by Mari Carr
“I understand, Fleet Admiral, and thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I mean it. You’re in love, getting married, and it doesn’t matter because your admiral and I are still going to give you orders that might get you killed. I hope—I fucking hope—that the Spartan Guard can torture some good information out of Alicia. Maybe she’ll give us a name, address, and a fucking shoe size. We swoop in and boom, it’s over by this time next week.” Eric looked at him, a bleak expression on his face. “But don’t count on it. You make every moment you have with them matter.”
Lancelot nodded once. He wouldn’t say thank you again, so instead he said, “I understand, Fleet Admiral.”
“Go.”
That was an order Lancelot, newly appointed knight of England, was more than happy to obey because he was going to be with his trinity, with the man and woman he loved.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hugo stood with his arm around Sylvia in the forward galley area, looking out over the tarmac and the airport. The door at the front of the aircraft was open, and stairs had been pushed up to the forward cabin door of the plane. The air smelled of jet fuel and heat, thanks to the planes, but if he breathed deep enough he could smell the sea. Given the size of the Isle of Man, the airport was comparatively large. Hugo was fairly certain he had a great uncle who’d helped arrange for the small British protectorate island to have a large airport, all so it would be easier for members of the Masters’ Admiralty to travel to their headquarters at Triskelion Castle.
Charlie—nope, now he was Lancelot again—had given Hugo orders as the plane parked on the tarmac, about fifty meters from the terminal. Stay with the plane, and with Sylvia, until he, Eric, and the Spartan Guards had successfully transferred Alicia into the medical transport they had waiting. From what he’d overheard, the ambulance driver was yet another member of the Spartan Guard posing as a paramedic, and once they were away from the Isle of Man’s airport, the ambulance would be escorted by two additional vehicles, also driven by members of the guard.
An armored SUV would pick up Eric, Lancelot, Marie, Sylvia, and himself, only after the ambulance was well underway.
“These security measures are all a precaution,” Marie said in French. She was standing in the open doorway of the aircraft. Her body acting as a shield, and the fact that he and Sylvia were standing far enough back from the open door that they couldn’t be seen—or targeted by a sniper—were the only reason Marie had allowed them to get out of their seats and watch what was going on.
Hugo turned his head to look at the Spartan Guard, replying in the same language. “An abundance of caution?”
“There is no such thing,” Marie said darkly as she stepped out of the plane onto the stairs. Marie was a quintessential Frenchwoman, with bobbed dark hair and bangs, high cheekbones, dark brown eyes, and a slight build. Prior to this trip, he could have at best called her an acquaintance—someone he had a passing knowledge of simply because they were both legacy members from the territory of France. He’d chatted with her briefly on the flight, laughing when they discovered they might be distant relatives, in the way so many of the legacy families—his great-great-grandmother had the same last name as her great-great-grandfather’s second wife’s cousin.
“I would have preferred that we fly to a small private airport in England, and come by boat,” she continued. “Here we cannot shut down the terminal, and EU regulations mean we can’t bring the ambulance or cars to the plane.”
“Why don’t we pull up to a gate?” Hugo asked, nodding his chin to the terminal building.
“Gangways are a weak point, security-wise. A narrow hall with limited visibility. This way we can see what’s coming. Two of the baggage handlers are actually Spartan Guard. They maintain relief worker contracts with the baggage handler union on the island, in case we need access to the airport.”
Sylvia was looking between them, and Hugo gave her a squeeze to let her know he would translate everything in a moment.
Marie’s phone rang. She lifted it to her ear, her eyes hard.
“Will you teach me French?” Sylvia asked him in a whisper.
“It would be my pleasure. I was asking her why we’re parked back here. She said it’s a security measure,” he replied quietly.
“We’re in danger. You think he might try to get Alicia back.”
It wasn’t a question, but Hugo treated it as if it was. “They are being paranoid.” What he was more worried about, and the reason Marie was staying on the plane with them, was that it was possible the mastermind would send someone after Sylvia again.
Lancelot, Eric, and the Spartan Guard had discussed the security protocols for when they landed. Hugo had overheard a bit of their discussion when he got up to go to the bathroom. Alicia, Eric, and Sylvia were all potential targets the mastermind might send someone after. The most likely target was Alicia. She knew things, and the mastermind had to be worried they’d be able to break her. Eric and Sylvia were tied for second tier target. Marie had tried to convince Eric that meant he should stay with the plane, but the fleet admiral had just stared at her.
There were the two guards on the plane, plus two guards who were working as baggage handlers for the day, and then two more with the ambulance. Hugo, Sylvia, and Marie would stay on the plane, while Lancelot, Nikolas, and Eric escorted Alicia to the ambulance. The two baggage handler guards would serve as lookouts and backup, while maintaining their cover.
“I don’t think it’s paranoid if someone is really out to get you.” Sylvia winced. “To get us.”
Hugo’s heart clenched. “You’re regretting your decision?”
Her face softened as she turned to look up at him. “No. Deciding to love you and Lancelot isn’t something I’ll ever regret.”
“Back away from the door,” Marie ordered as she hung up the phone. “We can’t close the doors due to airport rules, but I want you both deeper inside. They’re bringing out Alicia now.”
Marie put a wireless earpiece in as she tucked her phone into her pocket. When she adjusted her jacket, he saw the holstered gun at the small of her back.
Hugo escorted Sylvia back to their seats. They could hear voices coming from the rear aircraft door, which opened directly into the bedroom where Alicia, in her hospital bed, was being prepped to move.
Sylvia slid into a window seat. Hugo sat beside her, leaning into her shoulder to look out. They’d positioned a large hydraulic platform at the back door. Nikolas—the other Spartan Guard—and Eric were gripping the footboard of the hospital bed as they wheeled it onto the elevator platform.
That meant Lancelot was probably at the head of the bed, not visible from this angle.
The platform jerked, then descended. Hugo found himself holding his breath, but nothing happened. Once they were down, Eric opened the gate, and Lancelot and Nikolas started wheeling the hospital bed toward the terminal building. They had put on nylon jackets with medical patches on the back and arms. People watching out the windows of the terminal would see a sleeping person on a stretcher—her face covered by a mask, hair by a blue cap—being wheeled quickly toward the building by three paramedics.
Marie had stepped back so she was inside the plane, but still looking out the open door. Hugo just happened to be looking at her when she frowned and put a hand to her ear.
Hugo’s stomach sank.
“I’ll check it out,” Marie said in French. “You guard the assets.”
A moment later, a man wearing a cap, sunglasses, headphones, and a reflective vest appeared in the doorway. He nodded at Marie, who slipped out.
“What’s going on?” Sylvia asked.
Hugo squeezed her hand. “Stay here.” He rose and walked toward the baggage handler, who nodded at him.
“There’s a disturbance at security check,” the man said in French. He was probably the Spartan Guard from Ottoman, based on the Turkish accent. “I can’t enter the public areas of the terminal.” He gestured to his uniform. “Marie is goin
g to assess.”
“You think it’s someone coming after us?”
“It sounds like a fool objecting to taking off his shoes.” The man shrugged. “But we must be cautious.”
“What’s happening?” Sylvia asked.
The worry in her voice made his heart hurt. Hugo returned to her, urging her back into her seat. “There’s something happening at the security check. Marie is going to investigate, but that man is one of us, and he will take her place as guard until she comes back.”
Hugo looked out the window in time to see Lancelot, Eric, and Nikolas disappear into the far-right garage-style door used by the baggage handlers to access the ground floor of the terminal, and the baggage belts and storage areas that weren’t accessible to the public. They’d made it across the bare expanse of the tarmac, into the cover provided by the building.
From there they’d use an employees-only maintenance hallway to move quickly through the building without ever entering the public part of the airport. The ambulance would be waiting at the curb, away from most other vehicles because the gates at this end of the building weren’t in use by any airlines at this time of day.
Once Alicia and Nikolas were in the ambulance, Lancelot and Eric would come back to the plane. They’d wait a few minutes, and then they’d grab Sylvia’s luggage. Then he, Sylvia, Eric, Lancelot, and Marie would enter the airport, mingle with the other arriving passengers, go through the requisite checks and passport controls, and then exit and wait to be picked up like all the other passengers, except their car would be armored.
Sylvia sagged in her seat as the stretcher with her former mentor disappeared into the terminal building. Hugo kissed the side of her head.
“We have a few minutes,” he whispered.
Sylvia turned to him, eyes widening, her lips parting, exposing the wet, coral interior of her mouth.
Hugo touched her cheek. “Come here and I will kiss you.”
“Can we do that? I mean, without Lancelot?”
“Can we? Of course. It might make him mad.” Hugo waggled his brows.
“Sexy, ravish-us-in-punishment mad, or hurt-feelings mad?” Sylvia asked.
“The first one.”
“Plane make-out!” She leapt out of her chair, into his lap. There was a bit of forced frivolity to the moment, and Hugo knew they were both thinking about, and worried about, Lancelot. He suspected Sylvia wanted the closeness, the comfort of being held in his arms, more than anything. Still, a little make-out session would distract them both from their fears until Lancelot was back. Hugo grabbed her ass, hauling her hips against his abdomen as she straddled him so he could bury his face between her breasts. Sylvia’s left hand tangled in his hair and she giggled.
Then the bomb detonated.
The ground shook, the plane rocking hard to one side, as if they’d hit turbulence, but they were on the ground.
Sylvia screamed as she was thrown off-balance. She would have flipped over the arm of the chair and fallen into the aisle if Hugo hadn’t wrapped his arms around her.
The shock wave had preceded the sound of the detonation by fractions of a second. The sound of the blast was nearly physically painful—a horrible pressure against his ears and lungs.
Hugo held Sylvia tight, but turned to look out the window of the plane in time to see the right end of the terminal building collapse.
* * *
HE COULDN’T HEAR. Actually, he could hear—a horrible ringing that would have given him a splitting headache if a chunk of flying concrete hadn’t already taken care of that.
Bomb. Just like in Rome. Bellator Dei.
The mastermind had known they were coming. Known they had Alicia.
Lancelot knew he was at least partially in shock because minus the ringing ears and a vague burning feeling in his right leg, he wasn’t hurting too bad. He was lying on his stomach in the ground-level service area of the Isle of Man airport. He’d landed partially on a large coil of yellow hose. To his left, a line of open-topped baggage carts waited to be driven out to newly arrived planes.
Beyond that, there should have been more building—but he caught glimpses of blue sky when the clouds of dust parted. There were exposed wires and rebar sticking out of the mangled end of the building, too.
Electricity. Fire. Why was that striking him as such a very bad thing right now?
Jet fuel. Airports had jet fuel. Highly flammable, explosive jet fuel.
One of the baggage carts moved and he heard a steady stream of cursing in what sounded like a Nordic language. A pile of rubble moved, rising and shifting.
Moving on instinct, a still-stunned Lancelot pushed to his feet and stumbled over to the rubble, shoving bits of concrete off Eric’s back. The sight of blood covering the fleet admiral’s face helped dispel some of Lancelot’s emotional numbness.
Eric wiped his face with his hand and looked around. “Marie. Nikolas. Charlotta.”
Lancelot turned toward what he thought might have been the front of the building.
When they’d been waiting in the service hall for confirmation to go ahead and bring Alicia out of the building, Marie had called to warn them that there was a disturbance at the security checkpoint. The disturbance, which sounded unrelated to what they were doing, still had the effect of fucking up their plans.
All airport security was now on high alert, and the constables were on their way to arrest and remove the passenger who was refusing to follow security orders.
After a tense discussion, punctuated by periods of tense silence while they waited for information from Marie, who was in the airport and patched into the security radio frequency, Eric and Lancelot had decided to stay inside. Charlotta gave them the go-ahead, and Nikolas wheeled Alicia to the open doors of the ambulance, where Charlotta, another member of the guard, waited.
Lancelot and Eric had ditched their A&E jackets, stuffing them under the blankets near Alicia’s legs. The original plan had been they’d do a three-man escort of Alicia all the way to the ambulance, but two men exiting and then reentering a service door when the airport was on high alert was too risky—even with the paramedic jackets on. They couldn’t afford to get hauled into airport jail by a vigilant curbside guard. Instead, Marie had exited the airport with the arriving passengers, then doubled back to meet the ambulance.
Lancelot had to resist the urge to run back to the plane and check on Hugo and Sylvia, but he’d been assured that another Spartan Guard had taken Marie’s place. Once the ambulance doors had closed, he and Eric had started back to the plane, where they would rejoin his fiancés, wait a few moments, and then make their own way to Triskelion Castle.
It had been a good plan. A secure plan.
But very few plans were bomb-proof.
“God-fucking-dammit,” Eric snarled.
A gust of wind had cleared some of the dust in the air, and for a moment they had a view of what had been the curb and loading area at the front of the building. They were able to see it because the entire front corner of the building was gone.
Pieces of what might have once been an ambulance were strewn across the pavement. Four tires and the lower frame of a second vehicle weren’t far from where the ambulance had been. There were other cars tipped over, sobbing people crawling out of them. Chunks of the building were scattered like a child’s jacks all around them. Sirens wailed in the distance, and shaky-looking airport guards, visible, thanks to the neon vests they wore, were shouting orders.
Eric started forward, through the rubble toward the ambulance remains. Lancelot caught him by the shoulder. “No, Fleet Admiral.”
“They might be—”
“No. They’re not. The chivalrous thing to do would be to check for survivors. To help them.” Lancelot hauled back on the fleet admiral’s shoulder. “But I’m not a knight yet, and we’re making the smart choice, not the chivalrous one.”
“My guards—”
“Are dead,” Lancelot said bluntly. “And until you have someone else protecting
you, I’m appointing myself.”
Eric rounded on him. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but for a moment, Lancelot could see the fires of hell in the other man’s eyes.
“Sylvia, Hugo,” Lancelot said. “I need to check on them. Be with them. But I can’t do that if you don’t come with me.”
Eric blinked, looking over his shoulder. The first police car came screaming onto the scene, a fire truck right behind it.
Lancelot grabbed the other man and shoved him toward their plane. Luckily, Eric started walking. They were met halfway by a sobbing Sylvia and ghostly pale Hugo, running alongside a man in a baggage handler’s uniform. Hugo, bless the man, had grabbed the plane’s first aid kit. The fact that he’d thought to do that was another reason to love him.
Sylvia threw herself into his arms. “You’re alive, you’re alive!”
“We are,” Eric said grimly. “But Alicia’s gone.”
“Marie?” Hugo asked.
Eric shook his head. “The ambulance is in pieces. Small ones. No way she, Nikolas, or Charlotta survived.”
Hugo glanced at the chaos, his face so pale he looked like a ghost. Streams of water shooting from fire hoses cut through the dust and airborne debris. People were yelling, sirens wailing. “He did all this to kill Alicia.”
“Not just Alicia.” Eric turned away from the Spartan Guard dressed as a baggage handler, who ran toward the chaos. The fleet admiral wiped at the blood on his face, but that only made it worse. Hugo took a knee, opened the first aid kit, and pulled out several wipes, passing them up. “Bombs are blunt instruments. He wanted to take out all of us—anyone who talked to Alicia.”
Lancelot held a trembling Sylvia at his side. He expected she was in shock, but she surprised him by speaking, her voice trembling far less than her body. “That means she knew things he didn’t want us to know.”
