The color left his face. None of the muscles around his mouth moved, but his pupils dilated so much I couldn’t miss it.
Shit.Garrett had been right at the pub.
“Garrett!” I shoved back from the table, but the chair caught and tipped behind me.
Dr. Caulfield lunged. His hand clamped over my mouth and the other aimed for my waist, but before he locked the arm around me, Garrett was there.
He hit Caulfield from behind, got an arm under his, and hauled him off me, practically throwing him across the room. I stumbled back into the table as Garrett went for the authenticator, who tried and failed to escape.
“What the fuck do you—” started Garrett.
“Stop!” shouted a voice from the garden doors, causing me to turn.
Conrad Richter.Oh my god.Conrad Richter marched through the doors with a pistol in his hand, pointed directly at me. Where was Aleš? Why wasn’t he charging in? How had Richter gotten past him? Another man appeared, sweeping the room with a two-handed grip on his own gun.
I couldn’t look away from Richter. From the gun. I put a hand on the table next to me, which was probably the only thing keeping me upright. “Garrett?”
“Don’t move.” His voice was gentle, but it wasn’t nearly close enough to me. He must have been ten or twenty feet behind me, but if I turned to find out, I’d present my back to a man with a gun.
The second man’s gun had stopped off to my side, probably on Garrett.
“Let him go, Mr. Cruz.” Richter’s voice was low and even. “Hands up. Both of you.”
“You fucking worm,” growled Garrett.
“I’m sorry,” choked out Dr. Caulfield. “I didn’t want this. We just—we need the egg.”
“You see?” Richter stalked toward me, keeping the gun trained on my chest. “This can all be painless, but you’ll have to let your team know I don’t want any trouble.”
“I’m contacting my team,” said Garrett.
Richter’s focus stayed locked on me, but he nodded.
“Merlin. Arthur. Radek.” Garrett’s voice was the same one he’d used when I’d called him in London. The calm one. The one his training must have drilled into him. “We have two armed hostiles inside. Hold all positions. Do not engage.”
“Smart man.” Richter grinned and finally stopped, less than a foot from me.
If I were Garrett or one of the feisty heroines in my novels, maybe I could have used his proximity to my advantage. Grab his gun, do some complicated wrist thing, and turn it on him. Surely his accomplice would back down, right? Except any order my brain gave didn’t seem to translate into the rest of my body. I just stood there, unable to raise my hands.
“Confirmed,” said Garrett. “Now take the egg and go.”
“Dr. Caulfield?” Richter didn’t look away from me. “Do as he says and get the egg for us.”
The slimy authenticator skittered around behind Richter, glancing at me as he stopped at the spot where he’d been sitting. Caulfield grabbed the hen off the table and shoved it into his jacket pocket, then the yolk into the other. He clutched the blue enamel shell against his chest.
Checking his phone. Checking the door. His fidgeting and texting. He hadn’t actually been thorough with the egg—he’d been waiting for an opportunity to call Richter in.
“How could you?” I breathed. “I trusted you. Henri trusted you.”
He shrugged. Shrugged! Not even a full shrug, but one of those tiny little ones like he didn’t understand what was wrong with all of this. To Richter, he said, “I have it.”
“Go.” Richter inclined his head backward toward the garden doors.
“What did you do to Aleš?” asked Garrett.
“He’s fine.” Richter didn’t move, despite Dr. Caulfield hurrying past him to the garden doors. “Small tranquilizer. He’ll wake soon.”
Hurried footsteps sounded from somewhere behind me.
