Authors: Elizabeth Bevarly
“I suppose you could say my major is political science,” she began.
“Could I?”
She nodded. “Specifically, my studies focus on counterterrorism.”
“Which is why you know so much about the Black Knights.”
“Actually, no,” Sara said. “Them I was already an expert on when I chose my field of study.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She nodded. “Yes. You see, they murdered my father. He was killed by a bomb they planted at the RII offices eight years ago.”
The only reaction Shane showed to her announcement was to let his mouth fall slightly open. But his eyes seemed to grow darker somehow, colder, stormier. And his entire body seemed to go rigid, though Sara saw no actual tensing of his muscles. It was just that, one moment, he seemed relaxed and jovial and eager to tease, and the next moment, he seemed poised for attack. Attack on whom, however, Sara couldn’t say for sure. But suddenly he looked like a man who wanted to hit something. Or someone. Very badly indeed.
“Okay, next question,” he said, his voice low and gritty and menacing. “What’s the RII?”
“The Royal Intelligence Institute,” Sara clarified. “They’re a government agency that act as the king’s right-hand men and women, so to speak. My father worked for them.”
She didn’t go into further detail, and Shane didn’t seem to want any. Not about the RII, at any rate. Because his
next question was, “And just who the hell are the Black Knights?”
As questions went, Sara thought, that one pretty much used up every one Shane had left, and she told him so.
“I don’t care,” he replied. “I think it’s about time you told me exactly what we’re up against, Sara. Obviously these guys haven’t had any kind of response to their demands, or else we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”
“No,” she agreed, “I imagine we’d be dead.”
His expression hardened even more, something she wouldn’t have thought possible. “All the more reason for you to give me the whole story,” he said. “I think I deserve to know exactly what we’re up against.”
He was right, of course. In fact, he was long past due being told as much about their situation as she knew herself. They’d been sitting here long enough for the Black Knights to have made their demands known to Queen Marissa. But if Sara knew the queen—and, of course, she did—then Her Majesty was doing everything she could to stall, in an effort to buy some time and organize the Royal Intelligence Institute, so that they could find and free her and Shane. Unfortunately, Sara also knew the Black Knights. And there was a very good chance indeed that the RII wouldn’t reach the captives before they met with a bad end.
“As I told you before,” she began in her most professional voice, trying not to think about that last bit for now, “the Black Knights have been around for about a decade. These days, they’re a sinister lot, to be sure, very well organized and very well funded, and completely without morals or scruples. Who’s doing the funding, no one knows for certain, in spite of extensive investigation. Theories abound, however, and some of them even point rather high in the Penwyck administration. There are even some who think—”
Here, Sara halted. Shane didn’t need an advanced course
in the Black Knights. What he needed was the introductory version. Not only were there facts and theories about the group that weren’t relative to their current situation, but knowing too much could honestly be dangerous for him.
She started again. “Anyway, no one can say exactly for sure who runs the organization, and we’ve not been able to identify where their financing comes from. But this past year alone, they’ve been responsible for a number of acts of sabotage against both the military and the government, not to mention the kidnapping of Prince Owen and the attempted kidnapping of Princess Anastasia.”
At this, Shane’s head snapped up. “What? No one told me anything about any kidnappings.”
“Well, Owen and Anastasia both were eventually safely recovered, and the kidnapping of her children isn’t exactly the kind of thing Her Majesty wants to dwell on, is it? But it’s not been any great secret.” She shook her head slowly again. “All in all, it’s been an odd year for the royal family, I’m afraid. The queen found out her brother was involved in an assassination attempt on the king some years back. Princess Anastasia had a bout with amnesia, of all things. Princess Meredith took ill and there was concern she would lose her baby. Owen found out he fathered a child four years ago, while he was in America at school. And Princess Megan turned up pregnant, out of wedlock, which was scandalous enough in itself. Of course, she eventually married the baby’s father, but he’s the earl of Silvershire, of all things, which goes beyond scandal.”
“Uh, why is that such a bad thing?” Shane asked.
“Well, he’s from Drogheda, for heaven’s sake,” she said, certain that would be the only comment necessary there.
Shane, however, didn’t seem to understand. “And that would be significant because…?” he asked.
Sara expelled an impatient sound. She didn’t have time to tell him the history of the warring nations of Penwyck and Drogheda. Instead, she only told him, “Well, the fam
ilies have been feuding for generations, haven’t they? The last thing anyone could have seen coming was a royal wedding uniting them.”
“Ah,” he said, though he clearly didn’t understand at all.
So Sara continued as best she could. “But as strange as all those developments are, none of them is the strangest thing that’s happened in Penwyck. The strangest thing is that King Morgan contracted viral encephalitis and lapsed into a coma around the time of the wedding—something else we suspect the Black Knights are behind—and the RII trotted out his identical twin to rule the country in his place. They’re quite a powerful group, and they stepped in when the king went into his coma. Thing is, though, the RII never bothered to tell anyone at first, not even the queen, that it was Broderick they’d put in charge, and not King Morgan—”
“Broderick?”
“The king’s twin,” Sara clarified. “Evil twin if you ask me, though no one wanted my opinion, did they?”
“I don’t know. Did they?”
“Well, no one asked.”
“Mmm,” Shane replied blandly. But his expression, one of mild humor, told her she was revealing too much of the personal now, which wouldn’t be tolerated by the RII once—if—she landed a job with them.
“Anyway,” she continued, doing her best to curb her opinions, “Broderick’s been running Penwyck in the king’s place, and mucking things up royally, if you ask me.” All right, so maybe she wasn’t doing her
very
best to curb her opinions. “And now there’s this mix-up with the princes where, technically, there could be four of you to choose from for running the country. It’s like a bad soap opera, honestly.”
“Three,” Shane corrected her.
“Well, yes, I suppose there is enough going on for three soap operas, now that I think about it,” Sara agreed.
“No, I didn’t mean three soap operas,” he said. “I meant three to choose from for running the country.”
“What?” she asked.
“Three to choose from,” he repeated. “I’m not running any country.”
She gaped at him, not sure what to make of his assertion. “But what if you’re next in line for the Penwyck throne?”
“In the first place,” Shane said, “that isn’t likely, because I find it very hard to believe that Marcus and I were switched at birth with anyone. Hell, I still can’t make myself believe we were adopted. In the second place, Marcus is older than me by almost thirty minutes, so even if we did end up being the missing heirs to the throne, he has seniority over me, being firstborn and all. Plus, he’s been heading up an international financial empire for years now, so ruling a small sovereign nation should be a piece of cake for him. And in the third place, even if they offered the job to me, I don’t want it.”
This, Sara thought, was quite a surprise. Oh, certainly Shane Cordello made it clear that he was his own man who lived by his own rules, but she couldn’t imagine any man turning down the position of king of his own country, no matter what.
“You say that now,” Sara said, “but you’d feel differently if someone actually told you that you’re next in line to be king of Penwyck.”
Shane shook his head. “No, I say that no matter what. I don’t want to be king of anything.”
“Rubbish,” she said before she could stop herself. “Every man wants to be king of something. It’s all about control with you.”
He looked taken aback by her statement, and only then did she realize how vehemently—and revealingly—she had spoken.
“Well, my, my, my,” he said softly. “Haven’t we just hit a raw nerve with General Wallington?”
Sara closed her eyes for a moment, counted slowly to
five, then opened them again. “All right,” she conceded, “I’ll grant you that you did in fact touch a bit of a sore spot with me on that one.”
“Why?”
“Why is not important,” she assured him. Well, it wasn’t important to Shane Cordello, at any rate, she told herself. “And perhaps I was a bit overly sweeping in my observation,” she further conceded. “However,” she added quickly when she saw him open his mouth to object, “I still say that most men, if given the opportunity, would jump at the chance to be king of their own country. And yes, with many of them, it is most definitely a control issue.”
He eyed her levelly for a moment, his gaze so focused and so intense, it made her want to squirm. Then, very quietly, very evenly, he told her, “I’m not most men, Sara. I’m not even many of them.”
Well, that, of course, was something she had noticed about him some time ago. Though not, probably, in the way he meant. “But we digress,” she continued, less zealously this time.
“Right,” he agreed. “We were talking about why you think men are control freaks.”
“No, we were talking about all the strange things going on with the royal family,” she corrected him smoothly.
“Oh, yeah. We can talk about the control thing later.”
Not. Bloody. Likely, Sara thought. Before she had a chance to say anything, however—not that she was going to say
that,
of course—Shane continued speaking.
“Why wasn’t I told about any of this before now?” he asked.
Sara blew out a weary breath and wondered that herself. “Well, perhaps Her Majesty thought you wouldn’t come to Penwyck if you knew the current climate of the country and royal family.”
“Perhaps Her Majesty was right,” he replied dryly.
“I’m sure she planned to tell you everything once you arrived. This trip was rather hastily put together, after all.”
“Yeah, and look what happens when you fly by night like that,” he quipped. Then he blew out an exasperated breath and shook his head slowly. “I have
got
to start watching the evening news more often.”
“Not that the American news channels much cover what happens in Penwyck,” Sara reminded him. “The best news I receive of home is what I get from my mother and sisters. You shouldn’t feel badly about not knowing. You know now.”
“But what I know answers very few of my questions,” he said. “I mean, what was all that business about diamonds on the plane? Fawn said something about diamonds, and then one of the other guys shut her up. Fast. What was she talking about?”
“I have no idea,” Sara replied honestly. “I assumed they kidnapped you because of your possible tie to the throne, and your value there. They’ve already kidnapped and released Prince Owen. Perhaps they know something we don’t. Perhaps Owen
isn’t
in line to the throne and you
are,
which would put them in a very good bargaining position indeed. But diamonds?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “I can’t imagine where they fit in. It’s the alliances with Majorco and America they seem most concerned about. Of course—”
She had been about to say that of course, there was quite a lot to which she wasn’t privy, so her having heard nothing was meaningless. She wasn’t a member of the RII and wouldn’t be until she graduated, though she’d been all but promised a job there once she did complete her studies. Still, of course she wouldn’t know about the workings of the elite spy network that answered to the king and queen until she was one of them. Even then, it would be a long time before she was put to work on anything of significance—like the Black Knights. First she’d have to prove herself in the field like all the other newly hired operatives.
Even if her father had been a well-respected member of the group at one time.
“But the Black Knights are clearly up to something,” she finally concluded. “And trust me, Shane, when I tell you that they really will stop at nothing to meet their needs. They truly are a sinister lot, and we’d be best off assuming the worst from them.”
“Then we need to get out of here,” he said. “As soon as possible.”
“Yes, of course,” Sara said. “I’ll just ring up Queen Marissa on my cell phone and have her send round a car, shall I? Perhaps they can stop at the local market for sandwiches on their way.”
Shane threw her a sarcastic look. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”
“No, you didn’t say much of anything,” she pointed out. “But if you have a better plan, I’d very much like to hear it.”
He smiled a deliberate, menacing smile. “Oh, I have a plan,” he told her. “In fact, I have an
ex
cellent plan.”
H
e was probably going to get them both killed, Shane thought some time later. But, hell, Sara had agreed to go along with his plan, so she’d be equally responsible for their deaths, wouldn’t she?
Strangely, the realization did nothing to comfort him.
But as they sat in the darkness—the batteries of the flashlight burned out—waiting for the arrival of something or someone, he couldn’t help second-guessing himself. He told himself that they didn’t have any choice but to attempt an escape. There was no guarantee that the Black Knights would let them live, even if Queen Marissa did meet their demands. In fact, if what Sara said was true—and he had no reason to doubt her—the opposite was more likely, and the Black Knights would kill them, whether their demands were met or not.
So their only alternative, clearly, was to escape. If they could. Shane just hoped they were both strong enough, and brave enough—and lucky enough—to manage it.
The time for finding out whether or not they were came more quickly than he had thought—or hoped—it would. Because no sooner had that last thought formed in his brain than he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. It had been a while since any of the kidnappers had checked on them, and he assumed they must be bringing another meal. Instead, he hoped, they were offering them another bathroom break, because they really needed to get out of this room if they were going to have any chance of success. It would be even more helpful if only one of the Black Knights came to the door. It would be most helpful of all if it was Fawn. Because, hey, she fought like a girl.
Of course, so did Sara, Shane reminded himself, and she was pretty damned formidable. Still, Sara fought with a cool, calm head, and Fawn was easily provoked to do something rash, as he’d seen for himself on the plane. He’d place his bet on Sara in a heartbeat.
The gods must have heard his pleas and prayers, because when the door to the pantry/prison opened, it was indeed Fawn who stood there. She held the basket and thermos again—which one of the men had collected when two of them had come to release Shane and Sara for their earlier bathroom breaks, so it must be dinnertime now. Fawn was looking a little more fatigued and strained than she had looked earlier that day, and Shane couldn’t help wondering if she was having as much trouble sleeping as he was.
Before any of them could say a word, however Shane heard a sound outside and tuned his ear to listen more closely. And when he realized what the sound was, he had to bite back a grin at just how wonderful it was to hear. In fact, it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard in his entire life—better than the roar of the ocean as it curled over him while he was surfing, better than the sizzle of a fat sausage on the grill, better even, than the breathy murmur of a well-satisfied woman when she woke next to him on a balmy Sunday morning.
Because what Shane heard was the sound of a car driving away.
At least one of the kidnappers had left the house. With any luck at all, two had gone. That would leave two there with him and Sara, evening the odds nicely. Even if three remained, they were still better off. He glanced over at Sara to see if she’d noticed the sound, too, and saw immediately by her jubilant expression that she had. Then, pretending he hadn’t heard anything at all, he focused his attention on Fawn.
“Can I use the bathroom?” he said without preamble.
She widened her eyes in surprise. “But it’s not time for that.”
“Yeah, well, the call of nature and all that, honey,” he said. “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” He threw her what he’d been told was his most winning smile, even though winning Fawn was about as appealing as winning a cold sore. “To put it in the vernacular,” he added, oozing as much boyish charm as he could, and trying not to gag on it, “I gotta use the can.”
“But it’s not time for that,” she said again. “It’s time for you to eat. You can use the washroom later.”
Instead of replying this time, Shane stood—slowly, cautiously, with his arms extended at his sides, so that she wouldn’t think he was trying to pull anything funny. Ha.
“Look, Fawn,” he began again, keeping his voice courteous, and trying not to be too smarmy, “I’m just not as used to downing that tea as you Penwyckians are, and trust me when I tell you that if you don’t let me out of here to go to the bathroom, I’m going to get very…frustrated.”
Fawn expelled a long, ragged breath of air, then turned her attention to Sara, who still sat on the floor on the other side of the pantry in a completely nonconfrontational manner.
“Don’t look at me,” Sara said. “I was brought up in Penwyck. I nursed tea at my mother’s breast. My bladder can handle it just fine. He’s the one who has to go.”
Fawn hesitated, then rolled her eyes in a way that would make an American teenager proud. “Fine,” she bit off in a likewise adolescent manner. “You can use the loo. Just don’t try anything funny, as you’ve seen for yourself
you’re
outnumbered and
we’re
well armed.”
“Yeah, with a thermos and basket of bread, no less,” Shane said.
Without warning, she tossed both items in question at him. Shane caught them capably, and in turn, tossed them to Sara, who likewise snared them with ease. Then, his hands still extended straight out to his sides to show Fawn that he didn’t plan to try anything funny—ha—he took a few slow steps toward the door…and her.
She backed up as he approached, then stepped aside to allow him through, never taking her eyes from his. Shane continued to move slowly, hands out to his sides, his gaze never shifting, until he was clear of the door. Then, in one swift, fluid motion, he grabbed Fawn and shoved her into the pantry, where Sara, without missing a beat, dispatched her with a thermos upside the head before she had a chance to make a sound. As she fell to the floor with a heavy thump, Sara tucked the thermos beneath one arm, then slipped the basket of bread over her other. Then she bent to tug off Fawn’s flat shoes and slipped her own feet into them instead. Finally she brushed off her hands and stepped over the inert body, smiling as she neared Shane.
“My, but for some reason I enjoyed that quite a lot,” she whispered when she stood beside him. “She has rather elephantine feet, but I should be able to keep her shoes on, I think.” She dipped her chin toward Shane’s feet then. He was still clad only in socks. “What about you?”
“I’ll manage,” he whispered back. “I have a tough hide. And I’ve spent most of my life running on hot sand and broken shells. I’ll be okay.” He tipped his head toward the back door on the other side of the kitchen. “Shall we go?”
“Yes, let’s,” Sara said, gripping both basket and thermos more firmly. “These people are frightfully bad hosts.
I think I can safely say that this is the worst party I’ve ever attended.”
Not surprisingly, when they reached the back door, they found that it was locked. So, without further ado, Shane kicked it—hard. The first kick did little more than alert anyone else who might be in the house that they were in the process of escaping. The second kick, however, blew the door off its lower hinge, and they immediately pushed through it and down the porch. It was twilight—and cold—but the sun hadn’t set so far that they couldn’t see what they were doing, or where they were going—even if they had no idea what they were doing or where they were going. Shane led the way, though, trusting Sara to follow. He figured they were equally matched here, neither of them knowing where they were or which way to go. So he headed through the backyard of the house, toward a heavily wooded area beyond.
They had just sprung through the trees when he heard an angry male voice—only one of them—coming from behind them. Instinctively, he reached behind himself and groped for Sara’s hand, and twined his fingers fiercely with her own. Vaguely, as he tugged her through trees, over the rough terrain, he noticed not the pain that shot through his feet with every stray stick and stone, but how she seemed to have no trouble at all keeping up with him—even though he’d run cross-country track in both high school and college. Of course, the dense foliage hindered their progress, so speed wasn’t so much an issue as dexterity. Nevertheless, Sara, he discovered, was both as speedy and as dexterous as he.
Neither said a word as they pummeled the wilderness and bore deeper into the woods, and he kept his ear tuned to their rhythmic, labored breathing to keep himself focused, instead of on the masculine voice that trailed them. Gradually, though, that voice began to ebb. Eventually, it disappeared completely. By then, night had well and truly fallen, and Shane knew it would soon be pointless to keep
running. It was dark, it was cold and they had no idea where they were. So little by little, he slowed their pace until their steps became more deliberate.
His feet hurt like hell, which was another reason he needed to slow down. But his panic had lessened, and his instincts told him that they weren’t in as precarious a situation as they had been upon fleeing the house. Certainly they weren’t out of the woods yet—if one could pardon the incredibly stupid pun—but he didn’t think it would be unwise for them to slow down and choose their route more carefully from here.
“How you doing?” he gasped in a rough whisper as he drew Sara up beside himself and came to a halt.
Reluctantly, he dropped her hand, settling both of his on his waist. He bent forward to assist his breathing for a moment, then straightened again. He could just barely make out her silhouette in the darkness and saw that she, too, was struggling to level off her breathing. She had placed both hands on a tree and was pushing against it, as if she were trying to work a few kinks out of her muscles. The basket of bread still swung from one arm, and the thermos, he could tell by her strangely altered profile, was shoved down the front of her blouse. He couldn’t help smiling when he saw it. Awfully quick thinking on her part.
“I’m all right,” she said, her voice as low and labored as his own. “Just winded. How are your feet?”
They hurt like hell, Shane thought again. “Fine,” he told her. “But I wouldn’t balk at a chance to get off them for a while. Any chance you’ve become psychic over the last couple of hours and know exactly where we are and how to get out of here?”
He wasn’t sure, but he thought she chuckled at that. “Sorry. No. But if we could perhaps get a good look at the sky, I might be able to figure our bearings.”
They both looked up, but a dense umbrella of crisscrossing tree branches hindered any sight they might have of the night sky.
“How about X-ray vision?” he asked. “Developed that anytime recently, by any chance?”
“Drat it, no,” Sara told him. “All I have is this pesky gold rope that induces people to tell the truth. Wouldn’t you know. Damn our luck.”
“Ah, well,” he said. “At least we still have our senses of humor.”
“And our lives,” she added.
“Also a very good thing to have,” he agreed.
She took another few minutes to steady her breathing, then said, “I’m not certain, but I think we’ve been heading up a mountain.”
“Felt that way to me, too,” Shane said.
“And I can’t help thinking, too,” she continued, “that we should probably be heading
down
a mountain instead.”
He nodded reluctantly. He’d known that, but he’d been more concerned with just getting them away from the house at the time instead of going in the right direction. “Yeah, I agree with you there, too. I’m wondering, though, if we wouldn’t be better off waiting until morning. I think we lost our captors for now. But I also think they’ll be after us again once the sun comes up. It would be better if we saw them first.”
“Agreed,” Sara said.
“So. Ever spent a night under the stars?” he asked.
Even in the darkness, he could see her shaking her head. “No. I always thought that if I chose to sleep under stars, it would be Tom Cruise or George Clooney.”
Shane laughed out loud at that and made himself not say the thing he really wanted to say, which was that he might not be a star, but he sure wouldn’t mind if she…
Instead he replied, “Yeah, well, trust me. This will be even better.”
“I sincerely doubt it,” she said.
“Aw, c’mon, where’s that General Wallington spirit, huh?”
“I left it in the pantry. It got caught beneath the uncon
scious Fawn of the elephantine feet. I don’t see it getting up anytime soon.”
“We’ll be fine out here,” Shane promised her, even though he was far from believing that himself. “I think I can even remember how they taught me to start a fire with two sticks when I was in Cub Scouts.”
“My, but you do know how to impress a girl on the first date,” Sara said. “Fire from sticks? It boggles.”
“So does this mean you’ll invite me up for a nightcap later?”
“First things first. I need to make sure you can do that stick thing you promised.”
They spent the next half hour or so creeping through the brush, listening to see if they were still being followed. They looked for a clearing that might offer them a view of the night sky, or some kind of shelter that might make their stay more comfortable—and safe—during the night. Finally they came to an area overhung by mossy rocks that lay facing the opposite direction from which they’d come.
By then, Shane hadn’t heard a sound for a long time other than the ones they’d made themselves, and he was confident they’d lost their pursuers—at least until morning. He didn’t think they’d be taking too big a risk if they started a small fire to ward off the worst of the cold and darkness that had descended, especially in the sanctuary of an overhang. They could eat their dinner of hard bread and weak tea, maybe get a little shut-eye, then set out again when the sun came up—hopefully in the
right
direction this time.
As he searched for a couple of likely fire sticks, Sara scraped brush and rocks away from a flat area beneath one of the wider-hanging stones. As he tried to remember enough of his early scouting experience to turn the fire sticks he finally found into a stick fire, she unpacked their meager dinner and arranged it on the ground in a way that would have made a five-star restaurant’s maitre d’ proud. And as they finished consuming that meager dinner, and
the flames of the fire began to burn low, Shane realized he was fit to be tied. Literally. At least, his feet were. Preferably with antiseptic-soaked bandages.