Билл Пронзини - The Bags of Tricks Affair

But it would be another few days before she’d be able to return to her professional duties. The lacerations on her hands and the cut on her cheek needed more time to heal. She didn’t ask him if she would be fit to travel next week; she would make the trip to Grass Valley to testify at Lady One-Eye’s trial no matter how she felt. Nothing would prevent it now that she had survived Jeffrey Gaunt’s vicious attempt to silence her.

Memories of those three terrible days of entrapment would plague her for a long time after her wounds were healed. Her first night here she’d had a nightmare in which a horde of rats pursued her through the murky confines of the building, a dream so vivid and terrifying that she’d awakened from it drenched and shaken. There would be others in the future, she knew, as there had been a succession of nightmares after Stephen was killed. But they would not continue indefinitely, any more than had the ones of Stephen calling her name as he lay mortally wounded. Knowledge that justice had been meted out to Gaunt, as it had been meted out to the bandit who’d shot Stephen, would eventually drive them away.

But it must be the right kind of justice. And it was. John’s arrival and account of the confrontation with Gaunt at Lily Dumont’s cottage cheered her all the more.

“I must say I’m relieved,” she said. “I was afraid that once you found him, you might be angry enough to do something rash.”

“Shoot him down like the cur he is?” John shifted in the chair he’d drawn up next to the bed, fluffed his thickening beard. “It occurred to me more than once the past few days to do just that.”

“But you didn’t act on the impulse, even when he panicked and fled. That is what matters.”

“Well, you told me before I left that you had no desire for blood vengeance.”

“Did you restrain yourself only on my behalf, or on yours as well?”

“Both. I discovered I’m not as prone to violence as I thought I might be when I confronted him.”

“I’m glad. If you had killed Gaunt without provocation—”

“I would have been no better than him. Yes, I know.”

“Justice is better served if he suffers the same fate he sought to spare his sister.”

“Agreed. Prison is the proper place for criminals whose bags of tricks have been emptied.” John fluffed at his whiskers again. “I stopped at the Hall of Justice before coming here and filed a formal complaint against Gaunt for kidnapping and attempted murder. There’ll be papers for you to sign before extradition can be arranged.”

“As soon as I’m able,” Sabina said.

“Which shouldn’t be long, judging from how well you look.”

“I look a fright and you know it.”

“Nonsense. After what you’ve been through, you look remarkably healthy. Dr. Jorgensen tells me you have the constitution of a horse.”

She laughed. “A horse! He did not.”

“Well, no, not quite,” John admitted. “His exact words were ‘Mrs. Carpenter has a strong constitution.’ He also said I should be able to take you home tomorrow.”

“Yes, he told me the same— Oh!”

“What’s the matter?” he said, alarmed. “You’re not in pain?”

“No, I just remembered Adam and Eve, my cats. They haven’t been fed since last Friday, they’ll be starving.”

“Oh, but they have been fed more recently than that. I filled their bowls Sunday evening.”

“You did?”

“When I couldn’t find you anywhere, I suspected you’d run afoul of Gaunt... though I never stopped believing you were still alive...”

“John, did you pick the lock on the door to my flat?”

He confessed that he had. “An act of desperation — the slim hope of finding a clue to what happened to you.”

“The first time you’d ever been inside. I suppose you rummaged through all my things?”

“Of course not,” he said indignantly. “Only a cursory examination, and nothing of a personal nature. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Since you fed Adam and Eve, no, not at all.”

“Under normal circumstances I would never have invaded your private space uninvited—”

“I know you wouldn’t.” She smiled to reassure him, then on impulse reached out to place her bandaged hand on his. “John... thank you.”

“For feeding the cats? They were yowling—”

“No, not for that. For all you did to rescue me.”

“I didn’t rescue you, you rescued yourself.”

“From Gaunt’s prison, yes, but I might have died anyway on the marshes if you hadn’t come when you did. Collapsed and frozen to death before I could walk out — I was at the end of my tether. Your frantic search saved my life.”

He said in a softened voice, “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, my dear, to keep you safe.”

Sabina squeezed his hand, paying no heed to the twinges caused by the pressure. Nor I for you, my dear, she thought.