He opened the chest, not expecting to find much, but was rewarded by the sight of Lauryn’s notebook and pen, further proof of her involvement. He left them there, trying the next crate but only the one with the war chest had been opened. Still, he was certain now that he had what he’d been looking for right here.
Part of him didn’t want to let the crates out of his sight. Another part knew that to save them he had to get help. The sooner he made contact and had the riverboat stopped, the better. He headed out reluctantly, not looking forward to getting back into the night water, but ready to do whatever was required to stop Lauryn and her gang of criminals.
But then two things happened at the same time. He heard—but could not see from behind a stack of crates—men at the door, metal creaking as they worked to seal the container for the journey. And Lauryn Steler stepped out in front of him with something in her hands, cutting him unaware, hitting him on the head so hard that he staggered backward.
After that, he could neither see nor hear.
L
AURYN LOOKED OVER THE
man’s prone body, her heart going a mile a minute. Not that she would let a little adrenaline rush shake her. She’d been in tighter spots than this and had escaped.
Being trapped here didn’t scare her nearly as much as the implications of this whole incident. She’d sweated blood over the past couple of years to earn trust in the art industry, to change her reputation. If even a shadow of doubt fell on her regarding this heist, her new career would be over. Her new life as she knew it would cease to exist. She would lose everything.
And Prince Istvan would be the first to crucify her. He wouldn’t care if she were guilty or innocent. She’d seen that look in his eyes. If he’d had his way, he would have had her arrested just for thinking of coming near his treasury. He was as judgmental as he was good-looking. Too bad, because she truly respected what he had achieved in his field. He was an amazing archaeologist and practically the patron saint of preservation. But he wouldn’t give her the benefit of the doubt.
Nobody would after this.
Once again, she felt the tentacles of her past reach for her, wrap around her and squeeze. She shivered, as if her body was trying to shake them off.
She could see little; not much moonlight filtered in through the small rust holes on top. The man’s shape was familiar, but his face wasn’t. He had a dark mustache and a nose that looked as if it had been broken at one point. He was no threat to her. She’d taken off his belt and tied him up, gagged him with an oily rag she’d found in a corner.
The bad news was, she was now locked in the damned container. The good news was, she had at least nailed one of the bastards and had his gun, although she hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with it. But if things went badly, he might come in handy as a hostage.
She sat with her back against a crate and waited for him to wake. She didn’t have to wait long.
His dark gaze found her and focused on her as soon as his eyes popped open. He struggled against his restraints. She let him. If he wanted to tire himself out, that was fine by her. She didn’t worry about the belt giving. She knew a hundred ways to tie a knot, one for every purpose.
“Hmm.” He made an unintelligible noise as he glared.
“Stay put and stay quiet,” she told him. Then it occurred to her that he could be a source of information. Knowing who these people were and where they were heading might help her better engineer her escape.
Or, if he wasn’t with those men, he could tell her who on earth he was. Because now that she thought about it, why would they send one of their own into the container and then lock him in? If they knew that this guy was here, wouldn’t they have come looking for him when he didn’t return?
She held the gun on him while tugging the gag free from his mouth with her other hand. The threat was implicit.
He understood and didn’t shout. “I should have had you barred from the country,” he said, enraged but keeping it at a low decibel level.
That voice, those eyes… And her heart about stopped. “Your Highness?” She reached for the mustache on reflex. It came away in her hand. She jerked back, knowing that in some kingdoms, the touching of a royal person without his or her permission was punishable by death. Not that she thought Valtria was that archaic, but truth be told, she wasn’t comfortable with touching its hostile prince.
“The nose piece, too,” he ordered, then added in a less angry voice, “It itches.”
There was her permission. She felt his skin and found the ridge, pulled off an oddly shaped 3D bandage kind of something that blended in perfectly while changing the shape of his nose. Her mind was spinning like a whirligig, but couldn’t come up with an explanation for his sudden appearance. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same, but let’s not pretend we both don’t know the answer to that.” He seemed to be choking with barely controlled anger. “This has been your plan all along. You pulled it off. Congratulations.”
The accusation felt like a kick in the face. “Right. I plan a good kidnapping at least once a year. To others, it might be cumbersome, but to me, it’s like a vacation,” she snapped, hating that he would immediately think the worst of her, even if it was exactly what she’d expected.
“If you’re not guilty of anything, then there’s no reason for you to be scared of me. You can put the gun down and untie me.” He struggled to a sitting position, taking over even though he was practically her prisoner. He was tall and lean, wide-shouldered and dark-eyed like the rest of his brothers. According to the media, he was the least social of the princes, something of an introvert.
Now that they’d met twice, she could certainly see why. Probably nobody could tolerate his paranoia and temper. Too bad. She’d come to the country with nothing but respect for the man and his body of work.
“I’m not scared of you,” she told him. Not that he wasn’t physically powerful, but she had plenty of moves he hadn’t seen yet. “But while I know I’m not guilty, you’re too prejudiced and stubborn to believe that. And if you tried something…” He should know that she wasn’t going to stand still while he steamrolled over her. “I’ve worked hard to change my reputation and achieve the standing I have in this business. I wouldn’t want to ruin it by shooting a prince.”
He swore under his breath in French.
“Hey, I understood that.”
He glared. “So why don’t you tell me your perfectly innocent version of events.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Maybe you can convince me.”
If only. But it wasn’t as if she had anything better to do. A long tale might calm him enough so that she could untie him. She had to do that eventually. He was a prince. Despite what she’d said, she probably wouldn’t shoot him. But she couldn’t set him free until she could be sure that he wouldn’t try to overtake her and tie her up in turn. One of them would get hurt. And because he was a prince, she had a feeling that whatever the outcome of such a struggle would be, it wouldn’t be to her advantage.
“After you barely let me take a look at the artifacts in the treasury, I realized you were going to do your best not to let me back in there. I asked the Chancellor, who is a true gentleman by the way, to allow me some more time. I figured that was my only chance to do a thorough job and make sure I made the right choices.” The treasury was simply breathtaking, the most amazing place she’d ever seen. She wished—for a multitude of reasons—that they were both still back there.
“How convenient that the Chancellor had to step out,” he said with derision.
“Not at all. He was most helpful about the history of some of the objects. And he was very entertaining. A gracious host.” Unlike the prince had been, she thought, but left that part unspoken. No sense annoying an already-angry lion, even if he was tied and she had a gun on him.
“Which probably wouldn’t have stopped you from murdering him if he didn’t have to leave. Are you aware that nine men were killed? Men with wives and children who grieve them. Or were you rushing too fast to count?”
The anger in his voice was like a physical force, overwhelming and real. She thought of the young guard the Chancellor had left with her, and drew a slow breath. The man had pimples, for heaven’s sake. Couldn’t have been more than early twenties. Now he was dead, and others, as well.
“Fine, so it’s not fair that they died and I lived.” She pressed her lips together for a second, feeling the guilt, hating the prince for placing more blame on her and adding to the weight. “I was in the enclosure with the carpets and the war chests. We heard a commotion in front of the door. The guard rushed toward it. I thought I heard something that sounded like a gun being fired with a silencer. I slipped into the nearest war chest just as the door opened.”
He had the gall to laugh at that. “Oh, an innocent bystander. A victim even. Well done, Miss Steler. You’re a very creative woman. If my hands were free, I would clap.”
Keep it up and we’ll never be free.
“Fine. Think what you will.” She stood and walked away from him.
“Thank you,” he called after her, as arrogant and full of himself as ever. “I think I’ll do that.”
She checked the door. Locked, just as she’d suspected. If she had her old tools, it wouldn’t have posed a problem, but she had nothing with her save a pen and a notebook that she’d left on the bottom of the chest in which she’d hidden. She’d figured whoever was breaking in would go for gold. How was she to know that they would take the war chest, too?
She walked back to Istvan. “Where are we exactly?”
“On a ship called
Valtrian Freedom
, heading south, not that you don’t know that better than I do. Out of curiosity, who is your buyer?”
She shoved the gun in the back of her pants so she could put her hands on her hips. She simply watched him for a while, trying to decide whether reasoning with him would be a waste of breath. It would be. But she found she couldn’t help herself.
“First, I don’t steal. Second, even if I did, I’d never be stupid enough to steal crown jewels. Not very low-profile, is it? And not marketable either. They’re easily recognizable. As stolen artifacts, they’d be completely useless. The safest way would be selling the stones separately and melting down the gold, but that’s such a small fraction of their value. And a good thief could easily steal gold and gems from a number of other sources with a lot less difficulty.”
He stared at her without a response. Apparently, her words had given him something to think about. Not long enough. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to,” he said after a while. “It could have been a crime of passion. You saw the coronation jewels and you couldn’t resist them.”
She shook her head. “You know it as well as I do that this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. This was a carefully planned and meticulously executed heist. There are not that many people in the world who have crews that can pull off something like this. And I’m not one of them.”
“No longer one of them?” he pushed. “Or are the rumors true and you always worked alone?”
She said nothing to that. She never discussed her past.
“You know these crews?”
Again, she remained silent.
“If you didn’t do this, do you have any idea who did?”
She shook her head.
She’d thought about little else while she’d been hiding in the chest. She had plenty of time on the way over here, then while she waited for the men to walk away from the container. Then she finally opened the top, busted the crate’s lid and climbed out. The container door had still been open. But she hesitated too long between escaping and staying with the royal treasures.
Then someone came in, and she thought it was one of the thieves, about to discover her. So she’d done what she had to. But while she was busy with him, the door had been sealed and she’d lost the option of leaving.
“Could you untie the belt? You may keep the gun,” he said.
“Aren’t you the magnanimous one? You’re in no position to negotiate,” she reminded him, but untied him anyway. He was considering other options at least and didn’t look as if he would attack her on the spot.
He rubbed his hands over his wrists, closed his eyes for a second, and for a moment looked almost vulnerable. Must have been a trick of the shadows.
“Are you okay?” she asked anyway before she could stop herself. She did hit him over the head pretty hard back there.
His fierce frown was an immediate rebuke. “Fine.”
“Let me look at you.” She leaned forward to check his irises, chancing that he might grab for the gun, but couldn’t see much in the dark.
He drew back as if offended. “That’s not necessary.”
“Do you have any nausea? I could have given you a concussion.” Considering the way he’d been treating her, she felt only mildly guilty.
“You didn’t.”
“You don’t know that. Anyway, if you feel sleepy, try to stay awake.”
“I do not have a concussion,” he said, stiff-lipped.
His obstinacy was ticking her off on every level. “You’re too tough to get a concussion from a girl, is that it?”
He came to his feet and strode away from her, stopped as far as the crate allowed, then stared back. An image of buffalo came into her mind, pawing the snow, blowing steam out of his nose. No need to share that with him.
She gave him a minute before she followed. “How far is the nearest seaport?”
“Trieste would be two hours at the most.”
She considered options and backup options, trying to come up with an escape plan. “What do you think will happen when we get there?”
“If we’re lucky, they’ll open the container to transfer the stolen goods. That’ll give us a chance to make a break for it.”
“I don’t believe in luck.” She peered through the darkness and tried to map the place.
The prince gave a brief nod. “Me neither.”
So for two hours they searched every corner, tried to find a weak spot where they could break out—there wasn’t one—and made plans on what they’d do once the riverboat reached port and the container would be opened.
Except that it wasn’t.