Seemingly seconds later, Lauren woke up with a start, blinking owlishly.
This wasn’t the boat.
This wasn’t a hospital either.
In the semidarkness, which was punctuated by glowing monitors, the room seemed lavish yet vaguely clinical, with a cart at her bedside set up with blinking monitors. Where…where was she?
Then she woke up more fully and jerked to attention as she recognized Dimitri by her bedside.
He was sleeping in a chair. The seat should have seemed too small for him, as large as he was. But he seemed to occupy the space perfectly, not ungainly at all, more poised, ready for action…even in his sleep. His shoulder was heavily bandaged—she could see the trailing edge of the white gauze beneath the collar of his loose button-down shirt. But he appeared…healthy. Whole. She watched the rise and fall of his chest, and her mind was suddenly filled with too many images, too many impossible truths.
Is Henry really…gone?
She jerked her attention to the front of the room as a door opened quietly. She squinted as she recognized Nicki, who strode into her room without making a sound, her weight on her toes in that uniquely athletic way she had, always ready to dash off in another direction at a moment’s notice. Lauren waited until she was all the way up to her, then pointed to Dimitri and held a finger to her lips.
Nicole nodded, leaning down to keep her voice low.
“Hey. I figured out where they were keeping you as soon as I could.” Her eyes widened as she eyed Lauren’s bandage. “Girl, you know how to have a good time. They told me Dimitri had been knifed.”
Lauren glanced hurriedly at Dimitri, but he didn’t stir. “Did they tell you anything else?” Self-consciously, she gripped the sheets hard, ignoring the dull ache in her shoulder. “Do you know what happened to Henry?”
“I know he threatened Maddie, and so you went after him. After that, they completely shut down about the whole thing, and I toyed with trying to get more information but decided I would rather see you instead.” She met Lauren’s gaze. “Is Henry dead? Did you guys get in some sort of actual fight fight?”
“I…” Lauren sighed heavily, trying to get used to the idea. “I think so, yeah. Henry’s dead.”
“Oh my God, girl.” Nicki reached for her hand and gripped it tight, the simple act of friendship nearly undoing Lauren’s control. As if sensing that, Nicki kept talking. “They all blew up when Dimitri’s call came through, everyone talking fast. I couldn’t understand them. They spoke only Garronois, of course, which was pretty annoying even if it is their native language.” She grimaced. “I plan to be on hand when they meet with your parents, because they’re totally going to have to speak English then.”
“My parents? Where are they?” Lauren endured an entirely new rush of anxiety. Did they know? Had they guessed? And what would their reaction be to Henry’s death? Surely they wouldn’t blame her… She tried to remember the sequence of events on the island, but her mind slipped and slid over the facts, unwilling to focus. “Do they know I’m here?”
“In the castle, but not aware of your presence, no. Apparently you’re allowed to get a full night’s rest before you’re put through the gauntlet.” Nicki made a face. “Of course, here I am, ruining that. Well, me and the bodyguard anyway. Though at least he has the grace to stay quiet.”
Lauren’s gaze strayed to Dimitri. He remained asleep. “II tried to warn him away, but…I’d hoped he’d follow me when I went to meet Henry,” she said, unable to speak louder than a whisper. “I didn’t know if he would.”
“Well, of course he would. That was kind of his job.”
“True.” Lauren frowned, her appreciation turning into speculation. How much of the past few days had been a duty to the Garronian captain? How much simply a distraction? And why was he here, now, dozing by her bed, when there would be no way that anyone could get this deep inside the castle to attack her? Why was he with her at all? “Do you know anything about the watch Dimitri found? The one he thought was Ari’s? Did Stefan talk to you about that?”
“You’re so cute that you think Stefan talks to me. About anything. He’s the most closemouthed man I’ve ever met, no matter how much I want to get him naked. Again.”
Lauren blinked at her. “Again?”
“Well, nearly. I might have challenged him to a swim-off in the castle pool once when he decided to read me the riot act about swimming in the ocean. I almost beat him too. But either way, totally worth it. You have never seen anyone so gorgeous undressed in all your entire life, I’m telling you.”
Lauren let her gaze shift back to Dimitri. “Well, I think I could give you a run for your money on that.”
“Totally different type of hot.” Nicki rocked forward on her heels. “So what’s going to happen now between you two, anyway?”
“Between us?” Lauren frowned, her heart twisting. “There is no us, Nicki. He’s a military captain of a country I don’t belong to.”
“And a bodyguard.”
“And a bodyguard, yes. But that was a short-term assignment, one he executed very well. He’ll go back to his life. I’ll go back to my life.” The words curdled in her stomach. She’d not really considered what life would be like without Dimitri. Which was stupid. She barely knew the man. And she knew only one version of him at that, the version that was designed to keep her in place on a tiny island by whatever means he had at his disposal. He’d chosen a very effective means.
But now that assignment was over, and they both had to get on with their lives. Him to serve his country and the royal family, and her to…do whatever it was she was supposed to do.
What was that again?
“Well, if you ask me, and—” But Nicki didn’t get to finish her sentence. The door opened with a sharp click, and Lauren’s gaze swung to see Dimitri now standing at attention while Stefan entered the room along with Cyril and the king and queen. When had Dimitri woken up? How much had he heard of her conversation with Nicki?
She watched Stefan take in the room, zeroing in on Nicki. A pulse jumped in his jaw, but he said nothing as Queen Catherine stepped forward quickly. “You’re awake, oh good. I told Stefan that you would hardly sleep the night away. You’re going to be fine,” she said, taking Lauren’s uninjured hand in hers. “We have the best doctors on the continent, though Dimitri tells me your wound should be sufficiently tended for the moment, as long as there’s no infection.”
“There won’t be.” Dimitri said the words gruffly. Queen Catherine squeezed her hand.
“Well, there you go, dear. Dr. Korba has spoken, and we should all be at our ease now, right?”
Lauren removed her hand as quickly as she could from the queen’s without being awkward, and she turned her face to Dimitri, her chin tilted to the right, her expression serene, though she felt like she’d lost all her tools, all her tricks. Though she felt completely alone again, her shields torn away. She’d gotten through worse conversations, however. She would get through this one too. The way she always did.
By distracting everyone.
“So, is the watch truly Ari’s?”
Dimitri heard the question like a pistol shot, only it wasn’t aimed at him. Not directly, anyway. It was a flare that Lauren was firing off as a diversion, and by God, it worked exactly as she’d intended it to.
The queen froze. The king grimaced with the kind of weariness of a man whose secrets are always discovered by the one he loves the most. Stefan bristled with irritation, and Cyril went red. Just another day in paradise.
Catherine recovered first, as Catherine always did. “You found Ari’s watch? Where?” It took only a glance at her husband to confirm the truth, and she poked him in the arm. “When, precisely, were you planning on telling me, Jasen? I mean, for God’s sake, what does a woman have to do around here to stay informed?”
“It would appear that is becoming easier and easier.” Stefan’s gaze was once again on Nicki, boring holes in her temple as she ignored him, her eyes also traine
d on the king.
Cyril tried to break in. “Your Highness, there’s no need to discuss this now.”
“Don’t you ‘Your Highness’ me,” Catherine said, turning on Cyril hotly. In her eyes, Dimitri could see the hope that bolstered him and broke his heart at the same time, the one thing he’d guarded against but hated to see die these past long months. “I asked you if the watch—why am I asking you. Give it to me!” She held out her hand imperiously, as if Cyril had the piece on him.
The adviser lifted both hands. “The watch is currently being examined, Your Majesty.”
“It’s his.” Dimitri was surprised to hear his own voice cut across Cyril’s. As everyone pivoted to stare at him, he fought back his own flush at speaking out of turn. But this was Ari they were talking about. Ari, who’d been dead for far too long. “Or if it’s not his, it’s a close enough fake that it would raise questions all on its own.”
“You found it?” the queen demanded. “Of course you found it. Where? How?”
Dimitri glanced at Lauren, who was watching him with eyes too big for her face, as if she couldn’t absorb the image of him all at once. Anger surged anew, and he fought it with his own brand of offense. “Lauren did.”
That took Lauren off guard as the queen swiveled back to her. “I didn’t intend to!” Lauren said hurriedly, and now it was her turn to lift her hands in unconscious protection against the queen’s intensity. “I noticed it as odd, is all. It was being worn by a man who didn’t seem to be the type to have such an expensive watch. When I brought Dimitri’s attention to it, he thought he recognized it.”
“Who is this man?” the queen demanded, and King Jasen gripped her shoulder when she would have wheeled again on Dimitri.
“Catherine, we don’t have those answers. Why do you think I haven’t told you yet? There is far too much that we don’t know.” He squeezed her arm to forestall her next question. “And yes, we are going to question the man who had the watch. As Lauren said, it’s clear that he wouldn’t have been able to purchase the watch at anything near its real value, and yet he was wearing it openly and without any attempt to hide it, at a port where he knew Dimitri had put out calls for scavenged or discarded wreckage.”
There was no way he could miss the queen’s wince, but Jasen continued. “We have men in place to intercept his boat at the next port. We’ll learn what we can then.”
“But where is he from?” She turned again to Dimitri. “His boat—is he Garronois? Surely not. Greek, then?”
“Turkish.” Dimitri fought a weary smile at her expression. He recognized that look as well. Ari had worn it far too many times to count. “But we must first find out how long ago he took ownership of the watch.”
“We have to go there—to Turkey. But…” She frowned, her hands coming up to her brows. “We sent so many envoys, requests for assistance. We scoured that coast!”
“We didn’t scour it, in fact.” Surprisingly, it was Cyril who spoke, almost as if the words were being dragged from him. “We sent out search parties, of course. But the plane didn’t carry enough fuel to fly to a Turkish airstrip, and it was unlikely that Ari would drift so far off his trajectory as to crash-land on a hostile coast. He wasn’t an idiot.”
“But we have to go there,” Catherine said again. “We need to find out where he might have been. If he’s still there, sick or injured or—”
“Catherine.” Jasen’s words were quelling, but to his credit, he didn’t touch the queen or gather her into his arms. Queen Catherine was a woman of strength in her own right. Her emotional outburst might have seemed a sign of weakness in another person, but with her, it simply overlaid a steel core. “If he’s still there, do you not think he would have moved heaven and earth to find us?”
“What if he couldn’t?” she snapped back. “They could have him in some prison, Jasen, until they figure out what to do with him. Our relations are not all they should be. You know this. What better way to torment us?”
“Not torment.” Once again, it was Cyril’s voice of reason blanketing the room with its matter-of-fact practicality. “If we don’t know, how can we suffer? A year is too long for men with political agendas. These are not careful statisticians; they are devious and cunning strategists. If some faction of the Turkish government, recognized or otherwise, had Aristotle, we would have known about it already.”
“He could be hiding.” Nicki was up on her toes, balancing her weight. “If he’s injured, can’t get out, he could be trying to hide his identity.” She tilted her head. “You know, I was toying around with that windsurfing competition coming up in Alacati, but I bailed for this trip. I could totally try to sign up anyway and poke around—”
“Absolutely not.” Unsurprisingly, it was Stefan who snapped the response, but Nicki barreled on.
“Seriously, I’m really good at windsurfing. And I’d be the perfect cover. If there’s somewhere you want to check out on the down low, and it’s near anything at all remotely coastal, not only would it make sense for me to go it would make sense for you to send some of your strapping GNSF types to protect me. Being the fragile flower and all that I am.”
“Nicki—” This was Lauren, now, and her face was set in unexpected lines of worry. Dimitri caught the wrongness of that look, the tension, but Nicki scowled back at Lauren.
“I can do this,” she said resolutely, then brightened and shrugged. “If there’s anything to be done, that is. You find something on that boat that makes sense to explore, then I’m your girl. If not, then no harm, no foul.”
The men in the room exchanged a glance so obvious it was laughable. No matter what was found on the boat, Nicki wouldn’t hear of it.
Queen Catherine apparently didn’t get the memo. “Excellent. It’s the perfect subterfuge, and completely reasonable. Half the hemisphere knows we have the Americans under our roof, and Nicole’s expertise in adventure travel and extreme sports is well documented. With the proper escort, she would be quite safe.” Her gaze traveled meaningfully to Stefan, who looked ready to burst a blood vessel.
“Your Highness, it is not advisable in any situation to embroil a civilian in the affairs of the Crown, let alone an untrained civilian—”
Nicki scoffed. “You’re just mad because I beat you in rock climbing.”
“Who doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.”
The comment was so rude coming from Stefan that it was almost breathtaking, but Nicki defused the situation immediately with her bright, bold laugh. “Seems to me having a loud, obnoxious American who doesn’t know her place would cause about as much distraction as you could hope for, letting you and whoever you have tagging along skulk about while everyone’s eyes are on me. I know the Turks aren’t big on Western women acting foolishly, so I won’t be an idiot, but a little bit of brash can go a long way, I’m telling you.”
The queen lifted a hand. “It’s an excellent idea if we discover anything of merit from the boat of this man who had Ari’s watch. A watch I now want to see.” She turned to Dimitri. “Take me to wherever Cyril has sent the thing. I refuse to wait another minute.”
She glanced back to Lauren as Dimitri stood at attention. “You focus on getting well, dear. Your parents will be informed of your miraculous return early tomorrow morning, and you’ll want to look your best.”
“Of course.” Lauren wasn’t looking at the queen anymore; she was looking at Dimitri. But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—meet her eyes. Not and maintain his control. Instead, he focused on the queen.
“Your Majesty?” he said, gesturing to the door.
The queen’s sharp eyes traveled between them. “Thank you,” she said primly, and exited the room. He fell into step beside her.
She wasn’t three steps down the corridor, however, when she turned on him. “Right after you show me where Ari’s watch is, get your head out of your ass and go to that girl. You people are so young and foolish, you make my bones hurt.”
Then she turned and sailed down the corrid
or.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lauren barely waited for the room to clear before turning on Nicki. “Are you insane?”
Nicki, for her part, bounced on her toes. “So I maybe got ahead of myself. But it’s not my fault. Stefan has that smirk on his face that I want to rip off him every time he looks my way. I’ve not been so universally disapproved of since Mrs. Metusik in the third grade.”
“Nicki, that’s not what I’m talking about. This is a nonstandard experience if ever I’ve heard of one. What if you…” She pointed at Nicki’s chest. “Collapse or whatever?”
“I won’t,” Nicki scoffed. “I only told you about my situation because we were zip-lining, but before that, you had no idea—none. I’ve never gone into cardiac arrest, and I probably won’t, no matter what my family history.”
Lauren closed her eyes. On the day that Emmaline had met Prince Kristos, the two of them had gone zip-lining in the middle of the Garronois mountains while Fran and Emmaline had toured the royal palace. Before they’d reached the base where they’d begin their expedition, Nicole had measured out a cocktail of beta blockers, which she downed with the practiced ease of someone long used to medication. She’d explained the bare minimum of the risk she took on a daily basis regarding her heart condition, and had refused to say anything more.
Lauren had gotten the rest out of Emmaline, and it wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad, hopefully, probably, but Nicki would never know for sure until she consented to get fully tested. Which she was dead set against. And that meant that every time Nicki pushed herself too far, she ran the ultimate risk.
Captured (Gowns & Crowns #2) Page 21