Come to Kill: A Historical Revenge Thriller (The Sergeant Frank Hardy Mysteries Book 8) by Wendy M. Wilson

Author:Wendy M. Wilson [Wilson, Wendy M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent
Published: 2023-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

They found the cab an hour after leaving Porirua. Frank almost missed it as he was focusing on the road ahead, hoping for a glimpse of the coach.

Doolittle, who was now right behind him, yelled out suddenly.

“Hardy, over to your right. A Hansom cab outside a farmhouse.”

Frank wheeled his horse to the right and rode up the track to the farmhouse, noting the cracked windows and fading whitewash. Deserted by the look of it, the door left wide open and no sign of life inside. Doolittle had been right. They weren’t going to stop at a coaching inn. But if they had stopped here, they had already left. They’d taken the horse from the cab, and left the cab. They were all together in the coach now.

He dismounted and jumped up into the cab. No dead body, thank God; he’d been worried about that. He was about to exit when he noticed something scratched into the leather wall. He lit a match and deciphered it. A message from Mette.

“He’s with them. M.”

So the cab driver was one of the crew of assassins. He’d been almost sure he was, but this confirmed it.

“She left me a message,” he told Doolittle, who had come out of the sod house grinning broadly. “The cab driver is one of the gang. Did you find something?”

“You have to come and see for yourself,” said Doolittle. “I think they’ve escaped. I’m looking forward to meeting this wife of yours.”

Inside, they were enveloped in darkness. Frank lit another match and saw signs of occupation. A woman’s purse sat neatly in the centre of the room, open but empty. Doolittle nodded towards an open door.

“Go through there, but be careful. There’s glass all over the floor. And blood. Someone was wearing socks.”

“Socks?”

Frank stood at the door and looked at the small room with windows on two sides. One of the windows was without glass, with a woman’s handkerchief resting on the frame. The glass from the window had been scattered across the floor, and he could see blood spattered on the shards of glass. An empty billy can lay in the centre of the glass.

“What’s that smell?”

“I believe they peed into the billy can and set a trap for their captors,” said Doolittle. And they threw the glass from the window across the floor, climbed out the window and took off. One of the captors came in here, got hit by the full billy, and jumped out of the way and right onto the glass. Brilliant!”

Frank gave a grim smile. Brilliant if they got away, but if they’d been recaptured they were with some very angry captors.

He went outside and around to the broken window. They’d have run for the trees, through the field of flax. In fact, he could see where the grass had been beaten down.

Doolittle had followed him out. He bent suddenly and picked something up.

“Two cartridge cases.” He held them out to Frank. “Someone shot at them as they escaped. He’d have been shooting in the dark at two women running through the flax.

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