“We do not work for Rockley,” she insisted, voice tight. The very idea that they would work with someone like the baron filled her with a toxic sickness.

“Then who do you work for?”

“A girl. You wouldn’t know her.” She kept her gun pointed at him. He would be waiting for her to drop her guard, but that was not going to happen. “About a month ago, this young woman, whom I’ll call Miss Jones, was mostly wickedly seduced and abandoned. Her reputation was destroyed. Now she and her parents seek restitution, which we will help obtain.”

“Some gentry mort falls for a line, winds up on her back, and I’m supposed to care?”

“The ruin of any woman isn’t to be taken lightly.” Simon spoke through gritted teeth. “And she isn’t gentry. Just a merchant’s daughter.”

“Little difference.” Dalton shrugged. “Girl gets charmed into opening her legs, winds up with a bastard child or nothing at all. And the gent goes about his merry business. Not saying it’s right, but it’s an old story.”

“This time,” said Eva, “the story will have a different ending.”

“Cheers if you can make the cove pay.” Cynicism dripped from Dalton’s voice. “But what happened to the girl ain’t my business.”

“It will be,” she answered.

He crossed his arms over his chest, and the coarse fabric of his shirt pulled against his muscles. Both Marco and Simon were exceptionally fit men—their work demanded it. But Dalton possessed an animal strength, brutal and uncivilized. Simon, Marco, and her other male colleagues were trained warriors. Dalton was a beast.

“Love,” he rumbled, “I’ve got the screws hot on my tail. They’ll be here in an hour—”

“Less,” Marco said.

Dalton shot Marco a glare before returning his gaze to Eva. His words had been terse and impatient, but the way he stared at her made her think he hadn’t seen a woman in a very long time.

“So either speak plain or shoot me,” he continued, “’coz I don’t plan on lingering.”

She drew a breath. “The man who seduced Miss Jones is Lord Rockley.”

Dalton’s arms uncrossed as if readying for battle. His smirk fell away, replaced by cold, brutal hatred. Even knowing the details of Dalton’s history, she had not fully anticipated seeing such naked enmity, devoid of all pity. A shiver struggled to work its way through her body, but she ruthlessly suppressed it. Dalton was the sort of man to exploit any weakness. She could show none.

“We’re going to make Rockley pay.” She made certain to keep her voice level, as though the slightest hint of emotion would tip Dalton into crazed fury. “And you, Mr. Dalton, are going to help us. If you do not agree to do so, we’ll keep you here until the warders arrive. Escaping from prison is a serious crime. One that will see you well punished.” She stared coolly at him. “Time is running out, Mr. Dalton. A decision has to be made.”

For a moment, he did not move, did not speak. Then, “Who the hell are you people?”

She spoke before Marco or Simon could answer. “Nemesis, Unlimited.”


CHAPTER TWO

Stay and dance at the whim of this passel of bedlamites, or knock them all out and take his chances on the moors, with the screws closing in. Jack didn’t like either choice. Still, it had been so long since he’d had any choice at all, even deciding between two bad options was a luxury.

“Don’t plod over your decision,” the woman said, cold as a knife between the ribs. “We’ll need enough time to get out before the warders arrive.”

Jack stared at her. Such a pretty piece, but full of poison. He’d known women like her, except they didn’t have a gentry mort’s fine words and manners to disguise their ruthlessness.

She stared back in challenge. Maybe it was on account of him not seeing a woman besides the prison laundresses for the past five years. Maybe he was a sick bastard who’d gotten even sicker during his incarceration. But something about the way this woman looked and spoke, with her unyielding spine and amber eyes, stirred him up.

For fuck’s sake, she’s got a gun on me.

“They’re here.” This from the blond toff, standing at the window. Voices from outside drifted up, the shouts of the warders as they roused the villagers.

“The critical moment is upon us, Mr. Dalton,” the woman said. “Make your choice.”

He stood, and noted with some satisfaction that the woman took a step back, putting more distance between them. “You’ve got a plan for getting out of this place?”

She tipped her chin up. “We always have plans.”

“Then we go.”

The two men and the woman shared a glance, a silent exchange that made Jack edgy. At least none of them looked nervous at the idea of getting away from the warders. When people were panicked, they made bad decisions.

Jack wasn’t panicked, just determined.

The woman tucked her gun into a reticule as calmly as if she were stashing away a tin of comfits. “Do everything they tell you to,” she said to him.

“If you wanted a dog,” he answered, “you should’ve gone to the wharf.”

“And if you want to stay out of prison, you’ll do what you’re told.” She opened the door and walked out, her stride direct and purposeful. The warders’ voices barked on the ground floor. Jack recognized the sound of Warder Lynch. Likely the bastard was eager to do Jack some violence.

The dark-haired gent shut and locked the door behind the woman, muting the sounds from below.

“Where’s she going?” Jack demanded.

“Eva is buying us time,” the darker man replied. “Which we’re losing by hazing about up here.”

Jack wondered if buying time meant that the woman—Eva—might use that revolver of hers on the warders. Trading bullets with the screws would be dangerous and messy, and she’d already proven that while she was dangerous, she wasn’t messy. No, she was a tidy morsel, from the top of her pinned curls to the hem of her dress, with a lot of mettle in between.

“How are we looking out there, Simon?” the dark-haired man asked the blond.

“Damn warders are a bunch of low-pay amateurs,” Simon muttered. “They’ve got no one patrolling the perimeter.”

“Let’s be grateful for a badly trained workforce.” The dark man reached for Jack, but pulled his hand away when Jack reared back.

He didn’t want anyone touching him. Nobody did before he went to prison, and he hated it when the screws shoved him around on his way to chapel or to the rock yards. They wouldn’t touch him ever again.

Turning from the darker gent, he saw the blond one, Simon, straddling the open window.

“Going to assume you can climb down as well as up,” he said, then disappeared as he eased out the window. Jack had to admit that the toff moved as slick as any second-story man leaving a burglary.

“That’s Simon, incidentally. I’m Marco.”

“I don’t give a buggering damn.”

“You ought, since we’re all that’s keeping your neck from being stretched.” After shouldering a pack, Marco waved him toward the window. “Now climb.”

Jack bit back a mouthful of curses. For now, he had to play the puppet. When the time came, however, he’d cut the damn strings, and maybe some throats, too.

After giving Marco a glare, Jack moved quickly to the window and climbed out. Cold air bit through his damp, thin uniform and the moors stretched out dark and empty beneath a sky just as barren. This time of year, he wouldn’t last the night on the heath. Without shelter, he’d be nothing but frozen meat by morning.

These damned Nemesis people better have something lined up, or we’ll all be freezing our arses off.

He balanced himself on the worn brick, then clambered down the wall. Glancing up, he saw Marco watching him from the window. Likely making sure he didn’t cut and run.

Once the ground was near enough, he jumped the rest of the way down, landing in a crouch. Simon waited nearby, his gaze never resting, body poised for movement. The bloke looked like a toff, but he didn’t carry himself like one. More like a soldier, or a thief.

Jack, too, kept his every sense alert, tense as piano wire. The screws were just inside—he could hear them questioning men in the taproom of the inn. Just hearing the scrape of Lynch’s voice sent hot fury through Jack’s muscles.

“I ain’t going back,” he muttered.

“You won’t.” Simon’s words were clipped. “So long as you keep to the terms of our arrangement.”

Before Jack could ask just what the hell that arrangement might be, Marco dropped down from the window, quiet as a serpent.

Whoever these people were, they had impressive skills. But it wasn’t the two men Jack thought of. He could hear Eva inside, the low, clear notes of her voice plucking along the back of his neck.

“Time to run,” Marco said. He nodded toward the west, a long stretch of open moorland that led to nothing. Nothing that Jack could see, at any rate.

“You can’t just leave her in there.” He wasn’t about to carve Eva’s name into his arm, but it didn’t feel right abandoning her to the warders. There had to be at least eight screws in there. She was only one woman. Bad odds.

“Eva can take care of herself,” Simon answered.

Jack looked back and forth between the two men. They held fast to the shadows, but he could see enough of their faces to read complete confidence there. Confidence in Eva.

He shrugged. She wasn’t his woman. Never would be. If these blokes thought nothing of leaving her with a pack of edgy warders, he wouldn’t stop them.

“My legs itch,” he said. “Only thing that cures ’em is a run.”

Simon nodded once and darted off. With Marco right on his heels, Jack followed, plunging into the darkness. It felt good to move again, despite his exhaustion. Too long inside prison walls had given him a permanent hunger for action, the need to feel his lungs and muscles burn from use.