Chapter One

      Preston Worth might very well die this time. Liam Casek stripped off his shirt and tore away a wide strip with an efficiency born of too much experience—he’d patched up Preston more than once. But tonight might be the last time. He pressed the wad of cloth to the gash in Preston’s chest, alarmed by its location so near a lung and alarmed by the size of the crimson spread. It was too much for a mere strip of linen to staunch.

      ‘Case!’ Preston groaned with hoarse urgency, frantically grabbing at his arm to make him listen. ‘Leave me, they might be back.’ ‘They’ being the ambushers who’d come upon them on the road at dusk. There’d simply been too many to fight off, yet they had succeeded, at the price of Preston’s wound. It might have been Preston’s wound that saved them. The ambushers had retreated, perhaps convinced the natural course of events would finish off their prey.

      ‘Be still,’ Liam growled, all gruffness as he tied another strip around Preston’s chest to hold the bandage in place. ‘We have to get you stitched up.’ But the bleeding had to stop first. He racked his brain for a plan. The nearest town was two miles back. ‘Cover the bandage with your hand and press hard.’ Liam got his hands under Preston’s armpits. ‘We’re going to get you to the verge.’ He hated moving Preston, but the middle of the road was no place for a wounded man in the dark. It made an easy target for careless carriages and returning thugs.

      Preston grunted against the pain as Liam hauled him to the side, no easy feat considering Preston was as tall as he was—a few inches over six foot, and nearly a dead weight—hopefully not about to become more dead. Liam propped his friend against a sturdy tree trunk and examined the bandage as best he could in the fading light. It would be entirely dark soon. Damn winter! There was never enough daylight and Liam desperately needed some now. He could feel rather than see the blood soaking the bandage.

      ‘I hurt, Case,’ Preston admitted and there was the briefest flicker of fear in his eyes.

      ‘Pain is good,’ Liam offered encouragingly. ‘You’re doing great. You’re conscious, you’re talking, you’re not numb.’ Numbness was what Liam feared most, a sure sign of impending death. He’d seen it too often in the wars. He was no doctor, but he was a veteran of battlefields.

      ‘Those men,’ Preston ground out, ‘Cabot Roan sent them.’

      Liam nodded, too busy with his triage. He was not surprised. The attack tonight confirmed what they’d feared. Cabot Roan was a wealthy businessman suspected by important men in both the Home and Foreign Offices of leading an arms cartel. The cartel was made up of wealthy, private citizens who had manufactured arms for England during the recent wars and were missing their incomes now that the wars were over and there was no need for arms contracts. Now, those businessmen were selling arms to various revolutionary efforts across Europe. It went without saying that many of those efforts did not necessarily align with the British Empire’s own foreign-policy aims, which made these men traitors. But proof was needed that Cabot Roan was behind the arms deals. That was Preston’s job. If the ringleader was indeed Roan, the man was to be discreetly stopped. That was Liam’s job.

      ‘The hunches must be right, then. That’s good news. Roan wouldn’t have sent his thugs if there was nothing to hide.’ Liam kept talking, kept smiling. He didn’t want Preston to panic. He thought the bleeding might be slowing down at last. There was still too damn much of it, though. He couldn’t wait any longer to get help. ‘Do you think you can ride? Just a couple of miles?’

      Preston nodded. ‘Even if I can’t, we have to try. We can’t stay here and this is serious. You’re going to need light to work by, Case.’ As opposed to the other times Preston had been shot, knifed or otherwise needed his attentions, Liam thought wryly. If the situation wasn’t dire, he would have laughed. As it was, Liam thought he needed a sight more than light to make Preston right again.

      Liam moved to help