“Which one is hers?” she whispered to Cuddy.
He pointed to the one on the far end.
“Stay here and I’ll go to it,” Edilean whispered, but Cuddy shook his head no.
She nodded back in return, letting him know that he couldn’t keep her from doing this.
Reluctantly, Cuddy obeyed her—or seemed to. Ten seconds after she disappeared into the forest, he went after her.
Edilean silently made her way through the woods to the tent that Cuddy had pointed out. Her plan was to sneak inside, put her knife to Tabitha’s throat, and tell her it was either her life or the diamonds.
Edilean put the hilt of the knife in her mouth, and went to her hands and knees to crawl into the tent. Her heart was racing and her breath was coming fast, but she had no doubt whatever that this was what she had to do.
She lifted one side of the blanket tent and looked inside. There Tabitha was, lying on her back, one arm outstretched, and looking as innocent as she told people she was. Just two more feet and she’d be there. When she was at Tabitha’s head, Edilean sat back on her legs, lifted the knife and—
The next second, she was grabbed from behind by the waist and swung out of the tent and into the cold air. For a moment she thought it was Cuddy who’d grabbed her, but she saw it was a man she’d never seen before. He had black whiskers and his breath was foul.
“Let me go!” She fought against him.
“You expectin’ him to come save you?” the man asked, his big arm tightening around her waist.
She looked to one side and saw Cuddy lying on the ground in a heap. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
“You’ve killed him!”
“Naw, he’s all right.”
Edilean saw Cuddy move, but she couldn’t tell how badly he was injured.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” Tabitha asked as she crawled out of the tent and saw the man holding a squirming, fighting Edilean.
“Came to kill you,” the man said, his voice highly amused. “Woulda too, if I hadn’t caught her.”
Tabitha looked genuinely surprised. “You wanted to kill me? Why?”
“You have something of mine,” Edilean said.
“Angus ain’t here.”
“I’m not—” Edilean gave a double backward hit with her sharp elbows to the man, and he released her.
“I oughta—”
“Go away,” Tabitha said to the man, dismissing him as though he weren’t of any worth. She looked back at Edilean. “I didn’t take your man.”
“He’s a bit big even for you to slip into your pocket,” Edilean said, and she heard someone suppress a giggle. She didn’t look around her, but she could hear sounds of people moving about as they got up to watch the drama.
Tabitha picked up Edilean’s knife off the ground and looked at it in shock. “Why would you come out here to do this? My life ain’t bad enough for you?”
“Bad life?” Edilean said in anger. “You told Angus a lie about why you’d been transported and you ran away from the man who paid your bond. It seems to me that you have caused the bad, not them.”
Tabitha glared at Edilean, her eyes flashing in the moonlight, then she pulled down the side of her blouse to reveal her shoulder. Even in the moonlight Edilean could see the red scars. “He branded me! Put his initials on my shoulder with a red-hot branding iron. He did it because I told him that I’d work for him but not sleep with him. Yes, I’m a thief but I’m not a whore.”
Edilean refused to be swayed by the thick, raw mark on Tabitha’s shoulder because she saw a flash in the moonlight. Tabitha was wearing all three of the bracelets from the parure that Edilean had given Angus.
“Those are mine,” Edilean said, nodding toward the bracelets.
Frowning in puzzlement, Tabitha touched the diamonds, then she looked at Edilean in disbelief. “These are real?”