“The real business of what?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet. Something they don’t want anyone to know about.”
“Enough to kill for.” It was a statement, not a question.
Daniel nodded. “Maybe not everyone on this list. Some of these people might be just innocent investors. But for some on this list, absolutely.” His finger landed on Meade’s name.
“They didn’t seem to want Reginald to know,” Genevieve said sadly. Her lips pursed in anger. “So how do we find out? How do we ascertain what they’re up to?”
Daniel picked up the list and tapped it on the table a few times, thinking. “My guess is one of these company names is shared with the real business at hand, and the real company has the same initials as one of these.” His eyes met hers. “We have to keep digging.”
Genevieve’s eyes flared with a brief moment of fear, quickly replaced by determination. “Back to the archives.”
He nodded, his stomach twisting at the thought of her in yet more danger. But there was no other way. “Whatever they’re hiding, they’ll already know we’re getting close by the time the archives reopen Monday morning. Go in broad daylight.”
“It’s fine.” She straightened in her seat and finished her glass. “I can do it. I can even check whatever I find against the paper’s records; I’ll bring one of the secretaries with me if I must. Like you said, broad daylight.”
Daniel noticed a worried look returning to her eye. “Only if you feel up to it. We’re getting closer, though, and time is running out. This should be it.”
Genevieve took a deep breath and nodded. “Reginald was on the committee, but why kill Elmira Bradley? And what does Robin Hood have to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps Amos was approached and declined to be involved in whatever this is. My gut tells me Tommy is somehow involved. He’s devious, Genevieve, and more dangerous than you can possibly imagine.” Privately Daniel wondered if Tommy had ordered Elmira killed simply because she had embarrassed him at her ball, but he didn’t see the need for alarming Genevieve further.
Genevieve’s brow furrowed. “How do you know?”
He paused. “I’ve known Tommy a long time.”
“Of course,” she allowed. “But despite his past, the man is a mayoral candidate. Do you really think he’s capable of murder?”
Daniel leaned back again and regarded her through tired eyes.
“I don’t just think it; I know it.”
Genevieve’s mouth opened a bit in shock.
He sighed a breath and unwound his limbs, which suddenly felt ten times their normal weight, from the love seat for a brief journey to the sideboard, where he refilled his glass with a generous splash of whiskey. He held up the bottle with an inquiring look, and Genevieve nodded, holding her glass up as well.
Daniel resumed his seat and took a deep breath. He’d never revealed as much about his past to anyone as he was about to share with her, with the exception of Rupert. And he’d told Rupert only after they’d gotten rip-roaring drunk one night at college in Boston, where they’d both been attending Harvard. He’d woken up the next morning, expecting his friend to have forgotten all about their mutual confessions the night before, or at least to be very British about the whole thing and pretend to forget. But as he cracked one eye open and tried to assess the damage to his pounding head, Rupert simply blinked up at him from the floor of Daniel’s room where he’d collapsed, rubbed a hand through his wild hair, and said, “So, mate, if you’re from Five Points, you must know where to get some very good opium. Let’s go next weekend; what do you say?”
Daniel said no and convinced Rupert through stories from his youth that opium was a very bad idea indeed. But the casualness with which his friend had approached the topic opened something up in Daniel, something he hadn’t even realized he needed before telling Rupert about his past. The secrets had been festering, and the strain of pretending to be someone and something he wasn’t had been slowly killing him. Unburdening some of the darkest moments from his past—and only some of them; he hadn’t told Rupert about Maggie—had eased his mind enough to allow him to continue on the path Jacob had set for him, but to simultaneously make that path his own.
“I do know Tommy from my youth,” he said now. “We grew up together on Elizabeth Street. Tommy was just one of the kids we knew.”
“Who is ‘we’?” she asked.
“Just the kids I ran around with.” Daniel shrugged, peering into his glass. “There came a time, in the 1860s, when if you lived in Five Points and you were male and you were of a certain age, you needed to declare your allegiance.”
“Allegiance?”
“To a particular gang.”
Genevieve nodded, seeming to take the information in stride, though he knew it was miles outside her lived experience. “And did you?”
“Of course. It was the only way to survive. Especially with my father gone. And it wasn’t that bad. Your fellow gang members were like brothers. They protected you, and you protected them.”
“Were you and Tommy in the same gang?”
“No, Tommy was in a different gang. I was a Bayard Tough; he was with the Oyster Knife boys. Our gangs were rivals. You must understand, gangs functioned something like social clubs, but of course violence and crime were—are—part of their nature. The Bayard Toughs traditionally worked the political angle of crime, fixing polls and the like, arranging repeat voting.”
Genevieve’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you participate in this as a child?”
Daniel shrugged. “Of course. I served as a lookout for the approach of the police, ran messages for whoever was in charge, that sort of thing. Tommy’s gang, though, the Oyster Knife boys … they were harder. Tougher
