by Geneva Lee
I shut my mind to the image of Norris’s face, blood pouring from his mouth, but my stomach heaved. Too late.
Maybe my imagination was playing tricks on me. Maybe I’d hallucinated the girl. I had to be in shock or whatever they’d given me had side effects. I rubbed my belly protectively and felt a reassuring kick. If the baby was okay that was all that mattered.
For now.
But how long would that be the case? I didn’t know where I was or why I was here.
The room was warm, even if it was about as welcoming as a prison cell. I didn’t want to leave it to chase after what might have been a figment of my imagination. But she was the first sign of life I’d seen, which meant I didn’t have a choice. Not if I was going to get us safely out of here.
The corridor stretched before me as silent and empty as it was a few minutes ago. The echo of my bare feet hitting the cold cement made me cringe. Could they hear that? Whoever it was that had brought me here? I scanned for cameras as I went but didn’t see any.
No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t put all the pieces together. Who was she? Why was she here? Why was I here?
Dread churned inside me, twisting and rolling in my gut until I thought I might be sick again. I fought the nausea. I couldn’t afford to lose more fluids.
There was one spot of hope in this nightmare: I hadn’t wound up here by mistake. I’d been taken.
It was an odd thing to find comfort in but surely it meant that someone would come. Eventually. And when they did, I would get answers. I would demand them.
And then I’d plead for my child’s life.
It was a sobering thought. I spent the last few months preparing to fight for this baby—to make certain he or she lived. I never imagined it could come to this.
I trailed my hand along the wall, looking for something I missed, but the cinder blocks gave nothing away. There were no secret passages or hidden exits. The only doors were the ones staring back at me from either side of the hall—the ones that were locked. Ones that led to unknown places.
There was also no sign of the ghost girl. It must have been me seeing things. Given everything that happened tonight—if it still was tonight—I couldn’t trust myself.
Thinking back, I walked myself through the evening. We’d gone to the birthday party. Alexander and I had snuck off and made love in the museum. My thoughts drifted to the feel of his teeth on my flesh. Instinctively, my fingers skimmed over my breasts feeling the tender spots where he marked me.
It was real—that memory. Part of me wanted to retreat to it—to that last moment where I’d been in his arms, safe and protected. But the bite marks reminded me of something else: I was stronger than anyone knew.
Alexander had shown me that.
Someone thought they would break me. That was their first mistake. I expected them to make more.
I didn’t want to leave that memory, but the answers didn’t lie there. Still, I allowed myself a second to linger on the memory of his skin on mine. I could still feel him between my legs. Inside, part of me cracked, threatening to spill free. How much time had passed since those moments? Was he looking for me now? I sent a silent wish to him.
I wished he knew I was alive. I wished he knew I would find my way back to him. I wished he felt my love in that moment.
Pushing past the ache that threatened to overwhelm me, I recalled returning to the party. I’d danced with Anders.
No, that had happened before Alexander had whisked me away.
We’d returned the party in time for the cake. My stomach flipped again and the baby kicked as though put out by my rollercoaster of emotions. Mary.
She’d had a heart attack or stroke.
Why was everything so fuzzy the closer I got to this moment?
The memory plucked at me, but not because of this evening. I recalled being hurried out of the Child Watch Symposium. That day, Alexander had been waiting for me. What would have happened if he’d been waiting for me tonight?
But he couldn’t have been. He’d been occupied with his grandmother. He’d gone with her to the hospital. Norris had seen to me.
I covered my mouth and sank against the wall.
Our guard was down because we were all focused on Mary. We’d been distracted.
The Child Watch attack hadn’t been a miracle where no one got hurt. It had been a test run where they’d learned the two most important facts of my public life: Alexander would always come for me and Norris would protect me with his life.
And then they’d removed both obstacles.
Alexander was safe. He’d gone to the hospital. I couldn’t bring myself to think about what they’d done to Norris, our best friend and constant companion.
If they were capable of that, what else could they be capable of?
I needed to find that girl.
I hadn’t imagined her. I wasn’t going crazy. Yes, I’d been drugged and brought here, but I was firing on all cylinders now. She was flesh and bone—and the only hope I’d had yet of getting answers.
So far, I’d been walking along, waiting for her to come out as I relived the events that had led me here. Now, renewed purpose drove me. I rushed to the first door and tried the knob. It didn’t budge.
Neither did the second.
Neither did the third.
None of them.
Even the room I’d woken up in was now closed and locked. There was only one room to go to, but there were no answers there. Only a torn up book and a dresser filled with clothes meant for someone else:
The ghost girl.
I didn’t know what else to call her. Was she behind one of these doors? Why had she come to me? That had to be her room. She must have seen me or heard who brought me in. All of that meant she might have answers.
The fact that she was behind one of these locked doors meant she might not be an ally, though.
Panic rose inside me and the baby began to squirm, reacting to whatever cocktail of hormones my anxiety was producing.
“Calm down,” I ordered myself. Alexander would be looking for me by now. Sarah saw what happened. Unless, she was here.
Unless she was with Norris…
Worrying about that—about her safety—wasn’t going to get me closer to figuring out where I was.
I had two things I needed to do: keep calm and find that girl.
The baby’s heart condition had to come first, but it wasn’t easy to be zen when I was locked away god knows where. It’s what I had to do, though, for both our sakes.
I pounded on the now-locked door I had awoken in. I was done walking around in a daze. I was done waiting for a door to open. I was done.
“Hello?” I yelled. “What kind of cowardly dickheads won’t show themselves? Is this some kind of joke?”
It wasn’t. At least, not the type that ended with finding out your friends were secretly filming you the whole time. I wished it was. I wished that a door would open and my best friends would step out, laughing, and proclaim this the world’s worst gag.
No, this wasn’t a joke. Once life and death were at stake, there was nothing to laugh about. I’d been here before. I’d faced death head on and I’d do it again now.
“My husband is coming for you!” I was screaming and my anger bounced back at me, fueling my rage. He would come. I knew that. The baby kicked hard as if seconding this opinion. He or she was defiant, too.
Good, the baby needed to be a fighter.
He was due in a few weeks and by then he would need all the stubborn tenacity of his mother and his father.
When he underwent surgery.
Which couldn’t happen here.
The realization crashed through me. I wasn’t racing against the clock. I was racing to diffuse a bomb. The baby wasn’t supposed to come yet, but if he did, what would happen?
There would be no one to help either of us. There would be no life-saving surgery. There would be no hope.
That’s what I was searching for: hope. I’d take anythin
g. A scrap. A crumb.
But the longer I looked and found the same bedroom waiting for me, the harder it was to keep the panic locked down. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know why I was here.
Dropping to my knees on the threadbare rug in the little room at the end of the hall, I sent up a prayer.
I prayed for Alexander.
Chapter 3
ALEXANDER
I didn’t speak as I stumbled from the room and made my way to our private quarters. Clara was in every room I passed through and still gone. Her little touches were all over the parlour: red roses on the side table—a sentimental gesture, a book she was reading on the sofa, photos of us with Elizabeth. The bedroom was worse but I found myself there like a lost dog searching for home. Her perfume lingered in the air, her robe lay across the bed. I’d chastised her once for not allowing the housekeeping staff in here as often as she should, but Clara had wanted privacy, especially in the evenings. As I picked up the silk robe, I found myself thankful she was so stubbornly independent.
She wasn’t here. I knew she wouldn’t be. But here, in the most private room in the palace, I felt her presence most strongly while feeling her absence even more. The two sensations warred within me, pulling me in two different directions. I pressed her robe to my face, breathing in her scent—roses and vanilla and home.
I’d expected it to soothe me—to make me feel closer to her as I tried to process her betrayal. Instead, it brought me to my knees. I crumbled, unable to bear the weight of it, as I buried my face into her scent. Tears broke free as I spilled open clutching the silk as though I might find her there somehow.
But she was gone.
She was lost.
I’d failed. I’d promised to protect her, and I had failed. I’d obsessed and I’d planned and she had still been taken. And in her place there was nothing. Her absence stretched before me like a black hole, sucking me into it slowly. It took my control first. It took my faith next. Then it took my hope and left nothing but a shell concealing the splintered remains of my heart.
That was all I was now without her.
My fingers fumbled on the silk, seeking her out and knowing they’d never touch her again. Soon, her scent would fade from it. Soon she would fade from my life, but never my memories. Soon that was what Clara would become: a collection of moments remembered.
The robe fell from my hands as bile burned up my throat. I retched onto the floor until I was as physically empty as I felt.
The door opened and Edward peered in at me. His eyes found the pile of sick and the robe lying next to it. He didn’t speak as he crossed to me and knelt. My arms found my brother and clung to him.
“We’re going to find her,” he promised me softly.
“What if we don’t?” I asked. There were more permutations to this question. What if we did but it was too late? What if he found her and she was…? What if we were wrong? What if we couldn’t?
“We will,” he said with the conviction of a man who hadn’t had his soul stripped from his body. I had no strength left to believe, and I forced myself to draw from his. “Maybe you should lie down.”
I shook my head. There would be no rest without her. Part of me wanted to crawl into the bed we shared and lose myself to memories of her body pressed to mine. Part of me wanted to burn this room to the ground. Neither would bring her back to me.
There was no faith left inside me, but searching myself I found something more valuable: determination. Cold, unyielding determination. I didn’t know what had happened to my wife, but I knew what I would do to get her back. There were no lengths I wouldn’t go to find her. There was no crime I wouldn’t commit. There was no sin too great and no sacrifice too large. I would do anything. I was capable of anything. And when I found who took her, I would crush the life from them myself. One person. Ten. A hundred. It would be my hands that stole their last breath.
“Find Smith,” I said, “Brex. Georgia. I need to speak to them alone.”
“And me?” Edward asked without a hint of frustration. He’d been kept out of plenty of private meetings.
This time it was up to him to decide. “You need to know how far I’ll take this. I will do anything to get her back.”
“I know,” he said quickly. “Me, too.”
I drew back and studied him, wondering if that was true and then considering whether I could allow that. “Edward, I know that, but if that’s true, maybe it shouldn’t be. Can you live with yourself if you killed someone?”
“Can you?” he asked.
“I already do,” I said quietly. I’d killed men before—at war and at home. Deaths that had gone untried. Ones that remained unsolved. I didn’t go into details. Edward wouldn’t be able to stomach them.
As it was, his throat slid as he swallowed my confession. I could see the struggle within him. He loved Clara like she was his own sister. I knew he would do anything to help me save her.
“Clara wouldn’t want you to hurt someone for her. She’d never forgive me if I let you.”
“And will she forgive you if you hurt someone? If you kill someone?” He tripped over the question and I had my answer. Edward would rise to whatever sin I needed him to commit, but I didn’t need him to do that. Not when I was willing. Not when there were plenty of people around us who could live with that decision.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said curtly. “I don’t need my wife’s forgiveness, I need her home.”
“I don’t want to sit around and be useless. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime,” Edward said bitterly. I wondered how much of his venom was directed at our father and how much I’d earned.
“There’s plenty you can do.” Things that wouldn’t involved blood on his hands. “Someone needs to look after Sarah and Belle. Someone needs to keep them calm.”
“For how long?” he asked, sighing.
I’d expected him to argue with me, but today wasn’t a time to take a stand. It was time for us all to fall in line. It was time for us to take our places. “However long it takes.”
* * *
There wasn’t enough room in my study for us to properly plan, and there was the matter of privacy. It was dawn when we assembled in an old conference room once used to brief my grandfather on matters during the war. There were a number of reasons the room was ideal. A large conference table occupied the centre space, allowing us all a seat at the table, and a large bulletin board hung on the wall. It was a relic from the days of maps and strategising moves. I made a mental note to bring in computers.
“A war room?” Brex asked looking around the space. “How far are we going with this?”
“We need the privacy,” I said, unfastening my cufflinks so I could roll up my sleeves. Someone, probably Edward, had suggested a shower, but there was no time to waste. No one here had slept. No one here had showered. They were soldiers waiting for the orders of their King and I wasn’t going to show even a hint of weakness or privilege. “I don’t want this getting out.”
“We’re not going to be able to contain this information indefinitely,” Brex said, turning a chair around so that he could straddle it.
“Then I suggest we find my wife quickly,” I snapped. I’d taken my fear and pain and packed it away where it wouldn’t cripple me any longer. “Let me be clear, there’s only one way this ends: with Clara coming home. I don’t care what we have to do. I don’t care who we have to get in bed with. There is nothing I won’t do. Are we clear?”
Each of my three companions nodded.
“If any of you are unwilling to get your hands dirty, you should leave. I won’t hold it against you.” No one stood. No one walked. I’d expected as much, but it was important to me to know that they were here willingly. Each of them we're capable of murder. Each of them had killed before. But times and people changed. “I know I’m asking too much of you.”
“You know why we’re here,” Georgia muttered.
We were a family—a strange, twisted family but one with tig
hter bonds than blood could grant, although in a way, it had been blood that bound us—other people’s blood. We’d had it on our hands. Some in war. Some in conspiracy. We’d all done it for some perversion of King and Country. Not it was time to soak our hands in crimson once more. This time for our Queen.
“This was a well-organised attack,” Smith said, leaning back in his chair. “I hope you trust the people in this room.”
“I do.” I knew what he was getting at.
“It’s unlikely it could be pulled off without multiple people on the inside,” he said. “You need to check everyone.”
“I already ordered that,” Georgia said, earning a sharp look from Brex. Her eyes narrowed at the unspoken accusation on his face. “You weren’t around to do it. Someone had to think.”
“Thank you,” I said to cut off the argument at its head. “If it’s true, then we need to move a few people. Brex, you know who we can trust. Reassign them to my family’s personal guard. Elizabeth, Edward, Sarah—I want to know who’s watching them.”
He nodded. “I know who to move.”
“Good. I still—”
“And my wife?” Smith interrupted me. His gaze burned across the room. “I nearly lost her once protecting this family.”
“If you don’t want to do this,” I said coolly.
“I didn’t say that. I already threw my lot in,” he reminded me, “but my wife is pregnant, too, and I have to place a higher priority on her safety. Actually, it’s my highest priority.”
Georgia raised an eyebrow, but if she expected me to rebuke him, she was surprised. I expected nothing less of a man like Smith Price. It was why I’d grown to trust him. He was the only man who came close to showing the same consuming love for his wife that I felt for Clara. It meant he was capable of the same dark actions I was, although I didn’t fool myself into believing he would go as far as I would to save my wife. Still, he’d gone farther than most already.
Every soul in this room had, and that’s why they were here.