Javier makes a sarcastic noise. “Everyone in the world knows who you are.”
I glare but don’t comment. We watch her enter the chalet with him, her touching his arm and chest. A weird sort of heat scorches the skin at the back of my neck at seeing that, but a moment later, she says something to him, and they go their separate ways. She moves along with purpose, keeping her head angled furtively, but it’s not obvious. No staff challenged her. She simply coasts along as if she belongs.
He fast-forwards until he finds us on the dance floor. “This is her?”
“Yes.”
He clicks a million keys, and the video stops with her face clear and centered on the screen. There she is. Ella. As beautiful as I remember her being and then some. A web of linescovers her face, the computer thinking, until a pop-up message appears that says, “No match located.”
Shit.
Our eyes meet, both of us thinking the same thing.
“She didn’t go through security.”
I set my mug down and level him with a look. “How is that possible?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure. We had attendants lined along the only entrance and exit. Both in uniform and posing as attendees. No one could have slipped past them there, and everyone was funneled through both security checkpoints. She went through the second, but that was after we’d already searched everyone and taken their face ID.”
“Do you think she came with Sir Robert?”
He shrugs. “It’s possible, but she didn’t stay with him for long and doesn’t seem to meet up with him again during the course of the night.”
“Jesus, Javier.” I cover my face with my hands. “I brought her up to my room. I barely thought twice about it.” I took her fucking virginity. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“In fairness, sir, you had no way of knowing she didn’t go through security. Like everyone else in the room, it seemed as though she was supposed to be there.”
I nod, my hands falling to the table with a heavy thud and rattling my mug. “Except she wasn’t supposed to be there. What time did she leave?”
I get a raised eyebrow.
“No, I don’t know. She was gone when I woke.”
He clicks more keys and fasts forward through the night until her image appears coming off the elevator. She slinks through the first floor as if nothing is amiss and back out into the night, where we lose her.
“Timestamp reads 11:58 pm.”
I choke out a laugh. “What, she was afraid her carriagewould turn back into a pumpkin?” I gripe sardonically. “Jesus, I’m a fucking cliché.” She must have left almost immediately after I fell asleep. “Can we run her face through our database?”
“Already running it. It’ll just be another minute or so.”
My forearms fold on the table, and I drop my forehead onto them as we wait.
“No match found,” he says. “She’s not in our database at all.”
I pop my head up. “Nothing?”
“Nothing. That means she has no driver’s license or passport in Messalina and hasn’t been employed in this country in a position where facial scans are taken.”
“She said she was from Messalina.” Clearly, she lied. My brows furrow. “Could she be from outside the country?”
“She likely is.”
“I need to know who she is,” I bite out.
“Sir, with respect, what we need to know is how she bypassed security at the royal wedding,” he counters, his expression the stern mask it always is. “This represents a serious breach of security. We have no idea what she was after or what her motives were.”
“She didn’t act like a threat.” But even as I say the words, they sound weak and childish. I have no clue who she really was, and everything she told me was likely a lie. I sit up straight, pulling my head out of my ass. “We need to talk to Sebastian about this.”
