Page 70 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“But not proof pos­i­tive that these crim­i­nals are re­lated to the kid­nap­pers,” Mikel warned. “That type of mask is widely avail­able at cos­tume and party stores.”

Maybe not proof, but the con­nec­tions were pil­ing up. Crim­i­nals had habits, even sig­na­tures.

Mikel swiveled his chair to­ward Gabriel and Raul. “We can re­play each video feed sep­a­rately, if you wish. Or we can fo­cus on any­thing you want to see again.”

Gabriel picked up the wa­ter gob­let in front of him and took a long swal­low.

Raul cursed in frus­tra­tion. “Noth­ing trig­gered a mem­ory for me. What about you, Gabri? Any­thing?”

Gabriel’s grip on her hand be­came con­vul­sive, and Quinn un­der­stood. The masks had dragged him back into the night­mare. “Can we take a break?” she asked. “My eyes are cross­ing from star­ing at the video so hard.”

Mikel got the mes­sage that she was ex­press­ing Gabriel’s need. Her boss knew that she could stare at a com­puter screen for hours al­most with­out blink­ing. “Let’s have some of the tapas Emilia so thought­fully pro­vided us with,” he said.

It was nearly mid­night, but Cal­e­vans of­ten ate late. And the tapas looked de­li­cious.

“Gra­cias,” Gabriel mur­mured as the other two men pushed their chairs back. “Those masks…”

“Yup.” Quinn squeezed his hand once more be­fore let­ting go. “Ter­ri­fy­ing even for me.”

He closed his eyes for a mo­ment. The skin of his face stretched tight over the an­gled bones un­der­neath. She won­dered what he was see­ing be­hind his eye­lids. Noth­ing good.

A sweat-damp­ened strand of hair had fallen for­ward to rest against his tem­ple. She longed to tuck it back be­hind his ear, but she was too aware of her boss and the prince in the room. In­stead, she stood and brushed her fin­ger­tips gen­tly over the top of his shoul­der, the knit­ted silk of his gray T-shirt soft over the mus­cle. “I’ll bring you some tapas. And wine.”

“Just wine, por fa­vor.” He opened his eyes but did not look at her.

As she ap­proached the cre­denza, her gaze met Mikel’s. Quinn saw the cer­tainty in her boss’s eyes, no mat­ter what he’d warned about lack of proof.

“It was Dupont, wasn’t it?” Raul asked, even as he cast a con­cerned glance at Gabriel, who still sat at the ta­ble.

“He has moved to the top of our list of pos­si­bil­i­ties,” Mikel said.

Quinn poured a gen­er­ous por­tion of red wine for him and a glass of wa­ter for her­self. Sit­ting down be­side Gabriel, she slid the wine­glass in front of him. “This will help,” she said, hop­ing that was true.

“Muchas gra­cias,” he said, the cour­tesy au­to­matic. She could see the ef­fort it took him to bring his fo­cus back to the present.

He seized the wine­glass and drained al­most half of it in one gulp.

She looked up to find Mikel and Raul watch­ing with worry writ­ten on their faces. Mikel gave her a tiny nod of ap­proval and drew Raul’s at­ten­tion away from his cousin with an­other com­ment about the bur­glary.

Gabriel drank the rest of the glass and put it on the con­fer­ence ta­ble with an au­di­ble clink. “Let’s get back to work.”

Mikel shook his head. “It’s late. We’ll come back to this to­mor­row. We won’t gain any­thing by push­ing our­selves tonight.”

“No,” Gabriel said, his voice harsh. “I want my re­ac­tions to be im­me­di­ate and un­clouded by any false im­pres­sions I might talk my­self into overnight.” His gaze flicked to Quinn, and she knew he was think­ing of how she’d fed him the im­ages of the sur­geons. “I’m fine, Mikel.”

“Gabri—” Raul be­gan to protest, but Gabriel brought one hand down in a chop­ping mo­tion that cut him off. The prince shrugged. “You’re as stub­born as a mule.”

“Takes one to know one.” Gabriel flashed a sar­donic smile at his cousin. The ten­sion in Quinn’s shoul­ders eased. If he was abus­ing Raul, he was back in the present.

How­ever, de­spite por­ing over the videos for an­other hour, Gabriel and Raul could add no new in­sights. Quinn’s eyes felt like some­one had thrown sand in them, so she could only imag­ine how ex­hausted the two roy­als must be.

The only in­di­ca­tion of how dif­fi­cult Gabriel found the ex­er­cise was his con­sump­tion of mul­ti­ple glasses of wine.

It looked like she was go­ing to drive the Spano for the first time. Too bad she wouldn’t be able to en­joy it.

As she man­aged to put the car in gear, Gabriel closed his eyes and leaned back against the head­rest.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked, eas­ing the car onto the street.

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