What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

could see the shimmering blackness of lapping waves as the tide rose with the night.
    It was a diabolical trap, delicately baited. Whether Sebastian had entered the warehouse through one of the two ground-floor entrances, or whether he came up through the trapdoor or down the stairs, he could not reach Kat without being caught in the light. Yet because of the way the lanterns were set up, Wilcox kept for himself the protective cover of darkness. He also controlled the rope by which Kat Boleyn hung suspended. The only way Sebastian could free her would be to cut her loose. Yet, bound as she was, even if he were to plunge with her into thedark icy waters below, she would in all probability drown before he could get her to shore.
    There was only one move Sebastian could make. He acted swiftly, calculating the position of the lamps and the distance to the rope. Quietly hefting one of the large bags of coffee beans, he eased it over to the edge of the well. He was just stepping back when a board creaked, betrayingly, beneath his foot.
    He froze, but the damage was already done. Martin Wilcox’s amused voice came from out of the darkness below. “You may as well show yourself, Devlin. I know you’re there.”
    There was a pause, during which Sebastian shrugged off his coat and clenched Tom’s knife between his teeth. Into the silence, Wilcox said, “Let me rephrase that. If you don’t come down, now, your whore here goes in the river. You hear that, Devlin? All I need do is cut the rope, and she’s fish bait.”
    Sebastian gave the coffee sack a hard shove that carried it over the edge of the central well to plummet straight down on the triangle of lamps below.
    It landed with a shattering crash that plunged the warehouse into darkness just as Sebastian leapt from the well’s edge.
    One hand clutched only air, cold and empty. But his right hand caught the rope and closed on it, his arm wrenching in his shoulder as it took all his weight. The impact of the sideways lunge set the rope to swinging, but the movement was slight, too slight. He kicked his legs to make it swing farther, the fibers of the rope burning his hand through the leather of his glove as he slid down to Kat.
    He could hear the frightened strain of her breathing. Still gripping the rope with one hand, he closed his free arm around her in a swift, fierce embrace that drew her shivering body back against his chest as he kicked again, swinging them back and forth on the end of the rope like a pendulum. Then, wrapping one leg around her hips to keep them together, he slipped the knife from his teeth and, when the arc of their swing neared its apogee, he reached up and sliced through the rope.
    Gritting his teeth, Sebastian hacked at the heavy fibers, the last strands unraveling as he prayed that he hadn’t miscalculated the angle ofthe arc, that the rope wouldn’t give way at the precise moment they were over the open trap to plunge them into the freezing black waters below.
    With a half-catching jerk, the rope unraveled and snapped, hurtling them downward just as a blunderbuss exploded in a deafening roar of fire and smoke.

Chapter 61
     
     
    S ebastian felt the pain of the shot rip like fire through the flesh of his thigh, just before they hit the floorboards. At the last instant he managed to twist so that Kat fell half on top of him and he absorbed most of the impact himself.
    He rolled, shifting her weight so that she lay within the protective curve of his body. He could hear the rasp of her breathing, open mouthed behind the gag, but he had no way of knowing if she had taken any of the shot herself. Bringing his lips close to her ear, he whispered softly, “Lie still.”
    He felt rather than saw her nodded response, for without the lanterns and surrounded as they were by towering piles of crates and wool bales, the blackness of the night seemed nearly complete.
    Moving swiftly in the dark, he sliced through the ropes binding her ankles and tore away the coils wrapping her legs. Cautiously, he ran his hands up over her body. It was just below her ribs he felt the warm sticky wetness of blood.
    His heart thudding painfully in his chest, he ripped the cravat from his neck and pressed the quickly folded cloth against her side, unable in the thick, unfamiliar blackness of the foggy night to gauge the seriousness of the wound. Holding the cloth tight with one hand, he worked awkwardly to slice the ropes from her wrists before moving to ease the gag