Consideration for Scoundrels

SIX

Rick O'Connell loved his car, but hated driving it through the streets of London. No one on the road it seemed, had any sense of preservation, for neither vehicle nor human life in general. But even so Rick turned his attention from the road to the passenger seat. Evy had been unusually quiet, which told Rick she'd been deep in thought since the moment they'd left the estate.

"You know," He told her, "we could still turn around and go get her."

"No, Rick, no." Evy shook her head. "We swore it would be different than it was with Alex. That we wouldn't..."

"I know, I know."

"You think I don't want her with us? Gods, the moment I held that girl all I could think about was what we'd discover together, the places we'd go." Evelyn turned back towards the window, the city passing in a blur of muted color. "Then the war changed everything."

"Yeah." The word was heavy on Ricks chest. "Yeah it did."

"My father did the same for me; I could do what I liked, after I finished my education."

"Who are you trying to convince here Evy?" Rick shot her a sly smile. "Me or you?"

"Oh, shut up." She swatted him playfully on his arm.

"Hey! Driving here!" But Rick grinned and gave the top of her thigh a gentle squeeze. "She'll be fine Evy."

"I know."

Selena was going to break into the graveyard .

She had learned how to slip inside most places without anybody seeing her since she was ten. A fact that both horrified and delighted her parents in equal measure. The Shallows was no different. But midway into unfastening one of her hairpins, she paused; the night porter hadn't bothered to lock the door behind him.

"My lucky night." She slipped inside, careful to keep the gate from shrieking on its hinges.

The Shallows, unlike Highgate or Brompton, wasn't a tourist destination. Untailored, unkept, here tombstones were sinking into the ground like derelict ships, covered in a layer of lichen so deep you could no longer read the inscriptions carved into the stone. For some the bases had been swallowed by the ground, sinking deeper and deeper into the earth until eventually they'd be gone.

She'd enter in the eastern quadrant, away from the public streets, but away from any street lamps that could have helped light her path.

There was a small torch in her jacket pocket, now clutched in a gloved hand as she angled the narrow beam of light downwards as she followed the greystone cobbled path.

"No big deal; I just have to find a single grave out of..." she tried to remember the exact number of recorded burials, then tallied the estimated unofficial ones; "thousands. Easy."

Selena moved deeper in to the graveyard. But as the minutes ticked away, then an hour. And then two. Trepidation gnawed at her stomach, a sick and sinking feeling as she realized she had too much ground too cover, and too little time.

"Dammit." She cursed. "How the Hell am I supposed to find anything in here?"

This was stupid. Stupid, dangerous, and worst of all, amateur.

She came to a set of stone steps, winding downward in a tight spiral. There was no railing, so she clung to the stone itself, guiding herself downwards one step at a time.

Selena heard voices coming from the cluster of graves just below. A low murmur, irate and impatient. Almost as if she'd stumbled upon some one-sided argument, tossed back and forth across the silence.