Forever Guarded

by Kathleen Brooks

  Phobos smiled as he sat back on the bench across from her. “You remember me? I’m impressed. I thought I was rather undercover.”

  “You were trying to take a missile from Sophie and were pissed no one would let you talk to her alone or get inside the barn. I thought it was government posturing, but now I see what it was. You were part of Ares’s group and wanted to complete the mission,” Piper said as she slowly tested her bindings. They were tight, and there were also four guards spread out on the deck of the boat.

  Piper jumped when thunder suddenly rumbled and a flash of lightning lit the sky. Phobos laughed in delight at her fear. “My mentor’s failure was the best thing to happen to me. It led me to you.”

  “What do you mean?” Piper asked as rain began to fall. Phobos stood and stepped to where she was sitting.

  “Because it allowed me to hear all about Sophie Davies’s brilliant cousin who was currently working on something involving viruses and nanotech—something to save the world. And as we both know, anything that can be used to save the world can be manipulated to hurt the world. After that, it was easy to get Dudley to talk. The poor boy would say anything to get laid. That’s when I learned of your project and all the potential it held. I could make a larger name for myself than Ares or Poseidon. And all with something so small you’d have to have a microscope to see it.”

  The clouds opened up and rain fell in sheets as the ship began to rock. It might have been hot in Rahmi, but the rain chilled her to the bone as it soaked her thin dress. “I’ll never give it to you.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Phobos said tauntingly. He turned and walked toward the cabin. “Get her inside,” he ordered the guards as the ship dipped and a wave crashed over the bow, completely soaking her and sending her sprawling to the deck. Piper felt the roughness of the boards on her hands and knees as she fought the rocking ship to try to sit up.

  Phobos disappeared inside the cabin as two guards stumbled forward. Each grabbed an arm and hauled her to her feet. Piper looked over at the dim lights of Surman flashing through the heavy sheets of rain and then back at the cabin. The ship rocked and Piper flung her body toward one of the guards. The one guard lost his hold on her rain-slicked arm and she took the other guard down when she stumbled. He was under her but already had one of her arms grasped in a tight grip.

  Well, she might not be Abby, Sophie, or Layne, but you didn’t have to be a world-class badass to know kneeing a man in the balls would take him down for a second. And that second was all she needed. Piper slammed her knee into the guard’s balls, causing him to scream in pain and release her as he grabbed his bruised boys. Piper rolled off him and struggled to her feet as the other guards raced toward her. The boat pitched again, lightning filled the sky, and Piper jumped.

  It felt as if she were falling forever. Her legs flailed as they tried to feel something solid under them. But then she was under and encased in dark water. Piper kicked hard and clawed at the water with her tied hands as she fought the current and the waves to find the surface. Her face broke free as her body was thrown about the crashing waves. She gasped for air, her dress clinging to her legs and getting in the way of her kicks. Piper had grown up swimming in the rivers and lakes of Kentucky, but nothing could prepare her for the waves roaring down on her.

  She heard the men’s shouts from over the thunder and rain. She looked back at the deck of the boat as she kicked with all she had toward the shore. “If you make it to Surman alive, we will find you, Dr. Davies!” she heard Phobos yell. “We already have men there. You’ll never make it off the beach.”

  She looked over her shoulder and the moment before a wave crashed on her, sending her back into the water’s depths, she saw the boat turning toward Surman. Piper kicked hard and pushed her way back up to the surface, losing a flip-flop in the process. Her flip-flop! Piper took a deep breath and dove underwater so she could reach her other flip-flop. Gripping it for dear life and nabbing the other one floating its way to the surface, she kicked her way upward.

  Treading water and riding the waves the best she could, Piper shoved one flip-flop into the neckline of her dress and angled the metal nanoparticle of the second against the rope and began to saw at the knot hoping to weaken it enough for her to slip her hands free. She sputtered as another wave took her underwater, but she never gave up. Her lungs burned. She could barely see with the rain and spray from the waves hitting her in the face, but she fought on. And then she felt it. The rope loosened. She moved the metal frantically across the rope and twisted her wrists. With a hard yank, her hand slid free. Piper practically drowned in relief, but a wave beat her to it.

  She was now able to use both arms to swim and made it back to the surface faster. She looked around and saw that the boat was beating her to Surman. That was fine because she had a plan. Piper put the flip-flop between her teeth, and pulled off her dress so she could swim without her legs becoming tangled. She shoved her shoes into her bra for safekeeping. She had some serious swimming to do.

  “I need this boat!” Aiden yelled at the man who was standing with the keys to a speedboat. Piper was well over two hours away and he needed that speedboat right then.

  “Twenty thousand pounds,” the man grinned as he crossed his arms over his chest. The weasel.

  “By order of Prince Jamal, you will hand over that boat. You’ll get it back.” Most likely. The man laughed and Aiden had enough. He slammed his fist upward, hitting the man’s chin and sending him crashing to the docks. Aiden reached down and plucked the keys from his hand and leapt into the speedboat. A text came through.

  Miles Davies: She’s slowing down and changing direction. Heading to Surman. Here are the last coordinates.

  Aiden revved the engine to life and entered the coordinates into the boat’s navigation. He pushed the throttle and aimed the boat straight for the thunderstorm. He’d go through hell for Piper. A thunderstorm wasn’t about to stop him for rescuing her.

  Piper let her body sink into the water. She wasn’t worried about trying to swim as if she were in a pool. She let the tides, waves, and buoyancy of the water keep her afloat as she reached with her arms and battled her way toward the shore at an angle away from Phobos and toward the buoys that outlined the shipping lane. They were hard to see, but when she rode a wave she saw the lights of the buoys just a hundred yards away.

  Piper coughed as water surged down her mouth, but she didn’t stop reaching for every inch to get closer to those buoys. As she fought the water, the waves, and the cold, she heard what she’d been waiting for. The sound of an engine.

  “Help!” Piper yelled and then screamed it in Rahmian. Adrenaline surged her forward as she kicked with all her might toward the sound of the fishing boat. “Help!” she screamed again when she finally saw the lights of the small trawler. Judging the speed of the boat and the angle of its light off the front of the ship, Piper adjusted her direction and pushed herself until she was sure she was going to drown.

  “Help!” she yelled in every language she knew, which was really only English, Rahmian, and a little German she’d picked up from Mila. She treaded water as she frantically waved her arms. “Help!”

  The boat was going to run her over. Piper pushed herself slightly to the side. Maybe she could grab onto the net and pray it didn’t drag her under. But then the boat slowed and men were running to the deck. Piper cried out, “Here! I’m here.”

  Tears streamed down her face mixing with the rain and the ocean water as a life preserver attached to a rope was thrown toward her. Piper tried to remember to breathe as she battled the last ten yards to the ring and blissfully slid her arms through it. The men were shouting a language that seemed to be close to Rahmi’s language as she cried, “Thank you,” over and over again in Rahmian.

  Then she was being pulled up out of the water and rough hands gripped her, pulling her until she thought her arms would rip from their sockets. More hands gripped her side and she was painfully hauled over the side of the boat
and landed hard on the deck.

  Piper rolled over and vomited up a gallon of ocean water as a rain jacket was thrown over her mostly nude body and she was hauled up to stand. Her legs wouldn’t hold her and a man scooped her into his arms.

  “What happened to you?” one of them asked in something close to Rahmian.

  “Kidnapped. I need to get to safety. Do you have a cell phone?”

  He shook his head no. “Radio. Are you from Rahmi?”

  “America. Can you get a message to Queen Suri?”

  The men looked at each other and laughed. “Are you serious?” the man who must be the captain asked. He was in his sixties and looked as if he’d lived every rough second of it—leathered skin, callused hands, deep wrinkles, and numerous missing teeth. But his eyes were wise with experience.

  “I can’t have anyone know I’m here. The men who took me, they’re waiting at the shore for me. I’ve met Queen Suri. She’ll help me,” Piper pleaded.

  “Look, lady, we can’t just radio the queen.” The captain turned to his men and they began to talk. Piper felt her anger rise. She was heaving up half the ocean, she was weak, and she was desperate, but she wasn’t going to back down.

  “I’m right here. You will talk to me and not about me,” Piper ordered, sounding surprisingly like her mother did when she was breaking up a fight between Dylan and Jace.

  The men all spun around and looked at her. For good measure, she crossed her arms and tapped her toe, now very thankful for the raincoat that fell to her knees.

  “Who are you?” the captain asked.

  “Dr. Piper Davies, the head scientist at the Rahmi International Nanotechnology Laboratory. And who are you?”

  “Captain Msamaki.” The captain looked thoughtfully at her for a minute. “Why do these men want you?”

  “They want to take something I made and use it to hurt people.”

  The men all looked at each other. “And you know the queen?”

  “And the king of Rahmi, all the princes and princess of Rahmi, and the king of Bermalia.”

  “You know King Draven?” one of the men asked skeptically.

  “Yes. From his time in Kentucky. It’s in the United States.”

  “We know it. We’re from Bermalia. Because of the Treaty of Keeneston, we are allowed to fish. We have passage now from Bermalia through Surman where we can fish and bring our catch back to our country to sell,” the captain said, nodding as if he had come to a conclusion. “We’ll help you.”

  “You can get me into Surman?”

  “Better. We can get you to King Draven. We deliver a portion of our catch directly to the palace. From there you are on your own. They probably won’t kill you if you can really prove you know the king or if you take off the raincoat.”

  “Deal,” Piper said, holding out her hand. The man shook it.

  “Good. Now take this,” he said, reaching for a snorkeling mask and handing it to her.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ll have to get through customs and to do that they search the ship.”

  “So I’m going back in the water?” Piper dreaded the idea of getting back into the rough sea.

  “No,” he said with a gap-toothed smile. “You’re getting in with the fish.”

  20

  Aiden turned the boat and headed to the new coordinates. Piper was moving faster, and according to Miles, she was heading into the port of Surman. Aiden had the motorboat at full speed and was gaining ground. Now he was only forty-five minutes behind her. “Hang on, Piper,” he kept repeating.

  Rain pelted his face, which was now as numb as his heart was. He didn’t think it had beaten since he’d woken up and heard Piper had been kidnapped. Bloodlust fueled him now. With the rage and fear that filled him, Aiden had no doubt that he loved Piper. It was a desperation he’d never felt before. It was hard to control, but control it he must. Tapping into his SAS training, he kept a cool head as he raced toward the new coordinates.

  Well, this was only slightly better than being back in the ocean. Piper shivered and struggled to breathe with the weight of the iced fish on her. The men had dressed her, wrapped her in an emergency wet suit, and slapped the mask and snorkel on her before burying her in cold fish as they pulled into the harbor.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Just stay still and don’t make a sound,” the captain told her before he closed the lid on the large cooler.

  Sounds of boots hitting the deck reached her and suddenly the cooler was opened. Through the fish covering her, she saw a flashlight beam and then the cooler was closed again. If Piper hadn’t vomited everything in her stomach because of the seawater, she would have at the smell of the fish and the jerky movements of the crane lifting the cooler into the air to unload it.

  The cooler swayed and then slammed onto the bed of the truck. Every five minutes of so, another cooler was slammed down. After what seemed to be an eternity, the truck roared to life and began to rumble off down the pier. Five minutes later, the truck stopped and the cooler lid was opened. One of the men pushed the fish from her face and smiled down at her.

  “Want to ride up front for a while or stay with the fish?”

  Piper’s roll of her eyes answered the question as the man laughingly helped her out of the cooler and helped steady her as she peeled the wetsuit from her body. The man shoved the wetsuit into the corner of the flatbed before jumping down and holding his arms out toward her. Piper put her hands on his wide shoulders as he wrapped his large hands around her waist and easily lifted her from truck bed.

  “Come on, fish princess, let’s get you to the king.”

  Aiden navigated into the Surman harbor as his phone rang. He was looking everywhere for Royce as he grabbed the phone. “Hello?” he shouted over the rain.

  “It’s Nash. I’m with Miles, and I think I know where they are heading.”

  “Where?”

  “Bermalia.”

  “What?” Aiden yelled as thunder rocked the air.

  “Bermalia. The border is only three hours from the harbor. I’ve been mapping out her location, and she’s on the main road to Bermalia. Has been ever since she got off the boat. Main roads all the way. They must have a way to sneak her across the borders because she should have been stopped in the harbor,” Nash told him.

  “I’ll need to get through customs,” Aiden said more to himself than to Nash.

  “Zain has already taken care of that,” Nash informed him. “I’ll call with any updates. I’m sending you directions now for your car’s GPS.”

  “What car?” Aiden asked as he turned off the boat’s engine and tied it to the dock. But Nash had already hung up.

  “Mr. Aiden Creed?”

  Aiden looked up to find a Surman soldier standing there. “Yes?”

  “Queen Suri has instructed me to assist you. Your car is right this way. It is loaded with everything you might need. Further, you will be provided a military escort to the border. Upon reaching Bermalia, you will be on your own.”

  Apparently that was what Nash meant when he said Zain had taken care of it. Aiden followed the soldier to a large Hummer surrounded by two military vehicles in the front and the back of it. “Just honk if you can’t keep up,” the guard told him as he slipped into the lead vehicle.

  Aiden hurriedly got into his vehicle. It was filled with water, a change of clothes, and food. He tore into the food as he followed the guards from the harbor. As soon as they hit the open road, they sped up to well over 150 kilometers per hour. It seemed that time slowed to a crawl as they made their way through the early-dawn light. Everywhere he looked was wide-open desert. Towns surrounded water sources as they raced toward Bermalia.

  Aiden was growing frantic. It had been almost ten hours since Piper had been taken. At least he had hope she was still alive. His phone rang and the Bluetooth picked it up.

  “She’s at the border. Their vehicle is stopped. It’s being searched,” Nash told him.

  Aiden’s heart pounded
so hard he was afraid it might explode. “Do they have her? Is she safe?”

  “The head of the border patrol is live-streaming it. They can’t find her.”

  “That’s not possible!” Aiden yelled as he slammed his hand on the steering wheel. They were thirty minutes away and Aiden revved the engine, riding the Hummer right up the escort’s ass. They got the hint and sped forward.

  “Hold on. I’m sending you the picture.” Aiden heard Nash speak in Rahmi and a minute later a photo came through of a rough-and-tumble fishing crew. “Any of these guys Royce?”

  “No. Never seen them before.” Aiden felt his hope fade. “Wait, those big coolers, please tell me there’s no body in them.”

  “No. Just fish. The GPS is good within a half mile. She could be in another car or sneaking across the border just a little ways away. Since the treaty, the borders are more open.”

  “The men are all verified. They’re Bermalian fishermen. No criminal history. They don’t even own cell phones. They’re not Phobos or part of his crew. Cut them loose,” Aiden heard Nabi order.

  “We’ll find her,” Nash promised, but for the first time Aiden was starting to have his doubts. “You are cleared into Bermalia, but King Draven isn’t answering his phone. You’ll be on your own once inside their country.”

  Aiden disconnected as they sped closer to Piper’s coordinates. He didn’t mind being on his own. In fact, right now he’d prefer to use his new get-out-of-jail-free card by killing Phobos without worrying about laws and the soldiers who followed them.

  Piper couldn’t breathe. They’d buried her under hundreds of pounds of frozen fish. But even she knew it was worth it when they had been pulled over. It had taken twenty minutes before they were back on the road again. And another twenty until they pulled over to help her out of the cooler.

  Piper couldn’t stop shaking as the captain took his jacket off and wrapped her in it. “They had your picture and were looking for you.”