Page 65 of Bishop's Flight
“We wait and see. If Miguel lives, we turn him over to the police. If he doesn’t…”
The two guards waited.
Carwyn stepped away, leaving Miguel’s shooter encased in the earth. “Let Rose deal with him.”
Twenty-One
This is my fault.
It echoed through her mind over and over again as she sat in a corner of the waiting room at the human hospital, counting the hours until Lucas’s time was up. Dawn was a little over two hours away, and she was pushing her luck. She would have to leave soon if she wanted to make sure she was safe in her day chamber.
This is my fault.
The repeating chorus in her mind wouldn’t stop.
Lucas wouldn’t have been taken if Zasha Sokholov hadn’t become interested in her.
Miguel wouldn’t be fighting for his life.
Alina Oorzhak might still be alive.
Oleg wouldn’t be missing two soldiers.
Gary Preston and two domestic workers wouldn’t be dead. She didn’t even know the two women’s names. They were two more helpless souls taken because an obsessive had fixated on Brigid.
Why?
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the only way to stop this was to…
She didn’t know.
“How do I stop it?”
“Brigid?”
She looked up and Bernard was staring at her. “What?”
“You’re muttering.”
“I do that.” She rose and started to pace. “What’s taking them so long?”
“It’s been less than an hour, Brigid.”
She knew that. Logically, she knew that. “There’s something… It’s right there, and I’m not seeing it. There’s a connection that—”
“Carwyn is on his way here. He questioned Clarence Johnson and discovered that he’d been blackmailed by someone he called the Dutchman—”
“One of the Ankers.”
“Presumably yes. He’d been coerced to become friends with Lucas. That’s how they started tracking his movements. I happened over months. Alina was simply the final draw to lure him away from his guards.”
“That tells us nothin’ about where he is now.” She stared at the glass doors and saw a black shadow approaching. Tall and broad, the shadow moved with an efficient stride that had always been one of the most attractive things about him. He knew the ground he trod upon because it had been his source of power for over a millennium.
Carwyn pushed through the glass doors, and his eyes immediately found hers. He held out his arms, and she walked to them.
“I’m sorry.” She laid her head on his chest. “This is my fault.”
He enfolded her in an embrace. “It’s not your fault.”
