by Mari Carr
Eric slid inside, keeping his back to the wall. There was a moment of darkness, and then a red light blinked on. It was enough illumination for him to see a second door, and the small antechamber where he stood. The light changed from red to green with the sound of a lock releasing.
Eric opened the inner door, stepping into a brightly lit, immaculate room. There was a bank of security monitors to his left, and a long workstation on his right. The countertop was stainless steel, the shelves above bearing boxes of surveillance equipment, medical supplies, and emergency rations. In the center of the room was a large square table with several computer terminals. A jacket was draped over the back of one of the chairs.
The wall across from the door had a massive one-way mirror in it. Beyond the glass was an interrogation room.
A half-naked man stood in the center of the room. He was bent at the waist, his wrists shackled together behind his back and drawn up toward the ceiling, forcing him to lean forward or dislocate his shoulders. He was swaying in exhaustion. Eric took a breath and forced himself to go cold. To feel nothing.
A man stepped out of a shadowed corner of the interrogation room. He crouched down beside the man, saying something. The interrogator knew Eric was there. He was the only other person at this secret facility, which meant he’d been the one to buzz Eric in, probably using a portable control device he’d taken into the interrogation room with him.
Torturing information out of people was all about the timing. If they were just getting to the good part, it would be foolish to leave the room.
Eric tossed his pack and jacket onto one of the chairs and then hit the button beside the one-way glass that would activate the speaker system.
“We’re close to being done, mate,” the crouching man said. He had a thick Scouse accent. “I just need a bit more. Then we’ll get a beer. How does that sound?”
“Please, please, I’m going to fall.”
“You can’t do that. If you do that, you’re going to pop those arms right out of your shoulders, and that would fooking hurt.”
“I can’t see…” the other man whimpered.
“Your eyes are fine. You’re just a bit swollen from where I hit you. I’d say I was sorry, but I think we both know you deserved it.”
“I’m sorry. So sorry. Please.”
“I just need to know who told you where to find the princess.”
Eric rolled his shoulders, fighting the way they tightened in response to the reminder of what had almost happened two days ago.
The “princess” the interrogator referenced was Sophia Starabba, daughter of the admiral of Rome. The Starabbas had ruled the territory of Rome—which geographically looked more like the empire of the same name, rather than the current city—for generations. The membership of Rome called her “principessa,” and the nickname had gone with her when she’d married the admiral of England.
Unlike Eric, whose own marriage had a few years of peace and happiness before everything went to shit, Sophia and her husbands, James and Arthur, hadn’t known peace in their short relationship. They’d been the first people to figure out that ritual killings in Rome were actually a warning that an old enemy of the Masters’ Admiralty, the Domino, had returned. They’d gone to the fleet admiral, but their warning had come too late, and they’d been there when Eric’s predecessor was assassinated. Then the admiral of England had been killed when the territory admirals gathered to choose a new leader. Arthur, minus one arm, had been thrust into the role of England’s admiral.
Eric knew how that felt. Eric also knew that without Sophia by his side, Arthur might have fucked up royally, being so new to command.
But now Sophia wasn’t speaking to Arthur. She was livid, in a way only Italian women could manage, because Arthur had forbidden her from going to Rome in the aftermath of the attack on her father’s home. It had been too dangerous, but that hadn’t stopped her from desperately wanting to see her father, who was alive—barely—and in a coma, or her brother, Antonio, who was now acting admiral of Rome.
Another person forced into a role they weren’t meant to take, forced to remain in that position for the good of the society.
Eric was doing to them—to Arthur and Antonio—exactly what had been done to him.
Fuck it all.
Sophia and James had left the London home they shared with Arthur, planning to spend a few days at a country estate owned by James’s family. On the way there, they’d gotten a flat tire.
The tire had gone flat because the man currently being tortured had thrown out a spike strip.
Arthur, frantic for the safety of his spouses, and just the right amount of paranoid, had sent a knight with them, but had also deployed a team of security officers to follow and protect them in secret.
The knights of each territory were law and justice. They enforced the rules. They protected the members of their territory. When punishment was needed, they were the ones to hand down the sentence. That’s how Erik had started out. A riddari. A knight of Kalmar—noble, just, chivalrous.
But law and justice weren’t enough.
That’s where the security officers came in. They’d gone by different names throughout the years, some of those names infamous. What they did hadn’t changed. They were assassins and spies, shadow and smoke.
They did what needed to be done. No matter what that was.
“I told you. Told you,” the man blabbered. “I got a text from the master.”
“What did it say, exactly?”
“That the princess was leaving London. That I should follow her and…”
“Don’t stop now.” The security officer’s voice was friendly, almost jovial. “We’re just getting to the good part of the story.” He hooked an arm over the man’s bare lower back and pulled down, adding pressure to the shoulder joints.
The would-be kidnapper screamed, a high, thin sound.
“What were you going to do with the princess?”
“Whatever I wanted. He said I could do whatever I wanted!” Wracking sobs stopped the flow of words. “I just had to send pictures. One a day, with the newspaper.”
“Where were you going to send them?”
“Watchman Media.”
“How many days did you have to keep her?”
“Until he told me I could finish with her.”
“I need more than that.” The interrogator put his hand on the man’s back.
“At least four days! I couldn’t do any big stuff right away because she had to stay alive for four days.”
“You know what? This is great information. Thank you.”
“You’ll let me…let me go?”
“I’m going to let you take a bit of a break.”
“I told you everything,” he wailed.
“I know, I know. You told me about the other women and the bodies, and your pen pal the ‘master’.” The interrogator rose and then walked to the wall. Chain rattled and the man’s arms fell down onto his back. With a sob, he collapsed onto the floor, curling into a fetal position with his hands still tied behind him.
Eric flipped the sound off. He didn’t want to listen to a serial killer blubber on about how his shoulders and nose hurt—though based on the look of his face, his nose probably did hurt.
Charlie Allerton, former British SAS, walked out of the interrogation room, closing and locking the door behind him. He plucked a rag from the counter and started wiping off the blood that coated his hands.
“Fleet Admiral,” he said with a nod to Eric.
“Looks like I arrived just in time.”
Charlie grunted his agreement. “I have a list of names, some locations. I might be able to get more from him.”
“Names of victims?” Eric asked.
“Yes.”
“Our second serial killer.” Despite the emotionless state he’d forced himself into, Eric felt sick. “And just like the other one did with Karl and Leila, this one was going to kidnap and then torture Sophia.”
Charlie nodded. “But he was going to send pictures to us. Watchman Media is a Masters’ Admiralty owned business here.” He tossed the bloody rag away. His hands were still stained. “It was a distraction. Kidnapping Sophia Starabba would distract my admiral. Or it could be about more upheaval in Rome.”
Eric shook his head softly. “The Queen is the most powerful piece on the board. It might have been about taking out Sophia herself. She’s essentially running this territory while Arthur and I try to figure out what the fuck is going on.”
Charlie grunted. “You’re right. I underestimated her.”
“The master doesn’t. And the fact that he doesn’t tells me something.”
“Tells you what?”
Eric didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “If no one has said this yet, good job.”
Charlie had been in the tail car. He’d been the one to jump out the moment he’d heard about the flat tire and start scouting the roadside, finding the spike strip a quarter of a mile behind them. He’d found and apprehended the would-be kidnapper before James and Sophia even knew they were in danger. The knight traveling with them had gotten the tire changed, and they’d headed off to their destination, none the wiser.
The rest of the security officers had stayed with Sophia while Charlie had brought the man here to be questioned. Chain of command meant Charlie reported his findings to Lennon Giles, the security minister of England. He’d consulted with Lorelei Madden, the vice admiral.
It was Lorelei who had come directly to Eric with information about what had happened, acting on orders he’d given her. It was the same order he’d given all the vice admirals—do whatever it took to keep the admirals focused. He was in charge, but he wasn’t the one making day-to-day decisions. That was left to the admirals.
The members of the Masters’ Admiralty were afraid. They were powerful, a type of power that came from wealth and access. Power didn’t make them immune from death—Eric knew that better than anyone—but most of them weren’t used to being afraid for their lives. They were afraid now, and that fear made their already weakened society even more vulnerable. The way to fix that was to show the members that everything was fine—even if that was a lie.
The first step in maintaining that fiction was making sure each of the nine admirals were focused and in control. Eric was sure this same thing had occurred to his enemy, which meant the admirals were targets. Sending them into hiding, or safe houses, would be a sign of weakness. That meant he needed each of those nine men and women out front and center, running the society, and appearing calm, cool, and collected.
That’s why if there were any threats to an admiral or their trinity, the vice admirals were instructed to keep it quiet, and inform him immediately. He hadn’t specifically told the vice admirals to keep the admirals in the dark, but Lorelei was smart and dangerous. She knew people couldn’t be objective when it came to the people they loved—no one could; that’s how you knew it was love. Eric had decided to withhold information about the attempted kidnapping from Arthur and his spouses. Lorelei had, reluctantly, followed orders. She didn’t like keeping information from her admiral, but she knew better than to question him. Actually Lorelei would have no problem questioning anyone. Which meant she agreed, at least temporarily, with his decision, and hadn’t told Arthur, while Lennon and England’s security team quietly investigated.
Eric had used the time to plan how to go AWOL from Triskelion Castle.
“Thank you, Fleet Admiral. And…you’re going to tell Arthur, correct?”
Eric grimaced. The admiral of England was not going to be happy that Eric had kept this a secret. He was going to be even more pissed that his own people had kept him in the dark. If he was better at this whole leadership thing, Eric wouldn’t care, but the truth was, Arthur was his friend, and one of the only people he trusted without reservation.
That was tomorrow’s problem. What he needed to do now was to stop playing a defensive game. He turned so he couldn’t see the prisoner and was facing Charlie. “I need your help.”
“What do you need, Fleet Admiral?”
“We need to find the sniper’s wife, Alicia Rutherford. This—” Eric gestured to the interrogation room and the pathetic excuse for a man within. “He’s a pawn. A dangerous, psychotic pawn, but just a pawn. The sniper’s wife…she’s a bigger piece. Which means she might know more.”
“You want me to question her?”
“You have to find her first.”
“That’s not my specialty, but I can do it.”
“I have someone else I’d already planned to send. You’ll go with him.”
“Send?” Charlie frowned. “Send where?”
“That is problem number one. She fled to America.”
“Fookin’ Yanks.”
“Problem number two. The person I’m sending you with isn’t…he isn’t like us,” Eric said softly.
“He’ll object to my methods.”
“Yes. He believes in things like the Geneva Convention.”
“That would be nice,” Charlie said with a snort.
“If you can, bring her back here,” Eric said. “If you can’t, do what you need to do. Find out what the hell is going on. We need names of other apprentices or dominos or whatever the fuck they’re calling themselves.”
“That kind of information…that’s longer-term questioning. If I don’t have that kind of time, what’s the priority?”
“The why,” Eric said darkly. “Figure out what the hell they want. Why they’re doing this.”
Charlie looked surprised. “Not names?”
“If we know why, if we have even one fucking clue, my PhD cats will be able to figure out the rest.”
“Your…what?”
“Never mind. I’m sending you with Hugo Marchand to America, but don’t tell him who you are.”
Charlie’s brows rose. “Undercover?”
Eric smiled. “How would you feel about being a knight?”
Chapter Two
Lancelot Knight squinted as he looked up at the austere building. “Boston Public Library,” he murmured. “Stupid place for a meeting of secret societies.”
Hugo Marchand glanced at Lancelot. They were partners in an important—and dangerous—mission, but had only met for the first time on the flight here. There were many things he didn’t know about the man, and apparently, more than a few things Lancelot didn’t know about him.
Including that Hugo and his fellow “librarians”—a secret think tank within Europe’s oldest and most powerful secret society—held their meetings in the library of Trinity College in Edinburgh. Apparently great minds thought alike…when it came to their libraries. “I’m sure the grand master has a better grasp of this place than we do.”
Hugo held a PhD in political science and taught at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He’d had several opportunities to travel to the States for lectures, and he’d even taught a semester-long course at Northwestern once, but Boston was a new city for him.
Of course, this trip wasn’t part of his scholarly duties.
He was here acting as a representative of the Masters’ Admiralty. In recent months—no, years—the secret society had come under attack from a villain, a mastermind, believed to have detailed knowledge of their organization, and possibly the ability to decrypt their coded communications. The mastermind was operating with the help of…well, for lack of a better term, pets. Psychotic, maniacal pets with skill sets that ran along the lines of serial killing, bombing, and torture.
Thus far, the mastermind had managed to remain one step ahead of them, and the body count was growing. Hence Hugo’s trip to Boston.
While there were nine territories in the Masters’ Admiralty, spanning the United Kingdom and Europe, as well as parts of Eurasia, the United States was not included.
Instead, the Trinity Masters, founded at the same time thirteen colonies decided they wanted freedom from the British monarchy, was the secret socie
ty ruling on this side of the Atlantic, under the leadership of a Grand Master, Juliette Adams.
The Masters’ Admiralty and the Trinity Masters had a somewhat antagonistic relationship. The current state of affairs could best be likened to the Cold War. The delicate political situation—combined with literally hundreds of years of mistrust, misinformation, and outright antagonism—was why Hugo was here. When walking into a situation where the politics and culture of a place, both past and present, made any conversation a veritable land mine, one of Europe’s most respected political science professors was the best bet as lead negotiator.
At least that was his cover story.
A known associate of the mastermind, Alicia Rutherford, who had been wife to a sniper who had shot and killed several members of the Masters’ Admiralty, and the lover of two different traitors, was an American. They’d been closing in on her when she’d fled Europe. Their intelligence assets believed she was hiding in the States. In order to seek out the enemy, Hugo had to first ask permission of the Grand Master.
“Today’s objective,” Lancelot said as they climbed the front steps, “is to avoid starting a turf war?” They entered the building, passing by the welcome desk, climbing the marble staircase, and walking through the massive lion statues standing guard.
Hugo chuckled even though the knight’s description was accurate. “Precisely.”
“How do you want to play this?” Lancelot asked.
Though the two of them had spent the last seven hours sitting next to each other in first class on the flight from London, they’d spoken of nothing of significance. It was too dangerous to speak in public about anything of meaning. They’d spent a good two hours debating football, arguing who had the best chances of running away with the Premier League Cup, then another hour or so discussing their work.
Knight wasn’t just Lancelot’s last name; it was his position within the Masters’ Admiralty. As a knight of England, Lancelot’s job consisted of serving as both police and judge, maintaining law and order in his territory. In addition to that, the knights served as personal guards to the admiral and vice admiral of their territory. For a knight of England, which included modern-day Great Britain and Ireland to leave his territory and his admiral, was another indication of how important this mission was.
