“Bah.” Hall took a step past him, his brows drawn. “I’ll offer a reward for anything useful brought back. That’ll inspire some of our chaps to scour the area, widen the search. I only pray we’ve time enough. It will take at least a week for our lads on the ground to be given leave to hunt through the wreckage and then get anything they find back to us by ship. I do worry that—”

“I’ll go.”

They went still, both of them. Hall, in front of him. Margot, behind him. Both of their eyes drilling into him. Drake straightened his shoulders. “We need answers now, or this bloke’s going to vanish on us.”

Hall shook his head. “By the time you could get there, the others might as well—”

“Camden can fly me in.” He summoned a smile. “Assuming you can help him get his hands on a plane again, sir.”

Hall lifted his brows. “You’re going to ask him for a favor? I know he is your friend, Elton, but he hasn’t been in the best frame of mind recently. I wouldn’t count on his good graces.”

“He owes me one.” He turned to Margot. “I’ll get you the codebook.”

She gripped the logbook until her knuckles went white. “No. Let the others do it. We can wait.”

But they couldn’t. “You know well we can’t. He attacked you and Dot tonight. He lost his flat to the authorities. He’ll be on the move, and if we don’t act now . . . I have to.”

She must be clenching her teeth, given the tic in her jaw. “I’m sure there’s someone else who can do it.”

Drake lifted his brows. “Perhaps. But this is at least in part because of me, linked to Jaeger. I need to see it through. And Camden will know what we’re looking for. It’s the perfect, quickest solution, Margot.”

Hall’s footsteps sounded, padding away. “I’ll see to that plane.”

Drake turned to face her. He pried the logbook from her hands and set it aside so he could take those hands in one of his. “I’ll be all right.”

“You don’t know that. The number of planes shot down—”

“Is irrelevant.” He used his free hand to brush her hair from her cheek. “Camden is the best pilot we have. He can get me there and back safely.”

“You can’t even be sure there’s a codebook to be found. It could have burned up in the wreckage.”

“Maybe. But I have to try. You know how you hear numbers? I get urges. Impressions. Feelings, maybe, though I know you consider that a curse word.” He grinned, but it only earned him a shake of her head. “This is right.”

A bigger shake of her head. “It doesn’t feel right to me. It feels wrong. Really wrong.”