Page 139 of Under Arthur’s Protection

“I don’t need to. The man in that room with you offered, minutes ago, to stand her in front of this door if we tried to blow it. Your word she walks isn’t worth the speaker it’s coming through.” The second I left was the second Rick would tear into her. She was still alive, so she must have told them about her scheduled email. Rick had another day and a half to torture her into deleting it. “My men stay. I stay.”

The intercom went quiet, long enough that I’d have paid another five million to listen to the argument on the far side of it.

No more than twenty minutes ago, I’d led six men over a wall. Now the job was standing in a basement talking. All of my training covered the first part of tonight. But this part? No amount of hostage rescue prepared me for… for Gwen to be the one on the other side of the door.

I crossed to the door and set my palm where it had been. They had eyes and ears on us, but I was flying blind. I couldn’t hear her breathe. Couldn’t touch her skin. Couldn’t look into her hazel eyes. So I did the next best thing and looked directly into the camera over the door. “I’m not going anywhere without you, Gwen.”

Chapter 43

Gwen

Rick, the guards, Dr. Hopkins, and the man who’d claimed they called the police stood around the bank of security monitors. Arthur had offered them money, threatened them, and they’d threatened him right back. How many of the threats were merely bluffs? Would the Custodians open the door and let me out?

And what would Rick do if they tried?

A sliver of corridor feed showed Arthur standing next to the wall outside the safe room. Rifle slung across his body, he had the easy posture of a man waiting for a dinner reservation. His voice came through the security system’s speaker. “We can hold this position for days, and you know it. I’m sure Gwen’s told you about her email by now, so here’s where we are: either everyone walks out of here tonight, or the whole world learns what you are.”

The old man’s head came around to Rick. “What email?”

Rick’s eyes cut to Dr. Hopkins. Dr. Hopkins’s eyes cut back. Half a second, maybe less.

“What email?” the old man said, sounding as dangerous as Rick.

“We were dealing with it,” said Dr. Hopkins.

“Dealing with it?”

Clearly this man was in charge. Was he the one who needed an escort to the safe room because he was that important? Was he the Warden named in their Charter?

That’s not the important part, Gwen. No, the important part was that they were arguing. The longer they argued, the more opportunity I had to figure a way out of this.

I stayed against the wall, keeping my distance from the man who liked hitting me so much. “I have an email scheduled to broadcast everything I learned about your organization. I told Rick after we left Tintagel. It goes out in less than two days.”

“There is no email,” Rick said.

“The Aurelian Custodians, chartered by Edward the First. New Avalon, the Passage under Tintagel, and the sword as key. Dr. Hopkins has been chasing people away from this area for years, to hide your truth.” Please let it all be right. I kept my eyes on the old man. He was the one I still had to convince. “Friday afternoon, the email goes to the press, my colleagues, universities, plus a bunch of history and conspiracy influencers.”

I kept my chin up and my voice almost steady through it all—the parts I wasn’t sure of as well as the outright lies. I should have thought about influencers in the first place, but they didn’t know that. Dr. Hopkins folded his arms, while Rick took a step toward me.

“If all of this is true, I cannot let you leave this estate alive,” said the old man, as though killing someone were as common as breathing. He tilted his head, and the temperature of his voice dropped. “Unless Rick’s partially right, and you’re attempting to pass off what you learned in our home tonight as being in your email?”

I tried to appear confident, but I didn’t have the poker face for this.

“I suspect you know nothing more than that fool Fergus McConnell, and we discredited him a decade ago.” He waved a hand, dismissing me. “Your email means⁠—”

The room jumped—the whole thing—and I stumbled into the wall. Dust dropped from the ceiling like thin curtains. The lights flickered but held, and cries rose from the room down the hall where several of the people had gone.

Over the security display, Arthur said, “Good job. A few more of those and we’re through.”

They were blasting? They were seriously using explosives to get in here?

“First, you’re wrong about him walking in with force,” Hopkins hissed at Rick. “Now, you’re wrong about what he’ll do for the woman. What do you expect you’ll be wrong about next?”

Rick moved. Three strides, and his hand was in my hair, hauling me toward the steel door’s frame. “Open the channel.”

Nobody moved.

“Open the fucking channel!”