King's Ransom: (Tall, Dark and Dangerous Book 13)

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Thomas hoped this boded well for the tunnel itself—that it, too, would be in equally good repair.

  But unlike the front landing and stairs immediately outside of the other blast-proof door, there was no sensor in the escape hatch tunnel to pick up his movement and turn on lights. Probably because there were no lights to go on.

  The beam from Thomas’s flashlight bounced off the curved walls of the pipe, fading into the distance until the darkness swallowed it up.

  “Whoa,” Tash said again as she followed him. “You were right about the pipe.”

  Yeah, this was the exact type of escape exit he’d guessed this era shelter would have.

  The pipe was larger in circumference than he’d imagined, though. If he stayed in the very center, he could stand straight and walk tall. Made sense, since both Prince Teds Uno and Dos were above average height, too. Don’t want to make a crown prince crouch.

  Tasha held the still-burning candle up and out as they started up the slight incline. Its flame burned merrily, much to his relief. “In theory,” she said, “if there’s a lack of oxygen, the candle will go out...?”

  “Not just in theory,” he reassured her. “If we hit bad air, it’ll absolutely get weak or even extinguish.”

  “And if that happens...?” Tasha asked. “We retreat, right? Back to the pod? I’d like to know in advance, in case...” She cleared her throat. “I’ve heard that... well, hypoxia and you are not exactly best friends.”

  Thomas sighed. “Why am I not surprised someone told you that story?”

  “Stories, plural,” she told him a smidge too gleefully. “Probably because it’s the only thing you’ve ever been bad at as a SEAL—and well, that’s not your fault. You can’t train to be better at something like that, can you? A biological reaction. Your body responds the way your body responds.”

  Hypoxia was a bitch. And the human body allegedly changed its response to hypoxia—the lack of oxygen—as one aged, which was why there were embarrassing stories, comma, plural, instead of embarrassing story, comma, one-and-done.

  Navy SEALs needed to know what hypoxia felt like, so they could identify it when it was happening to them in a variety of situations, from scuba-diving to sky-diving to mountain climbing—or any other time there might be a lack of oxygen or an oxygen-tank fail. Because of that, at an annoyingly frequent schedule, as part of their ongoing training, Thomas and his SEAL teammates were put into an airtight tank—usually a hyperbaric chamber—where their oxygen was cut.

  During this “test,” they were asked to solve math problems or carry on a conversation with someone outside of the tank, to chart how loopy they did or didn’t get as hypoxia kicked in.

  Some of the guys in Team Ten could feel it from the jump—the result of the lack of oxygen in their bodies—and mark their symptoms as it got steadily worse, but not Thomas.

  Nope.

  Thomas’s consistent, as yet unchanging reaction was to go from absolutely fine—talking, walking, doing the math—to instantly, completely, no-warning, face-plant-on-the-ground unconscious.

  But Tasha already knew that, thanks to, oh, he was going to say Rio, Mike, and possibly even Dave Patterson.

  “Flame’ll go out long before I do,” he told Tash now, stopping. This was far enough for now. “But I’m seeing signs of maintenance—” he aimed the beam from his light at several examples of patches and repairs along the pipe “—so I doubt there’ll be an issue. Bad air’s the kind of thing we’d want to watch out for if, for example, we had to take cover from the hostiles in that cave I found.”

  “Although, that’s why you asked me to gather up the candles in the pod,” she realized. “Not just for light in case the hostiles cut the power, but to make sure we still have oxygen, in case they started messing with the ventilation system.” She paused. “Hostile’s such a good word, especially since we don’t know who they are. Bad guys feels a little too... Scooby Doo.”

  Hostile. Dollop. Tasha did love words.

  “You still writing?” Thomas asked her as they turned and headed back to the pod to finish their prep, and then get some sleep. His plan was to wait until just before dawn to depart. “Novels, right?”

  “Yeah, I am.” She sounded surprised. “Well, my word count’s been zero for the past few months, but... Who told you I was...?” She answered her own question. “Mia or Alan.”

  “Mia,” he confirmed. “I was—” he cleared his throat “—less than thrilled about your personal assistant job, you know, working for Prince Ted, and she told me you took it, in part, because you had a lot of down time. Kind of the perfect job for a writer.”

  Tasha laughed a little as he let her go first through the heavy door to the mudroom. “That got less true after I transitioned into being Ted’s fake-girlfriend. These days I have to show up for more events, which means I have to dress up and put on makeup. And that means I have to shop for suitable clothes—although Ted started doing that for me, since he grew up in that world. Still, it’s time-consuming, so my output has slowed way down.”

  “I’d love to read it,” Thomas told her, locking the door to the tunnel behind him. “Whatever you’re working on.”

  “Really.” She laughed a little as she blew out the candle and climbed out of the smaller door and back into the pod’s utility room, finally taking the towel off of her head. “It’s a YA—teen—historical, set in California just after the Civil War, heavy on the romance. I’m not sure it’s your thing.”

  “Of course it’s my thing,” he said, following her. “You wrote it. It’s my thing.”

  Tasha clearly didn’t know how to respond.

  Because she was silent for so long, he started to back-pedal. “I mean, unless you don’t want me to—”

  “No,” she said. “No! God! I just... I don’t...” Tears filled her eyes. “I want you to read it. And you being not just willing but enthusiastic is... It’s everything, Thomas, it really is. But I’m scared I won’t get the chance to share that—not just that, but my life; your life... I want a chance to have an our life, and I’m scared.”

  Thomas set down the flashlight and the rifle, and moved in to wrap his arms around her. “Yeah, I’m a little scared, too,” he admitted softly.

  She half-laughed, half-sobbed. “Thank you,” she said, holding him even more tightly. “For being honest.” She spoke in a fake-cowboy drawl—at least that’s what he thought it was meant to be. “Don’t you worry your pretty lil’ head lil’ lady, everything’s gon’ be jus’ fine. Thank you for not making me stab you with the shards of a peanut jar for saying something exceedingly annoying like that.”

  He laughed. “I think maybe doing John Wayne impressions is a white-boyfriend thing. It lives in the same Venn diagram intersection as red-plaid pajama pants.”

  Tasha lifted her head to look up at him, her face wet with tears, even though she was laughing a little, too. “Pants!” she said. “Or rather...” She pulled free from his embrace to use both of her hands for air quotes. “Pants.”

  She wiped her face as she left the utility room, clearly on a mission.

  Bemused, Thomas followed her out into the living room to watch her vanish into the bedroom, and ah, right, she’d told him she’d used up all the thread sewing him some...

  “Pants” indeed.

  Tash laughed at the expression on his face as she came out of the bedroom, holding them up for him to see. She’d used another of the dark blue fleece blankets—similar to the one he’d left back in the cave.

  They were gigantic and fugly—and would be so much warmer than the thin plaid flannel he’d been wearing. The amount of time and effort she’d spent sewing this, by hand, was mind-blowing.

  She held them up to his waist. “I figured too big was better than too small,” she told him. “We still have to figure out some kind of drawstring belt or suspenders so they stay on. Oh, and I also cut one of the white blankets into smaller pieces—I figured you could use them as socks, to keep your feet warm.”


  “Thank you,” Thomas said, leaning down to kiss her. “This is... Thank you.”

  She smiled, but it was forced—tears were back in her eyes. “At least maybe this way we won’t freeze to death.”

  “This is going to be hard,” he told her quietly, “but we’re gonna fight to make it.”

  Tasha nodded. “I know. I just...” She took a deep breath and started over. “Fighting and... and trying not to die is all well and good, but... Thomas, I’m sorry, I’m just feeling really stupid and desperate. Like, I’m trying to manage my burning need to live a lifetime with you in a single night, while still respecting your burning need to take this—us—slowly. And I know I said I wouldn’t push, and God, I don’t want to push, but what if this moment—right now—is all we get? I keep trying to convince myself that we’re gonna be okay—please God—and yes, you’ll read my book and tell me that you like it even if you don’t, and we’ll... we’ll... eat burgers and watch lots of movies at Werewulf’s, and we’ll have all the time in the world to—”

  Thomas kissed her—not specifically to shut her up, although ending her panicky rant was a bonus. He kissed her because she was right. What if this moment—right now—was all they were given?

  And right now, they had hours before dawn. Hours that he’d planned for them to spend sleeping, resting before attempting an arduous, dangerous journey. He had maybe fifteen minutes, tops, of prep left to do before they were ready to leave.

  Tash’s torrent of words turned into a soft noise of pleasure as she melted against him, and his rush of pleasure and joy felt so damn right that he knew, without a doubt, that this wasn’t just for her.

  Life was too damn short, and he’d already wasted too much time.

  Thomas stopped thinking and planning and lost himself in kissing Tasha.

  “If you were the twenty-three-year-old crown prince of Ustanzia,” Dave mused, as Rio pulled the SUV back onto the state road, “and you were heading to your family’s mountaintop ski lodge to rescue your...”

  At his hesitation, Rio filled the word in for him, “Girlfriend. They’re not engaged yet.”

  “Right,” Dave said. “No. But...” He cleared his throat. “Okay. Yeah. You’re Tedric and you borrow your... friend’s phone, and you convince him—Jeff—to pretend to be you and fly Daddy’s private jet at a time when doing that can get you into some real trouble even if you really are a crown prince—all of which Jeff had to have known.”

  “Kayla said the prince tried to get him to come with,” Rio pointed out. “To storm a mountainside filled with hostiles with a single handgun. So Jeff definitely took the easier job by flying the plane.” There was trouble, and there was dead. Jeff Willems had chosen trouble.

  “But what do you do now,” Dave continued, “if you’re Ted? Obviously he knows the jet’s landed and his prince-and-the-pauper act with Jeff’s been discovered. He’s busted—and he was smart enough to ditch the phone when he did. So he knows someone’s hot on his trail. Does he take the direct paved route to the ski lodge and drive right up to it, or does he go indirect, get as far as he can via back roads, ditch the car, and hike in?”

  “He definitely hikes in,” Rio said. “Someone who engineered that whole fake-prince-flying-the-jet setup won’t simply drive up to the ski lodge, even though that’s the way I’d do it. Of course, I’m armed with more than a handgun.”

  Dave opened the detailed map of the Ustanzian compound and the surrounding area. They still had hours left to drive—they just couldn’t get much speed on these winding mountain roads.

  “I originally thought we’d do it that way, too,” he said. “Just drive on up to whatever’s left of the lodge, weapons at the ready. But that was before the royal jet landed at the airfield. I mean, the prince could’ve added Here we come in skywriting or maybe even a leaflet drop announcing his arrival, but nope, he didn’t have to.”

  Rio nodded grimly. Whoever the hostiles were, they definitely knew that the cavalry was coming.

  And thanks to Prince Tedric’s foolish game-playing, those hostiles had just been given a boatload of time to prepare.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tasha knew that she should stop him.

  They couldn’t talk if they were kissing, and they needed to talk.

  But Thomas just kept on kissing her as he carefully unpeeled her blood-stained winter jacket from her injured arm. And she couldn’t seem to make herself stop kissing him back.

  When he scooped her up, one arm under her knees—again, so careful of her arm—her mouth was free. But she couldn’t seem to form any words or do more than laugh her surprise as he carried her over to the sofa.

  She could tell from the answering smile that danced in his eyes that he damn well knew the powerful impact of his Officer-and-a-Gentleman-ing her this way. She’d watched that movie on repeat, and therefore Thomas had, too, despite his squirreliness at watching R-rated scenes with her when she was barely fourteen.

  “I know it’s not the same without my cover,” he told her now as he set her gently down on the cushions.

  Tash laughed. “That wasn’t the big part of the fantasy for me.” In fact, the way that Debra Winger had casually worn Richard Gere’s gleaming white hat had made her cringe when she was younger. Uncle Alan’s stern-officer voice always popped into her head: My uniform is to be respected, Natasha, not treated like a toy. As a result, she hadn’t made the mistake of wearing his fancy white cover to play Ship Captain more than that one extremely regrettable time. “I’m not exactly the skinniest woman on the planet.”

  “Why do so many women think being skin and bones is appealing?” he said, but then quickly added, “Rhetorical, don’t answer that right now.” He leaned in to kiss her again.

  And damnit, she’d used up that non-kissing-window discussing one of her own foolish insecurities, as if he really was going to see her naked again after five long years, instead of stopping this insanity before it got that far, because she knew—he’d said—he wanted to wait.

  But Thomas was kissing her like the word wait was no longer in his vocabulary. If there was any wait happening here, it was the homonym—the delicious weight of his body on top of hers. Ah, God! Of course that was at least partially the result of her pulling him closer as she melted beneath him, but he wasn’t resisting.

  She’d gone so far as to open herself to him, wrapping her legs around him. If they hadn’t been wearing clothes, he’d already be inside her.

  That knowledge shocked her into pulling back from the magic of his mouth. “Thomas, you really don’t have to—”

  “Nah, Tash, there’s no have to here. This is pure want to.” The heat in his brown eyes was everything she’d ever dreamed of, but then he added the perfect dash of reality to the fantasy, upping it to an eleven by searching her eyes and confirming, “For you, too, right?”

  She nodded as she made an affirmative noise, and then surrendered as he kissed her again.

  Somehow their clothes fell away—her shoes and her shirt, his boots and sweatshirt, her socks and her jeans. Thomas must’ve done most of that, and surely she’d helped, but maybe she hadn’t, just thrilling at the intimacy of his touch.

  She knew him so well—this man-sized version of the boy she’d adored—he was familiar in so many ways. The sound of his voice. The intoxicating scent of him. The smile that lit his entire face and sparkled in his eyes. The bottomless dark brown depth of those eyes, and the decadent length of the lashes that surrounded them. His nose, his chin, his lips... The way he laughed with his whole body, and talked with his hands.

  Familiar hands, yet the way Thomas was touching her now was breathtakingly, heart-stoppingly new.

  The way he was looking at her made her feel beautiful. Desired. He was setting her on fire.

  And God, she wanted more, more... She heard herself moan.

  “Shit, I gotta...” he said, suddenly pulling away from her.

  Her first thought was bad time for him to remember he really didn’t
want to do this, even though she was already working to enunciate actual words instead of consonant-free sounds of pleasure to tell him that it was okay, she understood, and to apologize again for pressuring him too far too fast.

  But when she pushed herself up on her elbows, she realized that he was reaching for something on the coffee table—a condom. He tore the little packet open as he sat back in order to...

  Okay, like that wasn’t sexy as hell, watching the muscles flex in his shoulders, chest, and arms as he covered himself.

  And God, the smile he gave her redefined hot as he caught her gazing at him, with everything she was thinking and feeling no doubt plastered all over her face.

  He’d really meant it. His want to.

  That condom had been right there. Ready. At hand. It hadn’t been placed onto the coffee table by accident—Thomas had taken it from the box on the storage shelf and put it there. On purpose. To use. With her. He’d planned for this to happen.

  But even more importantly, he was finally ready to let her show him, in this beautiful, sacred, intimate way, exactly what she meant when she said I love you.

  Tasha didn’t hesitate. He was barely finished before she scrambled up, toward him.

  “Your knees,” he warned.

  “I don’t care,” she said, straddling his lap as she reached between them and pushed him deeply inside of her.

  And yes, her recently scraped knees may have complained, but dear, sweet God, the rest of her felt so good.

  Thomas made a sound that was surely one of agreement as his hands found her hips and held her there, firmly in place. But his eyes were tightly closed, like maybe he didn’t want to look at her, or God, maybe he couldn’t look at her because this was so weird for him, and all of her doubt came crashing back.

  There were more options than have to and want to. There was also got to while we can, in terms of now-or-never and...

  Oh, shit!

  “You think we’re going to die,” Tasha blurted.