Page 56 of Under Arthur’s Protection

“I slept like a baby.”

“I always slept the best on board ship.” Without skipping a beat, he asked, “So, did you share a cabin?”

I knew this would happen, but I’d expected him to give me a few minutes of work-talk before he started in on me. “There weren’t any adjoining rooms.”

“Right. Sure. How many bunks?”

“There were four.”

“You take the top or bottom?”

For fuck’s sake. “How’s Malta?”

“What about the hotel? One room or two?”

“A suite with two bedrooms.” I was not going to mention there weren’t any doors between the rooms.

“Sounds cozy. Which room are you taking?”

I could normally tell whether he was ribbing me or he was genuinely upset, but I wasn’t certain this time. However, if I’d had to put money on it, I would have guessed the latter. I glanced toward the archway, realizing Gwen might be able to hear my side of this pseudo-argument if she tried, and lowered my voice further. “Lance, I’m doing a solo detail with a low-risk client. You’d be handling this the same way.”

“I would, except you didn’t give me the opportunity, did you? You shipped me off to…” He took a deliberate breath, and when he started talking again, he sounded far more reasonable. “Morganna’s gone dark.”

“How dark?”

“White Spring pulled her into a project she couldn’t say no to. She texted before she went under—said she’d surface when it was done. No timeline.”

Which likely meant she was traveling to speak with some of her resources in person. She did most of her work remotely, but if her contacts stopped talking, she sometimes had to find them.

I held back a sigh. “We need to get her out of there. I don’t understand why she’s taking so long to commit to the company with us.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to move to small-town Michigan.” He’d taken some convincing on the location, too, but Tristan had been the only founder with strong opinions on our home base. “Any word from Gawain?”

“Two months of silence. I expected he’d be the first one to sign on.”

“So did I.”

Neither of us said the obvious thing. Gawain was the guy who leaped before he looked. He’d been first through the door on every op I’d ever run with him—and when he wasn’t, he complained for hours, if not days. Not jumping on the founder offer wasn’t like him. Something was wrong.

“I’ll reach out,” Lance said. “Find out what’s going on.”

“Thanks.” I stood and paced toward the bathroom, farther from the archway and from Gwen. “I ran the numbers after we checked in. Between the jet, fuel, lodging, ferry, and two operators deployed full-time on a zero-dollar contract…”

“Yeah,” was all he said.

My father would have pulled the plug after visiting Hopkins. Fuck, my father wouldn’t have taken on a job like this. He would have calculated the return on his investment, set a budget, and drawn hard lines. What did I do? Flew three of us to England, then Lance to Malta, and drove halfway across France. Not for the FBI, but for… for what?

For Gwen, Arthur. Admit it.

This wasn’t one of the stupid trips Lance and I had taken over the years, spending my parents’ money to fly off to Vegas or Ibiza for a party. I owned this company, and despite my father having a twenty-five percent stake, it was mostly my money we stood to lose.

“This was supposed to be a quick job,” Lance finally said.

“It was.”

“I know I pushed for it.”

“You pushed for it because it was good work.”