Hard Liquor: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #2

by Blair Babylon

  “There was a man with a gun,” he explained. “He went after Genevieve Ward.”

  “It was no longer any of your concern.”

  “Was he one of yours?”

  “No, he wasn’t one of ours,” she replied, her voice clipped and testy. She would have answered in exactly that fashion whether she had sent the man or not. “Now we have to arrange another extraction. Where are you going?”

  “I’m not sure,” Arthur said.

  “We need to bring you in now.”

  Arthur looked down at Gen, his Gen. She was still wrapped around him, her arms and one leg curled around his body. “I need more time.”

  “We don’t have more time,” Elizabeth insisted.

  “Nevertheless,” he said.

  “We can’t guarantee your safety or the safety of anyone around you if you’re not in our custody.”

  An oblique threat. “Evidently, you couldn’t guarantee their safety while I was being brought into custody, either.”

  “You need to come directly to Vauxhall, now.”

  Arthur said, “That’s not possible,” and hung up.

  They were driving on an expressway, so Arthur depressed the button to roll the window down an inch. He pressed a sequence of numbers on the screen of his phone, and the screen flashed several times before it went dead.

  As they were directly beside a tarmac median, Arthur threw the phone from the vehicle. He leaned forward to look through the side view mirror and saw the quick flash as the battery detonated.

  He rolled up the window.

  Gen wrenched around in her seat. “Whoa! Did that explode?”

  Arthur shrugged. “It was a liability.”

  Gen pulled out her phone and dialed. “Hello, Esme? Say, could I ask you an enormous favor? I recently got a dog, and he’s out in my garden. Could you take care of him for a few days? All his things are in my kitchen, his food and such. You can? His name is Ruckus, but he’s lovely. Thank you!”

  She hung up and wrapped her arms around Arthur’s waist again.

  Arthur laid his cheek on the top of her head, feeling the silk of her hair on his face. “So where are we going to hide out, Casimir?”

  Casimir turned in the front seat. “The one place in the world where even MI6 won’t think to look for you.”

  Maxence, who was in the rearmost seat, rolled his eyes. “Oh, God. Not there.”

  Casimir’s Plane

  GEN clung to Arthur during the ride to Luton Airport. Her whole body rattled from the inside-out. The SUV dodged from lane to lane on the expressway. Gen watched the traffic even though she knew that she couldn’t see people stalking them the way Arthur could.

  He kept stroking her arms, pressing her hands to his neck and arms, and holding her.

  After the committee meeting at the House of Lords, she had thought that she would be able to be British, but at the last minute, she’d broken. Casimir and Maxence had been holding her back and telling her to look away, to do what was best for Arthur. She had been utterly and completely shattered, and she hadn’t been able to stop calling to him. His name had stolen all the breath in her lungs, and she hadn’t been able to stop.

  When Arthur had turned and that rictus of anger had transformed his face, she had known something was wrong, so she had collapsed, falling to the sun-warmed sidewalk, ducking and pulling the rest of them with her.

  Hey, Gen was a Texas girl. She’d been around guns her whole life. There wasn’t anything magic about them, but they had a straight line of fire that you didn’t want to be in. She was just glad that Lee and Rose had dawdled inside the Palace of Westminster and hadn’t been in danger, too.

  Casimir and Maxence had both fallen over her, covering her with their bodies and wrapping their arms around her head, almost struggling with each other to shield her.

  Now, with the benefit and humor of hindsight, Gen was pissed off that she had been panicking about Arthur too much to enjoy being at the bottom of that pile of hot manflesh.

  Hey, even cheap thrills can be nice.

  The bullet had shrilled through the air over them, and Arthur had been on the guy before he’d gotten a second shot off.

  Now, she was going to hold onto Arthur and not let him go. It was a second chance, and most people don’t get second chances.

  The SUVs took a back road that she had never noticed to a terminal where private planes lined the runway.

  Arthur’s private jet—well, the earldom’s private jet—had been a silver dart of a plane, sleek and luxurious, but Casimir led the way to an enormous aircraft, a converted jumbo jet that should have seated hundreds of people. The tail was painted orange with a roaring, white lion.

  Arthur had taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Gen rotated his arm outward. Yep, on that triple-shield tattoo, the orange shield had a stylized white lion on it just like the plane did.

  At the door that led from the terminal out to the tarmac, Casimir clasped hands with yet another black-clad commando. “Good to see you, Lachlan.”

  The man nodded, “Your Highness, everything’s ready.”

  Highness? Oh, really? Arthur had forgotten to mention something about Casimir. If she hadn’t been so relieved that he hadn’t disappeared or been shot, she would have backhanded him on the arm.

  “Wait,” Gen said. “Where are we going? Arthur, do you have your passport?” Hers was in her purse because she hadn’t taken it out after the Parisian wedding just a few days before. She had been busy with Arthur’s lawsuit. And the treason thing. Stuff had happened.

  Arthur patted his suit jacket pocket where it hung over his arm. “Always. I never know when I’ll need to jet off to Paris.”

  Arthur had his passport on him when he was supposedly going off to live a quiet life in MI6-sponsored hiding under an assumed name?

  Interesting.

  Casimir lifted his arm, gesturing to the skyway that led to the jet. “Our documents are stored on the plane.”

  Gen followed Casimir onto his airplane.

  Arthur kept his hand on her back while they were walking.

  Inside the airplane, big recliner-looking chairs surrounded tables. The ceiling was so high above that even Gen couldn’t come anywhere near touching it.

  She collapsed into a chair beside a window and pulled Arthur down beside her.

  He looked exhausted, his silvery eyes dull. When he hit the seat, he grabbed her into his arms again. Gen pressed herself against his side, not wanting to commit too much PDA, but damn it, she had been given another chance to touch him.

  Casimir had talked to the pilot after they had boarded, and he walked down the aisle toward them. He quipped to Arthur as he passed, “I remember a time when you used to hug me like that.”

  Arthur jumped out of his chair and slapped his arms around Casimir. Even where Gen was sitting, she could hear him growl, “Thank you for saving her.”

  Casimir slapped him on the back. “She pulled us down. I think she saved Maxence and me.”

  Maxence happened to be walking by at that point, and Arthur clothes-lined him around the neck and pulled him into the hug, too. The bug-eyed shock on Maxence’s face made Gen crack up. Maxence awkwardly patted Arthur’s shoulder.

  Arthur finally released the two men, who stood with him, holding onto his shoulders for another minute.

  Casimir said, “I was worried I’d never see you again, Earl of Givesnofucks.”

  “I’ve been given a reprieve, Prince Monster, but I don’t know how long it’ll be.”

  “Tonight, at least, you’ll be safe. The plane was scheduled to fly out to California, so we’re filing a change of the flight plan. We should be in the air soon.”

  “Excellent,” Arthur said.

  Gen piped up, “Where are we going?”

  While the other two chuckled, Maxence turned to her. “Where would the Devil himself not look for Arthur? In Hell, of course. We’re going to the very origin of sin in the world.”

  Casimir was chuckling,
but Arthur cracked up.

  Arthur slapped Maxence’s shoulder. “And Pope Fuckitall knows it better than any of us.”

  Judas's Duty

  TEN minutes after the enormous jet pointed upward and lifted into the sky, Gen held Arthur’s strong hand in her own as she juggled her buzzing phone with the other one.

  The call was from another barristers’ office, Red Lion Street Chambers. She had to take the call. Anyone could be calling about any number of her cases.

  There was a ninety percent chance it was Orval Ainsley, she estimated.

  She couldn’t quite reach the answer button, though, and the phone kept vibrating on her palm as she stretched her thumb.

  Arthur watched her. “You can release me to answer that. We’re locked inside a flying metal tube hundreds of miles above the ground. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You never know.” She finally figured out how to get her thumb across the screen to answer the call. She shouted, “Hello?” over the roar of the plane’s engines.

  “Ms. Ward,” a man said, his voice loud in the air. Damn it, she’d swiped the speaker button. “This is Mr. Orval Ainsley, barrister for Mr. Christopher Finch-Hatten.”

  Yep, that dweeb again. They’d spoken several times, never with good results.

  She couldn’t reach the button with her thumb to turn her speaker off at all. She gave up and held the blaring phone flat in her hand to speak across it. “What can I do for you, Mr. Ainsley?”

  “Since your client has declined to mount a defense and thus the committee will ultimately decide the case in our favor, my client wishes to inform your client that the estate should be considered in escrow. Mr. Arthur Finch-Hatten is not to dispose of any of the estate’s current holdings in any manner, by sale or gift or other means.”

  “Lord,” Gen said.

  “Are you swearing at me?” he retorted.

  “No, It’s lord. Not mister.”

  “I’m not a judge,” the other barrister replied. “It’s Mr. Ainsley.”

  Gen summoned up her deepest Texas accent to rub it in and explained, “Not you. Y’all’re obviously not entitled to be called ‘lord.’ Y’all should refer to the Earl of Severn as ‘His Lordship’ or ‘Lord Severn.’ You said ‘mister’ and used his surname. That’s pretty inappropriate, don’t-cha think?”

  Arthur stared at her and touched his fingers to his lips to hide his grin.

  Mr. Ainsley sputtered on the other end of the line. “I’m aware of British forms of address, Ms. Ward.”

  “So unless the House of Lords committee rules for your client, you should use His Lordship’s proper titles. Good day, sir.” Gen hung up the phone.

  Arthur was still grinning. “I say, Gen, that was spectacular.”

  She shrugged. “I’m a goddamned pit bull attorney, Arthur. I don’t think you ever properly understood that. I may have had some little quivers on certain cases, but I’m a Texas girl through and through. I can rope a calf and tie three of its legs in under ten seconds, and I can shoot the eye out of a squirrel at two hundred yards. I’ve always been a badass. Now let’s talk about your defense.”

  Arthur’s smile was huge on his face, his silver eyes sparkling, until she got to her last sentence.

  His smile fell away. “I’m not mounting a defense.”

  “No, you said that. Lady Honeycutt definitely left the door open for additional arguments when they reconvene. Honestly, I think she’d let us call witnesses.”

  “No. We have to let this go.”

  “You’re here. You didn’t leave. If MI6 can hide you—”

  Arthur shushed her and looked around.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Casimir and Maxence obviously know who you were working for. Dude, you’re blown. You’re blown wide open. There’s no more secret agenting for you.”

  His silver eyes were wide-open serious, and he told her, very clearly, “It doesn’t matter.”

  “If they can hide you from the bad guys, then you can hide yourself. You can travel or something for a few years. I know all kinds of small towns in Texas where no one would ever think to look for you, or you could go to Africa to dig wells with Maxence. You said that you liked ‘hands-on’ charity.”

  “I like socializing kittens, not digging wells,” Arthur assured her.

  “But when you come home, Spencer House and your estates will be waiting for you. Everything will be just like you left it. You’ll still be the Earl of Severn, and Spencer House will still be your home.”

  “Gen, it’s not possible.”

  “We’ll tell the House of Lords committee that you’re in MI6.”

  “My God, Gen! Absolutely not.”

  “We’ll position you as a patriot, not a traitor. We can call Elizabeth and Bentley to confirm you were in MI6, and we’ll enter your badge into evidence.”

  “We can’t do that,” he insisted.

  She asked, “You still have your badge, right?”

  “It’s still in a safe deposit box in a bank, probably.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That means that if Elizabeth didn’t want me to have it, MI6 would remove it from the box with a phone call.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  “Of course, they can.”

  “Well, we’ll just put Elizabeth and Bentley under oath, and anyone else whom you worked with.”

  “The oath is not magic. People will say what needs to be said.”

  “Do you have paycheck stubs or direct deposit statements where they paid you?”

  “I’m paid through an anonymous government account. People like me who must maintain plausible deniability don’t get remittance advice with the words Secret Intelligence Service emblazoned across the top.”

  “You did get paid, though?”

  “Of course. Sworn in, paperwork, and everything.”

  Gen leaned in. “Is MI6’s head honcho really called C?”

  Arthur rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

  She waved her hands, mad at herself that she had asked a question out of curiosity instead of sticking to the subject. “Okay, that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we can win this case. You need to tell them you work for MI6. If you tell them why you were with all those terrorists and enemy leaders, if you tell them why you were pretending to be a drunken degenerate as part of your cover, if you tell them that you’re a patriot and not a traitor, then Christopher’s case falls apart.”

  Arthur shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “But you can keep everything.”

  “In the clandestine service, when one is discovered, one maintains one’s cover to the very end.”

  “But you don’t have to!”

  “I’ve convinced assets to swallow a cyanide pill rather than reveal their work with me, to keep my cover.”

  “Did they die?” Gen asked, aghast.

  “It was cyanide. Yes, they died.”

  She shook it off and tried to make it not so horrible. “But that was so they wouldn’t be tortured, I’m sure.”

  “If they had told all they knew about me, they wouldn’t have been tortured, probably.”

  Gen was losing this argument, hard. “But it was for a good reason.”

  “I’ve been an intelligence officer for eleven years. That’s a long time.”

  “You were seventeen. You’re twenty-nine, now.”

  “I was considered an asset for a year. I wasn’t sworn in until I was eighteen.”

  That did not make it any better. “But they’re saying you’re a traitor, and you’re not! They’re going to take everything away from you.”

  “It’s my duty to let them. If Christ hadn’t died on the cross, he wouldn’t have been the sacrificial lamb.”

  “So you’re saying you’re like Jesus Christ?” As a pit bull litigator, Gen knew when to call in the expert testimony. She flapped her hand at Maxence to come deal with the blasphemy.

  Arthur said, “To become the sacrifice, Christ had to be betr
ayed. Judas wasn’t an adversary. Jesus called Judas his friend and told him to do what he was there to do. Judas is as necessary to that story as the lamb. Someone has to be the Judas. Someone has to be branded the traitor. Sometimes, to save us all, someone has to fall.”

  Gen lowered her arm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Maxence turn around and head back toward the plane’s tail. “So you’re going to let them call you a traitor, even though it’s not true.”

  “This is my last duty to MI6 and Britain, to deny them. If it’s known that I worked for MI6, others will be implicated. They will all die. If I’m a traitor, they will live and continue to provide Britain with information we need to be free.”

  “You shouldn’t have to sacrifice yourself.”

  “I always knew it was a possibility.”

  “But this is Spencer House. It’s been in your family for centuries.”

  “And it will remain so. Christopher and his children are my blood.”

  “But you’re not going to die! They shouldn’t ask this of you, to give up your identity and your title and your home.”

  “I always knew they might ask for everything that I am, everything that I have, and my very life. I knew it when I was seventeen, and I’ve known it every day since.”

  “Arthur!” she whispered, grabbing at his hands. No one should make that deal as a seventeen-year-old child.

  He took both her hands in his and held them. He was still so serious, and his low voice sounded like he was begging. “I never thought I’d find someone like you, and I never dreamed they would ask me to give you up. They have, and so I must. If I had it all to do over again, I would never have signed this devil’s bargain. I would have waited for you.”

  “I’ll wait for you. You’ll come back. I know you will. Ten years, right?”

  “You mustn’t, Gen.” He took a deep breath and studied their intertwined hands. His dark eyebrows flicked downward, and he tilted his head to the side, battling within himself. Finally, he said, “I’m quite sure they’re going to kill me.”

  Bile splashed against the back of her mouth, but she swallowed it down.

  It burned her from the inside.

  She asked, “Why? Why would they do that?”