Page 49 of The Circle

“How—” Eliza starts. I keep talking.

“Brasil did not have her.”

“Did not?” Russell queries.

“He’s, uh…” I lower my voice. The laaities, his cousins, they’ll find out soon enough, but there’s no need for them to overhear now and get all lathered up about it. “He’s no longer with us,” I say.

“What. Happened?” Eliza repeats.

Before I have a chance to answer her in detail or, indeed, at all…

The phone rings. The one taken off the oke Christine inexplicably knows was called Cillian.

“What’s that?” Eliza asks, tension rising in her voice once more.

I take a breath and, with a calming hand gesture…

I answer the call.

“Yes?”

“Mr. van den Berg?” the polite Austrian asks.

“Yes, man. It’s me.”

“We have a proposal.”

Eliza starts to say something. It looks like she’s about to ask yet more questions for which I don’t currently have answers, so I put the phone on mute and say, preemptively, “We’re all learning together in real time, luv. Remain.”

She clearly doesn’t like being told to stay calm—or, I imagine, being called ‘luv’ for that matter—but I don’t have the bandwidth for ceremony.

Unmuting the call, I say, “Go on.”

“We wish to arrange an exchange.”

I knew it.

“Of course you do. What would you like to exchange, precisely?”

“You, Mr. Fortnight, and Ms. Keene will deliver yourselves to Vienna at our expense and, in return, we will release to you both Alexandria and Theo Watson.”

The collective snap to attention at hearing that rivals the most rigid military precision anyone has ever seen.

“I see,” I offer, trying not to sound alarmed or curious in the least. “You’ll be handing over Andra and Theo—both of whom are in tip-top shape, I trust? Because if they’ve been handled with anything other than pristine care—”

“They are being cared for as well as you were at the Berkshire estate.”

I press mute on the phone again because the chill that sends down my spine creates an actual, audible reaction from me, Christine, and Eliza at the same time.

“Alec…” Christine starts.

“I know.”

“How does—?”

“I don’t know.” I take a breath and once again unmute the phone. “So, you were the one responsible for retrieving me from the fall I took?”

“Not me, personally, but we were, yes. You and your brother.”