He glanced toward the house but no lights had come on inside. Whit must not have woken Stanley Jessup yet. “So we can tell her dad the truth?”
“No,” she said. “You shouldn’t have been told, either. Every person that learns the truth puts her in more danger.”
Aaron nodded.
He didn’t like that he’d been lied to—that people thought he’d failed to protect his client. But if lying to him had kept her safe, he would make peace with the fact.
“Do you think that could have been Trigger shooting at us tonight?” he asked. It would explain why he hadn’t called; why he hadn’t come back…
She nodded, and her tangle of golden hair fell across her face. “If Mr. Centerenian hadn’t found us, it could have been Trigger. He’s one of the few who knew where we were.”
“The only one who wasn’t there when the shooting started,” Aaron pointed out.
“But how did Whit know where we were?” she asked.
“Stanley Jessup told him,” he reminded her.
“But he knew exactly where we were,” she pointed out. “He knew we’d already broken out of Serenity House and broken into that very cabin to hide out. How did he know that?”
Aaron had wondered that himself and had fully intended to find out how—but then the shooting had started. “You think that Whit could be working with Trigger?”
“Or someone else he’s had following you,” she suggested, “maybe from the minute you left St. Pierre.”
“But they shot at him, too.”
“But he didn’t get hit, did he?”
“You’re saying I shouldn’t trust the man I’ve known for so long.” When sometimes he felt like he’d only known her ten minutes.
“Do you trust him?”
“Damn it…” His curse was his admission. He couldn’t trust Whit. When she’d staged Josie’s death, Charlotte hadn’t known Aaron. But Whit had—he’d known how much it’d hurt him—how much it had hurt him to think he’d failed her. But he’d let him suffer anyways.
Whit was not really his friend.
“I should contact the authorities myself then,” he said since he couldn’t trust that the U.S. Marshal had.
“Serenity House might be the biggest employer around here. Someone at the sheriff’s office could tip them off,” she pointed out. “Then they’d have time to destroy the records.”
She was smart, since Dr. Platt had insinuated as much when he’d been listening to her conversation with the private guard. He needed to accept that he could trust no one. “I’ll go to Serenity House alone.”
“No,” she said. “I’m going with you.”
“We barely got you out of that place,” he reminded her. “We can’t risk taking you back there.”
“I know who I am now,” she said. “I know how to take care of myself.”
Even when she hadn’t known who she was, she’d still known how to defend herself. And him.
“What about your baby?” he asked. Her baby. Not his. Why did it hurt so much to lose what he’d never really had? What he hadn’t even realized he’d wanted? “Don’t you want to take care of him?”
“Her,” she corrected him—almost automatically. Every time she’d talked about the baby, she’d referred to her as a girl.
“You had an ultrasound,” he realized. “You know what you’re having?”
“If I had an ultrasound, I don’t remember it,” she said. “But I know…” She was already connected to her child.
“Then you know you have to stay here—where she will be safe.” He didn’t wait for her agreement. He didn’t care what she said. She damn well wasn’t going back to Serenity House with him.
Hoping that Whit had left the keys in his car again, Aaron headed toward the driveway. That sliver of moon led him toward the banged-up vehicle. It had a sticker on the crumpled rear bumper that identified it as being from the same rental company as Aaron’s car. Whit wasn’t going to get back his security deposit, either. With the rear quarter panels nearly pushed into the tires, it was a wonder that the thing was drivable at all.
But it had to make another trip. Aaron needed to discover the truth about how Charlotte had wound up in Serenity House. And he figured he was only going to trust it was true if he learned it for himself instead of trusting what someone—anyone—told him.
Charlotte had raised more doubt in his mind. About her. But mostly about Whit.
Could he trust what his former business partner had claimed? And how had the man found him at the abandoned cabin tucked away in the woods?
Sure, he’d been with him when the shots had been fired. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have an accomplice—either the Marshal or some mercenary he’d hired. Had he wanted to kill Aaron and take Charlotte for ransom since he was one of the few who knew she was really royalty?
Had Whit known where to find them because he was the one who’d put her in Serenity House?
Aaron opened the door and the dome light glinted off the keys hanging from the ignition. After what had happened at the cabin, Whit really should have been more careful. Aaron slid behind the wheel and reached for the keys. But he didn’t turn them. Because the barrel of a gun pressed against his temple.
He really should have been more careful.
Chapter Nine
In the rearview mirror, Aaron met Whit’s gaze. “This is the second damn time that someone I thought I could trust pressed a gun to my head and threatened to kill me.”
“I haven’t threatened you.”
Aaron pointed toward his head. “Guess it’s kind of implied by the gun to my temple.”
Whit pulled it away. “I thought you were her. I figured she’d give you the slip on the beach and try to steal the car again.”
“Sure, she stole it. But she came back,” Aaron reminded him.
“Probably to make sure we didn’t get away from the guys she hired to kill us.”
Aaron snorted. “She speaks highly of you, too.”
“So she’s talking now?” Whit scoffed. “Passing all the blame off on me?”
Aaron turned around to face his old partner. “She doesn’t know who’s to blame.”
Whit snorted now. “Yeah, right.”
“You didn’t see her in Serenity House,” Aaron said, flinching as he remembered how scared and confused she’d been. That was why he’d momentarily mistaken her for Princess Gabriella. “She was tied down to a bed. She had been beaten up and bruised. She didn’t do that to herself.”
“So who did it?”
Possibly Whit. He knew, as few people did, that Charlotte Green was a royal heir. “I’m going back to Serenity House to find out.”
“You’re just going to walk inside and politely ask them for the princess’s records?” Whit scoffed. “At least I’m assuming they thought she was the princess since that’s the tip the freelance reporter passed on to Stanley Jessup.”
“How did the reporter get that tip?” Aaron hadn’t bothered asking Jessup who his source was because the media mogul was a die-hard newsman and fanatic defendant of the First Amendment. He would never reveal a source.
“Someone on staff at Serenity House tipped off the young reporter,” Whit explained. “Do you want me to wake up Stanley and get the reporter’s contact information? He’s some young kid fresh out of community college, but he’s got great investigative skills. He’s been following you around since you got here.”
The kid was very good because Aaron usually figured out when he was being tailed. But maybe three years of being bored out of his mind in corporate security had dulled his instincts. “So that’s how you knew where I was tonight?”
Whit nodded. “What? Did you think I planted a GPS chip in you like a dog?”
Aaron chuckled.
“I thought about it,” Whit teased, reminding Aaron of the friend he had once trusted with his life. “But I thought you’d notice. And you probably wouldn’t believe that you were abducted by aliens, and they implanted it.”
<
br /> Aaron snorted with derision. “I’m not that big a fool.”
“You are if you think you’re going to just waltz right back in there.” Whit crawled over the console and dropped into the passenger seat. “I checked that place out. It’s got higher security than most federal penitentiaries.”
“That’s why whoever kidnapped Charlotte put her in that place.”
Whit stared at him with respect. “So how’d you get her out?”
Aaron pulled one of the ID badges from his pocket, grateful now that he’d grabbed them from the cabin. He suspected they hadn’t been deactivated—just that during their escape someone had sounded an alarm that sealed all the doors and gates.
“I used this to get out, and I’ll use it to get back in. It’s like a key that’ll let me through all the locked doors and gates.” He dug deeper into his pocket. “I should have a couple more of these.” He’d taken three.
“We only need one more,” Whit said, holding out his hand—palm up, “for me.”
Aaron’s pocket was empty. “I must have lost them back at the cabin…”
“When we were getting shot at,” Whit finished for him. “It’s okay. Instead of splitting up and having me play the diversion tactic, we’ll have to stick together at the hospital.”
He was tempted. But he’d be a fool to trust anyone again. “Like I told Charlotte, it’ll be better if I just go in alone.”
“And she agreed to that?” Whit asked skeptically.
Aaron nodded. “She knows it’s not safe for her to go back there.”
“It isn’t safe for you, either,” Whit pointed out. “I should be the one to go back in alone. Let me do this…”
Aaron shook his head. “No.”
Whit uttered a ragged sigh of resignation. “You still don’t trust me.”
“Right now I don’t know who to trust,” he replied, “not after years of being lied to.”
The sigh became a groan. “God, man, I would have told you the truth if I could have. But you wouldn’t have been able to watch Stanley Jessup suffer like he had and not tell him that his daughter wasn’t dead. And the people after her needed to see him suffer to believe she was really gone. Don’t you get that?”
Anger and resentment overwhelmed Aaron. “I get that you didn’t trust me to do my job—to protect our client, and you let me suffer these past three years thinking that I’d failed.”
“It wasn’t like that…”
“It was exactly like that,” Aaron retorted. “You didn’t trust me. So how can you expect me to trust you?”
“Then don’t let me go in alone,” Whit negotiated. “But let me go in with you. We have always worked well together—in Afghanistan and running our own security business. Hell, look what we did tonight. You pulled me out of the line of fire.”
“And you drove us here, to safety,” Aaron had to admit.
Whit uttered a wistful sigh of nostalgia. “It was like old times…”
Aaron chuckled. “Yeah, getting shot at—running for our lives. It sure was like old times.”
Whit chuckled. “I didn’t say they were all good times.”
“Okay, you can come along,” Aaron allowed.
“You’ve finally decided you can trust me again?”
Aaron turned the keys in the ignition and pointed at the lightening sky. “I’m sick of arguing about it. We’re wasting time. Our best chance of getting inside and finding the records is going to be now—before the more heavily staffed first shift starts.”
The rental car’s ignition whined but didn’t turn over. However, another engine fired up, breaking the quiet of the late night. Lights momentarily blinded Aaron until the car passed them. And as it passed, Aaron recognized the profile of the woman driving the sports car.
“Charlotte…” She must have taken a car from the garage of Stanley Jessup’s rental home. “I thought she agreed to stay here. Out of danger…” Aaron turned the keys again, but the engine refused to start. “Now she’s going off with no backup…”
“Damn her,” Whit said, pounding his fist against the dash. “She’s getting away.”
“She’s not getting away,” Aaron said. “She’s going back to Serenity House. She’s risking getting caught all over again.”
Whit pounded the dash again—this time right in front of Aaron. “She told you she was staying here, too. Why would you believe anything she tells you?”
But, Aaron realized, she’d never actually said the words—had never agreed not to go back to Serenity House. Whit’s pounding the dash must have knocked something loose because the car finally started.
“We have to beat her back there.” Or she would walk alone into danger—just as she had so many times before.
Whit shook his head. “How many times do I have to tell you that you can’t trust Charlotte Green?”
“I know I can’t trust her,” Aaron admitted. But he didn’t want to lose her, either. And if she walked back into Serenity House alone, he worried that he would.
*
SHE HAD BEATEN them to Serenity House. The car she’d borrowed from the garage was faster than the battered rental. As damaged as Whit’s car had been, she’d have been surprised if it had started up again let alone been functional enough to follow her. And even though she hadn’t known exactly where she’d been going to get back to the horrible hospital, she’d found street signs that had guided her.
She bypassed the front lot to drive around the fenced-in grounds and the building to pull the borrowed Camaro into the employee lot in the back. She parked far from the gate that led to the building. If she were to be discovered, she wanted to be close to the street so no one could block the car from leaving.
Night shift must have been skeletal because there weren’t that many cars in the lot. Or maybe, after her escape, some of the employees had quit for fear of getting involved in a police investigation. Maybe she should have gone to the authorities as Aaron had wanted.
But if Serenity House had influence over them, the police might have brought her right back here. Because of the holes in her memory, she didn’t know if she had been legally committed to the hospital. Maybe a judge had ordered her confinement. And the authorities would have to uphold the judge’s order.
That was why she’d had to go back. She couldn’t stand one more minute of not knowing how she had wound up here. But she had a sick feeling that she wouldn’t like what she learned. What if the king had orchestrated her disappearance?
What if he’d resented her intrusion into his life and her interference with Gabriella? He had spent years denying her existence. When she’d showed up to protect his real princess, he had agreed begrudgingly. And only because of all the attempts that had already been made to abduct the princess. Since the day she’d been brought home to the palace, Gabriella St. Pierre had been the target of kidnapping and extortion plots.
His enemies had wanted to use Gabriella for leverage—forcing King Rafael to agree to their political or business demands. And everyone else had wanted to hold the princess ransom for money because her father would have willingly paid a huge sum for her safe return.
If Charlotte had been kidnapped by mistake—which might have been the case—he wouldn’t have paid a dime for her return. He would have just let her rot. Here.
Why had she wound up in a psychiatric hospital? Had it all just been a case of mistaken identity?
She turned off the car and reached into her pocket, pulling out one of the security badges she’d stolen from Aaron. Growing up with a con artist mother had had some benefits. She’d taught Charlotte to pickpocket at an early age. Not that Bonita had relied on pickpocketing to support herself. She’d just used the wallets she’d found to meet the men she’d wanted to meet.
Charlotte flinched with a twinge of guilt that she’d used Aaron to get what she’d wanted. Of course she’d wanted to hug him, had wanted to apologize for keeping so many secrets from him. But now that he knew his beloved Josie was alive, he wanted nothin
g to do with Charlotte. So when he’d pushed her away, she had pulled the badges from his pocket. She’d only intended to take one, but the lanyards had been tangled together. She had left him one…if he could get here to use it.
But dawn was already burning away the night with a low-hanging fog. Getting in now, before the day shift began, was Charlotte’s best bet to go unnoticed. Because she’d been cold, she had kept on the scrubs under the warmer clothes Aaron had packed in the box for her.
He was such a considerate man—always more concerned about others than himself. It was no wonder that, even knowing his heart had already belonged to another, she’d begun to fall for him. He had reminded her of her missionary grandparents and her aunt. Always trying to save the world and uncaring of their own comfort or needs.
Her mother had been the exact opposite. And Charlotte had grown up worrying that she would become more like her than the others—since her father was also a selfish bastard. How could he have made that announcement at the ball? Cavalierly passing Gabriella from one man to another like a possession with no thoughts or feelings of her own…
Just as Charlotte had been imprisoned here—with no concern for her comfort or her feelings. She stepped out of the vehicle and peeled off the sweater and then wriggled the jeans down her legs. The exertion zapped what she had left of her strength, which had already been diminished by being restrained to a bed. And either the pregnancy or the concussion had stolen the energy she used to have.
Her legs trembled beneath her weight. Maybe she just wasn’t accustomed to standing anymore. Or maybe she dreaded going back inside the hospital that had served as her prison. She tucked the stolen gun in the waistband of her pants and tugged the shirt down over it. At least now she wasn’t unarmed.
But if she was caught…
She wouldn’t be just tied down to that bed again. She would be taken to that airfield and whisked away on a private plane to some other prison. One from which she would probably find no escape.
And no one to help her.
If she were taken again, would Aaron even look for her this time? Or was he so angry over her lies and lies of omission that he would consider it good riddance if she went missing again?
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