She was gone.
Alastair’s heart skipped a beat. Where the hell was she? He actually peered over the side of the dock to s thm back tomake certain she hadn’t jumped in. He looked down one side of the dock, then the other, panic rising. Then, he glanced toward his carriage and saw her standing outside the boot, which was open.
She was talking to the Doctor.
A nasty suspicion crawled up his spine. He was attracted to Claire, but that didn’t mean he trusted her—not completely. She’d done nothing to make him doubt her, but then, neither had Sascha right up until that fateful moment. Claire was a desperate woman, one who knew the life she’d had before was over. All she wanted was to catch the man who killed her brother and have him tell her why.
Desperate people tended to do desperate things, and their victims ended up with augmentations that weren’t just for the job, but for life. If Evie hadn’t been able to put metal in his legs, he wouldn’t be walking right now—at least not with any grace.
Alistair approached quietly, turning his head ever so slightly so that his left ear was toward them. The W.O.R. had augmented his hearing as well—nothing so startling that he could hear conversations in other rooms, but enough so that it was sharper than ordinary. If he concentrated, he could sort through the noise of the bustling shipyard and eavesdrop on their conversation. Not very honorable of him, he knew, but there were times when a man would rather be dishonorable than a fool.
“Why did he do it?” he heard Claire demand. “Why did Howard kill my brother?”
“You traitorous bitch, if you think I’m going to tell you anything, you’re insane. If my hands were free, I’d kill you.”
“Well, that’s where I have the advantage, Doctor. As you can see, my hands are free. And I didn’t just have one of my wrists broken by Reynard. It’s going to be difficult for you with only one good hand to do procedures on people. I wonder how difficult it would be with only one eye?”
Claire raised her hand, and something glittered in the weak sunlight. Alastair didn’t know what it was. He didn’t care what it was. He knew only that Claire was in danger of seriously damaging his prisoner, and if anyone was going to have that pleasure, it was Luke.
He ran toward them, grabbing Claire’s wrist just as she was about to strike. She whirled toward him, and he found himself staring down the barrel of a very fancy, very deadly-looking pistol. She’d gone through the bags and found her gun.
What other items had she reclaimed?
“Alastair!” she admonished. “This doesn’t involve you.”
“Put the gun down, Claire,” he commanded in the most gentle tone he could manage. He wasn’t keen on dying on the Ayr docks.
“I can’t do that,” she replied. “Not until the Doctor answers my questions.”
The Doctor was still shackled, but a strange apparatus had been attached to his head. Little wire arms extended down from his temple and up from his cheeks, holding his eyes wide open, so much so that Alastair could see the curves of his eyeballs, and the ruddy inner flesh of his lids.
His stomach rolled. He hated anything to do with eyes. He couldn’t think about what had been done to s betai his own without gagging a little.
Then he spied what Claire wore on her right hand—claws. They were sharp brass talons that looked perfect for the job of scooping an eyeball right out of someone’s head. He’d forgotten he had them, and now they’d fallen into the worst possible hands—literally.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “Claire, don’t do this.”
Her face was a study in stone. “I want to know why Howard killed Robert.”
She was on the verge of madness; he could see it. It was that cold detachment of emotion that enabled people in their line of work to do whatever was necessary to achieve their goal. Though often a good thing, in times like these, it could go very, very wrong. He knew because he’d felt it himself once or twice.
“The only person who can tell you that is Howard, Belle.” The foolish nickname came easily to his tongue. “We need the Doctor intact.”
She reached out and swiped the smaller man’s face with the claws, leaving deep cuts in his cheeks. The Doctor tried not to scream, but his pain would not be denied and came out as a guttural cry.
Alastair didn’t think. He swatted the hand holding the gun away with his augmented arm. He didn’t want to hurt Claire, but he would if he had to. She cried out as the pistol tumbled from her fingers. It discharged when it hit the ground, blasting a hole in a nearby shack.
“Holy hell,” he swore, and turned back to Claire. She held her injured arm to her chest, and her “talons” were just about to tear into the Doctor’s eye socket. The man didn’t say a word; he just stared at her, daring her to do it. He would rather die than be taken to London as a prisoner. Alastair could not let that happen. He drew back his fist. He hadn’t struck a woman in a very long time, but he would do it now to stop Claire from making an awful mistake.
Suddenly there was a sharp buzzing sound, and Claire fell. Alastair just barely managed to catch her before she hit the ground.
“Sorry, my lord.”
Alastair glanced up from her unconscious face to the apologetic countenance of Tavish, who stood just a few feet away holding one of Arden’s “discombobulators.” It had a fancier name, but he could never remember it. Basically it was a little device that shot prongs into a body and then jolted it with an electrical shock. It was very handy for rendering attackers incapacitated.
“Well done, Tavish,” he said on a sigh, pulling the small sharp prongs from Claire’s hip. “Get that contraption off our prisoner, will you? And shut the boot so I don’t have to look at his ugly face. You’re going to return to London with him tonight.”
Tavish stood there, holding the contraption as though it were nothing more dangerous than a daisy. “What about you, my lord?”
Alastair swung Claire up into his arms. “I’m the new owner of a submersible, and I’m going after Stanton Howard.”
The world around her was moving. And it smelled like the inside of an old boot. What was th s. Wont sizat noise? It sounded something like a dirigible, but muted, as if the inside of her head were full of cotton wool.
Slowly Claire opened her eyes and sat up. She was on a small bed, and her muscles were rubbery, weak, twitchy. The last thing she remembered was getting ready to take the Doctor’s eye out, and Alastair telling her to stop. . . .
Damn him. He’d done something to her. It had felt like the kind of shock she sometimes got from a carriage door in the winter, only multiplied by a thousand.
She ran a hand over her forehead and glanced around at her surroundings. Was she in a cell? It was small—smaller than the one at the W.O.R. She didn’t like it. It was too small. The walls curved at the ceiling—she could imagine them closing in on her. . . .
She leaped to her feet, knees rubbery as she hurried to the door. It opened, and she stepped out into a narrow corridor. The invisible band around her chest tightened. Where the hell was she? It was not much bigger than the room she’d just escaped, the walls lined with equipment and various gadgets and gear.
Staggering down the corridor, she moved toward the only sound she could hear above the muffled “whomping.” She spied Alastair, sitting at a console where he was listening to a cylinder recording of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”
“Where are we?” she demanded. And why was it so damn tiny? They weren’t on a train, and this was nothing like any carriage she’d ever seen.
Alastair’s entire chair turned as he faced her. His brow furrowed, and the lines around his mouth seemed sharper. “How do you feel?”