Free Web NovelChapter 23: Coin, Courtesy, and Property Damage
The walk took most of an hour. As they crossed Nassau, evening came down one layer at a time until the buildings around them darkened to the color of old iron.
Anne stayed three steps ahead for the entire journey and didn’t say a word.
James found that commendable.
They reached the place by a side street and stopped in the narrow alley between two buildings. It gave them a clear view of the front while keeping them out of sight.
James observed the shed. Entrances. Windows. Anything that might be noteworthy once things started moving.
"Right."
Anne kept her voice low. "You’ve had me walking all over Nassau and you still haven’t told me what we’re actually doing. I want the plan. Otherwise I’m going back to the Rat, and you can get yourself killed without my help."
"Fair enough."
He kept his eyes on the building.
Then he explained, "You knock. You tell them you’ve finally come to settle what you owe. Be sorry it took so long, make it feel sincere. They’ll be expecting trouble, men like that prepare for a fight. Give them the opposite, and they’ll spend precious time trying to work out what’s wrong."
Anne glanced toward the door.
"And while I’m inside apologizing, what exactly are you doing?"
"Finding the coin. Securing it. Engaging in a little community outreach."
Her expression hardened.
"And when they realize it’s gone while I’m standing there?"
"By then I’ll have dealt with them by myself."
One hand rested on the cutlass at his hip. The other brushed the pistols hidden beneath his coat. Not uncertainty. Just a quick check of the weapons available to him.
Anne stared at him. "Do you think you’re some kind of invincible war hero?"
James shrugged.
"I was hoping confidence would carry me through that part."
That earned him a look.
James decided it was probably fine.
"If you’re waiting for me to admit this is a terrible idea, you’ll be waiting a while."
"And if something goes wrong?" Anne asked. "If you’re not as fast as you think you are?"
James sat with that.
It was a fair question. The plan depended on speed, surprise, and several assumptions holding together at once.
"Then it’ll have gone wrong for both of us," he said. "And we’ll find that out together."
She stared at him for a long moment.
Whether he actually believed what he was saying, and whether that made him competent or merely mad.
Whatever conclusion she reached, she kept it to herself.
Then she turned and walked toward the front door.
James took that as agreement.
The building sat back from the street. Narrow, wooden, and old enough to show it. The roof sloped upward at a shallow pitch, and one part near the rear had rotted badly enough to stand out as a pale patch against the grey weathered boards around it.
Every window was covered by shutters. There was only a single front door facing the road.
More important, a warehouse stood nearby. It rose two stories high, and crates and barrels had been stacked carelessly against the nearest wall. James appreciated when other people contributed to a burglary without realizing it.
Anne knocked.
A man’s voice answered from inside.
The door opened just wide enough to inspect her, then wider to admit her. A moment later it shut again, swallowing her from sight.
That meant it was time to move.
James climbed the crates.
Within a minute he reached the warehouse roof. From there he judged the distance between buildings.
Six feet.
Standing still, it looked unpleasant.
In motion, it looked manageable.
James trusted momentum more than appearances.
He ran the last few steps and jumped.
His boots struck the far roof hard enough to jar his teeth. He dropped into a crouch, letting the impact run through his legs and into the boards beneath him instead of cracking across the roof in a single thunderous report. By the time his balance steadied, the noise had dwindled to a few harmless creaks.
Then he moved toward the broken roof.
The rotten patch gave way with less resistance than he’d expected. The boards lifted beneath his hands with barely a sound. frёewebηovel.cѳm
That answered one concern.
No alarm.
He eased himself through the opening and lowered into the darkness below.
The loft forced him to stay bent at the waist. The boards beneath his boots were thin, and sound carried through them in fragments.
Voices, footsteps, bits of conversation. None of it clear at first.
A chest sat against the far wall, iron-banded.
He crossed to it, slid his knife into the hasp, and worked the mechanism until the lock surrendered.
The lid opened.
Coin.
Enough coin to convince James that playing the hero was an underappreciated profession.
"-took you long enough to come round to sense."
The voice reached James through the boards, muffled but understandable.
"I told you I’d settle it proper."
Anne sounded soft, apologetic. Nothing like her usual tone.
"I just needed time to get the coin together first."
"Walsh’ll want to hear that himself."
A third voice answered, older and confident. A voice accustomed to being obeyed.
"I’m right here. No need to send for me."
Walsh, then.
James shrugged the information away and started transferring coin into the bag he’d brought for precisely this purpose.
"Took your sweet time. Three months of men knocking on doors you wouldn’t open."
"I’m here now, aren’t I?"
The performance was good.
Mostly.
But James caught a sharper edge beneath the apology.
"Aye, ye are."
Walsh sounded relaxed now, enjoying himself.
"Count it out, then. Every shilling. I want to watch ye do it."
"Lets get this over with."
James continued working.
Coin into bag.
Coin into bag.
The chest emptied steadily.
Below him, the conversation dwindled into quiet rhythm.
Then Anne spoke again.
The apology was wearing thin.
"There. Every last coin I owe and then some."
"There’s no such thing as last with Walsh, lass."
One of the other men laughed at his own joke.
"I’m not your lass."
The room below went still.
James froze, listening.
"Touchy. Considering you’re the one who came begging."
"I came to pay a debt that stopped existing two months back, and you know it."
A chair scraped, someone standing up.
A voice rose sharply. Another answered just as fast.
The easy rhythm of the conversation vanished.
Whatever had been holding the room together was gone.
James weighed the situation.
Anne had reached the end of her patience. The men downstairs had noticed.
That meant the window for subtlety had closed.
He tied off the bag, slung it across his back, and drew his cutlass.
"Right then."
The words were barely more than a murmur.
Partly to himself.
Partly to the voice.
Whichever one happened to be listening.
"Time to get this party started."
