“Where are we going?” Inari asked.
“The same private airstrip we landed at. We’ve requested a helicopter loan from the German government. It should be here shortly,” the driver said.
She sat back in the seat.
So much for thinking she would be safe in a group of people.
She fished her phone out of her purse and made a call, desperate to know if Elias, Caspian, and Jeremiah had made it out alive.
Chapter 9
“Don’t apologize for taking off without me. I know how this shit works,” Jeremiah said.
Elias exhaled a pent-up breath. Jer was alive. He’d answered his phone before the end of the first ring.
“Glad to hear your voice. Where are you? We can circle back and pick you up. How is everyone else?” Elias asked, ignoring the look from a few of his guards. Going back wasn’t an option.
“Inari survived the initial attempt, but I don’t know where she or Caspian are right now. Your security teams are concerned with one thing only at a time like this: escape with you intact. Caspian’s people surrounded him and whisked him away almost as fast as Inari’s team did.”
“You didn’t tell me where you are.”
“A block from the hotel. About to get a cab back to our hotel so I can get all our crap and find a way to the airport.”
“Going back isn’t a good idea. We can have anything we can’t live without sent by the hotel.” Elias knew Jeremiah would do what he wanted to anyway, regardless of the danger. Jer understood what he was getting into, thus Elias didn’t attempt to persuade him more than that. “We’re headed to the embassy, actually.”
“Embassy, got it. I’ll meet you there in an hour or so.” Jeremiah ended the call.
Elias was just pulling up Inari’s contact information when his phone rang.
“How are you?” he asked without preamble.
“Shaken up, but fine. Is everyone else okay?” she asked.
“Jeremiah is good. I don’t know about Caspian yet, but I’d venture to say he got out all right. Jer mentioned seeing Caspian’s guard surround him at the same time yours did.” Elias ran a hand through his hair and glanced out the window. The Latvalan Embassy’s gray stone walls loomed high and foreboding as the limousine approached the gate.
“I hope so. I feel awful to have put that many people in danger if those shots were aiming for me.”
“We won’t know for sure until they conduct an investigation. Probably be three or four days until we have any definitive answers.” He paused as the driver spoke to another guard at the gate, and drove onto the property once clearance had been gained. “I’ll probably be incommunicado for a day or two, so if I don’t return your texts, you’ll know why.”
“What does that mean? I know you’re not referring to your underground search,” she said.
“I’m going to do some investigating with Jeremiah. Caspian will probably get involved. I’ll call you and see what you’ve learned when we surface again.”
“I don’t understand. There are a hundred people working on it right now.”
How did one explain what he and his friends did? That their group went away on secretive missions to help other royals or those with elite connections who could not help themselves? It was a sensitive subject to him and his team. To everyone involved, especially the people they saved.
The target—Inari—was much closer to him this time than usual. His father had told him long ago that any girl he might date needed to be kept in the dark about his other activities until she could be trusted with the truth.
Inari was one of them, involved on a personal level. There was no way to get around being absent for two or three days and her not get suspicious. Although he didn’t delve into the semantics of their group—there were more than the three of them—nor admit that his own father, uncle, and their friends went on the same type of missions, he gave her enough, he hoped, to satisfy her base curiosity.
“I prefer to do my own investigating sometimes,” he said, covering his evasiveness with another question. “You’re heading back to Somero soon, I take it?”
“Tonight. Right now, actually. We’re almost at the airstrip. The German government has kindly loaned us a ride home.”
“Good, good. I’ll talk to you in a few days.” He paused again, then said, “Be careful, Inari. This is the second attempt. Next time, the strike might be a lot more precise.”
And fatal.
* * *
Inari stared at the phone long after it had gone dark. She thumbed the smooth screen, watching the streak from her skin disappear like magic.
Fingerprint-free glass. Technology had come a long way.
Her phone lit up with a text message just as the sedan came to a stop inside the private airstrip. It was Caspian, checking in.
Made it to the airplane. Waiting on word everyone’s all right and arrival times.
Inari returned a quick text. Flying out separate. Am okay. Glad you are, too. Talk soon.
Then the hustle began.
From the car to the helicopter, hunched and moving as quickly as her shoes would allow. Her guards surrounded her on all sides, blocking easy access to her person.
Halfway across the tarmac, she experienced a moment of panic when the guard to her left suddenly went down with a grunt.
He’d been shot.
Dear God, how the hell did these people keep finding her?
But the guard rolled right back to his feet and filled in his spot at her side.
Not shot. Just a stumble.
Everything took on a surreal cast for Inari after that, from the flight through the darkness, across borders, to the landing near her family estate and the subsequent dash to get behind the tall palace walls.
She wasn’t fifteen steps through the door before her father was there, snatching her urgently into his strong embrace. He had ever been her champion, her staunchest supporter. Tough, sometimes, but never cruel or mean. King Thane reminded Inari of a medieval knight, always and ever, with his neck-length dark hair shot through at the temples with silver, and the neatly trimmed mustache-goatee that framed his generous mouth. He had the build of a warrior, broad in the shoulder and trim at the hips.
Inari filled him in as best she could after the embrace, pacing at his side toward the king’s parlor, a private room where she knew they would not be overheard.
“I’ve had several men personally looking into this. So far, they’ve come up with no leads and have heard nothing in the underground about an assassination attempt on a royal. This has come at us blindside,” Thane said. He paced the perimeter of the room like a caged animal, a hairsbreadth from lashing out should he happen upon his prey. “I need you to think hard, Inari, about anyone else that could be responsible. Besides the fake photographer—we know about him.”
Once again faced with the same question Elias had asked, Inari gave the only answer she could. An honest, forthright one. “I can think of no one who would go to this extreme. I haven’t pissed anyone off that bad, that I recall. I’ve got a good relationship with my peers, I haven’t noticed any stalking tendencies in the men I’m around—nothing. I just don’t know why this is happening.” Although he paced, she stood in one place, following his path with her eyes.
“I know this is difficult, but I think, for your survival, that you need to stay within the palace walls for now. Until we at least get some kind of lead. I don’t usually condone hiding and allowing others to dictate our lives, but this has gone too far. They’ve come too close twice now.” He slanted a look her way, as if expecting rebellion.
Once upon a time, she would have rebelled. In the last two years, however, she’d reached a new level of maturity and shed some of her former belligerence. She’d come to terms with her role in life and what was expected of a future queen. Inari was aware that she was still in transition, as it were. That she had a long way to go to reach the stature she would need later when she took the throne. She still enjoyed gay laughter
and pranks and challenging herself in ways a queen probably shouldn’t. For the former reasons, and because she was still shaking from the encounter in Berlin, she nodded her agreement.
“I won’t leave the palace. I’d like to be updated, though, whenever you have any new information.”
“Of course. I’ll keep you post—”
The parlor door flew open, interrupting the king. Inari darted a shocked look toward the king’s advisor, Hermann, who surged inside. No one dared interrupt the king when the parlor door was closed. Even Hermann.
“Your Majesty! It’s Lisbet!” Hermann’s frantic plea, wide eyes, and pale pallor suggested the worst of the worst. He ducked back out into the hallway where several guards began to swarm around the door.
Inari covered a gasp with her hands.
Lisbet. Her sister.
What the devil was going on? Had she choked on food? Fallen down the stairs? Been thrown from a horse?
Inari hurried in her father’s wake when Thane charged from the parlor, brushing people aside like they were so much ballast.
Ahead, from deeper in the palace, feminine wails and screams hit the air, sending pinpricks of ice up and down Inari’s spine.
Dear God, please don’t let my little sister be dead.
Chapter 10
Elias watched dawn break over the horizon from a high window in Kallaster Castle. The cloudless sky promised a temperate spring day, one forecast to be the warmest yet of the year. Shimmering ripples broke the surface of the ocean, creating a magical scene that seemed to stretch to infinity.
His thoughts were far from magic and outdoor activities, however, as he unfastened another button on his once crisp white shirt. He’d yet to change out of his suit from the evening before, and had, in fact, only arrived home a short while ago.
The door to the upper library opened. Erick entered, arms full of folders and a tablet computer, his brown hair tousled around his head. He looked like he’d been up all night, and probably had.
Erick, unlike Elias, looked more like their mother than their father. His features favored hers barring the strong jawline that ran in the bloodline of the Ahtissari men. A few days’ worth of whiskers painted a shadow on his skin, further proof of his distraction.
“Find anything?” Elias asked, flipping the cuffs of the shirt back to his elbows.
“I did find something. Just about three hours ago. So I’m still checking more photographs to see if there are others with this guy in it.” Erick walked the folders and tablet to a large desk in the middle of the library. He set everything down but kept one folder in particular at hand.
Elias stepped around the edge of the desk to his brother’s side. “What is it?”
Erick slid four photographs from the folder and arranged them in a square on the desktop. The images had obviously been taken in public during a celebration, parade, or other gathering.
Inari’s face showed in two of the photos; the others appeared to be random shots of the crowd.
“What am I looking at here?” Elias asked.
Erick grabbed the tablet and turned it on. The same four photos popped up on the screen, in the same order. He used his finger to trace a digital red line around a particular face in the crowd.
Not Inari, but a dark-haired man in sunglasses who had apparently shown up at each of the events. In one, the man looked a little blurry, yet the face shape was the same, as well as the haircut and the telltale sunglasses.
“Now, maybe this guy is a fan. I’m sure a lot of loyal citizens show up to royal events—we see it in Latvala as well—except three of these photos were taken in other countries.” Erick glanced aside, brows up.
Elias didn’t need it spelled out for him. Most citizens, no matter how passionate, did not track their kings and queens all over the world just to attend parades or other royal events.
“All three separate countries?” Elias asked, taking a closer look at the pictures. He could not make out specific details thanks to the sunglasses, the angle of the shot, or the clarity of the photo. Distance played a part as well.
“Yes. Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. The last one was taken in Somero during a charity event that Inari attended. These shots of just the crowd happened because I zoomed in a little or panned to inspect the faces. Inari is present in all the original files.”
“That can’t be coincidence. This is great work, Erick.” Elias clapped his brother on the back. “I think we should take these to King Thane and let his people start to work their own angle. They might even know who this guy is.”
“I ran the clearest pictures through facial recognition but didn’t get any hits. Which is weird. Usually you can get something, even narrow the details down. Nothing whatsoever came up.”
Elias was not a fan of the current worldwide database that was accessible to everyone. The ideology on privacy had fallen away decades before, where people had been convinced it was safer to submit their likeness and personal details to a nebulous global entity who worked hard for The Better Good. Privacy had ceased to be a choice not long after he’d been born; now enrollment was a requirement whether you liked it or not. For those who refused to freely submit, they were added via one of several different avenues: driver’s license, passport, school photos, street surveillance, shopping venues, through social media sites, and from personal computers or phones. Facial recognition attached to the database could locate anyone, anywhere, at any given time.
He might not agree with the practice on principal, but he couldn’t deny it made identifying criminals easier.
“I suppose there are a few people left in this world who have avoided the system, or know how to beat it. For all we know, that’s not his real face.” Elias tapped one of the photos with a finger.
You just never knew.
“I’ve got another few hundred photos to look through, but we can send this over if you want to,” Erick said, dragging a hand through his hair.
“I say send them. They need to know this might be a lead as soon as possible. You can offer to keep looking, but take your cues from Thane. Once we turn this over, it’ll be his choice how to proceed.”
“Will do. I’ll contact their people immediately.” Erick gathered the photos and stuffed them into the folder.
Elias turned from the desk, a troubled frown on his brow. He didn’t like where any of this was going. And he definitely didn’t like that Inari appeared to have a stalker who seemed hell-bent on taking her life.
* * *
Inari ran up on a horrific scene. A scene so heartbreaking and devastating that, at first, she mentally stumbled. Panic threatened to obliterate her self-control and throw her into a fit of tears and wailing. But panic helped no one, and the fifteen or so people hovering over her inert sister would remember a breakdown of that magnitude for years to come.
There could be no breakdowns or meltdowns. No loss of control.
She went to her knees at Lisbet’s side, her father on the other, and used a cloth someone handed down to dab at the foam bubbling from between her sister’s lips.
“Lisbet! It’s Inari. I’m here. Hold on, help will be here shortly. Can you hear me?”
Lisbet’s svelte frame convulsed. Her eyes rolled back into her head.
It didn’t look good.
“What happened?” Inari demanded of the crowd, turning Lisbet’s head to the side with help from her father. Distress painted the king’s features, but also determination to try and save his daughter’s life. There was no panic, only a flicker of fury amid grave concern.
“I think there was poison in the drink. She’s been poisoned!” Mrs. Larssen, the head chef said.
Someone had attempted to end her the same way only days before. Poison in the champagne glass. Was this an attack on Somero? The royal family? Perhaps Lisbet had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had imbibed something meant for the future queen.
“What did she have?” Inari asked.
“Apple cider,” Larssen sa
id.
The reply made Inari’s blood run cold. Apple cider was the one habit Inari indulged in every evening before bed. She liked it hot, with two cinnamon sticks, in a favorite mug made for her by a child of the kingdom.
Lisbet had consumed a drink meant for her.
“Step back, step back, please!”
Inari released Lisbet and stood as the doctor and his aides arrived. Her father kept a private physician and staff on retainer in the castle, not only for emergencies with the royal family but for all the staff as well.
Tonight that decision might very well save Lisbet’s life.
Thane paced, expression still as stone, as the doctors went to work. When he suddenly reached for his phone and stepped back a few paces to speak quietly into the receiver, then glanced at her over Lisbet and the physician’s heads, Inari knew it had to do with her.
“Let’s get her into the car and to the helicopter. We need to transport her to the hospital as quickly as possible,” the physician said. He stood as his aides eased Lisbet onto a stretcher.
“Is she going to make it?” Inari asked, taking a step forward. She’d just promised her father not to leave the palace, yet she had every intention of flying to the hospital with her sister.
The doctor paused to glance back. “I don’t know, Your Highness. She’s in bad shape.”
Inari opened her mouth to speak, but the doctor hastened after his aides. She fell into step behind him, but paused when her father touched the crook of her elbow, effectively halting her progress.
“I want you to have your assistant gather some things. King Aleksi has agreed to harbor you until we find out how the hell poison got into the palace. It’s not safe here when we’re getting hit inside the walls,” Thane said.
His tone brooked no argument.
Inari wanted to argue anyway. Her sister needed her. Perhaps her father, always an astute man, understood her concern.
“Your mother and I, as well as Carsten, will follow Lisbet in another aircraft. She won’t be alone. Right now, I feel this is the safest course of action to preserve our line,” he added.
Latvala Royals: Bloodlines Page 7