One Penny Surprise (Saved By Desire 1)

“Good morning,” Barnaby growled before Luke could speak.

“Is it?” Luke demanded dourly. He threw his friend and colleague a warning look and nodded in the direction of the park. “Come with me.”

“Been an eventful morning, has it?” Barnaby drawled with his brows lifted as he fell into step beside him.

Luke shook his head in disgust. “You have no idea just how badly my morning has gone.”

Careful to keep his voice low for fear of being overhead, he brought Barnaby up to date on the morning’s events while they made their way back to the park.

“So you have no idea who he is?” Barnaby asked curiously.

“Which one? The hider or the corpse?”

“Both. Either.”

“No.”

As they walked, Luke found himself habitually scanning the area for any sign of loiterers, pick-pockets, or people acting strangely, or the man in black. Unfortunately, on this particular morning the only people who appeared to be involved in anything untoward were himself, and the delightful Miss Cleghorne.

“What the hell?” Luke growled as he stared at the spot where he had left Poppy. “Damn it all.”

Barnaby looked at him before he studied the area. “What is it?” He couldn’t see anything amiss.

“They have gone,” Luke murmured in stunned disbelief. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. When his brain did begin to function properly his fierce temper grew - to mammoth proportions. He stared at the spot where he had left the body but, apart from a slight wet patch on the path, there was nothing to indicate that either the body, or Poppy, had been there at all.

“The body? The woman? Where are they?” Barnaby glanced around the empty park with a frown but nothing stirred. Not even the birds tweeted in the trees. There wasn’t even the occasional rustle of twigs and leaves from the woodland creatures.

“Gone,” Luke growled, perplexed. He scanned the trees but couldn’t see either of them. “How in the world did she move him?”

“She has scarpered,” Barnaby said, and didn’t need Luke to nod to confirm it.

“She must have had help,” he groused. Had the man he had just chased left an accomplice behind to help Poppy with the body. “God, I think I have just been taken for an utter fool.”

Barnaby clapped him on the shoulder. “What I want to know is why she has taken the body with her? She must be a really strong woman.”

“She wasn’t. She was no bigger than a sprat; all slender curves and femininity.” Luke scowled at Barnaby when he lifted his brows and smirked. “How in the hell could she drag a dead man around the park?” Luke snapped. “She was struggling to carry that damned carpet bag of hers. She couldn’t hold that and drag a man the size of me, unconscious, wet, and a dead weight around a park without being seen. She just wouldn’t have the strength.”

“She had help.” It wasn’t a question. “How big was she?”

Luke turned to look at his colleague, stunned by the latest turn of ev

ents. “She was just average. Beautiful, but certainly not inclined to drag a body anywhere, even if she was strong enough to do so. I couldn’t even get her to help me search it. She was squeamish – or appeared to be anyway.”

“She didn’t want to be left alone with the corpse. Maybe she didn’t want to be seen handling someone she had killed?” Barnaby shook his head and wondered what the hell Luke had gotten himself in to. “I thought you were after pick-pockets this morning?”

“I was - am,” Luke snapped. “Right now, they are the least of my concerns. They aren’t responsible for the dead body. That body was aristocracy; and bigger than the pick-pocket gang put together.”

“Did you get a good look at the face?”

“Whose? Hers or the body’s?” Luke asked without thinking. He mentally winced when Barnaby’s smile widened.

“Both. Either, but preferably the dead man’s. Just so we can match it up to any reports of missing persons. It would help.”

Luke nodded. “I can draw them,” he said, and rubbed a weary hand down his face. He studied the path beneath their feet. Even the coins and bits he had dragged out of the dead man’s pockets had vanished. Everything had simply disappeared without a trace – as though they had never been there in the first place.

Barnaby’s brows shot upright. “We need to focus on the pick-pockets, Luke. Terrence Sayers is a deep concern of everyone, you know that,” he warned his colleague quietly.

“I know,” Luke replied crisply. “But right now we have a missing corpse. The body of a man who had been murdered this morning because he was still warm when I dragged him out of that river. Not only that but we also have a missing woman too. The pick-pockets were here. They were pestering the woman when I found them. I chased them across the park when the woman screamed.”