by Luis, Maria
People get hurt. People die.
I cannot lose him, too.
Bracketing my mouth with my palms, I bellow, “Peter!”
His name is swallowed by a horn honking loudly, off to my left, followed swiftly by the sound of gushing water and startled yelps.
The City Police. The water cannons.
“Bloody hell.”
The words have barely escaped before the crowd swoops in more tightly, dragging me deeper into the fold. Elbows knock against mine, unfamiliar hands landing on my spine to roughly usher me forward, toward St. James’s Park. Fighting against the push would be akin to fighting a current, and I accept the trajectory with a shaky breath that rattles in my lungs.
“Go!” someone shouts. “Move faster!”
“Bugger,” another voice cries out, each syllable merging with the sound of water hitting pavement. It might not be tear gas—water cannons are more humane, some say—but it still hurts like the devil and has the power to lift you clear off your feet if you’re caught in the crosshairs.
My own feet stumble forward out of gathered momentum, but I manage a desperate glance over my shoulder to search the crowd. The cone of light from the helicopter continues to dance over faces, but none are recognizable. No blue eyes or short, jaggedly cut hair in desperate need of a trim. No Queen Mary pullover in dire need of a wash. No Peter.
Don’t think the worst. Don’t you dare think the worst.
Easier said than done, especially when screams erupt around me and my back dampens with water. The ground turns slick beneath my shoes, and I know my fate seconds before I hear the horn.
I go down in a sea of scrabbling hands and slipping feet, sucked under thrashing bodies all fighting for survival.
Terror clamps around my heart like a restricting vice, and then I hear nothing.
Not the yelling.
Not the whirring helicopter up above.
Just . . .
Nothing.
6
Saxon
I reach down, grabbing the man by the threads of his shirt, and turn him over onto his back.
Under the moonlit sky, his face appears ashen. Blood pools beneath his right nostril. His upper lip is busted, his left cheek sliced open—a gift from another bloke’s fist, I imagine—and it takes me less than three seconds to catalog the rest of him.
Blue tracksuit. Black trainers with untied shoelaces and blood spattered across the toes.
Seems I’m not the only one with my sights set on Alfie Barker tonight.
All around me, the protest at Buckingham Palace is a cacophony of chaos. The air crackles with tension—fear at its most formidable. And as I slip my thumb over my target’s throat, I can’t help but wonder if Queen Margaret is watching tonight’s festivities.
We told her to stay away, to remain hidden.
If I were a betting man, though, I’d place every last quid I have that she’s perched in one of the palace’s windows, unable to tear her gaze away from the frenzy.
Because that’s what this is. A frenzy. A mob.
And there’s no stopping it.
With one palm hovering over Barker’s throat, I use my free hand to search his pockets. A stick of chewing gum. A fiver. A purse stuffed full of identification cards. Multiple. All with different home addresses and different surnames though the picture remains the same and the first name never changes. Burner IDs. Shoving the wallet into my trousers, I make quick work of moving to his next pocket.
The throat beneath my palm gasps for air. I feel the withdrawal, the innate desperation, in the split second that it takes for him to exclaim, “Get away from me! Who the fuck do you think you—”
The rest of his sentence ends with the heel of my hand pressing into his larynx. He gurgles immediately, his fingers grasping my wrist to tug fruitlessly for release. When I don’t ease up on the pressure, and instead continue searching for the mobile he’s carrying, his knees hike up in a futile attempt to kick me away.
In the light of day, someone might care about this man dying. In the dark of night, though, secrets are kept with infinite care. No one steps in to help. No one shoves at my frame to push me off. No one gives a damn. Everyone is too busy saving themselves.
“Please,” he grunts, squirming from the chest down, “please don’t kill me.”
I lean over him, digging my knee into his abdomen until he folds like an accordion. “Where is it?”
He swallows under my grip. Claws his nails over my wrist, my forearm. Yanks so hard on my sleeve that my hood falls from my head. “What? Where is what?”
“Come now, Alfie,” I say, my tone eerily pleasant, “a man like you visiting the palace so late after hours? The Guard won’t let you through those front gates, which means we both know what you planned to do.” I drop another centimeter, until my mouth hovers by his ear and I can hear his every unsteady intake of breath. “Killing a queen in real life doesn’t work the way it does in film. In this life,” I murmur, applying enough pressure on his throat that his lungs inflate with need, “traitors are caught.”
Then dealt with.
But I need that goddamn phone first.
It took Damien only minutes to crack the mobile that Queen Margaret brought by Guy’s flat, before remotely putting a tracker on Barker’s phone. My younger brother is a genius. Had he been born in any other life but this one, I have no doubt that he would have wound up creating new technologies that people around the world could enjoy. New computer software, maybe. Something with artificial intelligence. Only, he’s not in that world—he’s stuck in this one, just like the rest of us—and so Holyrood is the only entity that reaps the benefits of Damien being the most brilliant person in any given room.
Hacking phones is child’s play for him.
Just as intimidation is for me.
Alfie Barker, older brother to the stable hand who tried to kill the queen last week, thrashes around beneath my weight. The queen was right about one thing: it hadn’t been the stable hand’s idea to orchestrate an assassination in the middle of her garden, in broad daylight. No, it was Barker’s.
Beneath my palm, I feel his Adam’s apple bob. Fear widens his gaze and his struggle gains renewed strength. “Please, please—”
Abruptly, his body goes slack.
His eyes roll into the back of his head.
Fingers fall limply from my wrist to the pavement.
I check the man’s pulse. Feel it flutter beneath my fingers. Not dead—not that I expected he would be. It takes more than ten seconds to strangle a person, and I’ve no interest in squeezing the life out of anyone who’ll prove more useful alive than dead.
“Priest!”
At the Scottish-accented voice rising above the cries of the protesters, I glance over my shoulder to see Hamish angling his way toward me. He palms an innocent bystander, pushing them out of his trajectory, until he’s standing an arm’s length away.
Close enough to speak but not close enough to imply that we know each other.
I cut the Holyrood agent another swift glance. Emblazoned across his chest are the words, I Stand With The People.
“It’s my protest shirt. Works like a bloody charm,” he says, plucking at the fabric when he notices the direction of my gaze. “Figured it’s best that I blend in with the crowd.”
One of us has to, and with my face, I’m more likely to take a turn in these people’s nightmares than look like a knight in shining armor. Drawing my hood up over my head, I take advantage of Barker being temporarily dead to the world and finish my pat down.
“Ye find it?” Hamish asks out of the corner of his mouth. “Because I’m still having flashbacks to that cavity search we did. Ye think you’ve done it all until ye’re bare-fisting a man the size of a mountain. Who the feck shoves a—”
“Enough.”
My brother-in-arms promptly shuts up.
A second later, I’m yanking up Barker’s joggers at the ankle and thanking a God I don’t believe in when I spot his
phone tucked into his right tube sock. Not as stealthy as he probably imagined the hiding place would be.
I toss the mobile to Hamish. “Take this to Damien.”
Hamish’s stare drops to the man still comatose on the pavement. “Any preference on where I dump him?”
“Not dumping him,” I mutter, sliding an arm beneath Barker so I can haul him upright—bloody heavy bastard. “Not yet. Bring him to the Palace.”
We both know I’m not referring to Buckingham Palace.
Hamish looks from me to Barker then back again. “Ye sure that’s a good idea?”
Whether it’s a good idea or not doesn’t matter. The man won’t be leaving Holyrood’s compound in anything but a body bag, if that, and not until we’ve wrung him dry for information.
Instead of answering the question, I shuffle Barker’s weight in my arms. “Take him before we start attracting notice. I’ll meet you there when I can.”
“Always leaving me to do the hard work,” Hamish grumbles good-naturedly while he throws an arm around Barker’s waist. “See ye, brother.”
Hard work is stripping someone of their life when they don’t suit the cause. Hard work is taking the emotionally strenuous assignments so that your brothers, both those linked by blood and those by choice, won’t have that stain forever imprinted on their memories.
My jaw tightens as I watch Hamish and Barker disappear into the crowd, Barker’s body limp against the agent’s side. Only when they’re out of sight do I twist away and allow myself to get lost in the fray.
Before Princess Evangeline’s death, Pa always said that being a Godwin was a lucky hand of fate. Times were good. Brilliant, was his particular word choice. Sure, we lived in a tiny flat that smelled of mold and, yes, things could change at any time. But danger rarely lurked around the corner. For the first time in nearly a century, since the first Godwin found his life entangled with the royal family, there was no impending threat.
I wonder what Pa would think of today’s turmoil. A nagging, vile part of me doubts he could hack it. Pa was good at heart. And it was that bleeding heart of his that got him killed in the end. Henry Godwin wasn’t meant for this life, no matter that he inherited Holyrood’s legacy the second he was born.
With my hands stuffed in the pockets of my jumper, I follow the crush of the crowd toward St. James’s Park.
And then I hear it—the horn.
Fuck.
Picking up the pace, I dart around a group of uni kids all carrying their posters, just as the first note of gushing water breaks through the din. It’s followed by surprised cries, and then mayhem erupts.
People push, shove, run.
I drift to the right, spotting a break in the crowd some twenty paces away. Angling my body around a weeping woman, I head for that gap, my hand on my waistband. The last thing I need is for someone to realize that I’m carrying—or, worse, to accidentally ram into me and grab the pistol itself.
Water spritzes my back, dampening my nape, my jumper.
It seeps like a slow-gathering stream beneath my feet.
The gap widens then narrows off to a point as people turn frantic.
We Godwins always find trouble.
It never fails.
I throw myself toward that break, just as a torrent of water rumbles to my left, sweeping multiple people off their feet.
“Go! Please, go!”
The cry is followed by more, each one more viscerally haunting as bodies slip and slide, tumbling forward onto the rough pavement. My knees lock still. There’s nothing you can do for them. Move!
The horn blows again, and this time, light from the circling helicopter descends on The Mall, as though the heavens have cracked open to shine down upon all us sinners.
I shift left, cursing myself as I pick through the soaked figures littering the ground. Damien would tell me to save myself. Guy would never find himself in a situation like this. And Pa . . .
Trouble.
Always bloody trouble.
The horn blows again, closer now, and I mentally prepare myself for what’s to come.
And it does.
Water blasts me from the left side. People scream.
I don’t.
My body crashes against the pavement with the brute force of being mowed down by a train. The taste of metal erupts in my mouth. Someone trips over my outstretched legs, but they never stop or look back.
They run. They all run.
I wish I felt that same pressing fear. Wish that it might pick me up and propel me forward, like the dogs of hell were nipping at my heels. Instead I twist my head, grit my teeth, and spit out a wad of blood.
My shoulder, the one that caught the brunt of my fall, spasms as I drag myself up onto all fours. Movement rushes past me on either side. A flash of trousers. A glimpse of bare calves and high heels.
Whoever thought wearing pumps to a protest was a good idea is a goddamn fool.
I lift my head, prepared to haul my ass off the ground, only to finally get a look at what’s stopping the break in the crowd from nipping closed.
Trouble.
She’s curled on her side, knees drawn up to her chest.
Trouble.
Arms wrapped around her strawberry-blond head, that pencil skirt she wore to The Bell & Hand ridden up to mid-thigh.
My gut lurches at the sight of her—
Isla Quinn.
7
Isla
I’m weightless.
Pressure digs into my abdomen and blood rushes to my temple, and my fingers—bruised though they are—search for purchase.
I touch nothing but air.
Open your eyes!
Except that I cannot. Nausea swirls in my belly and my head feels as though it’s been stuffed with cotton and, God, but this might be the worst of it all: my body aches as though I’ve been pummeled.
Repeatedly.
Through sheer force of will, I peel my eyes open and promptly wish I hadn’t.
A man’s shoes enter my periphery. Black combat boots. The sort soldiers wear. The kind that I imagine hurt like the very devil when they connect with human flesh. And those boots, they’re moving.
I’m moving.
Alarm slithers into my veins as my gaze involuntarily tracks north: black trousers, a gray pullover that looks like it’s seen better days. It’s drenched, same as my own clothes, and clings to a set of impossibly broad shoulders that . . . that . . .
The pressure to my stomach.
The weightless sensation.
I’ve been hauled over some man’s shoulders like a sack of potatoes. A stranger’s shoulders, my brain supplies, not just any man’s.
I’m going to die.
There’s no other explanation, save for the obvious: someone discovered that I murdered the king, and now I’ll pay the consequences.
No!
The word rips through my entire being like fire incinerating my skin. I grab the fabric of the man’s jumper, fisting the material tightly between his shoulder blades, and use my grip as leverage. Taking advantage of the man’s loose hold on the back of my thighs—completely unsuspecting—I drop my weight toward the ground in the same moment that I swing my right leg over his head.
My abdominal muscles protest.
My arms, holding the majority of my weight, cramp under the pressure of keeping myself aloft.
And still I squeeze the man’s neck between my thighs, praying with every bit of my soul that he’ll be startled enough to let me go, to let me fall, to let me escape.
He doesn’t.
There’s nothing but the sound of an involuntarily masculine grunt. Deep, guttural. A shiver screams down my spine, chasing away my confidence, and I have no time at all to reorient my pounding head before I’m hoisted up in the air and then coming down just as abruptly.
My cheek meets damp grass a second before the rest of my body follows suit.
I gasp, biting out a curse as pain twinges in my elbows, the base of my spine. Don’t
give up. Don’t. Give. Up. Think of Peter. Think of Josie.
Lightheaded from the fall, I fumble hastily with my coat, angling my fingers for the knife I stowed inside. Grazing the smooth hilt, I tug it free—No!
A big hand grabs my wrist, tearing the knife away, and, as my gaze follows in fear, he stabs the sharp blade into the earth, out of reach. A knee presses heavily into my lower spine, immobilizing me, and then that same hand that stripped me of any chance for self-defense anchors down beside my head.
I feel his bulky weight shifting, feel the heat of his breath on my bare neck, and then there’s nothing but the sound of his raspy voice in my ear.
A voice I well recognize.
A voice that belongs to a man with a scarred face and soulless eyes and a heart which I swear does not beat.
“Going somewhere, Miss Quinn?”
8
Isla
Saxon Priest.
I’m not sure that the reality of him is better—or worse—than being kidnapped by a stranger with a personal vendetta. At least with the latter, I know what I’m up against. With Saxon, all bets are off.
He turned me away today. Hell, he didn’t just turn me away; he practically laughed in the face of my desperation.
Arsehole.
When I lift a sore wrist in a last, feeble attempt to snatch the knife, Saxon’s hand flattens mine to the grass, his hold uncompromising. I swallow, hard, then turn my head just far enough so I can see his profile.
The distorted upper lip. The harsh slant of his dark brows. The crooked nose and sharp, angular jawline.
I’ve been pinned down by the devil himself.
“Try it,” I mutter, my voice still hoarse from shouting Peter’s name. “Whatever it is you plan to do with me, do your worst.” I pause, gathering steel fortitude like a mental blade poised to strike. “I bite.”
“Something tells me that you’d enjoy it.” The weight on my hand doesn’t let up. Not even a little. If anything, Saxon only hovers there, his bulk covering my frame, his face so very close to mine. “I should warn you—I bite back.”