Page 44 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)

Chapter Twenty-Three

T he lamp inside the coach flickered to life once Jasper took his seat. The hired muscle climbed in, followed closely by the man in the orange bowler. He had barely closed the door before the coach tore away from Scotland Yard.

Andrew was seated across from Jasper on the forward-facing seat. The single lantern’s red glass globe cast his face and everything else in the coach in a devilish hue. Fitting, really.

“What do you want, Carter?” Jasper kept his voice firm and unaffected, though the absence of his Webley made him vulnerable; the hired muscle had taken it from its holster before ushering him into the coach.

He hadn’t been given a choice in the matter, what with the man in the bowler coming to stand with them and brandishing a snub-nosed revolver of his own.

“Don’t sound so put out, Inspector,” Andrew replied smoothly. “I thought we could have a friendly conversation. It’s been a few months since we last spoke.”

“To tell you the truth, I’d much rather be having a pint at the Rising Sun,” Jasper replied.

Andrew chuckled lightly. “Not to worry, this won’t take long.”

“Good. Why don’t you start by telling me why you’ve been having me followed.”

Andrew crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands over his flat stomach.

In his mid-twenties, he was smooth-shaven, well-dressed, and handsome in a slick, predatory way.

“You’re not at Scotland Yard anymore, Inspector.

You don’t get to ask the questions.” A sly grin curled his lips.

“So, you tell me: Why did I stick a tail on you?”

Jasper had suspected the man in the orange bowler was associated with the Carters, though he’d hoped he was wrong.

“I can’t read minds, Carter.”

That sly grin spread wider. “Not even when it’s family?”

Ice splintered through Jasper’s chest and stabbed him low in his gut. Shit .

Andrew noted his reaction and laughed again.

“I thought you looked familiar when you brought me in for that interview. There was something about your face, something that tugged right here.” He tapped his temple as if to indicate his memories.

“I couldn’t place it. After I took care of Nelson, I let it go. ”

At nearly thirty years old, Jasper looked entirely different than he had as a boy of thirteen.

When meeting Andrew for that first interview, he’d worried his cousin might recognize him.

But beyond a momentary second glance and asking Jasper if they’d ever met before, the worry had seemed to be unfounded.

“I might never have thought about it again if I hadn’t come across those articles on the tragic and strange Miss Leonora Spencer,” Andrew continued. Jasper gritted his molars. He’d known those articles would cause trouble. “Do you know who else was mentioned in them?”

Jasper remained silent, though he knew the answer.

In a theatrical tone, Andrew recited, “’ Rescued from her family’s slaughter by the late Detective Inspector Gregory Reid.’ Reid. Your father, I take it.”

Jasper said nothing. Andrew didn’t need him to.

“I asked my Aunt Myra—does her name sound familiar at all?—if she remembered the name of the officer who told her my cousin James had drowned. She did recall. Reid, it was. She also remembered that the boy was unrecognizable. Bloated. Split open and disfigured by water rot.”

The coach slowed. Jasper glanced toward the windows, but the curtains were drawn, preventing him from seeing where they were. The stink of the river made itself known.

“I did some investigating of my own,” Andrew said, his tone deceivingly friendly. “Gregory Reid’s kiddies had died the previous year. Seems to me he wanted a son. Seems to me, he found one.”

There was no use denying any of it. It would only make him look weak, and Andrew preyed on weakness.

Jasper’s cousins, the sons of Patrick Carter, had all been heartless bullies.

They ranged widely in age, the oldest, Sean, ten years older than Jasper.

Andrew, the youngest, had been the quiet one.

Observant. Thoughtful. Not prone to temper.

Somehow, it made him even more dangerous than his older brothers.

“Who else knows?” Jasper asked.

Andrew’s friendly facade dropped, and Jasper was left staring into a pair of cold, calculating eyes. “You mean who else knows that you turned your back on your family, your blood, to become the son of a do-gooder policeman? And that you’re now a copper yourself? For now, just me.”

Jasper braced himself. Three against one, with no weapon, he wouldn’t stand a chance. The slightest quiver of apprehension churned in his gut. His mind went straight to Leo and what she would do, how she would cope, if she were made to look upon him, laid out on one of the morgue’s autopsy tables.

It gave him a jolt of determination not to let it happen. “What do you want, then?”

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” Andrew let both feet touch the floor of the coach, then gave a jerk of his chin. Next to Jasper, the hired muscle pounded on the wall. The driver came to a full stop.

“What do you want me to say?” Jasper asked, aware he was about to shake a hive of angry bees. “How much I’ve missed you all?”

A silent moment passed. And then, Andrew barked with laughter. Genuine laughter, at that.

“You’ve grown a pair, haven’t you? You ran off sniveling after that wallop from Uncle Robert—even I remember it—and here you sit, like a bloody king.”

The beating Robert had levied for mucking up the job he’d been given, for not finding and killing the little girl hiding in the attic, was something Jasper still thought of regularly.

Whenever he would enter the boxing ring at Oliver Hayes’s club, he’d think of the humiliation of that thrashing, done in full view of his cousins and the other men who’d gone to the Spencer home that night.

He’d think, too, of the pounding Robert had given Jasper’s mother, Vera, which had resulted in her death and the death of his unborn sibling.

In the boxing ring, he would fight every opponent he faced with Robert front of mind and with the secret hope that one day he would get his vengeance.

“I’m not sitting here like a king,” Jasper began. “I’m sitting here like a detective inspector of Scotland Yard because that is exactly what I am. It is who I am. If you believe I regret one second of the last sixteen years or what I left behind, you are sorely mistaken.”

If his response angered Andrew, the man didn’t allow his face to show it. Instead, a callous grin formed.

“Have no fear, Jamey, you will come to regret every second. I’ll see to that.”

Jasper tensed. His mother had called him Jamey, and he’d only liked the nickname coming from her. Whenever his cousins used it, they’d sounded mocking, often coupling it with the word ‘baby’.

He bristled, frustration pushing him toward recklessness. “Get to your point, Carter. You want something. Spit it out.”

“I don’t want a thing.” Andrew shrugged. “Not right now, anyhow.”

Jasper translated that easily: He would want something in the future.

And when he approached Jasper for a favor, be it large or small, Andrew would dangle telling the rest of the family about him.

Not only that James Carter was alive, but that he had grown up to become a Scotland Yard detective inspector.

Jasper sat forward, hinging at the hip. It put the hired man next to him on alert, who then shifted, ready to spring. “I’m not a dirty copper.”

“You won’t be a copper at all if any of your colleagues find out who you really are,” Andrew replied. “Hell, you might even land inside Newgate for deceiving your superiors. An ex-copper in one of Her Majesty’s prisons? You won’t last a full day before a shiv gets planted in your belly.”

The deceit alone would not land him in prison, but there were plenty of Met officers who, feeling the sting of betrayal, might be just as dangerous as prisoners would be.

“As for Miss Spencer, well…” Andrew shook his head, again with fake concern, “I imagine she’ll drop you like old mutton.”

Jasper failed to cloak his reaction at the mention of Leo and Andrew’s apparent understanding of their relationship.

His cousin’s mean grin stretched. “Muncie’s seen enough to know that the lady is important to you.

Of all people, Jamey, you should know how valuable a currency that is in negotiations. ”

The bloody, bloody bastard .

“Leave her out of this,” Jasper said, though he well knew he’d been backed into a corner.

“I’ll make every attempt,” Andrew replied with more false affability. “But ultimately, her safety will be up to you, Jamey.”

Just as he’d had no choice other than to hand over Terrence Nelson in March, he’d have no choice but to do Andrew a favor when he came asking for one. So long as Leo was there to threaten, Andrew would get what he wanted.

Fury burned through him, from his head to his heart to his gut. Jasper clenched his hands into fists, thwarted. His wretched cousin knew it.

With another jerk of Andrew’s chin, the man in the bowler, whom he’d called Muncie, opened the door.

“Until next time, Inspector.”

Jasper rose from the bench and saw himself out of the coach. They had stopped on the south embankment, just off Westminster Bridge. Gas jets lit the bridge, and there were several passing conveyances, omnibuses, and cabs all around. The coach door shut, and the driver sped off.

Jasper stood on the pavement, his heart racing.

The options the brief coach ride had left him with were intolerable.

He could never accept becoming a corrupt police officer, doing Andrew’s bidding, just to protect the identity he’d built for himself.

Nor could he stand resolute and say no. He’d be exposed, everything he’d worked toward, destroyed.

And the Carters, once aware that he still lived, would kill him for his betrayal, without a doubt.

Not to mention the most significant risk of all, the one that weighed the heaviest on him: Leo’s life.

He had vowed to protect her, and he would, no matter what price he wound up paying.

When a man passing by on the pavement bumped into his shoulder, Jasper blinked. He started walking across the bridge toward the north bank, half wishing Andrew had gutted him and thrown him into the Thames after all.