These Violent Delights (These Violent Delights 1)

“Perhaps Miss Juliette was mistaken?” another Scarlet tried.

“How could she mistake the retrieval of a giant insect?” Kathleen muttered, perplexed. Still, there was no use searching any further if it was not here. Perhaps it had been crushed underfoot, so harshly that it was nothing more than specks of dust now, invisible to their searching eye.

Kathleen sighed. “Never mind,” she said. She pointed to the corpse. “Move him out?”

The men hurried to comply. Left to her own devices, Kathleen took one last inventory of the scene, eyeing the bloodstains where the wharf started. She nearly missed it, but under an overturned wooden box, she spotted a briefcase lying atop yet another small clump of dead insects.

“Let’s have a look at you,” Kathleen muttered, pulling the briefcase free. Without thinking, she clicked it open, but she clicked it the wrong way, causing the lid to immediately flop in the other direction and spill forth its contents. The items hit the floor with a thud, drawing a concerned shout from the Scarlets nearby.

“Don’t worry!” Kathleen called quickly. She dropped to a crouch and hurried to clean up the clutter. “I am clumsy.”

She shuffled through the papers, snagging them before they could blow away with the wind. But before she could slot them back into the briefcase, her eye caught on the letter at the very top, one that was postmarked with COPY, signaling the paper to be a receipt of something that Paul had sent out. In the top corner, the address of the sendee placed the destination of this letter in the French Concession.

Kathleen scanned the short message.

And at once, in utter and abject horror, she dropped everything in her arms again.

* * *

The basket dangling on her arm, Juliette knocked on the door to the Scarlet safe house, glancing over her shoulder. She felt assured that she had not been followed—she had checked every three steps on her way here—but still, she turned anyway, ruling out any chance.

Shuffling came from within the apartment. The sound was loud, the motion immediately drifting in Juliette’s direction due to the tiny size of the apartment and the low, squat ceiling.

“Hurry up,” Juliette called, banging on the door again. “I don’t have all day.”

The door swung open. Marshall Seo raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you?”

“I’m a busy person,” Juliette said firmly. She motioned for him to step back so she could enter and shut the door firmly behind her. This was a safe house rarely used, so rarely—given its location in the poorest parts of the city—that it did not have running water, nor any amenities past a bed. It did, however, have a dead bolt on the door and a convenient window for jumping, should the occasion rise. It did provide a place where no one would come looking.

“Did you bring me water?” Marshall asked. “I’ve been so damn thirsty, Juliette—”

Juliette brought out the giant canister of water, tossing it onto the table so that it made an unsavory clatter, daring Marshall to say anything more. He grinned.

“I also brought food,” Juliette said. “Because I do not wish for you to starve to death.”

Marshall peered into the basket, inspecting the little bags. “Only oranges? I prefer apples.”

Juliette sighed. “For a dead man,” she muttered, “you sure are annoying.”

“Speaking of which…” Marshall wandered off, then plopped down on a rickety chair by the wall. He folded his arms across his chest, wincing imperceptibly when it pulled at his fresh wound. “When can I resurrect?”

It had been a gamble on Juliette’s part. A matter of timing, a matter of trust—in Marshall, that he would know what she was trying to have him do, and in Lourens, in believing the serum she had stolen would really work as he said. It had been a matter of framing her sleight of hand when she pulled that jar from her pocket, when she tugged Marshall’s hand away from his bullet wound and shoved the jar into his palm with the lid off. A matter of hitting him so he could collapse with his arms over his face, unseen while he drank it. A matter of taking the bullets out of her pistol so it fired only with the sound, stopping the barrel from pushing a second bullet into Marshall.

Then it had been a matter of pure luck. Of Juliette running into the main office and finding one doctor who had not evacuated, who was sorting through her filing cabinet with no concern about the workers flooding the hallways. Of Juliette convincing the doctor to operate on Marshall despite his lack of heartbeat, hauling his body into the surgery room right before the protestors spotted them in the adjacent corridor, and chaining down those doors until the workers got tired and left that wing of the hospital. The bullet that Tyler fired came out quickly—having only embedded itself shallowly at the skin of Marshall’s ribs—and the doctor stitched Marshall up. Juliette had promised her money to keep her quiet, but the doctor had wrinkled her nose, not even knowing who Juliette was.

“Give me some time,” Juliette said quietly. “Lie low until I can figure out what to do with Tyler. Until he believes entirely that I was merely tricking Roma.”

Marshall narrowed his eyes then. “How much of it was a trick?”

Juliette looked away. “Is this really the time for defending your fellow brother-in-arms?”

“I’m a dead man, darling. What’s the harm in answering the question?”

What was the harm? Only her dignity.

“None of it, Marshall Seo,” Juliette said. She wiped her eye quickly. “I didn’t have to save you. I could have shot you right through the head.”

“But you saved me,” Marshall said. “Because you love him.”