“That ain’t what I’m here to do. And I never attempt violence.” Jack’s mean grin widened.

Gilling swallowed hard. He shot an accusing glance at Eva. “You led me here! To him!”

“This is far more interesting than a game of whist,” she answered, and Jack loved the cold deliberateness in her voice. She seemed to hold many different women within herself, and yet all of them were her. He could explore her for a lifetime and never fully know all of her.

“What do you want?” Gilling demanded again.

“Same thing everyone these days wants.” Jack rubbed his fingers together. “The means to make myself comfortable.”

“A bottle of gin should see to that,” snapped Gilling, then looked terrified by his brief display of cheek.

“But it isn’t very lasting, is it, Mr. Gilling?” Eva asked. “What we’re proposing is a good deal more permanent.”

“Your money for my silence,” Jack said. He took a step toward Gilling, and the man sidled backward.

“Blackmail?” Gilling’s eyebrows rose. “There’s nothing you can hold over me. Certainly not someone of your class,” he added.

“Folks of my class know all sorts of valuable things,” Jack said. “Like the fact that you and Rockley skimmed your contract with the government. Took home a fine profit for yourselves while soldiers fired shoddy cartridges.”

“Utter nonsense!” Gilling countered. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“Your left eye twitches when you lie,” Eva said pleasantly. “Just a little. I saw it whilst you were playing cards. Not much of a bluffer.”

“I’m not lying!”

Jack crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Gilling. The same look he’d give his opponents when they stood at opposite sides of the boxing ring. A match could be won before a single punch had been thrown.

Gilling turned even paler. “See here,” he gulped, “even if your allegations were true—which they aren’t—I haven’t any money to give. You’d be better served blackmailing someone else, someone with property and wealth.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Jack said. “What you’re going to do is help me get money out of Rockley.”

If Jack had a pen, he could’ve written on Gilling’s now paper-white face. The man’s mouth opened and closed.

“Just go to him yourself,” Gilling stammered.

“Too dangerous,” Eva said.

“Rockley and me,” Jack explained affably, “we’ve got what you’d call a history. You know that. I couldn’t get anywhere near him. But you can. You’ll be my middleman.”

“But how am I to get you any money from him?”

Jack said, “That’s your worry.”

“And if you don’t do as instructed,” Eva continued, “your involvement with the government contract will be brought to the attention of very interested parties. I imagine it wouldn’t be difficult to have you arrested on charges of treason.”

Looking hunted, Gilling tugged at the collar of his shirt. “I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“We’ve got written proof, Gilling,” Jack said. “The records you kept. They’re ours now.”

“Oh, God,” Gilling croaked. “I … I must go. I have to think.”

He stumbled past Jack and Eva, heading back toward the main hallway. Jack didn’t try to stop him, easy as the task would’ve been. Yet as Gilling lurched down the corridor, staggering around other guests, Jack and Eva followed wordlessly at a distance through the house. Gilling hurried down the front steps and into the street.

If Gilling arrived in a carriage, he didn’t wait for it to be brought around. Instead, he waved down a hansom and flung himself into it. He shouted instructions at the driver. The cab drove on.

With Eva right behind him, Jack ran for their hired carriage parked in the nearby mews.

“Don’t lose that hansom,” he called up to the cabman.

As soon as he and Eva were in the growler, it took off in pursuit. The cab raced through the streets, rocking from side to side. Jack braced his legs against the seat in front of him, and Eva held tight to the strap beside her. Neither of them spoke. He liked that she kept her silence while they were on the chase. No useless gabbing for the sake of hearing her own voice or making dull comments about obvious things. She had the calm, focused look of a hunter. A hunter in gold-colored silk, with yellow flowers in her hair.

Looking out the window, he noted the neighborhood. “St. John’s Wood,” he said aloud.

“Wonder what’s here,” she murmured.

He had a pretty strong suspicion what that might be, but he’d wait until they’d reached their destination before saying anything. He didn’t want to look like a fool. Not in front of her.

The growler came to a sudden stop.

Both Jack and Eva peered out the window. Fine-looking brick houses lined the quiet street. A little ways down the block, Gilling had jumped out of the hansom. He hurried up the walk of one of the houses. Lights shone beneath the drawn curtains, but the house itself looked as decent and well behaved as any of its neighbors. Looks couldn’t be trusted, though.

“Do you know that place?” Eva asked.

“It’s Mrs. Arram’s.”

“Ah,” she said with understanding. Mrs. Arram’s brothel catering to wealthy gentlemen had been on the list of Rockley’s favorite haunts.

“Perhaps Gilling needs to blow off steam,” Eva suggested, “so to speak.”

The man knocked on the door to the brothel. The door opened, revealing two huge men. Gilling spoke to them, looking frantic, but it was too far away for Jack to hear what was being said.

“They’ve got more security than normal,” Jack noted. “Usually it’s just one chap at the front door and another at the back.”

“One of them might be Rockley’s man,” Eva mused.

“It’s Wednesday, and not even ten o’clock,” he said, shaking his head. “Rockley never went to Mrs. Arram’s on Wednesday. And he never went to any brothel before midnight. Gilling would know that.”

“Then why come here? Unless,” she said, thoughtful, “he’s here to check on the evidence.”

Jack took his gaze away from Gilling, still speaking with the guards, and frowned at Eva. “You think the proof of them skimming on the contract would be at a whorehouse?”

“It’s a sensible location to store something highly valuable,” she explained. “Secure, as you noted. Most genteel brothels are better guarded than any bank. The men who go there have only one real purpose in mind, and it isn’t searching for incriminating documents. Yet if Rockley ever needed access to those documents, he could have it without attracting any attention. Likely he pays Mrs. Arram a substantial fee to keep the documents at her establishment, but with a strong warning that she isn’t to know or ask about what those papers contain.”

Damn him, but it made sense. Jack said, “We’d been looking for places where Rockley might’ve added security, but we searched in the wrong places. We didn’t even know if the evidence existed, but it does, and it’s here.” He snorted. A brothel. A sodding brothel.

“Gilling has to know it,” Eva said. “When you told him you had the evidence, he came straight to Mrs. Arram’s to check on it.” She peered out the window. “It looks as though the guards aren’t going to let him in, however.”

Gilling, looking more and more upset, was shouting at the men standing watch, trying to shove past them. One of the guards pushed him back. Gilling stumbled backward. Before he could try forcing his way in again, the door slammed in his face. For a few minutes, he pounded on the door, but it stayed shut.

Finally, Gilling gave up. He sulked down the walkway and flagged another hansom. He got in and drove away.

“Same story here, my lad,” Jack called up to the hackney driver. “A nice bit of coin for you if we stay on him.”

“Right you are, sir.”

This time, as the cab sped through the streets of London, Jack and Eva weren’t silent. As soon as they set off in their pursuit, she said, “Rockley knows you’ve escaped prison. You’re out there. He also knows that you’ll never be able to touch him, not physically, anyway. But his one vulnerability would be the evidence of his embezzlement. So he bulks up security at Mrs. Arram’s to make certain you have no way of getting to that evidence.”

Jack snorted. “Hell of a rotten bastard.”

“One of the worst I’ve ever encountered,” she said. “And I’ve encountered quite a lot of rotten bastards.”

It didn’t surprise Jack when Gilling’s cab came to a stop outside Rockley’s home. However, after Gilling pounded on the front door, he was allowed to go inside.

“They let him in,” Jack murmured. “But Rockley won’t be there. He’s never home at this time. Doesn’t usually get back until three or four.” That was hours away.

“Perhaps the butler is allowing Gilling to wait for Rockley’s return,” Eva suggested.

“Rockley didn’t like having folks in his home when he wasn’t there. But if the butler’s letting him stay, there’s got to be a reason.”

“More proof that Gilling and Rockley were partners in the scheme to swindle the government,” she said darkly. Her lips tightened. “I don’t particularly fancy the idea of sitting in this hackney for five hours, doing nothing.”

“Where next?”

“Home.” After she gave the cabman the direction for Nemesis headquarters and the carriage moved on, she sat back against the squabs, her expression shuttered as it usually was when she was deep in thought. Jack liked watching her think, the tumblers of her mind turning.

“We did pretty well back there,” he said. “Working Gilling like that.”

Her smile flashed in the dimness of the cab. “It did go rather nicely.”