She was still talking. Laying out the intelligence like bricks, building a case, constructing the framework that would lead them to Florence. It was what Erin did. When the world collapsed, she built. Piece by piece, fact by fact, until the chaos had structure and the structure had a way forward.
Alexandra watched her wife strip down to her underwear: sporty black briefs that sat low on her hips, the sports bra, bare feet on the bedroom carpet. Erin's dark hair was loose around her shoulders and there were shadows under her green eyes and her bandaged hand was stained with blood she hadn't bothered to clean. She was exhausted and furious and beautiful, and the sight of her made something crack open in Alexandra's chest that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with the fact that this woman had been hers for a decade and was still, in the worst moment of their lives, here.
"If Arthur is involved," Alexandra said quietly, "then my mother is too."
Erin stopped mid-sentence. She turned and looked at Alexandra properly for the first time since entering the room. “I know.”
"They don't operate alone. They never have. Arthur provides the network. The connections, the money, the operational infrastructure. But the ambition, the vision, if you can call it that, has always been Cecilia's. She's the one who wanted me gone. She's the one who offered you a million pounds to leave. She's the one who supported Hugo. Arthur wouldn't move against the Crown without Cecilia's blessing. He doesn't have the imagination."
Erin's eyes were dark in the lamplight. “She ordered the kidnapping of her own granddaughter."
"I think my mother is capable of anything that serves her interests. Florence is the heir. If Florence is gone, the succession is in chaos. If the succession is in chaos, the public loses confidence in my ability to protect my own family, let alone a country. And if the public loses confidence?—"
"Arthur steps in." Erin's voice was grim. "The quiet, dignified uncle. The stable alternative."
"Yes."
They looked at each other across the dim room. The lamp threw their shadows long across the walls and the bed was between them and the house was quiet and somewhere in the Surrey countryside their daughter was in a stranger's house and neither of them could reach her.
"Hold me," Alexandra said. "Please. Just hold me."
Erin came to her. She crossed the space between the door and the bed in three strides and sat beside Alexandra and gathered her up in both arms. The warmth of Erin's body was immediate and encompassing: the hard muscle of her arms, the smooth skin of her stomach against Alexandra's hands, the familiar scent of her that was clean cotton and sweat and something underneath that was just Erin, the smell that had been Alexandra's home for ten years.
Alexandra buried her face in the curve of Erin's neck and the composure she'd been fighting to maintain all day crumbled. She sobbed. The sound was ugly and raw and she didn't care, because Erin's arms were around her and Erin's hand was in her hair and Erin's lips were against her temple, murmuring words that were barely audible.
"I've got you. I'm here. I've got you."
"I'm so scared." Alexandra's voice was muffled against Erin's skin. "I'm so scared, Erin. I can't?—"
"I know. I know."
"She's eight. She's out there somewhere and she's eight and she doesn't know what's happening and I can't?—"
Erin pulled back enough to look at Alexandra's face. Her green eyes were red-rimmed and her jaw was set and the tenderness in her expression was so fierce it was almost violent. "Listen to me. If Arthur and Cecilia have her, and I believe they do, they will not hurt her. Florence is their leverage. She's worth nothing to them harmed. They'll have her somewhere comfortable, with people who are taking care of her. They need her healthy and safe so they can use her as a bargaining chip."
"You can't know that."
"I can know how they think. I spent fifteen years protecting people from exactly this kind of threat. The hostage is valuable. Harming the hostage defeats the purpose."
"She's not a hostage." Alexandra's voice broke on the word. The clinical language, the strategic framing. It was Erin's way of coping, of making the unbearable manageable by reducing it to tactics and logic. But Florence wasn't a variable in an equation. She was a little girl who slept with a ribbon from her sister's hair tucked inside her book. She was a child who practised speeches in the mirror and worried about wobbling in her new shoes and knew the shape of her pony from a helicopter window. "She's our daughter."
Erin's face crumpled. For one terrible, beautiful moment, the tactical mask fell away completely and Alexandra saw the woman underneath: the raw, desperate fear that Erin had been holding at arm's length all day, the love that was so immense it was indistinguishable from pain. Erin's eyes were full and her chin was trembling and she looked, for the first and only time that day, like she might break.
"I know who she is," Erin whispered. "She's everything. She's everything and I will not rest until she's home."
Alexandra reached up and touched Erin's face. Her fingertips traced the line of her jaw, the ridge of her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth. Erin turned her head and kissed Alexandra's palm, a slow, open-mouthed press that sent heat through Alexandra's wrist and up her arm and into the centre of her chest.
"We'll get through this," Erin said against her palm. "Together. The way we get through everything."
"Promise me."
"I promise you. The way I promised you on the steps when I took that bullet. The way I promised you at the altar. The way I promised Florence last night that I would keep her safe." Her voice roughened. "I broke that promise today. I won't break it again."
"You didn't break anything." Alexandra cupped Erin's face in both hands and held her gaze. "You didn't do this. This was done to us. To Florence. By people who have been trying to destroy us for years. And they will not win. Not this time."
Erin pressed her forehead against Alexandra's. Their noses touched. Their breath mingled in the small space between their mouths. The lamp threw their joined silhouette against the wall and in the warm half-dark it looked like one shape, not two.
They were very close now. Erin's breath was warm on Alexandra's lips and her hands were at Alexandra's waist and the grief and the fear and the exhaustion were still there but beneaththem something else was rising, the need to be held, to be known, to feel something that wasn't terror. The need to remind herself that she was alive and Erin was alive and their love was real and solid and present even in the worst of it.
