Page 99 of To Catch A Rogue

Outside, there came the sound of startled yelling and a woman's scream.

"Stay here!" Gemma grabbed the carriage strap—now hanging from the roof—and kicked up, dislodging the door in their current ceiling. Then she was swinging through it, despite the hampering crush of her skirts. If he knew Gemma, she'd probably strapped half an arsenal to her thighs.

Obsidian vaulted through the door too, leaving him to tend to Lark.

"You're bleeding," Charlie whispered, turning her chin this way and that.

"Just a scratch," she said, struggling to sit up. "This is why I don't like skirts. How the hell did Gemma just do that in a bloody corset?"

If she was complaining about her wardrobe, then she had to be all right.

Pistol fire echoed in the night.

"What's going on?"

Charlie stood, and stepping up onto the plush carriage seat, he peered through the door. Fire blazed in the night, revealing the second carriage that had been carrying Byrnes, Ingrid, Kincaid and Ava. The entire undercarriage was ablaze, and he could see people swarming out of the shadowed streets, clad in dark cloaks and wearing some sort of mask.

They were on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, and he was fairly certain someone had just used an explosive device on the second carriage. The impact had thrown them askew.

"We're being ambushed. Stay here." Charlie heaved himself up through the door and perched on the new roof of the carriage.

"Like hell." Lark followed him, and he bent to haul her through the open door.

Mayhem ruled.

Several muzzles flashed fire to his left, and Gemma returned it, aiming coolly around the side of the carriage. He could see Byrnes and Ingrid fighting back to back, and Kincaid dropped a masked figure with a massive punch.

"This way," he said, dropping Lark off the edge of the carriage.

He followed, using his body to shield her. A knife glinted in her hand, her brass knuckles gleaming over her fingers.

A man came hurtling out of nowhere, clutching a sword. A second later, Charlie's cutthroat razors were in hand, and he was ducking beneath the man's swing and gutting him. A quick flick of the wrist and the razor in his right hand dashed across the man's throat.

Then there was a blur coming from his right. He had no time to deal with the first attacker, though he could hear Lark grunting as a body slammed against another body.

By the time he put the second man down—this one was definitely only human—she was wiping her dagger on the first's cloak. "Blue blood," she said, by way of explanation, and the spreading crimson tide in the center of the man's chest revealed she'd stabbed him in the heart. "What did Blade tell you?"

"Don't leave injured enemies at your back. Sorry. I was a little busy."

"Good thing you've got me."

Lark knelt and tugged the silver engraved mask off the man's face. It looked like some sort of ravening creature. "He's a Black Wolf."

He saw the impact of it slide over her.

"Nikolai's men."

"Yes." There was no emotion in her voice. Just a cold sort of determination. "I made a mistake. He's Sergey's creature through and through."

Was it a mistake to yearn for a family's love when you'd thought you'd lost it?

"I would have made the same mistake if I were you," he said, then turned and looked at the bloodied streets.

A horse bolted toward them, a man carrying a struggling bundle in his arms. Shit. Ava. He recognized her green skirts and frightened face, and made a grab for the reins. Sparks sprayed off the horse's hooves as it shied away from him, and its shoulder slammed directly into his.

Charlie hit the cobblestones, the breath smashing out of him.

No time to catch his breath.