I glanced over my shoulder for the hundredth time but saw no one there. It was a cold night. A mist hung in the air, tiny raindrops frozen in time, obscuring my view and giving an otherworldly feel to the atmosphere. The historic gas lamps, a throwback to Victorian times, flickered but gave out only a sparse halo of yellow light. The gray stone walls of the surrounding buildings seemed to loom in judgment over the gloomy lane, echoing its dark past.
I hastened my steps down Commercial Street toward my Whitechapel flat.
It was probably just nerves. Today had obviously been stressful. The university had not prepared me for Dr. Jekyll’s heated resistance to my employment in his lab. I had been told I would be a welcomed relief given the enormity of his research and the deadlines he was facing. To have to grovel and practically beg for a job I thought I already had was annoying to say the least. Not to mention, I had turned down another, far more lucrative job for the chance to work with the celebrated, if rather odd, Dr. Jekyll.
I had heard rumors about his increasingly paranoid behavior regarding his work but had dismissed them. In my experience, all scientists were a bit quirky. Myself included.
What I hadn’t been prepared for was how young and handsome he would be. There were no photos of him online since a man of his genius would hardly be posting status updates on his Facebook page, so I was unprepared. In my mind, I had pictured him as a cranky old man with an unkempt white beard, wearing tweed head to toe. There was lots of tweed in my imagination. And maybe even smoking a pipe while he drank whiskey out of a glass beaker.
That wasn’t the case.
Dr. Henry Jekyll was tall and definitely in his early thirties. I was surprised to see a hint of defined arm muscles through his white linen shirt when he picked up that pile of dropped files. He had short, if slightly ruffled brown hair and striking blue eyes. The only bit of tweed on him was a short vest he wore over his dress shirt, which was tucked into a pair of worn-out denim trousers.
My cheeks heated thinking about how he almost caught me checking out his ass as he bent over to retrieve a memo that had slid across the linoleum out of his reach. I had even sniffed the spicy scent of his cologne. There was just something so sexy and masculine about a man who wore cologne. And then there were his hands. They weren’t soft and pale like many men who worked all day under artificial light in some basement lab. They were large and tan with a silver watch around his left wrist.
I took a deep breath to cool my thoughts.
Perhaps it was a good thing he had turned me down flat. It wouldn’t do to start a new job with a crush on my boss.
The rattle of an empty can gave me a start and brought me back to the present.
Again, I turned around and surveyed the mostly deserted street.
This was silly. I lived in London. There were people everywhere. There was no reason to suspect I was being followed.
Still… I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling I was being watched somehow.
I stopped and waited, searching the street behind me for anything suspicious.
Just as I was about to continue on my path home, a scream rent the air.
I staggered backward, plastering my body against the brick wall as I searched for the source of the scream.
Before I could reach for my phone to call the police, I heard riotous laughter. Several seconds later a large group of tourists passed by me.
Their tour guide gestured to various buildings with his closed black umbrella. “Next I will show you where the infamous Jack scrawled his eerie message on the walls of Goulston Street.”
The Jack the Ripper walking tour.
I must be close to the Ten Bells Pub, where two of his victims, Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly, liked to drink. Often people who lived in the flats surrounding the Whitechapel tour area liked to pantomime the gruesome murders in their kitchen windows, to the delight of the tourists.
Feeling silly, I continued down the street and turned onto the small residential side street where my flat was located. I had to pass under an ancient stone arch and into a small courtyard. Usually, I found the historic architecture delightful but tonight my nerves were rattled. I needed a hot bath and a large glass of wine, not necessarily in that order.
The buildings surrounding the courtyard cut off any noise from the city. Everything was quiet and still.
And that was when I heard it… the unmistakable scuff of a boot heel.
Too scared to turn around, I walked faster as I reached into my purse for my keys.
“Catherine.”
It was no more than a rough whisper, barely decipherable.
I broke into a run.
The footsteps behind me picked up their pace.
I was being chased.