There was only one exit route from this room.
• • •
THERE WAS NO WAY I could sleep, not with the words that Nick had said barreling through my brain. Neither of us were happy, or knew what we were doing, or where we could go from here. The proverbial dead end was tall and wide, and I could see no way over, under, or around it.
Except . . .
As I lay in bed, I saw, as I had seen so many other nights, the lights of Drieden City sparkling below. My feet hit the carpet seemingly of their own accord. I drew the white satin draperies wider and pressed my palms against the cool glass of the window. All those times I had crept out of the palace onto the streets below, I’d been looking for an escape from the rules. The expectations. The life to which I’d been born.
What was stopping me from going now? From walking out and never looking back?
As steady and familiar as my own heartbeat, I heard Nick’s footsteps behind me. He stopped mere inches from my body. I could feel his heat, his strength, calling me to him.
I didn’t fall into his arms. Instead, I whispered, “We can go. Tonight.”
“Where?” His deep voice sent a shiver down my spine.
“Wherever you want; I don’t care.” Couldn’t he see? I couldn’t be here anymore. But I could be someone else, someplace else . . . with him.
My hair was lifted and moved across my neck, as if a ghost were behind me. His breath was warm against my neck and there was the barest pressure of his lips.
Then it was gone.
“I’m sorry for earlier.” My whisper was hoarser now. “Let’s go. I feel like I’m going crazy here. I don’t know what to think, what’s happening.”
The lightest touch caressed my shoulders, down my arms, and I almost sank into him, but my desire was far outweighed by my pride, that straight steel structure that had encased me from birth.
“Let’s go,” I said once more. Leaving was the only way I knew to handle this situation.
The curve of his palm fit right on my hip and I wondered if this was it. The moment where he took what he wanted, to hell with the consequences. I wanted that for him. And I wanted it for me, for entirely different reasons. Then he said the words I hadn’t known I’d desperately wanted to hear.
“I’d rather stay.”
He spun me around, swept his hands slowly up the sides of my waist, and then lightly circled my wrists with his fingers, pulling them up over my head, pressing them against the cool glass of the window.
I was stretched out for him. On the windowpane, I was completely on display both for him and the city. I could barely breathe, every fiber of my being waiting for what he would do next.
Slowly Nick tilted his head forward. My mouth opened, craving the taste of him. But he didn’t kiss me. Instead he pressed his forehead against mine.
A sharp inhale.
“We should have stayed on that goddamned boat.”
Only Nick could make me laugh at a time like this.
Then he took another shaky breath. “Tamar was wrong. No matter what happens, Thea, I will never hurt you.”
The rough, raw promise made me tremble with need.
“Tell me you believe me,” he demanded gently.
I found myself nodding. Yes. “Always.” Inexplicably. Time and time again it came back to that. My heart telling me that I was safe with this man.
He continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “I promised myself, that first night in the bar, that I wouldn’t have you.”
“That was a stupid thing to do.” I arched into him, needing to feel something hot. Something hard.
He nodded. “I told myself after we were at Sybil’s that I was being an idiot—”
“You were.”
“For wanting you.”
“You weren’t.” I arched again, as much as I could with Nick still holding my hands against the glass.
He finally kissed me, as slow and sweet as syrup. “I’m sorry,” he said against my lips.
“No.”
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
My eyes shot open as a chill ran down my spine. “Don’t say that. I’m not a pawn that you’re playing with. I’m a fully grown woman making her own decisions.”
Maybe respect was why he released my hands then, letting his hands come back down and cup my head, his fingers twining with my long hair. I thought he was going to kiss me again. I wanted him to kiss me again.
“Thea.” My name on his lips was something like a miracle. Like I was hearing it for the first time. I pressed my lips against his as if I could seal my name there for eternity. Keeping all of his promises to me, there would be no more talk about investigations or bodyguards or running away.
It was just me. Thea. And Nick. Two people who had found this space. This night. This fire.
His hands grasped my ass, jerked me tight against him. My mouth parted in surprise and he took control of our kiss. It was just like him, really. Always trying to get the last word.
When he’d left me breathless, he continued kissing my neck, my collarbone, nudging my camisole strap down my shoulder as I ran my fingers through his thick, dark hair, clenching my thighs to hold on as tightly as I could.
There was a moment, right after he’d lifted me to the edge of the bed and right before I’d intended to lift his sweater over his head, that he said my name again. This time there was a question mark after it. Slight, but meaningful, that inflection was so many questions in one.
Will you?
Can I?
Are you sure?
But I was tired of talking. Even more tired of debates and arguments. Tonight I just wanted to act. To run off the edge. To take a wild, crazy leap.
Instead of his sweater, I reached for his belt. Met his eyes and pulled on the buckle. Three, four quick moves and we were both bare to each other, and I finally had answers to all my unspoken questions about Nicholas Fraser-Campbell. I saw Nick’s scars, his wounds, his tender side, his demanding edge. And they were all mine.
For that privilege, even if it was just for the night, I was willing to jump with him into the unknown.
twenty-nine
WE HAD ONE LAST SHOT. I marched into my sitting room the next morning and laid it all out on the table. “We have to find Christian’s phone,” I said, after I’d explained what I’d learned from Hans. And Anders.
Nick looked exasperated at my perfectly reasonable conclusion.
“It will show us,” I continued, ignoring his scowl, “if Christian was definitively talking to Anders or kidnappers, or if he’s shacked up with his girlfriend in Tahiti.”
“Looking for a cheap unregistered cell phone is like a looking for a needle in a haystack of needles.”
He was always so negative. I was not throwing this shot away.
I went on to the next thread. “You said you searched Christian’s apartment; what did you find?”
“Nothing. It had been cleaned. Like he’d never been there.”
Christian’s apartment had been a set of rooms at my uncle’s palace on the east end of the city. As a royal property, the palace would have cleaned it out as soon as it became apparent that Christian was not coming back. And knowing my family as I did, I knew that we kept everything. Nothing would have been thrown away.
I picked up my phone and called Lucy. Ten minutes later, Lucy called back confirming that all of Christian’s things had been collected and delivered to the same facility where the wedding gifts were sent.
“Can you arrange for someone to make them available for me, please?”
Lucy paused. “Yes; I’ll just have to find a phone number.”
That surprised me. “I didn’t think there was a number in Drieden you didn’t have.”
“Well, there are quite a few Scottish phone numbers I don’t have.”
“Excuse me?”
“When we returned the wedding gifts, we sent Christian’s things back to his house in Scotland.”
• • •
/> A PLANE WAS WAITING FOR us at a small private airfield five miles from the city. Nick had ordered it as soon as I told him what Lucy had said.
The flight to Scotland took less than an hour, but we didn’t waste time. As soon as we were airborne, Nick handed me a tablet to review the new data that he had received from the manufacturer of Christian’s vehicle GPS system, courtesy of Nick’s “colleague” Max.
“This is a waste of time,” I muttered as I stared at coordinates and a map of Drieden City. “It’s telling us nothing.” I’d thought that perhaps we could find Christian’s girlfriend from his driving patterns, but Christian’s Land Rover seemed to go in a predictable, safe loop: his office, to the palace, to his apartment. Nick ignored me and kept working. He certainly seemed to know things about my city that I had never learned. Maybe he knew which hotels were especially conducive to conducting illicit affairs.
Not convinced that the coordinates would help at all, I looked out the window and watched the green fields of Scotland float below us. “Are you excited to go back?” I asked Nick.
He made a grumbly sound.
“I’m sure they’ll be very pleased to have you back. Prodigal son of Steading. The return of the Duke and all.”
There was a long pause. “Will someone be waiting for you? Christian said you had aunts and uncles nearby?”
Finally Nick shut off his tablet. “I’m not returning.”
Given that the landing gear had just dropped out of the plane, I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. Then he said the next part. “We’ll have rooms at a hotel a few miles away.”
“What about Christian’s things?” I asked. “Lucy said they were sent to his house. To Brisbane Castle.”
“We’re working on those.”
“Working on them? What the hell does that mean?” The plane hit the tarmac with a loud jolt and my fingers found Nick’s as if they had a mind of their own. While the sound of the airplane’s brakes crescendoed, I realized what Nick wasn’t saying.
“You’re not letting anyone know you’re alive, are you?” I asked quietly. “You’re not claiming your title.”
“I couldn’t care less about the title,” Nick nearly snarled. It did not intimidate me.
“You’re going back to your ancestral country and keeping up the ridiculous charade that you’re dead?” It was unbelievable and unconscionable. “Christian could use your influence right now.”
“Christian’s probably dead.” Nick sounded so cool and unaffected right then, I knew it had to be an act.
Wasn’t it?
“If he’s dead, then why are we even here?” I nodded at the door to the plane. “We should just turn around and go back.”
“We have to know for sure. And we’ve exhausted all of our resources in Drieden.”
“And you said British analysts couldn’t figure out any connection to Driedish interests in these damn papers,” I said, holding up the tablet in my lap. “And if you’re not here to reclaim your title and actually help Christian, then we’ve exhausted everything everywhere.”
A muscle in Nick’s jaw worked, and for a second I thought he was going to nod and tell me I was right. Or tell me I was missing something. Or thank me for my words of wisdom.
Instead, he unbuckled his seat belt, grabbed his backpack, and stalked to the exit.
If that was going to be the way he handled this, fine.
I followed him down the stairs of the plane to a dark-windowed Range Rover. Nick had already taken the front passenger seat and a man in similar black tactical clothing was at the steering wheel.
The driver rolled down his window when I knocked on it. “Hi, I’m Thea.”
He shook my hand. “Max.”
Aha!
“Max Cornelius?” I asked pleasantly, loving the frown on Nick’s face when I did.
The driver nodded carefully.
“So nice to finally meet you. I borrowed some clothes from you in Drieden.” Then I pointed at Nick. “I think Nick stole your boat.”
The men exchanged another careful look and I wondered what classified information I had just said aloud.
The drive was twenty minutes through rocky hills and verdant pastures. This was Scotland, Christian’s home. If we had been married, I would have come back here for visits as his wife. Now I was to be hidden in a cheap hotel room as Nick’s . . . what? Marginally helpful assistant?
At the hotel, Max showed us up to our suite, which was already filled with boxes labeled with bilingual delivery instructions in Driedish and English. I decided not to ask Max how he’d acquired and/or retrieved the boxes from Brisbane Castle, choosing to believe it was all legal and aboveboard.
We got right to work.
Everything that had been in Christian’s apartment was here in half-organized boxes. Clearly, someone had tried some system, probably devised by a harried post-wedding Lucy.
We started with his mail and the contents of his desk.
Credit card statements had some charges I didn’t recognize, but those weren’t a red flag. Christian had records from a Boson Chapelle credit card, too, which Nick carefully set to the side and that I grabbed, praying for something highlighted and marked with a Cayman Islands flag. But there was nothing besides charges for expensive dinners and hotel rooms, none of which were in the Cayman Islands. Maybe they’d been for his girlfriend.
“Have you ever been there?” I asked, sorting through ancient bank deposit slips.
“Where?”
“The Cayman Islands,” I said. “They’re a British territory, correct?”
Nick frowned at a bill from a Savile Row tailor. “Yes. With a governor appointed by the Queen.”
“And what makes them so popular for offshore banks?” I asked, with the weary voice of someone who had reviewed far too many bank spreadsheets the past week.
“No taxes there, for one thing. It’s a good place to shelter offshore accounts.”
“And the British Crown thinks that’s a good thing?” In my extensive reading of history, monarchs tended to like taxes. The more, the better.
Nick’s eyebrow cocked at me. “I suppose Liz gets something out of it.”
We fell into a silence as I tried to remember what else I knew about British territories around the globe. The remnants of a vast empire, the United Kingdom had strategically retained control over certain holdings while granting independence to others. Of course, some had always been independent, like a few of the Channel Islands . . .
Shock, sudden and irrefutable as a lightning strike, skidded through my skin.
“We’ve had it all wrong.” I pushed back from the table and left the piles of paper sitting there. I wouldn’t need them again. “I need the Boson Chapelle files.”
Nick glanced between me and the papers I’d just left behind.
“Not those. The firm’s clients, that paperwork. That’s the key to the mystery. Don’t you see?” I stalked over to Nick and looked into his stern, confused face. “Your analysts were right. There’s absolutely nothing in the Cayman papers about Drieden.”
thirty
SYBIL ANSWERED ON THE THIRD ring.
“Sybil, this is Thea.”
A pause. “Oh. Am I allowed to call you that again?”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have time for her drama. “I need some information.”
I briefly went over what I required.
Another pause. “It may be impossible.”
I wouldn’t accept that. “Find a Boson Chapelle secretary, a part-time intern, their IT guy. Hack into their system. We need a list of their clients. You know Drieden better than anyone, Sybil. I saw you hacking all those secure files on your computer. I know you can do this for me.”
“When do you need it?”
“As soon as possible.”
• • •
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, SYBIL CALLED back with an administrator’s password to the Boson Chapelle network.
“What are you looking for?” Nick asked in frustrat
ion as I searched the firm’s client files on his laptop.
I held my breath, and then . . . there. I pointed at the screen and read aloud, “Incorporated via the Territory of Perpetua.”
“Perpetua? Your women’s prison island?”
“Perpetua is a distinct legal identity, like the Channel Islands. In 1543, The Holy Roman Emperor wanted to give it to Drieden for complicated political reasons. He had the Dutch Crown and the French kept declaring war, but he also wanted to keep a legal string on the barrier islands guarding the continent so he didn’t have another Ottoman Empire invasion scenario from the west . . .”
“Princess . . .”
“. . . so he actually transferred the title to the Royal House of Laurent. It’s a technicality, but since the Holy Roman Empire doesn’t exist anymore and Drieden doesn’t legally control Perpetua, it’s sort of like—”
“Gilligan’s Island. An invisible place no one can find on a map,” Nick finished.
He was almost right. I focused back on the document I’d found in the law firm network. “According to this, Boson Chapelle incorporated a shell company, Magdalena Energy International, which is solely owned by the Territory of Perpetua.”
Nick scanned the screen as I scrolled through the information, and then he jumped to grab his tablet with copies of the Cayman papers. I suppose I knew what he would find before he did, because I was not surprised when he whistled under his breath and read the numbers aloud. There were billions of euros in offshore Cayman accounts connected to Magdalena Energy International.
Tax-free. Untouchable. Unknowable to 99.999999 percent of the world’s population.
The only people who could have put the pieces together were those who knew of Magdalena Energy’s existence.
And those who knew who controlled Magdalena Energy.
Which Nick put together in an instant. When he didn’t call me Princess, I knew his internal alarm system had gone off. “Thea, who controls the Territory of Perpetua today?” His voice was purposely casual, his question surgically precise.
The Royal Runaway Page 18