Royal Lockdown

by Rebecca York

  Seeing what he was doing, Ariana helped him, pulling away a large section of the door.

  They both worked frantically, and he could see her lips moving, hear her whispering a prayer. He hoped that God was listening and that he looked favorably on the royal family of Beau Pays.

  “Go,” he shouted to Ariana when the space was big enough for her to get her shoulders through. “Find the front door. Get out to the street.”

  She stumbled into what looked like a large family room, then stopped for a minute to get her bearings, before bolting across the rug and disappearing through a doorway at the other side of the room.

  Shane followed, through a kitchen, then into a hallway that opened into a vestibule. The large front door had a double lock.

  The bottom knob turned easily after he twisted the locking button, but the upper lock was a dead bolt. The kind you worked with a key. And the key was missing.

  Cursing their luck, he looked for Ariana. But she had already disappeared down a hallway.

  “Go out a window,” he called after her. “Hurry.”

  The dining room was on the far side of the vestibule. He sprinted across the marble floor, looking for a good place to hide. Floor-to-ceiling damask draperies hung on either side of a bay window. He was about to step behind them when he pictured the guy with the gun spraying the room with bullets.

  Better to find more substantial cover.

  At the far end of the house, he could hear footsteps crunching over glass. When the footsteps stopped, he figured the guy must be thinking about where they’d gone.

  Shane hurried through the kitchen, then through a wide archway into a formal living room. The sofas and chairs were grouped around an Oriental rug, and he crossed to one of the sofas and crouched behind it.

  An eerie silence reigned over the house—until the sound of an automatic weapon made his throat clog.

  Had the bastard found Ariana? Or was he just shooting at random targets hoping to flush them out like game birds in a field?

  He wanted to shout to Ariana and ask if she was okay, but giving that much away would be a fatal move. Instead, he crouched behind the sofa, holding his knife at the ready and silently calling out to the guy, hoping he’d come into the living room.

  He heard footsteps in the hall, then a blast of gunfire hit the sofa behind which he was hiding.

  Shane stayed where he was, thankful that the thick padding had stopped the bullets.

  The man crept across the rug, not bothering to hide his intentions. Obviously he thought that if anybody else had a gun, they would have fired by now.

  Shane tensed, ready to spring when Shea got within range.

  Long seconds ticked by.

  Come on. Come on, you bastard.

  As he waited for the man to round the sofa, Shane kept one ear cocked for Ariana. Was she out of the house? Was she all right?

  Worrying about her was a distraction he didn’t need with the assailant bearing down on him, and he forced his concentration back to the man who was now crossing the rug.

  He wanted to see what was going on, but he knew any attempt to peek around the sofa would give his location away. So he stayed absolutely still, trying to listen hard, waiting for his optimum chance at the guy.

  He saw a figure looming above him, saw an outstretched arm holding a gun. The guy was being too damn cautious. Which meant he was nervous.

  When the gun arm swung to the left, Shane leaped up and launched himself from behind the sofa, slashing down with the knife as he sprang forward. But he was two beats too far away, and the frantic movement gave the assailant a few seconds notice. The man sprang back, avoiding the knife blade by inches as he started shooting again.

  Shane rolled to his left, making for one of the chairs, as bullets crashed into the wall, the woodwork and the window behind him.

  “You’re a dead man,” Shea growled. “And the princess is next.”

  The man raised his gun, obviously savoring the moment of victory. Shane prepared to make a desperate leap at him with the knife. Maybe he could slit the bastard’s throat before he went down for good himself.

  Before the man could fire again, two blasts from another gun split the air.

  The assailant whirled, his finger pressing the trigger, spraying bullets toward the wide archway. But he was the one who screamed and fell to the floor.

  Looking up, Shane saw Ariana step from around the edge of the doorway and advance with a pistol in her hand. She looked as dazed as he felt—and at the same time triumphant.

  He stared at her, hardly able to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Somehow she’d found a weapon and brought the bastard down.

  “Where did you get that gun?” he gasped.

  She dragged in a breath and let it out, steadying herself before answering. “In a drawer in the office. My father keeps a pistol in his desk drawer. I looked there and found one.”

  “Lucky for us.”

  “We were due some luck,” she answered, keeping the weapon trained on the man who had fallen.

  Shea was still dangerous. And when he moved, Shane stepped on his gun hand, and he screamed.

  “Keep him covered,” Shane directed.

  “A pleasure.”

  After taking the weapon away from the assailant, Shane bent to inspect the man’s injury. Bright arterial blood spurted across the sleeve of his shirt. If they didn’t do something quickly, the bastard was going to die. Which wouldn’t be such a bad idea, except that Shane wanted information.

  Standing, he looked around.

  “What?” Ariana breathed.

  “We need something for a tourniquet or he’ll bleed out.”

  Ariana looked around the room, then pointed to the draperies. “One of the tiebacks?”

  “Yeah.” He sprinted to the sliding glass door and ripped down one of the silken cords, then wrapped it tightly around the man’s upper arm, tying the ends together. It made a perfect tourniquet.

  The man rolled his head weakly toward Shane, and he saw a face he recognized. Though not the exact same face from his past, the guy looked a lot like Liam Shea had looked eleven years ago, and Shane knew his assumption was correct. This had to be one of Liam’s sons.

  “Why?” Shane growled.

  “I don’t have to tell you a damn thing,” the man bit out, his voice laced with pain.

  Shane gave him a parody of a smile. “The important thing is that you know you’ve lost.”

  “That’s what you think,” the assailant answered. “There’s a lot more to come.”

  Was that bravado speaking—or reality?

  “Like what?”

  “A very explosive finish to the evening,” he said, then lay back and closed his eyes.

  Shane crouched over Liam’s son, wanting to shake the truth out of him. Instead he tried another tactic. Softening his voice, he said, “It will go better for you if you talk.”

  “Don’t give me that crap.”

  “I know who you are. You have to be one of Liam Shea’s sons. Which one are you? Colin, Finn or Aidan?”

  The man’s lips twitched, but he remained silent.

  “Why did you agree to such a murderous plan?”

  The man finally spoke. But his answer wasn’t very helpful. “Family loyalty.”

  “Family loyalty is going to get you convicted of murder.”

  “Maybe not.”

  The smug satisfaction in the injured man’s voice made Shane want to throttle him.

  Ariana broke into the conversation. “We have to call an ambulance.”

  Shane looked down at the man who had tried so hard to kill them, wondering why she cared about saving this guy.

  She answered his unspoken question. “I want a trial. I want the world to know what he did in the Hancock Tower, in the church and here.”

  “Too bad there’s no death penalty in Massachusetts,” Shane growled.

  At the same time, he was thinking about what a trial would mean. It would bring Ariana back here
.

  He reached for his cell phone to call an ambulance and realized he didn’t have it, or any of the other personal items he’d brought from the reception.

  “We may be able to use a cell phone if we can find one.”

  “I’ll go look,” Ariana volunteered. “You watch him.”

  “Okay.”

  She had just disappeared down the hall when the front door burst open with a resounding crack.

  SHANE WATCHED UNIFORMED COPS pour into the room. They were followed by a man in his forties with close-cropped brown hair. He was wearing a rumpled business suit, and Shane figured he must be the detective in charge.

  Shane gave the cops a professional appraisal. They had guns drawn, and none of them looked exactly friendly. He could see that they were still trying to figure out the situation, and they weren’t taking any chances on getting it wrong.

  One of the uniforms knelt beside the man on the floor and eyed the blood on his shirt and the tourniquet. “He’s in bad shape. What happened to him?”

  Before Shane could answer, the injured man stirred, his gaze flicking to Shane, then to the cop who bent over him. “Me and my partner came in to rob the place, and we got into an argument.”

  “Now wait a damn minute,” Shane objected.

  “He shot me. And he was going to leave me here,” Shea gasped out.

  This time, Shane addressed himself directly to the detective. “He’s lying. He was trying to kill us, with the gun on the floor. I kicked it out of his reach. You’ll find his fingerprints on the gun, not mine. You’ll find powder residue on his hand, not mine. And you’ll find bullets and shell casings from his gun sprayed all over the place in here and in the garden.”

  “He was trying to kill us, and I shot him.” The clarification came from Ariana who had come down the hall and was standing in the doorway, still holding the gun.

  Two uniformed officers whirled toward her and immediately focused on the weapon in her hand.

  “Stop where you are. Drop the gun and lie on the floor,” one of them shouted.

  Shane’s heart leaped into his throat as he sized up the situation. These cops didn’t know she was the heir to the throne of Beau Pays. All they knew was that she held a gun in her hand.

  “Ariana, do what he says,” he called to her.

  “I…”

  He knew this woman. She was brave and loyal and highly intelligent, with a streak of royal stubbornness she’d inherited from her father.

  He prayed that she wasn’t going to let that prevent her from obeying.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ariana felt the blood drain from her face. Through her panic she heard Shane’s pleading voice. “They don’t know who you are. All they know is that you have a gun. So do what he says!”

  She did, dropping the gun, then lying down.

  Two of the officers rushed forward. After one kicked the gun away, the other pulled her hands behind her back and cuffed them, then started to search her.

  “You,” the detective said to Shane. “Get down on the floor. Spread ’em.”

  Shane got down, still looking at her as one of the officers began to search him.

  She tried to tell the police who she was, but the detective told her to shut up.

  The uniform finished her search, then stood. “She’s clean.”

  Two of the officers helped her to her feet, where she gave the detective a murderous look. She tried to free her hands, but the cuffs held her fast.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. To Shane.

  The detective reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph, then a flashlight. He shone the light on the picture, then on Ariana, comparing the two.

  “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  She squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. “I am Princess Ariana of Beau Pays.”

  “What is your birthday?”

  “April twenty-fifth,” she said.

  “And your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Eleanore of Layden.”

  “You know your facts. But we’ll have to sort this out at the station house.”

  Ariana wanted to scream at these police officers that they were making a terrible mistake. She knew she and Shane were still in danger, so she kept her lips pressed together and tried to call on the discipline that had been drummed into her.

  Still, a sick feeling rose in her throat as she watched one of the policemen pat down Shane’s front pocket. He made a clucking sound, then pulled out the Beau Pays sapphire.

  “Well, well,” he said, holding it up. “It looks like you got some loot while you were here. What’s this?”

  Ariana couldn’t stop herself from speaking. “It didn’t come from this house. That’s a valuable jewel from my country that was on display at the reception at the Hancock Tower.”

  “And we stole it,” the Shea brother wheezed.

  “No!” Ariana’s outrage bubbled over. Desperately she cast around for the best possible wording and said, “Shane rescued it.”

  Shea made a snorting sound. “And pigs can fly.”

  She hated him as she had never hated anyone in her life, but she gave him points for mendacity and persistence. As long as he kept throwing in lying comments, he was going to keep the police off balance and make the situation seem totally different from reality.

  Shane remained motionless on the floor as one of the officers cuffed his hands behind his back and helped him up.

  The other stuffed the sapphire into a plastic bag.

  Ariana had to clench her hands into fists to keep herself from screaming.

  Her eyes met Shane’s for an instant before he looked quickly away, and she felt her stomach clench. They were standing here, cuffed like common criminals. And there was nothing they could do about it.

  She ached to use her royal position to make these men bend to her will. She had seen and heard her father use his kingly authority on numerous occasions. She herself had used the same techniques when she’d been in inconvenient situations in her own country.

  But she wasn’t back in Beau Pays with hundreds of years of royal tradition backing her up. This was the United States. And she wasn’t dealing with an inconvenience. This was a life-or-death situation. If she did or said the wrong thing, she or Shane could get hurt.

  A stir at the front of house made her look up. Paramedics wheeling a stretcher rushed into the room and bent over the man on the floor.

  She watched them working over him, thinking that if she’d killed him, he wouldn’t be telling his lies, and they wouldn’t be in this fix.

  The horrible thought brought her up short. She had been fighting for Shane’s life. But now that the emergency was over, she thanked God that she hadn’t killed the man. No matter what he had done, she didn’t want his death on her conscience.

  One of the medics hung a bag of clear liquid on a pole while the other inserted a needle into the injured man’s vein.

  “How is he?” the detective asked.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood. And his pressure’s low.”

  “I want him kept under guard in the emergency room and anywhere else he goes in the hospital,” the man in charge ordered. “I don’t want anyone besides the medical staff near him unless they have written authorization.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And make sure you don’t get someone posing as a doctor or nurse,” Shane muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  The detective blanched—then repeated the advice to the medics.

  “Yes, sir,” they said again.

  After the paramedics wheeled Shea out, the detective stepped toward Ariana. “I’m going to uncuff you because you match the description of the princess who is missing. And you know your facts.”

  One of the officers unlocked the cuffs, and she pulled her hands to her front, then rubbed her wrists.

  “Because I am the princess who is missing.” She gave the man in the rumpled suit a direct look. “What is your name?
” she inquired.

  “Detective Tyndall.”

  “Well, Detective Tyndall, I think you’d better let the State Department know that I’m safe. Before you end up in the middle of an international incident.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” he said. “What are you doing in this house?”

  “The wounded man you took away is one of the three sons of Liam Shea. They and their father took the president of the United States and a roomful of dignitaries hostage on the top floor of the Hancock Tower. I was one of those hostages, and Shane Peters…” She paused and gestured toward him. “Shane Peters got me to safety.”

  Ignoring the comment, the detective asked another question. “Do you have any idea what generated the hostage situation?”

  “Liam Shea, the father, was convicted of insubordination during a raid in Barik eleven years ago. He wanted to get revenge on the other men who were on the raid with him.”

  “An odd way of doing it.”

  “It mirrors the situation eleven years ago.”

  Detective Tyndall glanced at Shane. “Did he tell you that?”

  She felt suddenly trapped. “Yes.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t know if any of that is true.” He gave her a speculative look. “According to the information I was given, you were supposed to leave in a helicopter. What are you doing wandering around Boston in a blackout?”

  She felt her chest tighten, but she kept her gaze even. “Shea shot at us in Copley Square. We had to run into the church. He followed us inside and we escaped through a back door.”

  “King Frederick is worried about his daughter.”

  “My father,” she gasped.

  The detective kept talking. “We’ve got a citywide blackout, citizens going berserk. We should have every man on the force out there. But we had to divert valuable resources to finding you.”

  She felt her face heat as he asked, “Where were you all this time?”

  Her face grew even hotter when she thought about what she and Shane had been doing, but she managed to keep her composure.

  “We were hiding out,” she said in a low voice, then raised her chin. “Shane Peters got me away from Copley Square. He saved my life. I want him released.”

  Tyndall looked toward Shane, then back to her. “You’re sure this is Peters?”