Chapter 23
There isa note tucked under the coffee cup sent up for me the next morning. Typewritten.
It’s from the Scales.
There might be a key to the server room. Existence unconfirmed.
Additionally, you are needed in Belgrade in four weeks.
I drop the paper into a glass of water and watch it dissolve.
* * *
There aretwo things I try not to do at Lyonesse.
The first is my work as a saint—at least audibly or visibly. It’s easy enough to gather gossip and pieces of scandal, easy to start researching a Belgrade trip under the pretense of examining an artifact in person, but I don’t risk discussing my actual work in my office or in the apartment. I don’t risk calling my uncle or anyone connected to him. I wait until I’m in the city—grabbing lunch or shopping or going to Mass, which Mark only joins me for about half the time—and deliver my updates then.
The second thing I don’t do is shadow Mark during the day. He spent years as a shadow himself, and I don’t think enough of my own coquetry to think I’ll fool him into thinking my only motivation is affection. I keep my days to myself, praying, training, working, and try to observe his meetings and habits from the edges.
So it’s only luck that a few days later, as I’m passing by a meeting room with an open door, I hear my husband call my name.
I stop and look in to see Mark, Andrea, Goran, Nat, and Sedge. And Tristan, with a folder in front of him, crisply suited and his hair freshly cut. It’s a little shorter than I’ve grown used to—still longer than it was in the army, I’m sure—and I can see the sculpted edge of his jaw, the harmonious strength of his neck. Even without the romantic hair, even with the austere suit and the earpiece dangling from his pressed collar, he’s a Pre-Raphaelite painting come to life.
Mark gestures for me to come to him, and I do, feeling pleased and a little self-conscious when his hands find my waist and I’m pulled imperiously into his lap. This is not the most shocking thing we’ve done in front of anyone in this room, but there is something about the bright square of sunlight coming in through the window, about sitting on his lap while I’m in a silk wrap dress and heels with the vanilla and wood smell of old provenance documents still clinging to me.
Goran, who is rarely actually in the hall, looks at where Mark’s hand curls easily around my hip. And then he looks over at Tristan, who is studiously looking down at the now-open folder in front of him. And then he looks back at Mark and me, and all over his face is the memory of finding Tristan and me outside the club.
Goran’s as subtle as being hit on the head with a silver hammer, and I could almost laugh if I weren’t so terrified he’s going to give something away. Imagine Mark suspecting an affair not because Sedge saw us having sex on the yacht, but because Goran caught Tristan chafing my arms in the most sexless situation possible.
And maybe I could come clean to Mark about the yacht at some point, given that it predated our marriage, but would he still trust Tristan and me together after I told him? Am I ready to have that cloud of doubt following me around while I’m still trying to get the keys to Lyonesse’s secrets in the meantime?
“I’m not keeping you from work, am I?” Mark murmurs. Sitting on his lap like this, we’re right at eye level. I can see the scar in his hair, the barely-there lines fanning out from his eyes. His hand is large on my hip; his thighs under mine are firm. “I can let you go if so.”
“No, sir,” I say, the sir so easy, too easy. “This Venetian triptych has waited a hundred years to be sold. I think it can wait another afternoon.”
“This meeting is going to be boring,” he warns me now, low enough that only I can hear. “But it will be good for them to see us in daylight.” Then he nuzzles my neck just like an affectionate newlywed would, and I nearly melt.
Across the table, Tristan’s head bows even lower over his papers.
I wish—not for the first time—that Tristan would be just a shred better at hiding his feelings. Normally, his soldier’s stoicism works well enough with anyone who’s not as perceptive as Mark, but right now with Goran watching him, with Sedge already knowing that we spent half our trip across the Atlantic in bed—and in the pool and in the chapel and literally everywhere else—with each other…
Nat says in the crisp voice of someone who’d like to be done with the sitting-down-and-talking part of the day, “Are we all ready? We’ve only got a couple things on the agenda, so we can keep it short.”
Nods and murmurs of assent. Sedge has his stylus out and is ready to take notes on his iPad.
“Before we get to actual security stuff, there was a high-profile death in DC this week. Just two days ago, they found the director of artistic planning at the Kennedy Center dead in his apartment. They’re thinking poisoning, but it’ll take an autopsy to be sure. They’re also not sure if it was accidental, homicidal, or self-induced. The police report says there were no signs of agg burg. Early crime scene analysis is showing no traces of outside hair, DNA, footprints—there’s nothing out of place.”
“So this isn’t someone connected to politics?” Andrea asks, looking at the contents of her own folder. “Or lobbying or anything that matters? It’s just the person in charge of putting on shows and operas?”
“What a tragedy,” says Mark.
I move so I can study his face. “Why don’t you like the opera?”
“Bad memories,” he replies, looking back at me with a small tip to his lips.
“Of what?”
“Of listening to opera music,” he says, and I can’t help but smile back at him.
“And here we thought you were secretly Bruce Wayne,” Goran says.
“I bring up the death because there have been two other high-profile poisonings in the last two weeks,” Nat says. She taps the handout everyone has in their folder. “One in Vancouver, a movie producer. And then another in Tokyo, a low-level politician.”
“Different places, different spheres of influence,” Andrea says slowly, skimming the handout. “Other than poisoning, there isn’t much else in common between them. The producer died on set, and then the politician was found on the street outside his girlfriend’s apartment.”
“Poisoning is a tactic of a few different foreign powers,” says Nat. “There might be connections we can’t see from DC.”
“Or it could be a serial killer.” That’s Goran’s contribution.
Nat gives him a look in the I love you but shut up category. “You’ve been listening to true crime podcasts in the security room for the last four months. You think everything is a serial killer now.”
“Can you prove that it isn’t?”
“What’s this about the night of Drobny’s attack?” Andrea interrupts. She’s flipped to a different paper now. “I already have to deal with Lox coming out here to check some hardware issue with a door. Is there more that she needs to be looking at?”
Mark becomes alert underneath me, the ever-so-subtle shift of his thighs and shoulders. Across the table, Tristan shifts as well. I know he took it as a personal failure that Mark was stabbed that night.
Goran looks nervous. “Actually, it’s the opposite of…that. We already asked Lox to do a postmortem of the facial scanners and security software—the stuff that should have caught any uninvited guests either during background checks or upon entry. And she found that everything worked as it should have, except…”
“Except?” Mark prompts.
“There were some manual entries during the background checks,” Nat cuts in. Bravely, I think, given the coldness currently seeping from my husband into the room. “Someone intentionally inserted the fake identities of the attackers into our system.”
“Someone who had access to our system, you mean.”
Nat winces. “Yes, sir.”
“And is there any way to find out who that was?”
Another wince. “It’s the computer that our extra security staff uses. Guest logins only.”
“So you think it was the freelance security?”
“We’re looking into it now,” Nat assures him. “The good news is that the FBI has finally shared their report with us, after a little persuasion. As you suspected, sir, the attackers were hired muscle—some Czech former military, some petty criminals who’ve made a career out of being violent for pay. They’ve all been identified now.”
“Any surprises in there?” Mark asks.
Nat shakes her head. “No connections to anybody we know other than Drobny, and the FBI hasn’t made any connections of their own.”
“They wouldn’t,” mutters Mark.
“Do you know why they attacked the club?” I ask. “Why this person tried to kill you?”
Mark lifts a hand dismissively. “I probably killed his cousin’s best friend’s?—”
“—brother-in-law,” the table finishes for him, including Tristan.
Mark rewards them with an amused look.
“Actually,” Goran says, “there was something else. Not a person—I mean, I think it’s not a person. But still a name.”
“Oh?” prompts Mark.
“A group. Called Ys.”
There’s silence around the table. I feel my pulse stop and then start again with an abrupt kick.
“Ys,” Mark says slowly. “You heard that name? Someone said it to you?”
Goran nods. “An old friend from Carpathia who’s with MI6 now. He said they’ve been hearing whispers of the group for several years, mostly connected to arms deals, possibly a ghost mercenary force. As you might have guessed, both Drobny and Ys have been tied to weapons shipments going to the Carpathian rebels. Nothing concrete, but I think it’s solid info.”
“Ys,” Mark repeats tonelessly. “Okay then.”
Ys.Exactly what my uncle wanted to know about. The same thing I heard Mark and Melody discussing at the engagement party.
Ys started the game.
I put this Drobny person on my mental list. I’ll get his name to the Scales and my uncle. They might know more about him.
“The good news is that we think we know where Drobny has been hiding,” says Goran. “A yacht in the Adriatic. Lox says it’s been mooring at Porto Montenegro—she suspects safe houses within driving distance. Maybe Bosnia or Albania.”
“Ask Lox to keep an eye on him,” Mark says. “Is that all for today?”
“Yes, sir,” say Goran, and Andrea is already standing up. Tristan slowly closes his folder, not looking at us.
“Wonderful,” Mark says, squeezing my hip. “Tristan, want to get lunch with my wife and me?”