Operation: Monarch

by Valerie Parv

  Her pulse jumped and she breathed deeply to steady it. Garth would be with her. He wouldn't let anything happen to her. Nor she to him.

  She felt Jessica drift to a stop as the anchor took hold. Garth came back moments later and secured the helm. "Doesn't someone have to stay aboard?" she asked, knowing she was delaying the evil moment.

  "It's wise but not always practical. Are you volunteering?"

  Did he know how tempted she was to say yes? "No way. It's a perfect day for a swim."

  However rough and ready the boat appeared from the outside, it was well equipped and the diving gear Garth supplied was faultlessly maintained. When he drilled her on the hand signals they would need to communicate underwater, she was pleased to find she remembered all of them. He got the message when she crooked an arm over her head, the fingertips pointing to her hair in the "I'm OK" signal.

  What she had forgotten was how much gear there was. Wet suit, fins, weights, buoyancy control vest, mask and snorkel. The compressed air cylinder felt massive on her back. "Now I know how a turtle feels," she said with a shaky laugh as she settled the weight on her shoulders.

  He measured her with a look. "A very sexy turtle."

  She busied herself helping him with his gear so he wouldn't see the blush starting. Right now she should be terrified of what they might encounter under the sea. Instead she was worried about what her blush might reveal to Garth.

  Then it came to her that his compliment was a deliberate attempt to distract her from her fears. She felt almost good as she fitted her breathing regulator and adjusted the face mask over her eyes. At a signal from Garth she held onto the mask and rolled backward into the harbor.

  She had to keep reminding herself of the first rule of diving: keep breathing. The next thing she discovered was how difficult it was to sink at all. While equalizing the pressure in her ears and mask, she had gulped as much air as she could. No wonder she couldn't achieve neutral buoyancy.

  Gradually her training came back to her and she was able to follow Garth down the weighted guide rope. As comfortable in the water as the sea lion his wet suit made him resemble, he was remarkably patient with her inexperience, although she knew he would have been on the bottom long before if he hadn't waited for her.

  He had told her they would be down for a total of thirty minutes. At first she had worried that it wouldn't give them long enough to reach the wreck of the Onalos and search for clues. Now time seemed to stand still as they descended deeper into the silent blue world.

  She thought it too much of a coincidence that his parents' boat had blown up leaving no one with firsthand knowledge of his birth. He had been born on the boat when his mother went into early labor, he'd been told. His father had delivered him following radioed instructions from the paramedics. Strange that her investigation had turned up no record of the emergency call, or of the Remys seeking medical help when they returned to port.

  Garth's birth hadn't been registered until a few days afterward, not unusual in itself until Serena considered the other circumstances. Still she found it hard to accept him as the lost Prince Louis. Because she didn't want him to be?

  Pulling herself carefully down the guide rope, she filled her lungs with compressed air and felt a little light-headed. They weren't going deep enough for nitrogen narcosis—the bends—to be a hazard, so she put the feeling down to confusion. Why couldn't she be clear about what she wanted? She made herself concentrate on the task at hand, and realized in some amazement that she hadn't thought about the possibility of sharks for whole long minutes.

  Carramer was well known for its magnificent coral and sponge-encrusted underwater formations. With a current constantly flowing, Serena drifted along almost effortlessly, admiring the kaleidoscope of colors and details.

  On the bottom she saw dozens of sea anemones, their crowns of tentacles waving in the current as they held themselves in place by two-foot-long tubes buried in the firm, muddy bottom. Most anemones were light gray, but a few glowed orange or deep purple.

  Surrounding her were tropical fish of every shape and hue, from tiny angel fish to a hundred-pound wrasse colored a vivid turquoise. Her heart thumped wildly and she couldn't stop herself from flinching as a dark, sinuous shape loomed overhead until she realized it was a bottle-nosed dolphin come to check them out. Further away she saw a pod of them playing near the surface.

  The Onalos had gone down on the sandy mud bottom beyond the coastal patrol breakwater. According to Garth, the explosion had scattered wreckage over a wide area but part of the wheelhouse was intact and accessible.

  When she reached the sandy bottom, Garth signaled for her to follow him away from the guide rope. Almost immediately her inexpert finning stirred up a cloud of silt, reducing visibility to zero. For a moment she couldn't see Garth and her sense of panic returned. Then she saw him approach what she'd taken to be a cluster of rocks. As the silt subsided she saw they were the remains of a vessel.

  A monster-size lobster scuttled away from her feet as she swam closer. Through the window of Garth's mask his eyes were dark with sadness and anger as he touched what she guessed was the wheel of his parents' boat. Although her wet suit protected her from the cold, she shivered as she reached out and grasped his shoulder.

  His nod acknowledged her gesture. Then he began to pick through the wreckage scattered across the sea floor. Serena wondered what they could possibly find that the authorities hadn't already seen.

  Taking her cue from him she kicked along above the debris field, not certain what she expected to find. Surely anything of significance would already have been lifted to the surface?

  Without warning a rogue current caught her, sweeping her away from Garth. Focusing on the wreckage, he didn't see her futile grab for him as she was dragged along. By the time she managed to halt her progress by wrapping her arms around a coral-studded rock formation, he was lost in the silt cloud kicked up by her helter-skelter passage.

  Her breathing sounded as heavy as a crank phone call in her ears. Keep breathing, she ordered herself. Before the dive, Garth had instructed her to surface and swim for the Jessica if they became separated. She could manage that.

  Keeping a death grip on the rock, she stilled herself while the silt settled, then looked around. She was in the undersea equivalent of Stonehenge, a roughly circular formation of coral-studded rocks, most about waist high, one or two smaller. From fist-size openings in the rock, the gaping mouths of snowflake eels seemed to grin at her, although she knew they were only waiting to snag a meal as it swam by.

  One of the eels protruding from a low opening in the rock looked dead. Its mouth was closed and what she could see of the body was black. Then it shifted slightly with the current and she caught a glint of silver. Not an eel, but what?

  Moving slowly to avoid stirring up more silt, she worked her way down the rock. Close up, the object was a black and silver toy submarine. Jammed into the crevice, it resisted her first attempt to remove it. When she freed it, she saw it was about a foot long, the inside crammed with a substance that looked like modeling clay. It was probably nothing more than it seemed, but she decided to show it to Garth anyway.

  When she surfaced she was closer to the Jessica than she expected. Garth was scanning the water for her. He had pushed his mask up onto his head, and his face was lined with worry. "Where the hell did you go?" he demanded when she reached him.

  She grasped the ladder at the back of the boat, unwillingly pleased by his obvious concern. "A current took me away from you. I'm fine."

  He levered himself onto the dive platform and offered her his hand. "Next time I won't let you out of my sight."

  She let him help her out of the water. "I'm not sure there'll be a next time. It was pretty scary getting swept away."

  "Not as scary as finding you gone. What have you got there?"

  She had almost forgotten she still clutched her find. "A toy boat I found wedged in an eel hole. It's probably nothing."

  He too
k it from her and studied it for a moment, his expression darkening. "I don't know too many toy boats that come packed with C4 plastic explosive."

  Fear jolted through her and she recoiled instinctively from the innocent-looking object. "I thought it was modeling clay, weighting the boat to help it sink."

  His hand gripped her shoulder. "It's harmless as it is. You can hit C4 with a hammer and it won't explode until it's triggered by the right detonator."

  * * *

  Despite his assurance, she wanted to put some space between herself and the evil toy, so she accepted Garth's offer to let her go first in the boat's tiny shower. When she came out he was dressed and seated at the table, turning the toy over in his hands. So she wouldn't have to watch, she busied herself making coffee in the compact kitchen, the galley, she reminded herself.

  As she waited for the water to boil, she asked, "What is plastic explosive doing inside a toy boat?"

  He looked thoughtful. "The day my parents' boat went down, a family regatta was being held at Solander Lagoon, across the bay."

  "You think someone used a bomb disguised as a toy to destroy your parents' boat?"

  He nodded grimly. "While pretending to take part in the regatta, the saboteur had only to wait until my parents had some obvious engine trouble. Anyone keeping them under observation would have known how unreliable their engine was."

  She tensed again as he peered into the sub's tiny conning tower as if seeking answers there. "The saboteur could have aimed one of these at the Onalos, attaching it by remotely activated magnets, then triggered the explosion by remote. To anyone watching, it would look as if the engine had simply blown up."

  She thought of the debris she'd seen scattered on the sea bed. "That toy can't hold more than a handful of explosive, surely not enough to cause so much damage?"

  He brushed strands of wet hair away from his eyes, which she saw were cold with anger, making her thankful it wasn't directed at her. "A quarter pound of C4 rolled into a cigar-thick line about eight inches long and placed against a steel beam can cut through it as if you'd used a cutting torch. A pound of it placed at the four corners of a building will take down that building. Water density also increases the concussive effect of the explosion."

  She didn't attempt to mask her horror at his matter-of-fact recitation. Nor did she like to think how he had come by his knowledge. "How would the C4 be detonated?"

  "From an electrical generator small enough to fit in your hand. It was probably built into a cell phone or even the remote control used to operate the boat."

  It was chillingly clever and unbelievably callous. "Why is the toy still in one piece."

  "The saboteur probably needed more than one attempt before he got his deadly toy attached to its target."

  She handed him a mug of coffee. "Then there may be more of these things out there?"

  He wrapped his hands around the mug. "There's no way to tell. On land, C4 can be sniffed out by trained police dogs, but there are no underwater detectors available."

  "But now we know your parents' boat was sabotaged, the police have something to go on," she said.

  His face took on a look of savagery. "Establishing that there was a bomb doesn't tell us a damn thing about who set it."

  She added milk to her coffee and slid into the banquette opposite him, wishing he would stop playing with the toy. It may be harmless until detonated but it gave her the creeps. "Carramer First has to be behind this," she said.

  "C4 is a military-issue explosive. A group of republican crackpots couldn't get their hands on it easily."

  She sipped thoughtfully. "Unless our friend, the Hand, has military connections."

  "Or is ex-military himself."

  Someone with the kind of training and experience Garth himself possessed, she mused. It reduced the field to—say—a few thousand suspects. Since they still didn't know the Hand's nationality, and were only assuming he was male, the field of candidates was widening instead of narrowing.

  He had replaced the toy submarine on the table where it sat between them like a sea snake poised to bite. She touched it gingerly. "I'll ask Matt to see what forensics can make of it."

  Garth's hand clamped around her wrist. "Not yet."

  She didn't pull away, although her heart began it's now-familiar racing at the touch. "It's evidence in a murder investigation."

  "The murder of my parents," he stated coldly. "I still have contacts in the navy. They might know more about this thing's origins. Every demolition expert has his own way of assembling a device. The saboteur may have left clues he was unaware of leaving."

  Deliberately she matched his coldness. "While I grieve for your loss, this isn't only about your parents, but about the future of the kingdom. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble—including murder—to put you in line with the throne in time for the arrival of the American president. I can't sit on new evidence while you play secret agent."

  In the eyes Garth lifted to her, she saw the blind desire for revenge. Then she saw him master it with a superhuman effort. "Naturally your job must come first."

  Her gaze blurred until she shook her head. "Does it have to be a choice?"

  "You just made it one. And spelled out which side you're on."

  Before she was fully aware of making a decision, the protest screamed from her throat. "No. I'm on your side, Garth, I always have been."

  "Then you know why I have to do this my way."

  Torn between duty and desire, she knew there was only one answer she could give him. "Damn you, you can have twenty-four hours."

  Chapter 13

  Garth slammed a brake on the satisfaction bolting through him. He was used to Serena riding her moral high horse. He shouldn't read anything into her decision to climb down off it for twenty-four hours.

  She'd agreed for his sake.

  And gone diving with him when everything in her had wanted to stay safe and dry aboard the boat. Not only had she kept her head, she'd managed to find the evidence they needed.

  Now she was willing to put her career on the line to let him pursue his parents' killers.

  She cared.

  And now that he knew she did, he didn't want her to. Going to bed with her was one thing. They were both adults and were entitled to take their pleasure where they would. Letting her become emotionally attached to him was something else again.

  This morning he hadn't spent all his time playing Hawk Raider. Using a few slightly dubious skills he'd acquired in DARE training, he'd finessed his way into her personnel record, learning that she was on the fast track to the top in her career. He'd found enough good-conduct awards to paper a room, and the details of her earning a commendation for bravery when she'd been shot in the line of duty had made his blood run cold. He'd had to breathe long and deeply to get his temper under control at the thought of anyone harming her.

  When had he grown a conscience, he wondered? Some of her lofty principles must be rubbing off. One of them was telling him he couldn't go back to the castle and let her lie to the prince—even by omission—about what they'd learned today.

  There was only one solution. He would send her back alone while he learned what he could about the toy submarine. Prince Lorne was fair-minded enough not to hold Serena accountable for Garth slipping his leash, so her record wouldn't be tarnished.

  He stood up and pulled a duffel bag out from under the table, beginning to pack it with a few things he would need.

  She watched him with interest. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm not coming back to the castle with you."

  Her expression darkened. "The hell you're not. I'm responsible for your security."

  "I'll be secure enough where I'm going."

  Her palms flattened against the table's polished wooden surface. "Mind telling me where that is?"

  "My parents' house. Now I have proof they were murdered, the house might hold clues I've missed."

  "I'm coming with you."

  "Prince Lorne expect
s you back at the castle and that's where you're going to report your findings to him." She reached for the toy submarine but he moved faster. "That stays with me."

  "I'll need it as evidence."

  "You gave me twenty-four hours to check it out. After that it's yours."

  She huffed an impatient breath at him. "You aren't making much sense."

  "The only person I have to make sense to is me."

  "And you're afraid I'm starting to understand you, is that it?"

  He placed the toy boat into the duffel bag and zipped it up. "You don't need to understand me, Serena. I'm not good for you."

  Her hand snaked out and caught his wrist. "I'll be the judge of what's good for me."

  Her eyes glowed with a warmth he didn't want to see there, but it persisted and a fresh groundswell of desire rolled over him. He could have broken her grip with a move that would have prevented her from using her hand for several weeks. Instead he turned his hand gently but irresistibly and caressed the inside of her wrist, feeling her pulse hammer under his fingers.

  Her hair had dried to a soft halo around her head. With the strands backlit by the afternoon sun she looked like a Renaissance angel. He smoothed her hair with his free hand, hearing her make a soft sound he read as encouragement.

  He didn't need much. He slid his hand down the side of her face, drawing a strangled breath as she turned her head and kissed his palm. In a minute he would send her on her way, he promised himself.

  Like a sleepwalker she stood and linked her arms around his neck, her face upturned, waiting. He lowered his mouth to accept her silent invitation.

  The taste of her flowed through him like fine wine. She tasted of coffee and smelled of ocean breezes, seducing his senses until he felt as light-headed as if he'd surfaced too quickly from a technical dive. On a sigh she dropped her head back, and he skimmed his lips over the softness at her throat, aware of an abyss opening at his feet. He wanted to spiral all the way down with her, take her to places she'd only ever dreamed of going.