Chapter 23
Arthur
“The hotel’s safe,” she whispered. “Right?”
Probably not. If they’d been ready for us at the archive, they might come for us at the hotel.
I needed to make calls, but my right hand throbbed every time I moved my fingers, and my left was busy with the steering wheel.
Gritting my teeth, I pulled my phone from my pocket with my injured hand, unlocked it, and held it out to Gwen. “Call Lance.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“He’s in my contacts. Put it on speaker.”
She took the phone. She held it long enough for the screen to lock.
One more fast turn. Which Arthur Penn was going to get through to her? Barking orders hadn’t worked in the parking lot, and it wasn’t working now. The quiet voice from inside the archive worked. “Please, Gwen? I need you to dial Lance for me.”
She nodded quickly and held the phone up to my face to get past the lock screen. She found Lance’s number and made the call.
It rang once, twice, three times. Where was he? He’d better not be in bed with the fucking translator while I was dealing with this.
He picked up on the fifth ring. “What’s up?”
I leaned toward the phone, keeping my eyes on the road. “We were attacked at the—”
“Attacked?”
“Yes. At the archive. Three men came after us when we left.”
“Is Gwen okay?”
Gwen sucked her lips in and blinked rapidly. The tears were about to fall again.
“She’s fine. We both are,” I lied. “But you need to get out of the archive right now. Call the crew, get airborne.”
“Got it.” He became muffled, making apologies to whoever was in the room with him. “Where am I going?”
“I don’t know. Not England. Not France. Have the pilot make the call.”
“That’s not a plan, Arthur.”
“It’s what I’ve got.” The road curved, and I took it too fast, forcing Gwen to brace against the door. “Until we figure out who they were or why they came after us, I don’t want you in either country.”
“And what about you two?”
“I’ll handle it. Just get in the air.”
The background on his call changed, and I heard birds. He was outside. “Call me as soon as you can. We can have the team work through it.”
“I will.”
He hung up, and Gwen set the phone on the console between us. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the window. We drove in silence. Every so often, a tear ran down her cheek, but she didn’t say anything.
What was I supposed to do with that? My right arm was on fire, and I should have pulled over, but we needed distance.
Distance and time to think. I should have called Lance back to work through the situation.
Or Merlin. Or anyone else on the fucking team.
But I didn’t have answers—I barely even knew what questions to ask.
Because Gwen Lyons was fucking crying in my car.
If we hadn’t taken this job, she might have stopped at St. Catherine’s. Or at Dr. Hopkins. Definitely in Glastonbury. She would have flown home and filed a far simpler report, and I wouldn’t have been fucking bleeding while she cried.
An hour later, with the sun setting, she finally said, “You said someone was walking loops on the path behind the archive. Was he one of the men in the parking lot?”
“The first one. The guy in the blue ballcap. I’d been watching him since we arrived.”
“Since we arrived?”
“He was in a car in the lot.” I flexed the fingers of my right hand, cracking the dried blood on my palm. “But he was walking back and forth on the trails outside, and when I spotted the camera—”
“How long had it been there?” Her question didn’t make sense. Was it still the shock talking?
“I don’t know.”
“Obviously it was already there, waiting for us.” She stared out the windshield, but I would have been surprised if she saw anything.
“Obviously,” I echoed as encouragement. “And the sketch listing the imaginary collector must have been prepared before we got there, too.”
“It was a high-quality fake. Not only the sketch, but the paper felt…”
“Right?” I glanced at her, then back at the road. “It felt right?”
“You think it’s all linked?”
“I do.”
“So someone set all of this up, knowing we’d be there.” She wiped her palms over her cheeks. “That takes a lot of planning.”
A lot? A little? No matter how much, it did take planning. It had been a trap all along. “Who knew we’d be at the archive?”
“Me, you, Lance, your team, Dr. Hopkins…” She looked up, either at the sky through the sunroof or at the ceiling as though she’d find words written there. “And the staff at the archive itself, because I made the appointment yesterday.”
“It wasn’t my team.”
“But Dr. Hopkins sent us there.”
“And the sketch was premeditated.”
She let her gaze wander back into the vehicle, lingering on my injury, and eventually falling to my phone on the console. “He’d know how to fake that kind of documentation.”
“Let’s assume he was setting you up all along. Why tell us about the other two locations?”
“Fergus didn’t actually give me anything useful.” She was quiet for a beat. “Bridget certainly didn’t add anything.”
“Did we discuss Champagne with either of them? Or mention the Troyes archive at all?”
“You’re thinking one of them might be behind it all?”
I wasn’t. Not really. If Bridget had been behind anything, she wouldn’t have thrown such a bomb in Gwen’s direction. If her goal had been to push us toward the archive in Champagne, she would have been convincing, not insulting.
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything about Champagne, let alone Cristian de Troyes or Malta.” She shook her head. “So they may not have been behind the attack, but if Hopkins was, can we trust anyone he pointed us to?”
Which meant whatever Lance had dug up was suspect, too. “What about the Malta information? Any chance that’s a fake?”
She picked up my phone and fiddled with it. “Should we call Hopkins?”
If Lance had suggested that, I would have laughed and asked if he had a death wish. Assuming Hopkins was the one setting us up, we had to stay as dark as possible. But this was Gwen, and I wouldn’t harass her in the same way. “Not until we understand what we’re dealing with.”
Through the windshield, the road stretched between flat fields and clusters of trees. Gwen suddenly went bolt upright. “Wait a second.”
“What?”
“Where are we?”
“I’m putting distance between us and Troyes,” I said. “We’re heading southwest, away from the city.”
She dropped my phone onto her lap and shot her hands out, as though bracing herself. “But our things are at the hotel.”
“They are.”
“I thought you were planning on looping back or… My clothes. My bag. My—”
“We’ve got the sword and the laptop with your research. Everything else can be replaced.”
“Replaced?” Her voice climbed an octave. “I’ve already lost my grandmother’s pearls, my thirtieth birthday bracelet from my mom, and my nicest pair of earrings. Let alone my laptop!”
“You said your files synced to the cloud. Is Sam’s loaner missing software?”
“That’s not the point, Arthur!”
“Okay.” I nodded at the phone. “Call the hotel and tell them we had to leave unexpectedly. Ask them to pack our bags and hold them. If they make a stink, have them name a price and charge it to the card on file.”
“Money doesn’t—” Her eyes were wide, tears welling at her lids, and her mouth moved as if she were searching for the right words.
Her protest would be either that money didn’t grow on trees, or it couldn’t fix every problem. But honestly, in my family, it did grow on trees and it did fix everything.
“Gwen, I’ll fix this, I promise. But for right now, I’m going to keep driving.” I started to reach for the phone, but stopped short because it was sitting on her thighs. That wasn’t a move I should make. “Please call the hotel.”
She picked up the phone, stared at it for a few seconds, then held it toward my face. The screen unlocked. She scrolled through the call history, found the number, and dialed.
The conversation took a while. Gwen explained the situation to the receptionist, who transferred her to someone else, who asked her to start over. Her voice stayed steady, but she kept touching her face with her free hand, and twice she closed her eyes and breathed before answering a question.
On the upside, the call kept her occupied, which was partially the point. She needed something to focus on other than our escape across France or the attack in the parking lot.
The parking lot.
Shit.
The car had been unattended in the lot for over three hours, while we were inside. Any one of those men could have put a tracker on it. If they’d tagged the car, they knew precisely where we were. They could be following the signal right now, maintaining enough distance to stay invisible.
I slowed and pulled off the road.
Gwen covered the phone’s mic with a hand. “What are you doing?”
“I need to check the tires. Keep talking to the hotel.” I got out and opened the SUV’s back, rummaging through the emergency kit the rental place had provided.
After finding the flashlight, I made a slow circle around the vehicle, checking the most obvious areas—the wheel wells and bumpers.
Nothing. I dropped to my back on the gravel shoulder.
The undercarriage was dark and oily, the frame thick with road grime.
I worked my way along the passenger side, running my good hand over the metal, searching for anything out of place.
Even if I didn’t find a tracker, we’d need to ditch the car and find a new one at the first opportunity. I could steal a license plate, but the Land Rover was too big and expensive to blend in. I should have insisted we rent something less conspicuous.
You could call your father.
Pendragon had operatives across Europe. There would be a safe house nearby, a clean vehicle of any size I wanted, and structured extraction protocols. One phone call, and someone would be here within the hour with a new car and a location that didn’t exist on any public map.
My father—or one of his reps—would take the call at any hour and immediately deploy the company’s resources. That’s what he did, wasn’t it? He gave his son every advantage, every tool, and every leg up.
But if I called him, I’d spend the rest of my career knowing I couldn’t handle my own operation without his infrastructure.
Not today, Dad.
I slid farther under the car and checked the rear axle.
My fingers hit a small box under the back seat on the passenger side. It shifted when I nudged it. Magnetic. I pulled it free. It was a commercial GPS tracker, the kind you bought online for less than a hundred bucks.
For fuck’s sake.
I lay there, staring at the thing. The device was too obvious for professionals, so either the group who’d set us up was disorganized, or the men who’d been sent after us were inexperienced. They’d fought like amateurs. Or it was both. One had produced a knife. Another had gotten angry about it.
What now, Penn? Hold onto it and attach it to the next car we found? What would happen to the unlucky driver? Would our attackers hurt them? I couldn’t do that to someone else.
The door above me opened, and I jerked my legs to the side as Gwen stepped out.
“Sorry!” she squeaked.
“It’s fine.” I slid out from under the car, stood, and crushed the tracker under my heel.
“What was that?”
I clicked off the flashlight and kicked the plastic remains into the ditch. “GPS tracker.”
Her head rolled forward, and her shoulders slumped. “Could my life get any worse?”
Normally I’d have a dozen worse days lined up. The Round Table guys and I could spend hours listing things that would make it worse. But with Gwen? I said, “At least no headlights are barreling down the road toward us?”
She let out a laugh that was half-sob. When she looked up at me, the fading light danced in the tears collecting against her eyelids.
Brush those away.
No, Penn, don’t fucking touch her.
She held up the strap from her messenger bag, the metal clips dangling. “I thought we could tie this around your arm. Like a tourniquet.”
A tourniquet? After everything she’d been through today, she was still focused on my arm.
“Thanks, but that’s not what this needs.
” I removed my jacket, wincing as I eased it off my injured arm, and rolled my shirt sleeve above the wound.
I turned the flashlight on to see it clearly.
The gash ran four inches below my elbow, shallower than it had any right to be, given how it continued oozing.
“A tourniquet cuts off circulation. This just needs direct pressure.”
She pulled her shirt sleeve down over her hand and pressed it flat against my injured arm, while holding underneath with the other hand. She sucked in her lips, as though holding back more tears.
I flinched and pulled my arm back. “You’ll get blood all over yourself. You don’t have a change of clothes—”
“Neither do you.”
“Exactly.” I held my arms out to my sides. “I’m a mess from crawling around under the car, so you need to stay as clean as possible if we need to talk to someone.”
She laughed, a small and thin little thing.
Wrap your arms around her. Do it.
I couldn’t. I was covered in dirt and blood, and we were standing on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. Plus, if I hugged her right now, I wouldn’t be able to let go. And if whoever put that tracker under the car realized I’d taken it off, they’d waste no time closing the distance.
“Get back in the car.” I gestured at her open door. “I need you to find us somewhere to stay.”
“Is a hotel okay?”
“No. If someone sees me while I’m in this condition, they’ll ask questions. A short-term rental with a lockbox and remote check-in? Maybe another hour down the road? I’d like it to be dark when we—”
Her chin trembled, and I stopped. She took a breath that shook all the way through her. “I trusted him, Arthur. Dr. Hopkins. I thought he was—”
“It’s okay, Gwen.” My arms ached to reach for her.
To pull her against my chest and let her fall apart where she was safe.
But a gravel shoulder in the near-dark, two feet from the tracker’s last known position, was anything but safe.
“He got past my team, too. But right now, I need you to find us a roof.”