Axel (Royal Protectors Book 3)

by Kat Mizera

  “You had an argument?” Elen asked.

  “I’ll tell you in the car,” Shannon told her.

  “Make sure you don’t go outside at all,” Logan told me. “I’m going to take them back to the palace and then either one of the others or I will come back to stay with you until it’s time to go.”

  “I can just call you when I’m ready to go,” I protested.

  He shook his head. “You know the rules. Technically, I shouldn’t leave you alone at all but I’ll be back in half an hour, tops, and you’ll be locked in with the alarm set for the outside doors and windows.”

  “All right.”

  “You want me to bring you dinner?”

  “If you can grab something from the kitchen, that would be great. Thank you.”

  I went back to work, enjoying the silence and lack of distraction since Shannon and Elen tended to be chatty throughout the day.

  “I don’t know that we’re going to get through this tonight,” Jonas said to me on the phone. I had him on speaker as I worked.

  “I’m getting frustrated,” I told him. “Why are we running into so many issues?”

  “I’m getting a bad feeling,” he admitted. “I think we might actually be getting hacked while we’re testing the system.”

  “You think?” I asked in alarm. “Should we shut it down?”

  “You know what? Yes. Shut everything down completely. Turn off the routers and unplug all the connections. Depending on what happens with this situation in Braksa, I’m coming in tomorrow and we’re going to need to test things from the ground up.”

  “All right. I’ll start shutting everything down.”

  “I think Logan’s on his way back. Get some sleep tonight and we’ll take this apart piece by piece in the morning.”

  “All right. See you then.”

  I disconnected and started shutting down the computer system. The idea that someone was trying to hack our system before it was officially up and running was disconcerting. Opening an international baccalaureate school here in Limaj had been important to Erik as a way of legitimizing our country in the eyes of the rest of Europe, showing that despite being small, we still offered excellent opportunities in education. If our records were hacked before we even opened, we were going to have problems.

  Logan called out to me as I was turning off the last of the routers and I smiled at him over my shoulder.

  “I’ll be done in a few minutes and we can go.”

  “Since we’re going right back to the palace, I didn’t grab dinner,” he said. “I hope that’s okay?”

  “No problem. I’ll eat later.” I closed the door to the server room. We had a room for everything related to the computer system and I’d spent more time than I probably should have labeling everything to make it easy to know what was what. That made my job easier tonight and I locked the door behind me, sliding the wrist coil keychain over my hand so I didn’t misplace it.

  I was gathering up my things when the sound of breaking glass made my head snap up. Logan got to his feet and met my gaze. “Stay here. If I don’t give you the all-clear in two minutes, call or text Jonas.” He pulled a gun from his shoulder holster and quietly moved down the hall.

  My heart was going a million miles an hour and I tried to keep breathing. Memories of the night the Brat had attacked my family, came rushing back and I tried to put it out of my mind. It was probably nothing. Logan would take care of it and—

  He came running back into the room with his finger to his lips. “There’s been a break-in. Text the emergency number—you have it, right?”

  I nodded, immediately grabbing my phone.

  “Lock yourself in the server room and don’t come out until I get you.”

  “No! I can help,” I whispered, even as I pulled up the number and sent a 9-1-1 text. From what I’d been told, this would go to all the Protectors at once and it was only used during an imminent attack.

  There was the sound of more glass breaking and Logan shook his head at me. “Go, Solange! I’m not asking.”

  I took a breath and ran down the hall to the server room, fingers shaking as I unlocked the door. I went inside and closed and locked the door behind me. I looked around wildly, unsure what to do. My phone buzzed in my hand and I saw a text from Jonas.

  JONAS: What’s happening?!

  SOLANGE: I don’t know! Logan told me to lock myself in the server room. He said there’s been a break-in.

  JONAS: We’re on the way—stay where you are!

  I couldn’t move but I jumped when the sound of gunshots reverberated through the room.

  SOLANGE: They’re shooting!

  JONAS: Three minutes—almost there!

  I pressed my forehead against the door, my heart still slamming uncontrollably as I listened. There were more shots and then my phone buzzed again.

  LOGAN: I’m hit. Wait five seconds and then open the door for me.

  My hands shook even harder as I counted to five and then slowly opened the door. I spotted Logan crawling across the floor, a blood trail behind him. There was shouting in the background but he was badly hurt and wasn’t going to make it to me before they got to him. Impulsively, I ran out of the room and grabbed him, pulling him as he half-walked, half-crawled into the server room. Then I slammed and locked the door again. This had been set up as a mini safe room, with state-of-the-art locks and a metal door that wouldn’t easily be breached, but I had no idea who was here, what they were after, or how much firepower they had.

  My bigger concern was Logan. He’d collapsed the moment I shut the door and there was blood pooling around him.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered in Limaji, my English going out the window. “Where are you hit?”

  “Where aren’t I?” he answered in English, giving me a wry smile despite the pain in his eyes.

  I had nothing with me, not even my purse, and I yanked off my blouse, ripping it in half as I pressed one piece against a gaping wound in his chest.

  “Hold that,” I whispered.

  I took the rest of my blouse and tried to tie it around his thigh to create a tourniquet, but my shirt was small and his thighs were fairly muscular.

  “I’ve been hit four or five times,” he rasped in a shaky voice. “I’m bleeding out. Listen to me, if they get in…can you use a gun?”

  “I never have,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes as blood continued to pool on the floor around us.

  There were footsteps and shouts just outside the door and Logan held out the gun.

  “Safety is off. Just point…and shoot. Even if you miss, they won’t know you’ve never shot before.”

  “I can’t!” I cried, tears slipping down my cheeks.

  “You can and you will.” He put the gun in my hand and closed my fingers around it. “Just pull the trigger if they get in.”

  “Help is coming,” I said, swallowing as I watched him slump down.

  “Put me in front of you,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I’m not…going…to…make it,” he rasped, his voice growing shallow. “Put me in front of you as a shield. It will…buy…you time.”

  I was full-blown crying as I moved him between my legs, so my back rested against the wall and his back was against my front. He lifted the hand the gun was in and wrapped his hands around mine, aiming at the door.

  “We got this,” he said. “Just do me a favor… Make sure…Erik takes care of…my sister…” His head lolled to one side and I used my free hand to squeeze one of his biceps.

  “They’ll be here any second. Wake up!” I was being harsh, hoping it would keep him conscious. I didn’t know what else to do.

  There was more shooting, followed by an eerie silence.

  “Logan! Solange!” I recognized Sandor’s voice and then heard the lock being turned.

  “Logan’s hit!” Sandor spoke into his earpiece the minute he saw us. “He needs help now!”

  Jonas and Sandor lifted him, and Sandor threw him
over his shoulder as he hurried toward the exit. I assumed they were heading to the SUV, but I was still too shell-shocked to move, covered in Logan’s blood, gun still in my hand. I hadn’t realized I was still holding it up until Xander squatted beside me and gently took it from me.

  He reached out to touch my cheek. “You okay? Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head, no.

  “Come on, sweetie, can you get up?”

  I nodded, my body moving on autopilot.

  Xander took off his shoulder holster and then pulled off his T-shirt, handing it to me. “Why don’t you cover up?”

  I looked down and the fact that I was in my bra barely registered beneath the coat of blood that was starting to dry on my skin. My chest and bra were both completely covered and I looked up shakily. “Is he going to die?”

  “I don’t know.” He nudged the T-shirt into my hand. “Come on, put this on.”

  I did as I was told, my legs wooden as he led me out to where the others were. Jonas glanced in my direction and gave me a nod.

  “You protected the entire system by shutting it down when I told you to,” he said softly. “They were the ones causing all the bugs. If you’d fucked around and not done it when I told you to, they would have been able to get into our files once they were inside.”

  “Instead they shot Logan,” I whispered harshly.

  “They were going to have to shoot him to get to the computers anyway,” Xander said. “This isn’t your fault. You did exactly what you were supposed to and protected the identities and information of all the students. If that had been taken, we wouldn’t be able to open the school.”

  I nodded but my heart was heavy. Once again, I’d hidden in another room while someone else had gotten hurt. Why did this always happen to me and why was I never prepared to help?

  “Sandor’s on the way to the hospital and a palace guard is coming to pick you up,” Xander said. “We’ll clean up the mess here.”

  I hadn’t even noticed the dead bodies littering the floor and I closed my eyes, unwilling to look at the people who’d hurt Logan. He’d become my friend the last two weeks and because of them, now he might die.

  “Why did they want the information?” I asked after a moment.

  “Kidnapping opportunities. Some of the most important kids in Europe will be attending, children of the rich and powerful, and by knowing who’s here and all the details about them, it’s that much easier for them to attempt something like that. Or worse.”

  “Sonofa-motherfucking-bitch!” Jonas looked at something on his phone and then threw it across the room.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked in alarm.

  He met my gaze sadly. “Logan’s gone.”

  34

  Axel

  The death toll in Braksa was heartbreaking. The entire town had been burned to the ground. Every shop, apartment building and factory within the city limits had been trashed. Though most people had gotten out, quite a few hadn’t, so there were body bags on the streets as firemen from Ferdinbrag came to help with the chaos.

  This had been a cold, calculated hit on the town. The Brat were sending a message to all the other towns in the northern part of the country, letting them know what would happen if they didn’t comply with their demands. And it just wasn’t fucking acceptable. People were now homeless, unemployed and in mourning, and there wasn’t much we could do about it. Erik was scrambling to find accommodations for them in neighboring towns, but that was only a short-term solution. All their businesses had been burned and most only had the clothes on their backs.

  I’d spent the whole day helping people, delivering truckloads of them to neighboring towns. I’d just dropped off a group in Vinake when the 9-1-1 text went out, and my whole body froze when I saw it had come from Solange. I’d been about to call her when Mrs. Freela chose that moment to have a heart attack. Between performing CPR and then racing her across town to the hospital, it was nearly an hour before I had a chance to find out what was going on. I’d tried to call Solange but her phone had gone to voicemail and I called Jonas in a panic.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “She’s fine,” he said quietly. “A little shaken up, but okay. Unfortunately, Logan wasn’t so lucky.”

  “Fuck,” I growled. “How bad?”

  “He’s dead, man.”

  “What?!”

  “The Brat attacked the school. It was just Solange and Logan. He locked her in the server room but there were too many of them. By the time we got there with reinforcements, he’d been hit multiple times. He bled out on the way to the hospital.”

  I cussed in a dozen different languages, letting anger cover my grief, because Logan was one of us, one of the good guys. A great kid who’d overcome a lot in his life and had proudly served his country before coming here to serve the royal family. He was smart and funny, the joker of the group, and the first one to offer to help. It was unfathomable that he was dead, and I turned, punching my fist into the wall as I tried to breathe through the inevitable grief. I’d been through this before, with my brothers-in-arms in the military, but this was different. That had been war. This was… There were no words for what this was.

  That Solange had been there when it happened, and had potentially nearly been killed as well, almost sent me into a rage. I desperately needed to hear her voice, see her, make sure she was okay, but I needed to calm down a little first.

  I called her again a few minutes later and this time she answered. There was no doubt she’d been crying and my heart squeezed painfully with regret.

  “Hey, beautiful.”

  “Can you come home?” she whimpered, softly crying.

  “Things are crazy here,” I said. “I’ll try to get back tomorrow, but Mrs. Freela just had a heart attack… It’s bad.”

  “Things aren’t great here either,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too.” I paused. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m kind of numb,” she admitted.

  “It’s normal. You’re okay, though. That’s what matters.”

  “It’s not what matters. Someone is dead and I just sat there.”

  “What else were you supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know, but it shouldn’t have been sitting there in my bra, covered in Logan’s blood, while the men I work with showed up to save the day. I sat there, again, like a helpless…woman!” She burst into tears.

  “You weren’t helpless. You disabled the computer system, which potentially saved a lot of children. Logan told Sandor in the SUV on the way to the hospital how you opened the door and pulled him inside the computer room, how you did what he told you to without questioning him…how you pointed the gun at the door, ready to fight till the end if you had to. You were incredibly brave. I’m proud of you. You’re a lot stronger than you think you are. I would never use the word helpless to describe you.”

  “I never, ever want to hide in a closet again!” she cried. “I said this last time too, but I mean it!”

  “I know, honey.”

  “I’m serious. This is the second time I’ve been cowering in a corner while people were in trouble. If there’s ever a next time, I want to fight. I want to learn to shoot.”

  “I can teach you.”

  That seemed to calm her and she sighed. “I’m sorry. This was a really hard day and you aren’t here.”

  “It’s okay. It was a rough day in Braksa too. The entire town has lost everything. Their homes, their businesses, and a few lost their lives.”

  “That’s terrible. Is Erik going to help them?”

  “He’s going to try.”

  She was quiet and I understood. She was still processing what had happened to Logan, and though I’d been through this before, so was I. I was angry I hadn’t been there to help, hadn’t foreseen that there might be trouble at the school, but I probably didn’t feel anywhere near as guilty as Jonas did. He’d taken it hard, from what he’d told me in our brief
conversation.

  “This is our first loss as Royal Protectors,” I said out loud. “We’re all going to go through an adjustment.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Listen, I have to go, but we’ll talk tomorrow, okay? Try to get some rest.”

  “I will. Promise you’ll be careful.”

  “I will. Sleep well, sweetheart.”

  I was up half the night driving back and forth from Braksa to Vinake and another neighboring town called Marnote, which was halfway between the two. When Sandor’s name flashed on the screen of my phone at four thirty, I figured he’d been up all night too. I was dog-tired, but there was still a lot of work to do and I figured I’d crash on someone’s couch for an hour or two to get my second wind, but not yet.

  “Hey, man.”

  “Hey.” Sandor sounded both tired and frustrated.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I have to talk to you about something and you’re not going to like it.”

  Uh-oh.

  This couldn’t be good.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’ve spent all night trying to figure out how this happened and there’s only one answer.”

  “Which is?”

  “Someone tipped them off.”

  “What?”

  “How else would the Brat, who are based in Turkey and focused on the northern part of the country, know so much about a school here in Hiskale that isn’t even open? Sure, Erik talks about education constantly, but he hasn’t spoken publicly about this particular school for this very reason. And yes, it’s been under construction so locals could see it, but there’s no name on the front, no public information available anywhere beyond a fancy new school. Jonas said there have been glitches in the system for days, and he figured out today that someone’s been trying to hack into it all week. The only person who could have given them enough info to even know there was a computer system set up was Solange.”

  “No way!” I shot back angrily. “She would never do that.”

  “Axel, I know how you feel about her, and I don’t want to believe it either, but until we can get to the bottom of this, with facts, and exonerate her, she has to be removed from any access to information, including living at the palace.”