Page 137 of Under Arthur’s Protection

Ice climbed up my spine. I was going to be Rick’s shield for this, too.

Chapter 42

Arthur

My palm lay flat against the door, as though I could will it to open. A foot of steel hung between Gwen and me. How was I going to get her out?

Seven knelt over his demo bag three feet away, det cord half out of its spool. He insisted he could place his ordnance where it would carve out the wall around the door, one blast and inches at a time, until we were through. He swore it was possible without injuring a woman secured to the inside wall.

I’d worked with a lot of breachers in my time, but none of them were trying to blow a door with my woman on the other side.

The charge had stopped being an option the second Rick issued his little threat, but I let Seven keep playing along. Maybe someone inside would come to their senses.

Behind Seven stood men with nothing left to shoot. Two and Six on the stairs, Eight covering the passage we’d opened behind the great-hall fireplace. The assault had lasted twelve minutes, start to finish. This part would run longer.

I took my hand off the plate.

Work the problem.

“One, Lance, on me.” I moved up the corridor, out of the intercom’s pickup, past the ornate sconces over the stairs. Lance came down the final steps with his carbine slung. One followed him. “Closed net.”

“House is ours,” One said. “Eleven men cuffed, all breathing. We’re moving them into the room with the false wall so we can keep watch more easily. The men on the exterior are being brought in too. Three and Five hold the wall, Four has one bird on the perimeter, and the other’s recharging. Nobody’s come up the drive.”

“Good.” I should have deployed men to the safe room sooner. We’d been thirty seconds too late at the most. Rick—it had to have been Rick—had opened fire on them. At least the flashbang had gotten us a couple of stragglers.

Lance asked, “Architectural plans indicate a way in?”

The specs should have been my ace in the hole, but they confirmed we were in for the long haul. “The installers didn’t leave obvious gaps.”

“Torch?” Lance asked.

“The door’s a sandwich. Steel plate, ceramic fill, then more plate. A torch would take us two days of cutting.”

“Hinges? Frame?”

“The hinges are encased in the concrete, and the door is framed by it all the way around. Seven thinks he can blow it, but Rick’s threatening to put Gwen wherever the explosives go.”

Lance made a sound low in his throat. The sound I wanted to make, but couldn’t while I was pretending to have this under control. “That’s a big fucking no.”

“Air?” said One.

“Self-contained. Scrubbers and bottled backup. They can seal themselves in and breathe for weeks. No ventilation run reaches the surface, so we have nothing to pump through and nothing to plug.”

“Power? Water?”

“Both independent. Kill the mains and their generator picks up before the lights finish flickering.”

It was as solid as the safe room at the cottage. Because of course it was. My father didn’t install shitty products.

Part of me wanted to start cutting anyway, two days be damned—the same part that had considered how much Seven’s work would scare them all. But if Rick was threatening to put her in the blast’s path, he for sure would force her against a torch-heated door.

“So we hold the house,” One said, “and they hold the room.”

“For now.”

Lance set a shoulder against the concrete. “Weeks of air, you said. We could order in. Bore them out.”

“They’ve got more food than you’ve got jokes.” I gave him a small nod, thanking him for trying to steady me.