Page 136 of Under Arthur’s Protection

My ears rang, and the air was full of gunpowder and sweat.

If they shot at him⁠—

Oh god! I was over his shoulder! He wasn’t just carrying me to move me! I was his shield!

I wrapped my arms over my head, as though my hands would stop a bullet. I needed Arthur. I needed out of here. I needed to go back to my little apartment in New York and forget all about this. Boring contracts for museums from now on. That’s all!

Within moments, Rick was following the crowd through the hidden passage, and I spotted the men. They’d withdrawn. They hadn’t returned fire. Rick’s shield plan had worked.

But a tiny metallic object flew from the doorway and landed in the middle of the floor.

My ears were still ringing from the gunshots, and searing white light blinded me. It must have been a flashbang. Was that what they called it?

Half-blind and half-deaf, I hung off Rick’s back as the depths of the estate swallowed us. The temperature dropped, and the air grew dry, with a faint musty scent.

“Arthur!” I screamed. Had I made a sound, or was the cry all in my head? I couldn’t tell anymore.

The edges of my vision faded back in as we crossed a steel threshold. A door at least a foot thick swung shut behind us, and the pressure hurt my ears. Rick bent and dropped me to the hard concrete floor. My hip and bruised arm hit first, pain ricocheting through my body. He growled at me, “Move and you’re dead.”

I lay where I’d landed for a few seconds, doing nothing but breathing, before I rolled onto my side and propped myself against the corner.

What now, Gwen?

I blinked and popped my ears over and over until my senses returned.

It was a concrete room, but completely unlike the tiny safe house Arthur and I had stayed in. With its desks and camera feeds from all over the property, it reminded me of an office building’s security station. A hallway led deeper in, past shelving and couches to a large television at least fifty feet away.

This wasn’t just a safe room. It was an entire safe apartment. How long they lasted down here depended entirely on how well stocked the place was.

The ones who must have been the Custodians wandered down the hallway. One of them took the sword case from Dr. Hopkins and vanished with it. Two of the guards sat in front of the monitors, while Dr. Hopkins and Rick were deep in conversation with a man who must have been in his eighties. Was he the one they called the Warden? The one a guard had been sent to retrieve? The one mentioned in the Charter upstairs?

Another guard opened a tall cabinet by the steel door, withdrew two rifles, and headed down the hallway with them. They were arming up.

The screens showed the house being taken by men in pairs, rifles up, no hurry in them, moving door to door. In a corridor: two of them put a guard on the carpet, cuffed his wrists behind him, and one checked the pulse at his neck before moving on. On the kitchen feed: five of Rick’s men face-down among the scattered dinner plates, hands secured at their backs. In a library: one of the Custodians’ guards put both hands up, and they knelt him down, zip-tied him, and left him breathing.

But the gunfire? I’d heard it before the screams started.

Had it only been the men from inside the house? Rick had shot at the two before we descended the stairs. They hadn’t fired back. They’d used a flashbang instead.

Feed after feed, room after room, Arthur’s team took them down with skill and strategy, not firepower. A speck of black flitted across several monitors. They must have had a drone inside.

I kept an eye on Rick as I pushed through the pain wracking my body and stood to get a better view. Two men came down the hidden staircase. Another two stood over three men who hadn’t been there when we came through. Maybe the flashbang took them out?

The two men stopped outside the door, near a keypad.

“—rescinding your key,” hissed the eighty-year-old man.

“You don’t have the authority.” Rick shook his head and moved to the security desk. He muttered, “Fucking Arthur Penn.”

One of the guards flicked a switch, and we could hear what the men at the door were saying.

“We can hack the control panel, but it’ll take some time,” said one of the men.

The other looked up at one of the cameras. He was covered from head to foot, including his face, but his eyes behind the lightweight glasses he wore? I’d know those eyes anywhere. Arthur said casually, “The safe room goes back a fair distance. I’d like to start with explosives.”

“Explosives?” Dr. Hopkins’s voice broke. “What have you gotten us into, Rick?”

Rick turned and grinned at me. His rage had been less unnerving than his grin. He pressed a button on the control panel. “Try it, Penn. And she’ll be standing in front of that door, waiting for the explosion.”