Page 71 of Under Arthur’s Protection

The background on his call changed, and I heard birds. He was outside. “Call me as soon as you can. We can have the team work through it.”

“I will.”

He hung up, and Gwen set the phone on the console between us. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the window. We drove in silence. Every so often, a tear ran down her cheek, but she didn’t say anything.

What was I supposed to do with that? My right arm was on fire, and I should have pulled over, but we needed distance. Distance and time to think. I should have called Lance back to work through the situation. Or Merlin. Or anyone else on the fucking team. But I didn’t have answers—I barely even knew what questions to ask.

Because Gwen Lyons was fucking crying in my car.

If we hadn’t taken this job, she might have stopped at St. Catherine’s. Or at Dr. Hopkins. Definitely in Glastonbury. She would have flown home and filed a far simpler report, and I wouldn’t have been fucking bleeding while she cried.

An hour later, with the sun setting, she finally said, “You said someone was walking loops on the path behind the archive. Was he one of the men in the parking lot?”

“The first one. The guy in the blue ballcap. I’d been watching him since we arrived.”

“Since we arrived?”

“He was in a car in the lot.” I flexed the fingers of my right hand, cracking the dried blood on my palm. “But he was walking back and forth on the trails outside, and when I spotted the camera⁠—”

“How long had it been there?” Her question didn’t make sense. Was it still the shock talking?

“I don’t know.”

“Obviously it was already there, waiting for us.” She stared out the windshield, but I would have been surprised if she saw anything.

“Obviously,” I echoed as encouragement. “And the sketch listing the imaginary collector must have been prepared before we got there, too.”

“It was a high-quality fake. Not only the sketch, but the paper felt…”

“Right?” I glanced at her, then back at the road. “It felt right?”

“You think it’s all linked?”

“I do.”

“So someone set all of this up, knowing we’d be there.” She wiped her palms over her cheeks. “That takes a lot of planning.”

A lot? A little? No matter how much, it did take planning. It had been a trap all along. “Who knew we’d be at the archive?”

“Me, you, Lance, your team, Dr. Hopkins…” She looked up, either at the sky through the sunroof or at the ceiling as though she’d find words written there. “And the staff at the archive itself, because I made the appointment yesterday.”

“It wasn’t my team.”

“But Dr. Hopkins sent us there.”

“And the sketch was premeditated.”

She let her gaze wander back into the vehicle, lingering on my injury, and eventually falling to my phone on the console. “He’d know how to fake that kind of documentation.”

“Let’s assume he was setting you up all along. Why tell us about the other two locations?”

“Fergus didn’t actually give me anything useful.” She was quiet for a beat. “Bridget certainly didn’t add anything.”

“Did we discuss Champagne with either of them? Or mention the Troyes archive at all?”

“You’re thinking one of them might be behind it all?”

I wasn’t. Not really. If Bridget had been behind anything, she wouldn’t have thrown such a bomb in Gwen’s direction. If her goal had been to push us toward the archive in Champagne, she would have been convincing, not insulting.