As for Jack himself, he hadn’t thought of pretty girls or foods he missed, or even about how rough life was within the walls of Dunmoor. No, he’d lie awake, staring at the stone ceiling, and think about killing Rockley.

He’d do the same this night, even though he wasn’t in prison any longer.

Two strides took Jack to the grimy window. Holding back the curtain, he stared out at the little courtyard behind the house. There wasn’t a lot in the yard. Just a bench, a bucket lying on its side, and the previously mentioned jakes. Hard to tell in the dark, but not much grew out there except some weeds poking up through brick pavers. Beyond the yard were more houses, all of them dark and shuttered.

He’d never been able to look out his cell window. A view like this would’ve been prized. But suddenly, it wasn’t enough.

“Where the hell are you going?” Lazarus demanded as Jack shouldered past him in the hall.

“Can’t go out,” Jack growled, “so I’m going up. This place got a roof, don’t it?”

For a moment, the older man just stared at him. Then, “This way.”

Jack followed Lazarus through a narrow door—he barely fit through the thing, turning sideways and ducking his head—and up another, even tighter staircase. They emerged onto a slate-shingled roof that fell away sharply on all four sides. The flat part of the roof wasn’t sizable, only three good strides in any direction, and the chimney took up a decent section of it. Grime and soot coated everything. Bitter cold poked chilled fingers through the gaps in his clothing.

But Jack didn’t care. He walked to the edge of the flat part of the roof. Stared up at the sky, the London sky, the one under which he’d been born. It was such a damn luxury to have the night surrounding him, when he’d been herded indoors at the first sign of darkness for five years.

“You won’t see any stars,” Lazarus said. “Not with the smoke and fog.”

“I’m not here for stargazing.” When he’d been on the lam, after his escape from Dunmoor, he hadn’t been able to appreciate being outside. But here he was now. With London spread all around him—Bethnal Green and Whitechapel to the east, Smithfield Market and St. Paul’s Cathedral to the south. And off to the west, in the posh neighborhoods of Mayfair and St. James’s, that’s where he’d find Rockley.

Eva was out there, too. Heading toward her other life in Brompton as a … a what? She said they all had jobs to keep Nemesis afloat, so what did she do? Was she some gent’s fancy piece? She couldn’t be a factory girl like the ones Jack knew. A shopgirl? Maybe she was one of those “modern” women who worked as a clerk and could use a fancy typing machine. None of it seemed right, though.

He could ask Lazarus, but it wouldn’t do to have the old soldier know how much she interested him. He’d give none of these Nemesis lot anything that could be used as a weapon. They were the sort who hoarded knowledge and used it against people. Maybe Rockley. Certainly Jack. Ruthless bastards.

And he’d delivered himself to them. Right on a fucking platter.

“It’s colder than a Frenchwoman’s cunt out here,” Lazarus grumbled. “Time to go back inside. You’ll be no good to us if you catch the pleurisy and die.”

“I never get sick,” Jack said.

“And tonight won’t be the first time, not while I’m on watch.” The older man nodded toward the door. “Down you go.”

“Or what?” Jack rumbled.

“Or I summon the coppers and you don’t get to look at this fine night sky ever again.”

Anger churned in Jack like bad gin. If he could, he’d sleep on this roof, no matter how blasted cold it was. But it was clear from the set of Lazarus’s jaw that he’d make good on his threat if Jack didn’t do as he was told.

Cursing foully, Jack ducked through the door and trundled down the staircase. Each step back toward his little room felt like more weights being added to his invisible shackles. He’d broken out of prison, yet he still wasn’t free.

A voice whispered in his mind, Have I ever been?


CHAPTER FIVE

“You shouldn’t be alone with him,” said Simon.

Eva glanced over at him as the hansom cab rattled toward her lodgings. That they’d been able to find any cab at this hour—and a sober driver—had been something of a miracle. She’d been fully prepared to make the long trek on foot. But in that inimitable way of his, Simon had simply walked out onto the corner, and a hansom had rolled up, asking their direction.

Things came so easily to a man like Simon. Cabs included. He had everything—birth, wealth, position, aristocratic blond good looks that made women instinctively pat their hair and widen their eyes like fawns eagerly awaiting a wolf. Of all the Nemesis operatives, Simon seemed the least likely to involve himself in their work. Why should he? He’d never been on the wrong end of justice before. He served as Nemesis’s de facto leader, but he never made unilateral decisions. Everything was discussed among the operatives.

Simon’s time in the army had shown him hard lessons. And, like a few other men of his class, he had a strong belief in morals and ethics. Not so strong that he wouldn’t make use of a man like Jack Dalton, however.

“We’ve utilized men such as him before,” she pointed out.

“They were easily manipulated. Too afraid of the consequences of defying us to be a threat. But him…” Simon exhaled roughly. “He’s got nothing to lose.”

“Except vengeance.” She and the others of Nemesis had counted on Dalton’s need for revenge as a key element of their plan. What none of them had anticipated, she especially, was the depth of his feeling. It was far more than the animal desire for retaliation.

The pain in Dalton’s eyes when he spoke of his sister dying … beyond loss, there was self-recrimination. Somehow, Dalton held himself responsible for Edith’s death. Having read the file, Eva knew that Dalton had had nothing to do with Rockley’s going to the brothel where Edith had worked. Dalton hadn’t been anywhere near Rockley that night—his bodyguards received one day off a week, and that day had been Dalton’s. Somehow, Dalton had learned of Edith’s death that same night, and had unsuccessfully tried to avenge her in the early hours of the morning. Yet he still felt culpable. Eva had seen it in the glaze of rage and anguish in his dark eyes.

Killing Rockley wouldn’t bring Edith Dalton back from the dead, but to her brother, it had to mean some measure of absolution. A man would do almost anything to achieve forgiveness.

“He’s going to be trickier to handle than the others,” Simon insisted. “Remember Fetcham? He was a bruiser, too, but when it came right down to it, he fell in line. Dalton’s far more dangerous.”

“I can handle him,” said Eva. “Thumbs to the eyes, a knee to the groin. He might be big and strong as a bull, but every man has vulnerable places.”

Passing lamplight glanced off the pristine planes of Simon’s face as he frowned his displeasure. He verged on being too handsome, if such a thing were possible, almost uncomfortable to look upon. To her, however, he was merely Simon, her colleague, the architecture of his face admirable but not stirring.

Not like Dalton. He wasn’t handsome, not in the known sense of it, anyway. Yet she couldn’t banish his face from her mind, its rough contours and hard lines. If Simon was a mathematically perfect temple, its columns placed precisely, the proportions expertly rendered, Dalton was a granite mountain, all crags and peril, alluring because it was hazardous. Both drew the eye, but for very different reasons.

“It’s not Dalton’s size or strength that has me concerned,” said Simon.

“A little credit, if you please.” Eva fixed him with a wry look. “I’m hardly the sort to be led astray by a suggestive remark or carnal glance.”

“No, you aren’t.”

At least there was no recrimination in Simon’s tone. Once, years ago, he’d intimated that he would like to take their relationship beyond the professional. She’d immediately quashed that idea. There had been some wounded feelings right after her refusal, but Simon’s speedy recovery had proven to her that, at most, he’d been mildly curious. Not enthralled. Not even enamored. She hadn’t been hurt by his quick rallying. If anything, it proved what she already knew—she was better off on her own, free of entanglements.

“Just … be wary around Dalton,” Simon pressed. “He’s got a way of looking at you.”

Her heart gave a strange, small leap. “The man’s been in prison for five years. He’d look at a toothless crone the same way.”

This time it was Simon who was wry. “Believe it or not, but even in the depths of a man’s lust, he knows the difference between a beldam and a beauty.”

“How encouraging.”

Simon continued, “Dalton assuredly knows what he sees when he looks at you.”

The woman who’s got his baubles in her hand. Or is it more than that?

It didn’t matter. She was a dedicated operative. Dalton might be different from what she had anticipated, but she had a responsibility to Nemesis’s client and the greater good. He was simply another cog in the larger machine, a machine she was determined to run with the same capable skill she’d shown throughout her years with Nemesis.

The cab rolled to a stop outside the door to her lodgings. It was a perfectly respectable building in a perfectly respectable neighborhood; so respectable, in fact, that no one was awake to note that she wasn’t married to the man riding with her in the hansom. After bidding Simon good night, Eva climbed the front steps, then let herself in.

She walked up the two flights of stairs leading to her rooms. The ground floor was where her landlady, Mrs. Petworth, lived, along with Mrs. Petworth’s daughter. Miss Axford resided on the next story, a soft-spoken girl who worked at a stationer’s shop, as well as the Ratley cousins, both women employed as transcribing clerks at the same firm.