Page 3 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Quinn glanced around the room. While Emilia set up the food, Quinn had run out to grab two bunches of vaho hi­bis­cus from the flower stand on the cor­ner. On Cal­eva, dec­o­rat­ing with the fra­grant laven­der flow­ers was prac­ti­cally a re­quire­ment. One bunch rested in a vase on the cof­fee ta­ble, its ex­otic per­fume hang­ing in the air.

The other stood on the an­tique olive wood con­fer­ence ta­ble. Sup­pos­edly the ta­ble had been brought to Cal­eva four hun­dred years ago by one of the coun­try’s found­ing fam­i­lies. Quinn was al­ways ner­vous about putting her lap­top on it. If she scratched the sur­face, she would never for­give her­self.

She caught her­self smooth­ing her palms over the denim of her jeans. There had been no time to run home for more for­mal cloth­ing, so she’d twisted her brown braid into a low bun and shrugged on her black leather jacket over her black T-shirt.

The buzzer for the out­side door sounded, and Emilia bounded for­ward to open it. “Don Gabriel.” Her tone was rev­er­en­tial, and she curt­sied and ducked her head at the same time.

El Duque de Bencalor stepped through the door with a smile for Emilia that wiped all co­her­ent thought from Quinn’s brain.

His teeth flashed white against his tanned skin, and his sil­ver-gray eyes crin­kled at the cor­ners. “Emilia, such a plea­sure to see you. And you know it’s just Gabriel.” He leaned for­ward to give her that side-to-side, dou­ble air-kiss that con­fused Quinn. How did you know which way to lean first so you didn’t whack your faces to­gether?

He turned to­ward her, and her brain con­tin­ued its static over­load. His glossy, dark brown hair was pulled back in a short pony­tail, and he wore black jeans and a black but­ton-down shirt. The sleeves were rolled up to his el­bows, ac­cen­tu­at­ing the sculpted mus­cles of his fore­arms and his pow­er­ful hands.

He’d been a bril­liant gui­tarist be­fore the kid­nap­ping.

Now he was say­ing some­thing in that voice like honey and brandy mixed to­gether. She couldn’t fo­cus on the words, only on the sen­sual tim­bre of his voice. He fell silent and turned to­ward her.

That snapped her out of her trance. She thrust out her hand. “Hello, Don Gabriel.” Then she winced be­cause the ges­ture and the words were so at odds with each other. “I’m Quinn Pier­son.”

“Merely Gabriel, please,” he said as his hand en­veloped hers in warmth and strength. His smile faded as he stud­ied her. “Thank you for meet­ing with me on such short no­tice.”

When he re­leased her hand, an in­ter­nal sigh of loss whis­pered through her.

“Of course,” she said, al­though it was crazy for him to thank her. Tech­ni­cally, Mikel’s ser­vices could by en­gaged by any­one who needed a pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tor, but the firm worked first and fore­most for the crown. “Would you come into the con­fer­ence room? I have my lap­top set up in there.”

Gabriel’s lips thinned to a grim line be­fore he nod­ded and ges­tured for her to lead the way.

Emilia fol­lowed them into the el­e­gant con­fer­ence room. The walls were pan­eled with cork oak half­way up and painted above the wood with scenes from Cal­eva’s his­tory. Quinn had been sur­prised at the lack of win­dows un­til Mikel had ex­plained that highly sen­si­tive mat­ters were some­times dis­cussed here, mak­ing pri­vacy and se­cu­rity more im­por­tant than nat­u­ral light.

“Would you like some­thing to drink?” Emilia reeled off all the op­tions.

“Wa­ter would be much ap­pre­ci­ated,” the duke said.

Quinn waved her hand to­ward an up­hol­stered green leather chair half­way down the ta­ble, fac­ing the large screen on the wall. “Why don’t you sit there, Duque? You will have the best view.” There was no way on earth she could call him Gabriel, de­spite the fact that he was two years younger than her own age of thirty-one.

He sat while Emilia placed a leather coaster and a cut crys­tal gob­let of cold wa­ter in front of him. She also po­si­tioned the tapas plat­ter, a stack of small china plates, and a white linen nap­kin within his reach. He thanked her with au­to­matic cour­tesy, but his gaze was fixed on Quinn.

“Who is it?” he asked af­ter Emilia ex­ited, clos­ing the door be­hind her with a soft click of the latch.

Quinn hit a key on her lap­top. A still im­age ap­peared on the wall screen. “Elio Ko­dra. He’s Al­ba­nian.”

The sus­pect was a good-look­ing man with brown hair, a pleas­ant smile, a scruff of five o’clock shadow, and the thick neck of a weightlifter. He wore a red wind­breaker adorned with a sports team’s logo. She watched Gabriel’s face but saw no light of recog­ni­tion.

“The kid­nap­pers all wore full face cov­ers,” Gabriel said with­out in­flec­tion.

Quinn hit an­other key to start the video of Ko­dra, who was speak­ing to some­one off-cam­era.

His voice filled the room, talk­ing in a lan­guage she didn’t un­der­stand, al­though she could oc­ca­sion­ally catch an al­most fa­mil­iar word. “He’s speak­ing Al­ba­nian,” she said. “I found this on so­cial me­dia.”

The man laughed—full-throated, care­free—and the video stopped.

“No one spoke to me in per­son af­ter they dragged me into the van in Barcelona,” Gabriel said, the an­gles of his face set and un­read­able. “Only through a loud­speaker with a voice mod­i­fier. It changed ev­ery­thing: tempo, rhythm, pitch, in­flec­tion. I couldn’t even tell if the speaker was male or fe­male.”

When Gabriel lifted his hand to touch his re­con­structed ear­lobe, guilt jabbed at Quinn’s chest. She knew all that from the de­brief­ing videos, but had hoped that see­ing and hear­ing Ko­dra might shake loose some­thing in the duke’s sub­con­scious mem­ory.

This was why Mikel should be here. He wouldn’t show videos that Gabriel wasn’t ca­pa­ble of iden­ti­fy­ing. He wouldn’t re­mind Gabriel that his ab­duc­tors had sliced off his ear to prove they meant busi­ness.

“How do you know this man is one of the kid­nap­pers?” Gabriel asked af­ter a long mo­ment of si­lence.

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