Page 104 of A Treacherous Trade

“It’s not broken, thank God,” she announced. “But he wrenched your shoulder out of socket.”

“I can set it,” Indira said.

I wanted neither of them to touch it, but I swallowed the intensity of my fear and pain and nodded, bracing for the worst.

Indira wobbled over, handing the book of matches to Amelia before the one she held gave out.

When Amelia lit one again, she was bent over me, staring down into my face like an angel, her hair somehow still smooth and unruffled. Amelia braced behind me and Indira in front, her hands poised on my shoulder.

“It’s nice to meet the real you, Fiona,” she said with a sad smile.

Then she moved, and I screamed.

ChapterTwenty-Four

After our throats ran raw from screaming for help, we used the last of the matches to search for a way out. The room was brick but for a door as thick as the wall. Hartigan had perfected the art of imprisoning women.

Canny as the three of us were, we’d yet to find a way out. We even ripped up the carpet to see if we could dig in the packed earth.

I found some corrosive chemicals on a shelf and considered trying to eat at the wood of the door, but these weren’t solutions I used in my line of work, and I didn’t know what the fumes would do to us in a room with no ventilation.

Without a fire, we grew increasingly frozen as the day died.

And thirsty.

We finally huddled together, wrapping our coats around ourselves, our brains thick with cold and the chloral, failing to imagine what we could possibly do next.

I could feel the hope draining from us all, and it was one of the most sobering moments of my entire life.

“Sophia might figure this out,” Indira said through an obviously dry throat. “I told her what went on here. What I was being paid to do.”

That pricked my awareness. “What were you doing with Sophia at The Orchard the other day?” I asked. “I followed you both, thinking you might be in on something together, but Sophia only led me to the Hammer.”

“You know the Hammer?” I could hear a slip of interest in her voice.

“Yes.” I could see no reason to deny it now. “He’s hired me from time to time.”

“To clean the blood he’s spilled?” Amelia’s acerbic words reminded me that Croft and the Hammer had bad blood between them, and I didn’t know its source.

“If I’m honest, I don’t often ask who made the messes I clean up,” I admitted. “After this debacle, I’m forced to admit it’s a practice I should have maintained.”

No one shared my wry chuckle.

“That surprises me, Fiona.” The disappointment in Amelia’s voice itched at me.

“When I took the first job, I was not in a financial position to turn him down,” I explained. “And now—”

“I love Sophia.” Indira interrupted my confession with one of her own. Even though I couldn’t see her in the dark, I had the impression both my and Amelia’s heads snapped in her direction.

“And she loves me. We fell in love at The Orchard… working together. She wanted me to go with her to The Velvet Glove, but I didn’t want to work for a man, and I was so close.So closeto being able to buy my way out of the life. It’s why I let Hartigan take these perverse photographs. With this money, I could start my spice shop. But now…” The tears in her voice broke my heart and produced a few of my own.

“I found letters in Alys’s bureau,” I said. “I thought they might be between her and Jane… but they were yours? Yours and Sophia’s?”

“Alys was a ripe cunt.” Indira spat on the earth. “I’m sorry, Amelia. I know you were fond of her.”

“She liked me because I wasn’t competition,” Amelia replied. “I always knew that.”

“Sophia and I were looking for our letters in The Orchard that day. I’d had a key made from Bea’s master copy, one that would get me into Alys’s room to search it. But you were there…”