by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
"Not that I could tell," he replied honestly. "But the creek's not that far from the campsite.. .or where the prince's plane went down. I figure he wandered alongside the creek after he crashed and eventually built himself a campsite on the ridge. Some of the people looking for him had to figure the same thing."
It made sense. After the prince's plane had finally been found, the FBI and local police had scoured the woods for several miles in every direction of the vicinity of the crash, searching for Lucas. It was the others, however, the fortune hunters and nutcases who had been lured to the crash site by the false rumor of a reward offered by a Hollywood gossip magazine, that worried Eliza the most. If any of them had decided to follow the creek in search of him, they might have surprised him into running. The question was, where would he have gone from there?
Glancing over at Lorenzo, she expected him to be at least somewhat impressed with Willy's theory, but judging from his set expression, he was reserving judgment. Disappointed, she told Willy, "You might be right, but we won't know until we see the campsite. Tell me more about the scarf and the log it was caught on. Where was it in relation to the campfire?"
"On the north side," he said promptly. "Maybe about ten yards away. If he was trying to get away from someone, that was the easiest way to go. It's rough country up there. There are cliffs on either side, and the creek's impossible to cross."
"So you think he went north?"
He shrugged. "He didn't have much choice if someone was trailing him from the south. It's the only way out."
As far as theories went, it was as good as any other, and only time would tell if he was right. Sensing Lorenzo's impatience to get on with the search, Eliza said, "Well, I guess we'll find out, won't we? Thanks for your help, Willy. We couldn't have gotten this far without you."
"I know what it's like to be missing," he said simply. "It's the loneliest, scariest feeling in the world."
There'd been a time in Vietnam when he'd been missing in action and on his own in the jungle, and the shadows of that still lingered in his eyes, decades later. For a long second, he just stood there, reflecting. Then he quietly turned and disappeared into the trees.
Staring after him, Eliza couldn't help but feel sorry for him, but there was nothing she could do for him, nothing he would let her do for him.. .except give him the space he needed. So she didn't call him back, but turned to Lorenzo instead. "Well, what do you think? Could the prince have headed north?"
"Maybe," he said with a shrug. "Maybe not. It's too soon to tell. I prefer to make my own conclusions once I've investigated the campsite."
Personally, Lorenzo didn't put much stock in anything Willy said. The man obviously had problems. He didn't seem quite in touch with reality, and if Lorenzo hadn't seen Lucas's scarf with his own two eyes, he never would have believed it was found by the old man. Did the abandoned campsite even exist? He hoped so. They'd find out soon enough.
They started the search at the spot where Lucas crashed his plane into the side of the mountain. The last time Lorenzo had been there, it had looked much different. The crash had only happened days before, and the shock had still been fresh. When Lorenzo had seen the wreckage for the first time, he'd sworn he could smell the prince's pain and horror as he'd realized he was going down. In spite of the fact that Lucas's body hadn't been discovered in the wreckage, Lorenzo had felt little hope that he would be found alive.
Time, however, had a way of healing all wounds. The fuselage and debris that were all that was left of the small plane had blended into the mountainside, and the snow nearly covered that. Anyone seeing the site for the first time would have thought the crash happened decades ago instead of just last year.
And this time, Lorenzo really believed Lucas had somehow managed to survive the crash. Oh, he hadn't changed his opinion about Willy, but he knew his cousin. He loved life and wouldn't have let go of it easily. If anyone could survive not only a plane crash, but the wildness of the Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter, it was Lucas.
"Where is the forest service road Willy mentioned?" he asked Eliza as she stood solemnly beside him, surveying the scene. "How would you get there from here on foot?"
Considering a moment, she frowned. "I'd head northeast as long as I could, then cross the creek and head north. I don't think the prince could have made it any other way if he was hurt. It's too rugged."
"Then let's try that," he said.
Surprised, she said, "You don't want to drive from here to the forest service road and start the search there? That's closer to where the scarf was found."
"But we aren't positive that the prince is the one who actually dropped the scarf at the campsite where it was found," he pointed out. "It could have been anyone—which is why I need to see if it would be possible for a man who walked away from a plane crash to make it from here to there on foot."
She hadn't thought of that. "Then I guess we'll leave the truck here and come back for it."
They started off through the woods, heading northeast, as she had suggested. Within minutes, they'd left the crash site behind and were completely surrounded by the forest. Following Lorenzo as he took the lead, Eliza tried to imagine what it must have been like for the prince after the crash. He had to have been dazed, probably hurt, and in all likelihood, he hadn't had a clue where he was or how far he was from civilization.
It must have been quite frightening, she thought with a shiver, especially when nightfall had approached. Darkness came early in the winter in the mountains, and he'd been all alone. Eliza liked to think she was pretty gutsy, but just thinking about that gave her the willies. There were wolves in the mountains. And bears...
Sure she felt the touch of eyes on her, she glanced over her shoulder, but there was nothing there. Nothing but trees. Goosebumps racing up her arms under the soft sheepskin of her coat, she moved closer to Lorenzo.
She hadn't thought he noticed, but suddenly, he, too, was examining the trees around them, his narrowed eyes missing little as he studied their surroundings. "Is something wrong?" he asked quietly.
Caught letting her imagination run away with her, she felt a blush sting her cheek. "I was imagining what it must have been like for the prince to find himself all alone up here," she admitted with a grin. "Then I got to thinking about wolves and bears..."
"And suddenly you could hear one sneaking up behind you," he guessed with a chuckle. "Don't worry, we're not going to be anyone's dinner. Whatever bears are in the region are hibernating, and the wolves are probably just as scared of you as you are of them. They won't bother you."
Logically, she knew that. But when they started through the trees again, she made sure she was just a few steps behind Lorenzo.
* * *
They crossed the creek at its narrowest point, then began the slow climb up to Walnut Ridge. It was a fairly steep hike, but not as difficult as it would have been if they'd taken a path to either the east or west. And even though the prince had probably been hurt after the crash, there was no question that he could have made the climb if his injuries weren't too severe.
"I don't know how the hell he walked away from that crash," Lorenzo said with a frown as they broke through the trees and reached the forest service road, "but he always was a lucky devil. I think he could have easily made it this far. But why didn't he call home, dammit? Or at least call for help? He had his cell phone with him."
"He must have been confused," Eliza said, "and who can blame him? You saw what the crash did to his plane. He couldn't have been thinking clearly."
Lorenzo agreed. He could well understand Lucas's muddled thinking after he'd plowed into the side of a mountain. But that didn't explain his continued silence. It had been a year since the crash, dammit! Where was he? Was he still walking around in a daze or had he somehow fallen into the hands of someone who meant him harm and wouldn't let him call his family?
Frustrated, the questions he had far outnumbering the few speculative answers he had, he said, "The answe
r has got to be here somewhere. C'mon. Let's find the campsite."
Given Willy's oddities, Lorenzo hadn't put much stock in the directions he'd given them, and with good reason. The man had refused to even look him in the eye! But when they headed due north, just as the old hermit had instructed, it wasn't any time before they came to the stand of aspen he'd told them about. And there in the middle of the trees was a small circle of stones that could only be the remains of a campfire.
"This must be it!" Eliza said excitedly. "Listen! You can hear the creek."
Cocking his head, Lorenzo caught the gurgle of a small creek in the distance. Eliza was right. This had to be the place where Willy had found the scarf. "I'll be damned," he said softly, impressed. "I didn't think the old geezer had it in him."
"I knew he wasn't lying," she replied, then sighed in relief. Suddenly realizing that she'd given herself away, she grinned ruefully. "Okay, so maybe I had a few doubts. Sometimes it's hard to know with Willy."
Having now met the old man, Lorenzo could well understand that, but at least he appeared to have told the truth this time. And if they were lucky, there would be a clue somewhere in the vicinity that would tell them why Lucas had left and where he might have gone.
Surveying the area, however, he didn't see signs of much life. It was a stark place for Lucas to take refuge. The aspen, naked of their leaves in the dead of winter, offered little protection from the weather, and the snow seemed to collect in unusually high drifts on the east side of trees. When the north wind blew, it was colder than hell.
"What was he doing here?" he murmured to himself as he began to inspect the campsite. "He apparently traveled five miles from where he crashed and stopped here long enough to at least make a firepit and start a fire. Why? Was he just too tired to go on or what?"
"Maybe it was getting dark and he didn't have any choice," Eliza suggested. "If he was going to survive the night, he had to have a fire."
"Or some other kind of shelter," he replied, his green eyes speculative as he slowly turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees and tried to imagine why Lucas had stopped here, of all places. Then his eyes landed on a dead tree that had fallen at an awkward angle at the base of a snow covered hill. Located just a matter of feet from the firepit, the tree should have lain flat at the base of the hill but it didn't. And it was that, Lorenzo decided, that bothered him. What was under that tree?
"What are you doing?" Eliza asked when he suddenly grabbed a stick off the ground and poked through the branches of the fallen tree. When he met no resistance, he started to smile. "What?" Eliza said in confusion. "What's so amusing?"
"The tree's covering the entrance to some kind of small cave," he told her, grinning, and proved it by pulling the decomposing tree away from where it lay. There, jutting out from the side of the hill, was a small rocky opening that appeared to be the entrance to a shallow cave.
"I knew it!" he said, pleased. "I bet the cave wasn't covered when he found it, so he dragged the tree over the opening to conceal it so he'd be safe."
Stepping closer, he knelt down at the opening and peered inside, only to feel his heart stop in midbeat when he saw the contents of the cave. There on the ground was a red thermal blanket that was identical to the ones carried on all of the king's aircraft. The queen had insisted that all blankets be red in case there was ever a crash—the blankets would be nearly as effective as a flare when they were spread out on the ground to flag down rescue planes.
"What is it?" Eliza asked quietly when he turned to stone. "Did you find something?"
"This," he said huskily, and pulled out the blanket. "It's from Lucas's plane. I'm sure of it."
Protected from the weather all these months, it was clean and dry and neatly folded, as if the prince had just left it. And that made little, if no, sense. Glancing around, Eliza scowled. Damn, she hated it when things weren't logical!
"It seems like he would have stayed here until help came for him," she told Lorenzo with a frown. "The man had a blanket and cave to keep him safe from the elements, a firepit and plenty of firewood to warm him, not to mention water from the creek to drink. It was the middle of winter, he couldn't have known where he was, but he still walked off and left the safest place he'd found. Why? What possessed him to do such a thing? The authorities had dogs and helicopters looking for him all over these mountains. You know he had to at least hear the helicopters. Why didn't he spread the blanket out in the clearing? Somebody would have found him."
He shrugged, worry darkening his eyes as he looked around. "I don't know. Maybe he was so shaken from the crash that he wasn't thinking clearly and didn't realize anyone was looking for him."
"Or something spooked him," she said. "Think about it. Why else would he have left the blanket? He thought to dig it out of the wreckage of the plane, but then he walked off without it when he left here. I can't think of any reason why he would do that unless he was scared and he left in a hurry."
His brows knit in a frown, Lorenzo didn't like the sound of that, but he had to agree that there was little other reason for Lucas to abandon the cave. Unless, he was out in the surrounding woods, searching for food, and wasn't able to make it back to camp for some reason. He could have fallen and broken a leg or hit his head and knocked himself out. In the dead of winter, that would have been a costly mistake.
No! he told himself fiercely. Lucas wasn't dead! He couldn't be. Not when they were so close to finding him. There had to be another explanation.
"I want to look around," he told Eliza hoarsely. "Just in case."
He didn't say just in case of what, but he didn't have to. If he'd learned anything about Eliza over the past few days, it was that she wasn't a slow-witted woman. "Let's spread out," she suggested. "We can cover more territory. I'll meet you back here in a half hour."
Moving to opposite sides of the campsite, they began the search with grim expressions. Later, Lorenzo couldn't have even said what he was looking for.. .except a body. Thankfully, they didn't find one. They didn't find anything, in fact, and Lorenzo had just about resigned himself to the fact that he might never know what had led Lucas to abandon the campsite when he inadvertently stumbled across a deer stand half-hidden in some trees about a quarter of a mile from the camp.
"It had to be hunters," he told Eliza when they met back at the campsite. "He heard the guns and must have thought someone was shooting at him."
"So he took off."
Lorenzo nodded grimly. "He wouldn't have gone south, that's where the hunters were."
"And the cliffs on either side of the creek made it impossible for him to go east or west. He had no choice but to go north."
"Just like Willy said," he retorted. "Crafty old goat. I bet he knew about that deer stand all along."
Eliza shrugged, a rueful smile curling the corners of her mouth. "I wouldn't put it past him. Willy doesn't always feel the need to share everything he knows."
"Now you tell me," Lorenzo retorted, but he couldn't complain. Willy had put them on the right path to finding the prince, and he owed him for that. There was no question that the king and queen would reward him for his help if he would let them, but for now, he couldn't worry about Willy. Half the day was gone, and he had a feeling they had a long way to go before they tracked down Lucas. By mutual agreement, they headed north.
For a while, they made good time. Hurrying to keep up with Lorenzo's long stride, Eliza didn't notice that the terrain had become progressively rougher until she unexpectedly stepped in a hole. Between one heartbeat and the next, she went down.
She didn't remember crying out, but suddenly, Lorenzo was there, his handsome face lined with worry. "Are you all right? What happened? Here, let me help you up."
"I stepped in a hole," she said, dazed. She struggled to her feet, only to wince, and in the next instant, he'd swept her up off her feet and set her head spinning. "Lorenzo! What are you doing?"
"Making sure you didn't break your ankle," he growled, and carried her
over to a nearby log. Setting her down, he immediately dropped down to a knee in front of her and began gently tugging off her right boot and sock.
Eliza told herself there was nothing personal in his touch —he would have done the same for anyone. Then his hand closed around her bare ankle, and just that easily, he set every nerve ending in her body tingling. Startled, she gasped softly.. .and drew his eyes to her.
"Does that hurt?" he asked huskily.
He knew it didn't—she could see the awareness in his eyes, the same awareness that now had her heart thundering in her breast—but she only shook her head. "No," she choked. "It's just a little tender. I'm sure I'll be fine."
He frowned at that. "Maybe we should call off the search for the rest of the day."
"No! I appreciate the offer, but it's not necessary. Really," she insisted when he hesitated. "I'm fine. Look."
She wiggled her foot, testing her ankle. Under his hand, Lorenzo felt the delicacy of her bones, and in spite of himself, he was fascinated. Because she was such a tiger when it came to her job, he tended to forget just how delicate she was as a woman.. .until he touched her. Then he found himself wanting to run his hands over her. Just once, he told himself, he wanted to see how soft she was.
Don't even think about going there, a voice in his head growled. Not unless you want the story to end up on the front page.
That brought him back to his senses as nothing else could, and with a hastily swallowed oath, he jerked his hand back and handed her her sock. "If you're sure. Tell me if it starts to hurt you."
Rising to his feet, he vowed he wasn't going to touch her again. But as soon as she'd pulled her sock and boot back on and they continued moving north, he couldn't stop himself from reaching out to help her whenever they reached a rough spot. And with every touch of their hands, he found it harder and harder to let her go.
When they finally reached the end of the narrow valley and stumbled onto a road, Lorenzo was torn between relief and frustration. He didn't have to touch her anymore, but they'd come to the end of the trail. Once Lucas reached the road, he could have gone anywhere.