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Harley shivered. Outside, the rain continued to beat against the canvas relentlessly. He took a seat on the boarded floor and brought his knees to his chest. “I also haven’t been all that truthful,” he said, his expression darkening, but seemingly out of guilt. He took a shaky breath. “You were right, Asher. Theodore, the gentleman from the museum, is … was more than a friend.” He blinked twice and when he looked up, Lightfoot noticed his eyes were glassy. “We ended our friendship the day you and I met. I ended it. I couldn’t imagine a life without…Dear Lord, without being so…Intimate with one another.” He spoke the word as though it left a copper smack on his tongue.
The rainstorm outside worsened. Water trickled from a corner of the canvas roof and puddled on the floor by Lightfoot’s feet. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I understand if you need some time to process all this. I can’t say I’d blame you if you never wanted to see me again.”
Harley wiped his eyes. “But what about the diamond?”
“The Star? I’ll make a plan.” Lightfoot winked and began to unbutton his swimming costume. “I always do. In hindsight, it would’ve probably been easier to track down one of the guests, knock the bloke out with a potent substitute for chloroform I carry around in my kit and steal his identity for the duration of the party.”
Harley laughed, but the sound was fragile. “It certainly sounds like it.” He turned around to face the canvased wall, giving Lightfoot privacy to change. “But I’m glad you didn’t.”
The confession had definitely gone smoother than Lightfoot had assumed it would. Harley had taken it like a man, had even offered up a harboured secret of his own. Perhaps there was a way forward for them after all. Aqib was going to annihilate Lightfoot when he reported back to him about their trip to Sea Point.
He pulled the swimming costume down to his waist. As he reached down to open his linen duffel bag and remove a beach towel, he felt fingers graze the old wound on his lower back and he startled. Caught by surprise, he faced Harley, who was now at his side, and self-consciously covered the scar with his hand. He could feel the round, puckered bullet hole under his palm.
“I’m sorry,” Harley gulped, bringing his own fingers to his mouth. “Does it smart?”
Lightfoot shook his head but couldn’t look Harley in the eyes. He hated people seeing his scar. It wasn’t a medal of honour for surviving a gruesome mission. It was a deformity. “No, it’s just…A souvenir from Rome.”
Harley inched closer to Lightfoot, running fingers over his collarbone, then the meat of his shoulder and down the sinew of his left arm. The lad’s hand came to rest on Lightfoot’s hip, then worked its way over the hand covering the scar. Lightfoot didn’t dare breathe. He wanted to reciprocate the boy’s touch, by running his thumb over Harley’s full lips and carved cheekbones. But he couldn’t risk it — not without Harley taking the lead. He didn’t want what happened in the conservatory to rear its famished head and —
Harley pulled in close and pressed his lips against the hollow of Lightfoot’s neck.
Goose pimples spread over Lightfoot’s flesh. He could smell the scent of coconut in the lad’s hair oil from where he stood as he bit his bottom lip and tried to stabilise his racing heart.
“Will you do me the honour,” Harley asked, as he scraped his teeth along the line of Lightfoot’s jaw. “Of accompanying me to the Rhodes party tomorrow night, Asher?”
“Lightfoot,” he exhaled in a rush. Name be damned, he wanted Harley to devour him whole. “Call me Lightfoot.” He pulled Harley to his ribs. The lad gasped but folded into Lightfoot without a fight. The predator ached like a sore tooth to be let loose. Lightfoot would release it, under his conditions — leashed, tamed and controlled. “And yes. God, yes. Thank you.”
Lightfoot and Harley kissed. Lips upon wanting lips. Their tongues greeted one another — searching, discovering, wrestling — as a longing and excitement fused the two gentlemen together, leaving them as one.
Chapter Fifteen
From a rocky outcrop on the fringe of Queen’s Beach, Theodore watched the two gentlemen leave the bathing machine laughing as the last of the storm’s clouds parted.
The side of his waist felt weighted by the pistol strapped into the holster at his side. It was like carrying a bag of dead frogs tied to his belt, which he used to do as a child whenever fishing with his father at their farm in the Rand.
Harley had somehow found his way into the mix. How did he know Theodore’s target? Of all people the stupid boy could have befriended, did it have to be the gentleman Theodore was assigned to murder?
Spying on them from the outcrop, Theodore felt a pinch in his right hand. Ripping his eyes from the two men on the beach, he saw his hand was balled tight. Blood oozed between the cracks of his fingers. He realised he’d dug his nails into the flesh of his palm.
He brought the bloody hand to his face, then reached into the side pocket of his coat for the target’s photograph. The gentleman stared back at him with searing eyes. Theodore ran his hand over the gentleman’s handsome face, coating it in three thick streaks of blood. He wouldn’t be an easy kill, Theodore wagered.
It was getting late, nearing nine o’clock in the evening. Less than twenty-four hours until the Rhodes party.
It was still light, typical of summertime in the Colony. The façade that it was still daytime comforted Theodore. It made him feel as though he still had time before his fate was decided, that he had more hours of freedom to enjoy than what he already had. He wished he’d brought his comb along to the beach.
With a pained sigh, Theodore removed the pistol from his holster and fired two rounds at the gentlemen on the sand without a second thought.
One of them cried out, but he didn’t look to see who he’d hit. He was far too captivated by the horizon as the sun made its slow descent behind the water.
The sky was a violent red, bleeding out into the simmering sea.
