Under a Veiled Moon by Karen Odden

Author:Karen Odden
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

CHAPTER 19

I left McCabe with my thoughts like the chop of waves during a storm. I had acquired a few important pieces of information and wormed a promise from McCabe not to hurt Colin, but everything else about the meeting unsettled me.

Yesterday we’d reached something like a gentleman’s agreement, an understanding, even something like a cautious, temporary alliance. But tonight he’d acted as though he distrusted me all over again. Or perhaps he simply had other matters on his mind.

As I walked, I took apart our exchange second by second, word by word. McCabe had seemed angry about something beyond Finn’s defection. Had Finn taken others with him? Or had someone else taken Finn?

Good God, could it be Colin, forming his own gang?

Even as the thought came into my mind, I dismissed it. Colin didn’t have the power for that, the reach, the experience. It had to be Finn.

I recalled the twitch McCabe gave when I said that he had to let Colin out. Had that been impatience, or a sign that he found the demand vaguely humorous? Or a sign of nonchalance?

I couldn’t dispel the sense that McCabe had acquiesced too easily. But why?

My next thought halted my feet:

Because Colin had already left.

That had to be it.

If McCabe’s gang had fractured, and Finn had split away—and Colin had gone with him …

My fear and fury formed a riptide inside my chest. Damn everything. Damn everything ten times over.

The only place I could think of finding Colin was Pinton’s. I turned north and ran.

Outside the gambling house, I took a moment to recover my breath before I pulled open the door. I crossed the floor to where two men again guarded the staircase, and the one I recognized put out a hand.

“He’s not here tonight.”

“Is he really not here, or did he tell you not to call him down for me?”

“He’s not here, guv’nor.”

The man was lying. The sly spark in his eyes—the joke he was having with himself over tricking me—gave it away. But I didn’t care; he’d told me what I needed to know. I left the place and took up a spot in the shadows around the corner, grateful that the clouds scuttling across the sky were dropping no rain.

By the time Colin emerged from the doorway and started down the street, silhouetted against the weak light from windows and the odd gas lamp, I’d spent two hours mulling over the argument we were going to have, and I was angry and frustrated enough that I wanted to grab him right there. But instead, I tailed him for a few streets, watching for anyone following either of us, and then I chased him down soundlessly and pushed him into a wall.

He bounced back from it, his left fist coming up in a swift undercut aimed at my chin, and it was only by pure reflex that I dodged it and backed him against the bricks, one of my hands on each of his shoulders, pinning his arms.

“What

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