Princess in Peril

by Rachelle Mccalla

  Although the hole hardly seemed large enough to squeeze through, Isabelle realized they didn’t have time to enlarge it. And the fact that Valli likely knew about the catacombs made their flight that much more urgent.

  Reluctantly, Isabelle placed her hand in Levi’s and climbed over the pile of rubble to peer into the darkness of the hole. “You do recall that we left several soldiers in the mausoleum, don’t you?”

  “I’m sure they’ve left by now.” Levi shined his flashlight into the darkness beyond. “It’s less than a meter to the floor. We should hurry.”

  Realizing he was right, Isabelle hoisted the skirt of her evening gown just high enough to permit her to step through the hole. Her feet found the floor beyond and she secured decent footing among the jumbled stones. As soon as Levi was through she reached for the jacket he wore.

  “I’m cold.” Even her voice shivered.

  Levi pulled off the tuxedo jacket and placed it around her shoulders. “I should have given it to you sooner. I don’t need it.” His white cotton shirt rose and fell against his muscular chest as he sucked in deep breaths, obviously still winded from the exertion of breaking through the wall.

  Slipping her arms through the sleeves, Isabelle turned away from Levi and tried not to think about how indebted she was to the handsome bodyguard for all he’d done on her behalf that evening. Instead she focused on the path ahead.

  Isabelle knew they didn’t have much ground to cover because the Embassy was so close to the cathedral. They rounded a corner and found themselves back at the staircase that led up to the mausoleum. The climb that had been so frightening the first time now felt familiar, although Isabelle knew they had just as much to fear—possibly more so now that the soldiers knew she was alive. When they lifted the opening above, artificial light continued to shine down brightly from the central hall.

  Levi paused. “Do you hear anything?” he asked after some silence.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  They clambered through the hole and darted down the hall. Isabelle saw no sign of the soldiers they’d left behind less than an hour before. Relieved that the men weren’t still there, Isabelle nonetheless wondered where they might have gone. Her fingers tightened around Levi’s arm, and her steps slowed.

  “We need to hurry,” he reminded her.

  She shook her head. “Hurry where? You said yourself this is the last place they’d likely look for us. If we go running upstairs we could be captured.”

  The dark line of Levi’s beard flexed as he clenched his jaw. He seemed to weigh her words carefully before he spoke. “The soldiers have already checked the cathedral—I have no doubt about that. They’ll most likely assume we’ve fled the area. They’ll widen the perimeter of their search area before they recheck where they’ve already been.”

  “Do you think so?”

  His blue eyes hardened. “Whoever’s behind this insurgent uprising, they seem to have gained control of the Lydian military. That means Lydian commanders following Lydian protocol.”

  Isabelle recalled his earlier insinuation that he’d served in the Lydian military. Although she wanted to question him about it, there simply wasn’t time. She followed him down the hallway toward the steps that led up to the cathedral. “How long do you think we’ll have before they circle back and check the cathedral again?”

  “It depends on how organized they are. They’ve just pulled off a major ambush so I’d like to believe they won’t be too methodical about their search just yet. We might have an hour, maybe several hours. We still need to move quickly.”

  “And where are we moving to? Do you still think you can get me out of the country?”

  A smile twitched in the corner of Levi’s eyes. “Now you want out of the country?”

  He looked far too pleased with her change of priorities, but Isabelle refused to be distracted from her goal of reaching safety. “If Stephanos Valli is working with the insurgent forces, then yes, I want to get as far from here as I possibly can.”

  “Then we’ll need help.” Levi led her up the stairs to the back hallway of the cathedral, where the stone floors gave way to Persian rugs, softening their footfalls. “One of the deacons at the Cathedral is a former Sanctuary International agent. If he’s here—if we can find him before anyone else recognizes you—perhaps he can help us get to out of the country. The Sanctuary International headquarters are in New York City. We’ll be safest there.”

  Isabelle nodded. “What does this former agent look like?”

  “I don’t know,” Levi admitted. “We’ve never met, but your father mentioned his name in passing—”

  “What’s his name, then?”

  “Dan? Don? Dom?”

  “Dom Procopio?”

  “Yes.” Levi snapped his fingers. “I think that’s it.”

  “Dom Procopio is a deacon and a friend of my father,” Isabelle offered cautiously. They’d made their way down the richly inlaid hall, and now the doors to the deacons’ offices appeared in front of Isabelle as she turned the corner. The name Dom Procopio was etched into the placard on the third door, and Isabelle grasped the doorknob with her right hand.

  Levi’s calloused fingers covered hers. “Careful,” he cautioned her, suddenly so close that she could feel his warmth still the goose bumps on her arm. “We don’t know what we’ll find on the other side of that door.”

  Isabelle swallowed but didn’t dare turn around to meet his eyes. She’d spent too much time getting close to Levi already. Needing to put some space between them, she cautiously cracked the door open just far enough to allow her to see inside the room.

  Dom Procopio sat bound to his desk chair, a thick gag stuffed into his mouth.

  Isabelle wondered if he was even still alive.

  FOUR

  Levi hurried to Dom Procopio’s side and pulled the gag from the former-agent’s mouth. Relief filled him as the older man gasped for breath. The deacon’s bulbous eyes rolled as he searched the room and widened when he spotted the princess.

  “Your Majesty!” Dom looked as though he would have bowed if he hadn’t been tied to the chair. “They said you were dead.”

  “Not as long as I have any say in the matter.” Levi rushed to untie the stubborn knots that bound the man’s hands behind his back.

  “And who are you?”

  When Levi introduced himself and explained that he was an agent with Sanctuary International, the deacon’s face brightened immediately.

  Isabelle joined Levi at Dom’s side, her nimble fingers making quick work of the bindings at his ankles. “Who told you I was dead?”

  “It was on the news,” Dom gestured with his newly freed hand toward a small television set in the corner of the office. “I heard the explosions outside and tuned in to find out what was happening.” He leapt up as soon as Isabelle had freed his feet and switched on the television. Images of smoking vehicles filled the screen. “See for yourself.”

  Though Levi didn’t want Isabelle to have to relive the attack via the breaking news report, at the same time they both needed to know what was going on. He said a silent prayer that nothing on the screen would be too painful for her to see.

  But the chaos surrounding the news broadcast provided little in the way of answers.

  “All members of the royal family are at this time presumed dead,” a solemn-faced reporter announced. Levi recognized the silver-haired man from the local Lydian television station. “Although no bodies have yet been identified, the royal motorcade was destroyed in the ambush, and there is no sign of any surviving member of the royal family.”

  Levi turned and looked at Isabelle, whose eyes were riveted to the screen. Her lower lip trembled slightly and she pulled his tuxedo jacket tighter around her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, torn between pulling her into an embrace and maintaining an appropriate distance.

  The scene on the television split, and half the screen showed an anchor in a newsroo
m. “Paul,” she addressed the on-the-scene reporter, “we’ve heard rumors of possible sightings of members of the royal family since the blast. There was even a report that Princess Anastasia and a member of the Royal Guard were attacked at the marina. What do you make of these claims?”

  “It’s difficult to say at this time.” Paul’s solemn expression became more intent. “The attacks came out of the blue. The scene here on the street is one of disbelief and chaos. All we can say for certain is that none of the bodies have been identified as any member of the royal family.”

  “No bodies have yet been identified,” Isabelle repeated, meeting his eyes. “But they’re still assuming I’m dead. Maybe I’m not the only one who escaped.” Hope glimmered behind her unshed tears.

  Levi realized that Isabelle needed to remain optimistic that her family members might have survived. If she believed them to be dead, she might be immobilized by grief. “Maybe,” he concurred. He wished the reporter could tell them who was behind the attacks, but as the footage looped back to the scenes they’d already witnessed, Levi realized it was likely that no one knew any more about what had happened.

  He turned his attention back to Dom. “Who tied you up? Soldiers?”

  The man’s eyes bugged wide. “Lydian soldiers. They asked if I’d seen any members of the royal family. I was shocked because the television said they were all dead.”

  Isabelle’s chin lifted defiantly. “At least one of them escaped.”

  A warm smile lit Dom Procopio’s face. “At least one,” he agreed. “And the soldiers didn’t specify who they were looking for. Perhaps all of your family is at large.”

  Levi was grateful to the man for his encouraging words and for the insight he provided. His mind lit upon a detail he’d almost overlooked. “The soldiers we fought earlier in the mausoleum—one of them looked at me and said, ‘Alec?’”

  He met Isabelle’s eyes and she regarded him solemnly for a moment. “Your blue eyes—my brother Alexander has blue eyes. And with your beard covering so much of your face, if the soldiers were looking for my brother, they might have thought you were Alec. He’s served many years in the Lydian army. Most of the soldiers know him.”

  “So your brother may be unaccounted for,” Levi concluded.

  But Isabelle was clearly thinking about something else. “The soldier in the Embassy, the one who said Valli would be pleased that they’d captured me—he’s a friend of my brother. Sergio Cana.”

  “Do you think Sergio said what he did to warn us?”

  A hope-filled smile spread across Isabelle’s lips. “I believe that’s exactly what he was doing. If he hadn’t said what he did—if we’d have waited one more second to act—we might well be in Valli’s hands right now.”

  Her words sent a chill up his spine. If they waited one more second to act, they might yet fall into Valli’s hands. Levi closed his eyes for a moment and prayed, “Lord, may Sergio Cana not be punished for his bravery. And may we not waste his efforts.” Then his eyelids snapped back open and he met Isabelle’s eyes. “We need to get moving.”

  Dom Procopio rubbed his wrists where they’d been bound. “I will help you in any way I can. What is your plan?”

  “We have to get the princess out of the country.”

  “That is wise,” Dom agreed. “But judging from the number of soldiers who searched the cathedral earlier, I would guess that to be a very difficult task. Perhaps we should try to hide her inside the country.”

  “No.” Isabelle inserted herself firmly in the discussion. “That would only give the insurgents greater opportunity to move forward with their plans. I must reestablish the rule of my family. I can’t do that if I’m in hiding.”

  Levi placed a calming hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get you out of this country.” He turned to Dom. “We’re less than two miles from the Sardis airport. Do you think you can get us there?”

  “Get you to the airport?” Dom repeated, his round eyes thoughtful. “It might be possible, but you’d never get on a plane. Both of you would need passports, for one thing. And even if there were no soldiers at the airport, which would shock me, Her Highness is certain to be recognized.”

  The older man made many good points. Levi continued to brainstorm. “The coast is just as close. Could you get us to a marina?”

  “Do you have a boat?” Dom asked.

  Levi shook his head regretfully.

  “We could go through the mountains,” Isabelle suggested.

  Levi felt a jolt of fear at her suggestion. “We’d have to travel across the whole country. That’s more than a hundred kilometers.”

  “And it’s the last place they’d think to look.”

  Dom took her side. “There’s a Sanctuary outpost on the Albanian border. You could cross there.”

  The same outpost where the fated message had been delivered by a man who ended up dead? Levi shook his head. “I don’t know—”

  “We’d still need passports to cross at the border and to make an international flight from Albania.” Isabelle sighed. “My passport is back at the palace.”

  Levi reached inside a pocket on his bulletproof vest. “I have you covered there, Your Majesty.” He held out his own passport and the fake passport Sanctuary had supplied him for the princess, which used an assumed name. “If we could get to the border—”

  “I can get you to the border,” Dom interrupted. “And I can get you across into Albania, no passport necessary. You can save that for your flight. The princess is far less likely to be recognized by Albanians than Lydians.”

  Unsure what the deacon meant, Levi looked into his round eyes. “You can get us into Albania without passports? How?”

  “The Mursia River.”

  “All the bridges have border-crossing checkpoints.”

  “You’re not going to use a bridge.” Dom’s smile was unsettling.

  Levi opened his mouth to protest, but Isabelle cut him off. She’d been looking over his shoulder at the fake passport he’d provided. “This is a most unflattering picture of me.”

  “It was doctored,” Levi explained, “to make you look less like a princess. The idea was to make you uglier because it hardly seemed possible to make you any prettier.”

  If Isabelle recognized his compliment as such, she didn’t acknowledge it. “I look depressed. And bloated.”

  Dom peered at the picture. “You look nothing like yourself and yet just enough like yourself to pass for yourself. Sanctuary did a good job on this. It just might work.”

  The princess beamed at him. “Let’s do it then. We need to hurry. Those soldiers could return at any moment.” She turned her royal smile on Dom. “How are you going to get us to the river?”

  While Levi struggled to think of how to talk Dom and Isabelle out of their crazy plan, the former Sanctuary agent outlined his strategy.

  “The Cathedral Charity Store has a delivery truck. We often take excess donations across the border to ship to needy people in Eastern Europe, so it won’t look out of place. Right now the back of the truck is filled with bags of donated clothing. The princess can hide among the bags.” Dom looked at Levi. “As long as no one is looking for you, I suppose you can ride in the front with me.”

  “They’ll recognize him,” Isabelle explained. “The two of us went into the Embassy earlier. The security cameras surely got plenty of footage. If he’s associated with me, we can’t risk letting anyone see him.”

  “Fine. He can ride in the back of the truck, too.” Dom switched off the television and headed out the door. “Let’s get moving.”

  Shaking his head inwardly, Levi hurried to keep up. He could already imagine how his father would criticize the flaws in their absurd plan if his mission failed. Silently, he prayed God would help them out of a situation he feared was doomed from the start.

  Isabelle nestled among the large plastic bags of donated clothing and prayed her hiding place wouldn’t be discovered. She’d been in worse spots before, not even including w
hat she’d experienced already that evening. How many times had she traveled to Africa with mission groups building deep water wells in remote villages? How many hospitals and schools had she visited in those tiny towns—and via far more rustic conditions than a truck filled with bags of clothing? At least she was warm and the bags of clothes were soft, cushioning the bumpy ride in a truck whose shocks, she realized, were shot. She made a mental note to donate a new delivery truck to the Cathedral Charity Store.

  Assuming she survived long enough to do so.

  “Are you doing all right?” Levi’s voice carried clearly through the enclosed rear of the truck, in spite of the piles of bags that separated them.

  “So far so good.” She sighed, realizing how the attack and her flight from Lydia would change her plans. “I was supposed to be getting ready for a mission trip after the state dinner. I had originally planned to leave earlier this week, but then I would have missed the dinner. Now three African villages are going to have to wait for their deep water wells. Innocent children will continue to be exposed to deadly diseases from filthy water supplies. Do you think the insurgents thought of that before their attack?”

  “I’m sorry,” Levi apologized, though Isabelle knew it wasn’t his fault. “You do a great deal of mission work overseas, don’t you?”

  “I feel it’s my duty as a person of privilege. I’m in a unique position to not only raise the funds to improve people’s lives, but also draw public attention to the plight of those in need.” Isabelle could picture the delighted faces of the children in the previous villages where she’d traveled to build wells. They’d been so jubilant when the water had started flowing. And the insurgent forces, by their rash act, had denied scores of children that happiness.

  “I would like to promise you that we’ll restore you to that position soon,” Levi spoke with regret in his voice, “but I don’t know what we’re dealing with. Until we know who was behind today’s attack, there will be little we can do to bring them to justice.”