Chapter 24
Gwen
Arthur pulled the car into the driveway beside the house and killed the engine. He unlocked his phone and held it toward me. “Can you get the key? The lockbox code should be in the booking confirmation.”
I took the phone and stepped out into the dark. We’d driven over an hour after stopping on the side of the road. Four hours ago, we’d left the archive. Arthur had refused to let me treat his injury and had kept pushing through. Stubbornness? Or it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.
Either way, I was stuck somewhere between completely wired and utterly exhausted.
I headed to the side of the house where the lockbox hung, searching for the confirmation message.
Meanwhile, Arthur rolled a gray garbage bin to the back of the car. Not to the car—to the plate. He was hiding us.
“Do you think they’re following us?” I punched in the code and withdrew the key as he reached me.
“I think we’re fine to stop for the night.” He took the key, unlocked the door, and ushered me in. He shut it behind us. “Wait—”
“I know. Wait here.” We’d done this enough times that I knew he’d go in first, scout the location, and I could move freely once he finished.
He nodded, put down the sword case he’d carried in, and did his thing.
I stood just inside, trying to admire the cozy little kitchen with white subway tiles and the small dining table and chairs tucked into a corner. To the left was a living room, clean and plain, with framed prints of lavender fields on the walls.
Somewhere in the house, doors opened and closed, lights turned on and off, and Arthur’s steady footsteps signaled his progression.
I gripped the strap of my messenger bag tight, my brain flashing back to the parking lot.
‘Stop or she’s dead,’ the man had said. The same man who’d brought me the sketch as though he had all the secrets to my mystery in his hands. He’d said he’d kill me.
Arthur had used the case as a weapon and as a shield. I’d checked the sword on the roadside. The knife had penetrated the outer shell of the case, but fortunately, it hadn’t reached the sword.
‘Stop or she’s dead.’
All I wanted was to wrap myself up in a warm blanket, go to sleep, and pretend none of this had happened. Maybe I’d even wake up in the morning and be back in my bed in New York. Maybe Sam hadn’t called me for this authentication job at all, and I’d never met Arthur Penn.
The man himself appeared at the kitchen entrance. “We’ll be safe here.”
Safe? I’d thought I was safe at the archive. I’d been sitting at a table surrounded by history, doing the work I’d trained for my whole adult life. And then a man’s arm had wrapped around my neck.
My lungs did something funny. Something way too fast. And my feet didn’t cooperate. Neither did my mouth. I stood there, trying to go back in time to when the worst thing I had to deal with was Bridget’s mean words.
“Gwen?” Arthur stepped closer, his head tilting.
I tried to tell him I was okay, but a weird noise burst out of me.
“Are you all right?”
“He said he was going to kill me.” My voice had climbed way too high, and I couldn’t pull it back down. “He put his arm around my throat, and he said—”
“You fought him off. You did a great job.”
My hands flew up to cover my eyes. I couldn’t cry in front of him again. Not again. He was going to think I—
His big arms enveloped me, and he crushed me against his chest. “You’re okay, Gwen.”
I let my hands slip down from my face and tucked them under his jacket, wrapping my arms around him. My forehead pressed into his shoulder, and I gave up. I let the tears come.
His breathing was slow, while mine came in hiccups that hurt. One of his hands rested in the middle of my back, and the other came up to my head. His heartbeat was the steadiest thing in the world, and it made me feel… what? Protected? Calm?
Safe. I felt safe inside his arms.
If only this were more than a bodyguard trying to settle his hysterical client. Considering I wasn’t paying, I could almost convince myself there was more to it. Like maybe he cared. Like he was nothing more than a man comforting a woman who was precious to him.
As long as I cried, he’d keep holding me, and I could keep pretending.
I turned my head, resting my cheek against the hollow beneath his collarbone, and his thumb moved against my head.
One small stroke, but my whole body reacted.
Instead of the tears stealing my breath, it was my sudden, overwhelming awareness of the muscles underneath his shirt.
Muscles that my breasts—my breasts!—were pressed against.
He’s your bodyguard, Gwen. Don’t go there.
But I was already there. So there.
Memories of my dream at Sam and Antonio’s came back to me. Of Arthur’s hands on me, like they were on me now. Of my lips on his bare chest. I was so close.
He stepped back suddenly, gaze heading to the floor. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t.” Don’t what, Gwen? Don’t apologize? Or don’t stop holding you? Rubbing your back and your head? “It helped.”
“I mean…” He held up his right arm. “I’m getting blood on you.”
The blood. The cut.
The knife.
‘Stop or she’s dead.’
Be useful, Gwen.
“I’m going to find a first aid kit,” I blurted, hurrying past him before I could say anything stupid. The walls blurred as I blinked away my remaining tears.
God, his arms. The heat of his body. The smell.
Sure, the scent of dirt and oil clung to him from when he’d crawled under the car. And a whiff of blood and body odor from when he’d literally saved my life. But under it all was the sandalwood, warm and clean and inviting.
I found a kit under the bathroom sink and riffled through it.
Antiseptic, gauze pads, medical tape, and scissors.
Everything I needed. Before I left, I dared to look at myself in the mirror.
Dirt and more than a bit of Arthur’s blood decorated my shirt, especially at the sleeve hem where I’d put pressure on a wound well past needing it.
My hair was a disaster, and my eyes were more bloodshot than I’d ever seen them.
What a sight I was.
I blew my nose and splashed some water on my face—which did nothing but get me wet. Taking care of Arthur might push aside some of the panic and worry. If I could just feel normal for a minute, maybe that would fix everything.
Back in the kitchen, Arthur was at the sink, running water over his forearm. His jacket was draped over one of the chairs, and he’d rolled the sleeve above the wound. Under the direct light, the torn skin was angry and raw. He tore off a paper towel and gently dried the area around the edges.
I set the kit on the table and pulled out one of the wooden chairs. “Sit down.”
“I can handle this.”
“I know you can.” I opened the kit and laid out what I needed. “Sit down anyway? Please?”
He frowned at me, then pretended to be a cooperative patient and sat.
I took the other chair and pulled it closer. He rested his forearm on the wooden table, and I leaned over it. “Relax.”
He shifted his weight but didn’t pull away. “I am relaxed.”
“You’re not.” I tore open an antiseptic wipe and started cleaning the wound.
As I worked, his gaze danced between the back door, the windows, and the hallway to the bedrooms. He didn’t flinch, but he also couldn’t keep still.
“You don’t like people doing things for you, do you?”
“I grew up with people doing things for me.” His sarcasm was back, the same as on the ferry when he’d talked about wanting more from life. “It’s my natural state.”
“Do you want to debate nature versus nurture?” I worked carefully, clearing the dried blood he hadn’t washed clean at the sink.
He scoffed. “Don’t get me started.”
I opened a gauze pad and pressed it over one end of the cut. “Hold this.”
He indulged my request while I got the tape ready.
The cut was half the length of his forearm but on the top, and it wasn’t terribly deep.
It had made a mess of his shirt, and he definitely needed stitches, but if the guy who’d attacked him had sliced the softer side of his arm?
Or gone deeper? We would have been sitting in a hospital, not this kitchen.
How the man had continued fighting—god, how he’d driven a car for hours—
My eyes blurred, and I blinked hard, then wiped my wrist across my cheek before tearing off more tape.
I pressed it down, smoothing the edges against his skin, taking my time.
The last thing he needed was his incompetent nurse making things worse.
“I can wash your shirt, too, before the blood sets.”
“I don’t have anything else to wear.” No sarcasm. No bitterness, either.
“I promise not to look, if that helps.” I secured more gauze over the other end of the cut.
He smiled, then let out a quiet, short laugh. “I didn’t mean—”
His phone buzzed on the table, and he stopped mid-sentence. He glanced over and tapped the screen. “Hey, Lance. You’re on speaker.”
“I know I was supposed to wait for your call,” Lance said in a rush, “but I’ve been losing my mind up here. Is Gwen okay?”
Not ‘What happened?’ Not ‘Where are you?’ No, he asked if I was okay.
“I’m fine, Lance.”
“Thank fuck.” He exhaled hard. “When Arthur said you were attacked, my brain went to some dark places.”
“We’re both in one piece,” Arthur said.
Lance and I had only known each other for a few months before we dated.
We hadn’t been so much friends as people who ran into each other off and on.
I’d been working on a contract at the Met, while he’d been on a temporary assignment of some sort he never explained.
The attraction had been there from the get-go, but it was easy to fall for Lance Collins.
He’d had a smile for everyone and was quick to laugh. He was the kind of man who kept everything light, and dating him hadn’t changed that. Everything stayed light and casual through dinners, movies, and phone calls.
But the voice coming through Arthur’s phone was not light. “Don’t ever go dark on me again. Either of you.”
“Where are you?” Arthur asked.
“En route to Geneva. Gets us close enough to go wherever you need.”
“Good. Stay near the airport and get some rest. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Copy. Take care of her.”
“I will.” Arthur ended the call as I placed the last piece of tape on his arm.
“I wish they had butterfly bandages.” I pressed my palm around the edges of the dressing, ensuring the tape held. “You’ll probably need stitches.”
He put his hand on top of mine. “We’ll deal with it tomorrow, okay?”
I put my free hand on top of his. A hand sandwich. What was I doing? And why hadn’t I noticed my knees were bracketing his? Or that I was close enough I could lean forward and smell his cologne. Maybe he could hug me one more time, so I could stop feeling like such a mess.
“Hungry?” he said, pulling his hand and arm free.
“I’m not sure.” I began placing my tools back into the first aid kit.
He stood, crossed to the pantry, and laughed.
I loved that sound. “What?”
“Would you believe they have all the ingredients for Hettie’s puttanesca?” He pulled a box of spaghetti off the shelf as I turned around. “Canned tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, pasta. Even olives.”
The vision of Arthur at the stove in his Cornwall cottage flooded my brain. The way I’d practically hidden around the corner to watch him tearing off bread and dipping it in the sauce. The way he’d seemed so peaceful in his gray T-shirt and joggers.
That was the moment I wanted to go back to. I wanted to stare for a little longer, and share in the quiet moment he’d been having. But there was no going back. “Should you be cooking with that arm?”
“My nurse took excellent care of it.” He winked at me, and that wink settled in all sorts of places it didn’t belong.
Take the first aid kit back and get your head on straight.
“I’d like the pasta very much, thanks.”
While he cooked, I cleaned up, put everything back where it belonged, then tracked down my messenger bag.
Work would surely fix my brain. The laptop lid had a dent, and a few pixels in the upper-left corner were flashing in odd colors, but at least the machine worked. I was going to owe Sam a replacement.
Arthur didn’t chop as quickly as he had at the cottage, but his knife skills were still impressive.
Imagine if he’d pulled the knife out of the sword case and—
The garlic hissed as he threw it into the pan of oil. The scent had no business being so comforting.
“What were they trying to accomplish, Arthur?”
“Sorry?” He grimaced while twisting the olive jar’s lid. He didn’t ask for help, but tried four times until it popped open.
“At the archive. If they were willing to go that far to take the sword, there has to be something about it we’re missing.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing.” He drained some olives in the sink and brought them to the cutting board.
I pulled out my pen and notebook. Doodling would get my brain back into thinking mode. “It can’t be the black market people, either the owners, or the auctioneers the FBI took it from. They wouldn’t have bothered to plant a forged document. They’d simply take it back, right?”
“Makes sense. So you think the sword is special?”
“Somehow, yes. But what? Why?” I wrote Hopkins at the top of the page and underlined it. “Dr. Hopkins sent us to Champagne. He told us the archive might have records linking the inscription to the literary tradition. Instead we got a fake sketch and three men in a parking lot.”
Arthur cleaned and sliced the ingredients, then tipped them into the pan. “He also sent you to Fergus.”
“And to Malta.” I flipped through my earlier notes. “I’m fairly certain the sword itself is seventh century. Fergus’s earliest date for Novae Avallonis was in the 1600s, and the sketch claimed the inscription was added in the 1700s.”
“And Malta says the phrase inside the church dates to at least the fourteenth century.”
“What if Malta was supposed to be another dead end, and Lance got lucky with the translator?”
Arthur chuckled to himself and shook his head. “Then Hopkins has been running a pretty sophisticated operation.”
“That’s what scares me.” I stared at the name on my page. “I should look into him more closely. Maybe I can figure out what he’s actually been doing.”