He would have preferred to have ditched this car, which likely had a tracing device attached to the chassis. For all he knew, Ira was back at the palace pinpointing their exact location for the kidnapper. Yet his princess was safest in the armored car.
His princess? When had he started thinking of her as anything but his responsibility? Since that spectacular kiss? Just the memory heated him. But right now, he couldn’t afford any distractions. Lives were at stake.
Hunter fully believed the children were still alive, but he doubted the kidnapper’s intention to eventually free the kids. That attack at the phone booth had likely been an attempt by the kidnapper to strike the prince and princess down while they were out in the open and exposed. To answer the phone, he’d had to leave the protection of the vehicle, and while he spoke to the kidnapper, he’d been attacked. The weapons they’d employed proved they’d wanted to kill them—not subdue them and lead them to the children.
Tashya was too smart not to put the pieces together. Keeping her in the dark was no longer an option.
When another song blasted over the radio, he spoke. “We have to assume the kidnapper tried to take us out at the phone booth.”
“Which means he has no intention of freeing Dimitri and Nikita,” she said softly.
“Probably. At some point, we’ll have to decide whether to obey the kidnapper’s instructions or risk going after the kids. Right now, it’s not an option.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“Because, Princess,” he said gently, “it’s going to be the most difficult decision you’ll ever have to make.”
She remained silent, thinking, adjusting and adapting, he hoped, to the new information. He had to give her credit, she was holding up well under the pressure.
Hunter pulled into the police parking lot and honked his horn. Two officers ambled out. When they recognized His Royal Highness, Prince Alexander of Vashmira, their sleepy demeanors sharpened, their steps quickened.
The officer in charge asked, “What can we do for you, Highness?”
Alex popped the trunk, then motioned the officers over. “These men attacked me in front of the National Museum. I want them questioned. After you run back background checks and interrogate them, I’d appreciate a phone call.”
“Yes, Highness.”
As Hunter got back behind the wheel, he realized there were some advantages in being recognized as the prince of Vashmira. If he’d been a normal citizen, he’d have been stuck at the police station for hours while the officers took a report and filled out forms. The stop had taken them only five minutes.
He drove through empty city streets. This area of the city was comprised of upscale stores that sold luxury merchandise. Grass along the sidewalks was neatly trimmed, and garbage cans lined up by the curb for morning pickup had fitted lids. A city block of stores and a park with a fountain defined a central square right smack in the middle of the shopping district.
“Is this the park where Nicholas and Ericka had difficulties?” Hunter asked, masking his words with a radio advertisement for cereal.
“Yes. They had to hide in the park fountain to avoid being run over by a driver. Why?”
“It could be just a coincidence that the kidnapper told us to meet in the same place.” Maybe, he thought.
His cell phone rang. Hunter stopped the car, turned down the radio and attached the tracer, then picked up his phone. “Yes?”
“You’re late.”
Hunter identified the disguised voice as the kidnapper’s. He held the cell phone up to Tashya’s ear and leaned close to her, so both of them could listen.
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” the kidnapper half demanded, half whined.
So the kidnapper was either watching them or having them watched by someone reporting back to him.
“I practice safe cell. I don’t drive and talk on the phone.”
“Get going.”
“Where?”
“Ditch the tails, and I’ll be in touch.”
After the dial tone blared in their ears, Tashya looked at the blinking tracer and turned up the radio. “Did you get his location?”
“He didn’t stay on the line long enough.”
Hunter now had several choices. He could pull a quick U-turn, chase down his tails and confront them. Or he could lose them. Either option was risky. Both had advantages and disadvantages. However, he also had to consider the princess’s safety and weigh the danger to her against how much he might learn from questioning his tails.
Tashya reached over and placed her hand on his. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m weighing your safety against Dimitri’s and Nikita’s,” he told her honestly.
She squeezed his hand tight enough to dig her nails into his flesh. “Let’s get something straight. The kids have to come first.”
“I’m not sure if confronting those tails will gain us any information—but it will put you in jeopardy.”
“What would you do if you were alone?” she asked, her tone impatient.
“I’m not alone.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’d go after the tails. Force them to tell me who they work for.”
“There’s your answer,” she insisted.
It wasn’t that simple. However, Hunter knew she was right. But placing her in danger went against the grain. “I could drop you off here—come back for you afterward.”
“And maybe they’d grab me while I was alone.” She spoke calmly. “I’m safer with you. Even if you drive us straight into danger. So get on with it.”
The cell phone rang. Expecting the kidnapper, Hunter turned off the radio and put on the speaker option, so Tashya could listen.
“This is Officer Nefi, Highness. We questioned those degenerates separately. They all gave up the same story. They were paid in cash by a guy on the street who goes by the name Georgi Petrov. They described him as a stocky man in his mid-fifties with black hair and dark eyes, who speaks English with a Bulgarian or Hungarian accent. All three men claimed that they had no idea that they’d been hired to attack Your Highness. They were told you were a businessman who’d cheated a merchant and needed to be taught a lesson.”
“How far was that lesson intended to go?”
“These criminals aren’t stupid, Highness. They aren’t going to admit to attempted murder.”
“What about Georgi Petrov?” Hunter asked. “Have you any records on him?”
“Sorry, Highness. We believe the name is an alias.”
“Thank you, Officer. If anything else turns up, please inform me immediately.”
He clicked off the phone, and Tashya’s tone was somber. “We don’t have anything to go on. Whoever is doing this knows how to hide themselves.”
“We’ll just have to be smarter.”
“How?”
Hunter turned the radio up. “First, we ditch this car.”
She reached for the phone. “I’ll have Nicholas arrange for another car to—”
“No. It’s too easy to tap into the palace phone system. If Nicholas arranges transportation for us, the kidnapper may find out.”
“We can’t buy a car at this time of night. Even the cab companies are closed.”
“We’re going to steal one.”
Chapter Seven
Steal? Hunter wanted her to steal a car? The thought bothered Tashya on several different levels. Stealing was wrong. She didn’t believe in taking some hardworking citizen’s car just because she didn’t have one of her own. A car was an expensive item; it took many hours to earn the money to buy one. She imagined the upset owner, the inconvenience and anger at the loss, the time lost from work to report the stolen vehicle to the police.
Hunter wanted her to steal.
Tashya had been brought up by her father with a strong sense of justice and duty to her people. She held her position to serve Vashmira’s citizens, not to take from them.
And he wanted her to steal.
She couldn’t even justify stealing a car for the greater good. It wasn’t as if she was fighting a war for her people. Stealing a car served only her purpose, her convenience. It was wrong.
But so was kidnapping and possibly murder. Weren’t the lives of two little boys worth more than a car? Was she simply wrestling with her conscience so she could justify an illegal action?
Hunter glanced at her. “If it makes you feel any better, when we return, you can have the palace write the owner a check.”
She quieted her conscience by telling herself she would do whatever was necessary for Nikita’s and Dimitri’s safety. Really, she didn’t have much choice—not if she wanted to live with herself.
Of course, there were no guarantees they would live through the night. Hunter stepped on the gas, and she braced her hands on the seat and door, her heart surging with fear. She stared straight ahead, not daring to look at the speedometer, not even daring to say a word of protest. Losing those tails had to be done and speeding was their only option right now.
Hunter zigzagged through the city streets, changing lanes to steer around wide corners. Several minutes later they left the city behind and entered a residential neighborhood. “Hold on, Princess. We’re almost there.”
“Where?” From the maps he’d studied, he must know exactly where he was going, but she’d never been in this section before and didn’t recognize the area.
He turned a corner and slammed on the brake. The car slid to a stop by the river. He parked in the middle of a boat ramp. “Grab your bag and get out.”
She did as he asked, stepping into the night air and feeling vulnerable without the armored plating around her. Hunter took his duffel from the back seat and tossed it into the grass. “Wait here.”
He got back behind the wheel, rolled down the windows and bent below the dash. She had no idea what he was doing. Then the car headed straight for the water. She gasped.
At the last moment Hunter opened the door and rolled out of the car as easily as Dimitri tumbled from bed. Hunter swiftly shoved to his feet to watch the car roar down the ramp and splash into the water. The heavy armored vehicle sank beneath the surface and out of sight with one giant sucking gurgle.
“We’re hiding our tracks?” she asked.
He nodded. “Now we need a new set of wheels.”
They strolled across the street where expensive homes overlooked the river. They walked past several vehicles before Hunter stopped beside a dark Mercedes coup that looked sleek and powerful.
Kneeling, he placed his duffel on the ground and pulled out a thick ring of keys.
She’d expected him to pick the lock. Talk about being prepared. He walked around carrying sets of master keys; she wondered how many cars he’d stolen.
Judging by his efficiency and the two seconds it took him to find the correct key, he’d stolen quite a few. Two minutes later, in their stolen vehicle, he drove them back the way they’d come at a much more sedate pace. She turned off the air conditioner and tried not to feel guilty for settling comfortably into the plush leather seat. At least he’d stolen from a household that could probably afford to lose their car and undoubtedly had insurance.
“Are we going back to find the tails?” she asked him, glad she was free to speak in a normal tone and without a radio blasting.
“They’re gone.”
“Since when?”
“Since I mentioned going after them.”
She leaned back and closed her eyes. “If the armored car was bugged, do you think they know that you aren’t my brother?” she asked, opening her eyes and watching as he turned onto a highway that led toward the airport and the mountains beyond.
“We’ll know soon enough. If the kidnapper calls back, it’s probably safe to assume he still believes that I’m the prince.”
And if he didn’t call…she might never see Dimitri and Nikita again. The horrible thought brought tears to her eyes. She wiped the tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. “How long…” She stopped herself. Hunter couldn’t possibly know when the kidnapper would call again. Pestering him with useless questions would only distract him from…from what? She had no idea where he was taking her next.
He checked his rearview mirror every fifteen seconds like clockwork. “My guess is that it’s going to be hours until we get that phone call.”
“Hours?”
“The kidnapper’s plan to take us out at the phone booth failed. I don’t think he had an alternate strategy.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Although he kidnapped the boys out of the palace quite efficiently, it means we’re probably not dealing with a professional. Let’s just hope he tries again and doesn’t panic.”
She swallowed her frustration. She wanted the phone to ring now. She wanted to get this over with. “So what do we do while we wait?”
“We sleep.”
Romance wasn’t exactly high on her list of priorities at the moment and she wasn’t sure what she thought about sleeping arrangements.
He turned into a parking lot outside Vashmira’s main airport. “We should rest so we can be fresh,” he said. He parked in the long-term parking lot amid the Eurocar rentals where she imagined it might not be noticed for several days.
“Come on, Princess. I need to steal another car and then we can find a bed for the rest of the night.”
“WAS STEALING ANOTHER car really necessary?” Tashya asked Hunter after she settled into the discrete white sedan.
“Probably not necessary, but I like to take the safest option.” As he drove past a well-lit area, he glanced over at her. Dark circles under her eyes weren’t from shadows but from stress and fatigue. Although Hunter never once forgot that she was a civilian on a dangerous mission for which she’d received no training, he’d failed to consider how the strain of knowing the kidnapped children so well would affect her. He’d met Dimitri and Nikita just once, but they were her brothers.
After one meeting the two boys had reminded him of puppies, curious and lovable. However they had grown up around Tashya. She’d probably held them in her arms since they were babies, watched their first steps, heard them speak their first words. The danger they might be in had to be much harder for her to bear than for him—a relative stranger.
Working under that kind of stress tended to wear trained agents down. For Tashya, it had to be pure hell.
He wished he could give her something else to think about and considered allowing her to take part in some of the decisions. While he had no intention of abdicating his responsibility for this mission, if he could treat her more like a partner, she might feel as though she had a little more control over the outcome.
“Where do you think we should hole up for a few hours?” he asked her.
“I suppose the five-star Vashmiran Crown Hotel is out of the question?”
“It would be better to go somewhere more discrete. Somewhere we won’t be recognized, if that’s possible.”
“There are some special license hotels that are near the historic attractions in the old neighborhoods.”
She directed him to a pretty street of pastel-painted old wooden houses, rebuilt and refurnished like period pieces. Tashya put on sunglasses and knotted a scarf over her hair, a temporary disguise that often worked. She secured a suite at the hotel while Hunter hid his face behind a newspaper. She paid in cash, and then they were taken to their rooms by a sleepy bellboy who informed them that the restaurant opened at 7:00 a.m., the bathhouse an hour later and that the café across the street served Turkish coffee and baklava or asure—pudding made with nuts, cereal and raisins—for breakfast.
Hunter tipped the bellboy, then set Tashya’s backpack in the bedroom. He made sure the drapes were closed and the windows locked before he went back into the living area. “Go ahead and take the bedroom, Princess. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
She looked from his six-foot frame back to the five-foot couch. “It’s too little for you.”
Now
was no time for her to turn considerate. Even discussing the sleeping arrangements had him on edge. “Have you forgotten I can sleep anywhere, even sitting upright in a chair? I’ll be fine.”
She hesitated again outside the door to her room. “You’ll wake me if the phone rings?”
“If you like.”
Something in his tone must have clued her in that he had no intention of waking her up until he felt it was necessary. She frowned at him. “If we share the bed, I’ll hear the phone ring, too.”
No way would he be able to sleep if they shared a bed. No damn way. Just imagining her next to him—her soft breath rising and falling, her skin close enough to take in her sweet scent—would lead his thoughts down a path he’d decided he could never take. Yet he had no intention of telling her how she affected him. Kissing her had been a mistake that he couldn’t make worse by going even further—like sleeping in the same bed.
“Go on.” Hoping the gesture appeared lighthearted, he waved for her to move along and leave him. “I have a few things to do.”
Yeah, like twiddle his thumbs. Like pace in frustration. Like think how good it would be to have accepted her invitation.
She stepped into the bedroom, and he could no longer see her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t envision her getting ready for bed. He doubted she’d had room in that backpack for a nightgown. He wondered if she slept in the nude, and his mouth went dry at the thought. She’d probably sleep in a T-shirt, a cuddly soft shirt that would outline every curve, caress every hollow.
When he heard her turn on the water in the shower, Hunter knew better than to attempt a combat nap. He wasn’t exhausted enough to turn off his mind. How could he sleep when he imagined her standing under the shower, water coursing through her hair, over her face, raining between her breasts?
He slammed his right fist into his left palm, hoping the sting in his palm would remind him that he had work to do. From his duffel, he pulled out a laptop computer and uplinked to a satellite. He entered three eighteen-letter/number combination passwords and downloaded a top-secret encryption program.
Royal Ransom Page 9