Page 34 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Shrug­ging all that away with the men­tal dis­ci­pline she’d cul­ti­vated in her chaotic child­hood, she turned to comb­ing through Dr. Paul Ricci’s fi­nan­cial records, travel his­tory, fam­ily, friends, and known as­so­ciates. It would be a lit­tle harder to get ac­cess to his pa­tients, but she would do that, if needed. A slight smile curled her lips as she dug into her project.

“Quinn, I—” Mikel’s voice made her jump so vi­o­lently that her rolling chair banged into her of­fice wall.

“Holy shit! Sorry!” She wheeled the chair for­ward again and swiveled to­ward where her boss stood a foot away from her desk. “You star­tled me.”

He gave her an ironic gri­mace. “I called your name from the door­way, and you ig­nored me, so I moved closer.”

“I was work­ing on Ricci.” She ges­tured to­ward the com­puter screen.

“Your fo­cus is ad­mirable, but we have an­other mat­ter to dis­cuss. If you’d join me in my of­fice?” His pale blue eyes burned with a glee­ful malev­o­lence that made her a lit­tle ner­vous.

Quinn stood. “How’s Ser­ena?”

All the edges of his face soft­ened. “She’s al­ready com­plain­ing about be­ing bored, a good sign.” He stood aside so that Quinn could pre­cede him to his of­fice. She took a deep breath, won­der­ing whether this was about her vis­i­tors last night.

Mikel sat in one of the more com­fort­able an­tique chairs in the seat­ing area and ges­tured her into an­other.

“I need to tell you about—” she be­gan.

Mikel held up his hand to stop her. “We can talk about your busy evening in a minute.” The gleam of evil sat­is­fac­tion was back in his eyes. “Ko­dra pro­posed to his girl­friend last night. She wants a showy ring and a big wed­ding with a de­signer gown.”

Quinn let her lips curve in a smile that echoed the re­strained glee in Mikel’s ex­pres­sion. “You didn’t even have to sab­o­tage his propane tank.”

“And he’s made plans for travel to Lis­bon to­mor­row.” He pulled out his phone and swiped at the screen. “I’m send­ing you the itin­er­ary now. We’ll be leav­ing on the royal jet in the morn­ing.”

Quinn’s phone pinged as she stared at him. “Why am I go­ing to Lis­bon?”

He leaned back in his chair, his gaze hooded. “Be­cause you can han­dle Gabriel while I deal with Raul.”

That car­ried so many im­pli­ca­tions she didn’t know where to start, so she con­tin­ued to stare at him.

“Good,” he said as though she’d agreed with him. “I know that Pete Glee­son came to see you last night, so you don’t have to con­cern your­self with that.”

“Um, I need to go back a cou­ple of steps.” She swal­lowed as she sorted through her con­cerns to choose the most press­ing one. “I’m not sure what you ex­pect me to do in Lis­bon.”

“I hope that Ko­dra has set up a meet­ing with some­one else in­volved in the ab­duc­tion. Gabriel is com­ing be­cause he has a chance of rec­og­niz­ing some dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the per­son Ko­dra meets.” Mikel’s ex­pres­sion tight­ened. “The prince is com­ing be­cause he in­sists. His ra­tio­nale is that he also had con­tact with their ab­duc­tors, which is true.”

“But the prince makes it a more dif­fi­cult se­cu­rity is­sue than just Gabriel’s pres­ence does,” Quinn said with a nod. “So my role is…?”

“I will be fo­cused on keep­ing the prince from—safe.” She guessed Mikel had stopped him­self from say­ing the prince might do some­thing stupid. He con­tin­ued. “Gabriel seems to feel a con­nec­tion with you. It’s his first trip out of Cal­eva since the kid­nap­ping, other than for his ear surg­eries, so it may be stress­ful for him. I want him to have a com­pan­ion he feels se­cure with.”

Mikel def­i­nitely knew about Gabriel’s visit to her house last night.

“He only feels com­fort­able with me be­cause he doesn’t have to ex­plain the worst ex­pe­ri­ence of his life. I al­ready know it all.”

Mikel shook his head. “That’s only part of it. I’ve ob­served that clients come to trust the in­ves­ti­ga­tors that they work with in a sur­pris­ingly pro­found way. They feel seen, fo­cused on, un­der­stood. They be­lieve you’re on their side.”

“I am.”

“Then there’s the more uni­ver­sal con­nec­tion.” Quinn must have looked as con­fused as she felt. Mikel’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “You’re a woman. He’s a man.”

She re­mem­bered the kiss that hadn’t hap­pened last night. “You def­i­nitely give me too much credit.”

Mikel merely raised his eye­brows to ex­press his skep­ti­cism. “I’m also count­ing on you to keep Gabriel out of dan­ger.”

“But you’ll be there the whole time, right? I don’t have any field ex­pe­ri­ence, as you know.” Or even much ex­pe­ri­ence away from her com­puter, but that sounded too pa­thetic to say out loud.

“I’ll be there, along with a squad of my best agents. I ex­pect that the bulk of the work will de­pend on cam­eras and mi­cro­phones, not on in-per­son ob­ser­va­tion. You and Gabriel will mostly likely spend all your time in front of a mon­i­tor in the safety of a ho­tel room.” Mikel’s eyes lit with that fright­en­ing ex­hil­a­ra­tion again. “I’ll brief ev­ery­one fully on the plane as I get up­dated in­tel­li­gence from the team surveilling Ko­dra. How­ever, we have to be pre­pared to im­pro­vise.”

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