She was hungry, thirsty, and worn out.
Except for a cup of rancid-tasting water and a greasy glob of something that might have been goat, she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in the two days since she’d been captured. Dehydration, lack of food and her useless struggles to break free of the handcuff that shackled her to a wooden post, had finally exhausted her.
She was also angry as hell—and even in her present state, she almost laughed at the irony of that phrase because it was surely not one a demure, obedient Qarami princess would ever use.
The thing was, she was neither demure or obedient, and she had long ago stopped thinking of herself as a Qarami princess.
She was Annie Stanton, which meant that instead of sitting here in subservient defeat she was wracking her brain in an effort to come up with an escape plan—not easy to do when you couldn’t focus all that well thanks to the lack of food and water.
Thanks to the cold.
The cold, the fact that she was shivering, that her teeth were banging together, worried her. She knew how debilitating it could be, that it could make it hard to think straight, that it could steal what little energy reserves she had left.
Then she would never escape—and no, she was not even going to consider that possibility.
A gust of wind sent its chilly fingers clawing through the cracks in the shed. Annie used her free hand to draw her tattered silk gown around her.
It was all she had.
She’d been wearing it beneath a hooded cashmere cloak—the proper outfit for a bride, one of her so-called ladies-in-waiting had said—but the cloak had been torn off her when she’d tried to fight against the rough hands of her captors as they’d dragged her from her limousine.
Her limousine.
As if anything to do with what her uncle had put in motion today was connected to her. And, yeah, that was the good news. That she was chained up in a shed while a bunch of outlaws drank themselves into a stupor meant that at least his horrible plans for her had suffered a setback.
But that was all it was. A setback, unless she found a way to escape these men, these mountains, this part of the world.
“Dammit,” Annie said, and jerked against the handcuff for maybe the hundredth time.
Getting free of the cuff was impossible. She’d tugged and pulled, she’d banged her wrist against the post. She’d even chewed on the disgusting piece of fatty whatever one of her laughing captors had called food, trying not to gag until she had a mouthful of the slimy stuff. Then she’d licked her cuffed wrist until it was as slippery as she could make it and tried to work herself free.
Tried for what had seemed forever.
What she’d ended up with were cuts and bruises, but her wrist remained trapped.
Trapped, same as she was trapped.
She could stand or sit, but that was it. She was at the mercy of those who’d captured her, even when it came to emptying her bladder. Twice, a woman with missing teeth and a milky eye had wrapped a rope around Annie’s neck, unlocked the handcuff from the post, and led her to a filthy bucket behind the small building.
The first time, Annie had backed away in disgust.
The second, she’d been desperate enough to use it.
That had made the woman cackle with laughter.
The wife of the American ambassador had received the same treatment, but Annie had no idea how she’d dealt with it. The ambassador’s wife hadn’t said a word since their capture.
She was roped, not cuffed, to a ring in the opposite wall. Annie had eyed the arrangement with longing. The wall looked as if a stiff breeze might knock it down. If they’d shackled her the way they’d shackled the ambassador’s wife, she was sure she could have broken free by now.
She’d whispered to the ambassador’s wife, urged her to give it a try, but the woman didn’t talk, didn’t even make eye contact. She simply lay on her side, knees drawn up under her chin, and stared blankly into space.
After a while, Annie had switched tactics.
“Can you just get to the door and maybe crack it open enough to peek outside?”
No response.
“How many men did you count when they took you out to pee? I think I saw at least a couple of dozen.”
Nothing.
Annie had stopped asking questions. She knew she’d have to rely on herself and she did a quick tally.
Two dozen bandits. Maybe six or seven more.
Her party had numbered thirty-eight when they left the palace in Qaram. Eight had died in the first furious minutes of the ambush. Four Royal Guardsmen. Three Qarami council ministers. One of her ladies-in-waiting.
Annie leaned back against the wall.
Such a fanciful name for female guards loyal to her uncle, but her uncle was good at that. At making evil things seem like good ones.
This wedding, for instance. As far as the world knew, she was a happy princess on her way to a fairytale wedding to her prince.
Annie shuddered.
The reality was that she’d been on her way to marriage to a man who agreed with her uncle that the world had been a better place when women were kept in a state of subjugation.
“Barefoot in the winter and pregnant in the summer,” her uncle had said, laughing uproariously at the ugly old joke.
She’d been lost in those thoughts when a bunch of vehicles came tearing into the clearing where the Qarami party had stopped because of a flat tire.
Eight Guardsmen had died then. At least twice that many, based on the sounds of gunfire, had died right here a couple of hours ago.
Annie had sat crouched in the semi-darkness of the shed, her hands over her ears in a useless attempt to drown out the screams and gunfire—although the next sounds had been worse.
The sounds of men roaring with laughter.
After that, there’d been silence, which was almost as bad as the screaming.
She tried not to think about what would happen next.
Instead, she thought about ways to escape.
About what was happening away from this terrible place.
Was there a rescue party coming? Would her uncle pay whatever ransom was asked for her, because surely this was about ransom? Or would he write her off as a deal gone bad?
After all, that was what she was.
A deal. Part of one, anyway. For several million dollars and her as his bride, the king of Tharsalonia would not interfere in her uncle’s brutal expansionist plans for Qaram.
Annie groaned and leaned back against the wall.
Every part of her ached. From the cold. From struggling with her captors and—Be honest, Annie—from fear.
Was death to be her fate as well?
What had awaited her—marriage to the king of Tharsalonia—would have been a kind of living death anyway.
Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back. She wasn’t going to give in to defeat. The trick was to keep her mind occupied. To think about good things, not bad.
This place—the shack—was ugly. It stunk of goats and chickens and of her captors, but she knew that the Copper Mountains themselves smelled of green growing things. Of flowers. Of sunshine. As a little girl, she’d spent summers in the foothills of these mountains with her parents.
Her throat constricted.
Oh, how she’d loved them. Her beautiful mother, who’d given up the charmed life of an American debutante to become the wife of a handsome king determined to lead his people forward. Her loving father, who’d defied tradition by raising his daughter to be strong and independent.
“I am so proud of you, Anoushka,” he’d said when she graduated from Oxford University, and he’d beamed with happiness when she’d enrolled in graduate courses at the University of California. He’d understood and supported her decision to do it under the name Anne Stanton—a combination of her mother’s middle and maiden names—because she’d wanted to avoid the kind of publicity she’d run into at Oxford.
Annie’s mouth trembled.
Sh
e remembered, too, the call a year later from her father’s senior advisor, telling her of the plane crash that had taken her father’s life as well as her mother’s.
“I’ll be on the next flight home,” she’d said, sobbing.
“No!” the senior advisor had said, and then he’d told her that she could not return, not even for the funeral.
Her uncle Cyrus-—her father’s younger brother—had immediately seized control of the governing council.
“He is intent on undoing all the good work of your father, Princess. If you return home, he will imprison you. You must stay away until we are powerful enough to oust him. He does not know the name and identity you have been using, and he must not learn it. Do you understand?”
Annie had understood all too well.
She had been raised in a royal court filled with the intrigue that accompanied two differing factions, one determined to keep the kingdom mired in the past, the other determined to bring it into the twenty-first century.
And so she’d stayed in America, alone and lonely, and devastated by grief…
Until, by chance, she took a walk along a windy stretch of beach and met a man. An amazing man.
“Declan,” she whispered.
No. This wasn’t the time to think about him. How she had hurt him, wounded him…
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
Declan. Her beautiful, proud lover.
Except, they’d never made love. Not really.
She had slept in his arms. Kissed him. Oh, those kisses! Gentle at first. Then more demanding. More exciting. Her mouth had opened to his. Tasted his heat. His passion.
And that one time, that one incredible time, his hands and mouth on her breasts.
“I need to touch you,” he’d whispered, and she’d needed him to do it, to taste her nipples, lick them, suck them into the heat of his mouth.
But she’d pulled back. She knew it had almost killed him, but he had let her do it.
“I can wait until you’re ready, sweetheart,” he’d whispered, and he’d drawn her against his hard body and held her in his arms through the long night.
Once, he’d asked why there were times he could see the sorrow of the world in her eyes.
Because everything you think you know about me is a lie.
She’d told herself she hadn’t deliberately lied. He knew only what everyone else knew. That she was a student named Annie Stanton.
Then she and Declan grew close. Closer. And still she lied to him. Out of fear.
Not of him.
Never of him.
What she feared were the possible repercussions if he learned her true identity.
He was a warrior in the service of his country.
She was a princess of a kingdom that, because of her uncle, now had an uncertain relationship with the United States.
Could she ask Declan not to reveal her secret to his commanding officer? No. That would be asking him to dishonor his oath of loyalty. And if he told his commanding officer about her, what would happen next? Would his CO see too much risk in the situation? What if those further up the chain of command saw the diplomatic repercussions as impossible?
What if Declan ended up having to choose between her and the life he so clearly loved?
She’d decided she had to keep quiet—but keeping quiet was a polite way of saying she had to keep lying and eventually she’d known she couldn’t go on doing it. For his sake and hers, she knew that she had to end their relationship—but it was hard.
By then, she was deeply in love with him. Losing him would be agony.
So she did it slowly.
She saw him less often.
She only took some of his calls.
She told him she was busy when she wasn’t.
His growing bewilderment was painful. What had he done wrong? he’d asked. Had he somehow hurt her?
After a while, she’d felt as if her heart was breaking.
She’d realized that she had to tell him everything. If he hated her for not telling him the truth sooner, she would live with it. If he had to stop seeing her, she would live with that too. She just couldn’t inflict pain on him anymore.
In the end, Fate had the last laugh.
The same night she’d made that decision, she’d been jolted awake by the pressure of a hand over her mouth and another around her throat.
She’d tried to scream, but she couldn’t. So she’d struggled instead, bucking and kicking and flailing her arms.
Her efforts had been useless, especially when a second pair of hands pinned her to the bed.
“Stop fighting,” a low male voice hissed, “or I will apply enough pressure so that you lose consciousness.”
“We do not wish to kill you unless we must, Princess Anoushka,” the other man said.
After a minute, the hand lifted from her mouth.
“What do you want with me?” she’d gasped.
They told her that they were taking her back to Qaram.
Annie hadn’t hesitated. “I will not let that happen. You’ll have to kill me.”
It had been a desperate bluff. Obviously, her uncle was determined to have her returned to his control. That meant she was important to his plans. Surely, he would not want her dead.
And she was right—but in the worst possible way.
“Perhaps the princess requires a better incentive,” one man had said to the other. Then he’d turned his cold eyes on her. “Here is a choice you may find more interesting, Princess Anoushka. You will return to your country with us—or your friend dies tonight.”
“My friend?” she’d said, even though she knew right away, she knew…
“Declan Sanchez,” the second man said. “How does it feel to hold a man’s life in your hands?”
Annie’s thoughts had whirled. Declan was a skilled warrior—but these men were cold-blooded assassins. They would attack Declan when he was most vulnerable: when he was in his own home, asleep.
“Choose, Anoushka. And choose wisely.”
She had begged to be permitted to leave a note. “People will wonder what happened to me.”
The two men had exchanged knowing looks.
“They will be told you moved,” the one who’d awakened her said. “Nothing of you will remain in these rooms.”
“My landlord—”
“Your landlord just inherited a handsome sum of money. He is a happy man.”
They gave her five minutes to get ready. An hour later, she’d been on a plane bound for Qaram.
The next time she saw Declan was at her friend’s wedding in Texas.
At first, she’d been amazed her uncle Cyrus would permit her to attend, but he’d said it was important to show a civilized face to the world.
And just in case she thought she could turn the Texas visit to her advantage… He’d used the threat that always worked. Did she want Declan Sanchez to live—or to die?
“You won’t be able to harm him,” she said. “He’ll be surrounded by his friends.”
“His friends will not be able to save him,” her uncle had said with an icy smile, “but in trying to do so, they will create an international incident. Imagine the headlines. American Special Forces solders attempt to harm Qarami diplomats at Texas social event. Excellent, don’t you think?”
Annie knew there would be no Qarami diplomats. There would only be her uncle’s thugs, men whose job it was to keep her from running away, but she also knew that her uncle could and would spin the story to suit himself and effectively end Dec’s career, if not his life.
The day of the wedding, her first view of Declan had damn near undone her.
She’d come dangerously close to throwing herself into his arms.
But she hadn’t.
Still, for the couple of minutes they were alone, she’d almost told him the truth.
And then sanity had returned.
Flying home, she’d told herself she’d survived the worst her uncle could do to her.
Wron
g.
A couple of weeks later, he’d summoned her to his chambers and told her that she was about to do something of vital importance for her country.
“You will marry the king of Tharsalonia,” he’d said.
She hadn’t believed him. It had to be a threat meant to keep her in line. But it had not been a threat; it had been a fact.
Running away had not been an option. Her uncle had placed her under guard.
“For your own protection, Anoushka,” he’d said, so earnestly that anyone who didn’t know the truth would have believed him.
She’d even resorted to pleading—until she saw what pleasure that gave him. He had stolen her freedom. Her future. All she had left was her pride. She was determined to keep it, so she’d stopped pleading, stopped showing him any emotion at all. She refused to talk to him or join him at the functions he organized. Instead, she’d kept to her rooms and to the palace gardens.
“You need taming,” her uncle had said with grudging admiration. “The Tharsalonian king will enjoy that.”
But she’d refused to think about the Tharsalonian king until two days ago, when she’d been told she was being escorted to him…
Bang!
The door to the shed flew open.
Heart pounding, Annie struggled to her feet as two of her captors stormed into the room.
The ambassador’s wife whimpered and cowered in the corner. One of the men laughed, pointed his fingers at her and mimicked pulling a trigger.
The other man came for Annie, unshackled her, grabbed her by the arms and dragged her through the shed. When she stumbled, he kicked her in her backside and propelled her out the door.
At first, it was hard to get her bearings. She was dizzy. Disoriented. And the sun, setting over the jagged mountain peaks to the west, was in her eyes.
Sun or no sun, she was freezing. Her teeth chattered, which seemed to amuse everybody. Every instinct she possessed warned her to show no weakness. So she took a deep breath and concentrated on maintaining self-control.
Gradually, her vision cleared. She looked about her. If by some miracle she had a chance to escape later tonight, after her captors had drunk themselves into a stupor, she’d have a mental map of the place.
Renegade: Special Tactical Units Devision (STUD) Book 3 Page 3