Chapter 39 #2
But when I lifted the sword’s case, I froze.
Under a sheet of glass embedded in the desk was a calligraphed charter with wax seals.
It was written in Latin, and I couldn’t translate all of it on the fly, though I did recognize some phrases.
Custos secreti. Keeper of the secret. Novae Avallonis.
Part of the inscription I’d been chasing.
Rex quondam rexque futurus. The once and future king. And a name. Custodes Aureliani.
The Aurelian Custodians.
Dated to 1284 by Edward I.
Holy fucking hell! Edward I?
Did the panel come out of the desk? Could I take it? Toss it into the sword’s case and go? Maybe it would prove something. Maybe it would be a lead, or maybe it—
Voices again.
Shit.
I put the case down and closed the folder. The voices were getting closer. Two men. I couldn’t make out the words yet, but one voice was lower, clipped.
Oh god. It was Rick Younge.
I was too far from the door to hide behind it, so I crawled under the desk. I pressed my back against the inside panel and pulled my knees to my chest.
They pushed the door open.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
You should have run when you had the chance.
“—can’t keep her here indefinitely,” Rick was saying. “She’s a liability. Every hour she’s breathing is another hour closer to our secrets getting out.”
“Which is precisely why she needs to stay alive,” came the second man’s voice.
Older, gentle. Dr. Theo Hopkins. But not the Dr. Hopkins from St. Catherine’s Church, the man who’d smiled at me and admired the sword.
No, this voice sounded more tired. Stressed.
“If she dies and that email publishes, we’ve lost everything.
Centuries of work. Everything the Custodians have protected. ”
“She’s bluffing.” Rick stopped near the desk, and I could feel how close he was to me. “What could it possibly have in it, other than the inscription you were able to explain? Maybe she’s got some photos from the church. Nothing we can’t manage.”
“Can you guarantee that? Can you guarantee the email doesn’t have detailed notes on whatever theories led her into the Passage?”
The Passage. That must have been Merlin’s Cave.
“No,” Rick said. “I can’t.”
“Then we don’t touch her. Not until we can verify what’s in that email, or find a way to stop it.”
“And how exactly do we do that? Her phone’s at the bottom of the sea. She can’t reset it herself, which means we can’t make her do it.”
“I’m aware of the constraints.”
“Are you? Because from where I’m standing, this whole operation has been a disaster since she turned up at St. Catherine’s.” Rick’s voice had an edge to it. “Your little stunt in Champagne didn’t work, and now we’ve got Arthur Penn’s girlfriend locked upstairs, and he’s going to come for her.”
“Penn doesn’t know where we are.”
“You don’t know what Penn knows. The man’s father runs one of the world’s largest private security firms. If he starts pulling on threads—”
“We deal with it when it happens.” Dr. Hopkins sounded more like a department chair at the end of a long faculty meeting than a man discussing whether to kill me. “Right now, the priority is the email. She said it was going out in forty-eight hours?”
“Minus travel time, so I don’t know how many we have left.”
“We need to put a computer in front of her, where she can log into her email, and we negotiate.”
“Negotiate?” Rick practically spat the word. “With the woman who’s been building a case to expose us since the day she picked up that sword?”
“She doesn’t know what she’d be exposing.” A chair creaked. Hopkins must have sat down.
“Or we kill her and take our chances.”
“No.”
“Theodore—”
“I said no. The risk is unacceptable.”
My whole body shook. My knees pressed hard against my chest, and I covered my mouth and nose to keep from breathing too loudly. Leave, leave, leave. Please, leave.
Footfalls thundered somewhere farther off. Shouts of “She’s gone!” rang out, followed by more running.
Rick’s steps receded, and the chair creaked like Hopkins might have been standing.
Yes! They were going to leave! The place would be crawling with guards.
The windows in this room had bars—the only ones I’d seen in the house, so they must have been protecting something in here.
There was no getting out that way. But if I could slip out behind them and make it to the rear door, I’d be home free unless someone was watching outside.
“The woman’s gone!” came a rushed voice, far too close. One of the guards must have come to the study.
“Fucking bitch,” muttered Rick as he came back toward the desk. That’s the wrong way! “I’m going to take the sword—”
I tried to make myself smaller.
His boots came around the desk, and he pushed the chair out of his way to reach for the sword. And then he was glowering down at me.
Run!
He grabbed a handful of my hair and hauled me out from under the desk, tossing me against the nearest wall. I hit one of the paintings and tried to run, but the door slammed shut at the same moment the back of Rick’s hand exploded across my face.
My head snapped sideways, into the painting. The bruise he’d given me on the boat screamed under the new impact. All I saw was the small dog at the bottom of the painting, once white, now flecked with blood.
His hand clamped around my upper arm, and he shoved me into the desk chair. He put a hand on the back of the tall chair and leaned in close enough that I noticed the hint of green in his brown eyes. “You little cunt. How’d you get out?”
Big Hands blocked the doorway. “She climbed out the fucking window over the door.”
Rick turned to him and spat, “Get the fuck out of here, you incompetent prick.”
“She’s—”
“Out!” shouted Rick.
Big Hands glowered at me, but did as he was told.
My cheek was on fire, and from the dampness on it, he’d likely split it open. The blood on the painting might have come from my cheek, from where I’d bitten the inside of my mouth, or from his knuckles. Or the blood on his knuckles was mine.
Don’t cry. Do not cry.
Rick’s jaw tightened as he turned back to me. “You know you aren’t leaving here alive, don’t you?”
“Rick, please.” Hopkins settled into his chair at the small table by the bookshelves. He didn’t share Rick’s anger, at least not on the surface. “You’ve put us in a difficult position, Dr. Lyons.”
Put them in a difficult position? Neither of them had blood in their mouths.
Hopkins held my gaze. “What’s in the email?”
What could I say? Did I actually have enough in the email to keep me alive? Or would my theories be too weak for them? Would they decide letting the email go was better than letting me leave?
“Dr. Lyons?” Dr. Hopkins said, folding his arms. “I’m a patient man, but not as patient as you seem to think I am.”
“My analysis connecting the sword and the church inscriptions to the cave at Tintagel. A Hospitaller inventory from 1312 confirming the inscription at the church.” Ignoring the goosebumps climbing up and down my arms, I forced myself to keep looking at Dr. Hopkins.
If I met Rick’s eyes, I’d lose my nerve.
“Your name is in the email, with a list of research you’ve discredited to keep people away from Tintagel. ”
His eye twitched. That last part was the key. That was what he wanted buried.
“If I don’t get out of here and shut the email off, the BBC, Sky News, CNN, and every major news outlet in the world will be reporting on the carving”—I took a gamble, hoping I was right about what they’d said—“inside the Passage at Merlin’s Cave.”
Dr. Hopkins stood and crossed to the door. He flung it open and said to Big Hands, who was waiting outside, “Take her.”
Big Hands came in, a wicked grin on his face.
Oh shit. Had I said enough? Was the cave really what they called the Passage?
“If you hurt her,” Dr. Hopkins said to Big Hands, “I’ll take you out in the boat myself.”
Rick pushed off the table. “She’s stalling. She doesn’t—”
Hopkins held the door open, glowering at Rick now. “Move her to one of the bedrooms in the main wing. And this time, put a man outside her door and keep him there.”
“You’re going to—”
“Dr. Lyons, I want you to understand.” Hopkins turned back to me, and for a half-second, the mask slipped.
He looked tired, as though a weight on his shoulders had just grown heavier.
“The work we do here has mattered for a very long time. I don’t expect you to believe that right now, but I hope in time—”
“In time?” Rick cut him off. “You’re talking to her like she’s a fucking colleague.”
“Watch how you speak to me.” Hopkins’s weariness disappeared, and he let go of the door. To me, he said, “Letting this information get out carries significant risks. I’ll speak with you in the morning, and we’ll see if we can’t figure this out.”
Rick grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the chair. He gripped harder and pulled me close enough to rasp into my ear, “You won’t stay this lucky for long.”