Page 33 of Undercover Shadow
“I won’t.” Even if I had to lock her in the Blue Room and stand guard outside her door. Although knowing Leila, she’d find a way out through the windows or the old passages.
I checked in with Typhon first, then Viper. By the time I finished, Leila was standing in the doorway.
She’d changed into dark jeans and a burgundy sweater that brought out the gold flecks in her eyes. Her hair was still damp from the shower, falling in waves past her shoulders. She looked young and vulnerable and beautiful, and I had to force myself not to go to her, not to pull her into my arms and promise things I couldn’t deliver.
“May I come in?”
“Of course. It’s your operations center too.”
She moved into the room, carrying her laptop and tablet, choosing the far end of the table—as far from where I stood as possible while remaining in the same room. The message was clear.
“If we’re doing this,” she said without looking at me, “we do it my way. I control the intelligence flow. You want to see something, you ask. No accessing my tablet, no going around me to get information. Understood?”
“I wouldn’t dream of going around you.”
She glanced up then, frowning at my smirk.
“And I need access to your historical archives. Everything about the estates, the tunnels, the connections between your family, Ash’s, and Con’s.”
“The monastery vault has records going back five hundred years. They’re yours.”
When her eyes met mine and lingered, I wondered what she was thinking, what she might say.
“Talk to me, Nightingale,” I finally said when she didn’t speak.
“The investigation is our focus. Once we stop whatever McLaren and Janus are planning, I’m leaving.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” She stood, moving to the window that overlooked the loch. The water was choppy today, wind-whipped and gray. “Because tomorrow, this place will be full of people who know us both. Con, who can read people better than anyone. Ash and Sullivan, who just found happiness and will notice our misery. Your team…”
“They care about the same thing I do. Namely, that you’re safe.”
She returned to the table without acknowledging what I said. “Do you want to see what I found about the tunnel networks, or should we wait for the others?”
“I’d love to,” I said, standing beside her, once again wishing I could put my hands on her shoulders and simplytouchher.
“I’m convinced these were never random smuggling routes,” she said, pulling my mind back to the investigation. “They’re infrastructure. Planned, maintained, and expanded over centuries.”
There was a knock at the door that stood partially ajar, and I waved Douglas inside. He carried a large box that, when opened, revealed several books containing monastery records.
“What are those?” Leila asked.
“Glenshadow’s history. We’ll have to dig through them, but according to Sullivan, Fallon Wallace found maps showing tunnels that connect this estate to Ashcroft and Blackmoor, including information suggesting they date back to the Jacobite era.”
“How fascinating,” she said, reaching in to pull one of the heavy books from the box.
“Let me get that for you.”
Leila shot me a look that made me laugh, and I held up both hands.
“Apologies. You’re likely twice as strong as I am.”
“And don’t you forget it.” When her eyes met mine, I caught the first sign of a glint.
We spentthe next few hours looking through the books that Douglas continued delivering until darkness fell and Mrs. Murray delivered dinner to the study—stew, fresh bread, and wine neither of us touched. We ate in silence, the only sounds the crackling fire and rain against windows that reminded me so much of being at Dunravin.
“I should review more files,” Leila said as the clock struck twenty-two hundred.
