by Eve Devon
“You get a tree from that embossed squiggle?”
Honeysuckle passed him the key. “That’s not what you see? Do you know what the other symbol is?”
“The other one looks like some sort of grid.”
“A grid? Are you serious? Hang on a minute.” Honeysuckle passed him the key and jumped out of bed to search through her bag. When she located her eyeglass jeweler’s loupe, she looked up to find Adam staring at her.
Blushing, she got back into bed and, settling cross-legged, held her hand out for the key. Bringing the loupe to her eye, she stared through the magnifying lens at the cylinder part of the key. “I’m kind of seeing a grid, now you’ve said that.”
She passed the loupe and key to Adam.
“For the woman who has one of these in her bag, jewelry design is not just a hobby,” he remarked and then wisely closed his mouth and bent to study the key.
After a few moments letting him look, she said, “Maybe she was simply trying out a different embossing stamp, but it didn’t work. Maybe the symbols are meant to be decorative.”
“Rose Hawk didn’t make faulty designs. She’d never have kept something that didn’t turn out just how she meant it to, let alone produce two.”
“True,” Honeysuckle agreed, enjoying the familiarity of Adam Steel figuring out a puzzle.
“I could probably scan this in on my laptop and use some software I have to enhance the images—” Adam stopped abruptly, dropped the loupe, and looked at Honeysuckle. “Or, I could finish unscrewing the shank from the key and see if there’s a clue inside.”
“What the hell? Tell me you haven’t broken my Steel Hawk key.”
“No. Look, it screws together.”
Honeysuckle stared as Adam twisted until the top of the key and the barrel of the key came detached from each other.
“You got something to get whatever’s in there, out?” he asked, closing one eye to stare into the chamber of the barrel.
“All this time…” Honeysuckle’s heart started beating fast. Really fast. Jumping up from the bed once more, she searched her cosmetics bag for tweezers. She ran back to the bed with them, then passed them to Adam. “Careful. If something is in there, it could have been in there for years.”
Biting her lip, she bent her head close to Adam’s to watch him tease out the tiny scroll of paper inside. Unfurling the old paper, he held it between his fingers so that she too could see.
There were two pictures scratched into the paper.
“It’s the tree. And”—she wrapped her hand around Adam’s and lifted the piece of paper closer—“that grid thing. Or is it more like a grate?”
“A tree and a grate. Mean anything to you?”
Disappointed, she shook her head. “Does it to you?”
“Off the top of my head, I can’t relate it back to anything at Steel Hawk. But I’ll keep thinking.”
She knew he would. Like a dog with a bone.
“What if it is simply Rose’s pattern, and when she made up the embossing stick, she simply popped the design into the barrel of the key?”
Adam looked at her with a smile on his face. Gently, he ran his finger down her nose. “When I was young, I used to spend hours finding my way into Nathaniel and Rose’s treasure boxes. In all my time pulling them apart, I never once found the design locked in one of the compartments.”
Honeysuckle grasped on to Adam as a dangerous thought occurred. “If the person who trashed my apartment was really after this key, do you think it was because they knew what the symbols stood for?”
Adam deliberated for a moment. “Makes sense. So we’re back to ‘who’ again. Damn, I don’t like the feeling this is getting messier. All these lines are starting to connect.”
“But not to anything specific,” Honeysuckle agreed. “It feels like we’re being pulled into something, though. Right?”
“Right. My concern is that if we can’t determine who the threat is from, we haven’t got a hope in hell of assessing the scope or scale of the threat.” He grimaced. “Tomorrow—”
“We’ll still be flying blind. But,” Honeysuckle leaned in to steal a kiss, “Strong as Steel,” she whispered into his ear, leaning back to point at him before then pointing back at herself.
She raised an eyebrow and loved it when he smiled and whispered, “Watchful as a Hawk,” before pulling her close to seal his mouth over hers.
Chapter Thirteen
“Oh. My. Wow.”
Adam looked up as Honeysuckle entered the throne room.
Oh. My. Wow was right, he thought, unable to take his eyes off her. She was so damn beautiful, looking about her in wonder at the mosaic floor, the ceiling dripping with crystal chandeliers, and, right at the very end of the room, completely in keeping with the ostentatious feel—a huge mural and dais containing the royal throne of Zarrenburg.
It was with great reluctance that he’d left her sleeping this morning. His dedication to Steel Hawk was the only thing that could have dragged him away from her, because last night had been incredible.
Game-changing incredible.
Alexa’s betrayal might have given him his drive to succeed, but it had also broken something basic within him. He had always known that.
Honeysuckle had demanded more from him emotionally than he would ever normally have risked, all the while looking into his eyes like it was okay because she was going to give nothing less than everything back.
So damn seductive that he’d woken up in her bed, wrapped around her like a shield. Feeling like there was nowhere else he was supposed to be.
Her pumps clacked across the tiny stone tiles of the thirty-five-meter room, reminding him of how she used to ignore him when he asked her to remove the offending spikes to enter his lab.
When she left, would he ever be able to look at the pit marks in his floor again and not think of her?
When she left…
Damn, but he didn’t like the sound of that.
Last night during the audience with Prince Zoltan and Princess Izabella, he’d freaked out internally when they had spoken of potential threats coming from Zarrenburg. His first thought had been for Honeysuckle and how to get her away from harm. But even as he’d tried to protect her, she’d stood toe to toe with him, arguing that she wasn’t running away.
He admired her backbone. She wanted to see this thing through to the end.
He was going to ensure they both made it through to the end.
Then maybe afterward…
“Hey, you,” she said, her voice soft, her smile warm as she stood opposite him. The half-meter square glass security case he had brought to hold the Pasha Star gleamed between them.
“Hey, you, back,” he parroted with a grin.
You should have woken me, she mouthed through the glass with a pout.
Images of the frantic way they’d reached for each other in the early hours of that morning had him wanting to pull her into his arms and kiss her back to bed.
“I did try to wake you,” he said. “You were snoring so loudly I thought I was going to have the castle staff pounding on the door.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I do not snore.”
He raised an eyebrow and held up a thumb and forefinger barely an inch apart to show she did a little.
Her elbow came up to rest against the ledge of the five-foot plinth the base of the case was bolted to, her jaw in her hand and her finger pressed against her lips as if to stop a knowing smile from forming.
Again there was that strange loosening feeling around his heart.
She was breaking down that titanium shell he’d erected.
She was that powerful.
And he was falling so hard he wondered if there was any distance left to fall.
Whether she saw something in his eyes, Adam didn’t know, but suddenly she was f
ocusing once more on the glass case separating them. “So, this looks Steel Hawk standard issue. Can’t be, though, right? Am I allowed to know the add-on features?”
Adam hesitated, but they were alone in the room. Anton Haas was in a full security briefing with his team in preparation for the coronation ceremony in two hours’ time, and he had placed guards outside the entrance so that Adam and Honeysuckle could work undisturbed.
Smiling, he held out his hand and gestured for her to come around to his side of the glass box.
“Come and meet Steel Hawk’s latest. I thought I’d name her Descry.”
Honeysuckle stepped around the plinth, to his side where he had his laptop connected up to the security case.
“While everyone is looking in,” Adam explained, staring at his creation, “she’s looking out, seeing everything that surrounds her.”
“How?” Honeysuckle’s hands lifted to the glass to touch, and right away his brain shot into overdrive. Maybe he could extend the nanotechnology he’d created to include fingerprint analysis.
“Adam?” Honeysuckle asked, pulling him away from where he’d been making quick notes on his laptop. “How? Am I allowed to know?”
“She has cameras embedded into every surface. It means that the glass isn’t as tough as our usual products.”
“But it’s still tougher than any other product out there?”
Adam nodded, silently acknowledging that the knot of worry in his belly hadn’t shrunk any. He guessed until he was dismantling the case after the exhibition had closed without incident, it wouldn’t. He was too invested in this prototype working.
He’d never have actually brought Descry here if he hadn’t checked that, during the exhibition’s opening hours, guards would be patrolling the room and that extra guards would be stationed outside the entrance 24/7. There were only two access points—the heavy, carved, arched entrance doors and a smaller, unobtrusive door at the top of the room, next to the ornate gold balustrade that formed the edge of the dais, which contained the larger-than-life gold-leaf, carved throne.
Only royalty was allowed to use the side access near the dais, but the room hadn’t been used for formal functions for years, and Anton Haas had personally shown Adam how they had blocked up the second door to ensure only one way in and one way out.
“So if an attempt was made on the diamond, you would be able to see immediately?” Honeysuckle asked, sounding impressed.
“That’s the theory.” Adam picked up his laptop and switched on the camera feed from the glass display box.
His OSD lit up and separated into five different screens. Each screen showed what the camera invisibly embedded in each side and the top of the glass case was seeing.
Honeysuckle looked from his laptop to the glass case and waved her hand in front of the glass. When she saw herself on his computer, she smiled.
“The commercial application for this technology is insanely huge,” she murmured.
“Providing I can get the technology into large sheet glass and still maintain optimum strength of the glass, and providing Edward gets it patented, yes. It’s looking good.”
Honeysuckle blew out a breath. “Coolest thing ever.”
Adam rubbed absentmindedly across his chest, where a large ball of pride had formed. If Descry worked here in Zarrenburg, under these conditions, he’d have managed what he set out to do. Steel Hawk would be back on their way to the top, its future secure. He’d have repaired any damage his failure to get the other contracts had caused.
“Are you on schedule?” Honeysuckle asked.
“Pretty much. I could do with your help setting the camera range on the display.”
“Sure, what do you need me to do?”
“Walk about looking beautiful. Should be a breeze.”
“You going to be looking at me on that?” she said, pointing to his laptop.
“Yep.”
“Very well,” she sighed dramatically. “I will add a little more sway in my hips. For the purposes of focusing your cameras, you understand.”
“Oh, absolutely,” he deadpanned, “for Steel Hawk.”
They grinned at each other, and suddenly he didn’t care that he was working. Reaching out, he snagged her about her waist, pulled her in, and kissed her.
Her mouth fit his so perfectly. Moving under his, over his, her tongue sliding against his, feeding his need on a platter.
Need like he’d never tasted it before.
All-consuming.
She moaned, and he tore his mouth away to grant them both a chance to breathe.
He’d shocked her. He could see it in her eyes. Did she not want him with the same intensity? Was he starting to trust in something that wasn’t real? He searched her blue eyes, old issues coming back to haunt him.
She searched back, and what she saw must have pleased her, because her eyes cleared, and with a gentle stroke of her hand against his cheek and one more satin-soft glide of her lips against his, she restored his faith and brought back perspective.
This was mutual, and for now, that was all he needed to believe in.
Releasing her, he dropped a quick kiss to her forehead and mentally stepped back into his work head.
“If you could walk down to the main doors, I’ll start with the farthest range,” Adam said, forcing himself to stare back at his computer screen. Once the ranges were inputted into the program, he would be able to zoom in and zoom out of any recorded footage.
Then all he needed to do was create the uplinks to enable the signal from the cameras in the display case to transmit via a private cloud. With the signal up and running, he’d be able to log on to the cloud and set up the devices in which he wanted to view the camera feed.
“Don’t the gilded birdcages look fantabulous?” Honeysuckle declared, her voice echoing from the other end of the room.
“I take it that’s a technical term,” he queried, glancing over to them.
“Absolutely.” She opened her tote bag and took out her Steel Hawk tablet, and as Adam adjusted the camera angle and focus, he saw her on-screen as she started checking things off on her list. “I was worried. But I think they look right.”
Adam had to agree the size and style of the room could certainly take them. Honeysuckle had arranged for them to be placed at equal intervals along both sides. Members of the public would pass by the large cages containing smaller glass display boxes with one of the lesser-known royal jewels inside, on their way to the display’s pinnacle.
The Pasha Star.
Gustav Ambrus had arranged for script explaining the history of each of the jewels to be projected onto giant screens.
“The overall look is impressive as hell,” Adam told Honeysuckle, pleased when he saw her shy smile appear on the screen in front of him.
He watched her eyes light up as she took in each gemstone or piece of jewelry sitting in each of the display boxes inside the cages.
This was what she should be doing, he thought. He’d never seen her look quite like that working at Steel Hawk.
But then, as if she didn’t want to let herself become too attached, the long looks in each cage became glances as her footsteps gained speed. “You want me to head to your end of the room now?” she asked.
“Great. Actually, can you slow down a little? I think the queues will be moving slower, and it will mean I can get sharper focus.”
She slowed down, keeping her eyes on the giant mural that filled the wall behind the throne.
“Did you know that the mural tells the history of the Pasha Star?” she asked. “The prince who originally built this castle wanted his people to remember the diamond’s heritage. Myths and folklore included.”
Adam framed the mural on-screen, using the camera from the side of the glass case facing it. “Keep going, I love it when you go all stats and facts on me.”
Honeysuckle turned back to the case and grinned, and he saw her captured beautifully on-screen.
“The mural depicts how a great prince of the East fell in love with a maiden. But the maiden had been fooled in love before and was uncertain. She couldn’t declare her faith or love, and so she lost him. Legend says she called to the night sky for guidance on how to go on living and saw a shooting star. She left fear behind and followed the shooting star, and it brought her full circle back to her prince. He’d been holding the Pasha Star in his hand to guide her to him.”
“Cute story,” he managed, his heart thumping as an image of him waiting nervously with a diamond in his hand popped into his head. Jesus. He had to get ahold of himself. He’d spent one night with her. “What happened next?”
“The next few hundred years aren’t quite as romantic. They show all the wars where the diamond was coveted and used as the proof of right to rule. It became Zarrenburg’s in the 1300s. Look,” Honeysuckle added, pointing to the end of the mural, “that must be the part where Princess Mary gave it to Prince Stefan. The year Nathaniel and Rose recovered it from Prince Randolph.” Honeysuckle looked down as her bag beeped. “Oh, that’s my phone.”
Adam wasn’t really paying attention. There was something about the last image on the mural that pulled his focus, but he couldn’t work out what it was. Everything he saw correlated perfectly with other images he’d stored in his memory. So what was off about it?
“Edward has emailed,” Honeysuckle said, tapping her phone to access the message. “He’s going to arrive late afternoon, in time for the ball.” She frowned.
“What is it?”
“He has a couple of queries against the information I gave him. It looks like there are some dates where the Raven struck but where I have Nathaniel Hawk listed as being out of the country.” She looked up at Adam, excitement dancing in her eyes. “That’s great, isn’t it? I mean, if we can prove it couldn’t have been him? They’d have to print a retraction or something, right? I’ll forward you the attachments.”
* * * * *
Adam swore under his breath and watched as the cold air left his mouth to meet and mingle with the freezing night. Standing outside the castle ballroom, he could hear the orchestra playing and the sound of partygoers enjoying themselves.
