by Rebecca York
Even as that rationalization surfaced, she knew she was kidding herself. It had started before the armed men had taken over the reception, when she’d first seen the devastatingly handsome man across the room. Then she’d danced with him and melted into his arms.
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t realize they’d reached the door to the stairs. Shane looked back at her and put his fingers to his lips, and she knew he was worried about what might be on the other side of this door.
He moved her back a few yards, then pulled the door open with one hand, the fire extinguisher raised in the other.
When he saw the stairwell was empty, he ushered her through. Because she still had on her high heels, it was hard to walk quickly. So she pulled them off and held them by the sling backs in her left hand, gripping the railing with her right.
They had descended two floors when he stopped short again.
Looking around his large frame, she saw what had stopped his downward progress.
A man wearing a tuxedo lay sprawled across the steps—either dead or unconscious.
One of the gunmen or one of the guests? And was he only playing dead? If they came close, would he spring up and grab them?
Ariana allowed Shane to keep his body between her and the crumpled figure as he descended the stairs. Kneeling down, he put his hand on the man’s shoulder, then quickly rolled him over.
Mon Dieu.
Ariana gasped when she saw the man’s face.
It was President Allan Stack, his skin gray and pasty and his lips pale.
Not far from him on the floor was a pool of blood.
“Is he dead?” Ariana gasped out as she focused on the red spill.
“I don’t know.” Shane crouched on one side of the leader of the free world. He felt for a pulse in the man’s neck, then leaned over to feel his breath against his cheek.
“He’s alive.”
“Dieu merci.”
Swiftly Shane checked the man’s chest and abdomen, his arms and legs.
“I don’t think the blood’s from him.”
“Thank God,” she breathed again, then thought of another terrible possibility. The blood could be from Grant Davis. But she didn’t say that now, not when they were focused on President Stack.
Shane touched the man’s cool skin and looked down at the shallow rise and fall of his chest. “He’s not injured, but he’s unconscious. I think they drugged him.”
Ariana came down on her knees on the other side of the president and took his limp hand, squeezing and chafing it as she spoke quietly to him.
“President Stack? You’re all right. We’ve found you. You’re safe now.”
When he didn’t answer, she kept speaking. “President Stack, you’re safe. Everything is all right. Wake up.”
Shane’s methods were a bit more aggressive. He shook the president’s shoulders. When he didn’t respond, he slapped him across the face.
Ariana winced.
But it worked. Stack’s eyes fluttered open, then filled with alarm as he focused on the shape hovering over him. The president surged off the step and reached out a shaky arm toward Shane.
“Sir, take it easy,” Shane soothed. “You’re all right. We found you on the back steps at the Hancock Tower. Just a few floors down from the reception room. The kidnappers are gone.”
“You…” His voice trailed off. Then he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I lunged at you.”
“Understandable.”
The president sat down and continued to study Shane. “You’re not one of them. One of the men who hustled us out of the room,” he said, his voice slightly slurred.
“No. I’m Shane Peters.”
It was amazing how quickly the president’s thought processes clicked into place. “The security expert.”
“Yes. And this is…” Shane started to say.
President Stack turned to her, then finished the sentence for Shane. “Princess Ariana of Beau Pays.”
The man tried to stand up, but Shane kept a hand on his shoulder, holding him down. “Don’t try to do too much yet. Tell me what happened to you.”
“They separated me and Davis from the crowd. After we went down a couple of flights of stairs, they stuck a hypodermic into my arm, through my jacket and shirt, and I conked out.”
“You need to be checked by a doctor.”
Ignoring Shane, the president looked around. “Where’s Vice President Davis?”
“I’m sorry, sir. He appears to be missing.”
“They took Davis and left me?” he said, sounding puzzled by the scenario.
“It looks like it. Do you know why?” Shane pressed. He had a pretty good idea why, but he wanted to hear what the president thought.
“They didn’t say. But the whole time we were together, they seemed more interested in Davis than me.” He closed his eyes for a moment.
“Are you dizzy?” Shane asked.
“Yes. Give me a moment.”
When he opened his eyes again, he looked around and saw the blood on the floor. “Oh, Lord, that could be from the vice president.”
Shane responded quickly. “Did they shoot him? Hit him on the head? Head wounds bleed a lot, even if they’re not serious.”
“I don’t know what they did to him! Or where they took him,” President Stack answered in frustration. “Whatever happened, it was after I passed out.”
“We’ll get a sample of the blood to a crime lab,” Shane answered.
The president grabbed the sleeve of Shane’s tuxedo jacket. “I need to tell you something else,” he muttered.
“What?” Shane asked, looking up and down the stairs.
“I know you were on your way down, trying to escape. But in the kitchen…they tied up two Secret Service agents. They may still be up there.”
Shane looked up the steps again, and Ariana knew he was struggling with a dilemma. She had to provide him with a good way to make the decision.
Keeping her voice calm, she leaned over the president. “It’s not safe for us to stay in the stairwell, but if you can stand, I can help you through the door into the hallway. Then Mr. Peters can go up and find out what’s happening in the kitchen.”
The president nodded.
Over his head, she and Shane exchanged glances. “Okay,” he mouthed.
She and Shane helped President Stack to his feet. He wavered for several seconds, then gathered his strength together and stiffened his knees. Leaning on them heavily, he walked the few feet to the exit door, panting by the time they stepped into the corridor.
As President Stack rested against the wall, she saw Shane’s doubtful expression, and she was afraid that the plan wouldn’t work.
The president gave up the fight to look dignified and sank to the floor. Ariana came down beside him.
“I can’t leave you,” Shane muttered.
In the dim emergency light, Allan Stack’s expression turned fierce. “Of course you can. The president of the United States orders you to go up and free those agents.”
Chapter Eight
Shane wondered about the wisdom of abandoning Ariana with a man who had been drugged—even if he was the president of the United States.
But he was worried about the agents, too. He knew one of them was his friend Ty Jones.
With Ariana and the president outside the stairwell, they were unlikely to be found. The armed men who had hustled the president and vice president out of the reception area weren’t coming back for President Stack. It was Davis they’d wanted. And they’d gotten him.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Shane said. “Stay right here.”
“Oui,” Ariana promised.
Shane hurried back up the steps. Instead of taking the hallway he and Ariana had used to circle around from the front of the building, he turned directly toward the kitchen. The door was closed, and he was more cautious than he’d been at the entrance to the stairs, since the bad guys could be up here.
When he
pressed his ear against the barrier, he heard nothing. Taking a chance, he eased the door open a crack. With only the emergency lighting functioning, it took several moments for him to take in the scene. Then he saw two men gagged and tied to chairs.
One of them was at the side of the kitchen, furiously sawing his bound wrists against the edge of the kitchen counter. Shane saw that it was Ty.
He called to his friend, and Ty’s head jerked up, his eyes widening when he saw his Eclipse buddy. He tried to say something, but the gag in his mouth prevented speech.
Shane ran to Ty and saw that the rope that secured his wrists was partially cut. A few more minutes and he’d have freed himself.
Shane set down the fire extinguisher he was still holding and pulled out his plastic knife, using it to finish cutting the bonds on Ty’s wrists. Then he removed the gag and ran over to the other man. It was Charlie Mercer, President Stack’s Secret Service agent.
“The president?” he asked as soon as Shane had removed his gag.
“President Stack is okay,” he said. “We found him two floors down.”
“We?” Mercer asked as Shane cut through the rope on his wrists.
“I left him with Princess Ariana. They’re not in the stairwell. We moved the president to the hallway.”
“You got the princess out of the reception room?” Ty asked.
“Yes.”
“Way to go.” Then his face sobered. “What about Vice President Davis?”
“I’m sorry. We didn’t find him. Only the president.”
“Do you have a phone?” Mercer asked urgently as soon as his hands were free.
“Yes.” Shane pulled out the cell phone and handed it over.
The Secret Service agent immediately began punching in numbers. Seconds later, he apprised his counterparts on the ground of the new developments. When he finished, he looked up. “We have all the exits to the building secured. And they’re sending a helicopter for the president.”
“Good,” Ty answered, but he looked badly shaken, and Shane could imagine what he was feeling now. Vice President Davis was the responsibility of Ty Jones. And Davis was missing.
Logically, there was nothing Ty could have done to save the vice president, not when he was being held at gunpoint. But Shane knew that didn’t make his friend feel any better. He hated giving Ty the next piece of news. “There’s blood down on the stairs where we found the president. He wasn’t wounded. If it’s not from one of the bad guys, then Davis is the most likely source.”
“Damn,” Ty muttered.
“We’ll get a crime-scene unit in here. They’ll get a sample and find out,” Mercer answered.
“There won’t be any labs open in the city,” Ty pointed out. “Not with the power off.”
“Then they’ll take it to the closest place that’s open,” Shane told him.
Mercer broke into their conversation. “You say the president wasn’t wounded. But what’s his condition?” As he spoke, he finished with the tape holding his ankles to the chair.
“He was conscious. But it looks like they gave him something to knock him out. He said it was some kind of injection.”
“I’m going down there.” Mercer pulled off the duct tape and dashed for the service entrance to the kitchen.
“Wait. One more thing,” Shane advised him. “There was no cyanide gas at the front entrance to the reception area.”
“And none at the back,” Ty said. “Or we’d be dead now. Which means they were just faking that part of the scenario.”
Ty and Shane exchanged glances, and he suspected they had both come to the same conclusion. The leader of the gunmen was Liam Shea. He’d set up a scenario as much like the Barik rescue mission as he could manage, and the gas had been included to remind Grant Davis and the other members of the team of that night of terror. Shea had also wanted to capture Davis, and apparently he had him.
“The hallway, right?” Mercer said before hurrying out of the room. Ty and Shane turned toward the kitchen door—the only barrier between them and two of the men who still held a roomful of people hostage.
“You going to tell your boss you think Liam Shea set this up?” he asked. “With the help of his sons.”
“As soon as we get out of here.”
“Can we take the bastards by surprise?” Ty asked.
“Risky. They’ve got machine guns, and we’ve got kitchen knives.”
Just as they turned to look around for more effective weapons, the door burst open.
Knife in hand, Shane whirled toward the door. He and Ty found themselves face-to-face with a lean man with gray hair and wild eyes.
It was the oil-company executive Shane had seen at the beginning of the evening.
“You’re not them!” he croaked.
“Not the kidnappers? They’re not out there?”
The executive shook his head. “They’re gone. They told us that if we didn’t stay in the reception area, we’d be gassed or shot. But then I heard you talking out here, and I thought you weren’t them.” He looked at Ty. “You’re one of the Secret Service agents, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re the security guy,” he said to Shane.
“Yeah.” Shane turned to Ty. “It looks like the other two got away. I wonder how they did it.”
“I can’t believe they could get out of the building so fast.” He looked at Shane. “We’ve got to tell the guys downstairs what’s happened.”
Shane pulled out his phone again and handed it to Ty. “And somebody’s got to take charge up here. I think you’re it. I have to get the princess out of harm’s way.”
“Maybe they’ll send more helicopters for the rest of the dignitaries.”
“That makes sense,” Shane answered.
Ty called the forces on the ground to tell them the last two hostage takers had disappeared and that they needed medics in the reception area to treat the wounded.
Shane waited impatiently for the return of his phone. As soon as it was back in his hand, he exited through the back door and charged down the stairs.
When he bolted through the door to the fifty-eighth floor, he stopped short.
Ariana and the president weren’t where he’d left them. Then he saw her peek around a corner and breathed out a sigh.
“They took President Stack down?” he asked.
“Yes. Agent Mercer took him. The president was leaning on him. I would have let him rest, but the agent wanted to get him out of here as quickly as possible.”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “He looks ten years older than when he gave that speech at the reception.”
“Unfortunately,” Shane agreed, then gave Ariana a news bulletin. “The last two of the bad guys left the crowd alone in the reception area and warned them not to move. The gunmen are gone.”
“Thank God,” she breathed.
“I’d like to know where they went,” Shane muttered.
“Won’t the police and the Secret Service search the building?” she asked.
“Of course. But it’s the tallest building in New England, with a lot of places to hide. They could even have kept Vice President Davis in here.” Switching topics, he said, “There’s a helicopter coming for the president, and hopefully for the rest of the dignitaries.”
The conversation was interrupted by the sound of men pounding up the stairs.
“Who’s there?” Shane shouted, not that he could do much if it turned out to be the kidnappers.
“Boston PD.”
“Did you meet a Secret Service agent and the president coming down?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the status of the blackout?” Shane asked.
“It’s all over the city. Apparently explosive charges were set to detonate at several key power plants,” the police detective said.
“How did they get in? You’d think there would be good security after 9/11.”
“You’d think,” the man agreed.
; Shane shook his head. “Let me guess. The power company can’t get the plants online anytime soon?”
“Right. They’re estimating that it’s going to take at least two days to get back online.”
“Lucky Boston!”
Shane knew that with the whole city dysfunctional, it would be that much harder to find Grant Davis. Which was probably one of the reasons the kidnappers had gone to the trouble of blacking out the whole area, not just the Hancock Tower.
The men continued up the stairs, and Shane turned to Ariana. “Let’s get out of here.”
As they started down the stairs, another harsh reality was sinking in. He was never going to see her again.
He wanted to ask if she was regretting getting tangled up with him. Well, not the rescue part. The instant attraction between them that had led them both into forbidden territory.
But he wasn’t going to mention the subject, if she didn’t. After this ordeal, he was sure she’d want to get back to her country as soon as possible. He’d heard that she was engaged to marry someone. Some nobleman named Jacques or Claude or something like that. He wondered if she’d share the same kind of passion with her husband that she’d shared with him.
Just one kiss. Well, two if you counted the fooling around under the table in the reception room when he was trying to get her mind off the kidnappers.
He shouldn’t be thinking about them.
Doggedly, he brought his mind back to the hostage situation. Two of the Sheas had taken the president and vice president out of the reception room. Two of them had stayed to control the hostages for a few more minutes, then had slipped out when they’d gotten some kind of all-clear signal. Or had they needed a signal?
Perhaps, given Liam Shea’s bad luck with signals, they’d just left at a prearranged time.
He’d bet Shea had gone with Grant Davis. Shea and one of the boys. And the other two had stayed in the building and were hiding there somewhere. But where?
He’d studied Liam. He hadn’t thought he needed to study the sons as well.
His mistake.
Beside him, Ariana cleared her throat. “When we get downstairs, we won’t be able to…say anything personal.”