Vic was quiet for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was different: rougher, more careful, the voice of someone choosing words with unusual precision.
"I've known Erin a long time now. Angry, brilliant, utterly certain that the world is a problem she could solve if she just worked hard enough. And I've watched her soften over years of loving you. You changed her, Alex. Not in a way that made her less. In a way that made her more. She fights harder because she has something to fight for. And right now she's fighting so hard that she's forgotten to let you in, because letting you in means feeling the grief and the fear and she can't afford that while Florence is still missing."
"What if our marriage doesn't survive this? Even if Florence comes home, what if the damage is already done?"
"Then you fix it. The way you've fixed everything else. The way you fixed the monarchy after Cecilia nearly destroyed it. The way you fixed Erin after the assassination attempt. The way you fix things, Princess, by refusing to let them stay broken."
Alexandra looked at Vic. Her friend. Erin's friend. The woman who had been part of their family for so long, who had held newborn triplets and threatened paparazzi and ridden horses beside her many times and was now sitting on a child's bed telling her that her marriage was worth saving. Vic's eyeswere red-rimmed and her jaw was set and there were tears on her cheeks that she hadn't bothered to wipe away, and the raw honesty of her grief was more comforting than any reassurance could have been.
"Thank you," Alexandra said. "For not pretending."
"I'm fucking rubbish at pretending. Ask anyone."
A silence. Then, very quietly, from the doorway: "Mummy Alex?"
Matilda was standing in the hallway in her socks, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her face carrying the solemn, watchful gravity that she'd worn since the morning Florence was taken. Her eyes moved from Alexandra to Vic and back, and whatever she saw, tears, grief, the rabbit clutched against Alexandra's chest, she absorbed it without flinching.
"Can I sit with you?"
Alexandra opened her arm and Matilda crossed the room and climbed onto the bed and pressed herself between Alexandra and Vic. She tucked her feet beneath her and leaned her head against Alexandra's shoulder and her small hand found the rabbit and held it, and the three of them sat there on Florence's narrow bed with the rabbit and the silence and the afternoon light coming through the window. Outside, somewhere in the grounds, a dog barked twice and then stopped. The castle settled around them with its familiar sounds: pipes ticking, a door closing distantly, the muffled voice of a security officer on a radio. And they held each other in the particular, wordless communion of people who were waiting for someone to come home.
16
Someone had tipped them off.
Erin stood at the central console in the control room, staring at the timeline that the MI5 analysts had constructed on the main screen, and the conclusion was inescapable. Someone had warned Latimer that the rescue was coming, and Latimer had moved Florence in the night, and Erin had walked into an empty bedroom at dawn because someone in this operation had betrayed them.
The timeline was precise. Latimer's housekeeper had confirmed, under questioning, that a van had arrived at the property at approximately two in the morning, three hours before the rescue team's approach. Two men had entered the house, collected the child, and left within fifteen minutes. The housekeeper hadn't seen where they went. She'd been told to stay in her room and she had, because she was a woman in her sixties who worked for a baron and did what she was told.
Two in the morning. The rescue had been planned at the control room briefing at twenty-two hundred hours. The tactical deployment had been finalised by twenty-three hundred. Between ten in the evening and two in the morning, four hours,someone had communicated the plan to Latimer, and Latimer had communicated it to whoever was holding the other end of the operation. Four hours. The window was narrow. The pool of people who'd known the timing was small.
Erin looked around the control room. Five MI5 analysts at their terminals. Two communications officers monitoring radio channels. Helena Ward at the secondary console, her red hair pulled tight, her face composed, her uniform crisp. Director Graves on the wall screen from London, his expression grim. These were the people who had been in the room during the briefing. These were the people who had known when the team was going in.
One of them was a traitor.
She'd slept for two hours. Two hours on a camp bed in the corner of the control room, her jacket balled under her head, her phone clutched in her hand in case something came in. She'd dreamed of Florence, not the nightmare version, not the scenarios her mind constructed in the dark, but a gentle, ordinary dream. Florence on the lawn with the dogs. Florence laughing. The sound of her laughter, which was high and clear and full of delight. Erin had woken with the sound still in her ears and the reality of the empty bedroom at Latimer Hall crushing down on her like rubble.
She hadn't called Alex. She should have. She'd picked up the phone three times and put it down each time because she didn't know what to say.I'm sorry I hung up on you. I'm sorry I couldn't come to the safe house. I'm sorry I said "I have to go" when what I meant was "I can't feel this right now because if I feel it I'll break and breaking isn't something I can afford."The words were there but they wouldn't form, and the distance between what she wanted to say and what she could say was growing wider by the hour, and she hated herself for it but she couldn't stop it.
Focus. The leak. That was the thing that mattered right now. Find the leak, find Florence, then deal with everything else.
"I want the phone records for every person in this room," Erin said. "Personal devices, work devices, all of it. And I want the CCTV footage from the castle for last night: who left the building, who made calls, who was where between twenty-two hundred and oh-two hundred."
Helena looked up from her console. "That's a significant request, Ma'am. These are cleared MI5 personnel. Accessing their personal communications?—"
"Someone in this room told Latimer we were coming. Florence was moved three hours before the team went in. The timing doesn't work unless the leak came from inside this briefing." Erin's voice was level. Cold. The voice she'd used in her protection days when an operation was compromised and there was no time for diplomacy. "I'm not accusing anyone. I'm following the evidence. And the evidence says that between ten last night and two this morning, someone communicated our plan to the target."
Graves, on screen, nodded slowly. "She's right. The window is too tight for coincidence. I'll authorise the phone audit. Helena, coordinate with the technical team."
Helena's face showed nothing. "Yes, Director. I'll have the data within the hour."
Erin watched her. Helena Ward, who had run this security operation from the beginning. Helena who had designed the protection protocols, who had been first on scene after the kidnapping, who had set up the control room and managed the surveillance and coordinated the intelligence gathering. Helena who had been competent and professional and exactly the kind of steady, reliable officer you wanted running a crisis operation. Helena who had been in every briefing. Who had known everydetail of every plan. Who had access to every piece of intelligence the operation had generated.
The thought that had been forming in the back of Erin's mind for twenty-four hours crystallised into something sharp and specific.
Hyzenthlay's voice came back to her. A whisper in a castle corridor the day before, small fingers tugging at her sleeve, hazel eyes serious and certain:I saw Captain Ward on the phone in the garden. The day Florence was taken. She looked angry and she was talking very quietly and she kept looking around.
On the phone in the garden. The day Florence was taken. Not in the control room, where calls were logged. Not on a secure line, where conversations were recorded. In the garden, on a personal device, having a conversation she didn't want anyone to overhear.
