Page 37 of The Gentleman (Guardsmen Security #6)

Kat stared out the window as they headed away from Jane’s apartment. Leo’s hand found hers across the console. Her chilled skin drank in his heat. Gage said nothing in the back seat.

The lights still on. The unlocked door.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the images clawed back anyway.

Jane’s open eyes. The silence. The coppery smell.

Gravel crunched under the tires, and Leo’s fingers tightened around hers. “We’re here.”

She nodded. If she spoke, she might unravel.

Cold air hit her face as she stepped out, but her legs held. She breathed in damp tarmac and distant chimney smoke.

Brock opened his front door before they reached it. He greeted them with a curt jerk of his head. “Come in, quick,” he said, ushering them through. “Got the kettle on.”

The house’s warmth hit her. Above her head, the porcelain figurines still lined every shelf. Before they had struck her as creepy. Now they were strangely comforting.

Leo’s hand pressed on her back. “You need to sit.”

“I need to think.”

Leo didn’t argue. Instead, he steered her through Brock’s cluttered ops center to the kitchen, to cozy yellow light and the smell of instant coffee and toast.

Gage hovered in the doorway, hands in his pockets, as Brock fussed with mugs and tea bags.

A television burbled from the corner of the room as she took a seat. Images flickered. Yellow police tape. Uniformed officers. A familiar red brick building.

The Royal London.

Kat leaned forward. “Gage. Turn that up.”

Gage grabbed the remote.

“…authorities have concluded their search of the Royal London Hospital following reports of potential illegal activity. No evidence was recovered, and hospital officials have condemned the disruption to patient care, calling it an unnecessary intrusion.”

Her fingers twitched and she imagined punching the screen.

The announcer continued. “A statement from MI6’s Agent Charles Crow confirmed?—”

The image changed. A man in a sharp suit filled the screen. Clean-cut. Pleased with himself. Eldridge’s deputy.

She’s not been well recently. I have no idea how she has the energy for any of it.

“They cleared it out.” Her voice was toneless. “As soon as we were discovered, they moved everything.”

“We’ve slowed them down,” Leo said. “Got them scrambling.”

“And that scramble buys us what—six hours? Maybe a day? Then we’re right back where we started. There’s a second test site and we don’t know where it is.” She dug her nails into her palms until it hurt. “We shut down one node. The rest of the network is untouched. We have nothing.”

Leo’s mouth grew tight. “So we keep going.”

Brock set down a mug. “Drink. It’s mostly sugar. Helps with the crash.”

She took a sip. It was hot sugar, nothing else.

Eldridge had missed the Zurich conference last year. Kat had assumed politics. But now? Thoughts snapped and scattered, chasing threads she couldn’t hold on to.

“I need to lie down. Just for a bit.” She stood too fast, and the room tilted sideways.

Leo caught her arm. “Hey—slow down.”

She smiled, her cheeks tight. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

“No one’s fine right now.” His voice was gentle. “You’re allowed to crash.”

“Spare room’s down the hall.” Brock motioned her forward. “Not fancy, but it’s quiet. Might help.”

“Thanks, Brock.”

Brock led her down the narrow hallway to a spartan bedroom. No figurines here. Just a neatly made double bed, a dresser with stacked books, and heavy drapes drawn against the night.

Jeff lay curled in a ball on the bed.

“I can move him?—”

She touched Brock’s arm. “He’s fine. Don’t worry.”

Brock nodded. “Not the Ritz, but it’s clean. Safe. You can sleep, if you’ll let yourself.” He gestured to the laptop on the dresser beside a notepad and pencil. “In case you can’t. I find research oddly relaxing.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

When the door closed behind him, she sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress didn’t give much. Solid. Reliable.

Jeff stirred, opened one eye, and then closed it again.

Voices drifted through the thin walls. Gage’s voice rising, followed by Leo’s lower reply. She almost smiled. Both stubborn. Both protective. Both impossible.

She lay back beside Jeff, shoes still on, staring up at the ceiling.

Wood beams crossed in narrow lines. Four cracks running north to south. A cobweb in the far corner. Her hand found soft fur as the cat stretched beside her and purred, his motor running hard.

The Royal London. NX-7782. Korolov. The Arken Institute. Eldridge.

Eldridge is sick.

She’d written it off as office gossip. But now gossip was the only breadcrumb she had left.

She sat up, grabbed the laptop, typed Arken Institute.

She tapped the pencil against her chin as she read.

Research focused on experimental neural therapies—advanced treatments for degenerative brain diseases, neural regeneration, deep-brain interface studies. Peer-reviewed journals, global conferences, and philanthropic partnerships. Clean and respectable.

Not weapons development. Not military funding.

She blinked hard against the screen glare.

Arken’s focus on neural therapies. Was Eldridge a patient?

She accessed her email and opened the financial records Gage had dug up for her.

On paper, the Arken Institute in Geneva looked legitimate. But the money said otherwise.

Quarterly fund transfers, all routed through a web of shell corporations. One in the Caymans. A second in Singapore.

Standard practice for someone hiding something. But not for medical science.

She pulled her phone from her pocket. Scrolled.

The images she’d grabbed at the Royal London weren’t spectacular—shaky, low light, partially blurred.

But she stopped on one, zoomed in. It was the image listing Phase Two Implementation Sites—half-obscured by motion, but still legible enough to make out two locations: London, and the second site labeled Primary Development Facility, E.N.P.

She stared at the notation. An acronym? A code name? It could be anything. Or nothing.

She opened to a fresh page on her notepad, cracked her neck and blew out a breath. Jane’s blank eyes flickered at the edge of memory.

The Royal London facility had been evacuated. No equipment, no files. Nothing they couldn’t afford to lose.

Because the real work wasn’t there.

It was somewhere else. Somewhere protected.

She traced the Cayman records again, double-checking every line, every link. Nothing new. She flipped to a clean page. Singapore next. More shell companies. More enmeshed offshore holdings. Her eyes scanned line after line until the pattern broke—something new.

Funds flowed through three intermediaries before landing at a specialized research facility in El Nido, Palawan.

Her fingers stilled on the keyboard.

E. N. P.

Not a code or a dead end.

A place.

El Nido.

The Philippines.

On the other side of the world.