Free Rogue Spy by Joanna Bourne Page B

me.”
    â€œThat goes without saying. It takes somebody who knows you well to want to kill you.”
    â€œShe wasn’t trying to kill me.” It wasn’t easy, dragging his coat on over the wet shirt.
    â€œCould have fooled me.” Hawk pulled off his hat and tossed it over. “Switch hats. You put this on.”
    â€œLet me tie the hair back.” He found a thin black ribbon in his pocket and hobbled his hair back in a club under the hat.
    â€œNext time, dye your damned hair. A babe in arms could spot you at a hundred yards with your hair hanging down.”
    It was too hard to explain the reasons he’d come to Meeks Street without disguises. “It’s not that bad.”
    â€œYes, it is.”
    The coach rolled to a stop and they swung out, fast, Hawk on one side, him on the other.
    *   *   *
    Cami joined the thin outer edge of the crowd, well back from the unfolding drama. Men pushed a way behind her or in front of her and stopped to satisfy curiosity or strode on impatiently, going about their business. Glimpse by glimpse, she watched Devoir deal with the damage she’d done him.
    A man—a colleague from the British Service, doubtless—jostled past her and elbowed through the onlookers, swearingat them in a ripe city voice. He was brown skinned, black haired, quick moving, and annoyed. That was another face worth adding to her memory.
    Devoir staggered to his feet, dripping wet, eyes slitted against the sunlight. He moved like one of the great predators, wounded but not clumsy, like a tiger who’d fallen a long way and landed on his feet, jarred and dizzy but ready to fight. She was immeasurably glad she didn’t have to face him at this moment when his inner nature was so close to the surface.
    She was one of the few dozen people on earth who knew this truth about his deadliness. His Service comrades would have seen it. Cachés who’d been in the Coach House with him knew. Maybe he had enemies who’d fought him and somehow survived. Nobody else.
    The two men talked, heads together, words emphatic. They were friends, then.
    In the glare of midday, Devoir stood in wet shirtsleeves and an unbuttoned vest. The linen of his shirt was almost transparent where it stuck down tight to his skin. Distinct, clearly defined muscles wrapped his arms and strapped long lines across his upper chest. He didn’t have the body of one of those hearty gentlemen who rode to the foxes or took fencing lessons and sat down to a comfortable dinner every night. She knew, in some detail, what the strength of such men looked like. Devoir was muscled like a workingman—a sailor, a soldier, a bricklayer, somebody shaped by unrelenting labor. The strength of him had been formed in days of work without respite and nights with too little sleep. He was, inside the drab, ordinary clothing, inside that tanned skin, a professional, a spy to the bone.
    Devoir dried his hair with a white towel, vigorously, and talked to his friend. A hackney coach drew up to the curb. The crowd parted. The two men got in and it drove away.
    Devoir would go back to whatever plans and schemes he pursued at Meeks Street. She’d go about her own business. They wouldn’t meet again. She would sink into memory. He’d call her to mind once in a while, when someone mentioned betrayal.
    She knew nothing of his long-ago past, but she knew thismuch—before he’d been taken to the Coach House, everything weak in him had already been burned away. He must have survived terrible things to become a metal, like silver, like steel, that you could hammer upon or put through the fire, and it emerged unchanged. The Tuteurs had never broken the strength at the center of him.
    She watched the hackney till it turned at the corner and was lost from sight. Then she walked briskly toward Holborn, Mr. Smith’s minion sneaking along behind, surreptitious and easy to spot. With luck,