In my desperation I think I would’ve made a bargain with the devil himself if I could just find my girl safe and sound. I headed back to the wing where Lady Percival was on display, hoping she might offer me a clue. I remembered Brynne saying something about access to the back room where she’d helped out when Lady Percival had been moved from the Rothvale over here for this show tonight. I looked for a door and there it was not ten feet down, blending into the wall—the outline of the seal, and then a small sign marked private affixed to it.

Jackpot!

I turned the handle and pushed into a large work storage room with more doors—one of which was marked toilet.

“Brynne?!” I yelled her name and slammed my hand hard. I tried the knob but it was locked.

“I’m here,” came a weak reply, but praise the angels, it was her!

“Baby! Thank Christ...” I tried the knob again. “Let me in. We have to go!”

The door latch clicked and I wasted no time wrenching open the final barrier between me and my girl. I would have torn it off and thrown it if I’d had the ability.

She stood there looking pale with her hand over her mouth, sweat dotting her forehead, in her beautiful periwinkle dress. The most gorgeous color in the whole bloody world right now! Maybe forever. I didn’t think I would ever forget how I felt in this moment. The stark relief at finding her, just about took me to my knees in thankfulness.

“What’s going on with the fire alarm?” she asked.

“Are you okay?” I wrapped my arms around her but she pressed a hand to my chest to keep a distance.

“I just threw up, Ethan. Don’t get too close.” She kept one hand over her mouth. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Thank the gods I remembered about this bathroom being so close by. I was in here bent over the toilet and then the alarms went off—”

“Oh, baby.” I kissed her forehead. “We gotta go now! Not a fire but a bomb threat called in!” I grabbed her other hand and started pulling. “Can you walk?”

Her face paled even further but she revived somewhat. “Yes!”

I fired off a call to Neil as I got us the hell out of that building.

Adrenaline has amazing powers on the human body. There are many small things to be thankful for, but the greatest thing of all was safe in my arms.

What a cluster f**k the last hours had been. I ruminated over what’d gone down as I drove into the night. Change of plans, I’d decided as soon as we got home. I called Hannah and let her know we were driving up to Somerset tonight. She seemed surprised but said she was glad to have us early and that the house would be open so we could get in whenever we arrived.

Brynne was a bit harder nut to crack. She didn’t feel well for one thing and then was worried about the bomb threat and all the paintings. So far, there hadn’t been an explosion but the whole mess was on every news station and being categorized as a terrorist risk. I would have my people investigating the bomb threat as a compulsory measure, but what concerned me far more were the messages on her mobile tonight. Whoever sent it was close by. Close enough to see me having a smoke behind the National Gallery. And if he was close enough for that, then he was too f**king close to my girl. I could hardly make sense of the text message either—just lyrics from the song typed out with Brynne’s name attached to them. Gave me chills, and made my decision to get her out of the city a very easy one.

I looked over at her sleeping in the front seat, her head tilted against the pillow she’d brought along. I’d rushed her out of the city, and knew I’d have some explaining to do later but thankfully she hadn’t been in a mood to challenge me and went along with everything. We’d changed out of our formal clothes, grabbed the bags, and hit the M-4 for our three hour drive to the coast.

She stirred about two hours into the drive and then woke up with a direct question. “So are you going to tell me why you dragged me away tonight when the plan had been to go in the morning for weeks?”

“I don’t want to tell you because it won’t be nice for you to know and you’re already feeling bad.” I reached for her hand. “Can we wait till tomorrow to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Baby…please, you’re exhausted and—”

“Remember our deal, Ethan,” she cut me off, “I have to know everything or I can’t trust you.”

The tone of her voice was very hard and scared the shit out of me. Oh, I remembered our deal very well and I hated what I knew. But I also knew what I’d agreed to with Brynne. And if keeping the information from her broke us apart, then it wasn’t worth the cost to me.

“Yeah, I remember our deal.” I reached into my pocket for her mobile. “A message came through on your mobile while I was out the back having a smoke. That’s why I didn’t know where you were. I’d left to go outside and the bomb threat happened about simultaneous with that text message on your phone.”

She reached a shaky hand and took it from me. “Ethan? What’s on it?”

“A music video first and then a text message from someone calling themselves ArmyOps.” I put my hand on her arm. “You don’t have to listen. You really don’t—”

Her face looked absolutely stricken with fear but she asked the question anyway. “Is it—is it the video of…me?”

“No! It’s just the music video of the song by Nine Inch Nails—look, you don’t have to do this, Brynne!”

“Yes I do! It’s to me, this message! Isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“And if we weren’t together it would have still been sent to me, right?”

“I suppose. But we are together and I want to keep you from having to worry about shit like that. It kills me, Brynne. It f**king kills me to see you like this!”

She started to cry. It was the silent kind of crying. The way she usually did it and somehow the silence of her tears seemed to be screaming loud in the car between us.

“That’s one of the reasons why I love you, Ethan,” she sniffed. “You want to protect me because you really care.”

“I do, baby. I love you so much. I don’t want you to have to see that piece of sh—”

She pressed start and the song rang out as she played the video. I watched her and held my breath.

Brynne held it together for the whole thing, watching it through to the bitter end, in all its mad-scientist themed fetish crap. I had no indication from her as to how she felt from seeing it though. At least not outwardly. I couldn’t possibly know.