The Husband They Bought To Die

Chapter Six: The Fortune Teller's Last Prophecy

The first patrol car reached the broken guardrail four minutes later. By then the pistols were at the bottom of the Harrow, the last gunman had come to and staggered off into the reeds, and Gideon sat on the slope with his jacket zipped over the wound in his side. The gunman's phone was in his pocket.

Iris did the talking, and Gideon watched her with something close to awe. She stood in the flashing lights with mud on her coat and blood dried on her hands, and she lied to two police officers without a single tremor in her voice. A drunk driver, she said, a black car that swerved across the lane and kept going. No, she hadn't seen the plate. Yes, her husband had been cut by the glass. One officer studied Gideon a little too long, but Iris was a Whitlock, and that name still carried weight in Harrowgate. They let her go.

She called a car and gave the driver the address of a private clinic on the north side. On the way, while she stared out the window, Gideon typed a single message to Bram with one hand. Everything on Master Quell, tonight. The fortune teller's prophecy had started all of this, and Gideon had never trusted a prophecy that came with such a convenient deadline.

At dawn, the doctor tied off the last stitch and left them alone. Gideon sat on the edge of the examination table with a bandage wrapped around his ribs. Iris stood by the window with her arms folded. She had scrubbed his blood from her hands, but she kept rubbing her fingers together as if she could still feel it.

"I lied to the police for you," she said without turning around. "So now you're going to tell me the truth."

He couldn't give her all of it. His real name could make her an accomplice to a fugitive, or something worse.

"Gideon is my real first name," he said at last. "Gray isn't. My real name is dangerous, Iris. The men who destroyed my family are hunting me, and tonight they found me. They know who you are now." He met her eyes when she turned. "Staying near me could get you killed."

"That's it? That's the truth?"

"That's the part that might keep you alive." He nodded toward her coat on the chair, where the folded divorce papers from the boardroom stuck out of a pocket. "Sign them. Walk away from me while you still can."

Iris looked at the papers for a long moment. Then she took them out and tore them cleanly in half, tore them again, and dropped the pieces into the wastebasket.

"My family tried to have you killed in my own house," she said, her voice low and steady. "I knew what they were planning, and all I had the courage to do was hand you an envelope. I'm done obeying them."

It wasn't love. He could see that in her face, which was angry and frightened and exhausted all at once. But she had chosen a side, and she had chosen him.

* * *

By late afternoon they were back at Whitlock House, and the entrance hall smelled of sandalwood.

Margaret had wasted no time. The Vales wanted a new wedding date, and she refused to set one until the curse was properly dealt with, so she had summoned Master Quell. He sat cross-legged on a silk mat in the center of the drawing room, a gaunt man in gray robes with long silver hair. A brass bowl of burning incense stood before him, and the family had gathered in a half circle to watch, Margaret in front with Celeste, Damien, and Roland behind her.

When Gideon walked in beside Iris, Celeste's lips thinned. "You were told to be gone."

"Let him stay," Margaret said coldly. "This concerns him."

Quell closed his eyes and chanted under his breath while smoke curled toward the ceiling. Then his eyes snapped open and fixed on Gideon. "The shadow is still in this house," he intoned. "The widow's star has not been satisfied. Unless this man leaves these walls within three days, the curse will turn, and Miss Iris will not live to see her wedding."

A ripple of fear went through the room. Margaret's hand rose to her throat, and Damien smirked. Beside Gideon, Iris's fingers tightened on his sleeve.

Gideon stepped forward.

"I have a prophecy of my own," he said, glancing at the single stick of incense in the brass bowl, already a third gone. "Before that incense burns out, Master Quell will be in handcuffs."

For a heartbeat nobody moved. Then Damien laughed out loud, and the rest of the room followed. Quell only smiled, thin and pitying, like a man who had endured skeptics for decades.

"The curse speaks through him," he said softly. "Do not listen."

The laughter was still dying when the doorbell rang.

The butler showed in three people in plain clothes with badges clipped to their belts. The woman in front held up a folded document. "Detective Moore, Northvale Provincial Police. We're looking for a man who calls himself Master Quell." Her gaze landed on the gray robes. "Also known as Martin Dobbs. Mr. Dobbs, you're under arrest for fraud."

The smile slid off Quell's face.

Gideon had read the file on his phone that morning while Iris dozed in the car. Bram had pulled it from the Ledger overnight, and it was thorough. Martin Dobbs had been a stage magician before he became a spiritual advisor, and he was wanted in Northvale under his real name for swindling three widows out of their savings. More interesting were the years of payments into his accounts for private predictions. They came from the same handful of people, and the predictions always went their way.

The detectives cuffed him on his silk mat. The incense still had an inch left to burn.

Margaret stared at the man whose word had guided her investments, her children's marriages, and her granddaughter's fate for twenty years. She sank slowly into her chair as if her legs had given out. "Twenty years," she whispered. "I listened to you for twenty years."

Quell didn't look at her. As the detectives hauled him toward the door with his robes dragging, his eyes swept the room wildly and locked on Roland Pike.

"You swore no one would ever check!" he screamed. "You swore it!"

Every head turned. Roland let out a short laugh. "Listen to him, he's raving. A man like that will say anything to save his own skin."

But he slid his hands into his pockets a moment too late. Gideon had already seen them shaking.

* * *

That night, just after eleven, Gideon's phone rang. Bram's voice was grave.

"Martin Dobbs is dead," he said. "They found him in his holding cell at Harrowgate Central an hour ago, while awaiting transfer north. Officially, it was a heart attack."

Gideon closed his eyes. "And unofficially?"

"I had the visitor log checked." Bram paused. "His last visitor signed in as a lawyer for Vale Maritime."