Especially since it was well-known that any guests to the Ustanzian compound usually flew in and out via helo.
Still, both the truck and the van that had blocked the road had been pointed—just slightly—back down the mountainside. That could’ve been a misdirect, but he doubted it. The abductors had positioned their vehicles that way in case they needed to make a quick escape.
Trusting both his meticulous training and his instincts, Thomas began the long hike back the way they’d come, down toward that last gas station, in the direction those vehicles had been pointing, certain that whoever had taken Tash had gone that way, too.
It didn’t matter that he was naked and cold, or that his head was throbbing painfully with every beat of his heart.
I promise, I’ll find you...
He’d never uttered truer words in his life.
He would find Tasha and make sure she was safe—and God help anyone who got in his way.
Chapter Two
Twenty-four hours earlier: Saturday
Thomas King’s brain was on fire.
His head had full-on exploded at Admiral Francisco’s request. Just... boom.
I need you to do me a favor, Lieutenant. I know you’ve got some downtime coming, and, well, Tasha insists on going to meet her boyfriend’s family at their ski lodge in the mountains in a remote part of western Maine—she’s flying out on a red eye tonight, and... Mia and I need you to go along to just... you know. Make sure she’s safe.
Thomas couldn’t say no—at least not the way he wanted to, with hysterical laughter and a loud Are you fucking kidding me...?
First of all, lieutenants, particularly those who were junior grade like Thomas, didn’t drop f-bombs in lunchtime conversations with admirals—even admirals they’d known since their high school days. Even admirals they still sometimes called Navy—in private, of course—which was the nickname he’d given this man back when Thomas was a kid of seventeen and Alan Francisco was still just a lowly lieutenant.
Although these days—in private, of course—Thomas mostly called his longtime mentor Alan. Especially when talking to the admiral’s wife Mia, who’d been a friend to Thomas long before they’d both met Alan and his precocious red-headed niece, Tasha.
Tash was now twenty-three, a college graduate, living in Boston. She still had masses of red curls, and she was also still as independent and ferociously strong-willed as she’d been as a child.
Back when Thomas had first met her, she’d been a little obsessed with him, purely because his last name was King. Back then—God, she was maybe five years old at the time—she’d liked to pretend she was a princess. Tash’s mom—Alan’s sister, Sharon—had been a hot mess, so Thomas understood the little girl’s desire to lose herself in fantasy.
Funny thing was—yeah, that was definitely humor he was feeling back beyond his overwhelming, head-exploding disbelief—Tash had grown up and gone off to college on the east coast, and was now dating a real, full-pedigree prince.
So when Alan—Admiral Navy—said meet Tasha’s boyfriend’s family, he was talking meet the freaking queen and her husband, the royal consort of Ustanzia.
And come on, Uncle Crazy. Like Queen Wila wouldn’t have a top-notch security team in place at her remote family compound...?
It was obvious that Alan knew exactly what Thomas was thinking as they sat in the man’s favorite local San Diego lunchtime spot, across from each other in his favorite padded booth. He said, “Yeah, I know there’ll be security at the lodge, but you damn well know that if there’s an incident, Tasha’ll run toward the danger and risk her own safety to shield the prince.”
Thomas sincerely doubted the security detail would allow that to happen, but he respectfully kept his eyebrows from going too far north as he steadied himself by looking around the busy restaurant that had become a SEAL Team Ten hangout. Not only was the food great at Werewulf’s, but in the evenings they ran classic SF movies—mostly post-apocalyptic gems—on a giant flat-screen on the wall. The audio track could be accessed via WiFi, and the owner, a friendly woman named Greykell Perks, even had high-end, noise-cancelling headphones for patrons who wanted to eat dinner and watch the films in absolute, uninterrupted peace.
According to the blackboard, ‘Wulfs was showing Buckaroo Banzai tonight. As Thomas breathed, he comforted himself by knowing that as bad as this request from Alan might seem, at least he wasn’t going to be tortured by space aliens anytime in his near future.
Although, okay. If Prince Idiot was bringing Tasha home to meet his parents, he was serious about her. So unless the royal parents didn’t particularly like the idea of her marrying their son....
She was, after all, an unruly American.
And, no. Their failure to protect her was as unlikely a scenario as his own potential impending torture by fictional characters.
Alan had taken Thomas’s long silence for the commentary that it was and was already shaking his head as Thomas finally met his gaze. “Yeah, I know, that’s just me being overprotective,” the admiral admitted. “I have checked out the queen’s security detail. The team is decent, but...” He smiled ruefully. “They’re not SEALs.”
And there it was: the one argument Thomas couldn’t deny. Add into it the fact that none of the members of the queen’s security detail were him.
But Thomas didn’t sigh heavily. At least not externally. Instead he simply nodded as Greykell brought their burgers to the table.
“Thanks, Grey.” He smiled at her before turning back to Alan. “I’ll make sure she’s safe,” he told the man—who was asking him to do this not as the top of Thomas’s chain of command at SpecWar, but as a long-time friend. “But that’s all I’ll do. She’s a grownup, so if you’re asking me to police her behavior in any way, or to keep her from—”
“God, no,” Alan interrupted him. “Of course not. I mean, this kid—Tedric—he’s not my first choice for Tasha. He’s way too entitled and self-absorbed, but... she’s been with him for over a year. She says she loves him, so... They moved in together a few months ago.”
Oh, shit, really? Thomas hadn’t known that. He clenched his teeth and forced a smile. “Well, okay then,” he said, keeping his voice light as he picked up his burger, pretending he hadn’t just lost his appetite. “I’ll stay out of sight. Low profile.”
“Yeah, no, I don’t want that,” Alan countered, and again his smile was rueful—apologetic even. “You know that expression, Walk softly, but carry a big stick? You’re kinda my big stick.”
This time, Thomas let his eyebrows rise to that full, uncensored Are you fucking kidding me...?
“I know,” Alan said, sighing heavily for both of them, “and I’m sorry, but I need you to do the whole, miserable, steely-eyed, visible bodyguard thing. Follow her wherever she goes, stand nearby at parade rest while she’s having lunch and dinner.”
“Jesus,” Thomas said, adding, “sir,” but thinking Damn, Uncle Crazy...
“Please,” Alan said. “There’s no one I trust more than you.”
So Thomas nodded. “I’ll make sure she’s safe, sir,” he said again, but he said it through clenched teeth.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Alan smiled and took a huge bite of his burger. Clearly his appetite was just fine.
Yeah.
Damn.
This was going to suck.
“I’m sorry, what...?” Natasha Francisco turned from zipping closed her suitcase to stare at her aunt, Mia.
The older woman was pretending to be apologetic, but Tasha knew she was really trying to hide her smile. Mia had an interesting sense of humor. To be fair, it was one of the things Tasha loved best about her. Right now, however, it was far less adorable.
“It was the only way Alan was going to let you go—” Mia told her.
“Uncle Alan doesn’t have the right to let me go anywhere,” Tash pointed out crisply. Under normal circumstances, she would’ve been flying to the ski lodge out of Logan Airport, via small commuter plane. But s
he’d planned this trip back home to California to visit Mia, her uncle, and her two adorable and adoring cousins long before she and Ted had ramped their relationship up to its current new level of DefCon Stupid.
“Alone.” Mia finished the sentence that Tasha had interrupted. “We were invited, too,” she countered. “All of us. Even your mother. We could all still grab our ski pants and come with.”
Tasha closed her eyes. “Don’t even joke about that.” This week was going to be hard enough—meeting Ted’s parents. God, doing it while juggling her unconventional mother, while also under Aunt Mia’s and Uncle Alan’s watchful gazes...? No, no no no no.
“I’m not joking.” Mia pushed. “I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of room on that private jet.”
With a sigh, Tasha opened her eyes and looked at her aunt, who clearly knew she’d won. “Please,” Tash said. “Just... not Thomas. Mia, talk to Uncle Alan for me. Please? He’ll listen to you. I’d be okay with, I don’t know, Dave or Mike. Rio, even. Please, just anyone but Thomas King.”
Mia gazed at her. “But I thought... You guys are such good friends, I thought...”
“Were,” Tasha corrected her, even as saying the words aloud still made her heart break a little at the hard, cold truth. “We were friends.” She shook her head.
She’d messed that up. It was her fault, entirely. She’d made an assumption, and...
It had been five years—at least—since she’d spoken to Thomas. At least not more than a cursory Hi with a forced smile, when they bumped into each other at some Team Ten family event.
He was still embarrassed, too. She knew because she’d seen relief in his eyes more than once as he was leaving some function, when he’d managed to navigate the party without having to exchange full sentences with her.
Tash couldn’t remember the last time Thomas had teased her, calling her Martian Girl or Wild Thing or Princess, his dark brown eyes warm as he flashed his killer smile. It certainly wasn’t after she’d turned eighteen.
When she’d gone to college, she’d intentionally chosen a school on the East Coast to put distance between them.
Meeting Erik at the end of her freshman year had helped—her childhood crush on Thomas had given way to... well, not exactly love. More like mutual heavy-duty physical attraction combined with a case of serious like. She and E had stayed together for several years, only breaking up right before graduation.
Which was right around the time she’d met Ted, through his roommate Jeff Willems and...
Shit, what a mess.
Tasha looked up to find Mia still gazing at her, concern in her hazel eyes.
“You know, you don’t have to do this,” Mia told her quietly. “If you don’t want to go, you shouldn’t go.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes,” Mia said. “It really is. You could stay here. Write another chapter or seven of your book.”
Her book. Right. It had been weeks since Tasha had so much as opened that word doc.
Mia raised her eyebrows and smiled, silently saying, You know you want to.
It was tempting, but... “I’m living with the crown prince,” Tash pointed out.
“With two other roommates,” her aunt argued.
“But Ted and I share a bedroom now,” Tasha reminded her, and to her credit, Mia didn’t wince the way Uncle Alan did when Tash as much as uttered Ted’s name. “I’m past due to meet the queen.”
“She and Tedric’s father should come to you,” Mia said. “Meet you for coffee. Or dinner. Not make you spend an entire week locked down with her security team at some compound in The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Maine.”
“It’s okay,” Tash said. “I’ll have backup. Jeff and Kayla are going, too.”
You’ll have backup—real backup—because Thomas King will be there. Mia didn’t say the words aloud, but Tasha could read them clearly in her aunt’s expressive eyes.
“I don’t need a bodyguard to be safe,” Tasha said, “mostly because of that lockdown. Thomas—or Rio or Dave or Mike or Uncle Bobby or Uncle Wes or all of SEAL Team Ten... They’re not going to make me any more safe.”
“I know that you know that’s not true,” Mia said. “They absolutely will.”
“Not Thomas,” Tash admitted. She wasn’t sure what she felt when Thomas was around, but it certainly wasn’t safe.
And as for Thomas? There was no way she was gonna do this to him. Make him trail around behind her for a solid week?
No.
“Please,” Tasha said again.
Mia nodded then. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll talk to Alan.”
Tasha hugged her—this woman who’d been more of a mother to her than her own biological mom.
And if there’d ever been a time over the past few years when Tasha was sorely tempted to spill the truth—about everything—to someone who would absolutely understand, it was right here and now. But, God, she was still so embarrassed about the thing with Thomas.
And the other secret wasn’t hers to tell.
Instead, she went into the bathroom to pack up her toiletries and seal her bathing suit—which wasn’t quite dry because she still swam every day, as often as she could—into a plastic bag.
No doubt about it.
This was gonna suck.
Thomas hit pause on the poor-quality video and sat back from his laptop, feeling...
Unsettled, absolutely.
Sad? Yeah, that was in there. Angry? A little, for sure.
Disgusted at the world, and yes, if he was gonna be honest here, at Tasha, too.
What the hell was she doing? It was pretty damn clear—from the furtive glance over her shoulder she’d given the paparazzi scumbag who’d taken that last video—she knew that she and her royal boyfriend were being stalked as they’d left that upscale Boston restaurant. And yet, she’d instigated the PDA—and it was one hell of a Hollywood, big-screen-sized kiss she’d laid on ol’ Ted in the middle of the Newbury Street sidewalk. After which they’d quickly flagged down a cab. Didn’t take much imagination to figure out where they were rushing—home to their apartment. Or why they were in such a hurry to get there—for a replay of that kiss, with fewer clothes on.
Thomas sighed.
He’d gone online to do some easy research: Ustanzia 101. Bring himself up to speed both on the royal family and the current political situation in the country.
When he’d first started digging, Thomas had found out the basics: Tedric Cortere the Second, Crown Prince of Ustanzia, son of Queen Wila, had been named after his now-deceased uncle, the former crown prince of the tiny oil-rich nation. There’d been a great of deal of tension in Ustanzia after Ted the First—known for his excesses and bad behaviors—had drowned in a terrible Thailand tsunami. Although as Thomas dug a bit further, it appeared that that might’ve been a convenient cover for “died from a drug overdose.” Either way, the tragedy had a ripple effect. The reigning king had had a stroke at the news of his son’s demise, and died himself, mere days later.
The history got even more Shakespearian at that point. The king’s much younger brother, Hendrake—seriously, that was the guy’s name—had tried to claim the crown, but the Prime Minister, backed by the rest of Ustanzia’s government—along with most of population, too—pressed to put the beloved king’s surviving child, his daughter Wila, into power.
A popular princess due to her propensity for wearing blue jeans and speaking her mind, Wila had already given birth to two sons—the heir and a spare that her own father had failed to produce—so she could focus on running the nation. Which everyone who had working brains in their heads knew she’d already been doing for her elderly father for the past decade.
And although angry Uncle H did his best to usurp her rise to power, he’d failed—slinking off to Monaco where he still grumbled his discontent, despite the fact that he lived in a freaking palace.
Paid for by his niece.
That was all good to know—Queen Wila seemed cool, and not-to
o-dragon-like—but while Thomas had been Googling her, he’d discovered that the search bar’s primary autofill prediction following his typed words “Queen Wila of Ustanzia” was “reaction to baby bump.”
It turned out that everyone and their obnoxious paparazzi brother spent way too much time chasing handsome Prince Tedric and his mysterious red-haired GF through the streets of Boston. Oh yeah, and apparently the latest furor surrounded the burning question, Was that or was that not a baby bump? It all seemed to have started when some photo-“journalist” snapped a long-distance and badly focused picture of Tasha, dripping wet, one-piece bathing suit clinging, reaching for a towel just after she’d pulled herself out of some indoor swimming pool, probably in her high-end apartment’s fitness center.
Thomas hadn’t seen anything more than a very healthy young woman, but the rumors persisted. And even though the links that screamed TEDRIC BABY BUMP PROOF! landed him—squinting through his eyelashes, just in case—on a bunch of shitty photos of Tasha wrapped in a giant and completely body-obscuring, cold-weather appropriate winter coat, the rumors didn’t appear to be dying down any time soon.
Mostly because the prince and his girlfriend didn’t deny it.
It was then that Thomas had stumbled upon the video of that steamy kiss.
He scrolled back a few dozen frames and froze on Tasha who was, indeed, looking dead into the camera’s lens.
The girl he knew—or thought he knew—would’ve hated that kind of attention, but here she was, definitely playing to the camera.
Of course, five years was a long time, and as people grew from child to adult, they often changed.
As for Queen Wila’s reaction to said baby bump...? A terse, “You’ll have to ask my son—or his little red-haired friend.”
Ouch.
So. This week was going to be even more stressful for Tasha than he’d imagined. And Uncle Navy—who always did his homework, too—damn well knew it. No wonder he wanted Thomas’s presence to be large.
King's Ransom: (Tall, Dark and Dangerous Book 13) Page 2