Page 118 of Under Arthur’s Protection

Lance exhaled hard through his nose. One breath. “Get up here.”

“Tristan.” I stepped past the woman onto the highest rock, as though a few more feet would fix this. “Tell me you’ve found her.”

“We’re searching, Arthur.”

I leaned down to the Canadian woman, likely in shock from hiding in a little outcropping half-full of water. “The police will want to talk to you when they get here. You should head up the stairs to meet them.”

“She caught me, you know. Inside? I nearly fell, and she caught my hand.” The woman blinked hard, a few tears falling. “She seemed like a good person.”

She is. It stayed on the tip of my tongue. If I said it out loud, the other tense was standing right behind it. Is. She is a good person. “I’ll find her.”

Tristan and Galahad muttered on their end, about altitudes and search grids. They had to find her. They had to.

And when they did, I had to be ready. I moved more slowly back through the cave. I’d been reckless when I ran, and was lucky I hadn’t rolled an ankle and put myself out of commission. I had to remain operational. I had no other option, and a twisted fucking ankle would make everything worse.

Past the narrowing. Past her section of wall. I grabbed her flashlight and shoved it into my jacket pocket, and beside where it had fallen, wedged between two rocks, lay a small DSLR camera.

I hit the power button. The screen lit on her last photo. Her flashlight beam swept across a circle carved into the rock, with a cross cutting through it and wavy channels beneath. The symbol. Fifty feet of it.

She’d found it. She’d actually found it. She’d been standing in front of the biggest discovery of her life when Rick came for her. Had they hurt her? Had I let them⁠—

Move, you worthless piece of shit! Move!

I moved. Rocks, pools, boulders. My ribs and knees screamed their complaints. Background noise.

Your father would have had men at both openings.

My father never would have brought her here, because my father wouldn’t say yes just because a woman asked him to and he wanted to make her happy.

My signal reconnected seconds after I cleared the cave, and I caught Lance mid-sentence: “—has contacts who can pull harbor cameras, maybe⁠—”

“I have her camera.” I hit the stairs. “She found it, Lance. The symbol.”

“Copy. What about the woman you were talking to?”

“She saw it all and called the police. We need to be gone before they arrive, or we’ll be stuck here answering questions.”

I’d been on the stairs when they took her. Retrieving equipment. I’d kept my overwatch posted, handled the logistics myself, and gotten my eyes back in the sky. Every mission I’d ever been on said I made the right call. But the right call had still landed her on a boat going who knew where.

You’re so fucking cocky, Penn. Thought you were across the Channel before Rick and his cronies knew you were here.

I’d underestimated the risk. Hadn’t planned long enough. Should have brought more backup.

‘The most dangerous thing a man can do,’ my father had told me once, ‘is let someone else become the reason he makes decisions.’

I’d been, what, sixteen at the time? I was sitting in a leather chair across from his desk in our Miami condo, waiting for a call to end. He’d hung up and said it without preamble, as though continuing a conversation we’d been having. I’d thought he was talking about business partners. He was probably talking about my mother or one of his faux-friends.

You should have listened to him.

If I had, I wouldn’t have brought Gwen here.

Fuck.

When I crested the top of the staircase, Lance fell in beside me, binoculars around his neck. He gave me one pat on the shoulder, and we sped up to a jog. The parking lot was a twenty-minute walk, and I didn’t know how many minutes Gwen had.

“I’m here,” Merlin said over my earpiece. “Sit rep?”

“Thermal contact,” Tristan said over the line. Thank fuck. “RIB running northeast along the cliffs. Six signatures, one small. I’m in the fog, but I’ve got them.”