The Klondike Mysteries 4-Book Bundle. Vicki Delany

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СКАЧАТЬ up and sit down.” I kept talking. At times it is what I do best. “Margaret, I don’t see why you’ve involved me in this sordid mess.” I started to walk backwards, one tiny inch at a time. The boulder lay behind me. The crowded safety of town beyond that. I might be able to scale the rock in one magnificent leap. But then again, Her Majesty Queen Victoria might swoop down from the heavens and carry me to safety.

      “If you put that silly knife away,” I said, “we can both go home.”

      It was, sadly, not a silly knife, but a good kitchen knife, sharpened to a fine point; no doubt used to slice up sides of raw meat.

      As well as the late, unmourned, Mr. Jack Ireland.

      “Don’t you ever listen to yourself, you arrogant woman? You as much as told me that you wouldn’t let it rest as long as your precious dance hall is threatened. I made a mistake; I’ll admit it. Please stop moving.” She grabbed the front of my dress and almost jerked me off my feet. The knife touched the bottom of my chin, gentle as a lover. And as dangerous as some lovers I have known. “I intended to drag his body out into the back alley, but it was too heavy. I should’ve thought of that earlier.”

      “Never mind all that. We can come to some sort of arrangement, I’m sure.” I stepped backwards. The knife sliced down my chest, through the bodice of my best day dress. Thick red blood, glistening in the light of the setting sun, blossomed from the wound like one of Margaret’s beautiful mountain wildflowers.

      The white blouse fell open and pain shot through my chest.

      “Sit down, Mrs. MacGillivray. I do not want to kill you, but don’t doubt that I will if I have to.” The sight of the ripped blouse spilling lace and my life’s blood in a gentle trickle, shocked me as much, if not more, than the pain.

      While I stared stupidly at my chest, Margaret whipped out one foot, wrapped it around my ankle and twisted. I collapsed.

      Like me, Margaret spoke well. But she had some history behind her. Also like me.

      A rock jabbed into my side, delivering a lightning bolt of pain. I ignored it, curled forward, and tensed to launch myself back upright.

      Margaret’s foot caught me under the chin with enough force to snap my head back. Before I could recover my senses, she reached out with the knife and sliced it across my cheek.

      “The next cut will be to your throat. Move back. There.” She gestured, and I wiggled backwards until my back touched the single tree still clinging to this patch of hillside. It wasn’t a tree, really, more of a sapling. Strange that it had been overlooked in the mad lust for lumber. I touched my face; the spot burned like fire. I looked at my fingers—wet, red and sticky. Blood from the cut in my chest soaked the front of my dress.

      Another dress ruined. My hat, the one that I worried made me look old, lay in the mud, the once jaunty feather squashed flat.

      “Hold your hands out.” Margaret pulled a length of rope from the depths of her dress. She truly had played me for a fool. While I had stood outside her front door, admiring the summer evening and watching a pack of children tormenting a dog, she had gathered everything she needed. How had I become so soft?

      I eyed the knife and the cold eyes behind it and held out my hands, my fingers streaked with my own blood. She looped the rope around my wrists then wrapped it around the tree, and me, several times. It was a long, thick rope. She yanked on the end, and I gasped as it bit into my chest.

      “The high-and-mighty Mrs. MacGillivray brought low.”

      “You needn’t insult me, Margaret. You might think I’m of no importance, but you can be sure that the officers of the law, as well as the prominent citizens of this town, will be looking for me before the sun sets.”

      “Probably,” she said, pulling a large, well-mended, but clean handkerchief from her skirt pocket. A bit of blood, my blood, had splashed onto the front of her dress and the cuffs of her right sleeve. Not enough blood, unfortunately, that anyone would have reason to think she’d been doing anything more dangerous than preparing meat for her husband’s evening meal.

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