In the Eye of the Storm (Storm and Silence 2)

‘Someone is following us!’

Mr Ambrose didn’t even bother to turn around. Tugging on my arm, he dragged me along with him.

‘Of course they are.’

‘But all your talk about remaining inconspicuous and hidden… I thought we’d gotten away so far with being Mr and Mrs Thomson!’

‘We have. Those men who are following us work for me.’

‘For you?’

‘Certainly. As do the me

n following them.’

‘Wait a minute… you have men following us?’

‘Correct.’

‘Why?’

‘To protect us, of course.’

‘And you have men following the men who are following us?’

‘Also correct.’

‘For heaven’s sake, why?’

‘To protect the men who are following us, of course.’

‘Do they know about it?’

‘Certainly not.’

Something in my brain made click. ‘Just in case they turn out to be traitors and try to attack us instead of protecting us.’

‘You, my dear,’ Mr Ambrose told me, throwing me a look out of his dark eyes that made me shiver from top to bottom, ‘are a wife after my own heart.’

Amazingly, he actually sounded like he meant it. And, blasted fool that I was, I couldn’t help but grin with pride.

A wife after my own heart, he said!

Bloody hell, what was wrong with me? I was not married to him! I wasn’t married to anyone, and certainly intended to keep it that way!

‘And what if someone attacks us from the front?’ I asked, forcing my thoughts back on the matter at hand.

‘Then they will run into a group of energetic, knife-wielding individuals whom you have not noticed yet. Something similar would happen to anyone trying to attack our flanks. I know how to take precautions, Wife.’

‘I can see that, Dick.’

His hold on my arm tightened.

‘Do - not - call - me - that!’

I thought it perhaps wiser not to reply to this with a prim ‘Yes, Dick.’ Not in a dark alley where I could be strangled without anybody raising an alarm, anyway.

‘And Karim?’ I asked instead.