by Mari Carr
“If you don’t tell them yourself, you risk the Masters’ Admiralty finding out.”
Weston stared at him. “Would you tell them?”
Marek fished his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll do what’s right.”
“Fuck,” Rose groaned.
“I know what you’ve been through. Both of you. We’ll stop these purists,” Marek assured them.
Weston’s face closed down into grim lines.
Marek checked his phone, which was a special model usually only available to military personnel. He flipped it to satellite mode and placed a call to his grandmother.
It rang twice, and after a brief conversation with William, she came on the line. Marek put it on speakerphone, but turned down the volume. Rose slid out of her chair to sit cross-legged in the aisle beside him. Weston leaned forward.
“You didn’t come visit,” Jane Dell said.
Marek winced. “I’m sorry, Grandmother. Circumstances necessitated it.”
“Make sure you include that in my eulogy. ‘Circumstances necessitated me not coming to visit.’”
“I’m very sorry, Grandmother. I promise I will come visit.
“Did you find the one-eyed man?”
Marek made an apologetic face at Weston.
“I did. You’re actually on speakerphone with him. His name is…Wesley. And you’re also on with a woman named Rose.”
“The woman you were hunting?”
“I wasn’t hunting her.”
“Call a spade a spade, boy. Are you in jail?”
“No. I called to ask you a question.”
“Of course. Because you’d never call to just talk to me.”
“Grandmother, I call you twice a week. Religiously.”
“I’m a duty? Just another task.”
Marek reminded himself, several times, that patience was a virtue and that he had to respect his elders.
Rose was grinning at the phone. “I like her,” she whispered.
“Who was that? Is that the girl? Let me speak to her.”
Marek offered the phone and Rose frantically shook her head.
“Grandmother, I have a—”
“So you’re somewhere, not in prison, with the woman you were trying to rescue and the man who kidnapped her. Is he your prisoner?”
“No, Grandmother. The situation is more complex than I was led to believe.”
“Didn’t give you all the information? Sounds like those dumb fucks at MI6.”
“Language, Grandmother,” he chided gently.
“Caradoc has a lot to answer for. He ruined you.”
“Grandmother, I have a—”
“So it’s just the three of you? Are they attractive?”
Marek stumbled to a verbal stop. “What?”
“Wesley and Rose. Are they good-looking?”
“That’s hardly relevant.”
“Ha! They are. Are you going to return to the fold? Get in a proper marriage with a trinity?”
“They’re not part of the Admiralty.”
“That’s not a problem. I’m sure we can make them seem either smart or dangerous enough to get them in.”
Marek took a breath and spit out the question. “Was there a secret boat full of Admiralty children sunk during World War II?”
Silence. Marek looked at the phone screen. The call hadn’t dropped.
“Where did you hear that?” The cantankerous grandmother was gone. Though her voice still vibrated with age, this was the voice of Agent Dell. Marek had only heard it a few other times in his life.
Marek swallowed hard. “I will tell you that, once this mission is over,” he said quietly.
Another silence, before she said. “You’d better, Marek.”
He winced. “Yes, Grandmother.”
There was another beat of silence before she started speaking.
“This is what I heard. No one spoke about it in full. It was always just bits of information. Things I heard and pieced together.
“You must understand that the Admiralty was terribly divided during the war. There were some who sided with the Third Reich. People looking for someone to blame because their lives weren’t going well, and Hitler said it was the Jews’ fault, and they were happy to accept that. That’s a story that happened before Hitler and has happened since. Only the scale was different.
“The Admirals threw out anyone who thought like that, but there were enough of them that they took a lot of power with them. The Admiralty was weakened. Some people faked loyalty to the Nazis and pretended to be thrown out, in order to rise up within the party and feed information back to the Isle.”
Marek looked up, trying to catch their reaction to the piece of information she’d just let slip. Neither one seemed startled by it, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Early in the war, when it looked like we’d all be speaking German, members from all the different territories sent their children away. It was a desperate move. They were trying to save their children, and save the Admiralty. If the allies had lost the war, that might have been the end of us.
“The territories with neutral countries organized ships and overland caravans. The children went to north Asia, Africa, and South America.
“There had been at least a few successful trips. There must have been. But then there was one that went all to hell. It was a big ship, Spanish I think, carrying children from Germany, France, and England. The parents sent the children with guards, and all the portable wealth they could.
“It was taken by the Nazis. The children were never found. Probably at the bottom of the ocean. Later, while being used by the Germans to transport supplies, it was sunk by the Americans.”
Marek looked up. That story, that it had been first taken by the Germans, explained why no one had thought to look for the children, or art, in the U.S.
“Thank you, Grandmother.”
“Marek, this is one of the darkest tragedies, particularly in our territory. If you know anything about this, you need to call it in.”
Marek grimaced, then told a small lie. “Knight is with us.”
“Hmph.” Her voice returned to that of opinionated, cantankerous old lady. “Which one?”
“Tristan.”
“Come, boy, that hardly tells me anything.”
“Tall, blond.”
“Bah. The knights are too hard to keep track of.”
Rose was frowning in confusion, but Weston was grinning. That meant he probably knew more about the Admiralty’s internal structures than he should.
“Thank you, Grandmother.”
“You should be.”
She hung up.
“I love her,” Rose said in a breathless voice. “I want to be her.”
Weston quirked a brow at Rose, then said, “What she said confirms what we’ve guessed.”
“That brings me to the question, why are we going to Boston?”
The flight attendant appeared with food. Rose went back to her seat as he pulled out the large tables between the seats, then set up elegant place settings, including second glasses of Prosecco and bottles of sparking water. Then he returned with wide bowls of creamy risotto with truffles, crusty bread in ceramic baskets, and crystal cups of fig, sweet potato, spinach, and honey salad.
They ate for a moment, murmuring quiet responses to the flight attendant’s questions. When he once more disappeared, they resumed their conversation between bites.
“We’re going to Boston because all the records about the Bluebird, along with the diaries, are there. Maybe someone mentioned the children. Not directly, I would have noticed that. But there might be, must be, something.”
“We can’t get them,” Rose told Weston. “Juliette knows about the tunnels. She has people keeping an eye on them. That’s why Christian was down there. They were going to map them. His wife is some relation to the original architects.”
Weston took a bite. “I got down there unseen to get you out.”
“And after you did that
, they will have realized there are holes in their security.”
Weston set his jaw. “We have to try.”
Marek leaned forward. “We will try. And if we aren’t able to access what we need, I’ll approach the Grand Master directly.”
Rose considered that, her head tipped in a posture reminiscent of a bird of prey.
“You could take me with you. Return me to her.”
“No,” Weston ground out. “Too dangerous.”
“She won’t kill me right away.” Rose’s lips curled in a snarl. “I have things to say to her.”
Weston took a thoughtful bite. “You two provide the distraction. That could work.”
Marek’s brows went up in alarm. “That isn’t what I meant.”
They ignored him. Rose turned to stare out the window, but closed her eyes. “There’s something,” she said, voice barely audible because she was facing away from them. “Something that I keep thinking of and forgetting.”
“About what?” Marek asked.
“About…” She whirled to face them. “About something that Caden hid. We had to go with them one time, to help clear out the tunnels. It was after you,” she looked at Weston, “after you were hurt and disappeared. They were cleaning out the tunnels. And there was something, a folder, an old-fashioned kind of folder, that Barton particularly wanted to make sure they took. Caden took it. Hid it in the tunnels. While I provided the distraction.”
She smiled as she said it, but there was haunting pain in her eyes.
“What was in it?” Marek asked.
“I never saw it, but Caden told me later that there was a name on the front.” Her eyes lost their haunted look and glittered with excitement. “It said Admiralty.”
Weston pushed his plate away. “Describe it.”
“It was dark leather—blue, black. That’s it. That’s all I saw. But Barton wanted it.”
“All right. Then we find the diaries, or we find that folder.”
“Agreed,” Rose said.
Marek had a fairly good instinct for when things were about to go wrong. And right now, he most definitely had a feeling that the—he paused, then allowed himself to think the word—shit was about to hit the fan.
* * *
Weston dropped his bag onto the bed at the hotel. Tristan had booked them rooms at the Hyatt Regency overlooking the Boston Harbor. Tristan said it was only to keep an eye on Weston, but having the room booked in his names with his cards meant they didn’t set off any flags. The knight would never say it, but he was doing his best to help.
Weston was relieved when the car that picked them up at the airport brought them here. He didn’t mind keeping some distance between them and the Trinity Masters headquarters until they solidified their plans, figured out how to ditch Tristan.
When Rose had raised her brows at the seamlessness of their travel, Weston had given her a wry smile. He’d been in awe of what the Masters’ Admiralty could do since the start. It only took one instance of having people pull you, quite literally, out of a fire and get you to a hospital in time for you to not die, before you developed a reverence for their powers.
Weston had devoted nearly half of his life to defeating the purists. He’d let Rose and Caden be hurt because he’d stayed away, dedicating himself to finding out their secrets. That choice had killed his brother. It ended now. For the first time in his life, Wes had a sense that karma was on his side.
Rose walked out of the bathroom, running a brush through her lovely dark hair. “Marek back yet?”
He shook his head. Marek had stopped by the hotel’s elegant and expensive shop to pick up a few things, including more clothes for Rose. All Tristan had gotten her was what she was wearing and toiletries.
Rose leaned back into the bathroom to set the brush down, then walked across the room to the window. When she passed by him, he reached out a hand and she grasped it briefly, before letting her fingers slip from his as she kept moving. Even that small moment of contact made him feel better.
Whole.
Weston watched her walk—the way her hips moved, the confident tilt of her chin. He knew that though she looked and acted like a femme fatale, inside she was the walking wounded.
Knight had booked them a suite, putting Weston, Marek, and Rose in one room with a king bed, while claiming the other for himself. The window looked out onto the narrow streets of Boston. Even on the eighth floor, he could hear the sound of traffic—particularly, horns honking.
The suite, while practical and great because it kept their names off the registered guest list, was proof that Tristan didn’t intend to help more than he wanted which was going to be problematic. Though Tristan was in part helping, he was, after all, a Knight. He would want to stay in the loop. To gather information. Information was the most valuable currency to the Admiralty. They had plenty of money and connection. What they craved was information. If the Admiralty found out what had really happened to the Esperanza there would be hell to pay, and they’d lose their all-important leverage.
“We need to come up with a timeline,” Weston said softly, aware that Tristan was in the living area adjoining their rooms, flipping through the television stations on the big screen. “We don’t dare stay in Boston too long without acting. The best thing we have on our side is the element of surprise—even if they have contacts with the airport or customs, they won’t be able to find us immediately.”
“But Marek came in on his passport.”
“They hired him, why would they have a flag out for him?”
Rose looked dubious.
“Are you okay with the plan? Okay going with him?”
Rose sat down on the edge of the bed, smiling coldly. “Can you imagine Juliette’s face if you came with us? Captain America, a dead man, and her arch enemy, all popping up in her office?”
Weston claimed the chair next to the bed. “She’s not going to see all three of us. You and Marek will provide the distraction while I find the diaries, or that folder, and get the hell out.” That was the part of the plan he was worried about—sending Rose to be part of the distraction. And he hadn’t missed that she didn’t answer his question about whether or not she was worried. “Then we confront the Andersons and end the madness. If you want to have words with Juliette, fine, but make sure that you get out of there.”
Again, Rose didn’t respond directly to his statement. “What do you think happened to those kids, Wes?” Her softly spoken question told him she’d come to the same conclusion he had.
“I think they were killed.”
“What kind of monsters kill kids?”
Weston tilted his head. “Do you really need to ask that question, Brown Eyes?”
She fell silent, and he kicked himself for reminding her how much she’d suffered at the hands of this generation’s monsters.
The door opened and Marek entered. He looked at them. “Is everything all right?”
“Tristan is settled in out there.” Weston nodded toward the door. “Not sure how we’re going to get past him.”
Marek put his hands on his hips, all noble and upstanding. Weston hid a smile. Captain America was a good nickname.
“We’re back on American soil. Who says we have to answer to him? I say we just walk out of here.” Rose raised her hands palm up and arched her brows. “We’re not his prisoners. Trust me. I know what being a prisoner feels like.”
“Never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Nope.”
Marek shook his head, looking serious. “We are not going to sneak out. We’re going to talk to Tristan and he’s going to let us go.”
“Ohhh, Marek, you’re such a badass. Just walk out there and talk to him?” Rose shook her head. “Bold, ruthless.”
Weston didn’t miss the slight wince on Marek’s face when she said “badass,” but at least he didn’t call her to task for cursing. Marek didn’t respond to her mocking.
“I could grab that lamp over there and knock him out,” Rose
offered.
“Bloodthirsty woman. Grandmother will adore you.” Marek turned to the door. “We’re doing it my way.”
Before Weston or Rose could argue, Marek was gone. They followed him to the living room, Weston walking past Marek, wanting to take the lead on this conversation. He knew Tristan better, knew exactly how much information to give.
“We need to run out for a little while,” Weston began.
Tristan was glowering at the TV, flipping through channels. “Forget it.”
“Tristan.”
“We’re here, Wes. I kept up my end of the bargain. You owe me details.”
“You know I’ve been chasing art,” Weston started.
Marek butted in. “We now have some limited evidence that during the theft of that art, people went missing too.”
Tristan looked up. “You said lives were at stake. As in people currently alive. But if this is all about some Nazi art, those people are long dead.”
Marek frowned. “I’m surprised a Knight would say something like that.”
Weston winced. Tristan had some insecurity issues about his pedigree. Marek implying he wasn’t a good knight was going to severely piss him off.
Tristan’s expression was blank, but Weston could see his friend’s jaw muscle clench.
“The fate of these people does matter, even if they have passed away. Any descendants they have, any legacy they left—those things matter. They deserve to have their story told.”
Tristan turned back to the TV. “Two hours. You’ve got two hours before I call the Admiral and your grandmother, not necessarily in that order, and bring their full wrath down on your heads.” He sighed and turned off the TV. “But you’re going to tell me where you’re going.”
It was as good as Weston was going to get, and he knew it. “We’ll be back by then,” he said. “You can find us at the Boston Public Library.”
“Care to be more specific?”
Rose exchanged a glance with Weston, who gave her a subtle nod. “Here’s a clue for you, Blondie. Nitimur in Vetitum.”
“We strive for the forbidden?” Tristan asked after pausing for a moment to translate.
