Page 11 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel needed to con­trol his fa­cial ex­pres­sions bet­ter if he was go­ing to be ef­fec­tive in his new role. “I as­sume I will be briefed on the peo­ple and is­sues in­volved.” He wanted the brief­ing to be thor­ough since he was start­ing with zero ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Of course. Fran­cisco will be in touch with you.” Fran­cisco Var­gas was the king’s high­est po­lit­i­cal ad­viser. “Make them feel lis­tened to and re­port back not just their words but your im­pres­sions.”

“I will do my best.” Gabriel gave a small bow from his chair to in­di­cate the grav­ity with which he ac­cepted the as­sign­ment. He lifted his head again. “I am sell­ing my gui­tars, Tío.”

The king made a sharp ges­ture of de­nial. “I wish you would not.”

“It is time. I need to move for­ward.” The terse re­sponse was all he could muster.

A shadow of melan­choly swept over the king’s face. “I will miss your mu­sic, Gabri. It so of­ten brought me so­lace at the end of a hard day.”

Gabriel kept the mus­cles of his face still as his un­cle’s words sliced through his chest like spin­ning knives, mak­ing it hard to breathe. He had al­ways felt hon­ored when Luis would ask him to bring his gui­tar to this of­fice for a pri­vate con­cert. His un­cle would lean back in the big leather chair, ut­terly still, while Gabriel played for him. Yet the king’s eyes had blazed with the emo­tions the fla­menco evoked.

A fist closed around Gabriel’s throat. He might help the king with prac­ti­cal mat­ters now, but he could never again use his mu­sic to ease his un­cle’s heart.

Chap­ter 4

Quinn walked into her of­fice and stowed her bag in the blond oak cre­denza be­fore she woke up her bank of com­puter screens.

Af­ter he hired her, Mikel had given her a bud­get that made her eyes bug out and told her to choose her own fur­ni­ture. She’d bought a ba­sic wooden desk, an er­gonomic chair, and all the com­puter equip­ment her heart de­sired. When Mikel had walked in for the first time, he’d shaken his head and told Emilia to make the decor bet­ter.

Now Quinn’s of­fice had soft blue car­pet­ing, the cre­denza, two up­hol­stered chairs for vis­i­tors, and some wa­ter­color paint­ings of Cal­e­van flora. She never looked at any­thing ex­cept the com­puter screens, and no one ex­cept Mikel ever sat in the chairs, so she con­sid­ered the dec­o­rat­ing a waste of money.

She was deep into track­ing leads on the sur­geons who might have cut off the duke’s ear when a mes­sage came in from Mikel, say­ing that the first video footage on Ko­dra from the sur­veil­lance team was ready. He wanted her to come to the con­fer­ence room so they could re­view it to­gether on the big screen.

Mikel ges­tured her into the big leather chair be­side his. “Any­thing new on the doc­tor an­gle?”

“I’ve nar­rowed it down to three.” Quinn was ex­cited. Now she could fo­cus on which slime bucket was cal­lous and money-grub­bing enough to mu­ti­late a kid­nap­ping vic­tim.

“Three?” Mikel’s eye­brows rose. “How did you elim­i­nate the oth­ers so fast?”

“Great de­tec­tive work…and so­cial me­dia.”

Mikel’s lips turned up in a ghost of a smile. “I think I won’t tell el rey that last part,” he mur­mured be­fore he re­sumed his usual im­pas­sive ex­pres­sion.

Mikel could pur­sue Ko­dra and his crew, but the doc­tor was the one who had de­stroyed Gabriel’s ca­reer as a mu­si­cian. Mikel had never said that, but Quinn had put those puz­zle pieces to­gether.

She had even tracked down the few record­ings of the duke’s per­for­mances that she could find. The beauty of his gui­tar play­ing had made her weep, and she wasn’t prone to tears. She would find the rat bas­tard who had taken so much away from the duke, and from the world that would have fallen in love with his mu­sic.

“I’m sorry you had to de­liver the news to el duque,” Mikel said. “I should have been here. How­ever, he said you did an ex­cel­lent job.”

“Thank you, but you needed to be with Ser­ena. The duke un­der­stood that as well as I did.” She felt a flicker of plea­sure that the duke had com­pli­mented her to Mikel, even though she had dragged up the bad mem­o­ries of the ab­duc­tion again.

Mikel’s ex­pres­sion dark­ened, and he glanced at the cell phone rest­ing on the con­fer­ence ta­ble. “I’ve heard noth­ing from the hos­pi­tal for two hours.”

“No news is good news,” Quinn said in a gen­tle tone. “They would have con­tacted you if her fever had flared up again.”

“In my job, no news is sus­pect.” He nudged the phone two inches far­ther away from him. “In ad­di­tion to track­ing down the sur­geon, I want you to view the video and au­dio that comes in from the sur­veil­lance of Ko­dra. Give me a daily re­port of any­thing you think is sig­nif­i­cant.”

“Yes, sir.” It was a flat­ter­ing sign of Mikel’s trust in her abil­i­ties.

He hit a but­ton on his lap­top, and the big screen came to life. “I’ll fill you in on what I know so far. Af­ter that, it’s all yours.”

The screen dis­played an an­gu­lar mod­ern villa made of stone with a paved court­yard bounded by a high wall and a heavy metal gate. Sev­eral cars were parked in it.

Quinn scanned the scene, not­ing the cars ranged from a gleam­ing sil­ver Mer­cedes sports coupe to a rusty red Fiat 500. “I’m guess­ing the Mer­cedes be­longs to Ko­dra?” She turned to­ward her boss.

Mikel nod­ded with­out tak­ing his eyes off the screen. She watched him for a few sec­onds, fas­ci­nated by the fo­cus etched on his face.

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