Royal Lockdown

by Rebecca York

  With the timing off, the mission blew up in their faces. From somewhere deep in the building, one of the insurgents released cyanide gas. The team members were prepared and had masks.

  But some of the innocent men and women being held hadn’t made it, including Secretary of State Rollins.

  Liam forced his lips into a parody of a smile.

  Grant Davis had come out of the mission a hero. That wouldn’t be the case tonight. Instead he’d reveal himself for the sniveling little weasel that he was. Then he’d die.

  And so would the others. Ty Jones. Shane Peters, Ethan Matalon and Chase Vickers.

  In the eleven years since Barik, they’d been free to do anything they wanted. Jones was a Secret Service agent. Peters had a high-class security company that catered to the rich and famous. And Matalon had a multimillion-dollar computer software company. Chase Vickers was the only underachiever of the group. A man who lacked ambition, he was content to be a limo driver. But that didn’t mean he was going to escape retribution tonight.

  King Frederick of Beau Pays was one of the players, too. He should have been at this reception, trapped with the other team members, but his daughter was standing in for him. When she died, it would be worse for him than if he’d taken a bullet himself.

  Liam gave himself a minute to contemplate that possibility. Then he moved toward Colin.

  His only regret was that Colonel Bradley, the commander of the mission, hadn’t lived to get what he deserved. The colonel hadn’t believed in Liam’s innocence and had been one of the witnesses for the prosecution.

  Well, that was all prologue. It was time to put the next phase into operation. Into the devilishly clever scenario he’d created. He’d made sure to include many details that the team members would recognize.

  If they didn’t get it yet, they would.

  The blackout. The hostage taking. The machine guns. The cyanide gas. The important people who would die.

  Liam was prepared to die, too, if that was what it took. But his boys would get away. He’d arranged escape routes for them and new identities.

  They would be safe, no matter what happened tonight.

  The thought gave him a little jolt. Why was he thinking no matter what happened? He was totally in charge here and the night was going to come out exactly the way he intended. Unlike the last time he’d been on a mission.

  Everything was running smoothly. There was no need to think about failure.

  He looked over at Colin and smiled. All his boys had rallied around him, but Colin had been his chief aide in planning tonight. Colin would help him kidnap Grant Davis, while Finn and Aidan would remain behind in the tower.

  OUT ON THE FLOOR, Shane reversed his direction. He’d seen, heard and smelled enough to make him sick. The men who were holding this roomful of captives were ruthless and prepared to kill as many people as they needed to accomplish their purpose.

  Unfortunately, Shane couldn’t be certain what that was yet.

  Whatever was going down, he knew it was going to get worse. And he’d better get back to Ariana and make damn sure she didn’t end up as one of the evening’s casualties.

  He made his way back to the crevice where he’d left Ariana. But when he reached the hiding place, he got the shock of his life.

  She had disappeared.

  He moved farther back into the space, hoping against hope that she’d somehow squeezed into a hidden space that he hadn’t previously found. But when he reached the back wall and searched with his hands in the dark, he had to conclude that she simply wasn’t there.

  What the hell was she doing? What was she thinking?

  Fear leaped inside him, fear fueled by anger. If he’d had her in his grasp, he would have throttled her.

  But she wasn’t here, and he couldn’t even call out to her. Grimly, he clamped his lips together and reversed direction again. No way could she have escaped from the room. She had to be somewhere in the reception area.

  He had to find her before the bad guys did.

  ARIANA DRAGGED IN A DEEP breath and let it out slowly, using the technique her yoga instructor had taught her to combat stress. As the heir to the Beau Pays throne, she’d had training in what to do if she ever faced a hostage situation. But this was so totally different from anything her instructors had prepared her for.

  They’d assumed she’d be the lone target at a state occasion, in a motorcade or perhaps returning to her vehicle from a public appearance, the way Ronald Reagan had been shot outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.

  And they’d assumed that anyone who tried to harm her would be trying to harm the government of Beau Pays—or her father.

  But this was different. She was only one of a crowd of people trapped by madmen at the top of a Boston skyscraper. Madmen who had nothing to do with her or her country.

  Nobody had prepared her for this.

  She stopped the train of thought before it could go any further. She was rationalizing because she was scared.

  But that wasn’t the fault of the security experts her father had hired to instruct her. None of them had envisioned anything like this. Neither had she. Neither had her father, or he never would have sent her here.

  When the men with the guns had materialized in the middle of the reception, she’d been as shocked and scared as everyone else. She’d gone along with Peters because at the beginning of the crisis, she’d been glad to have someone big and strong protecting her.

  Now that she was thinking more clearly, she knew she couldn’t stay with him, hiding in a niche in the wall.

  For one thing, she knew Manfred must be worried sick about her. But that wasn’t the only reason for leaving the hiding place where Peters had stashed her.

  She’d left her silk-and-seed pearl evening bag with Manfred when she’d decided to dance with Peters, and she had to get to it.

  The purse looked like any other bag that held a woman’s lipstick and comb. But inside it was a special piece of electronics equipment that she’d brought with her from home. It came from an exclusive European dealer, and her father had insisted that she take it.

  It was a transmitter that would signal she was in trouble. But it also included a broadcast function that would send out voice transmissions. Not just voices, but the sound of gunfire as well.

  She wanted the world to know what was going on in this reception room. Maybe it was their only link to the outside world, since the men who held the guests captive had taken away all the cell phones and walkie-talkies. She still had her covert device, but it was inactive at the moment. She needed to get to it so she could turn it on.

  Of course, she hadn’t heard anything from the president or the vice president since the crisis had begun, and maybe in the dark and confusion, the Secret Service had gotten them out of the building and had sent help on the way. But she couldn’t count on it. Her father had taught her that in a crisis, you must rely on yourself.

  She’d had martial-arts instruction and weapons training. Though, like Peters, she hadn’t been able to bring a gun to this reception. Above and beyond her training, she was in excellent physical shape. Plus, she was wearing a valuable ring and necklace that she was authorized to exchange for her freedom. But it seemed that these men weren’t interested in riches, or they would have already started stripping the guests of their jewels.

  She grimaced. So far, she hadn’t done much for herself in this crisis. Or for the Beau Pays sapphire, either. Was it safe? She hoped so, but she had a more urgent problem now. She’d blindly followed Shane Peters into hiding. Now she had to get to that transmitter and turn it on.

  She’d seen Peters crawl out of their hiding place and use a linen-covered table to shield himself from view. Now she did the same.

  Before she’d left home, she’d been given background information on the building and the reception area, but, in a rush to leave, she’d only given the sheets a quick scan. Leaning back against the wall, she closed her eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the room,
searching mentally for another way out besides the main entrance.

  There had to be stairs. And a service entrance used by caterers.

  The gunmen had been blocking that door. Were they still there?

  Long ago, she and her brother had played hide-and-seek in the palace, crawling around the heavily carved furniture and richly upholstered couches and chairs, and leaping out to scare each other. For just a moment she let herself think about those simpler days when life hadn’t been so full of responsibilities.

  Rolf had been her father’s hope for the future, but when he had died, that hope had come down squarely on her own shoulders.

  Stop thinking about any of that, she ordered herself. You’re in the middle of a crisis, and you have to get yourself out of it.

  With her lower lip between her teeth, she started crawling in back of the tables, keeping out of sight of the men with the guns and masks.

  She’d compared this to her childhood adventures. But when she’d crawled around on the floor long ago, she’d been wearing casual clothing—not an expensive evening gown. Her knees slid against the stiff Thai silk, and she was forced to stop and pull the skirt up around her hips, balling up the excess fabric in the crook of her arm as she worked her way toward where she’d last seen Manfred and her evening bag.

  FINN SHEA LOOKED AROUND with satisfaction at the well-dressed crowd of men and women cowering in the center of the room like shell-shocked refugees who had been directed to a bomb shelter to wait out a terrorist attack. Only the attack was right here in the room, not somewhere outside.

  His father had been right. It had taken only a few killings to get them under control. The first deaths had been random, to show these people who was boss.

  Soon they would get down to the real business of the evening. But first he was going to collect an extra little dividend.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Make it quick,” his father said.

  Leaving his father and his brothers to keep the crowd under control, he walked to the far side of the room, to the case where the ridiculously gaudy Beau Pays sapphire was on display.

  The security system was electronic, and with the power off there was nothing to stop anyone from taking the jewel. Too bad for King Frederick. Finn knew the old man would be devastated when he found out the family treasure was missing. That was only going to add to the misery of losing his daughter.

  Through the lenses of Finn’s night-vision goggles, the sapphire glowed a strange shade of green.

  But he knew the true color, because he had studied many pictures of the gem.

  Quickly he extracted the metal tool he’d brought along for the purpose, then used it to break the lock on the thick Lucite case.

  It opened as smoothly as a can of sardines, and he pulled out the sapphire.

  But the moment he held the gem in his hand, he knew something was wrong. He’d studied all the physical specifications of the sapphire, and he knew the weight of the faceted stone. This thing was far too light.

  He hefted it in his hand, then for another check, he scraped it across the Lucite. The gem didn’t even make a scratch. The damn thing that had been in this case all evening wasn’t the Beau Pays sapphire. It was a fake.

  He muttered a curse, then ordered himself to think through the situation.

  Had the counterfeit really been in the case since the beginning of the reception?

  When he’d first arrived and begun his waiter duties, he’d taken a look at the gem. No question it had been the real thing. Now it was missing.

  And he had a good idea where it had gone. Just before the president had arrived, Shane Peters had been hanging around the case.

  Finn cursed under his breath as he worked out what must have happened. Peters was known as a daredevil. And he owned a security company that catered to the rich and famous. What if he’d wanted to get King Frederick for a client? He could have just applied for the job like any normal human being. Made a proposal for how he’d do things differently.

  But that was too easy for a hotshot like Peters. Finn had a hunch that the man had set out to demonstrate his superior technology tonight by playing a little trick on the king.

  Well, that wouldn’t do Mr. Smart-Ass Peters a lot of good. Because he wasn’t getting out of this building alive. Not tonight.

  One of their first priorities would be to find him and make him tell where he’d hidden the gem. Or maybe he was carrying it around?

  A ninety-carat sapphire? Unlikely. But it would be gratifying to make Peters tell what he’d done with it.

  Finn had read up on the career of the great Shane Peters. At least what was on the public record. There was probably a lot more, if you had the right government sources and maybe sources that weren’t prepared to go on record.

  He’d seen enough to know that Peters had done the same thing in his career as Grant Davis. Had used his army experience to establish his civilian credentials, although in a different venue.

  Peters acted as if he were hot stuff, which would make it all the sweeter when he started squealing like a stuck pig begging for his life.

  Finn made a split-second decision. He would tell his brothers that Peters had taken the sapphire, so they could be on the lookout for the gem. But he would protect Dad from the annoying information.

  His father had planned every detail of this evening, and Finn wanted to see his scenario play out as the old man had envisioned it. There was no point in telling him that something had briefly gone a little bit off track—not when they could get it to work out the way it was supposed to. And Dad would never be the wiser.

  Chapter Five

  Ariana silently railed against her long skirt as she kept crawling across the floor, using the tables as a shield.

  She had made it partway around the room when the man who was running the horror show began speaking again. She went rigid as his voice boomed out across the reception room.

  She could tell he was enjoying this situation, and she wanted to slap him across his smug face. Of course, that would only get her killed, so she clenched her teeth and waited.

  “All right, you bunch of self-satisfied capitalists. I want the president and the vice president. I know their Secret Service guards have hidden them away in some nook up here, but they can’t escape. So hand them over.”

  There were murmurs around the room. One man shouted, “You have to be kidding.”

  A woman started to moan, and others in the group tried to hush her.

  Ariana risked a peek from around the table where she was hiding. She could see the men with the guns, see their relaxed posture. They were the kings of this little terrorist state that they had created. One of them leaned over to speak to another, and the second one laughed softly.

  The laugh made her want to throw up.

  She knew in that moment that they weren’t staging this hostage situation out of grim necessity. They were like men who had gone out on one of those hunting farms to shoot game that someone had raised for the purpose. They were perfectly comfortable with killing to get what they wanted. And they had obviously practiced their moves and knew how to make the evening work to their advantage.

  As if to confirm her assessment, their leader gave another clipped demand to the people at his mercy.

  “I want the president and vice president immediately. If you don’t turn them over, then I will begin shooting a hostage every ten minutes.” He paused to let that sink in, waiting until the moans and protests had subsided. Then he added another horrifying detail. “And the first person we kill will be Princess Ariana of Beau Pays.”

  Ariana’s blood turned cold. These men knew she was here. They were looking for her, and they were going to kill her first.

  So what would happen if one of the other captives saw her?

  From childhood, she’d been trained to understand people and their motivations. There were always good and bad individuals in every crowd. Some of these terrified partygoers would turn her in to curry
favor with the enemy.

  And others would risk their lives to save her, like the people who had risked execution to hide Jews from the Nazis.

  But whatever the other people in this room did, she knew she had made a strategic mistake. She should have stayed in the hiding place Peters had found.

  Did she have a chance of getting back there?

  Her horror increased as she saw one of the killers plunge into the crowd and pull a man up to the front of the room.

  When she saw it was Manfred, her heart leaped into her throat. He had sworn to protect her with his life, and she knew he would do it.

  “This is the princess’s bodyguard,” the kidnapper said to his companions.

  “Oh yeah?” one of them answered, then turned to Manfred. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she left.”

  Absolute silence had fallen over the crowd as they watched the unfolding drama.

  The kidnapper raised his gun and slammed it against Manfred’s cheek. “Don’t lie to me!”

  Ariana crammed her fist against her mouth to keep from crying out.

  Manfred gasped but kept his rigid stance. “If I knew where she was, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “You have three seconds to answer,” the man with the gun said, his voice hard. “Or I’m going to kill you instead of her.”

  “Go to hell,” Manfred answered, his own voice steady. He’d always been so cool and collected, and that had gotten him nowhere in this situation.

  She knew Manfred had been in love with her for a long time. It was a hopeless love that he could never fulfill. She’d told her father about it and asked for another guard. Her father had answered that the situation made Manfred more willing to sacrifice himself for her.

  As she watched in horror, he turned and leaped at the lead thug, taking the man completely by surprise. Manfred would have knocked him to the ground if he hadn’t been standing so close to the wall.

  Still on his feet, the man struggled with Manfred. One of the other gunmen turned and began firing.