The Lost Prince

by Dees, Cindy

  Katy sucked in her breath hard. Wow. She hadn’t seen that one coming! It was more than she could’ve possibly hoped for! Exultation shot through her. She and Nick and the baby could be a family after all! Their children could grow up in safety. They could live a normal life without any of the stresses and distractions of royalty. Maybe twenty or thirty years from now, one of their children would eventually rule Baraq….

  And Nick would never fulfill his destiny. He would never be king. He would never get a chance to make his vision for Baraq’s future real. He would have to set aside all he was and all he dreamed of becoming if she took this deal.

  She’d get what she wanted and he’d get nothing of what he wanted. Her conscience pricked her. Could she do it? Could she rip the heart out of everything that Nick was? Would he be able to live with her after she did that to him? Did she want to live with the man who would be left behind if she destroyed his dreams, his very future?

  She stalled for time while her thoughts spun wildly. What to do? “What guarantee do I have that you would honor such a deal, General? You’d get the cash, but I’d have nothing but words to go on.”

  “I will put it in writing. I’ll sign it into law.”

  Aah, he sounded a little desperate now. He wanted this deal very badly indeed. “I’ll give you half the money and you leave Baraq. Nick retakes the throne and our children after him, and you never darken Baraq’s doorstep again.”

  Sharaf snorted. “I already rule Baraq.”

  She retorted, “I already have all the money. Which means you’re broke. How are you going to run a country with no cash? In a few months, when food and fuel start to run short and you’ve got nothing with which to buy more, the Baraqi people are going to get hungry and cold. And they’re going to blame you. How long do you suppose they’ll stand for that? You’ve just demonstrated to them that uprisings are entirely possible.”

  That earned her a long silence from Sharaf and a low snarl from Moubayed. She ignored the major and concentrated on her foe at the other end of the phone line. She could practically hear Sharaf mulling it over. How her brothers played chicken like this for a living, she had no idea. She felt as if she was going to throw up. C’mon, Sharaf. Take the deal.

  The he said, “I get all the money, and in twenty years I step down and hand the throne over to your eldest child regardless of my health. Or, if I should die before then, your child immediately inherits the throne.”

  He talked about this stuff as if it were no more than an elaborate game. I’ll trade you my railroads for Boardwalk and Park Place. Except real lives hung in the balance.

  She closed her eyes in indecision. What would Nick do? But then, that wasn’t really the question, was it? What would she do?

  And then something odd happened. A face popped into her mind. Riki, the young Baraqi guard whom she’d bribed with honey cakes. And then another. Hanah, the hotel operator and closet women’s-rights activist who’d risked so much to make contact with her. The shopkeepers she’d bought snacks from. And everywhere she’d gone in Baraq, the haunted, desperate eyes of women appalled and terrified by what was happening to them.

  Was she courageous enough to do the right thing? After all, this wasn’t just about her. This was about the future of an entire nation.

  Suddenly she understood. Now she knew were Nick’s passion came from. It wasn’t an overdeveloped sense of duty to country at all! It was his sense of duty to, of loyalty to, of love for the people of Baraq that drove him.

  Dammit. Why did she have to have that particular revelation now? It would’ve been so much easier to make the selfish decision and move on with her life in blissful ignorance.

  Did she have what it took to measure up to Nick’s standards? If she was going to be his wife—heck, his queen, the Baraqi people’s queen!—did she have the moral spine to look death in the face? Nick had done so with dignity and grace. But what about her?

  Another revelation broke over her. This was how he’d been able to turn down all her offers of assistance, her pleas to run away from Baraq. Being king was bigger than him.

  And being queen was bigger than her.

  Sharaf’s offer was incredibly tempting. A remembered image of Nick’s face crossed her mind’s eye. It was the day they’d identified him and moved him to the royal apartments. He’d been standing at a window looking out across the city of Akuba before he’d known she’d entered the room. And his face had shone with love. He loved his country. Loved his people. The same way she loved him and the baby inside her.

  Certainty settled in her heart.

  She knew what she had to do.

  Chapter 15

  As their SUV raced northwest out of the city and toward Katy, Travis looked at Nick grimly. “Although it’s far from the most important problem we’ve got right now, you do realize you may have blown the deal with the U.S. State Department by walking out on that press conference and leaving them hanging in the lurch, don’t you? Now they have the ammunition to pull out of their deal with you.”

  Nick nodded impatiently. “If it comes down to a choice of the woman I love and my child over my throne, I’ll take Katy and the baby.”

  He paused, startled. One short hour ago, he wouldn’t have been so quick to say that. Funny how everything could change so fast. But then, life could be like that. In one week his father died, he became king and he nearly died in the coup. And now in a single day he had a family to protect and his priorities had totally shifted.

  Travis looked at him keenly. “Are you sure you choose family over kingdom?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You really do love her, don’t you?”

  “More than life.” They were silent for a few moments, then Nick said reflectively, “A few weeks ago I was willing to give up my life to be king of Baraq. And now I’m willing to give up my life and my kingdom in the name of being a husband and father.”

  Travis smiled. “Life is strange, isn’t it?”

  “Gentlemen,” the driver interrupted them. “Air-traffic-control says a helicopter has just popped up on radar right about where Mrs. Ramsey’s bird was last seen going off radar.”

  “Let’s go get her,” Nick said grimly. “At all costs, my wife must not come to harm.”

  “Understood, Your Highness. Our people have been briefed on the rules of engagement. Mrs. Ramsey is a nonexpendable resource.”

  The next few minutes were pure hell for Nick. Their SUV, along with several others full of FBI SWAT team members, drove like bats out of hell toward the unidentified chopper. There were a few hairy moments while the SUVs made adjustments in course on deserted country roads to track their target’s flight path. But then the pedals went to the metal again.

  The clock was ticking. Nick’s nerves stretched thinner and thinner. Hang on, Katy. Don’t give up. He prayed hard that the same unquenchable optimism that had gotten her through the coup would see her through this crisis.

  He listened tensely on the radio as the FBI chopper apparently did some nifty flying and eventually forced the target helicopter to land. The SUV arrived on the scene a few minutes later.

  Nick waited in an agony of impatience as he was told to stay put and let the SWAT team swarm Katy’s helicopter. And then one of the FBI agents reported sourly, “The target female is not aboard. Only the two pilots are inside.”

  Nick swore violently. “Where did they take her?”

  The FBI man answered grimly, “I need you gentlemen to stay put a little longer while we have a quick…conversation…with these pilots.”

  It gave Nick grim satisfaction to know that it would be a very unpleasant conversation if the pilots didn’t sing like canaries.

  In about thirty seconds the FBI agent reported, “Smart boys. Decided to cooperate fully with us. They’ve given us the coordinates of a field where they dropped off your wife and her four captors. They said she called one of the men who grabbed her something like Kum-bay-ah.”

  “Moubayed,” Nick said throug
h gritted teeth. “I’ll kill him with my bare hands if he’s harmed a hair on her head.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s find her first and take it from there,” the FBI agent retorted with a grunt as he and most of his men sprinted for their helicopter. One agent was left behind to hold the pilots until police could arrive on the scene.

  And then the FBI chopper and the SUVs were off again, speeding into the night.

  “I regret to inform you, General, that I am going to be unable to accept your deal,” Katy said quietly.

  Sharaf exploded into curses on the other end of the phone. Thankfully most of it was in Arabic, and she’d never bothered to learn obscenities in that tongue.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t take the deal!” he bellowed.

  “Some things are worth dying for, General. I learned that from my husband. Some principles are bigger than one man or one woman. He was willing to die for his country. If I am to be a worthy queen to him and to the Baraqi people—my people—then I have to be willing to make the same sacrifice.”

  It felt right. It was insane. Purely suicidal. But it was the only decision she could live—or die with—in peace.

  She didn’t ask to be thrown into the middle of this high-stakes political crisis, had only vaguely understood the implications when she’d agreed to Nick’s request to have his baby. It had really been a matter of human compassion to ease a dying man’s last days. And, of course, it hadn’t hurt that the dying man was a charming, charismatic prince. But all this other bigger stuff—honor, duty and country—hadn’t been part of what she understood to be the initial bargain at all.

  Thanks to Nick, however, it appeared she’d grown into all three.

  She waited out Sharaf’s screaming. And when he paused to regain his breath, she said reasonably, “That money is Baraq’s future. It’s food and medicine for children. It’s schools and jobs. It’s a better future for thousands of people, men and women alike. How can I possibly give all that away just to save my own neck? It would be supremely selfish of me to take your deal. I can’t and won’t do it.”

  “You’re dead!” he screamed. “Hand the phone to Moubayed.”

  Cold terror washed over her. Steady, Katy. Just because she’d made a decision that would probably cost her life, that didn’t mean she was going to roll over and go down without a fight.

  “Of course, General,” she said smoothly, eyeing the ground at her feet. She spotted what she needed and sidled to her left a bit. And then she flung the phone down upon a rock and stomped on it all in one motion.

  Moubayed lurched. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  She shrugged with a casualness she didn’t feel at all. “He and I had no more to say to each other.”

  Moubayed cursed at her long and hard in Arabic. As he threw his tantrum, he revealed more than he probably should have. As she’d hoped, she had him in a bit of a pickle. His impulse was to kill her, but he had strict orders from Sharaf not to hurt her. Until he got in touch with the general again, he didn’t dare do anything.

  And now it was time to keep him occupied and not borrowing one of his henchmen’s phones to dial Sharaf back. She bolted.

  She wasn’t the greatest athlete the world had ever seen, but she had the element of surprise on her side and she had desperation to speed her steps. She darted into the woods and dodged between the trees, slipping into and through every narrow space she could find. Moubayed and his men were all much bigger and huskier in build than her.

  It was a relief to run for her life. Moving like this made her feel as though she had some small measure of control over her fate. Thankfully Moubayed and his men didn’t pull out guns and start shooting. They were going to have to actually catch her and tackle her.

  She heard them crashing through the woods. All four were swearing freely and calling back and forth to each other. In Arabic.

  She paused to listen to them, crouching in the shadowed lee of a tree to catch her breath. They didn’t know she could understand them.

  The four men were setting up an ambush. Apparently there was some kind of barrier ahead—a riverbank maybe? She didn’t know the word they were using. At any rate, they were content to herd Katy toward it and trap her.

  She looked left and right. She had to hide. Let them move past her. And then she’d sneak back in the direction she’d come from. She spotted a heavy growth of weeds and shrubs a few yards away. If she could just get under that, maybe she’d be okay.

  And maybe not. But it wasn’t as if she had a whole lot of better options. The net was closing around her.

  “We’ve got heat signatures on radar,” one of the pilots announced over the general radio frequency everyone was listening in on.

  “What kind of heat signatures?” Nick replied sharply.

  “Human. Four, no five of them. In the woods below us. Four of them are on the move. The fifth one appears to be—” the guy paused for a second and then went on grimly “—prone on the ground.”

  Nick’s heart dropped to his feet. They were too late. Dear God, take my life in return for hers. After everything they’d been through together, after how close they’d gotten to having it all, they couldn’t fail now.

  The driver said off-radio, “The helicopter will put men out on ropes. They’ll rappel in as close to the action as they can. We’re going to have to park in the nearest field and hoof it in on foot.”

  Nick went totally numb. He felt nothing. Saw nothing. Heard nothing. She had to be alive. He’d die if something had happened to her.

  Katy plastered herself flat against the cold, wet ground under the bush and barely dared to breathe. She covered herself up with leaves as best she could, but she dared not disturb the forest floor too much or that in itself would give her away.

  Moubayed was just drawing even with her, passing off to her right at a distance of no more than twenty feet. He was moving slowly, stealthily, like a hunter tracking its prey. She watched him through eyes barely slitted open. Another slow, light, careful inhalation on her part.

  He took another step.

  She held her breath until her lungs were on fire. And then exhaled by agonizing degrees. She felt as if she was going to pass out before she allowed herself to inhale again, a welcome relief to her pain.

  Another couple steps by Moubayed.

  A few more, and she’d be out of his primary line of sight. She drew in another breath, slightly more easily than last time. Her plan might just work after all.

  And then all hell broke loose. Something incredibly loud swooped in overhead, and dark objects came crashing down through the trees all at once. Moubayed whirled and began firing a gun he’d pulled out of somewhere on his person, and shots rang out in return. All of Moubayed’s men were firing now, and the dark falling objects turned out to be men shouting back and forth at each other and roaring for Moubayed and his men to surrender or die.

  She buried her face in the dirt and prayed like crazy that this new threat wouldn’t kill her. She’d been so close to getting away. So close to safety. To making her way back to Nick and their love and happily ever after. It would be too ironic if she died now after all they’d gone through together trying to keep Nick alive.

  The firefight was pure chaos. She plastered herself even flatter against the ground and prayed with all her might that a stray bullet wouldn’t hit her—or worse, that Moubayed didn’t turn his weapon on her and take her out in the midst of the shoot-out.

  But she wasn’t so lucky.

  When the lead slammed into her, she was more aware of the impact of it than the pain. Time slowed, and her thoughts became crystal clear, each one outlined in bright light. The bullet had hit right where her neck and shoulder joined. She felt a gush of warm wetness. She was bleeding then. She pressed her left hand against the wound. But it was futile. Blood seeped unchecked over and through her fingers.

  The firefight went on around her for a lifetime after that. Long enough for her to remember the first time she’d seen Nick,
so battered and yet so beautiful. Her shock the moment he’d told her who he was. That un-forgettable moment when he’d asked her to have his baby. Their unorthodox wedding. And then her thoughts slowed until time stopped altogether as each beautiful, tender, heartrending moment of their lovemaking passed through her mind’s eye.

  She smiled against the wet leaves and mud as she felt consciousness slipping away from her. It had been a good life. They’d loved deeply and well. And silently she mouthed the same promise to Nick that he’d made to her the last time she’d seen him in Baraq.

  She would be his for all eternity. She bade him to live joyfully and love well. And when his days were passed, she would be waiting for him at heaven’s gate.

  Her lips stilled. She felt cold. And then it all faded away to silence and dark, leaving behind only peace. And warmth. And love.

  Chapter 16

  Nick heard the gunshots even before he was out of the vehicle. And sensation came flooding back—a chilling rush of panic. He had to find Katy!

  More gunfire erupted, a spate of it rattling through the trees in front of him. He put on an extra burst of speed. Surely Katy wasn’t caught in the middle of that! It sounded worse than the night the coup took place.

  He crashed through the trees without a care for himself. He was only vaguely aware of branches slashing at him, of cuts opening up on his face and hands. He had to find her. He had to.

  “Katy!” he called into the din of voices shouting all around.

  She didn’t answer. But he probably couldn’t have heard her if she did.

  The shooting began to slow down, and he drew close to the epicenter of the fight. He began to see shapes ahead. Armed men wearing night-vision goggles, kneeling in combat shooting positions, brandishing lethal weapons.

  “Katy!” he shouted again. This time he could actually hear his own voice.

  Still no answer.

  And then a male voice called out from in front of him and to the left. “Subject located and down. She’s shot. Bleeding and unresponsive.”