The person she’d be killing was the man she loved.
Her guide turned down an alley and Johanna followed, alert to every movement. The place to which One-eye brought her was a boarded-up house with cracked and staring eyes for windows. Even rats must avoid the place. There was just enough moonlight, filtered through fog, for Johanna to make out the door.
She turned to speak to One-eye, but he’d already slipped away. His services were no longer required, and she suspected that he had no desire to meet his master face-to-face.
The steps leading up to the door were fragile with rot, and Johanna moved carefully. To walk in unannounced would not be wise. Fenris was unstable, unpredictable. He might turn on May if angered.
Gott in Himmel, if he hurt her—
She knocked. The door creaked open. A single brown eye peered through the crack.
“Johanna?” May whispered.
“May!”
May pulled the door inward and rushed over the threshold into Johanna’s arms. “You’re here! You came to find me.”
Peering past May into the lightless room, Johanna couldn’t see anyone else inside. She smoothed back May’s unkempt hair.
“Are you all right, mein Liebling?”
“Yes.” A shiver worked its way through her thin body. “I’m all right.”
“Let me look at you.” She held May’s shoulders and examined her. There were no signs of damage except a bit of dirt and a general dishevelment. Fenris hadn’t hurt her—and he’d left her alone.
To remain standing on the doorstep, in plain sight, was the height of folly, but Johanna didn’t wish to be trapped within should Fenris return. She led May just inside the door and half closed it.
“Where is he?” she asked, deliberately using the unspecified pronoun. She didn’t know how much May had observed of Quentin’s dual nature, or how well she had dealt with it.
“He went out,” May said. “To find my father.”
So Fenris’s absence was not unmitigated good fortune. “Did he say why?” Johanna asked.
“I think he wants to hurt him.”
Himmel! What unspeakable ordeals had May been through since Fenris had taken her? She’d seen the man she’d thought of as a friend, a protector, become something grotesque and evil. How could she do other than retreat into fits of hysteria or catalepsy?
But she met Johanna’s gaze steadily, her body straight and still. Trusting. Waiting. Expecting Johanna to make everything better again.
She didn’t understand that her physician had discovered the depths of her own weakness and folly.
“We must leave, immediately,” Johanna said. “Is there anything you need to take from this place?”
May didn’t move. “What about my father?”
It was not uncommon for the children of abusive parents to maintain an attachment, even love, for those who had mistreated them. But May hadn’t wanted anything to do with her father. Did she want to protect Ingram, or was she hoping he’d be removed permanently from her life? More likely, she was simply confused, torn by conflicting needs and desires. Who could blame her?
Johanna could see May to a safe place and go to the police. It was a certain death warrant for those men who went after him, for Fenris was more than human. He’d kill without compunction. “I’ll get you to safety,” she told May, “and then I’ll do what I can.”
May buried her face in Johanna’s bodice. “Please don’t leave me alone.”
“Oh, she won’t leave you, Miss Ingram,” said a familiar, masculine baritone. “At least not yet.”
Johanna turned, pushing May behind her. She knew that voice, though his face was in shadow.
Bolkonsky.
He walked through the door and kicked it shut with one well-shod foot. In the semidarkness, his pale hair flowed like tarnished silver to his shoulders. The gun in his hand had the same dull sheen.
“I wish we had met under less unfortunate circumstances, Johanna,” he said, tipping his hat with his free hand. “How was your trip to San Francisco?”
Johanna reached into her pocket. Bolkonsky cocked his gun. “Please hold your hands away from your sides,” he said. “I’d rather not be forced to shoot you.”
She obeyed, stunned at the hatred she felt. “You will not take her. I will not let you.”