33. Galahad
Galahad
“Grace!” I was running before I knew I was running. Through the gate, onto the road, the car accelerating away from me, and her eyes remained locked with mine through the car window like I was her fucking anchor. “I’m coming! I’m coming for you, do you hear me?”
The car gained a length. Two. Richter’s hand was still in her hair.
Plate. Get the plate.
The operator part of me caught up to the rest of me, and I had my phone out, video on, sprinting through the dust. Camera up. Frame the plate. Hold it. Hold it. Three more strides. Four. The plate started to blur, my lungs gave out, and I dropped to a walk, then a stop.
I stood at the bend in the road, holding the phone up.
The car was a black square shrinking into Prague traffic.
Gone.
I stood at the edge of Henri’s property, dragging in air that wasn’t doing anything to calm me. I tilted the phone. Scrolled back. The first three seconds of video were sharp enough I could read the plate. Whatever else I’d failed at, at least I’d done that.
Now what, asshole?
I texted the image to Merlin and ran back toward the house, past Radek, who sat on the flagstones with Ale?, who was beginning to stir.
Inside the dining room, Dr. Caulfield’s equipment sat on the table, as though he’d excused himself—for a fucking glass of water with goddamn lemon slices!
It was a ploy. It was all a fucking ploy, and I missed it.
I’d been so wrapped up in the smile on Grace’s face that I’d created the gap that let Richter in.
I grabbed the hard-sided case with his testers in it and hurled it against the wall. Glass shattered. Metal clattered across the floor. Not enough. I grabbed his leather notebook and threw that too, its pages fluttering as it joined the heap on the floor.
“Garrett.” Arthur was suddenly in front of me, gripping my shoulder. “Stop.”
I shoved him away and threw Caulfield’s stupid little velvet mat. Paced to the garden doors and back. To the table and back. My whole body was vibrating with a rage that needed to be let out, and standing still wasn’t fixing anything. “I’m going after them.”
“You don’t have any way to track the car.”
“I’ll find them.” Back to the doors. A stupid fucking bird chirped at me from the garden, and I could have shaken its tree until the damn thing shut up. “I’ll track Richter. Find Kessler’s location. I’ll?—”
“And do what?” Arthur stepped into my path on my next circuit to the table. “Storm whatever location he might be in? No intel, no backup, no extraction plan?”
Fuck. He was right.
Fuck!
The tactical part of my brain—the part that had kept me alive through my tours in the Middle East and my years of private security—knew solo extraction against an unknown target was suicide.
But the rest of me wanted to put my fist through the wall, through Arthur, through anything that stood between me and Richter’s car. “Get out of my way.”
“No.”
Merlin came through the garden doors at a run, with his phone to his ear.
“—got a photo of the plate. I’m sending it to you now.
Yeah, forward it to Morganna, tell her we need everything she can pull ASAP.
” He spotted me and held up his hand while he finished.
“Registration, traffic cameras, rental records, anything. Thanks, Tristan.”
“What do you have?” Arthur asked.
“Garrett got us a photo of the plate.” He lowered the phone. “Lance and Tristan are coordinating from home, and they’re bringing Morganna in.”
“Good.” Arthur still hadn’t moved.
I paced around him. To the window. To the table. Back to the doors. My hands kept flexing, ordering me to throw something else.
This was supposed to be a goddamn favor to Tristan. A few days of babysitting a woman with a shiny egg, then back to the States in time for my meetings with White Spring Security. That was the deal. That was the plan.
And now look where you are.
Henri appeared in the doorway from the interior hall, with Dmitry close behind him. “What’s happening? We heard—” His gaze swept the room. The shattered case. The scattered papers. Me pacing like a caged animal. “Where are Grace and Brandon?”
“He grabbed Grace and the egg,” I growled. “Richter had a car waiting.”
“No. That’s impossible.” Henri sank into a chair at the far end of the table. “He’s done work for me before. Everyone recommends him for Russian Imperial pieces. His references?—”
“His references don’t fucking matter.” I kicked at a piece of broken equipment near my foot. It skittered across the floor and hit the wall. “He’s been feeding intel to Kessler all along.”
I should have trusted my instincts from London, instead of assuming the front-running bullshit was a sign we could let him anywhere near Grace.
Dmitry crouched and picked up Caulfield’s notebook from where it had landed. He flipped through the pages, stopping on one to study it.
You should have seen through him. You should have listened to your gut in fucking London!
“This drawing.” Dmitry held up the notebook, open to a page with a detailed sketch of a decorative enamel box with annotations in the margins. “I’ve seen this piece.”
“So what?”
“It was in Kessler’s collection.”
All that confirmed was what we already knew—Caulfield was tipping Kessler off about artifacts he might want. It didn’t tell me where they’d taken Grace. Unless?—
I stopped pacing and faced Dmitry directly. “You saw it in his collection? Where?”
“His estate. It’s less than an hour’s drive outside Prague.” Dmitry flipped through some more pages. “I’ve been there twice for items I’ve recovered.”
“Can you draw the layout?”
“The main house, yes. The collection wing. The grounds, roughly.” He looked down at the notebook. “The security arrangements may have changed since my last visit, but I can give you some ideas.”
“Garrett,” said Arthur, “we’re not assaulting the man’s house.”
Merlin’s phone buzzed. He checked the screen and put it on speaker. “You’re on speaker, Marj.”
“The plate belongs to Werner Kessler,” Morganna said through the phone. “I did a little digging and discovered he owns an estate outside the city, purchased twelve years ago through a shell company registered in Liechtenstein.”
“Address?” Merlin asked.
“Sending now.”
A notification appeared on Merlin’s phone, with a link that brought up satellite imagery. He showed it to Dmitry, who nodded.
“One more thing,” Morganna added. “You’d better get some OSINT sources lined up if you actually expect me to join your little Round Table gig. Right now I’m running everything through White Spring’s systems, and I can’t keep doing that if I leave them.”
White Spring Security. The job I was supposed to have time to decide about. The meetings I’d been promised I’d make. I was past my deadline with them.
Did any of that matter now?
“Thanks, Morganna.” Arthur took the phone from Merlin. “We owe you.”
“You owe me a corner office and a signing bonus, Arthur. If I find anything else, I’ll call.” She hung up.
Dmitry cleared a space on the table, pushing aside Caulfield’s scattered tools, and started sketching on a blank sheet in the notebook.
The property perimeter first, a rough oval with the main entrance to the west. Then the house itself, a central structure with two wings.
He marked the collection room on the east side, where Kessler displayed his acquisitions.
“There’s a secondary approach through the gardens here.” He drew a dotted line. “The security was concentrated at the main gate when I visited. Professional, but not military. Private guards, maybe six or eight.”
“Safe room?”
Dmitry tapped a spot on the map. “Accessible from a stairwell near the kitchen. Steel-reinforced walls, two feet deep. Kessler showed it to me once. He was proud of it.”
“How fast can he get to it?” I asked.
“From anywhere on the ground floor, perhaps a minute.”
“So he doesn’t get a minute.”
Merlin leaned over his shoulder, comparing the sketch to the satellite imagery on his phone, and pointing to the west side. “Looks like tree cover along this approach.”
I paced to the open garden doors while the other men worked.
It was barely six o’clock, so we had hours of daylight left.
Even with tree cover, we couldn’t assault in broad daylight.
No matter how much I wanted to charge out through these doors and take our rental to Kessler’s right now, I had to be smart. That’s what would save Grace.
Her voice circled inside my brain. ‘Would iced coffee be too much trouble?’
Trouble. That’s what she thought she was.
Had she always been like that, or was it because of me?
Because I’d grumbled and complained through our first few days?
Was she afraid of upsetting me? No. Grace Laurent wasn’t the type who hid things.
She was open and welcoming, and she was my fucking ray of sunshine.
Sunshine? What, do you think you’re a poet now?
It was nothing but brain chemistry. Forced proximity and adrenaline created chemical reactions that mimicked real emotion. What I was feeling was nothing more than survival instinct mixed with some hormones. Poetry was just another way to get laid.
That’s all it was.
She’d wanted iced coffee in the heat. I’d crossed fifteen feet of room to ask the housekeeper to bring it. Fifteen feet. And by the time Grace had said my name, Caulfield had already been out of his chair, and the men with the guns had already been crossing the garden.
I should have snapped Caulfield’s neck. But no.
Conrad Richter had held a gun at her chest, and the second Arthur arrived, Richter had put a knife to her throat.
Standing down had been the only fucking choice I had.
Even if Ale? had woken up faster or Radek had shown up and put a bullet through his head, the body did things when it died.
He could have spasmed and slit her throat just as easily as he might have dropped the knife.