Page 8 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel slid into the pas­sen­ger seat, and Mikel backed to­ward the road the way he had come. “I’m go­ing to be in deep shit with the con­ser­va­tion­ists,” he mut­tered, his gaze fo­cused on the backup cam­era dis­play so he could keep his tires on their orig­i­nal tracks.

“You’re go­ing to con­fess to driv­ing on Acan­ti­lado Alto?” Gabriel asked.

“Bet­ter that than have them go on a witch hunt. I’ll tell them it was a mat­ter of na­tional se­cu­rity, and that will shut them up.” He gave a wry gri­mace and swung the car onto the road.

“How is your daugh­ter do­ing?” Gabriel asked.

Shad­ows dark­ened Mikel’s ice blue eyes. “Her fever is down. The doc­tors say they have it con­trolled, but…” He shook his head. “She was hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. She screamed at me to get the wires off her arms be­cause they were slic­ing into her skin and burn­ing her. But there were no wires for me to cut through. Noth­ing I could do.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “Noth­ing.”

For a man used to tak­ing ac­tion, that must have been ag­o­niz­ing. “You did some­thing. You took her to the best hos­pi­tal in the coun­try.”

Mikel mut­tered an un­flat­ter­ing com­ment about doc­tors and steered the car into the small park­ing area where Gabriel had left his sleek, char­coal gray GTA Spano. Mikel cut the mo­tor and turned in his seat to look at Gabriel. “I’m sorry you had to hear the news about Ko­dra from Quinn. I should have been the one to tell you.”

“Quinn did an ex­cel­lent job of con­vey­ing your dis­cov­ery. I have no com­plaints.”

Mikel’s gaze did not wa­ver. “She knows the facts of the case, of course. But not the…fall­out.”

That’s why Gabriel had come to Acan­ti­lado Alto. His jok­ing his­tory les­son for her had re­minded him of the wild­ness of the place, which matched the churn of his emo­tions. And it had de­layed his task of read­ing through Quinn’s re­port on Ko­dra. “I’ve han­dled the fall­out,” he said, his tone stiff.

Mikel’s mouth tight­ened. “That doesn’t mean you’ve for­got­ten it.”

Gabriel had fought through the night­mares and flash­backs, the flare of throat-clos­ing panic when an elec­tronic voice sounded too much like his kid­nap­per’s, the ter­ror of see­ing a sil­ver mask like his ab­duc­tors had worn.

He wanted to put all of that be­hind him. That was why he had fi­nally let go of his pre­cious gui­tars, even though the de­ci­sion made him feel as though some­one had torn his heart out of his chest while it was still beat­ing. He needed to find his way into a fu­ture that gave him a sense of pur­pose again, even if it felt like a pale, fee­ble shadow of the pas­sion he’d felt for his mu­sic.

Gabriel straight­ened in his seat and felt the bur­den of his duty set­tle like a weight on his shoul­ders. “What else can I do to help you catch my ab­duc­tors?”

“We’ll see what we learn from surveilling Ko­dra.” Mikel scanned Gabriel’s face, his deep-set eyes like search­lights. “This will stir up your trauma all over again. You should talk to some­one.”

Gabriel raised his eye­brows with full-on ducal haugh­ti­ness.

Mikel was un­de­terred. “You can’t han­dle this by your­self.”

“And who would I talk to even if I agreed with you?” Gabriel gave Mikel a faint ironic smile. “The whole in­ci­dent has a high-se­cu­rity clas­si­fi­ca­tion.”

“Your mother.”

“She’s in Paris, rene­go­ti­at­ing our con­tract with Odette Fontaine at Ar­cham­beau Cos­met­ics, as you well know.”

“She will be home soon,” Mikel pointed out.

But Gabriel was too old to run to his mother for help. Not to men­tion that his mother didn’t know him any bet­ter than his fa­ther did. She spent as much time away from Cal­eva—and her hus­band—as pos­si­ble. He couldn’t blame her for that. How­ever, she would lis­ten to Gabriel’s prob­lems and then of­fer ad­vice in her prac­ti­cal French way. Ad­vice was not what he wanted right now.

Of course, Mikel would never sug­gest that Gabriel talk with his fa­ther. Lorenzo Med­ina, el Duque de Bruma, the royal his­to­rian and rigid ad­her­ent to the old ways, felt his son had done noth­ing more than what was ex­pected of any Cal­e­van cit­i­zen by tak­ing the crown prince’s place dur­ing the ab­duc­tion. His fa­ther felt the award for valor and dis­tin­guished ser­vice that the king had in­sisted on be­stow­ing upon Gabriel was un­nec­es­sary and os­ten­ta­tious.

To be fair, Gabriel hadn’t wanted the medal ei­ther, but his fa­ther’s lack of ac­knowl­edg­ment of the trauma his son had been through cut deeply. Gabriel didn’t want pub­lic recog­ni­tion from the king, but he wanted pri­vate sup­port from his own fa­ther.

When Gabriel didn’t ac­qui­esce, Mikel said, “Find some­one, or I’ll men­tion it to Su Ma­jes­tad el Rey. And maybe you shouldn’t sell the gui­tars quite yet ei­ther.”

“Back off, Mikel.” Gabriel wasn’t forc­ing the ducal tone now.

“As you com­mand, Ex­ce­len­tísimo Señor.” Mikel’s tone was sar­donic.

Gabriel wrenched open the car door and vaulted out be­fore telling Mikel where he could shove it. The other man laughed.

But Mikel’s words had re­minded Gabriel of some­one who had the se­cu­rity clear­ance to know the facts of his case, yet who knew noth­ing of the un­der­cur­rents. Some­one who wouldn’t re­quire an ex­pla­na­tion of the hor­rors he had ex­pe­ri­enced.

He shook his head. He had spent all of thirty min­utes with Quinn Pier­son. Why would he be­lieve he could talk to her?

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