Page 41 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Loud and clear.”

He nod­ded and went back to his an­nounce­ment. “The cars will be leav­ing the hangar one at a time and park­ing in var­i­ous lo­ca­tions around the air­port. Once Ko­dra ar­rives and is on the move, we’ll fol­low him. He’s re­served a ho­tel room in down­town Lis­bon, so it’s pos­si­ble that he will go di­rectly there to wait or even to meet his con­tact.” Mikel shifted his gaze to Gabriel. “We’ll do our best to keep a cam­era and mic on Ko­dra at all times. How­ever, if he meets some­one in a place where it’s fea­si­ble, I want to get you near him. Only if it’s fea­si­ble, though.”

Gabriel nod­ded with­out hes­i­ta­tion. “Of course.”

“Make sure you have the hooded sweat­shirt on,” Mikel said.

Gabriel held up the navy gar­ment.

Quinn glanced at Raul to see his mouth tighten with frus­tra­tion. Mikel was go­ing to have his hands full keep­ing the prince out of the ac­tion.

“Let’s go,” Mikel said, send­ing them all to their beige, brown, and blue sedans.

“How do you sup­pose he found the most bor­ing cars in Por­tu­gal?” Quinn asked as she slid into the back seat with Gabriel.

“I found them. They have bet­ter en­gines than their ap­pear­ances would in­di­cate.” The blond woman in the driver’s seat turned to smile over her shoul­der. “I’m An­neliese. This is Ivan. We’ll be your tour guides to­day.”

Ivan piv­oted so she could see that he had dark eyes and no smile at all. He nod­ded and swiveled his gaze for­ward again. Part of a tat­too was ex­posed be­tween his short brown hair and the low col­lar of his gray T-shirt. It looked like the three prongs of a tri­dent.

“Great job on the cars,” Quinn said, po­litely adding what she knew were un­nec­es­sary in­tro­duc­tions. “I’m Quinn. This is Gabriel.”

“Bom dia,” An­neliese said as she started the car. “We’re the van­guard.”

“Do you speak flu­ent Por­tuguese?” Gabriel asked.

“And a few other lan­guages,” An­neliese said, guid­ing the car through a garage-sized door at the back of the hangar. “Comes in handy when you work with Mikel. You never know where you’ll end up.”

Chap­ter 12

The car fell silent as An­neliese cruised around the air­port. Gabriel stared out the win­dow. He didn’t feel vul­ner­a­ble since he had three peo­ple ded­i­cated to his pro­tec­tion crammed into a car with him.

It was the next step in this ex­pe­di­tion that made his heart­beat speed up and his breath go shal­low. He knew what he had to do, but he hated the thought of plung­ing back into the mem­o­ries he’d tried so hard to box up and stash away in a dark cor­ner of his mind.

Af­ter his re­lease from the kid­nap­pers, Mikel had guided him through the de­brief­ing, say­ing, “Imag­ine you are watch­ing a movie. Tell the story to me as though it’s hap­pen­ing to some­one else.”

Now Gabriel forced him­self to re­mem­ber when he and Raul had walked down the street, try­ing to con­jure up new de­tails that might help iden­tify the man Ko­dra was meet­ing to­day. But he and his cousin had been so drunk that it was a blur. The al­co­holic haze hadn’t be­gun to clear un­til the ab­duc­tors had forced them into the al­ley.

Since Gabriel had no faces to work with, he fo­cused on voices. He was—once—a mu­si­cian. Sound and rhythm should be eas­ier for him to de­ci­pher than for most peo­ple. Ex­cept that the only voice he’d heard af­ter that ini­tial en­counter had been the dis­em­bod­ied voice that had come over the loud­speaker in his tent, warped by the elec­tronic au­dio pro­cess­ing. There had been no ac­cent, no rise and fall, no rhythm, not even a gen­der. The per­son had spo­ken Span­ish, but he had al­ways felt that it was not the speaker’s na­tive lan­guage. Why?

He pulled the mem­o­ries out of the box. At the be­gin­ning, the voice had ter­ri­fied him. It had told him that no one could find him, that he couldn’t es­cape, and that if he be­haved, noth­ing bad would hap­pen to him. That last had been a lie, of course.

Af­ter the…surgery, the voice had as­sured him that the doc­tor was mon­i­tor­ing the progress of his heal­ing, so he shouldn’t worry. One of the masked fig­ures had in­deed changed his ban­dage morn­ing and night, us­ing a cell phone to snap a photo of his wound each time. When he had com­plained about the pain, the voice had told him to eat the ap­ple­sauce they’d brought be­cause there were painkillers mixed into it. He’d fi­nally given in af­ter twelve hours and eaten the drugged food, which had sent him into a night­mare-filled sleep.

How­ever, the worst con­ver­sa­tion had come twelve hours later, when the kid­nap­pers had dis­cov­ered that he wasn’t Raul. He’d been asleep, par­tially due to the drugs, when the voice had yanked him out of his slum­ber. “You lied to us, Gabriel.”

The use of his real name hadn’t reg­is­tered at first, es­pe­cially since the au­dio pro­ces­sor had fil­tered any anger out of the voice.

“Why did you lie to us?”

“About what?”

“What do you think?” There was a pause. “Gabriel?”

Then it hit him that they knew they had the wrong per­son.

Giv­ing them the truth wasn’t a good idea. “I was drunk. I’d been telling girls that I was the prince all night, so it just came out again.”

“I think you’re still ly­ing, Gabriel. You’re the use­less mu­si­cian. I should cut off all your fin­gers so you can never play the gui­tar again.”

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