In Shining Armor

by Blair Babylon

  Zero, nine. Enter.

  Zero, seven. Enter.

  The safe whirred and popped open.

  Nothing lay inside.

  The strongbox was bare. Nothing but damned dust.

  He slammed the steel door.

  Behind Dieter, Wulfram asked, “How did you open that?”

  “Safecracking is a required class at Mercenary University,” Dieter snarled. He cleared his throat. “I took a double-major in safecracking and hostage rescue.”

  Wulfram nodded, but he wouldn’t be able to laugh at the joke, not with his sister missing and Dieter wouldn’t even reassure him that she might be alive. Dieter felt even more like an asshole.

  Wulf asked, “Did you find anything?”

  He scowled. “Not a damned thing. Let’s see what else is here.”

  They searched the suite, and Dieter found Flicka’s package of birth control pills in the bathroom. He slipped the blister pack up his sleeve.

  One of the lamps in the bedroom was cracked, though it had been returned to the bedside table. There was no other sign that a rape had occurred in this bedroom, just hours before.

  Dieter’s molars ground together, and his pulse thudded in his ears. He turned away and poked through a dresser drawer filled with Flicka’s clothes, lest Wulf see the rage boiling in his eyes and blood.

  He growled to clear his tight throat again. “There’s no blood. There are signs of a struggle but not violence.”

  Wulfram nodded, but his blue eyes were blank. “Strangulation would not produce blood evidence.”

  Dieter found a bullet hole in the living room plaster wall above the couch. He poked his finger in it and found cool metal inside.

  “Bullet,” he said to Wulfram and examined his fingertip. “Smells like gunpowder. No flecks of blood. He missed.”

  “He missed that shot,” Wulfram said.

  “The carpet is light blue. We would be able to see the blood if Pierre cut himself shaving.”

  Wulfram nodded, but he continued to stare at his feet.

  After fifteen minutes of supposed searching, the urge to return to Flicka—to stand over her and guard her—was too much to ignore.

  Dieter said, “I don’t think there’s anything here. I’m going to check the surveillance footage and interrogate the concierge staff.” He rounded on Wulfram. “Listen, this looks like a domestic situation, but it might not be. I want you on your toes, all the time. If they came after Flicka this time, they might come after you or Rae next.”

  Wulfram didn’t move as he listened. Even his bright blue eyes didn’t waver at the news that his pregnant wife might be in danger.

  Dieter paused, gathering his thoughts. “There’s always a chance this was an inside job. Rogue Security and the Welfenlegion have been rotating coverage on Flicka. I need you to suspect everyone, absolutely everyone around you, if we’re going to keep you and Rae safe.”

  “Can I trust you?” Wulf asked. It felt like an attempt at humor, but his eyes were too flat for laughter.

  “You’ve never been able to trust me, Durchlaucht. We established that years ago,” Dieter told him.

  Wulfram huffed, an abortive attempt at a laugh when he was being told that the people he trusted most in the world might kill him or the love of his life. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “Keep a weapon by your bed at night. Put one on Rae’s side of the bed, too. Lock your bedroom door, or keep them outside of your suite entirely. Don’t let them separate you. Don’t trust any one of them, not an inch.”

  Wulf nodded. “I wish I could have you there, but I need you to find her.”

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I know anything,” Dieter lied.

  The Cavalry

  Dieter Schwarz

  Business meeting.

  Dieter hurried out of the Le Montreux Palace Hotel onto the busy street in the heart of Montreux. Shops lined the street on both sides, and of course, concert halls, auditoriums, and bars with stages were behind every third door. Montreux hosts jazz and classical music festivals. One year, when the Montreux Casino burned down during the jazz festival, Deep Purple wrote the song “Smoke on the Water” about the black plume roiling across Lake Geneva in the aftermath.

  But today was another beautiful summer morning with a cool breeze skimming over the blue water and winding down the narrow streets where tourists shopped between sunning themselves and eating in the restaurants.

  Dieter walked quickly, picking up a morning-after pill in a pharmacy and some women’s tourist clothes at gift shops. Flicka had nothing to wear but the ruined evening gown, gilded sandals, and a diamond tiara or else his tee shirt and boxers which flowed around her, both of which were a little conspicuous for what he intended.

  When he returned to his suite, Magnus let him in. “Not a whisper from anyone. Entirely uneventful.”

  “Good. I need to convene a business meeting in fifteen minutes. Get the captains. It shouldn’t be long, but we have an emergency to contend with.”

  As Magnus walked out the door, he shot back, “I’ll get them.”

  After Dieter bolted the door behind Magnus, he rapped his knuckles on the bedroom door. “Flicka?”

  For just a moment, a wisp of paranoia threaded behind his eyes that he shouldn’t have trusted Magnus Jensen, that he would find blood and Flicka’s lifeless body in the bedroom.

  Flicka looked up from where she sat in the middle of the bed, her eyes and nose red. “I didn’t make a sound while you were gone.”

  “You were perfect, Durchlauchtig. I need you to dress and do anything you can to disguise yourself. I bought some makeup at the pharmacy, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. I bought clothes, and I got the morning-after pill and your regular pills from your suite. I couldn’t find your passport, though. It wasn’t in the safe. Nothing was in the safe.”

  Flicka’s eyes scrunched up. “I thought it would be there. He must have taken everything out. How am I going to fly to Paris without a passport?”

  “Trains,” Dieter said. “They don’t check passports on trains.”

  Flicka’s eyes opened wide. “They don’t?”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Have you ever ridden a train?”

  “Of course not. Don’t be gauche.”

  He chuckled at her haughty pout. “Then it’ll be an adventure, right? You were always looking to have adventures like ‘normal’ people.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled just a little, but her brilliant green eyes were still so sad that they hurt him.

  “We’ll leave in a few hours. I need to meet with some of the guys to arrange things now, so you’ll have to be quiet again.”

  “Okay.” She picked up the plastic bag and started toward the bathroom. “I’ll just see what I can do with this.”

  “And Flicka?”

  She stopped and looked back.

  “Nice work on Pierre’s face,” he told her.

  She smiled a little more.

  He watched her walk in and shut the door, smiling all the time in case she looked back. His oversized clothes flowed around her slim thighs and arms.

  She did peek as she closed the door, looking into his eyes as the gap narrowed.

  He couldn’t look away from her brilliant green eyes.

  When he heard the door lock, Dieter opened his carry-on suitcase and felt along the top edge with his fingertips. Part of the seam that held the fabric to the suitcase was a little rougher than the rest, and he slid a long thread out of the cloth, unraveling the closure. He peeled apart the thin strip of Velcro and felt inside, finding two scarlet-covered Swiss passports. Pressing the Velcro back together to hide the compartment, Dieter slipped the passports into the breast pocket inside his suit jacket.

  Just in case.

  Knocking rattled the front door to the suite.

  Dieter received a text on his phone via Rogue Security’s encrypted system that his captains had arrived, but he looked out the peephole, too.

  Four men stood outside,
all angled away from the door to surveil the hallway.

  Dieter opened the door. “Gentlemen.”

  Magnus Jensen led the other three as they trooped in and settled on the couches. All were tall, muscular, lean, and bearing that easy confidence that comes from knowing you could kill anyone you wanted with nothing more than your bare hands.

  The four of them lounged on the furniture as Dieter locked the door. He didn’t bother moving the chair and table back in front of it. Nothing short of a shrapnel grenade could take down the five of them.

  Dieter summarized the official story as quickly as he could: that Friederike Augusta von Hannover, a Princess of Hannover and wife of a Prince of Monaco, had been missing since the small hours of the morning. The Monegasque Secret Service wasn’t coughing up any information, and her brother and Rogue Security’s largest client wanted her found and safe. Dieter, himself, was very, very concerned for her safety. “We’re relatively certain that domestic violence was involved. I didn’t see any bloodstains or signs of murder, but strangulation doesn’t leave much evidence.”

  Magnus Jensen didn’t flinch, his ice blue eyes as steely as ever, but Eian Summerhays, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees, winced.

  Eian was a blue-eyed Northern Irishman who had served in the British SAS as a paratrooper and underwater specialist. His experience in infiltration had already come in handy during Rogue’s operations, but he had a soft spot for women, children, and dogs in peril, maybe too much of one.

  Eian had been highly recommended by the man on the right side of the couch, Aiden Grier, a ginger Scot with no past that could be spoken of.

  The last of Dieter’s captains, Aaron Savoie, was former Israeli Mossad and Sayeret, the special forces division of the Israeli Defense Force. The darkness in his eyes could have been mistaken for sadness, as if he had seen too much in his thirty years. It was true that Aaron had lived through enormous tragedy, but his dark eyes were deep pools that hid the rage Dieter had seen emerge when Aaron needed to fight.

  Dieter said, “We need to watch the Monegasque Secret Service to see if they’ll lead us to her. If they do, we need to get ahead of them and keep her away from them. If she’s not already dead, they may have orders to finish the job.”

  At that, even Magnus raised his dark eyebrows. “I’ll take that. I’d love to punch that prick Quentin Sault in the face.”

  Not if Dieter had the chance to do it first. “We’ll need to secure a location because she might be headed there: her lawyers’ office in Paris. I want several men on that office, ready to stand with her if she shows up. Monaco will doubtlessly be watching it, too. I need to know who all their officers are, where they are, and how we can neutralize them if she does show up there. We can extract her at that time to a safe house.”

  Aaron Savoie, the Israeli, raised his hand, indicating dibs on Paris, and wrote a short note on a small pad of paper. He was a man of few words.

  “So, what do I get, Chief?” Eian Summerhays asked.

  “Liaise with Wulfram von Hannover,” Dieter said.

  “That’s it? Just relay messages? You set him up with secure communications months ago.”

  “I have intelligence that Monaco has turned a person inside Wulfram’s camp. We’ve got a traitor. If Flicka has been kidnapped rather than walked away on her own, it is exceedingly likely that the next target might be Wulfram or his wife, Rae Stone-von Hannover.”

  Eian asked, his voice light with his Irish accent, “Isn’t she—um—in the family way?”

  When you employed a bunch of guys who used to be spies, they learned stuff that they probably shouldn’t.

  “Off the record, yes.” Which meant Eian had a pregnant mother to take care of, which meant Eian would be in peak form absolutely every moment, which was exactly what Dieter needed between the Hannovers and whomever Monaco had inside the Welfenlegion. “So you’ll take good care of them, right?”

  “Jesus Christ.” Eian looked stricken, but Dieter knew that he would get over it and be the most diligent of bodyguards.

  “And me?” Aiden Grier asked, his Scottish burr thickening even those two words.

  “Undercover in Monaco,” Dieter told him. “Infiltrate the Prince’s Palace and be near him in case we need a man on the inside, there.” Two could play at the game of placing moles inside security perimeters. “Conduct surveillance and report intelligence. Be ready to intervene if they show up there with her, take her into our custody, and protect her there.”

  Aiden nodded. “Aye, sounds like fun.”

  Aiden Grier’s usual idea of fun involved mopping up copious amounts of blood afterward. Dieter repressed a shudder.

  They strategized for a few minutes and then divvied up other Rogue Security personnel for other assignments.

  Dieter’s four captains left his suite with more spring in their step, though whether it was mere adrenaline or actual bloodlust, he couldn’t tell. “Magnus, hold up a moment?”

  Magnus paused while the others left.

  Dieter handed his laptop, the one with Rogue Security’s specialized and proprietary software on it, to Magnus. “Take this with you. Whenever you’re separated from me by at least a hundred miles, log in.”

  Magnus accepted the laptop and nodded.

  “And I need a clear passage from this room to one of the SUVs in the parking garage in about an hour. Take all the personnel you need, coordinate with Blaise Lyon at HQ for technical support, but no eyes.”

  “On it.” Magnus left.

  Dieter locked and blocked the door again before he pulled his phone from his pocket.

  Aiden Grier, the ginger Scot who had just left the room, was the most affable guy you’ve ever met in a bar with a drink in his hand, like most spies. Everyone believed that Aiden was their best friend.

  Jordan Defrancesco, a Monegasque Secret Service officer, had fallen under Aiden’s spell and promised to pass information to Rogue Security within an hour.

  Dieter’s phone rang as he called Defrancesco.

  Jordan answered, “Si?”

  “Tell me what happened last night,” Dieter told Jordan.

  Jordan said, “Friederike von Hannover has gone missing, but no one is talking. The beepers went off, and the on-calls emerged from the ready room down the hall from the Prince’s suite. The first guys out saw her running down the hall. They chased, but she jumped into the elevator as the doors were closing. They almost got her there, but then they couldn’t trace the floor where she got off. She’s smart. They searched the hotel but found nothing. Sault is on a rampage, demanding that we find her. Squads are searching the hotel, the parking garage, and a couple of blocks around. No one knows anything. No one will talk. It looks like she fell off the face of the Earth.”

  “Thank you, Jordan. That is helpful.”

  “Do you know where she is? Is she all right?” The panic in Jordan Defrancesco’s voice sounded like more than professional interest.

  “We’re also searching for her. I think you guys are ahead of us at this point. We’ve only known that she was missing for an hour or so. If I find anything, I’ll let you know, all right?”

  “I would really appreciate that. She’s a nice girl, you know? She’s always nice to us.”

  Friendliness with her jailers hadn’t saved her the night before, when she’d been assaulted and still had livid marks on her neck from Pierre’s hands.

  Dieter said, “I’ll let you know if I find out anything. After all, we’re on the same team.”

  Chattiness Pays Off

  Flicka von Hannover

  Magical thinking.

  Flicka swallowed the first dose of the morning-after contraceptive even though she knew that she could have just resumed her pills and her chances of being knocked up would have been quite low. Last night’s pill would have only been about twelve hours late.

  Insignificant, statistically.

  Just the thought of Pierre forcing her to be pregnant made her hands shake. He’d been so s
ure that he could do that, that he would just impregnate her and neither she nor anyone else could stop him. Even though he’d been so angry, his confidence that he owned her body terrified her.

  Never again.

  She never wanted to be in the same room as he was ever again, and she wanted to finalize that divorce as soon as possible. That afternoon, if she could. Getting married was the stroke of a pen. Divorce should be the same way.

  She suspected that divorce would not be that easy, but she hoped. The prenuptial agreements had been hammered out by teams of lawyers over months. There should be no quibbling over money, property, or titles. There was a rubric. Less than five years with no children meant that everybody picked up their money and went home.

  But she wanted it done right then.

  To do it, though, she had to get to Paris.

  Flicka stared into the bathroom mirror above the sink and did her best to change her appearance with the cosmetics that Dieter had bought. Luckily, he had purchased an eyeliner and some different colors of foundation.

  Professional makeup artists had been performing their magic on Flicka for years, often several times a week. Flicka was chatty, and she liked people a lot. Her chattiness bothered some people, and she had learned to sort those out and let them do their jobs without her interference. But if they were up for it, she was more than happy to listen, ask questions, and be very interested in everything they did. Cosmeticians had been divulging their best secrets to her all that time as they giggled together.

  Basically, Flicka did the opposite of what the good make-up artists did.

  She changed the heart shape of her face by highlighting her jaw to widen it, blunted her cheekbones, and shaded in her eyes until they were almost almond-shaped. The frightened tremor in her fingers made her glop on the eyeshadow, exaggerating them more than she had intended.

  It worked, though.

  Most of her close friends would have walked right by her and never glanced twice.

  She scraped her voluminous blond hair back into a tight bun and bound it with a rubber band she had found in the back of one of the vanity drawers.