Page 122 of Under Arthur’s Protection

I pulled the blinds on the street-facing window while Lance cleared the back room and bathroom.

Lance returned with Merlin on his phone’s screen and turned it toward me. “We’re inside Hopkins’s office.”

“Marj?” Merlin said.

“Don’t call me that,” Morganna said faintly in the background.

My phone immediately began buzzing with a video call, and I accepted. “Thanks for helping out.”

“Like I had a choice. John,” she drawled, using Merlin’s real name, the same way he’d used hers, “arrived at my apartment yesterday and gave me an ultimatum about helping you. He said I was dicking you around and followed up with a cute little comment about my head being in my ass.”

I grimaced at Lance, who was holding back a laugh. That hadn’t been what I’d expected Merlin to do.

She continued, “I thought it was overkill until he told me about Rick Younge. I can’t believe that asshole showed his face, let alone took your girlfriend.”

She’s not my girlfriend. Although if Merlin had called her that, it was clear everyone knew what she meant to me. So much for the secret. “I appreciate it.”

“Don’t appreciate it yet. Did Hopkins leave his computer behind?”

“His desktop’s here.” I aimed my phone’s camera at the desk and hit the power button.

Lance had angled his phone at the filing cabinet, so Merlin could see what he was pulling. He opened the first drawer and spread files on a side table. He muttered, “Maps, photos, notes. His handwriting’s shit.”

“While it boots up,” Morganna said, “check for a password. Under the mouse pad or the keyboard, maybe in a drawer.”

I flipped the mouse pad. Nothing. Lifted the keyboard. Nothing. The top-right drawer contained pens, a magnifying glass, and loose USB drives. The second had reprints and a half-eaten pack of digestive biscuits. The bottom drawer had a sticky note pressed to the inside panel. He’d made the password hard to guess and easy to find. I typed in the string and the desktop loaded. “I’m in.”

Morganna walked me through giving her remote access—a website, a code she read to me, a confirmation prompt. The cursor began moving on its own. “Got it. I’ll work this end. You two work the room.”

“How did they know we’d be at the cave?” I asked, as though someone would have the answer.

Lance didn’t look up from the files. “That’s what’s been eating at me.”

“We didn’t spot anyone following us. We came across the Channel, drove the back way in.”

“Let’s start closer to the beginning.” Lance pulled a folder and set it aside. “How did the car that followed us from the airport know we’d be there? When we first arrived from the States.”

Our first night in England. We’d landed at the little airstrip, loaded Gwen and the sword into the car, and a dark sedan had been behind us within twenty minutes. “We filed flight information. If they knew we were on the jet, they could have identified the airstrip.”

“And they knew about the archive in Champagne because⁠—”

“That was Hopkins.” I watched the cursor move around Hopkins’s screen. “He’s the one who sent Gwen there. Told her the French archives might have the earliest references to the inscription.”

“So if Hopkins is involved in all of this,” Lance said, pausing with his hand on the next drawer, “is it a coincidence he was at St. Catherine’s Church when we visited?”

Shit. I’d thought his being there was convenient. But it wasn’t. It was too convenient. “How did he know we’d be there?”

Lance looked at me over his shoulder.

I stared at the bookshelves. A lifetime of scholarship, and all of it had been cover. But for what? “I didn’t tell anyone we were going to the church.”

“No one?” said Lance. “Didn’t you say you⁠—”

“Oh, fuck me.” I would have thrown the computer if Morganna wasn’t using it. “Ethan. I emailed him before we went, asking for details about it.”

You told him everything.

“Ethan,” Lance said. “Who was also at the house earlier today and saw our plans to go to the cave?”