Page 76 of Guardian
Amelia replied, “I know someone, and I think he’ll do it. Especially if I explain why.” She said it as if she expected me to accept this addition without question.
But I couldn’t.
James sensed my reluctance and saved me from asking: “Who is he, Amelia? Is he anyone Maggie could reach?”
“No. We’ve been friends for years. I broke him out of prison.”
James turned to me, to see what I thought.
It still wasn’t enough to reassure me.
“Kit.” Amelia’s eyes held mine. “Do you remember I told you a friend of mine risked his own neck to save Adam last week?”
I nodded.
“That’s this man.”
If she trusted him with Adam’s life, I could trust him, too.
“All right,” I said. “How much will he ask?”
“I think he’d do it for sixty or seventy,” she replied.
Sixty or seventy pounds. Nearly half my savings, but I was grateful it wasn’t more.
I withdrew the two pouches of money and held them out to James. “Can you keep these here?”
“Aye.” With a steady look, he set them, softly clinking, on the table. “I wish we could bloody double-cross Maggie, but we can’t until Sarah’s safe. Maggie must get what she wantsandthink she got away with it.”
“Yes. Sarah must be safe before anything else,” I said sharply.
“Of course,” Amelia said.
“Your safety comes next,” James said to me. “Think about Sarah if you’re not here, how she’d feel if anything happened to you.” He didn’t say a word of how he’d feel, but I heard it in his voice. Amelia’s eyes darting from James to me and back told me she heard it, too.
I swallowed. What would he say if he knew I was planning to leave London? The thought put a pinch near my heart, but I couldn’t think of that now.
“Once we’re safe, then what? For everyone’s sake, Maggie needs to be put away, for good.” I turned to James. “Can’t we turn her over to the Yard?”
He looked dubious. “How can we, without telling your part in the dodge? No Yard man will let that go. They can’t.”
“Oh, the papers would love that,” Amelia said drily. “The Yard covering up a jewelry heist—involving a titled peer no less. They’d feed off it for weeks.”
The newspapers.
“Maggie needs to see the story in the papers before she’ll let Sarah go,” I said slowly. “Once that’s done, she’ll have what she wants and might lower her guard.”
“We need to have the police find the diamonds on Maggie,” Mary said.
“But she’ll conceal them somewhere. We need to plant one, somewhere we can tell them to look,” I said.
“I can do that,” Mary said.
“That means stealing four stones instead of three, and when the story breaks, Maggie’ll know something’s wrong,” James said.
“She won’t know I’ve taken four, if the story breaks that it’s three stones.” I turned to James. “Would your newspaper friend help us, if we gave him a story?”
James’s eyebrows rose. “Printing false information isn’t going to get him back in the Yard’s good graces.”
