Heart of Brass by Kate Cross Page A

She opened her bag and removed her gear.
    “Excuse me, Inspector?” One of the officers stood at the entry to the alley. “We have a potential witness, sir. I thought you might like to speak to her.”
    Grant turned to Arden. “Do you have need of me here, my lady?”
    “None at all,” she replied, slipping on her spectacles. In fact she preferred to do this sort of thing as privately as possible. She never knew what she was going to see or how it was going to affect her.
    Three minutes later she was on her hands and knees retching against the wall of the alley. What had happened to this woman had been awful—some of the most vile images she’d ever had scorched into her mind.
    Arden slowly pushed herself up so that she knelt in the alley. Rain dripped from the edge of her hood onto her face, and she welcomed its chill. Her hands shook as she removed the apparatus from the prostitute’s head and returned it to her bag. Whoever had killed her was indeed a monster, but not the same monster who’d killed Baron Lynbourne’s daughter. This man hadn’t worn fancy clothes, and he was missing his front teeth.
    And he’d raped her while he killed her—used her in so many awful ways before making the brutal cut. Then he’d delivered his final insult by spending himself on her leg after he was done, as her life flowed across the dirty stones.
    A shadow moved across the alley as the lazy fingers of a wet dawn slowly crept in. Arden glanced up, expecting to see Inspector Grant.
    Instead she saw a dirty man in need of a shave and a dentist. Her heart stopped at the sight of him. She knew him. She had seen him just a few moments ago through the prostitute’s eyes.
    Frantically, she groped for the pistol she always carried in her bag. The killer came at her fast. For a second she was too terrified to scream, her mind flashing through the gruesome catalog the woman’s eyes had given her. Her normal calm, or facsimile of it, disintegrated like sugar into tea as his filthy hands reached for her. She opened her mouth…
    There was a snap, and the killer crumpled to the ground beside his victim, his head turned at an impossible angle, sightless eyes bulging and wide.
    She might have felt relief if she hadn’t looked up and met her husband’s bright gaze.
    There were few people who could manage to look imposing and dangerous—and altogether too gorgeous—when dripping wet, but Lucas was one of them.
    Inky hair fell over his forehead as water trickled down the lean planes of his face. Shadows deepened the lines around his eyes and mouth, made the grim smile on his lips all the more frightening.
    Rain poured off the long leather coat that hung from the strong breadth of his shoulders—exaggerated by the leanness of the rest of his frame. He crouched before her, paying no attention to the body of the prostitute or the man he had just killed with the apparent ease of swatting a bug.
    “What is it about you that makes people want you dead?” he asked, eyes glinting unnaturally bright in the gray morning.
    Arden’s fingers closed around the pistol in her bag. Now that the first threat to her safety was gone, she wasn’t about to let this one get the better of her. “Part of my charm, I suppose.” He chuckled and she added, “Why didn’t you let him? He would have done the job for you.”
    His gaze locked with hers, and what she saw there sent a shiver down her spine. “You’re mine,” he growled.
    “Yours to kill, you mean.” It was tempting to let him do it. She didn’t want to die, but the thought of him being able to kill her…Well, what was the point of going on when so much of her life had been about him and he was lost forever?
    She needed a drink, or perhaps a good slap.
    His hand came up, and she fought a flinch. Instead of grabbing her already bruised throat, he cupped her cheek. She had the pistol out of the bag.
    “Are you going to shoot me?” he asked with a smile, fingers rough against her skin. “Do