“Then this is the letter
E,
” she guessed correctly. Then asked a few more words and within minutes, literally, had the entire alphabet decoded, by which time he regretted ever giving her any information.
“So it says,
The wealth of the nation is on the head of the ruler.
”
“
In
and
on
were interchangeable in the old language.”
She nodded. “This is interesting. Can I take these back to my room to read through them?” Her head was tilted, the light playing on her slim neck, reflecting off alabaster skin. Mesmerizing.
He very nearly fell for it, but in the end came to his senses.
“Absolutely not.” He held out his hand for the page.
Her eyes narrowed. He expected one of her biting remarks, but in the end, she stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re no fun to play with.”
A bolt of desire shot through him. “Didn’t hear you complain a couple of minutes ago.”
The reference to the passionate kiss they’d shared made her cheeks tinge.
Interesting.
She hadn’t seemed shy when she was kissing him back. Urgent need resurfaced quickly at the memory. “Lauryn—”
She backed away from him, an intriguing creature of the night that begged further investigating. “Good night.”
He hated to see her go, something he needed to consider later. He was going to have to straighten out his thinking and his unexpected attraction to her the first chance he had.
“Fine. Go back to your room and stay there,” he told her. “How are your stings?” he asked belatedly, more than ready to give her thighs a close inspection.
Her impertinent response was, “None of your business.”
As soon as she was gone, he called security to meet her in the hallway, escort her to her room and stand guard in front of her door until he sent for her in the morning. Then he stretched out in his bed, his arms folded under his head.
He could still taste her on his lips.
He had a couple of hours left until dawn, but sleep didn’t come easily. It didn’t come at all, in fact. So he got up at five, washed and called for a car and armed escort, then left for Porto Paphos without breakfast. He would wait for his brothers on the ship. It would take hours before he had the whole thing searched anyway. Beyond recovering the royal treasure, he also wanted to find some clues as to who was behind the heist. He wanted the man who’d ordered it.
He called the estate just as his car rolled into the harbor. Port Authority was already there, waiting for him. He could make out the Turkish ship by one of the loading docks.
On the phone, he talked to the guard in front of Lauryn’s room, asking him to check on her. He could hear knocking. Knocking again. “Miss Steler?”
He heard the key being turned in the lock and the door opening. Then silence for a moment.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. She doesn’t seem to be here. I can’t find her,” came the worried, embarrassed reply from the other end.
Pretty much what he had expected.
He hated to be right about her. Right in some ways, in any case. Wrong in others. She’d turned out to be an exceptional woman, possessing a lot more than the criminal brilliance he’d first attributed to her. For a second, as he walked across the shipyard, Istvan imagined what it would be like to work with her on a dig, deciphering ancient messages carved in stone. Her mind would be flying a mile a minute, that rapture of discovery on her face…
To work with her like that would be nothing short of exhilarating, he thought, and felt guilty. He’d used to do fieldwork with Amalia and he’d never once thought of her in those terms. He appreciated the warm companion ship Amalia had provided, but his head had never been as full of her as it was with Lauryn. Even now, steps from reclaiming Valtria’s royal treasures, she was the only thing he could think of, the way she’d come to his room in the middle of the night, the way her face lit up at the sight of the Maltmore diary.
The things that could have happened between them under different circumstances…
He could still feel her lithe body under his, taste her mouth, hear her laugh, hear her repeat some lines of the text. “The wealth of the nation is on the head of the ruler,” she’d said.
His mind ground to a screeching halt, as did his feet. His guards nearly ran into him because they’d been following so closely, but he paid little attention to the puzzled looks they gave him.
On
the head of the ruler.
He’d corrected her last night, but now as he heard her say the words in his head again, he got stuck on that small difference.
On,
as opposed to
in.
What if she’d been right the first time around? What if the Royal Brotherhood left clues to their treasure right on the royal crown?
What better place to hide that message? The crown was always well-protected. No one but the royal family had access. Until now.
At the moment, the royal crown was on the ship ahead of him. He broke out running, everyone following behind.
“The crew?” he asked the Port Authority official who came to greet him. Suddenly he felt as if he didn’t have a second to waste.
“Held in the canteen on the ship, under armed guard, Your Highness.”
He strode across the plank onto the ship, then straight to the containers in the general area where he believed the one they were looking for was located. “You and you—” He pointed at two of the guards behind him.
“Climb this stack, get as high as you can. We’re looking for a container that has one of its top corners peeled back.” The small explosion Lauryn had created to get them out of there also marked the container, making his job easier now.
They couldn’t just look for a door with two bullet holes in it. Most of the containers were crammed too closely together to squeeze in and check the doors on every one of them.
The men immediately dispersed and did as he’d ordered. He couldn’t help but notice how much slower and clumsier they moved than Lauryn.
He had to wait at least half an hour before one of the men shouted down. “I got it.” Then he led the group on the ground to the right location.
The container in front of his had been moved some how. As if to allow someone entry.
He was going to wait for his brothers with the opening of the container, but he was unable to hold back now. He threw open the doors and strode in, adrenaline pumping through him. He would get everything back.
The treasure was all safe. He willed it so.
But he could see within two steps that the contents had been disturbed. The tops of several crates had been tossed to the floor. He jumped up on the first, his skin burning where his clothes rubbed against his abdomen. He barely noticed the pain from his lingering jellyfish welts.
Empty.
The realization echoed through his brain.
He smacked his fist into the wood. “Search every crate,” he ordered the Valtrian guards, while motioning Port Authority back. He worked alongside his men.
“Empty,” one called out.
“Nothing here,” said another.
“Bare-root roses packaged in sawdust,” came the first response that was different.
Valtria’s signature purple roses, a common export item, the official contents of the container that the ship’s captain had declared toward customs as cover, Istvan guessed.
“Keep searching,” he said, although he knew by then that all the effort would come to naught.
He turned away in disgust. He should have come earlier. He should have come right away last night. But he’d been tired, and he knew Lauryn had been tired. He’d wanted to see her safe and settled.
Then a familiar shape caught his eyes, Lauryn sauntering across the shipyard, dressed in all black, self-possessed and full of confidence. Catwoman had nothing on her. He came off the ship to meet her, ordering his men to search the entire ship and get the crew ready for interrogation.
He caught some of the Port Authority officers on shore looking her over and didn’t approve one bit, frowned at the gawkers. Normally that was enough of a warning for anyone to heed a prince’s displeasure, but currently had no effect whatsoever. Next to her, nobody even noticed him.
“Everything’s gone,” he told her matter-of-factly, determined not to show that part of him was glad she’d come back even as he wondered why she did, or if she had anything to do with the treasure’s disappearance.
He didn’t know when she’d left the estate. He didn’t know when the crates had been emptied. Her involvement was more than possible. But if she’d come to Valtria for the crown jewels and now she had them, she’d be on her way, wouldn’t she?
There was no figuring the woman out.
“I got here an hour ago. Everything was already gone by then.”
He didn’t even bother asking how she’d gotten on a ship under full guard.
“They probably handed off the stolen goods before the ship pulled into port,” she told him.
And he had to admit that the ship having had a rendezvous off shore seemed the most likely explanation at the moment. They might have had the transfer set up for Cyprus, but changed that when their prisoners escaped, suspicious that someone might be onto them. Then, because the ship’s manifest included Porto Paphos, they had to pull into port anyway.
Lauryn sneaking on the ship at dawn was one thing. But surely the guards would have noticed if someone tried to remove a dozen crates’ worth of treasures. It wasn’t as if that war chest could have been smuggled off the ship in someone’s back pocket.
But even if Lauryn wasn’t part of the group who’d made off with everything, she
had
left the estate during the night and she
had
come here. She
had
sneaked onto the ship and
had
checked the container. All that didn’t exactly help when it came to trusting her.
“The pickup team probably had a local fishing boat that could come to shore anywhere and wouldn’t be subject to inspection,” she was saying.
She was right. She was sharp and quick. The smart thing was to let her help. Frustration coursed through him as he considered their new situation. “Which means the things they took could be anywhere on the island.”
They were both careful not to mention what exactly they were looking for. The Port Authority men stood too close. Although a press release had been issued about the breakin at the Royal Treasury, it had been played down and no specific items had been mentioned. Istvan preferred to keep the extent of the heist under wraps while he investigated.
He watched Lauryn, her eyes narrowed but unfocused, her mind probably going at the speed of light. He didn’t trust her motivations, but he couldn’t deny that she could be an asset to him.
So when she said, “I’m going to stick with you until we see this through. But don’t try to lock me up again,” he simply nodded.
T
HEY WERE HOLED UP IN
a villa in Porto Paphos, owned by one of Istvan’s cousins, the duke of something or other. Her rooms had an unobstructed view of the sea out front and of an amazing pool out back. The grounds were shaded by date palms and inhabited by more cats than Lauryn had ever seen in one place. She liked cats.
They were all over the island, but seemed to especially prefer the estate.
Valtrian guards, borrowed from the embassy, took up residence on the lower floors, securing the building.
The top floor was reserved for her and the prince. They each had a suite of their own, plus another to be used as a war room. It was already furnished with giant maps of the island, two computers and stacks and stacks of papers. They had received a list of art and antiquities dealers on the island—legitimate and illegitimate—the name of every cop who could be bribed, the location of every nook that could be used as a hiding place for someone trying to lie low with stolen treasure.
When a prince asked questions, people responded.
Everything and everyone responded to the prince.
Including her body.
Those kisses in his bedroom—where they could have led… It didn’t bear thinking about. Except that, despite her best efforts, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, about him. She’d run because her own response to the man had scared her. Her casual attitude to his touch, to his seduction, had all been pretense once she recovered from melting completely.
She’d also run because no matter how much he was getting to her, she couldn’t allow him to get the upper hand. No man was going to control her, not in any way. He needed to understand that, the sooner the better.
Putting her under house arrest, indeed.
But then she saw him at the harbor. And felt his frustration, shared it. She could have started investigating on her own. But the truth was, she needed his help. And if she was totally honest, she liked working with him.
And so she had walked up to the prince. She could only hope she wasn’t going to regret it.
She listened to Miklos on the phone, on speaker. He and Janos had arrived earlier that morning, helped to search the ship, then arranged for a quick extradition of the crew to Valtria and took them back, along with the ship’s captain. Miklos would be handling their questioning there. The princes were adamant about keeping as much of the case under wraps as possible.
“The crew is not talking. Yet,” Miklos added with optimism. “I’m working with them. Janos found a couple players in Valtria with good enough teams, we think, to pull off the heist. One boss is the guest of Great Northern Penitentiary at the moment. We’ll go after the others. Shouldn’t take too long between the five of us.”
“The twins are back?” Istvan asked with surprise.
“Lazlo cut his honeymoon a few days short,” Miklos said as if it was no big deal. “Rayne got sick or some thing in South Africa, so Benedek was bringing her back anyway. My lovely wife says the kids are about to have a little cousin, but I can’t get anything out of Benedek.”
“Leave the men to me,” Istvan responded with sudden force. “Enough of our people died at the treasury. I will handle the investigation.”
“The Brotherhood—”