Page 62 of All Scot and Bothered

“What?” Cecelia shrank against the brick, trying to make herself small. Doing her best to understand what he was saying. This wasn’t the man who’d chased Phoebe. He was too thin.

Had the girl escaped?Please God let her get away.

“We need one more now. Your littl’un will do nicely.”

“No!” Cecelia’s cry erupted as a moan. “No, takeme. Don’t touch Phoebe. She’s just…” She fought for breath, for consciousness. “She’s just a child.”

“Yeah.” The bigger thug grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back and exposing her throat. “That’s rather the point.”

“Where’s the book?” The thin man pressed the knife to her throat, its cold steel biting into the thin skin. “Give it over to the Crimson Council and we might let you live.”

She knew they were lying. They had no intention of letting her live.

A raw, strangled noise filtered to them from the street. A gunshot broke against the stone.

The two men looked at each other.

“He’d better not have shot the girl,” the lean one said.

Cecelia gave a desolate cry, her heart withering in her chest.No. Not Phoebe.

A shadow shifted, lunged, and Cecelia was roughly released.

She blinked a bit dumbly as the knife dropped to her lap.

The brutish man crashed against the brick wall opposite Cecelia and was held there by an even larger, taller form.

Cecelia squinted, struggling to see.

The thin man sprawled out on the cobbles, though how he’d gotten there was a mystery to her.

The crunch of flesh meeting flesh drew her notice back to the two shadows at the wall. One was large, the other enormous.

Ramsay.

He was the only man of her acquaintance with such a tremendous build. The only one who could move with such astonishing quietude.

The only man who even growled in a Scottish accent.

The names Genny had called him made so much sense now. He was the devil, relentless and inescapable, bringing with him all the punishing castigation the dark could devise.

He’d a pistol in his left hand, but he subdued the thrashing brute easily, shoving the gun beneath his chin. He ignored the one blow the man managed to land at his temple and drove his right fist into the thug’s face again and again with single-minded acumen and unparalleled skill. Little cracking sounds might have been bones breaking, or rotten teeth falling to the cobbles.

Cecelia found that she didn’t care.

The thin man gained his feet, and for a moment Cecelia thought he might save his compatriot when he surged toward the tussle.

She took up the knife, opening her mouth to warn Ramsay, but there was no need.

With one mighty roar, he grasped the brute’s head and snapped it to the side. The man’s spine made a sound Cecelia would never forget.

Ramsay lifted the pistol and executed the thin man with one expert shot to the forehead before the thug with the broken neck had folded to the dirt as though he had no bones left.

Cecelia clapped her hands over her ears, tucking her chin down as the deafening blast of several more shots rang out through the narrow alley.

Even when the last echo died, she didn’t move. Barely dared to breathe. The clicks of the empty pistol matched the painful rhythm of her heart.

Ramsay hadn’t stopped pulling the trigger.