But Aaron had believed Charlotte too honest for subterfuge. Had he been wrong about her?
It wouldn’t be the first time he had let his attraction to a woman cloud his judgment. The last time his lapse had cost that woman her life.
He had to be more careful—had to make certain that nobody died this time. Because, given all the bullets that had already been fired at him, it just might be him who wound up dead this time.
*
JANE HELD HER breath as she waited for him to swipe the badge he’d stolen through the lock. But he hesitated, his gaze fixated on her. Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she knew those pale blue eyes were staring at her. He wasn’t touching her, but yet she felt him. Her skin heated and tingled as it had from just the brush of his fingertips as he’d untied her gown.
She closed her eyes and drew in a steadying breath. But that was a mistake because that fleeting image she’d had earlier of him returned—even more vividly. She not only felt him. She saw him. Naked.
Her face heated with embarrassment over that being the only thing she remembered about her life before she had woken up in this place. That was why she’d lied to him. How could she admit to knowing what he looked like naked—magnificent—but not what his name was?
She’d only heard that voice from the hall refer to him as Timmer. But she didn’t even know if that was really his name or a cover he’d used to gain access to this creepy place.
Hell, she didn’t even know what her name was.
But none of that mattered right now.
“We have to get out of here,” she urged him. “Mr. Centerenian, that armed guard, called someone—I don’t know who—earlier, and they made plans to take me to some airfield—to get me out of the country.” She had no idea what country they were in, but that didn’t matter, either. What mattered was not getting on that private plane to a new prison.
He nodded, either in understanding of the guard’s plan or in agreement with the need to get out of here because he swiped the badge through the card reader.
She held her breath until the lock buzzed and a green light flashed on the card reader. She reached for the door, but his hand was already on the handle. Her fingers connected with the back of his hand, with his hard knuckles and warm skin. And she tingled again from his touch, just as she had when he’d undressed her. Attraction had chased chills up and down her spine then. Now apprehension did as he opened the door to the hall.
Would the guard catch them as he’d caught this man last time?
Now that Timmer had unlocked the door, he was done hesitating. His hand wrapped tight around her arm. Maybe just to steady her. Or maybe to make sure that she didn’t get away from him.
He pulled her down the hall behind him, as if keeping himself between her and whatever threat they might encounter. As she followed him, she noticed the bulge beneath the scrubs at the small of his back. He wasn’t unarmed this time. Since she’d seen him last, Timmer had acquired a gun. Was it his or had he taken it off the burly guard?
Was that where Mr. Centerenian had gone? Disarmed? Or dead?
Maybe this man, whom she’d once known intimately, was just resourceful. Or maybe he was dangerous.
The threat actually came from behind them as someone yelled, “Stop!”
The man increased his speed, nearly dragging her as Jane obeyed the command and tried to stop. It wasn’t a male voice yelling but a familiar female voice. Nurse Sandy caught up to them and clutched at Jane’s free arm.
“Stop!” But the older woman spoke to the man. “You can’t take her.”
“I can’t stay,” Jane told her. “That guard—the one who hurt me—he’s going to take me out of here. Out of the country. I can’t leave with him.”
“You can’t leave with this man, either,” the nurse said. “Unless…” Sandy stared intently into Jane’s eyes. “Do you know him?”
“I—I—”
“Of course you don’t,” the woman answered her own question. “You don’t even know who you are.”
“Tell me,” Jane implored the nurse. “You know. Tell me!”
She shook her head. “I can’t. And I can’t let you leave.” She held on tightly to Jane’s arm as the man tugged on her other arm.
Feeling like the rope, pulled taut to the point of fraying, in a game of tug-of-war, Jane summoned all her strength and wrestled free of both of them. “I have to get out of here!”
“Don’t leave with him,” the woman implored again. “You don’t know him.”
As if the adrenaline coursing through Jane had awakened the baby, she shifted inside her womb. Or maybe she was trying to send her mother a message. “I think I knew him—that I would know him if I had my memory.”
“That doesn’t mean you should trust him,” the nurse said. “If he was on the up-and-up, he would have come here with the police—not all by himself.”
“I didn’t come alone,” the man replied. There had been the other one in the hall, warning Timmer to leave before the guard came back. “I brought a U.S. Marshal with me.”
At the mention of a Marshal, Jane shivered—her blood chilling. Who the hell was the Marshal? And how would she know one? Was she a wanted criminal?
“You don’t have a warrant or any legal reason to take her,” the nurse said with absolute certainty.
“There’s no time to get before a judge and get one,” he replied.
“There isn’t,” Jane agreed. The guard had already made plans to take her away. This man wouldn’t have had time to obtain a warrant.
And then whatever time they had had ran out because someone else shouted. The burly guard lumbered toward them. Mr. Centerenian wasn’t alone—two other, slighter men followed close behind him. When they caught sight of Jane with Timmer, they surpassed the guard.
As he had before, Timmer stepped between Jane and the threat—bracing himself as if to take a blow. But he dodged the fist thrown at him and instead threw one of his own with such force that he dropped his would-be assaulter to the ground.
The guy grunted and clutched his head while his coworker stepped over him, his arms already swinging. Jane’s protector braced himself with a wide stance, but instead of throwing another punch, he kicked out. His foot connected with the man’s jaw, sending him backward over the guard already sprawled on the ground.
Who the hell was Timmer? What kind of experience had equipped him to break in and out of secure facilities and beat up men nearly as big as he was?
But before Jane could ask him any questions, the guard usually posted outside her door lifted his weapon and stared down the barrel at him. Mr. Centerenian wouldn’t shoot her—not when he had plans to take her away.
His intent was clear. He was going to kill the man who had tried to help her escape. And if he succeeded, her chances of ever regaining her freedom would be dead, as well. But she cared less about getting away than she cared about Timmer. No matter who or what he was—he had mattered to her.
Chapter Five
Aaron reached for his gun, but he was too late. Metal scraped his spine as someone pulled the weapon from the waistband of his drawstring pants. He’d been so focused on the guards rushing him that he’d forgotten about the nurse. But it wasn’t her. The older woman had flattened herself against the corridor wall to avoid the fight and the bullets that would inevitably fly.
The barrel of the guard’s gun pointed right at Aaron’s face—his own gun probably pointed at the back of his head. Either way, this wasn’t going to end well for him.
A shot rang out, reverberating off the walls. He flinched at the noise and in anticipation of the pain. But he wasn’t the one who cried out with it. The burly guard uttered a foreign curse as he dropped his gun from his bleeding hand. One of the Serenity House guards reached for the discarded weapon, but another shot rang out. And another curse as blood spurted from torn knuckles.
“What the hell!”
Aaron repeated the sentiment. “What the hell—” He whirled toward th
e shooter who stood beside him. Recognition and relief clutched his heart, squeezing it tight in his chest.
Charlotte.
“Let’s go,” she said as she backed quickly down the hall.
He shook his head at her and then addressed the guards. “Toss your ID badges over here.”
Their eyes hard with rage and hatred, they just stared up at him.
Another shot rang out and Charlotte gestured at them with the gun. “Do as he says or the next bullet I fire will do some serious damage!”
They tugged off their badges—the two who still had theirs—and tossed them onto the floor.
“You, too,” she warned the other.
“I don’t have it!” the man exclaimed, casting a vicious glare at Aaron.
Charlotte’s lips curved into a small smile. “You took his?”
Aaron nodded. He leaned over and grabbed up the badges and the gun.
“Now let’s go,” she said.
He wanted to, but he couldn’t leave yet. Trigger might have taken off on him earlier, but he had returned. “Where’s the Marshal?” he asked the first guard she’d shot—the man who wore the suit instead of hospital scrubs.
The man was still cursing beneath his breath while he clutched at his bleeding hand. “Who?”
“We have to get out of here,” Charlotte urged him. Clutching his arm with her free hand, she tugged impatiently.
“The Marshal,” Aaron repeated. It wasn’t the only question he wanted to ask the man; he wanted to know who the hell he was working for, too. But first he had to know if the Marshal was all right. “The man wearing the wig to look like me—where is he?”
The guard shrugged. “He’s gone…”
“We should be gone, too,” Charlotte said.
She was right. More guards or the police could have been called and were already on their way. His other questions and answers would have to wait until he got Charlotte safely out of Serenity House.
Aaron agreed with her—with action. Keeping an eye on the guards to make sure no one followed them, he steered her through the lobby to the exit doors. A quick swipe of his badge had the doors sliding open, but then an alarm blared. The noise was louder even than the shots that she had fired, causing him to flinch and for his heart to slam into his ribs.
The doors stopped and began to close. Aaron gently pushed Charlotte through the narrowing gap. Then he turned sideways and tried to squeeze through behind her. The metal edges of the glass doors scraped against his hip and shoulder, threatening to crush him as the doors continued to close. But he made it through the narrow space just before it closed completely.
Alarms sounded outside, too. Aaron swiped his badge through the card reader in the gate, but the red light kept blinking. And the alarms kept blaring.
Charlotte squinted and grimaced—probably in more pain from the bruise on her head than in fear. She’d been almost too weak to stand up back in her room. The physical exertion might be too much for her. But before Aaron could reach for her, she lifted her gun toward the lock and fired at it—in sheer frustration and anger. Sparks ignited from the machine, glinting off the metal. “It won’t open.”
Not now. He couldn’t even try another badge since the reader caught fire. And there was no way he could get Charlotte over the gate—not with the men rushing through the lobby behind them.
He glanced through the fence, to where a car idled in the front lot. “Stand back!” he shouted at her, as the engine revved.
Tires screeched as the car headed right toward the gate. And them.
*
JANE LIFTED HER gun and aimed it at the windshield. It was already broken, the glass shattered. She couldn’t get a clear target, only the vague shadow of a man behind the wheel. This shot might not be as nonlife-threatening as the other shots she had fired. But before she could squeeze the trigger, a hand closed over hers and shoved down the gun.
“Don’t shoot!”
The car kept coming, right at them. She struggled to lift her arm, but her strength wasn’t back yet. She couldn’t overpower a man like this—one so strong he’d easily fought off two men. Timmer’s arms closed around her, lifting her off her feet. Her legs flailed, but she didn’t kick at him. He was already moving, carrying her away from the fence.
Metal crunched as the car careened through the gate, crumpling it and the fence around it. She screamed—more with frustration than fear. Would she ever be able to escape?
Then the man changed direction, carrying her toward the car instead of away from it. Timmer opened the passenger’s side rear door and pushed her inside, onto the backseat. Had the nurse been right? Had Jane been a fool to trust a man she didn’t know, or at least that she couldn’t remember?
Before he could climb in beside her, the guards reached him—tugging him from the car as it backed away from the building. The gate tangled beneath it, sparks flying as the car dragged it across the asphalt.
“Stop!” she screamed at the driver. “Don’t leave him!” Her mind couldn’t recall more than how he looked naked, but her heart—which beat frantically with panic—remembered him. Had she loved him? And if she had, how could she have forgotten him?
And if the man behind the wheel was the partner of the other man, why wasn’t he helping him? Instead he glanced into the rearview mirror and studied her. “Charlotte?”
It felt more familiar—more right—than it even had the first time that Timmer had called her that name. But was it hers?
She remembered the weapon clenched in her hand and lifted it again, training it at the back of the man’s head, she told him again, “Stop!”
“Charlotte,” he repeated with the same certainty she had heard from Timmer when she’d tried to strangle him.
She cared less about who she was than his safety right now, though. Ignoring the driver even while she kept her gun trained on him, she turned back to the fight going on inside the gate. The man didn’t need her help this time. Hell, he wouldn’t have last time if she hadn’t pulled his weapon before he’d had the chance.
He had the guard’s gun, but he used his feet and fists, knocking down the guards as easily as he had inside the building. Then he ran toward the car, jumping inside the door she’d left open for him.
“She’s Charlotte,” the driver told him, turning from behind the wheel to look at his backseat passengers. “How the hell is she Charlotte looking like that—looking exactly like Princess Gabriella?”
“Get out of here!” Timmer ordered him, pointing toward the guards rushing toward them.
As the car backed away, a tall woman ran out of the building. It wasn’t the nurse but another woman, one who shouted with an anger that was more intense than Mr. Centerenian’s. Her shouts were clearly audible through the broken windows. Had every window of the car been shot out? When?
The woman yelled, “Don’t let them get away!”
Jane shivered.
Timmer pulled the door shut and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“Not yet,” she murmured. “Not until we’re far away from this place.”
But they didn’t go far—just a few sharp turns on dark back roads and the car pulled up in front of a cottage. Headlights glinted off dark windows. The place looked abandoned.
“Where are we?” she asked. “Are we still on the grounds of that horrible place?” She shuddered at the thought. She wanted—she needed—to be much farther away.
“They’ll be checking airports and train stations,” Timmer replied as he opened the back door again and stepped onto the driveway, gravel crunched beneath his shoes. He held out his hand for her. “This’ll give us some time…”
“Time for you to explain what you’re up to this time, Charlotte,” the driver said, his voice gruff with bitterness. He reached over the seat and caught her arm before she could slide out.
Her fingers were grasped in the other man’s hand—leaving her feeling again like that rope in a demented game of tug-of-war. And that
rope was getting even more frayed as exhaustion overwhelmed her.
“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what I want to know,” the driver said. With his free hand he dragged off a dark wig, revealing coarse-looking iron-gray hair.
The man was threatening despite or maybe because of the fact that he seemed vaguely familiar. She may have known him before but definitely not as intimately as she had known the younger man. And she had certainly never trusted this man.
It was nothing—what she remembered—so damn little that it made her laugh. She wasn’t all that different from the baby she carried—starting out all over again—with no past.
At least no past that she could clearly recall…
“You think this is funny?” the man asked, a vein beginning to bulge in his forehead with frustration that she wasn’t taking him seriously.
No. But now that she had started laughing, she couldn’t stop. It was all so ridiculous—how could she have forgotten everything?
“What’s so damn funny?” he demanded to know, his voice sharp with anger.
She gasped for breath and tears rolled down her face. But she couldn’t stop.
“What’s wrong with her?” the driver asked the other man.
“She doesn’t remember anything, Trigger.”
Like his roughly lined face, the name struck a chord with Jane. A very unpleasant chord that had her breath catching in her throat.
“What do you mean?” Trigger asked. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask her.”
“The only thing you should be asking her about is what happened in Paris or where she’s been the past six months.” Timmer’s light blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Unless you’re here for some other reason than breaking her out of that psychiatric hospital?”
Paris? Six months lost? Timmer had also mentioned some things earlier—about princesses and kings and announcements. Jane wanted to know about those things and so much more. But she didn’t want to talk in front of this man—this guy named Trigger. She tugged on her arm, but he held tightly to her yet, refusing to release her.
“I—uh,” he stammered, “there is some other information I need from Charlotte.”
Protecting the Pregnant Princess Page 5