Shattered Dreams (34 page)

“
So, she goes out, finds the ideal people, namely young girls
with little or no family, and who come from impoverished
backgrounds. She then lures them to the town with the promise of
jobs which don’t exist. Once they are away from the protection of
their loved ones, they are rendered destitute in one way or
another, and are either forced to go to the poor house, or are
kidnapped and taken there, where they are left and ignored until
you are ready to move them to the people trader in Stepney
Mallet.”

Harry
shook his head and felt a little sick. He had only ever heard of
cattle being treated in such a way; never people. It made him
indescribably angry and, for a moment, he had to fight the urge to
punch Charles Dandridge right in the face.

Roberta
Dandridge shrugged unconcernedly. “They pay good money. Cruickshank
has been paying the wardens in the poor house to look the other
way. They get extra pay for not asking questions. Mrs Taylor loves
being able to control the residents. It was easy to persuade her to
ignore their pleas to go home. She is a weird one, that one.
Johnson herself paid Cragdale handsomely to look the other way.
When the trade was arranged, the women were removed from the poor
house and taken to Stepney Mallet. The man then takes them on to
their new homes, I think. I don’t know for definite. Our
involvement ends once we hand them over.”

“
Where is Johnson now?”

“
Gone off to find another one probably. She is due to leave
this morning.”

“
Where for?”

“
How the hell should I know? Cruickshank usually drives her,
or that useless idiot.” She threw her husband a dark
glare.

“
If you are on her payroll, why are you still
thieving?”

Mrs
Dandridge looked a little melancholy. “I don’t want to carry on. He
does. We agreed that if we keep adjusting the accounts and helping
ourselves, we can get enough money together to be able to move away
and leave Johnson behind.” She threw a dark look at her husband.
“Or I would anyway. He agreed to help me so long as he could keep
gambling.”

“
So you have your wages, your thieving and employment from
Johnson.”

Mrs
Dandridge grinned proudly at him. “Made sixty pounds last year,”
she chortled.

Thoroughly disgusted, Harry leaned forward, and watched her
smile dim. “You are selling people.”

“
Who cares?” Mrs Dandridge challenged clearly unconcerned at
the damage she had done to the women concerned, and their
families.

He ran a
weary hand down his face and stood upright. “She wasn’t there
yesterday. Where did she go?”

Mrs
Dandridge looked at him. “She is – or was – sleeping with Cragdale
too.”

“
She sleeps with a lot of men,” Harry challenged. He couldn’t
help but wonder if the woman was a little unhinged, or was just
jealous of Johnson’s conquests.

“
She is a whore,” Dandridge declared flatly.

“
So how does she come across the people she lures
here?”

Dandridge shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care either. I
just know that Cruickshank drives her wherever she needs to go but,
sometimes, she drives herself. She can be gone for days at a
time.”

“
You don’t know where she goes?”

Dandridge shook her head.

“
What are the women traded for?” Tilly asked with a frown. She
looked at Harry, who appeared decidedly uncomfortable.

Mrs
Dandridge grinned snidely at her. “You are young. Lots of use in
you,” she laughed.

Tilly
looked at Suzanna, and felt her skin crawl at the lecherous meaning
hidden in the suggestive way Mrs Dandridge’s gaze ran over the
length of her.

Tilly
quickly averted her eyes and struggled to keep her face blank. It
was a little sickening to think of what might have become of her if
she hadn’t met Harry. Then, she considered Zack beside her, and
truly began to feel sick.

She
immediately felt cold and clammy. The world swirled, and her
sickness increased as her fingers trembled with a mixture of fear,
worry and shock.

“
Tilly?”

She
jumped to her feet and hurried toward the house. She couldn’t go in
through the back door because the kitchen was rendered useless, but
desperately needed a few moments to herself before she humiliated
herself thoroughly.

“
I will be back in a moment,” she gasped before she clamped a
hand over her mouth, and raced around to the front of the
house.

Harry
followed her, a dark frown of concern on his face. At the sound of
her retching he froze.

“
Are you alright darling?” He called from the study
door.

“
I will be back out in a minute,” Tilly gasped, and silently
prayed that he wouldn’t follow her.

“
Are you sure? Do you want a glass of water, or
something?”

“
Yes, please,” Tilly replied but then realised that he would
have to bring it to her. “But I will come out for it. I won’t be a
moment.”

Harry
stayed where he was. He wanted to go to her and see for himself
that she really was alright, but she clearly wanted to be by
herself for a few minutes.

There
really was no danger now. He suspected that Johnson was already
miles away or, at the very least, at the house across the other
side of town. With everyone else tied up and under heavy guard,
Tilly really was perfectly safe, and could be given what she so
desperately needed; some privacy.

He
reluctantly decided to give her some time to herself, and quietly
left to fetch her a glass of water.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

Tilly
stepped out from behind the retiring screen, relieved that the last
of the sickness had finally faded. To her utter horror, she walked
straight into a middle aged woman whom she knew only as Mrs
Bolsworthy.

“
Do exactly as you are told and you will not be hurt,” the
woman whispered. She stared hard into Tilly’s eyes at the same time
that she pointed her gun at Tilly’s temple.

Tilly
shivered and felt the cold bite of metal dig painfully into her
tender skin. She closed her eyes and began to pray, and now
fervently wished that she had accepted Harry’s support, and that he
was there with her now.

“
Turn around,” the woman, Johnson, growled.

“
No,” Tilly declared flatly. She was sick of being pushed
around and threatened by these people. She looked at the woman
accusingly. “You lied to me.”

Johnson
snorted. “You were nothing more than a mere pawn.”

“
I trusted you, and you lied about there being a job here,”
Tilly whispered, her voice heavy with betrayal. “God, you hateful
creature.”

“
Turn around.”

“
No.”

Johnson
cocked the gun. The click was loud in the silence of the
room.

Tilly
slowly turned around.

The
woman suddenly yanked her backward, and slid one arm across her
shoulders while her other hand pointed the gun at her
temple.

“
You are coming with me.”

Tilly
had no choice really because she was dragged awkwardly toward the
door. Words were not possible because of the tight pressure across
her throat, but she wasn’t sure what she would say if she could
take a breath to speak.

As she
was dragged toward the front door, she could hear Zack and Suzanna
chatting just around the corner, and the men discussing the
prisoners in the back garden, but couldn’t call out.

She
wanted to struggle; to wriggle, twist and writhe, but she daren’t
do anything that might cause the woman behind her to pull the
trigger. The small circle of metal that pressed so cruelly against
her flesh was a constant reminder that this was no game; this was a
fight – a fight for survival.

Unfortunately for Johnson, she was unable to keep the
pressure on Tilly, handle the gun, and drag her captive toward the
door, all at the same time.

Tilly
finally managed to ease the pressure on her throat enough to draw a
proper breath.

“
You were inside the house all the time,” Tilly gasped in
dismay.

“
When everyone disappeared around the back, it was easy to get
in because the idiots left the door wide open. I have been waiting
for you,” Johnson sing-songed as they stepped outside.

“
You lied to me,” Tilly accused. “You lured me here so you
could sell me to your highest bidder,” she gasped.

“
I don’t have any bidders,” Mavis Johnson snapped. “I am my
own boss.”

The
triumph in her voice warned Tilly that the woman was either
completely ruthless, or a little unstable.

She had
no option but to back-step in the direction that Johnson wanted.
However, she began to pray that someone – anyone – would come to
see what was taking her so long.

Where was Harry with that water?
She
thought desperately, and almost groaned aloud when she remembered
that she had told him that she would go to him.

Her mind
latched onto Harry, and she felt an almost overwhelming feeling of
love sweep through her. To her amazement, with that love came such
considerable strength that Tilly started to win the battle against
the panic that had begun to build within her. What she had shared
with Harry last night had been indescribable, and had changed her
in many ways, not just physically. She belonged to him now, and
that thought alone gave her the confidence to face what she had to
do to regain her freedom, and get back to him.

With
that thought forefront in her mind, anger began to build at the
deviousness of the woman behind her, and it fuelled her
determination not to let Johnson get her own way. She had only just
found the man of her dreams. Someone like Johnson was definitely
not going to deny her happiness now.

Unfortunately, in spite of her bravado, they were
unchallenged as they walked down the front steps toward the
driveway. Tilly’s gaze turned to the side of the house and, as she
was dragged down the drive toward the main road, she began to pray
that someone would come and look for her.

Although
she tried to reassure herself that Harry and his friends were just
around the corner, by the time she had been dragged almost half-way
down the drive, panic began to take hold.

Determined not to be left at the mercy of the odious creature
any longer, Tilly deliberately went limp in a desperate attempt to
slow Johnson down and unbalance her enough to make walking anywhere
difficult.

Behind
her she could hear the soft snort of a horse, and was busy thinking
of ways to alert everyone to her problem when Johnson suddenly
spoke.

“
I am going to shoot her if you don’t get out of my
way.”

“
You are going to have to get through me if you want to take
her anywhere,” Harry snarled.

It was
the most difficult thing he had ever done, but he carefully ignored
Tilly’s pained whimper. He stared at the carriage Johnson had
parked at the end of the driveway, and cursed his own stupidity.
Given how many people Johnson had working for her, and how they
needed to move themselves, and their captives around the county, it
was inevitable that they would need more than one
carriage.

He
hadn’t stopped to think about it before, but there had been a
carriage in the barn when he had searched Johnson’s house with
Joseph the other day. Johnson had arrived in a second carriage
while they had been inside. He had no doubt that if he went to the
top road on the other side of the woods, a second carriage would be
waiting to take the victims to Stepney Mallet.

Tilly
felt tears well at the wonderfully reassuring sound of his voice.
Those rich, husky tones were so calm and controlled that she
immediately began to feel some of her tension wane. The need to
turn around and see him was desperate, but the tight hold Johnson
had on her prevented her from doing anything apart from follow her
captor.

“
You are not going to trade her, I can promise you that,”
Harry reported firmly. “You die too if you hurt her, only yours
will be a slow and painful death, I can assure you.”

His eyes
met and held Johnson’s. She read the cool authority in his stance
and studied each of the men around them belligerently, but gave no
indication that she was prepared to accept defeat.

“
You see, we know all about you,” Harry challenged, when
Johnson didn’t immediately reply. “Not only do we have Suzanna and
Zack, but the other two young girls you effectively snatched off
the streets as well. Abduction, false imprisonment, theft, people
smuggling, arson, are all crimes that warrant the ultimate prison
sentence.”

“
I am not people smuggling,” Johnson declared with an arrogant
toss of her head.

In her
youth Mavis Johnson, aka Mrs Bolsworthy, would have been fairly
pretty. Unfortunately, the ravages of time had not been kind. There
was a jaded wisdom about her that was deeply disturbing because
Harry knew from past experience that people; hardened criminals
like her, didn’t usually have much left in life to lose, and did
whatever desperate deeds they needed to do in order to maintain
their freedom.