Page 32 of Daredevil Lady and the Mysterious Millionaire (The Hidden Hearts Collection #3)
Eleven
Z eke Morrison felt as if the top of his skull were going to explode.
But considering the pain that thundered like the strokes of a hundred hammers, the loss of his head might prove a blessing.
For what seemed an eternity he had been conscious of nothing but mind-numbing agony, mists of darkness webbing his eyes the few times he tried to open them.
The effort to do so had proved so great, he had given over trying.
But slowly the pain receded enough to allow him awareness of other things—the feel of silk beneath his cheek, the heavy odor of cheap perfume, so strong it made him want to retch.
He remembered enough to know he had sprawled out on Rory’s sofa to spend the night.
But such a cloying scent had nothing to do with the riot of springtime, the freshness that was Aurora Rose. Something wasn’t right.
He managed to raise his hand to his head, flinching as his fingers came in contact with a huge knot swelling on his scalp.
He eased his eyes open, a fraction at a time.
All was a dizzying blur, but eventually the room stopped spinning.
He was surrounded not by the cozy warmth of Rory’s parlor, but an atmosphere far different.
Moth-eaten velvet curtains blocked out most of the light, for which Zeke was grateful. His gaze roved around the chamber, taking in the tawdry flocked wallpaper, the cheap gilt trim on the bedposts and dresser. Somehow it all fit well with the stink of the perfume.
Zeke blinked in recognition, not of this particular place, but of similar establishments he had frequented. He knew a bedroom in a brothel when he saw one.
He could almost hear the echo of Sadie’s voice scolding. Johnnie, why must you have anything to do with bad girls like those?
“This time, lady, I swear I’m innocent,” Zeke murmured. How had he come to be here? Not by his own power, of that he was certain. He couldn’t even remember leaving Rory’s flat.
He shifted on the lumpy mattress, his head throbbing with the effort to remember. It had been too warm in Rory’s parlor. He had opened the window, climbed up to the roof.
The roof! Footsteps behind him, the thug with the jagged scar, the heavy club crashing down—it all came back to Zeke in a blinding flash.
Attacked by the same man twice in one night?
It made no sense. Obviously, the scarred man had trailed Zeke to Rory’s flat and lurked in the street below, waiting for him to leave.
When Zeke had climbed up to the roof, the thug must have spotted him and followed.
In Zeke’s experience, pick purses usually weren’t so persistent.
He didn’t know what this was all about. He was only sure of one thing—he had to get out of here.
Zeke struggled to raise himself. But at that moment, he heard the scrape of a heavy boot, the chink of a key as someone unlocked the bedchamber door.
Too weak to risk further conflict, Zeke felt it might be better to lie still. Closing his eyes, he feigned unconsciousness as the door swung open. The floorboards creaked, and Zeke sensed someone standing over him.
He risked peering beneath his lashes enough to see who it was—two men, undoubtedly the same two who had assaulted him earlier.
The ugly one with the scarred chin leaned closer. “Hey, I thought I saw him move. I better give him another thunk.”
Zeke tensed, keeping himself motionless with great difficulty. To his relief the second man intervened. “Naw, stupid. He’s supposed to wake up.”
“Yeah?” the scarred man grunted. “Well, I ‘like none of it, all this play-acting and games. This feller’s too dangerous. Damn near broke my jaw before. I shoulda just slit his throat the first time we jumped him.”
“Good thing you didn’t. The boss man would’ve been mad as hell. He might not have paid us. He wants him alive for now.”
The voices faded and Zeke heard the door close, telling him he had been left alone again. He tried to clear his disordered thoughts, make sense of what he had just heard. The boss man wants him alive for now.
So he had been right. This series of attacks was no coincidence, no minor attempt at thievery, but part of some more sinister plan directed by a person who had not as yet revealed himself.
It would seem you have an enemy, Zeke, my boy.
There was nothing new about that. In the old days, he could have taken his pick of any number of rival gang members who might have wanted to see him dead.
Now that he was a respected pillar of the community, that was supposed to be all behind him.
It had been a long time since he had even been threatened.
Not unless one counted Charles Decker’s pathetic bluster.
Zeke’s lips curled in contempt as an image of the politician rose in his mind, the weaselly fellow sitting in Zeke’s office hemming and hawing, while he had hinted that Zeke should drop his support of Stanley Addison or else he would be sorry.
All bluff. Or so Zeke had thought. He still had difficulty picturing Decker, in his natty checked business suit, dealing with street toughs and arranging something so desperate as abduction, possibly murder.
Yet Decker had been hard-pressed of late. Any rat when cornered would bite. Maybe Zeke had been foolish to underestimate the man.
Only one thing was clear. He would find out nothing lying here in some night chippie’s bed. Nothing except how they intended for him to die.
Luckily his captors had not taken the trouble to bind him. Whoever was paying the scarred fellow wasn’t getting much value for his dollar. The thug wasn’t that good in a fight, nor was he overburdened with brains.
This time when Zeke struggled to rise, it still hurt, but his head didn’t swim so bad. He made it to a sitting position, the ache behind his eyes settling to a dull throb. Hell, he always had had a hard head.
Swinging his legs off the bed, he planted his feet on the floor and nearly stepped on someone.
Startled, Zeke drew back, glancing down and realizing he was not the room’s only captive. Sprawled on his back lay a young man with waves of wheat-gold hair, staring at the ceiling, glassy-eyed, the sensitive contours of his face gone rigid.
Zeke’s throat tightened with recognition. “Addison!”
The shock of seeing the attorney somehow numbed Zeke’s own aches. Shaking off what remained of his confusion, he sank down to his knees beside the man.
He didn’t need the absence of a heartbeat or even the sight of the dark red pool on the attorney’s slender chest to know. Addison was dead.
Addison, with all his muddleheaded ideals that Zeke half-admired and was half-driven crazy by. Addison, his blue eyes empty now, with all his dreams snatched away.
Zeke rocked back on his heels, feeling sick.
It was not the first time he had confronted death, even in its more violent forms. Why did this one wrench so hard at his gut?
He barely knew Stanley Addison, yet he felt pierced with a sense of loss.
He was actually shaking. His fingers trembled as he moved to close those gentle, unseeing eyes.
As his hand dropped back to his side, Zeke struck against something hard, half-protruding from beneath the bed. Grasping it, Zeke pulled the object out, only to find his fingers curling about the thick handle of a knife, the blade encrusted with blood. His sorrow gave way to anger.
“God damn it. God damn them all to hell!” He didn’t know who, but someone was going to pay for this.
At that moment, the door to the room swung wide. Zeke would have given every last cent he possessed for it to be the scarred thug, or better still the mysterious and cowardly “boss man” who had yet to show his face.
Instead he stared upward into the haggard features of a buxom woman, clad in a scanty negligee. She gasped as stared at Addison’s blood stained body and then at Zeke, the knife still poised in his hand.
From then on everything seemed to happen by prearranged cues. The girl backed out of the door, screeching with a melodramatic flair that would have done credit to Maude Adams.
“Oh, help. Murder! Police.”
Flinging her hands into the air, the girl vanished, still screaming. Zeke dropped the knife, ready to plunge after her, only to hesitate. It seemed somehow obscene to abandon Addison, leave him in a place like this.
A ridiculous qualm, for there was nothing he could do for the young man now, only live long enough himself to see the murder avenged.
With one last look at the attorney’s absurdly youthful features, Zeke staggered out into the corridor.
It was already filling up with women, ladies of pleasure in all stages of undress, straggly hair, pale cheeks devoid of rouge, purple hollows beneath their eyes.
The first girl had already raised the alarm, and they all fluttered about, shrilling like a flock of frightened starlings.
“Oh, there he goes. The murdering fiend!”
Zeke’s appearance set off a fresh series of shrieks.
He wanted to clutch his ears as he bolted down a rickety flight of steps.
He expected at any moment to come up against the thug with the scarred chin, or some other burly rogue bent on preventing his escape.
But he encountered no one until he reached the small foyer below.
The front door was flung open to admit a blue-coated officer.
Zeke gaped at the sight of the dapper Sergeant O’Connell. He would’ve been prepared to wager that the policeman had never responded to a distress call so fast in his life. He was glad for once the copper was doing his job.
“O’Connell. Good thing you’re here, There’s a man dead upstairs and?—”
To Zeke’s astonishment, O’Connell leveled his pistol at him. “Halt or I’ll shoot.” Not waiting for Zeke’s response, he began cocking the hammer.
Although startled, Zeke was quick enough to duck. Instead of plugging him through the head, the shot whistled past his ear, shattering a gilt-framed mirror behind him.