Jade Star (Star Quartet 4)

“I still don’t like this,” Brent said.

Saint shrugged, his thoughts moving ahead to his confrontation with Jameson Wilkes.

Jules felt numb. She’d spent the entire morning hating herself for her wretched helplessness. Hawkins had eyed her again, but she realized she wasn’t afraid of him, nor was she afraid of Wilkes, not anymore.

She was afraid for Michael. He would come, she knew he would come. She didn’t know what to do.

“Ah,” Wilkes said, an odd relieved tone in his voice, “I do believe your precious husband has arrived.”

Jules bounded to her feet and rushed toward the cave entrance, screaming, “Michael! No! Go away!”

Wilkes jerked her backward and she landed in the dirt on her bottom. She scrambled to her feet.

“You stay put or I’ll put a bullet through him before you can even see him.”

Jules believed him. Oh, Michael, she thought, closing her eyes a moment, why did you come? Why do you have to be so noble?

She prayed that Byrony was all right.

Then she heard his voice, strong and deep, coming from below.

“Wilkes! Can you hear me?”

“Good afternoon, Dr. Morris,” Wilkes shouted down. “I see you brought your friends. Leave them down there and come up alone!”

I’ve got to do something! Without conscious thought, Jules rushed at Wilkes, clutching at the gun in his belt. He whirled about, caught her hand, and struck her with the flat of his palm.

She staggered back, and he came toward her, drawing his gun as he stalked her.

Saint felt the barrel of the gun in the small of his back. He didn’t pause, but continued walking until he came into the cave entrance.

“Here he is, Mr. Wilkes,” Hawkins said, and gave Saint a shove.

Saint blinked rapidly to adjust his eyes to the dim interior of the cave. Wilkes was holding Jules in front of him, one arm across her breasts, the gun in his other hand.

“Hello, Dr. Morris,” Wilkes said. “I have wanted to meet you, indeed I have. I believe it was you who clipped my jaw.”

“I was hoping,” Saint said calmly, his eyes boring into Wilkes’s face, “that I’d broken your jaw that night at the Crooked House. Did I?”

“No, no, you didn’t. Of course, I have heard that you aren’t a violent man,” he added, his eyes boring into Saint’s.

“I’m not. But I realized months ago that I should have killed you.” He shrugged, his eyes roving over his wife’s strained face. “Then again, I’m supposed to save lives. You have always posed me a difficult problem, philosophically, at least.”

“Stay where you are, Dr. Morris!” Wilkes pressed the gun against Jules’s left breast.

Saint didn’t move. He met Jules’s wildly frightened eyes. “Are you all right, love?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, yes, of course. You shouldn’t have come, Michael,” she said, her voice an agonized whisper.

“I’m your husband, little fool.” He met Wilkes’s eyes. “I am her husband, you know, in all ways. Now, what do you want, Wilkes?”

The gun jerked and Saint froze.

“You took her from me,” Wilkes said in a low, hoarse voice, the pain in his belly nearly bending him double. God, he’d just had as much opium as he could take and still be coherent. “I wanted her and you stole her from me!”

“That isn’t how I seem to remember it,” Saint said slowly. “You were selling her. Hardly the same thing. All you lost was money.”

“I would have gotten her back.”