Heather. Still on the bed, she tried to scramble away from him, but he grabbed her arm painfully and jerked her to her feet, crushing her against him, her back to his front.
Wrapping his arm around her neck, he squeezed until she thought she’d lose consciousness. Gasping, she tried to claw his arm away but he was far too strong. He held fast, and bright lights flashed before her eyes as she fought for breath. “If you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll kill her,” he snarled.
Drake lifted his arms in submission, frustration in every line of his body. “Do you know how many cases the Metropolitan Police are working on at any given time? I don’t investigate these things myself. Why would you think I’d know any details about some low-level communist group?”
If the situation wasn’t so dire, Heather might have laughed. She didn’t think Jacob had any idea how completely insignificant he was to the man in front of them. Why would the assistant commissioner of the whole department concern himself with something so trivial in the grand scheme of things?
But as Jacob’s arm tightened even more around her throat, she really wished that either she or Drake could give himsomething. Anything that would keep them alive.
“If you let me go, I can check into it for you,” Drake said tightly. “But let the girl go. She can’t tell you anything. I don’t even know why you took her.”
Jacob only laughed though his arm loosened enough so that she could finally draw a breath. Apparently, he didn’t plan to kill her. Yet. “Do you think I’m a fool? If I let you go, you’ll bring the entire police department down on my head.”
“Your only hope is to keep me alive.” Drake gave Jacob a look of utter condescension, the sort of look only a man born to the nobility could give. “The entire department is probably looking for me as we speak. If they manage to track me down, you’re going to need me as a bargaining tool.”
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Oscar said from the other side of the room, the gun wavering in his grasp. “We should let them go.”
Sensing the weak link, Drake began to edge toward Oscar, seeming oblivious of the gun in the other man’s hand.
“Stop right there!” Oscar cried, steadying the gun and trying to act as though he wasn’t frightened out of his mind.
