Page 123 of Under Arthur’s Protection

“And Ethan, who I called in advance to open the cottage. So he knew we were coming to Cornwall in the first place.”

“So he alerted whoever followed us from the airport?”

I put both hands on the edge of the desk and pressed down. My knuckles ached, and the cut down my arm threatened to split open.

Ethan Fowley. The man who’d told me to be careful at Tintagel, as though he gave a shit about my safety, had been telling the people who took Gwen where to find us. He’d been working for my father for over thirty years. He’d been there every time we visited. He’d known me my entire life.

It fit too well.

“Could he really be involved?” I said it out loud because I needed to hear how stupid it sounded. Except it didn’t sound stupid. It sounded like the only possible explanation. “Their surveillance went quiet near the cottage because Ethan took over. Or hell, he might have been the one in the fucking car that night, because he would have had an excuse if we caught him.”

Lance didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to.

I needed to tell my father.

“Arthur?” Morganna said from the phone on the desk. “I’ve got an AI helping me comb through his email archive. There’s a pattern—dozens of references over the last two decades to an estate. Most are vague, but two messages include an address on the North Cornwall coast. I’ll text it to you.”

When the coordinates arrived, I clicked through to a map. In the satellite view, an isolated clifftop property sat at the end of a single road winding through farmland. I switched to the street-level view, which stopped just outside the estate’s stone wall and iron gates. Behind them was a large, ancient building with as many windows as my family’s cottage.

“Lance.” I held the phone toward him. “Did you see anything like this in the files?”

He pointed his own phone at it, and Merlin said, “It’s in there. About halfway through the papers we went through.”

I helped Lance dig through the mess he’d made on the side table. Folders, loose papers, photographs. After several minutes of sorting, we found a glossy five-by-seven. A group of people standing in front of a building. We both aimed our cameras at it for Merlin and Morganna.

Same building. Same stone wall.

Lance held his phone closer, zooming in on the video feed as he moved across the faces. He paused on a figure in the front row. Smiling. At ease. “Hopkins.”

He moved his phone to the right. Stopped. “Shit.”

I zoomed my own camera on the area he was looking at, so Morganna could see what was going on. The figure at the edge of the group was thin, with long gray hair and a scowling face.

Fuck.

“This is Arthur’s cottage caretaker,” Lance said. “That’s a confirmed connection.”

“Copy,” Merlin said through the speaker.

I switched my phone back to the map and requested directions from our current location. “It’s a forty-minute drive. That’s where she is.”

“That’s our best lead, you mean,” Lance corrected.

But I knew. The address, Hopkins’s emails, and Ethan in a photo with the people who’d taken Gwen. “We need to go. Now.”

“You remember Galahad in Prague?” said Merlin over the phone. “Take the advice you gave him: You need a plan.”

“I know, but I can come up with one while we’re driving.”

“All right, boys, if you’re going to start talking tactics, I’m signing off this call to focus. I’ll keep running through Hopkins’s computer and let you know if I find anything else. And I didn’t forget about your reporter. I found a few things yesterday that I’ll follow up on tomorrow.” How much was she actually doing for White Spring, if she had so much on her plate with us?

“Thanks, Morganna,” I said, trying to sound more like myself.

“I’ll be in touch.” She clicked off.

“Do you want to brainstorm?” asked Merlin.

“Not yet. I’m not sure…” Of anything.