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Sinclair had been a thorn in his side for months now, but his investigation turned up nothing that Doran didn’t want him to find. He’d become a joke. Referred to as the undertaker, his task reduced to finding and burying the abandoned bodies. The riverside attack had been a halfhearted ploy, the rabble Doran contracted to carry it out not worth the coin he’d paid.
Now the hunt grew serious. Pursuit became real. And he could afford no more mistakes.
He’d end the questions and the threat. Tonight.
Morgan never took her eyes from the tavern across the street. She’d traced Cam to The Forlorn Hope after waiting at their room for over an hour. She understood his reasons for leaving her behind. But still, it grated on her desire to keep busy. Stay involved.
Cam saw her as a helpless female. One who needed protection. Well, to hell with that. She’d been fighting that fight her whole life. First against brothers and cousins who tormented her until she landed her first bloody nose. Then against the men she trained with on Skye who paraded their physiques in front of her as if one look at their hard bodies would send her over the moon. The bloody noses there had been harder to achieve, but she managed to gain their grudging approval as well.
But both her family and the Amhas-draoi held an advantage over Cam. They’d grown up with capable women. As mothers, teachers, leaders. Cam was a novice. It was up to her to prove she could hold her own.
She shifted, trying to regain feeling in her right arm. Pressed back into a doorway, unmoving for what seemed a lifetime, she’d gone tingly and then numb. By now, it felt as if a dead fish hung from her shoulder.
September’s chill stole in off the moors, dusting the ground with hoarfrost. Fog silvered her hair, dampened her face. She tried heaving the boat cloak farther over her, but the lack of mobility in her arm and the confined space made it impossible. Half numb, half freezing. Could it get any better?
Where was Cam? Had he slipped out the back, losing himself in the smoky, gray cloud hovering ghostlike in the air? Or had something happened to him?
The image of him blood-soaked and horrified sent a lightning jolt of fear through her, bringing painful sensation back to her arm. Another part of her—the angry part—imagined him hunched comatose over a whiskey, or worse still, wrapped between the legs of some riverside whore.
No. She shook her head, ridding her mind of that unwelcome idea.
She’d not come out here to spy. She’d come to force Cam to see her as an equal in this fight, a partner. If they stopped Doran and retrieved Andraste’s sword, Cam could skewer any whore who’d have him.
She straightened, new resolve firing her cold, stiff body.
She didn’t have long after that to wait. Ten minutes after a loud group of drunks weaved off into the night, she spotted Cam. She recognized him as soon as he stepped into the street. If he’d been drinking it hadn’t been enough to dull the controlled power of his movements, the aura of invincibility surrounding him. Despite his knife injury, there was just something about him that spoke of hidden strength—intense single-mindedness.
She held far enough behind that even if by chance he glanced her way, she’d have time to blend in with the darker shadows. Step into the gloom of an alley or a doorway. But he never looked back, his path steady on an unerring course to take him across town to the inn. Head down, hands shoved in his coat, he acted as if he were out for a Sunday stroll and not returning from a mysterious meeting with who knew what kind of scum.
This should be harder. Mayhap she needed to amend her first reaction. Mayhap Cam’s aura was as superficial as the perfect uniform, the gold braid, the strong jaw.
Just more of the brilliance that had blinded her the first time.
She drew closer, now no more than a hundred yards separating them. She’d leave her gotcha moment for just before the inn. The pinprick of her dagger at his back. A whispered told-you-so in his ear.
Cam crossed the street, rounding the corner, still with no idea she followed only steps behind.
Morgan jogged to catch up. Too many side alleys and narrow lanes broke off from the main streets through town. She wanted to keep him in visual as long as she could. But rounding the corner, not seconds after, she slammed to a stop.
The street stood empty.
She blinked, narrowing her gaze as she scanned from corner to corner, but nothing moved. No telltale scrape of a footfall. No harsh breath giving away his position. Not even a print in the frost.
He’d vanished.
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nbsp; She swallowed an uncomfortable lump. This wasn’t going exactly as she’d planned, her gotcha moment slipping away before her eyes. Picking up the pace, she hurried down the street, passing into a lane that brought her out close to the inn. She’d cut time and distance going this way, and be waiting when Cam arrived.
That’s when it happened.
One minute she slid from shadow to shadow, the hunter on the trail of her prey; the next, a hurtling punch slammed her between the shoulders. Another smashed her in the small of the back. She landed with a head-cracking thud in the dirt, the wind knocked out of her.
A hand grabbed her, flipping her over. Her attacker straddled her hips, his knife inches from her face.
Eyes, gleaming with deadly purpose, stared down at her, before widening with a mixture of surprise, confusion, and horror.
She opened and closed her mouth, trying to work her crushed lungs. Pump some air back into her body.
