He began to unbutton his shirt, building a mental picture of Caroline. Petite, with dainty ankles and rounded arms; face as flawless as an angel’s, as lovely as any English aristocrat’s; china-blue eyes…
Dark eyes. Short hair. Long legs and tanned skin and parted lips.
Liam slapped the shirt over the chair, glaring at his unshaven reflection in the mirror. He’d been too long away from his obligations. Once Mac was safely in Napa, he’d have no more of this baffling and troublesome temptation.
He’d make himself into the stable, respectable husband Caroline needed, here in this house, within these walls, confined to a simple domestic life. Tonight’s raid would be his last. No more taking chances, no more adventures, no more meetings with bold, pestiferous, distracting females in the jungle…
His reflection stared back at him, grim and stolid. Liam turned away from the mirror and the man he was to become.
* * *
The Chinatown alley stank of human refuse and the stale odors of cooking. From where he crouched behind a stack of crates, Liam had an unobstructed view of the gated and barred house that was the object of tonight’s raid.
Almost no moonlight reached the alley, and the nearest streetlamp was far away. There were places of concealment everywhere—enough to hide the motley group of raiders: Chen and three other Chinese men like him, who’d lost relatives or friends to the slave trade or to tong bullets; a few policemen who’d come to agree with Liam that there was too much corruption to work within the law; even Irishmen like Liam himself, once known as the principal enemies of the Chinese in San Francisco.
Now they were scattered in a wide arc around the house, each man within signaling distance of the rest. Waiting for the instant when the tong hatchetmen guarding the entrance would be distracted, and the raid could begin.
The girls had arrived on a steamer late that afternoon, twelve of them, some no older than thirteen, each and every one bound for a life of slavery and prostitution in Chinatown or communities in the countryside.
Since the Exclusion Act two years before, it hadn’t been so easy for the tongs and their bribed allies to bring the girls into San Francisco. Not so easy, but far from impossible. At least four of this group had arrived smuggled in crates as freight; others had been carefully coached to convince immigration inspectors that they were native Californians returning from a trip to the land of their ancestors.
There were always men—officials and police—who would take bribes from the wealthy tongs and profit heavily by it. Men who had no pity for the girls and the terrible life of degradation that awaited them.
Two years ago Liam had assembled this little group. What they did was technically illegal, but Liam had no faith in the law to protect these innocents.
He nodded to Chen across the alley. In a minute or two Chen’s niece would make the daunting walk across the street, in full view of the hatchetmen. The chance of seizing another Chinese girl in a town that never had enough of them would be too great a temptation for the tong men to resist.
Liam ground his teeth together and touched the butt of his pistol. Using Mei Ling had been completely against every principle he lived by, but it had been getting increasingly difficult to catch the tong off guard. They didn’t know who carried out the raids—Liam and his men always went masked—but they were more careful than they’d once been. The two heavily armed hatchetmen at the house were proof enough of that.
Only this once, Liam had told Chen. But the girl had insisted with remarkable courage, having at one time been destined for the bagnios herself. And it might be the only way to save the other twelve.
Liam’s thoughts drifted inevitably from Mei Ling to the other two women who had succeeded in plundering his peace of mind.
Hell. He shifted his crouch, stretching a cramped muscle. Every time he swore to himself he wouldn’t think of Mac again, he broke his own oath. What was she doing now? Was she sleeping, or wide awake still cursing him for today’s little drama?