Runaway (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 4)

Molly lifted her brows at him while her mind raced. “I have one thing. It was a locket of my mother’s. He will recognise it, I am sure of it. He wanted to keep it but because he tends to lose most of his things, or damage them, I refused to allow him to take it.”

“It will have to do,” Jasper replied. “Would it be all right if we borrow it? If we find him, we can use it to persuade him to trust us. We will take good care of it.”

“Before you go and fetch it, tell me what your brother was wearing. Has he changed clothes?”

“I don’t know,” Molly replied. “He was wearing a dirty shirt, but he is always dirty. Oscar loves to be outside. He prefers it to being indoors because he gets bored easily.”

“What colour were his breeches?” Jasper asked.

“I don’t know,” Molly whispered. “I can’t remember. I was looking at his head, the set of his shoulders. I know it was him.”

Jasper nodded but knew Molly was already starting to doubt herself. Still, she didn’t admit to the possibility of being wrong. They had to believe she knew that the boy she had seen had been her brother.

“Then we shall just have to go in there and get him back,” Jasper declared to everyone.

Reluctantly, his colleagues nodded.

“I have to come with you,” Molly insisted.

She sighed heavily when her suggestion was met with a chorus of objections from the men. Patiently, she heard them out before she lifted a hand and studied each man in turn.

“I am afraid, gentlemen, that I am not going to be swayed in this. I know you work for the government, but I am not a criminal. As far as I know I am not under arrest and am therefore under no obligation to do what you tell me to do. While I confess that I didn’t notice what breeches Oliver was wearing, I do know that he was terrified. He had to have been to run away like he did. I know that if I can just speak to him, I can persuade him to come home with me.”

“You are not going back to Leicestershire,” Jasper retorted, unprepared to argue over it.

“I know, but I have to get him out of Rigley Row.”

Jasper sighed. He struggled to find the right way to ask her that wouldn’t offend her only to find that nothing seemed right. In the end, he came right out with it.

“Had your uncle ever spent time in gaol?”

Molly stared at him. “My father always said my uncle was the ‘black sheep’ of the family. He lived down here, and we lived up in Leicestershire. His life was completely different to ours. I don’t think we had much in common, but we did keep in touch with the occasional letter. I have no idea if my uncle spent any time in gaol. My father certainly never mentioned it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

Jasper nodded. “It doesn’t really matter. It would have helped to know if he might have had a criminal connection in the area, though.”

“But what relevance does that have with Oscar? My uncle died a while ago,” Molly murmured.

“It helps because if your uncle corresponded with your father when he was alive he might have left clue about who his friends were. Oscar might have heard or read about them and decided to come here to find help,” Jasper sighed.

He knew it was highly unlikely but had no idea what other reason there could be for the lad being so foolish. He knew his colleagues were all biting their tongues because none of them wanted to admit that it looked like the lad had been kidnapped.

“Neither Oscar or I really knew our uncle. Besides, Oscar cannot read,” Molly replied with a shrug.

“Then we have to consider that Oscar is being held in Rigley Row by his captor. We just have to find out where that captor keeps his victims,” Jasper sighed.

“I have to come too,” Molly insisted.

“I am not going to take you into the most dangerous place in London,” Jasper insisted.

“You don’t have to take me anywhere. I can go there alone,” Molly retorted coldly. She suddenly wondered about the wisdom of accepting the clothing off him. While she had been deeply touched by his thoughtfulness, and indeed he had seen to all her needs, she wondered whether he considered it gave him leverage to try to tell her what to say, think or do.

“Let me put it this way. If you don’t allow me to come with you then I will go anyway, whether you like it or not.” With that, Molly pushed away from the table and stalked out of the room but was very much aware that she left a stunned, decidedly disgruntled silence in her wake.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I don’t like this one bit,” Niall murmured quietly later that night.

The contrast between the road behind them and the emptiness of Rigley Row was unnerving. Everything was so deathly quiet the place felt unoccupied, but they knew it wasn’t.