In a Faraway Land

by Blair Babylon

Flicka turned and looked at him from where she had been sitting on the couch, watching the daily sports recap. She asked, “I beg your pardon?”

  “Obviously, they are hunting for you. They had information from somewhere, from the casino, maybe. We should find somewhere to hole up and go to ground.”

  “That’s what Pierre would expect us to do,” she said. “If anything, now he’ll stop looking for me in this area because he will assume that we’re going to flee and go somewhere else.”

  Dieter shook his head while the announcer on the television held her microphone up to some athlete’s mouth. “He has a sighting of you here. He’ll concentrate his efforts in the area where you were seen.”

  “Our plan is a good one. Just because he found me one time—”

  He straightened, aghast at her naiveté. “You can’t be thinking about going back to work at the Monaco Casino.”

  She waved off his statement. “Oh, of course not. We’ll have to switch casinos. I wasn’t talking about going back there.”

  “You can’t just get another job and do this again.”

  “Of course, I can.” Her smile became rather smug. “I got that job with no experience and no idea what I was doing. I’m good at getting jobs, which rather surprised me.”

  “But you could stay with Alina, here where it’s safe, and I’ll go out.”

  “I’ve never been around a baby.” Flicka’s glance at the stairs held fear. “I don’t know anything about how to take care of a baby. She would get hurt. I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “But it’s safer.”

  Flicka shook her head, and one of her blond eyebrows twitched down. “Not for her. Children should be cared for by professionals, not by any idiot who happens to be available. If something happened to her because I was too stupid, neither one of us would ever forgive me.”

  Dieter cringed inwardly at the thought. “She’s an easy kid. She’s not a runner, like some. You’d be fine.”

  She looked back at the muted television. Blue light flickered over her pale skin, turning her green eyes nearly teal. “Besides, I did the math. Between my tips and your winning average over these last two weeks, we make about fifty percent over and above her daycare costs, so it’s fiscally worth it. If only you worked—and I took into account the kind of jobs and hours you could do if I wasn’t around—we’d still have a lot less money. I even tried to factor in if there would be savings because I could cook instead of picking up, which we both know I can’t do. We tried that a couple of times in London.”

  He chuckled, remembering.

  A few times, he had managed to rescue the meal with a little military ingenuity.

  A few other times, they’d given up and ordered takeaway.

  Once, the Kensington security staff had inquired whether they should call the fire department or poison control.

  Those had been good times.

  Maybe the oven fire had been a little scary. Kensington Palace didn’t have the best sprinkler system.

  Flicka continued, “Most of the time, I bring home something from the casino’s restaurants because employees get seventy percent off the menu prices. It’s cheaper than pasta. We might need that money in case we do need to go to ground for a week or two or if Alina gets sick or something.”

  “That’s true,” he allowed, still uneasy, still hating it every time an unknown person walked into the casino near Flicka.

  “And if we don’t need the money by the time we’re done, maybe I can get the Laurel Tiara back from that pawn shop.” She shrugged. “It’s stupid, I know. It’s just metal and shiny rocks, but it’s almost two hundred and fifty years old. It belongs to Wulfie and Rae and their kid, someday. It belongs to the Hannover kingdom and to history, and it shouldn’t be in a damned Las Vegas pawn shop.”

  Dieter was cut off from his own past and history, but he had hung around Wulfram and Flicka von Hannover long enough to understand their complicated relationship with their ancestors, even the dead ones. The exorbitant wealth was inadequate compensation for that burden. “Okay.”

  “I’ll get online at the rental office tomorrow and take a look. Maybe Indrani has heard that someone is hiring. I’ll have a new job by lunchtime.”

  He wrapped one arm around her shoulders. “We’ll do that.”

  Under his arm, Flicka went stiff, and she sucked in a hard breath.

  He turned, looking at her.

  Her elfin face had gone rigid, and her emerald eyes were larger than normal. Dots of sweat bubbled near her blond hair on her forehead. Her throat moved as she swallowed hard.

  Dieter retracted his arm. “I thought you were—”

  She shrank away from him, back to the other end of the couch. “I thought so, too. I mean, in the closet this afternoon, I was fine. It was great. It was really, really great.”

  Dieter’s face warmed. He’d been so eager to get his hands on her that he’d been selfish and stupid. Pierre’s Secret Service men could have broken the door down while he’d been screwing his principal protection target against the wall.

  But at least he hadn’t been a lousy lover, too.

  She said, “But now, my skin hurts.”

  Dieter pushed off the cushions and leaned back in the opposite corner of the couch. “You know I would never hurt you.”

  “If I thought you would, I’d run out of here screaming,” she said, panting. She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. “It’s not you. It’s just—touching.”

  Dieter’s hands rose in front of him, and he forced them down to his knees. When they had been together in London, he had been able to make any anxiety go away by holding her in his arms.

  Damn that Pierre Grimaldi. If Dieter ever got within sniping distance of Pierre, he was going to end that guy.

  However, maybe working was good for her.

  It must be better than stewing in an empty apartment, alone.

  Locked Out

  Flicka von Hannover

  He took everything.

  Without her waitressing job, they needed money.

  “Pierre obviously knows we’re somewhere in Las Vegas,” Flicka argued the next day. “I can transfer some money from my trust funds.”

  They were sitting in the living room while Alina toddled around, talking to some of the toys she had dug out of the chest. They’d drawn the sheer curtains over all the windows and flapped shut the vertical blinds over the sliding glass door. The foggy, dim light in the living room reminded Flicka of cool London evenings, walking on the bank of the Thames River.

  “He might not know the names on the passports we used.” Dieter clasped his hands between his knees, leaning on his forearms. “He hasn’t shown up here, which suggests that he hasn’t made the connection. Our bank accounts here are in the Mirabaud names. Transferring money from your von Hannover trust fund to an account in the name of Gretchen Mirabaud would be a bright line that Pierre and his Secret Service could surely follow.”

  “He might not notice.”

  “It’s why I haven’t transferred any money from Rogue Security to our account. He might be watching. His Secret Service might be able to trace it if they have a warrant, and Pierre can have a Monaco court issue any warrant he wants.”

  “If I transfer the money, we wouldn’t have to work.”

  “If that were the goal, I could arrange to move us to a secure compound for the duration. Rogue Security would provide protection.”

  “I don’t want to be cooped up in a fortress, unable to get out.”

  “I know,” he said, “but it’s the safest course of action.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to be a prisoner.”

  “I know,” Dieter said, more gently.

  “Pierre wants to lock me up. Pierre wants me to be a prisoner.”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t. I won’t.”

  “Flicka, I won’t let him.”

  His hand twitched like he had almost reached over to take her hand, and she recoiled. “I don’t w
ant to be a prisoner anywhere.”

  “I know.”

  “But if I can dump some money in our checking account, we won’t have to worry about the court costs and filing fees. If we don’t have the money, we can’t file the divorce papers.”

  “We’ll get the money. We’ll get the money even if I have to ask Blaise to wire it to me.”

  “Pierre would see that, just like last time.”

  “Probably, yeah.”

  “But maybe he isn’t watching my trust fund. Maybe I can move the money.”

  “Flicka, I think it’s a bad idea.”

  “I want to try.”

  He sighed. “All right, but don’t do it from the house. Let’s drive somewhere and try it.”

  The next day, they piled into a car service, taking the extra few minutes to clip Alina’s car seat in, and were driven to a coffee shop across the city.

  There, they purchased some of the cheaper coffees for themselves and a glass of milk spiked with sugary vanilla syrup for Alina.

  Alina sat in a chair with her little feet sticking up. She held the small cup with both hands, concentrating intently while she drank it, her green eyes enormous as she sucked on the straw.

  “Uh oh,” Dieter told Flicka. “I don’t think Suze Meier let her have sweets very often.”

  “Cool,” Flicka said. “Buy her a cookie.”

  Flicka connected her phone to the WiFi and used that to navigate to her trust fund’s discretionary funds. The usual fields popped up, and she entered her username and password.

  Small, red writing appeared, saying that her password was wrong.

  She tried it again, typing her password with just one fingertip on the phone’s keyboard. The password was a string of letters and punctuation that she’d memorized.

  Still wrong.

  Weird.

  Flicka started the recovery process, typing her email address into a field to get a new damn password.

  Dieter leaned over from where he sat against the wall, watching the coffee shop from behind sunglasses. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not typing my password right. I’m getting a new one.”

  “Don’t log into your email.”

  “It’s just a quick login. He won’t find it. And even if he did, he obviously knows we’re in Las Vegas.”

  “Flicka—”

  But when she entered her email at the bank’s website, her access was still denied.

  She sat back in her chair. Panic flushed through her skin.

  She clicked the box to ask security questions to recover her password.

  The site said there was no account in her name.

  Flicka typed in her bank account numbers, the digits flashing colors in her head as she typed.

  The website flashed a message that the accounts did not exist. “Dieter.”

  “What?”

  “Pierre has locked me out of my bank account. He’s got everything.”

  He stood and scooped Alina out of her chair. “Let’s go.”

  They walked around the block to a different corner and called another ride service.

  They got home safely and locked the doors.

  Flicka was shaking as she collapsed on the couch. “He shouldn’t have done that. That money is mine. It’s Hannover money, not Monaco’s.”

  “I can’t believe Wulfram didn’t have fail-safes around it. Did he hack your password?”

  Flicka bit her lip. “I put Pierre’s name on the accounts.”

  “You what?”

  “We were married. You know how it is. How did Gretchen get into your business accounts and steal all your money?”

  Dieter flinched and sat beside her. “It’s hard not to put your spouse’s name on accounts. It looks like you don’t trust them, even when you shouldn’t, and money is often used as a weapon in divorces. Yeah, I get it.”

  “Okay,” Flicka said, clutching her hands together to keep them from shaking so hard. “I’ll go out and get another job at another casino, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “I don’t like you walking around out there,” Dieter said. “It’s better if you—”

  “I will not be a goddamn prisoner,” Flicka said. “I won’t let Pierre make me a prisoner in Monaco or a prisoner here.”

  “All right,” Dieter said, sighing. “We’ll figure out how to make it work.”

  Her Silly Little Stalker

  Flicka von Hannover

  After two hours of looking, I had another job,

  because I can take care of myself.

  Indrani had been surprised to hear that Flicka was on the job search again so soon, so Flicka had told her that the hiring manager had wanted a little bonus prize for hiring her. Indrani blinked slowly, maybe deciding whether or not to believe her, and said, “We’ve lost three cocktail waitstaff in the last week. Apply at the Silver Horseshoe Casino, and tell them I sent you over.”

  Flicka certainly took Indrani up on her offer, pinned Dieter’s alpine mountaineering pin into her bra for luck because it had worked the last time, showed the casino her resume, and had a job offer immediately. They even had a “costume” in her size.

  She called Dieter and told him that she would be starting that afternoon, so he could start his card sharking any time he liked. She could hear the smile in his voice as he told her he would be right over.

  Not being helpless and hapless felt good. The vast wealth of the Hannover kingdom had given her many options—and she had been utilizing every single one of them—but it had also meant that every moment of her life was defined.

  Going out and pouncing on a job was liberating.

  They settled into their new routine at the Silver Horseshoe casino, where Flicka’s costume had brown fringe trailing from the backs of her arms that she had to be careful not to dip in the drinks she served.

  Dieter took up residence at a Texas Hold’em table near the middle of the room where he could see when she was restocking her tray at the bar and survey at least half the room. If anyone noticed that the hulking blond poker player had appeared when she did, no one mentioned it.

  Indrani did, indeed, deal blackjack at the Silver Horseshoe on weekends.

  When Flicka worked her first weekend, she sought out Indrani in the changing room to thank her.

  Indrani hugged her and whispered to her that the hiring manager, Prissy, had been watching her and thought she was doing fine.

  The other girls in the locker room eyed Indrani talking to Flicka, and a couple of them nodded to her. One—her nametag read Scotta—chatted with Flicka about the weather and customers while they were waiting for Frank Fissmin, the bartender, to get their drinks.

  And Flicka and Scotta did have time to talk. They had time for a whole conversation while Frank dribbled beer into steins and looked up recipes for mixed drinks but still managed to make them wrong.

  Flicka held a glass up to the light. A pale yellow layer floated on top of bright red gloop in the bottom of the glass.

  She fretted because whatever he had made—pineapple juice, whiskey, and grenadine syrup—wasn’t even a particular drink. A Southern Belle should be made with Tennessee or bourbon whiskey, not single malt Irish whiskey, and it needed orange juice in it, too. Plus, a Southern Belle took a splash of grenadine, not half the highball glass, and it should be served in a tall glass over ice. If Frank had been trying to make a No Man’s Land, then he would have needed to add orange bitters. If that had been an attempt at a Billionaire’s Cocktail, then it would have needed orange juice and bitters. A Tipsy Santa should have been topped with ginger ale.

  She finally said, “I don’t think a pineapple whiskey sour is supposed to have grenadine syrup in it.”

  “She’ll love it,” Frank said, slopping vodka over his knuckles as he poured a jigger that was somehow still half-empty.

  “It should be four ounces of pineapple juice, one ounce of a single malt whiskey, and half an ounce of lemon juice, and that’s all. No grenadine. Grenadine is sweet. It�
��s supposed to be a sour drink.”

  Beside her, Scotta was nodding along to Flicka’s ingredient list. “Frank, you have to make it right. What if the guy is allergic to grenadine, and that’s why he’s ordering sours?”

  Frank rolled his bulging eyes, slammed the weird orange drink down his throat, and finally made a drink that was closer to Flicka’s recipe.

  Frank added a lot of lemon juice to the second one, though. That whiskey sour was going to make the customer pucker, all right.

  Flicka took it anyway. As she walked off, Scotta told Frank to make her a Lemon Drop the right way, too.

  The Silver Horseshoe Casino was more wild-wild West than the Monaco had been, predictably. Flicka tried to tone down her British accent, but everyone asked her if she was from London. Eventually, she said yes, because a British waitress might raise fewer flags than a German or Swiss one if Pierre’s guys were still looking for her.

  She kept an eye out, looking for men wearing black suits who looked out of place in the more casual Silver Horseshoe casino, but none materialized.

  Two days after Flicka started working at the Horseshoe, Bastien showed up like the silver fox had sniffed out her trail, and he ordered his usual top-shelf martini and Weizenbier.

  “Bastien,” she teased him, “I swear you are stalking me.”

  He tapped his chest, a little too appalled at her suggestion. “Moi? Never. But I admit that the Monaco became desperately dull, so I moved on. Four other casinos were just as dull, also. Keep bringing me my martinis and German wheat beer, and I’ll take care of the casino’s electricity bill.”

  She laughed at him.

  Over at the Texas Hold’em table, Dieter swiveled when her laugh rang above the chatter of the crowd, but he didn’t look hard at her. That was standard operating procedure, of course. If she had needed help, she would have rested her right arm on top of her head while she laughed.

  Bastien dropped a black poker chip in the old-fashioned glass on her tray that jingled with other colors of chips. “Besides, after your quick exit from the Monaco Casino, I was worried about you. It’s not every day you see your favorite waitress chased through a crowd by the FBI.”