Jenna turned quickly toward the front of the meeting room . . . and lurched. For a long, terrifying moment, the entire room circled like a washing machine on spin cycle. She knew the man who’d appeared, who stepped up to the tall lectern. The last time she’d seen him, he’d levelled a pistol at her head and pulled the trigger. Her mind reeled, partly with the implications of the conversation they’d just overheard. If that’s Lachley and Lachley’s holding a young lady in his house, she can’t be anyone but Ianira Cassondra!
Dr. John Lachely was in a high state of agitation, Jenna realized as the spinning room steadied down. His color ran high and his dark eyes glinted with a touch of madness that left the fine hairs along Jenna’s neck and arms standing erect. She clutched at Noah’s arm. “It’s him!”
The detective gave her a sharp stare, then gripped Marcus by the arm and forcibly held him back. Ianira’s husband had started forward, fists clenched. “Not here!” Noah cautioned sharply. “We’ll sit through the lecture. Then we’ll follow him home.”
Marcus, his own eyes a trifle wild, glared at Noah; then he glanced at the room full of eyewitnesses and subsided. “Very well,” Marcus growled under his breath. “But if he has hurt her, I will kill him!”
“I’ll help you,” Jenna muttered. “I owe that bastard a bullet through the skull!”
“Keep your voice down!” Noah hissed. “And take a seat, for God’s sake, the lecture’s starting.”
Jenna found herself in a chair next to the young Irishman with the fire-eaten eyes, Mr. Yeats. The name was familiar, somehow, from long ago, she couldn’t quite place where or why. Yeats sat glaring across the aisle at Crowley, who listened calmly to the opening of the lecture and ignored the Irishman’s furious stare. Jenna sat wrapped in her own feverish thoughts, hardly paying attention to what Lachley said, and only stirred when Yeats’ friend, the other dark-haired Irishman, muttered, “What on earth can be wrong with him? I’ve never heard such ramblings. He doesn’t make proper sense, half the time.”