After making a few more calls and sending a small team to tail the car they’d spotted, Jacob dialed up Atlas to inform him that they were on track to getting the prince back. Of course, the king made a point to tell him that the use of force was essential, and that they were to execute all rebels on site without exception if any were there when the rescue team arrived. Jacob had already expected that they were to use extreme measures, so he agreed to the orders without complaint. Any rebels who were in the area were almost certainly complicit in the kidnapping of Aspiria’s next monarch, so they deserved to be punished for their treason. He intended to make sure his men knew not to show them any mercy. No one who had joined the Scourge deserved it.

After hanging up the phone when his conversation with Atlas was over, he spent the afternoon waiting with the surveillance team for updates on Prince Caspian’s whereabouts. They hoped that when the vehicle moved, it would lead them straight to the building where he was being held. Instead, they came upon a surprise.

“What the hell?” one of the men who’d been watching the screen exclaimed, leaning toward his monitor with squinted eyes.

“What is it?” Jacob prompted. He tightened his jaw slightly, concerned that the soldier had seen something that would throw off their search.

“I think it’s…” the other man started and then trailed off, turning to a different computer screen in front of him to dig through the database for something. After a pause, his eyes widened, and he looked back up at the live feed. “It’s that bastard, Nox-Fleuret!”

“Are you fucking serious?” Jacob jumped to his feet and hurried to the man’s side to see for himself. To his shock, the leader of the rebellion was one of the people getting into the car. Their missing prince had unintentionally led them right to him. “I’ll be damned,” he shook his head, then suddenly remembered the scouts he had sent after the vehicle and quickly accessed his com device. “Keep your distance,” he ordered his team sharply. “I’ve got eyes on Regis Nox-Fleuret. If we play our cards right, we can bring this whole god damn rebellion to the ground in a matter of hours.”

[i]Do you still want us to follow the vehicle, sir?[/i] One of the scouts asked.

“Affirmative,” Jacob replied. “Tail them, but don’t engage. When the car stops, tell me the coordinates. It may be the place where they’re keeping our prince.”

The soldier agreed to the commands, and Jacob ended the conversation. “I’ll be right back,” he said to the other men in the room. “I need to tell His Majesty that Prince Caspian may have just led us to the son of a bitch who’s been causing all of us so much trouble.”

--

After a few tedious hours of cutting in between more naps, Cas finally managed to break free from the rope that had bound his hands. As soon as it fell off, he sighed in relief and rubbed his sore wrists. All that was left was to figure out a way to escape from his cell. Now that he knew he was in a makeshift prison in the basement of a house, he felt more confident about his odds of getting out on his own. There had to be a weak spot somewhere that he could use. Determined to find it, he climbed to his feet and began examining the bars that kept him stuck inside.

This process also took hours. At a glance, the metal poles seemed secure, so he had to study each one individually, pushing and pulling on the bar in different spots and checking the bolts that held it in place on the floor and ceiling. By the end of it, he determined that he wasn’t going to be able to remove one with his bare hands, but he did have a few pieces of scrap that he’d found on the floor. One of which was the screw he’d used to get out of his ties.

On a whim, he toyed with the bolts on the floor of one bar, trying to fit the screw into the groove of each fastening. The pointed end was too thin, and the screw itself was too wide to fit lengthwise. However, when he tried slipping part of the flat end of the screw into the bolt, it worked. With a twist of his wrist, he could loosen the bar from the ground. The revelation sent his heart racing with excitement, and he set to work pulling up each bolt one by one, getting closer to escaping from the rebels with each passing minute.