The Devil in Her Bed (Devil You Know #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,86

never think to keep you from Cecelia if she was in a similar position. So help me, Ramsay, if you keep me from him by some misguided notion that I’m the weaker sex and in need of protection from my own decisions, it’ll be you I come after next.”

This time, the silence on the other side of the phone was more astonished than hesitant, and she could hear the muffled sounds of Cecelia’s voice.

He drew a long intake of breath, holding it for a beat. “I’ve gathered a small amount of information from the men ye’ve already turned in to us. I have a few names. When pressed, they might have let spill that there was talk of holding one of the rituals in the catacombs off Isambard Tunnel in the Underground.”

Trying not to choke on her guile, her desperation, and maybe a little of her hurt, Francesca nodded for a while before realizing he couldn’t see her.

“I’m … obliged to you,” she forced herself to say.

“Och,” he replied with his own brand of curt fondness. “And let me tell ye, Lady Francesca, woman or no, ye’re as fierce and formidable as any general. I’d follow ye into battle anytime.”

“Well…” If that didn’t take the tempest out of her sails. “Thank you.” This time, the sentiment was more genuine and easier to express. “How does tonight sound?”

“Fair enough … Francesca?”

“Yes, Ramsay?”

“I’m going to help ye get yer man and get out of there.”

“But how—?”

The line went dead, and Francesca stared at it for several furious moments before slamming it back on the receiver.

She swept aside the shards of glass as she went to prepare for the evening.

“Where are you going?” Serana asked.

“To rescue Chandler,” she said darkly. “So I can murder him, myself.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Objectively, it was the perfect place for a cultish ritual, Chandler thought, a forgotten underground chamber with access to the newer Tube stations branching out in three different directions. From what he’d read in the blueprints, it had been dug and buttressed as a hub from the Thames in 1863, but a drunk and wayward architect hadn’t delved enough into the earth and so it spent perhaps a month of the year submerged in knee-deep water.

In the summer, however, when the river was low, it remained dry and the raised walkways that might have been train platforms rose from the groundwater. The grooves plowed for the tracks made perfect trenches beneath which Chandler and his two fellow operatives Benjamin Dashiell and Theo Howard would station themselves.

Logistically, it left everything to be desired for a police raid, as three different tunnels converged into the unfinished space. This not only left nowhere for a force to hide, but allowed plenty of means to escape as smaller passages branched from almost every tunnel, some of them nothing more than ancient walkways or Jacobite escape paths dating back to the Tudor era.

With the unsolicited help of Lord Ramsay, Chandler and the Secret Services had hatched a plan. Three operatives would be sent in with three low-grade, fairly harmless explosive devices, and place them in each tunnel. When the raids began, they would be detonated in little more than a percussive nightmare and billows of smoke, corralling the cultists and signaling the police to surround and isolate the gathering in a sweeping arrest the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Inquisition.

During the day, trains would shake the very ceilings of this place, but at half eleven at night, the Underground was nearly deserted by all but vermin.

Vermin that wasn’t limited to rats and roaches.

Signs of danger made from no official office had been posted on the gates to dissuade any lurkers in the tunnels from becoming curious.

And to guide the cultists in the right direction.

The gates had been latched, but none of them locked, as Kenway was too clever to block his own escape.

Chandler and his contingent of two agents swooped in from the north tunnel, drawn by the sounds of low, rhythmic humming and a lone drum. There was no chamber music tonight. Nothing that would draw attention from the main passages.

The festivities had only just begun.

And the Crimson Council would be finished before the night was out.

There weren’t any footmen this time, though piles of cold food and drink lined a table against the far south wall where it was obvious excavators had simply stopped their work in the middle of it. Depravity did work up an appetite, and these were not people who were used to suffering