“It will be warmer if we go inside,” he said, even as he followed her as she started down the path. He didn’t like her out here in the cold.

  She shook her head. “Not inside.”

  “We could have met at my office.”

  She shook her head. “Definitely not your office.”

  “Are you afraid someone will remember the time you were there? Raiding the uniform closet? Or the time you blew up the jail?”

  “You’ve no proof of the last one,” she quipped, and he couldn’t help his laugh, or the way he imagined putting his hand to the small of her back and guiding her around the piles of snow the wind had collected.

  But she wasn’t his to touch here, in public. Not even if last night, he’d touched her everywhere, and she’d come apart in his arms and then spent hours in his arms, confessing her secrets.

  I am not a heroine, she’d said to him, and as he watched her make her way upriver, skirts swaying, the idea that this woman did not see how much of a heroine she was—that she might think herself too much or not enough—was madness.

  She was bold and beautiful and brilliant. Captain of her own fate.

  And, he feared, captain of his, as well.

  “You never wear a uniform,” she said, stepping around a pile of snow.

  He held out his arm to keep her stable. “Detectives don’t wear the uniform.”

  “Not wearing it doesn’t seem to hinder you getting what you require.”

  “You’re here, are you not?” he teased, drinking in her smile.

  Once they were at a distance from the tavern, she turned, facing him, the wind whipping her curls into a frenzy, making his fingers itch to smooth them.

  “I have things to tell you,” she said, and he was shocked by the hesitation in the words—hesitation he’d never witnessed in her before.

  Did she not understand that he would never betray her trust? He searched for the right way to settle her. “The message,” he said, moving to block her from the wind. “It was business.”

  “Yes.” She nodded once. Firm. “It was business.”

  “I confess,” he said, trying for levity, disturbed by her seriousness. “I was disappointed.”

  A tiny smile flashed. “I fear you will be even more disappointed when you hear what I have to say.”

  He shook his head. “Imogen. Whatever it is. We are together in it.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded again, as if encouraging herself to go on. She reached into her skirt pocket and extracted a piece of paper. Handed it to him.

  “Another secret message?”

  “Secrets,” she said, shaking her head. “But not a message.”

  He opened it to reveal three names, aristocratic and immensely powerful. Names he had known before he’d seen them that night at the Trevescan ball, in conversation with Commissioner Battersea.

  Beneath each name, a location.

  Bethnal Green. Whitechapel. Spitalfields.

  He immediately recognized the sites of the explosions. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “But we cannot prove it. There is a missing link.”

  He looked down at the list again. “Motive?”

  Imogen looked to the river, pulling the fur over her face. “No. Motives are clear.” She set a finger to the top name. “This one owned the factory where a dozen seamstresses died in a fire last year.” She slid a finger to the next address. “Mayhew’s print shop where the remaining workers met to plan their demands for better conditions.

  “This earl—he is the money behind a bawdy house in Seven Dials. Didn’t care what happened to the girls who worked there, as long as he got his money.” The next address. “When they fought back, saving enough money to run, his muscle exploded the waypoint in Bethnal Green where they were waiting to be smuggled out of the city. And took eight girls with it.”

  Fucking hell. “Linden’s bakery.”

  Another name. “This one is a monster, so untouchable thanks to title and fortune that his wife can’t escape him. But she can keep him from tormenting a new generation.” Two addresses beneath. “He discovered she’d been to O’Dwyer and Leafe’s. Blew it up and went looking for proof so he could have her committed.”

  Tommy’s teeth clenched at the words. “Did he succeed?”

  She shook her head. “The records were hidden in an underground safe. We got to them before they could.”

  “The morning I found you,” he said, remembering the Duchess of Clayborn climbing into a carriage with a stack of papers.

  A little nod, a flash of surprise that he’d put it together. “Yes.”

  “Why explosives?” He looked to the paper. “He could have had her arrested. O’Dwyer and Leafe, as well.”

  “And risk the scandal?” she asked. “Even if he was willing to bear it . . . the violence is the point. These men . . . they don’t want solutions. They want suffering.”

  He knew it was true even as he loathed it. There, on the paper, a second address. Mithra Singh’s brewery on the Docklands. A flash of memory, O’Dwyer outside. “The clinic moved. You went up against him again.”

  She gave a little shrug. “What else could we do? They’re the ones doing the work—all we can do is stand with them.”

  “You should have come to me,” he said.

  A small, sad smile. “We couldn’t.”

  “The missing link.” Something more. Something more dangerous.

  Imogen nodded. “We didn’t know how they did it. We didn’t know who they were using. But now . . . we do.”

  He reached for her, remembering where they were just in time to keep from touching her. Wishing he hadn’t remembered. Wishing they were inside, anywhere but in full view of the world.

  She reached into her coat pocket. “You said we were together in it,” she said softly, opening her hand to reveal a small gold disk, gleaming in the setting sun. “I fear you will feel differently now.”

  Tommy’s stomach dropped.

  He knew the St. Michael medallion instantly. From Wallace’s lapel. From the drawer in Tommy’s own rooms where he kept the one he did not wear. From countless other policemen.

  He spoke to her hand. “Where did you find it?”

  “Underneath the cistern in the brewery, where Mithra keeps the wheat.”

  “Where I found you,” he said, his gaze rising to meet hers. “Where you were dismantling explosives.”

  Anger flared, hot and nearly unbearable. She could have been killed that night. And by— “Who?”

  “Mithra surprised him, Tommy. He’d set the fire above and had placed the explosives on the lower floor—exactly what you would do if you were trying to blow the whole place to the ground, and anyone who was trying to save it along with it.” A pause. “The fuse in the warehouse matched the fuse I found at the seamstress—fabric.”

  The words shattered through him as his mind raced. “From the uniforms. That’s why you were in the closet.”

  She nodded. “We’ve confirmed the match of the weave. And the chemicals there—the explosive mix—they are the same from the bakery. And the print shop.”

  “Mercury fulminate,” he said.

  She nodded. “And the blasting oil—once I had it in hand, it was easy to match.”

  The weight of the proof was heavy and devastating. And still, he struggled with the shock of the truth. “The men I work with—the ones I’ve trained—” He trailed off, knowing as he spoke that he could not vouch for them all.

  One did not climb the ranks of Whitehall without witnessing the way power consumed people. The way it made different shapes of monsters: Those born with privilege and power, unable to stop themselves from misusing it. And those who had come up on the opposite path—with nothing but strength and hunger—desperate to claim it.

  “These men.” She waved a hand over the files. “We cut off their line to muscle. When Adelaide married her duke, her father agreed to set The Bully Boys straight—”

  “The Bully Boys aren’t straight,” Tommy said. They were the most notorious gang on the South Bank, run by Alfie Trumbull, a criminal with a code, but no discernible conscience. “They’re claiming more turf every day, and giving Whitehall a run for it.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed immediately. “Alfie Trumbull will never cede power. But he’s going to be grandfather to a duke someday, so playing muscle to the aristocracy doesn’t work well for him any longer. That, and he knows that if he came for places the Belles protect, Adelaide and Clayborn will take him down without hesitation.” A long pause. “So the terrible, powerful men who’d used The Bully Boys as hired guns for years . . .”

  “They needed another gang,” Tommy said. “One that would be tempted by proximity to power and unfathomable amounts of money.”

  “Yes. And we think they are paying handsomely for it.”

  He looked directly at her. “Who? How many?”

  “We don’t know. We’re looking for the records.”

  “Where?”

  “In their houses. While they are . . . otherwise occupied.”

  His mind was racing, following the plan. “Occupied with seeing you find a husband.”

  She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “I told you I had no intention of marrying.”

  “Imogen,” he said, hot with anger and denial and a keen, furious faith that she was right. “What you’re into—this isn’t one toff and a handful of thugs.”

  She paused and looked out at the river. “We know very well what we’re into, Tommy. Duchess isn’t even sure we can trust you.”

  He met her eyes, his chest tight.

  “I trust you, though,” she said softly, staring up at him with her enormous brown eyes in her beautiful open face. “What they did to these places. To O’Dwyer and Leafe’s. To Mithra’s warehouse. They could just as easily do it to Maggie’s tavern next. And a dozen others . . . if they knew what we kept at Duchess’s . . .”

  They would come for them. Without question.

  Fear and frustration clouded her gaze. “Tommy—I have to trust you. We are running out of safe spaces. We are running out of people to stand with us.”

  He reached out to her, unable to resist touching her, stroking a finger down her arm, hating that he couldn’t pull her close. “You have me.”

  “Do we?” she asked. “Are you with us?”

  “Yes.” The reply was instant. He knew what she asked. “Yes.”

  Over the years, Tommy had made himself a name across London as a decent man and a good detective, and here was the test of it. He could turn his back on the evidence and swear by the good of the Yard. Or he could see the truth. Believe her. And turn his investigation toward what he knew was true. To unearth the corruption inside Scotland Yard.

  And so, he faced the question: Was he a decent man? Or a decent detective?

  Was he willing to turn his back on Scotland Yard—on his career, on the men who had pulled him from the streets? Was he willing to set a bomb himself? Punish those inside the Yard, standing with those who were outside of it?

  Was he willing to stand with Imogen and choose justice? Vengeance?

  He’d pledged her his blade, had he not?

  The answer was unequivocal. He was with her. With these women who worked with honor and did more good in more places than Whitehall ever could.

  Of course he was with them.

  With her.

  Before he could say it all, footsteps pounded toward them. He turned, sliding her list of names into his coat pocket, instinctively pushing Imogen behind him as he came to a crouch, fists up, ready for whatever was to come.

  If they wanted her, they would have to come through him.

  What came was the heavy blow of a truncheon, wicked and devastating at his side.

  He sucked in a breath at the pain and threw a punch, knocking his foe back. Foes.

  There were two of them, both wrapped in heavy coats and scarves, their faces difficult to see. Not so their clubs and fists, which came fast and vicious, quickly revealing to Tommy that this was no game. That they would put them down right there, in broad daylight, and not think twice.

  He dodged another blow. Landed one of his own. And witnessed the truth he’d already known—that Imogen had already revealed. These weren’t mere thugs. Not bullies from the South Bank. Not run-of-the-mill criminals from the East End, trading money for muscle.

  These were policemen.

  Tommy might not know their names, but he recognized the smoothness of the movements. The lack of fear. The certainty that even if they were caught, they would not face the same consequences as a common street fighter.

  Even if Tommy hadn’t recognized the club at the larger one’s side—a Yard-issued truncheon—even if the brute didn’t ring a bell with his broad, pale face and his nose, flattened by force sometime in the past, Tommy would have seen it.

  It was confirmation; Scotland Yard was on the take. On the take, and willing to do anything to prevent being discovered.

  And if there were two Peelers here, fighting in broad daylight, there could be any number more of them. At every level.

  The realization crashed through Tommy along with a horrifying thought—that they would keep coming as long as they were threatened with discovery. Which meant Tommy would have to do all he could to keep Imogen protected. If that meant blood on his hands, so be it.

  Consumed with a feral fury, Tommy knocked the larger man into the dirt and made for the smaller of the two, memorizing his features—the dark hair on his pale, freckled face, his bulbous red nose, his small dark eyes.

  They grappled with each other, Tommy calling out to Imogen, “Run!”

  “I absolutely will not!” she said, too close for comfort.

  He threw a punch, sending the man stumbling back, and turned to look over his shoulder. She was unbuttoning that coat—the one that looked like spring and summer all in one. The one that made him wish he could lay her down in a field and have his way with her.

  “It wasn’t a request, you madwoman!” he shouted, coming back around to block a heavy punch and land another of his own—one that rang with the crunch of a jaw going out of whack. “Get gone!”

  The big one was up again, and this time heading for Imogen. A fucking mistake. If he laid one hand on her, Tommy would personally see it removed from the bruiser’s body.

  Imogen was backing away, toward the embankment. “Who do you work for?” she asked brightly, as though they were all at goddamn tea.

  Tommy was going to lose his mind. “The police. He works for the fucking police. They both do.”

  His own foe didn’t hesitate to reply, “Yeah, but you won’t anymore, will you, Peck? You should’ve let us take you out with that carriage . . .” The carriage outside The Place. It hadn’t been aiming for Imogen. The bruiser grinned, wicked and cruel. “Pride of Whitehall? Not when we’re done with you. Not when we’re done with your girl.”

  The threat roared through Tommy, and he went for the man without holding back. All thoughts of justice gone as he fought with a single goal. To protect Imogen.

  Her guard. Her warrior. Her vengeance.

  Tommy made quick work of his opponent, putting him into the snow, already turning into a dead run, headed to help her. At a distance, she was nearly at the embankment wall, backing away as the other copper headed for her, arms outstretched, a wicked, playful grin on his face, as though they played a game. As though when he caught her, the cruelty would be the point.

  She was too close to the low wall. If she wasn’t careful, the bastard would push her into the river, and with her heavy skirts, she’d be dead before Tommy could save her.

  Except, of course, Imogen had no intention of requiring saving. As Tommy watched, she reached up and yanked on the obsidian brooch she always wore at her neck—the one she always took care to keep out of reach.

  It came off without any effort, and she opened it with a deft movement.

  Not a brooch; a box.

  Without hesitation, Imogen flung the contents of the box in the direction of the villain, who lifted his hands to his face just as . . .

  Boom!

  She’d blown the man off his feet. He now lay on his back at a distance, looking dazed and deeply worse for wear.

  Tommy pulled up short, staring at the man for a long moment before turning to look at her. “Fucking hell.”

  “It won’t kill him, but one must always be prepared.” She waved away his shock and raised her voice in the direction of the prone policeman. “You really should make better choices, sirrah!” Turning a bright smile on Tommy, she said, “I suggest we tie them up and take them to Duchess’s for questioning.”

  “I don’t want to question them,” he said. “I want to kill them both for thinking to threaten you.”

  Her gaze went soft on him. “That’s very sweet, Tommy. But I think you’ll find we need them alive if we’ve any hope of finishing our investigation.”

  She was right, of course. But Tommy struggled to care about the investigation in that exact moment. Instead, he was vibrating with anger and frustration and no small amount of admiration for this glorious woman. Instead, he cared about getting her to a private location and keeping her there for a long time. Possibly forever.

  Nevertheless, if Imogen wanted to tie these men up, Tommy would do it. He’d do whatever she asked.

  Christ. He was gone for her.

  He made for her, eager to do as she suggested as quickly as possible so he could tell her just how gone he was. The words were right there, on his tongue.

  I love you.

  Except she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking over his shoulder, her soft gaze going hard, and then wide. He turned, knowing what he would find.

  His opponent had found his feet again, along with his club. Tommy didn’t have time to block the blow, nor the shove.

  The last thing Tommy heard as he tumbled was Imogen’s scream, and then he was in the river, the water like ice, stealing his breath and his strength, pulling him immediately down into the current.

  He fought for a moment, with singular purpose.

  Imogen.

  He had to get back to her.

  He kicked off from the riverbed, breaking the surface, forcing himself to take a deep breath. Shouting for her.