If she was still alive.
A knot stuck in his throat, but he didn’t have time for that now. He slipped to a second boulder, waited until both men were facing the ocean, then darted behind yet another rock until he was closer to the cave.
Two against one. Odds that would have stimulated him before. Not now though. Not when going down would cost Eliza instead of him.
He flipped his gun around and fisted the barrel, then cleared his throat loud enough the man closest to him might hear.
Nothing.
Felton grabbed a seashell and scraped it against the rock. Twice. He heard nothing at first. No shout, no gunshot, no whisper of warning to the other guard.
Just footsteps. Crunching over grass and sand, cautious, slow, and deliberate—
Felton pounced. He brought the man to the ground in one swift movement, slammed the end of the pistol into his temple, and bounced back off the limp body just as a gunshot grazed his arm.
He ducked back behind the boulder. Hot pain sizzled through him, as he raised his gun, aimed, shot.
The other guard lost his cap but nothing else. He must have thought better about taking the time to reload, because he threw down the pistol and charged.
Felton met him head-on and smashed a fist into his swarthy face. Then another. Then another.
The man tumbled backward, but he lunged back to his feet and charged again. This time, he brought Felton down and showered two blows of his own.
They rolled together in the sand, rocks jabbing Felton’s ribs, as they exchanged one punch for another. Felton was under, then on top, then under again. Pressure came down on his bleeding arm and he cried out the same time as he bashed his forehead into his opponent’s.
The impact gave him enough time to throw the man off him and kick a boot into his throat, his head, his stomach.
Then Felton dropped to his knees in the sand, seized the man by the coat, and jerked his bloodied face inches from Felton’s. “Where is she?”
The man’s eyes rolled back, but nothing came from his mouth more than a tooth and a curse.
Felton shook him. “I said where is she?”
“I’ll show you where she be.” A voice from behind.
Felton whirled, stomach dropping at the pistol staring him in the face—and the short, dumpy stranger who held it.
“You be hurt, Lomas?”
Spitting out a second tooth, the man scrambled back to unsteady feet. “Martyn’s out cold. Stranger here knocked him over the head. Give me that gun, Breage—”
“You just be taking care o’ Martyn here.” Breage motioned Felton for the cave. “Mr. Bowles, I s’pect, will be taking care o’ him.”
“You can run if you like, Miss Gillingham. Think not that I shall object.” The silver-bladed knife flashed in the torchlight. One she’d seen before. “Indeed, it would be an expected reaction, I imagine.”
Her teeth clattered. She ground them together and tried to stop her wet body from shaking, but she couldn’t. Just like she had never been able to writhe from his hold. Or stop herself from hurtling out the broken window. Or escape the suffocating red curtains, flapping in the night air, the color of blood.
“You rather amaze me.” He took another step toward her, grinning. “All this time I imagined you would wail as you did as a child. That we would have our moment again, Miss Gillingham, and that you would look at me in that hauntingly powerless way of yours.”
Bile surged up her throat, but she swallowed it down. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to face him.
But she did. She caught his eyes, held his gaze, and found the ice of his stare already cutting through her. To her soul. Through her mind. All the places she’d been tortured so long he now fully inhabited—yet still, she would not look away.
He had conquered everything. Like a demon in the dark, he had manifested himself in her nightmares, determined her life, taken what he wished, and killed whomever he pleased.
But he would not have this.
He would not have the cowering child he once remembered.
