Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Bed and Breakfast: Part One

Brighton, England, 1974

The thin wail of a child in distress drifted on the air, along with the salt-tang from the nearby sea, and Gideon Hartwright paused, listening. Brighton's narrow, tangled lanes – the oldest part of the city – lay all around him, moonlight glinting off the glass fronts of shops closed for the night.

The cry came again, but muffled this time, like someone was smothering the sound. Gideon's instincts prickled.

Something was wrong.

He turned into a narrow alleyway on his left, where the buildings crowded together, seeming to lean overhead and block out the moon, and then took another right until he emerged in a small paved area between shops.

A woman in a shabby, ill-fitting coat crouched in one corner, clutching a little boy to her. One hand was clamped tightly over his mouth. Behind her, partly hidden by her coat, was a battered suitcase. She looked at Gideon with wide, terrified eyes, one of which was darkened by a purple bruise, and Gideon held up both hands, reassessing the entire situation. When he'd heard the boy cry, he'd thought that someone was hurting him, but he'd been wrong.

"Are you alright?" he said.

The woman cringed away from him, trying to push the boy behind her.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Gideon said, edging forward.

She didn't look like she believed him, and Gideon hardly blamed her. The suitcase, the bruised face, the haunted eyes – it was a reasonable assumption that she was running from a husband or partner, so she was hardly likely to trust a strange man on the streets.

Her little boy whimpered, and Gideon froze. The last thing he wanted was to scare them more, but . . . they clearly needed help.

He looked around, scanning the streets, but there was no sign of whoever the woman was running from. Still, that didn't mean he wasn't close by, looking for them.

"What's your name?" Gideon asked, crouching down to make himself look less imposing.

Silence.

"Please," he said. "You need help, don't you? I'm just trying to help."

Finally, her voice emerged, raw and scratched, as if she'd been sobbing. Or screaming.

"I'm Gilly," she said.

Gideon switched his gaze to the little boy. "And how about you?"

"Liam," he said, even as Gilly tried to hush him.

"Are you running from someone, Gilly?" Gideon asked.

He was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but if he could get her talking, keep her calm, she might let him help her.

She blanched, her face paling, and one arm tightened around Liam's shoulder.

"My daddy's very angry with us," Liam solemnly informed Gideon.

There were no visible bruises on the little boy, but Gideon knew better than anyone that psychological trauma could be just as bad as physical trauma.

Gideon held Gilly's gaze. "Is he out here now? Is he looking for you?"

She gave a jerky nod, her hair falling across her face. Tears shimmered in her eyes.

Gideon weighed up his options. He could stop this thug from ever touching Gilly again, but that meant leaving Gilly and Liam alone while he went to look for the man terrorising them, which also meant running the risk of the thug would find them first. The thought of leaving him unpunished made Gideon's fangs ache in his gums, but protecting this young mother and her son had to come first.