The Lost Prince

by Dees, Cindy

  “I love you, too.”

  Her parents were both watching her intently when she hung up the phone. Heat climbed her cheeks. To distract them, she said, “Nick has hired Travis, and the two of them have some plan they want to run past me. Mom, could I borrow a suit from you?”

  “Of course, honey.”

  The two of them went upstairs to find something for Katy to wear. Since she’d lost weight in Baraq, she was much more similar to her mother in build. They picked out a royal-blue cashmere suit that magnified the color of Katy’s eyes until they glowed cobalt. The asymmetric cut of the jacket was timeless yet stylish. The suit wouldn’t pass for casual anywhere, but it could pass for varying degrees of formal. Since she had no idea what Nick and Travis were up to, she wanted to cover all her bases.

  Katy’s mother put her hair into a French twist for her, and Katy borrowed some of her mother’s makeup. The end effect was startling. It was the first time Katy had really gussied herself up since she’d come back from Baraq, and she didn’t clean up half bad nowadays. It must be the good bones Nick had once told her she had.

  But then the ever-present doubts began to creep back in. Did he really love her? He was surely polished enough and smart enough to manipulate her emotions. Was he saying what she wanted to hear because she was carrying his baby or because he really felt that way about her?

  If only they could’ve fallen in love under normal circumstances. Yeah, right. As if she’d have ever crossed his path, let alone caught his eye.

  She became aware of a noise outside. It was loud and getting louder. And then her father called from downstairs, “Katy, there’s a helicopter about to land in the backyard. I think it’s for you.”

  Thank goodness her parents had a large treeless space behind their house. She called down the stairs, “Either it’s for me or you’ve hooked up with a really rich mistress on the side. Better watch out. Mom’ll kill you if she finds out!”

  Her mother laughed and walked her down the stairs. Her father looked up when she walked into the family room and stared. “Honey, you look beautiful.”

  There went the blush again. “Thanks, Dad. I don’t know when I’ll be home. Don’t wait up for me.”

  He grinned. “Do try to keep the noise down when you come in.”

  They were having to yell over the din of the helicopter, which was idling in the backyard.

  One of the security guards poked his head in the door and shouted, “One of you call for a chopper ride?”

  “That would be me,” Katy shouted back.

  Both guards fell in beside her as she walked across the yard toward the helicopter. How cool was this? A helicopter to pick her up? There were going to be some definite perks to this whole royalty business.

  A spotlight turned toward her from the vicinity of the aircraft’s cockpit. It reminded her of the lights mounted on police cars. Squinting into the glare, she had no trouble picking her way across the lawn. But she couldn’t make out anything other than a big, black blob where her ride awaited.

  A door swung open and a man leaned out. One of her security guards stepped forward, and the man from the helicopter said, “We won’t be needing you. There aren’t any extra seats. We’ll take it from here.”

  The security guard nodded and stepped back. He helped the guy from inside fold down a set of steps and then he helped Katy climb them. After the piercing light outside, she was completely blind in here. She made out the silhouettes of men filling the other three seats in the back, but beyond that all she could see were bright spots dancing before her eyes.

  The door shut behind her and the helicopter lifted off. It lifted straight up, and her parent’s house fell away beneath her. Then, it tilted forward thrillingly and accelerated away into the night.

  Gradually her vision cleared and she was able to see the men around her. She didn’t recognize any of them. They were all dark-haired and olive-complexioned. They looked Baraqi. Nick must have sent his personal bodyguards for her after all.

  After about fifteen minutes, she turned around to face the cockpit area and the two men seated there. “Where are we going?” she shouted. She’d assumed this would be a short hop downtown to Travis’s offices or maybe to a restaurant for a meeting.

  The man in the copilot seat turned around to face her.

  “Welcome aboard, Miss McMann. Or should I say, Mrs. Ramsey?”

  Oh. My. God.

  Major Moubayed.

  Chapter 14

  Nick closed his eyes while a makeup artist put powder on his forehead to eliminate any glare from the camera lights. He hated wearing makeup but was no stranger to it. Between photo shoots for magazines, official portraits and the rare press conference over the years, he was used to paper towels stuck down his collar and fussy makeup artists fluttering around him.

  “Ten minutes, Your Highness,” a State Department aide told him.

  “Thank you. Is my wife here yet?”

  “Not yet, sir. We’ve got a call in to the driver to give us an estimated time of arrival.”

  She should’ve arrived fifteen minutes ago. Pressure was building behind his eyes, and his gut was roiling in a way that had nothing to do with stage fright. Something was wrong. He could feel it.

  He pulled the paper towels out of his collar and looked at one of his bodyguards. “Bring me my cell phone,” he ordered quietly.

  Had she stood him up? Had the same sense of unreality that he’d fought ever since he left Baraq overwhelmed her? She’d taken such huge risks in Baraq. Had her courage failed her now? Or maybe being back home made her realize how crazy they’d both been in Baraq.

  Dammit! They almost had it all. She just had to hang in there with him for a few more days. Maybe even a matter of hours!

  He dialed her cell phone number. No answer.

  Surely she hadn’t learned what he and Travis were up to and bolted. He’d intentionally given her no hint as to what tonight’s rendezvous was about. He’d talked it over with Travis, and while they felt bad for sneaking up on her like this, they both felt it would be unwise to give her advance warning that she was about to be declared Queen of Baraq and presented to the world. She would likely get worked up over it, and they didn’t want to make her nervous or stressed. She was expecting a baby, after all.

  Nick huffed in frustration as he was transferred to her voice mail. What in the world was going on? She’d been so cheerful on the phone just an hour ago. What had changed between now and then? Why didn’t she want to talk to him?

  “Ah, there you are, Your Highness. Are we all set on the order of events?” It was an Undersecretary of State who would be participating in the press conference to announce America’s commitment to back Nikolas Ramsey in regaining his throne.

  Once the State Department had learned of his pretty, young American wife and the child on the way, Travis had helped them see the public-relations nightmare it would be if they didn’t get behind the Cinderella fairy tale and help Katy and Nick regain their thrones. Nick suspected Travis’s reputation for blatantly and brilliantly manipulating the press to his own ends was largely responsible for the State Department’s quick capitulation. They were terrified of what he’d do to them if they didn’t go along.

  A high-ranking United Nations official had already called Nick to tell him the U.N. would be getting on board, as well, and would issue a press release in the morning. Everything was falling into place. All he and Katy had to do was get through this press conference and then let international pressure push Sharaf right out of power. And in the meantime, maybe they could get away and take a real honeymoon somewhere.

  His mental debate over heading for snowy mountains or a tropical paradise was interrupted by a commotion among the cluster of aides who’d accompanied the Undersecretary of State.

  One of them rushed toward him and the Undersecretary.

  “There’s a problem, gentlemen.”

  The pressure behind Nick’s eyes became stabbing pain, and his entire gut rolled ov
er.

  “Mrs. Ramsey has disappeared.”

  Nick expected an explosion from deep in his gut, but instead terror so cold it froze him from the inside out overtook him. “What has happened?” he bit out.

  “When our driver showed up, her parents told him she’d left a few minutes before by helicopter to join you.”

  “Was there a mix-up of some kind? Did the State Department accidentally send one for her in addition to the car?”

  “No, Your Highness. I just got off the phone with our flight coordinators, and no helicopters have been dispatched this evening.”

  “You’re about to dispatch one now,” Nick snapped. “Call your air-traffic-control centers and find out where that helicopter’s gone. And get me another helicopter. I’m going after my wife!”

  “One of our security specialists is already working on getting it tracked.”

  The Undersecretary piped up. “The press conference is set to begin in less than ten minutes. What are we going to do about that?”

  “I don’t give a damn!” Nick exclaimed.

  “I can’t very well announce that we’re going to back your return to the throne of Baraq until you present your wife. Otherwise it would look like we were reversing course without any good reason for it. The press release has already gone out stating that you’ve given the entire assets of the Baraqi treasury to your wife. You have to follow up with announcing your wedding or the international press will go ballistic by tomorrow morning. We’ve only got an hour or so before the European morning newspapers go to print.”

  As if Nick cared about press brouhahas or the State Department’s public image—or about his throne, for that matter! And then it hit him. He didn’t give a flip whether or not he ever set foot in Baraq again, let alone became king. All that mattered now was Katy and her safety.

  He turned to the State Department official “Look. You deal with it. Say whatever you want to the press. Cancel the damned press conference, for all I care.”

  “But our agreement… Of course we need to postpone the press conference—your wife’s safety comes first. But the timing of this announcement is critical—”

  Nick walked away from the guy. He grabbed the aide by the elbow and steered him back over to the now-agitated cluster of other aides, most of whom were talking tensely into their cell phones. He overheard enough snippets of conversations to know these guys were calling in everyone and his uncle to search for Katy. He gave them about a minute before his own impatience got the best of him.

  “What have you got?” he asked them as a group.

  “The helicopter headed northwest out of D.C. at a high rate of speed. It went off radar about thirty minutes after it showed up.”

  “Take me there,” he ordered.

  One of the lead agents nodded. “Police and FBI agents are heading into that area to begin a search on the ground, and the FBI is scrambling a search-and-rescue team by helicopter. We figured you’d want to be there. We’ll have a car here for you in approximately ten minutes.”

  They were the longest ten minutes of Nick’s life. He’d had some rough moments when the coup d’état had taken place in Baraq and he’d been waiting to die, but this was a hundred times worse. A thousand times worse. He paced like a caged lion and gave serious consideration to doing some random violence if that car didn’t get there pretty soon.

  Finally an aide gestured to him and Nick rushed to the guy. They rode an elevator to the ground floor of the building and then jogged to a loading dock at the back.

  The FBI vehicle pulled up, a big, black SUV. It turned sharply in the tight confines, and Nick ran toward it with Travis right behind him. A door opened in the back and the two men jumped inside. The door hadn’t even shut before the SUV leaped forward. The driver opened his window as they hit the streets and slapped a red-and-blue flasher light on the roof. It attached magnetically with a sharp thud.

  Nick put on the headset someone held for him. “What’s the latest?” he called over the noise and the rush of wind from the still-open window.

  “We have a report of a chopper matching the description of ours landing close to a wooded area in Montgomery County. We should be there in twenty minutes.”

  I’m coming, Katy. Hang on, my darling.

  Katy looked around. The helicopter had set them down near the edge of a large field, and Moubayed’s men had hustled her to the edge of a dark wooded area as the helicopter had lifted off into the night again, all its lights extinguished. It looked like little more than a shadow as it winged off.

  Fear, panic and terror didn’t begin to describe the emotions gripping her by the throat and barely allowing her to breathe. It was her worst nightmare—and worse—come horribly true.

  She reviewed what she recalled of Moubayed from Baraq. It had infuriated him to have his authority challenged or even questioned, and he’d expected her as a female to bow and scrape at his feet. She tried to think of something submissive to say to him that would open a dialogue with him. Maybe allow her to talk him out of killing her right away. Maybe buy herself time to be discovered missing and rescued.

  Nick! Where are you?

  The worst had happened. Everything she’d warned him about had come to pass. Sharaf’s people had found her. And worse, they knew she’d married Nick. She and the baby were so dead. Had Nick backed off trying to retake the throne, had he taken his wealth and his family and just gone away to live a quiet life, she wouldn’t be in this mess now. Why, oh why, hadn’t he listened to her?

  She was startled out of her desperate thoughts when Moubayed snapped, “Someone wishes to speak with you.”

  Katy looked around the deserted field in surprise. “Here?”

  He pulled a cell phone out of his jacket and dialed a number quickly. He spoke in rapid Arabic, but she caught the gist of the conversation. It ran along the lines of, “Yes, she’s here. That’s right, unharmed. You made it very clear that at all costs we are not to hurt her.”

  Hearing that was a giant relief. She wasn’t out of danger yet, but the immediate threat of death subsided to a dull roar in the back of her head.

  Moubayed continued in Arabic, “No, Nikolas doesn’t know we have her. No, sir, I haven’t asked her about the money. I haven’t said anything at all to her, just as you instructed me. Yes, sir. Here she is.”

  The cell phone was abruptly thrust at her and Moubayed snapped, “Speak in French.”

  “Uh, âllo?” she said hesitantly.

  “Is this the McMann girl? The InterAid worker who married Nikolas Ramsey in secret and helped him escape?”

  Oh, God. She knew that gravelly, demanding voice. She was speaking to Hamzad Sharaf himself.

  “General Sharaf?” she asked incredulously.

  “Answer the question, girl!” he snapped.

  “Uh, I’m Katy McMann and I work for InterAid, but I don’t know anything about the rest of that stuff.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I have a copy of your marriage license on my desk. These are a matter of public record in Baraq.”

  She had no way of knowing if he was bluffing or not. She didn’t respond to his comment. Instead she asked politely, “You wished to speak to me?”

  “Yes. Let us get straight to the point. I know about the money.”

  “What money?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me. The press release was handed to me over an hour ago.”

  “What press release? I promise I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He answered scornfully, “The press release announcing that all of the assets of the Baraqi royal treasury have been transferred into your control.”

  If she’d had a mouthful of any fluid at that moment, she’d have spewed it all over Moubayed’s chest in front of her. “I beg your pardon?” she blurted in genuine shock.

  “You heard me.”

  She thought fast. Well, then. That explained why she was still alive and why Moubayed was under orders not to harm her. Sharaf wanted to get his paws on
all of Nick’s millions! She and the baby might still have a fighting chance of getting out of this mess alive. If she could offer him a deal, maybe to trade some of the money for her freedom….

  He was speaking again. “I wish to make a trade with you.”

  She jolted. Had he read her mind?

  “What sort of trade?” she asked cautiously.

  “I want Baraq. You want what? Your life? That of your husband, perhaps? A certain amount of security for your future?”

  Although panic still hovered close, she pushed it aside. She had to keep her wits about her to keep thinking her way through this mess.

  She got the distinct impression Sharaf wasn’t talking about financial security here. “I am interested in all of those things, yes.” Thank goodness he hadn’t said anything about a baby. Maybe the child was still safely a secret after all.

  “This is what I have in mind. You give me the money. All of it. And in return, I let both of you live.”

  She wanted to fall to her knees and sob in relief at the offer, to take it in abject gratitude and run. But she was a McMann, dammit, and she knew better. Sharaf was too canny an old codger to make his best offer right away.

  She took a deep breath for courage and said lightly, “If we keep all of Nick’s money, the two of us will be able to buy more than enough security to stay alive very nicely, thank you. And then we’ll still have the rest of it for ourselves.”

  “Greedy bitch,” Sharaf snarled.

  She didn’t bother to respond to that. She only said, “You’ll have to do better, General.”

  He sighed theatrically. Grumbled about her being a pushy American. Hemmed and hawed about what he could do to sweeten the deal for her when he had nothing to trade with her except her life. And then he finally coughed up his offer. “You give me the money. You and Ramsey live. Plus, he formally abdicates his throne and names me ruler. In return, I will name your first child heir to the throne. When I die, a Ramsey will get the throne back.”