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So, when her friend Nivedita Brooks invited her to a meeting of the Women’s Equality Alliance, she’d jumped at the chance.

Not only did Leo believe in the cause, but focusing on the dearth of women’s rights in England, especially the right to vote, gave her another injustice toward which to direct her anger.

One that had nothing to do with Jasper Reid.

The women at the WEA meetings were forward-thinking and bright, and most had accepted Leo even after learning she worked as an assistant in her uncle’s city morgue.

Some, of course, kept their distance, choosing another row in which to sit, but it hadn’t offended her much, and it hadn’t bothered Dita at all.

Most of the WEA members, including their president, Mrs. Geraldine Stewart, were welcoming.

In the past few months while she’d been attending meetings, her uncle had supportively pointed out that it was good for her to be a part of something that wasn’t connected to either the morgue or the Metropolitan Police.

As she reached the doors to the entrance lobby, Leo turned her mind to the WEA meeting that she and Dita were to attend that week. But as one of the doors opened, her legs and heart came to an abrupt stop.

Detective Inspector Jasper Reid and Detective Sergeant Roy Lewis entered the lobby of Scotland Yard together.

Jasper locked eyes with Leo, and whatever he was in the middle of saying to the detective sergeant fell off.

He stopped moving. Leo’s throat cinched as she took in the sight of him.

His hooded, dark green eyes, his slightly rumpled clothing, and the dark blond stubble on his cheeks and chin.

He’d either forgotten to shave that morning, or he was beginning to grow a beard.

A sense of helpless misery pierced her chest.

Sergeant Lewis tipped the brim of his hat to her before moving past them and further into the building.

At the clearing of Constable Woodhouse’s throat from where he stood behind the reception desk, Leo’s sudden paralysis lifted.

Her heart thrashed against her ribs as she averted her welling eyes and stepped forward again.

“Leo, wait.”

“I’m in a hurry, Inspector.”

“I suspect you’re only in a hurry to avoid me.”

The accusatory tone brought her to a standstill. She whipped around, the coals of her temper stoked to life. “Yes, I am, although that turns out to have been a complete failure.”

Jasper glanced toward Constable Woodhouse, who was openly listening to their exchange, then stepped toward Leo and lowered his voice. “It has been months, Leo. We need to talk.”

She squared her shoulders as fury prickled under her skin. “I’m not ready.”

The muscles along Jasper’s jaw tensed. “I didn’t think it possible to underestimate your propensity to be mulish, but it seems I have.”

Her lips parted on a gust of disbelief. “You have no right to be upset.”

She barely suppressed kicking him in the shin before she turned for the doors again.

“Leo,” Jasper pleaded. “I’m asking you to stop.”

She didn’t know why she complied. Maybe it was because, as furious as she was with him, as intent as she’d been to uphold her vow to never speak to him again…she missed him, which only made her more upset. Although this time, with herself .

He whisked off his bowler and, more quietly than before, said, “I think it is high time we spoke. Not here, of course?—”

“No, not here.” Leo struggled to keep her voice equally soft but managed to whisper, “If anyone here found out why I haven’t spoken to you in two months, you’d be sacked, wouldn’t you? You’ve lied to everyone, not just to me.”

He pressed his lips thin, his expression injured and subdued. Her eyes, already brimming with tears, began to sting. Blast! She needed to get out of there before they fell.

Leo rushed outside into the courtyard behind the building.

She filled her lungs with warm, late spring air and blinked back hot tears.

What she’d said was true: Jasper hadn’t just lied to her.

He was related to one of the most powerful crime families in London, and surely, if anyone within the Met were to learn of it, he’d be released from duty at once.

How Jasper had managed to come face-to-face with Andrew Carter in March during the investigation into the murder of his wife, Gabriela, and not be recognized was beyond her comprehension.

Had Andrew known who he was? Or had Jasper changed so drastically since the age of thirteen that his own relative did not know him?

It was just one of the dozens of questions she’d been stewing over.

Another was whether the late Chief Superintendent Gregory Reid had known the truth about him.

The Inspector had rescued Leo from the attic and taken her in as a ward while searching for her aunt and uncle, Flora and Claude Feldman.

At that time, Jasper had been a runaway from the East End, who’d been arrested for thievery.

But after a show of heroics at Scotland Yard—stopping a drunkard from colliding with nine-year-old Leo—he piqued the Inspector’s interest, and Gregory Reid had taken in Jasper as well.

He welcomed Jasper into his home, into his life, and loved him like a son. Leo couldn’t bear the thought that Jasper might have lied to the Inspector too.

The courtyard buzzed with commotion. Officers, both in uniform and plain clothes, were arriving and departing, and hansom cabs were lined up, ready for hire.

Scotland Yard was a hub of activity, and in the past, she had always felt a pinch more alive whenever she was there.

Now, however, it was a place she only wished to evade.

Jasper was the reason, and she bitterly held it against him.

Leo increased her pace, eager to return to the morgue.

There, the next postmortem report would distract her, and she could push Jasper and his lies from her mind. For a little while, at least.

Up ahead, a familiar constable crossed under the arch that led into the courtyard behind headquarters.

For several months, Police Constable John Lloyd had been courting Dita, and Leo would often join them when they went across the river to Striker’s Wharf, a nightclub and dance hall.

John was an affable fellow and usually had a smile for Leo whenever he saw her.

But now, as she walked toward him, tension creased his brow.

A fresh bruise discolored his swollen left eye, and gashes on his cheek and bottom lip were crusted with dried blood.

Oddly enough, he wasn’t wearing his policeman’s uniform.

His civilian clothes appeared rumpled, and in his left hand, he carried a brown leather valise.

Leo slowed. It looked to be a lady’s valise, trimmed with floral embroidery.

Only about ten or fifteen yards separated them, but Constable Lloyd had yet to see her.

Leo lifted her arm to hail him, and his attention clapped onto her.

He stopped walking as abruptly as if he’d smacked into a wall. Then, he spun on his heel and started away in the direction from which he’d come.

“Constable Lloyd!” she called, worry mixing with curiosity. What on earth was he doing?

Beyond the archway that led into the yard, a man wearing a brown wool cap pushed off from the iron hitching post he’d been leaning against and stood to attention.

His scowl was fierce, Leo noticed, and he seemed to be directing it straight at Constable Lloyd.

The man shook his head, as if to say, “ Don’t . ”

Before she could think twice about the man, a pulse of light blinded her.

A violent, crushing blast lifted her feet from the ground.

Heat raced over her skin and through her hair, and the brutal percussion of an explosion thudded through her chest. The strike of it emptied Leo’s lungs even before she landed hard on her back, cracking her head against the ground.

The world went dark and still and silent.

She came to—how much later she was unable to tell—with a shrill chime filling her ears, followed by a burrowing pain.

Slowly, she lifted her hand to her throbbing left ear.

Acrid smoke filled her nose and throat, and she coughed as her eyes fluttered open.

A river of smoke flowed over her, with pockets of blue sky cutting through it, then disappearing again as the black haze blotted them out.

Bomb.

It was a bomb.

Muted shouts filtered through the strident ringing in her ears.

And then, Jasper was hovering over her. He was all she could see, his lips forming her name, his dark green eyes filled with stark panic.

She tried to sit up but found it impossible.

In the next second, she was in the air again, this time firmly locked in Jasper’s arms. As he carried her back toward the building, her vision swam, and a surge of nausea gripped her.

For over his shoulder, sprawled upon the ground, lay Police Constable John Lloyd.

Or what remained of him.