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The new voice resounded through the crypt, and Jasper took Leo by the arm. He swung her behind him while raising his revolver. His broad back nearly obscured three men as they emerged from the narrow stairwell, one after another. Tabitha Pierce cried out in panic.

“It’s him,” she moaned. “Cillian’s uncle.”

Brian Carter. Damn.

He looked nothing like Andrew, who’d been handsome and intense in a charming, if predatory, way. Brian was much older, probably in his mid-forties, with a pronounced brow, blunt nose, and thick torso. The man to his right was familiar: Leo had seen him behind the bar at the Golden Harp. He and the other man flanking Brian gripped knives, the blades long and glinting in the filtered light. Brian, however, held a gun.

“Drop your weapon, Carter,” Jasper ordered, but the criminal only chuckled.

“How am I to kill you without it?”

“This is the Lord’s house,” Reverend Thorpe chastised even as Tabitha wailed. Leo glanced over her shoulder and saw her huddling behind the reverend.

Brian Carter ignored the reverend’s rebuke and smiled at Leo. “Too bad you joined that detective agency, Miss Spencer,” Brian said. “Oh, aye, I know who you are, love. Imagine my surprise when you started sticking your nose into this business. The lucky little Spencer. Not so lucky now, though, are you?”

Leo began to sweat as the air in the crypt seemed to grow thin.

“You’ve been following her,” Jasper growled. He’d thought a carriage had been tailing them, Leo recalled, and he’d been correct.

“I’ve been hearing about her detective skills. I was right to put my money on her finding Cillian’s whore before those other hacks could,” Brian said.

Leo cursed herself for not noticing that someone had been shadowing her. After she and Detective Palmer had gone to the Golden Harp, she presumed.

“Why did you kill your nephew?” Jasper asked.

“Cillian was a muck-up,” the man replied casually as though no gun was trained on him. “Gambling and whoring I can let slide, but fraternizing with the Angels? Taking one of their wives for himself? He was bound to start a war. One we don’t need.”

Jasper had explained to Leo that the Angels and the East Rips were holding a tenuous peace. Cillian’s actions could have led to a break down in their accord, but to kill him seemed an extraordinary measure.

“You betrayed your own brother. Your own family,” Leo said, dread pooling in her stomach. Jasper’s Webley had perhaps six shots. But Brian’s weapon was equally deadly. The question was who would strike whom first.

“Cillian was a weak link. He needed taking out before he became too much of a liability,” Brian retorted.

“He was a young man who trusted his uncle,” Jasper said, his voice rising. “He didn’t deserve what you did to him.”

“Our family’s legacy, every single East Rip, depended on it. Allow a pathetic, inadequate boy to take them over once Sean was dead? Bow down to him? Not while I still draw breath.”

As Brian explained his decision to murder his nephew, Leo glanced toward the other end of the crypt. There had to be another way out, another set of stairs. If there was, it was draped in shadows.

Shadows that, to Leo’s astonishment, suddenly seemed to move.

“You won’t be drawing breath much longer once Sean finds out what you’ve done,” Jasper said.

Brian laughed. “And who’s gonna tell him? I’m tying up loose ends here. In more than one way, I suppose, with you, Miss Spencer.”

“Lower your gun, brother.”

The smooth voice stemmed from the back of the crypt, where Leo had seen movement.

Brian’s arm came up in a flash, swinging out toward the voice. Jasper recoiled, shoving Leo back as he, too, swiveled.

A beat of silence passed. The world hung on a precipice. And then, an explosion of gunfire filled the crypt. Leo’s ears rang from the blasts, and from Tabitha’s shrill screams as she, Leo, and the reverend scurried to the far end of the marble coffin. Crouching, Leo turned—and realized Jasper hadn’t followed.

“Jasper!” She peered around the coffin’s corner. Her heart leapt when she saw him leaning against the broadside of the coffin. It then crashed—one of his hands gripped his abdomen while his other aimed the Webley toward several swarming figures in the diffused light of the crypt.

“Stay back, Leo!” His strained command barely rose above the report of a gun and the clamor of men shouting and fighting.

Ignoring Jasper’s order, she crawled toward him. Panic fluttered in her chest as he dropped to a crouch alongside the coffin, and she saw blood on the hand gripping his right flank.