when she became so tense. “It could be there,” she whispered. “Morley has no jurisdiction in Sheerness.”
“Should we send for him?” Felicity suggested. “For safety’s sake, if nothing else.”
“No, you ninny,” Mercy stood as well and began to pace as she considered. “If we invite the police, they’ll confiscate the gold.”
“The gold has been stolen from someone…” Nora reasoned. “Even if we find it, it’s not ours.”
“We’d be taking from smugglers to finance medical care for the poor,” Mercy remonstrated. “We’re essentially Robin Hood.”
Nora couldn’t believe she was about to do this. “I’m not getting you two involved. You need to return home at once.”
“Oh, no you don’t!” Mercy wagged her finger, then winced as she jostled her wounded hand. “You’re not leaving us out of this adventure. I’ve been reading about quests for illicit treasure my entire life and I’m finally able to go on one!”
“I do think we should hire more security…and probably shouldn’t leave until after dark.”
“Excellent!” Mercy swept to the front door. “I’ll just ask our entourage if they have any dangerous-looking friends.”
Dawn
Titus was stone-cold sober by the time he reached Sheerness.
As they careened through the sleepy port town, dawn licked the eastern sky with silver. Clouds built a swirling mass in the distance, pregnant with an approaching storm. The ocean ebbed and surged in a murky maelstrom, as a swarming flock of dark birds waved and shifted like an ominous flag above.
When the carriage clattered up to the dilapidated warehouse at #12 Seaworthy Street—the address on Dorian’s note—Titus leapt from the carriage before it even had a chance to slow down. Clutching his medical bag in one hand and a wicked iron-tipped club in the other, he realized he was more ready to use the unfamiliar weapon than the typical tools.
After suffering through the past couple of weeks, he was ready to break something.
Or someone.
The warehouse stood gaunt and bleak, hunkering alone over a vacant dock. It was as if the tightly clustered shipyard businesses to the south and north had turned their backs, leaving it to rot abandoned and alone.
Dim light flickered from a window in the corner facing the water. Along one dark alley, two passenger carriages and a cart used for hauling freight were hitched to sleepy horses. Their breaths curled from their nostrils into the chill of the morning, and Titus could almost hear the sound, so complete was the eerie silence.
Still as death.
What if they were too late?
Dread and fury threatened to overwhelm him, tunneling his vision with shades of crimson. Nora. His heart tattooed the syllables of her name into his ribs.
“Wait, dammit,” Morley growled as his and Dorian’s boots hit the ground behind Titus. “We don’t know what is awaiting us in there.”
“She’s in there. That’s all I need to know.” Even as he said it, he paced at the door, desperately listening for signs of life. He looked behind him to see Morley hang a rifle over his shoulder.
“That woman is banned from entering warehouses for the rest of her natural life,” the Chief Inspector muttered with no small amount of exasperation.
“Upon that, you can rely,” Titus vowed, grappling back both wrath and worry in an effort to summon the strength to discover whatever horror might await them inside. “Where is the security they hired?”
“I was wondering that myself.” Blackwell, a man fond of wearing long jackets even in the summer, had any number of weapons hidden on him at any given time. Whether he currently palmed a knife or a pistol remained to be seen. “Tell me you have a firearm in that bag, Doctor.”
“Trust me,” Titus said darkly. “I’ve instruments in here that would cause you nightmares.”
“Good. Let us hope we don’t need them.”
“There’s nowhere to climb,” Morley grumbled, his head tilted back to survey the drooping, dangerously sloped roof of the structure. “And no windows low enough to get to.”
“The front door it is, then.” Titus lifted his boot and kicked the door. The latch shattered and wood splintered as the thing exploded inward on rusted hinges.
They advanced into the gloom of the warehouse, Titus at their head, using the darkness on the street side to their advantage.
What he saw confounded him enough to freeze his feet to the floor.
The warehouse was an empty void of packed earth and mold. The air stirred with a sharp bite of pitch. Tired beams held aloft sagging rafters and a second-floor walkway was missing more boards than it boasted. A handful of shipping crates clustered at the