Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Franco: Best comic book villain.
Colum: Joker
Franco: That’s a basic bitch answer. Be better.
Colum: Evil Deadpool.
Franco: Now we’re talking.
A nnie sat bolt upright, lunged over Colum—who grunted when she braced an elbow on his stomach—and snatched the state-of-the-art security control panel off the bedside table.
It was chiming discreetly. Someone had rung the doorbell of the archive upstairs. Which would be fine if it wasn’t three a.m.
And they hadn’t rung the front doorbell. The image showed a collection of darkly clad men standing at the rear entrance that led to the long, narrow outdoor space that in turn let out onto the small street bordering the back of the properties. It was now used for parking, and all but two of the spots were rented out to the businesses and organizations with offices along this side of Merrion Square. During the day, people came and went from the back of the building regularly, which was why, as Colum had explained, no one used that back door. Plus, he had to go in and out through the front door to access his flat.
All this ran through Annie’s head as she rolled over the top of Colum?—
“Oof. Jaysus, Annie what’re you at?”
—and started pulling on clothes.
“Get up.” She yanked the covers off the bed. Xavier, who’d still been asleep on his stomach, yelped, his very nice ass clenching at the sudden exposure to the cold.
“Someone’s breaking into the archive,” she said, just to get them moving, because that wasn’t true. If they were breaking in, they wouldn’t have rung the doorbell.
Annie threw on clothes and was standing at the front door to Colum’s apartment waiting impatiently as they stumbled over, each in various states of mostly dressed.
She tapped through the screens of the security system, checking the camera, then opened Colum’s door.
“Jaysus love us!”
“ Mon Dieu! ”
Colum and Xavier hadn’t seen the security camera feed, so the man waiting outside Colum’s door with a gun on one hip and a sword on the other surprised them.
“Mr. O’Connor, Ms. Ward, Mr. Allard.” He nodded to each of them.
“Knight?” Annie nodded at his sword.
“Yes.” He glanced at the tablet she held. “I’m guessing you’re aware we have a situation.”
“I am.”
“Good. If it wasn’t clear already, I’m part of your Dublin security team. The Spartan Guards and I were on duty. We apprehended a team attempting to break into the archive. We need to question them but wanted to check with the archivist to ascertain the most appropriate location on the property.”
Xavier slumped against the wall, exhaling until the tension in his shoulders dropped. Colum stepped up next to Annie. “You’re just here to ask what’s the best interrogation room in the archive?” He peered at the knight, his glasses notable in their absence.
Annie dashed back to grab them, joining the men at the door just as the knight led them outside and up the steps to street level.
It took ten minutes, but they got the back door open so the Spartan Guard could haul in the two assailants they’d caught. Colum led them to a storage room at the back of the first floor that was lined with locked metal storage cabinets, the door of each carefully labeled with a series of numbers.
The sight of those handwritten, precise labels made Annie smile as she looked over at Colum, wearing the glasses she’d popped onto his nose. Xavier had straightened them while tucking Colum’s hair behind his ear.
Their Dublin security team was three people—one knight and two Spartan Guards. Like the assailants zip-tied to chairs in the center of the room, their security team were all in black, with the only notable item the sword Agravain wore.
She’d made a silly face at Colum after Agravain introduced himself, making his lips twitch as he recalled her enthusiasm on learning the knights in England changed their first names to that of one of the Knights of the Round Table when they became a knight.
Colum wasn’t smiling now. He looked more than just angry; he looked coldly furious.
Dangerous.
It was kinda hot. Scratch that, it was really hot.
“Why?” he demanded, standing in front of one of the would-be robbers. “What’re ye looking for?”
The man just smiled.
Annie had helped the Spartan Guard check them for weapons and ID before hauling them into the archive. The fact the men had nothing on them—no IDs, money, not even a car key—wasn’t a good sign.
Unlike the first attacker in Dublin, or the man in New York, these two were professionals.
Colum repeated his question, and the second man actually answered.
“If you want information,” he said in a smooth voice with an accent she couldn’t place, “you’ll have to torture us.”
Colum took a step back, some of the anger fading from his face and replaced with shock. The knight crossed his arms, and one Spartan Guard looked resigned, while the other tipped his head as if considering it.
Annie was past considering it. She knew how to access that place inside her where humanity was absent, and she could do horrible things. And if these two had come to hurt Colum or Xavier, she had no problem becoming that morally black person once more.
“Okay,” Annie said with a sunny smile, even as she whipped a knife from the sheath at the small of her back. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” She winked at the man who’d spoken.
Most of his expression didn’t change, but his eyes widened just a little.
“Not the eye,” Xavier all but whimpered.
“Why not?” Annie stepped forward. “John… Do you mind if I call you John?” she mock-asked the man. “John here was the one who suggested it.”
“He didn’t fucking suggest you stab him in the eye.” Xavier’s accent was thicker, and he looked slightly green.
“He said torture.” Annie looked to the Spartan Guard who hadn’t seemed all that worried by the idea of torturing someone. The guard stepped beside her and her soon-to-be victim, grabbing his head and holding it still.
Now the man started to struggle.
“Do you know why I’m going to call you John?” Annie straddled the man’s thrashing legs—he wasn’t thrashing much, since his ankles were zip-tied to the chair. “After Long John Silver. The pirate.” She covered her eye with the hand not holding the knife. “You know, the one-eyed pirate with the eye patch?”
“ Non. Absolument non ,” Xavier declared, heading for the door.
Annie shot a pointed look at Colum, who was swallowing hard in the way people did before they were sick.
Xavier grabbed Colum on his way out, hauling the other man out of the room.
Annie let the smile drop from her face. “Anyone else who doesn’t have the stomach for this, or still has a moral compass, leave.”
The knight and other guard both stayed, though neither looked happy about it.
Annie still sat on John’s knees, which had caused him to freeze in confusion at the odd intimacy of their position.
She traced a line across his lower lip with the knife, opening a small cut. Lips healed easily and fast, but any injury to them hurt like a bitch. He grimaced, trying and failing to pull away.
“How much do you need me to hurt you before you’ll talk?” she asked. “If, say…breaking your arm would be enough to do it, let’s do that. You’ll heal and probably have no permanent damage. If you want a little bit of pain over a long period, I’m happy to do that too—this knife is thin enough to go under your nail without permanently damaging the nerves in your fingers, and we can go at it one finger at a time.”
Annie tipped her head to the side, knowing that it was disconcerting to see a pretty, petite woman with a soulless, merciless expression staring back at you.
“So, John, you tell me, how much do I have to hurt you before you tell me who sent you, and what your mission was?”
“Ah, but sure she wouldn’t…” Colum’s voice trailed off as Xavier arched a brow. “She would,” he finished grimly.
Xavier pointed at his eye and made a popping noise.
Colum gagged. “For the love of God, don’t be making that noise.”
Xavier grinned and did it again.
Colum swallowed hard, then shoved him toward the stairs. “Get up there, you gobshite.”
Xavier chuckled—teasing Colum had erased his own horror at seeing Annie in murder mode.
His mood further shifted when Colum whacked his ass as they started up the stairs.
“No, no, keep going,” Colum said, as Xavier started to stop on the main floor. “There’s a sitting room up at the top.”
Colum wanted to put distance between them and whatever Annie was doing, and Xavier didn’t blame him.
Xavier kept going up another flight. They bypassed well-maintained rooms with plaster ceilings and crown molding, each filled with state-of-the-art archival storage units from pressure-controlled glass cases, to large metal cabinets, and even a few wooden crates. Everything neatly labeled in what Xavier knew was Colum’s handwriting. Only his workroom—as Xavier had come to think of it—was organized chaos. The rest of the archive was simply organized.
Colum had taken the lead, since Xavier didn’t know where they were going. He stopped by a door with a glass inset. The room on the other side looked like more storage, not a sitting room. Colum put his hand on the knob but hesitated.
“Er, do you want to see my favorite piece in the archive?” Colum’s head was turned away, so Xavier couldn’t see his expression, but the hesitation and vulnerability in the words made Xavier’s heart clench.
“I would love to see it.” He cupped the back of Colum’s neck, forcing him to turn until their gazes locked. “Show me the things you love.”
Colum held his stare a moment longer, mouth parting…
Xavier waited, breathless. But Colum turned back to the door, opening it and stepping inside.
This was an interior room with no natural light, but recessed lighting along the top of the cabinets that lined the walls illuminated the space, and there was a system of track lighting in the ceiling above, several of the lights pointed at the large square worktable in the center of the space.
Colum paused once they were inside, hesitating and running a hand through his hair.
Giving him time, Xavier strolled around the room. Some of the cabinets had glass fronts, and as he passed, motion-activated lights clicked on, illuminated books, folios, and even a few scrolls. A beautiful Wedgewood vase was sitting in a shallow plexiglass tray on the worktable. As Xavier stopped beside it, he bent down to look at the white jasperware designs on the distinctive blue. The shape of the vase was almost that of an amphora with wide shoulders, but a neck so narrow it could only be used as a bud vase.
The track lights clicked on, making it much easier to see the reliefs.
Xavier studied it for a moment before straightening. Colum stood by the light switches. There was something about the way he stood there—a man in his element, in control of the space—that made it hard to breathe in the best possible way.
Then Colum ran his hand through his hair again, looking almost bashful, and tenderness swelled.
“Is this your favorite?” Xavier nodded at the Wedgewood vase. “It’s a trinity, isn’t it?”
“It is.” Colum’s face lit up with enthusiasm as he walked over. “Wait, no, it isn’t my favorite, but it is a trinity. How much do you know about Wedgewood?”
Xavier shrugged. “My mother has a few pieces. I know they’re insured for an ungodly amount, and there are strict instructions to never sell them.”
“Wedgewood made a special series. Queens ware is the most famous because the first pieces were made for Queen Charlotte. But Wedgewood made a very limited series for members of the Trinity Masters. According to the archive notes, there were originally thirty pieces, all with the same relief image of the trinity, but not all are vases. Sadly, we don’t know where they are, or if they survived. I know the fleet admiral doesn’t have them at Triskelion Castle, so I’m thinking they were given as gifts to the admirals. There have always been nine territories, so if three went to each territory, that would leave three for Triskelion Castle. My thinking is this is one of the ones given to the fleet admiral, and it got passed on to the archive for safety.”
Xavier smiled slightly, looking forward to Colum’s reaction to what he was about to say, but before he could, Colum stepped back, shrugging and turning away.
“Ah, but sure that wasn’t even what I meant to show you. I didn’t mean to talk that much about it.”
Xavier realized the moment had passed and followed Colum to one of the glass-front cabinets. Colum opened the doors and then carefully pulled out the glass shelf, which slid smoothly.
A small book with a worn leather cover was set on a wooden stand shaped like a V. Colum carefully opened the cover, turning a few of the thick pages.
Xavier leaned down, peering at the text. He could barely make out the handwritten words. The ink had faded, and the pages had darkened until there were only a few shades of difference between them. He looked harder, trying to make out what he was reading.
“It’s old English?” he guessed, when he realized he couldn’t read any of it.
“Irish,” Colum said. “It’s one of the oldest known texts written in Irish. It’s a book of Psalms—because sure what else could it be—but this book, and books like it, kept the language from dying.”
As a Frenchman, Xavier fiercely understood the desire to protect and preserve a language.
“My predecessor dated the book to the eleventh century, but I was able to get a more precise, earlier date. This was probably produced sometime between 905 and 920 CE. That puts it nearly a century older than the Liber Hymnorum they have at Trinity, and yer man’s one down with the Franciscans.”
Colum’s accent and enthusiasm were making him almost unbearably cute.
“See here—wait, do you read Latin?”
“A bit,” Xavier answered.
“Well, see here. Some of it’s in Latin, yes, but most of it is in Irish.” Colum turned the page, and Xavier was able to pick out a few words as one side of the text was in Latin. “We think the eleventh century Liber Hymnorum was probably written to try to preserve the Irish-Catholic church’s hymns and prayers due to the Norman invasion.”
Colum looked at him expectantly.
“I’m…sorry? On behalf of Normandy?” Xavier said slowly.
“No no no.” Colum made a disgruntled noise. “The British. Well, I guess they’d be French originally, of course. It’s why they’re called Normans. But what I’m saying is that the Normans started invading Ireland in 1169. You see?”
Xavier hadn’t been a bad student, but he felt like he was sitting for an exam he didn’t study for. “No…”
“If the one at Trinity was written in the eleventh century—sometime between 1001 and 1100, but the Normans didn’t invade until 1169, either the dating of the manuscript is wrong, or the reason for writing it is. But here’s what I think. I think whoever wrote the one at Trinity knew the Normans were coming. I think it was someone in Lenister, someone close to Diarmait mac Murchada.”
“Who was that?” Xavier didn’t attempt to replicate the pronunciation.
“The King of Leinster. He’d been deposed, and to get his crown back, he made a deal, first with Norman mercenaries, then with the Earl of Pembrooke. That fecking gobshite Diarmait even married his daughter to Pembrooke.”
Xavier had been merely listening, but now he was processing what Colum was saying.
“Someone close to, uh, Diarmait,” Xavier stumbled a little over the pronunciation, “knew he was planning to go to the English for help getting his crown.”
“Exactly!” Colum’s cheeks were creased, he was smiling so widely. “They knew Strongbow—the Earl of Pembrooke—would pledge Leinster to England. They knew, well mayhap suspected, that the Irish way of life, and the Irish language, wouldn’t survive, so they wrote down what was important—the hymns and prayers people needed and used every day.”
“ Mon Dieu ,” Xavier said, struck by the revelations. He didn’t know much about Irish history, but even he could see Colum’s deductions were fascinating. Then something occurred to him.
“Wait a moment. You keep talking about a manuscript from the eleventh century. But you said this one is from the tenth century—around 905.”
Colum blinked in surprise. “You were…listening.”
“Of course.”
“I mean really listening.”
Xavier felt guilty for not paying better attention from the start.
“It’s just that…the only people who really listen to me are…were…Franco and my sister Josephine.”
Xavier took a step closer, sliding his arm around Colum’s waist. “I love listening to you. I want to hear everything you know about every treasure in the archive.”
Colum slid the shelf back into the cabinet and closed the doors. “You’ll regret saying that,” he said with a laugh.
“No,” Xavier assured him. “I won’t.”
“Let’s, uh… Sure, then let’s go to the sitting room.”
Xavier slid his hand into the back pocket of Colum’s pants as they walked, giving his ass a little squeeze.
Part of Xavier was grimly aware of what was happening downstairs. What Annie was putting herself through in order to get information.
But if he thought about it too much, he’d run down there and snatch her up, carry her away to protect her sweet, gentle heart from having to return to the darkness she’d fought to escape.
Not that she’d let him, but the urge was there.
Colum stepped out into the hall.
A gloved hand jerked Colum to the side, Xavier’s fingers sliding out of Colum’s pocket. For just a moment, confusion held Xavier suspended.
Then a black-clad figure stepped into view, his face covered with a balaclava, and adrenaline flooded Xavier’s system.
“They’re stalling,” Annie said, wiping her knife on the handkerchief Agravain handed her. “I’m going to have to actually hurt him,” she said with regret.
Right now, the damage was superficial. Painful, but superficial. A broken nose, some tidy cuts along his arms, and a small stab wound to the meat of his shoulder muscle.
The man was breathing hard, but he didn’t seem fazed.
“These two are professionals,”Agravain said.
Two.
Two.
“They’re professionals,” Annie breathed.
She’d been a solo operative but strike teams—mercenary or military—were usually five or six.
“There are more of them,” she breathed. “Fuck. These two are a distraction.”
The men both held perfectly still, their lack of reaction all she needed to see.
Annie whirled for the door, feeling stupid, so fucking stupid for not realizing. The attacks up until now had been so amateurish she hadn’t treated this one like a professional job, even though she knew these two were professionals based on their lack of ID and the fact they clearly had enhanced interrogation endurance training.
One of the Spartan Guard—the one who’d held John’s head—realized what she was thinking.
Annie raced out of the room, the Spartan Guard and Agravain on her heels. The second Spartan Guard stayed behind, which was good.
They might need hostages.
This time, Xavier’s shock didn’t hold him back. The angry young man he’d been, the one who’d had more than a few fistfights, surged forward.
Xavier lunged for the man, throwing a feint with his right fist, and when the man leaned out of the way, Xavier caught him in the solar plexus with his left. The resulting whoosh noise as air left his lungs was satisfying.
But Xavier couldn’t press his advantage because someone grabbed him from behind, hooking their arm under Xavier’s, their hand at the back of his neck, locking his shoulder in place and forcing him to look down to alleviate the pressure on his neck and the back of his head. His free arm was locked behind his back, his wrist pulled up enough to make his muscles burn and the threat of a shoulder dislocation clear.
Xavier was able to raise his gaze enough to see Colum.
When he did, he froze.
They had Colum on his knees, hands behind his back.
And there was a gun pressed to his head.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs.
“Annie, no!” Xavier shouted. “Run!”
The man he’d punched lashed out. Pain exploded in Xavier’s head, and the world went hazy for a minute.
“Don’t hurt him,” Colum demanded. “Please, just…don’t hurt him.”
“Colum, what’s happening?” Annie called out from the stairwell.
“They hit Xavier.”
“How many?”
“There are four of us,” one of the black-clad men said calmly. “And please, join us.”
Portuguese, Xavier decided, trying to process the accent despite the headache making it hard to think.
“Oh, thank you so much for the invitation, I think I will.”
Annie emerged from the top of the stairs, smiling. Xavier growled at her, as if that would make her go back. Colum in danger was making him feel sick. Both of them in danger might break him.
“Xavier, you’re bleeding!” Annie put a hand over her mouth, eyes wide and round. “Please, let me at least get a washcloth and an ice pack for him.”
“We know who you are, Ms. Ward. No need to pretend. We are well aware of how dangerous you are.” There was a smile in the man’s voice. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
Xavier was going to have to dissect that later.
Annie’s smile dropped, her expression almost disinterested.
“ You are?”
“Call me Mr. Black.”
“Original. I’ve never heard that before.” Annie looked disappointed in Mr. Black’s choice of name, and Xavier oddly felt like laughing.
“Next time I’ll do better.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Annie assured him.
“No, there won’t,” another voice said, as Agravain stepped up beside Annie, sword drawn.
“Bring as many people as you wish,” Mr. Black said. “But if you do something I don’t like, we shoot Mr. O’Connor.”
“My goal is to keep everyone alive,” Annie said bluntly. “Now, why don’t you tell me what it is Dodge sent you in here to find?”
Mr. Black inclined his head, not seeming surprised Annie knew who hired them. “To business, then.”
“Please.”
“We want the rest of the Oscar Wilde manuscript.”
“And you think we have it?”
“Let’s skip the part where you pretend you don’t have it.”
Xavier lost a few bits of the conversation due to the throbbing in his head, but forced himself to pay attention when Annie said, “We’ll give you the manuscript. At least the piece we have.”
“Thank you for being reasonable.”
“But I don’t trust you, so I won’t just hand it over until I’m satisfied we can do the exchange without you deciding it would be easier to take the manuscript and then kill us all.”
“You have two of my men,” Mr. Black said reasonably.
“And you have two of mine. You want the manuscript and both your men, in exchange for my two. Hardly seems fair… Unless you’re willing to sacrifice the two men downstairs?” Annie arched brow.
Mr. Black shrugged. “They knew the risks.” His voice hardened. “The manuscript.”
“Give me my people first. You and yours leave peacefully. Once you’re outside, I’ll pass out the manuscript. If I go back on the deal, you can find a nest and pick us off as we leave.”
“No,” Colum said. “We’re not giving these feckers anything.”
“Mr. O’Connor,” Mr. Black said. “I’m sure your brother, Eric, would prefer you alive rather than sacrificing yourself for a few bits of paper.”
Xavier looked up, blinking away the blood that had gathered on his lashes from a cut somewhere on his forehead. He met and held Annie’s gaze, the cold horror there mirrored in his own.
Mr. Black just name-dropped the fleet admiral and made it clear they knew who Colum was to him. Dodge knew things about the Masters’ Admiralty not even all the territory admirals knew.
“The manuscript—” Annie started.
“No!” Colum started to struggle to his feet, but the man behind him shoved him down. He pushed the gun hard against the back of Colum’s head, knocking his glasses askew.
“No!” Xavier shouted, at the same time Annie started the negotiation again.
Fear, a terrible cold fear, gripped Xavier. He could lose Colum.
He could lose them both.
“The vase,” Xavier blurted out.
Everyone went silent and turned to look at him.
“Please just…let us go. I’ll tell you where it is.”
The man holding Xavier released him, allowing Xavier to straighten his neck and relax his arm. Blood rushed to his head and he almost fell over. The man who’d been holding him gripped his upper arms, keeping him upright.
“Let me take him,” Xavier nodded at Colum, “and go downstairs. You can go out…however you got in.” Xavier swallowed hard, wiping blood from his face. “Nothing in here is worth their lives,” he said softly, looking first at Colum, then at Annie.
“Xavier…” Colum said.
“It’s good to meet a reasonable man,” Mr. Black said.
Annie was silent, watching him. He was grateful she was so damn smart. She’d heard him say vase, realized he had a plan, and let him take the lead.
Part of him, a large part really, was ready to give them the real manuscript. But the part of him that was, according to several people, an asshole wouldn’t give these fuckers anything.
“They come to me, you get the manuscript,” Annie said. “We keep your people long enough to get someone in to sweep for explosives or any other surprises you might have left us.”
“Done,” Mr. Black said. “And please know that despite my willingness to sacrifice them for the mission, I would prefer them alive.”
“I’m banking on it,” Annie said.
Mr. Black nodded at the man holding a gun on Colum. He stepped back…and immediately raised his gun, pointing it at Xavier.
“Colum, come here,” Annie demanded.
But Colum started for Xavier, an emotion with no name in his gaze.
Agravain sheathed his sword and stepped forward, past Mr. Black to intercept Colum, forcing him to turn away and retreat to the top of the stairs.
Xavier felt very alone in that movement, standing there surrounded by four faceless men, ready to lie to them when the truth would have been so much safer.
“First,” Mr. Black said. “He tells us where it is. Then we let him go.”
Xavier didn’t wait for Annie to negotiate. He wanted this done.
He turned, looking back into the room full of treasures.
“There’s a vase. A Wedgewood vase. Blue and white. Right there on the table. The manuscript is inside. We don’t know how they got it in or how to get it out without breaking it. The vase is one of a kind, created by Wedgewood himself. Might be worth more than the manuscript, but we X-rayed it and there’s a tube inside. Robbie Ross’s great-niece had it. Wilde left a clue to where it was in a signed copy of one of his plays that was on display in a museum in New York.”
Xavier spoke fast, sprinkling truth and bullshit liberally over every syllable. There were a thousand holes in that story, but no way they could know that.
At least he didn’t think they could.
He hoped.
Mr. Black took a step to the side, leaning to look into the room. “Let him go.”
The man with the gun lowered it, and Xavier stumbled past Mr. Black. Colum was there, arms open, and Xavier fell into them, closing his eyes against the increased throbbing caused by walking.
“Take him downstairs,” Annie whispered. “Lock yourselves in a secure room.”
Xavier didn’t argue. The last thing he heard as they cleared the bottom stair was Mr. Black and Annie.
“Thank you for this,” Mr. Black said. “When you feel safe to do so, please release my men. We’ll be watching and pick them up.”
“I assumed,” Annie replied dryly.
“And before I leave, let me give you something, because you’re right, our exchange isn’t totally fair. It wasn’t Dodge who hired us. Not directly. We work for the Spaniard.”