The Child Thief 6: Zero Hour

by Forrest, Bella

  “Long day, eh?” Giles asked as David passed.

  David paused to look the ex-businessman in the eyes. “Yeah,” he replied simply.

  The lines of Giles’ tired face deepened as he chuckled—then some more as he rasped out a heavy cough.

  David managed to return a faint smile. “You’d better get inside, old man. You’ve still got that fleece blanket, right?”

  Giles nodded slowly. “Yeah. Don’t worry about me.”

  David nodded and continued on his way. He had to get his crap set up before the rain started.

  “Hey—wait, Tina!” Charles called out behind him. “Hand me that thing for a sec. It looks antique.”

  “Says the man who was about to burn it on site,” Tina snapped.

  “I’m serious, though,” Charles continued. “Those carvings look super posh. I could take it in and see what we could get for it.”

  “Looking like that?” Tina snorted. “You’d sooner be arrested for theft.”

  David let the bickering of his neighbors fade into the background as he arranged his collection of plastics and cardboard and got to work on his own pop-up home. He set up as quickly as he could in a race against the rain, then pushed open the plastic flap leading to his shelter’s dark, musty interior and crawled inside.

  He fumbled in his pocket for his rusty light, and, switching it on, he began to organize himself for the night. He pushed his boots and coat to one end of the shelter while gathering the newspapers he had collected and smoothing them out over his coarse woolen blanket. They would provide extra warmth during the night, as well as help to absorb any water that seeped through the ceiling. He was almost done laying them out when rain began to batter the roof. The newspaper right in front of him began to get soaked. But it was not the rain causing the drops of water that began to stain the newspaper in his hands.

  This water was spilling from his own eyes.

  For his eyes had passed over a bold line of text.

  A headline that drove the cold in his limbs straight to his heart.

  Barely breathing, he clutched the sheet of paper and shook it straight with one hand, his other illuminating the text with his light.

  “Princess in London for Grand Engagement at Palace” the headline blared.

  The princess in question was Princess Katerina De Courtes, touted by the media to be one of the most beautiful and eligible bachelorettes in the world. “A modern day Grace Kelly,” no less.

  And at the sight of her picture, every memory David had fought to forget over the past five years came crashing back into him, ripping the breath from his lungs and crushing his windpipe.

  The shock. The pain. The grief. The anger. The disgrace.

  The injustice.

  Each one a searing bolt of emotion, hot-wired to his chest.

  Flashes of scenes lit up his mind like an unstoppable movie, forcing him to relieve every second of it all.

  And then he tore his eyes away from the paper, gasping for breath.

  “You okay, David?” the muffled voice of Giles called from his left.

  David swallowed hard, realizing his tears had been accompanied by too much sound. He quickly cleared his throat. “Fine,” he grated out.

  Pushing the newspaper and the light to one corner, he swiped roughly at his eyes with the back of his sleeve and slowly leaned back in the gloom.

  What would he have told his friend, anyway, even if he had wanted to talk?

  For who would have believed it…that an invisible like him could have ever held the heart of a princess.

  A Love that Endures: Chapter 2

  Chapter 2: Katy

  Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Five years earlier.

  Katerina stared at the letter, her heart in her throat. Her eyes zoned in on the closing sentences.

  “Think about it, Katy. Please. I know I’ve been an absolute jerk but I am so, SO sorry for everything, and I’m paying for it now with each day we’re apart. I’m thinking about you all the time, remembering when you stayed with me here in our chalet. I’m missing you, gorgeous, so very much…From Russia with love, Alexei.”

  She scoffed in disgust, then finally tossed the letter aside and slid off the kitchen stool. The heady scent of fresh cupcakes filled the room, but her stomach was roiling.

  How dare the selfish prick contact her again! How dare he. After all he’d done. After all the hell he’d put her through. She always knew the guy had a pair of balls large enough for two, but she had never thought that he would stoop to this.

  “Has the rage-baking session been helping any?” her cousin Cassie murmured, eyeing Katy closely from where she was perched across the table, frosting cupcakes.

  Katy stopped by the counter and leaned against it. Exhaling heavily, she glanced over at the short, blond-haired girl.

  “He’s already trying to convince me to get back together with him," she replied, struggling to keep her voice even. “Wants me to meet him in Paris over the winter break. We’ve barely started sophomore year, for crying out loud! He must think I’m completely stupid—or an utter narcissist. Like a bunch of smarmy declarations that I’m the center of his universe could erase the fact that he wasted three years of my life.”

  Cassie smiled. “I’ll take that as a no, then…”

  Katy dropped her head into her hands, giving another sigh. Usually, rage-filled baking with Cassie was the ultimate stress reliever. When her dad was completely unreasonable and wouldn’t let her garden because the hobby was “beneath her”? They’d rage-baked coconut macaroons. When her mom snidely told her she ought to try starving herself once a week? They’d rage-baked a decadent chocolate cake slathered in ganache. When Alexei’s letter had arrived, Katy had immediately proposed making red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

  But today, none of it was helping. Not even the bonus multicolored sprinkles Cassie had discovered in a drawer.

  Alexei had been her first boyfriend, and they’d been together for over three years. They’d explored the world together. Shared times that, even now, she would struggle to forget. Bonded in ways she’d thought had made them unbreakable. She had never felt so swept up by anyone in her life, and she had been so sure that he felt the same about her too.

  Then, last summer, she had caught him behind the sauna with his pants down, screwing the family housemaid.

  Not a good look, man!

  It had shaken her world to the core, given how unequivocally—and stupidly—she had trusted him. It was the reason she had moved to America and enrolled at Harvard in the first place: to escape his lying, cheating ways and move on with her life.

  Yet here he was, less than six months later, trying to lure her right back into it all—with a cheesy letter no less—even when he knew she wanted nothing more than to forget his face.

  The thought alone was enough to throw her into a dark, sugar-craving mood.

  Katy grabbed the letter and tore it to shreds over the trash can, then strode toward Cassie and started helping her with the frosting.

  “What I don’t get is how he even knows you’re here,” Cassie remarked, licking at a smudge of cream cheese on her wrist. “Maybe he hacked your phone’s location somehow.”

  Katy shook her head, more irritation bubbling to the surface. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean, I blocked his number, so he couldn’t have done it through a phone or text conversation.”

  Not even the paparazzi—or any of the girls who shared Cassie and Katy’s house—knew Katy’s true identity as the famed Princess of Lorria. Although the country was the smallest in Europe, it was still influential, and Katy had to be cautious.

  Katy groaned, realization suddenly dawning. “I’ll bet you anything my parents had a hand in it.”

  Of course they would have. It should have been the first thing she thought of. They hadn’t been pleased to find out he’d cheated on her, of course, but that hadn’t stopped them from asking her to give him a second chance. They had always b
elieved that Alexei, being from a powerful Russian family, would be an ideal match in marriage.

  Ugh. The nerve of them, too.

  “Hey, don’t squish that cupcake so hard,” Cassie chided. “You’re making it crumble in two!”

  Katy loosened her grip begrudgingly and proceeded to frost, while Cassie made her way over to the sink.

  After washing her hands, she pulled up a stool and sat down, glancing at Katy tentatively.

  “What?” Katy mumbled, catching her cousin’s eye.

  Cassie’s gaze wandered across the table toward the envelope the letter had come in—along with a small box, which Katy had almost forgotten about with all the frantic baking.

  “You planning to open that thing or what?” Cassie asked.

  Katy stared at the box for a moment, narrowing her eyes as she considered the question. Then she blew out a sigh and dropped the cupcake, wiping her hands on her apron. “I guess,” she grumbled, slinking around the table toward it.

  As she picked it up and opened it, her frown turned into a grimace. She immediately regretted opening it at all.

  Inside lay a bracelet encrusted with sapphires and diamonds, alongside another damned piece of paper with Alexei’s handwriting on it. This one was much shorter, though no less vexatious.

  “Diamonds for my diamond.”

  Hurt and anger washed over her. She’d told him repeatedly when they were dating that expensive jewelry meant nothing to her, and yet here he went again, trying to win her back with that very thing. He didn’t know her at all. Or, more like, didn’t care to know her.

  “We’ll give it to charity,” Katy spat, dropping the bracelet back into its packaging and pushing the box away with such force it skidded across the table.

  Cassie lunged forward and grabbed it before it could reach the edge, and Katy paused from her tirade as she noticed the expression on her cousin’s face.

  Cassie gazed down at the box longingly. “You should’ve just let Alexei keep buying you expensive gifts,” she murmured. “After all’s said and done, you were lucky to have a guy who cared about you enough to try and woo you.”

  Katy immediately sensed the note of bitterness in her cousin’s voice, and her heart ached for Cassie. She realized then how insensitive she was probably being, dragging out this whole ex-boyfriend subject over an entire evening. After all, Cassie had been just as unlucky in the love department. Much more so, in fact. Katy knew her cousin’s scars ran far deeper than her own.

  She moved over to the smaller girl and took her by the shoulders, squeezing gently and giving her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Cass. You’ll capture the attention of a good man someday. There are guys out there much better than the likes of Alexei…or that douchebag, Jason.”

  Cassie’s hazel-brown eyes warmed at that, and though a tinge of bitterness still lingered there, the overriding emotion was hope, which was the effect Katy had been hoping to have.

  A creak sounded, and the two girls whirled toward the kitchen door to see a curvy brunette stride in. It was Michelle, one of the few upperclassmen who shared the building.

  “And what are we chatting about in here?” she asked. Her eyes widened as they passed over the rows of cupcakes. “Good grief, don’t let me near those. I feel like I’ve gained two pounds just looking!” She moved quickly over to the sink for a glass of water.

  Cassie sighed. “We’re talking about men.”

  Michelle turned back around to lean against the counter with her glass, arching a manicured eyebrow. “Oh. Men. Well…you’ll both want to start flaunting your natural attributes more if you want to be attracting one of those.” At this, she flashed Katy a wry grin.

  The blood rose to Katy’s cheeks. “I would rather not attract a guy for the wrong reasons,” she replied, feeling suddenly flustered. She turned away from the older girl and reclaimed her seat around the table.

  Michelle’s grin widened. “Oh, I’m all for that, hon. But the way you dress, it’s like you’re actively trying to repel them.” She took another sip from her water, then giggled, placing a hand in front of her mouth to stop it from spurting out.

  “You in particular, Katy. I mean, girl, you know I say this with love, but that turtleneck thing the other night, at Jessica’s party…seriously? You’ll never earn your “Mrs.” degree going around dressed like that. If that was the first time I’d met you, I’d say you were a huge prude!”

  Ouch. That hurt Katy more than she would like to admit. Her gaze shot to her lap and she bit down hard on her lower lip to keep it still.

  Michelle, an overly talkative girl in general (per Katy’s tastes) and the oldest in the house, had a penchant for generously distributing unwanted advice. But she wasn’t the malicious type and didn’t really deserve a snappy response.

  Still, it hurt.

  Yes, that particular dress Katy had worn to Jessica’s had been a rather poor choice, in hindsight. But old habits die hard. Katy had spent her entire childhood and adolescence wrapped in traditional Lorellian clothing—as was expected of a member of the royal family—and for females, that boiled down to ankle-length dresses with high necklines.

  She and Cassie had gone on numerous shopping sprees to try to shake the conditioning since arriving in America, and while Cassie seemed to be embracing normal-people’s fashion fairly well, Katy still found herself subconsciously gravitating toward the most modest pieces. It was a work in progress.

  But as for being a “prude”…she swallowed hard at that.

  Truth be told, a little voice at the back of her head had accused her of being just that, on more than one occasion, over the past few years. It went back to another long-held tradition of Lorellian royalty: no lovemaking until marriage.

  Which was the whole reason Alexei had cheated on her.

  “Anyway,” Michelle went on, breezing past the girls as she headed back toward the door, “I wanted to let you know there’s a party on tonight at the Wolf Club. All the girls in this house are invited.” She turned once she reached the frame and winked at them. “I hear there are some real hotties in that house, so probably not one to miss. And if you want some wardrobe advice, just come to my room and I’ll fix you up.”

  With that, she padded out of the kitchen, leaving the girls staring after her.

  “Oh my God. We’ve got to go, Katy!” Cassie exclaimed after a split second. “Who knows who we’ll meet at the Wolf’s? I’ve heard so much gossip about their parties. It’ll be the perfect distraction for both of us!”

  Katy’s stomach churned. Meeting a houseful of horny drunk guys really wasn’t what she had planned for the evening. She’d been thinking more pajamas, Netflix, and an hour-long bubble bath.

  She looked between Cassie and the door…then shoved a whole cupcake into her mouth.

  A Love that Endures: Chapter 3

  Chapter 3: David

  Harvard would be the death of him.

  David rubbed at the swollen lump on his middle finger, formed by too many hours of holding a ballpoint, and looked back down at the spread of books scattered across his desk. It was late, and his brain was starting to feel less like an organ and more like a sack of Jell-O packed between his ears, but he wasn’t nearly prepared enough for his impending exams.

  He blew out a slow breath and slouched back over his copy of American Politics Through the Twentieth Century, willing his eyes to cooperate. Just a couple more hours, and he’d allow himself to hit the pillow. Just a couple. More. Hours…

  A pair of heavy hands clamped down on his shoulders. He jerked upright, but his chair tipped backwards, slamming him onto the floor with a painful thud. Before he could glimpse his attacker’s face, a second set of hands pulled him upright and came around his head with a blindfold.

  “What the—” He brought his hands up to bat it away, but then the hands grabbed his arms, pressed a knee sharply between his shoulder blades, and wrestled his wrists together behind his back. Another heavy grip joined his ankles; he felt the scrape o
f rope against his flesh there, too.

  “Are you ready for your true test of character?” a familiar voice boomed down from above in a tone so stupidly deep David would have laughed were he not so pissed off.

  “Get the hell off me, Seb!” David snapped, realizing his housemates were hog-tying him.

  He tried to lash out and break away from the rope-tiers, but although he was a large guy, two (or three?) against one was foul play, especially when they had the advantage of surprise.

  “Woohoo, we got the Brit!” another familiar voice announced.

  David felt the rope tighten into a painful knot around his ankles.

  “Not funny, Max,” Seb shot back, finishing the bind around David’s wrists.

  “Hey, David knows I didn’t mean it like—”

  “Just shut the hell up. We gotta get him outta here.”

  “No.” David grunted, writhing like a snake as the guys hoisted him into the air. But their grip held, and they lugged him across the dorm room. He heard his door clicking shut, and then the two boys were out in the hallway, breaking into a jog that jolted him uncomfortably from side to side.

  “Guys,” David said through gritted teeth. “I seriously do not have time for this.”

  “Everyone who joins the Wolf Club has time for this,” Max snorted.

  The ride grew suddenly bumpier as they descended a flight of stairs. Then there was the whine of a door, and chill evening air surrounded him.

  His skin prickled with alarm. Where were they going?

  Metal doors creaked open, and a moment later, David landed on a hard, metallic surface. Then the doors slammed shut, and he was engulfed by silence.

  Or, almost silence. He could hear someone else’s ragged breathing just opposite him, a couple feet away.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, trying to shift into a more comfortable, upright position.

  “David? Is that you?”

  David grimaced as he recognized the slight Iranian accent. They’d gotten Zeke, too.