The Female Charm by Amelia Price

with him and think you
know more than you do, or find out you do know something they want
to discover for themselves. And Myron has to tread carefully with
other countries. He won't start a war to protect just one
life.”
    A shiver ran down
Amelia's spine. Although she'd considered that being around Myron
was dangerous – it was even a little dangerous being near Sebastian
– she'd never thought that she'd be in danger just because she
might be seen with him. It put her trip to Scotland with him in a
whole new light.
    “What do you
advise?” she asked a moment later.
    “Whatever you do,
don't betray Myron's trust... Now come on, time to spar. You'll
come to no harm on my watch.”
    She nodded and
tried to push the thought from her mind. If trouble was in her
future somewhere, the best thing she could do now was train, and
hope she'd learnt enough by the time it did come. In short, she had
to trust Myron.
    After twenty
minutes of sparring with Tom, Amelia felt her concentration slide.
Seconds later, his fist smacked into her torso, getting through her
defences much more easily than it usually did.
    “Ouch,” she said
as he backed off. A wince crossed her face as she felt the damaged
ribs. It was going to give her a very nasty bruise.
    “You lost focus.”
Tom didn't look pleased.
    “I'm shattered. I
didn't get much sleep last night and I was... busy for a very long
time yesterday.” Amelia stumbled over her words, remembering what
Tom had said about not telling him anything only half way through
the sentence. No one else should find out from her that she was in
Scotland with Myron the previous day.
    “We'll stop now,
then, but you'd have lost a real fight if you'd let your
concentration drop like that.”
    “In a real fight
I'd have had adrenaline to help.” She grinned her reply but Tom's
disappointed shake of his head wiped it off in less than a
second.
    “To begin with,
the adrenaline might help you, but whoever you're fighting would be
pumped with it too. Mostly, all adrenaline does is tire you out
even quicker. You shouldn't ever need it to win anything,
Amelia.”
    “Noted.” She
sighed and straightened her body. There was always something new to
learn.
    “Here.” Tom
reached out to her, a small envelope in his hands. “I was told to
give you this today.”
    “From him?” she
asked. He nodded as she took it. She turned it over to open it.
    “Not here. I don't
want the chance to accidentally see what it says.”
    “Until next week,
then.”
    He nodded his
goodbye and gave her a small bow which she copied. As soon as he
was gone, she sat on one of the wooden benches and tore open the
envelope.
     
    E:
48/2(9+3)=
     
    “Well that's not
very difficult,” Amelia said out loud to the empty room. Shrugging
in disbelief at the ease of the sum, she grabbed her water bottle
and headed back to the women's changing rooms.
    It was only once
she was part-way dressed that she realised this was clue E. She had
no idea what D had been.
    With all the
current clues in hand and an empty changing room to hide in, Amelia
decided to try and solve her puzzle now. She pulled the wooden box
out of her handbag and right away she noticed the arrow on it had
moved to the other side.
    As she looked over
the letter that had come with it again, she realised she was
holding a reverse geocache. The clues so far were the coordinates
she needed to take the box to so it would unlock and let her
inside. She chucked everything back into her handbag and finished
getting dressed. She knew just the café to have a cup of tea in, so
she could finish figuring out where to go to get her box to
unlock.
     
     

Chapter 9
    A fire burned
merrily in the grate in Mycroft's study while he sat as his desk
with his laptop open in front of him. He wasn't really working yet.
He'd only got back that morning from Scotland, and after destroying
the physical copies of the leaked financials, he'd spent another
hour probing through all the phones and