Her father the tomb raider, lest he forgot. And he couldn’t afford to forget where she’d come from and who she was for a second. She might have saved their lives back on the bridge, but they weren’t partners. She might have clever words and clever fingers, but he couldn’t trust her. “Did he teach you pickpocketing, as well?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said bland-faced.
And he felt the corner of his lips tug up at her bravado. He immediately schooled his features back into place. He was willing to accept that they were going to have to work together to get out of this mess, but he was
not
going to enjoy it. And he most definitely was
not
going to like her, under any circumstances.
He turned his attention to the porthole and fiddled with the latch. Locked. Because he’d already looked the shelves over, the points of interest in the room seemed pretty much exhausted. At least in the shipping container he’d been near his precious artifacts and had room to walk around, stretch his legs. Their grand escape so far was turning out to be anything but, taking them from bad to worse.
“Any ideas on how we could get out of here?” Having to ask for advice from her galled him to no end, but there it was. He’d seen enough by now not to underestimate her.
She smirked at him. “I didn’t give back everything I took.” The smirk turned into a full-blown smile as she pulled a fork from her pocket.
That was it? “I was hoping for a semiautomatic and a set of keys.”
“Those who can’t value the small things in life, don’t deserve the big ones.” The smile turned into a look of annoyance. Then her eyebrows went up as she caught him looking at her mouth.
Oh, hell. He focused on the damned fork. “Where did you get that from?”
“Found it on a tray on a side instrument panel. When we were on the bridge. Probably came with the captain’s lunch.” She examined the lock on the porthole. “What do we do once this thing is open?”
“See if there’s a way up to the main deck. Maybe we could get our hands on a lifeboat and slip away before the sun comes up. Why did you take all that stuff anyway?”
“You never know what’ll come in handy in an emergency. Anyway, there was no time to evaluate. I grabbed anything I could feel.”
He shook his head.
The locking mechanism was nothing more than a hole, must have worked with some kind of a tool. She had to break off two of the fork’s tines and bend the other two together to make it work. Her competence was impressive, even if it was competence learned from a profession he disapproved of.
Having the lock popped, however, didn’t mean that they were home free. The porthole had been painted over and over again with thick white maritime paint and had stuck shut years ago from the looks of it. She went at it with the mutilated fork. He found a chunk of scrap metal under one of the shelves and helped. Even with the two of them working side by side, it took nearly an hour to set the window free.
But only the smallest metal circle that held the glass in the middle opened. The rest was apparently framing. He stepped back in disappointment. All that time and effort wasted.
She stuck her head out. “This might be beyond your considerable contortionist skills.”
He tried anyway, once she stepped aside, not ready to give up yet. Other than a bruised shoulder, he got little for his efforts. And the window had been their only chance. The door didn’t have a lock on the inside, nothing to pick. And this time he didn’t have a weapon to shoot the lock apart.
He sat on the floor and braced his back against the shelving, cataloging the contents of the small space, trying to think of anything he could use to break out of the place. There had to be a way.
Lauryn hung her upper body out the porthole again to get a good look up. Then she looked to the front. “I think I see something on the horizon ahead of the ship.”
He ignored the tempting curve of her hips that was framed by the window. “Probably another ship. Fifteen percent of all the world’s shipping goes through here.”
“Can we signal to them?”
“Not from this far.” Although, the idea held merit.
“If they come closer.”
He wore a black sports jacket he could wave from the window. Lauryn had on a black shirt. He would have preferred her to be the one to undress for rescue’s sake, frankly. With her leaning out and her shapely behind dangling practically in arm’s reach, he was beginning to become aware of her as more than a possibly reformed thief. She blocked most of the light, but his brain was happy to supply details he couldn’t see. Nothing had ever been wrong with his imagination, unfortunately.
“We need something white. Black won’t stand out against the ship’s black side, especially in the darkness,” she said, her mind on more practically issues.
Too bad he’d chosen a dark blue shirt to wear that morning.
“It’s not a ship,” she said after a while. “It’s bigger.”
“Could be one of the Greek islands. There are more than two hundred of them.” Janos often went there yachting. He wished he had his brothers with him or that, at least, they knew where he was. There was no trouble the six of them couldn’t manage together.
“I think I see lights.”
That had potential. “About forty of the islands are inhabited.”
She slipped back in. “I can fit through the porthole. If the ship sails closer to the island, I’ll swim to shore and get help.” Her voice brimmed with excitement.
He had a feeling her face would be lit up, too, if he could only see it. But with their only source of light outside, her features were shadowed. “No.”
“I’m a strong swimmer.”
“No.” To emphasize his point, he went to the window and sat on the floor right beneath it. The fresh air eased his seasickness and if she dived for the porthole to escape him, he could catch her.
“You don’t trust me,” she accused him after a minute, her initial excitement waning. “You don’t think I’d send help.”
He watched her for a while before he responded. “The thought did cross my mind.” Her criminal background didn’t exactly spell
trustworthy
.
Because she’d turned to him, the moonlight was in her face. She looked as if she was ready to murder him.
His gaze dropped to the fork, still in her hand. Looked like the perfect tool for skewering any number of body parts he’d be reluctant to sacrifice. He pulled up his knees.
“Of all the pigheaded—” She stepped to the left, then to the right, using up all the room available for pacing.
“If you let me go, I might or might not bring help. If you don’t, you’re not going to get help, guaranteed. Isn’t at least getting a chance worth the risk?”
“Not from where I’m sitting.” Just because she didn’t seem to be in league with the captain, it didn’t mean she wasn’t involved in the heist. She could have been part of the retrieval crew, while the captain was transport.
They could be working for the same person without knowing about one another. She could have been locked in the container by accident, or on purpose, to guard the treasures until final delivery.
All right, so she’d helped them escape the container, and she’d helped to avoid immediate execution by the ship’s captain, but Istvan still wasn’t about to let her go until he was sure about her and had a crystal-clear picture of her involvement in the theft of the Valtrian crown jewels.
“So I’m what, your prisoner?” She huffed, her hands on her hips, a stance that only accentuated her exceptional figure, which could have been a conscious, distracting maneuver on her part.
He refused to be distracted. “More like a cellmate.
We’re both prisoners here.”
“But I could escape! And help you,” she added quickly.
“Too dangerous. The currents are pretty strong. And the ship won’t go close to any of the smaller Greek is lands. It’ll stay in deep water. It’ll go close to shore only if it’s headed for harbor, and none of the small islands down here have a harbor large enough to accommodate a ship this size.”
“I could try.”
He was done explaining. She wasn’t going anywhere.
The end.
She sat down, her back against the door, and glared at him. “I can’t believe I’m being kidnapped by a prince.
There should be a code of honor, you’d think, with royalty.”
He fought a sudden grin. Under different circum stances, he might have appreciated the fire in her, al though, hitherto he hadn’t been aware that he liked fire in a woman. Amalia had always been soft-spoken and accommodating. “Consider it more like protective custody.”
She stuck her chin out. She had a pretty chin, delicately shaped like the rest of her. Her tumultuous eyes narrowed. “I could take you.”
“Your trying would certainly make our journey more interesting.” He wouldn’t have minded it a bit, provided that she put that cursed fork down already.
Her lips tightened. So did her fist around the fork.
He drew a deep breath, appreciating the cool night breeze that came through the porthole, helping his stomach to remain semi-settled.
The porthole…
“You’re looking at me funny,” she was saying.
He stood as the puzzle pieces came together in his head and a plan gelled. “We need a place to hide.”
“Ha!”
All right, he got her point. The storage room was insanely small, every corner instantly visible from the door even with the half-empty storage shelves. But there was Turkish writing and some symbols on one wall. He moved there and ran his finger over the metal sheeting until he found a screw head. “I think there might be an electric panel back here. Would you hand me that fork?”
She did so grudgingly.
The edge was too blunt, of course. He had to work it on the rough steel of the floor to sharpen it. He got the first screw out, then the next and another. Having to work by nothing but moonlight didn’t make his job easier, nor did the rust. But finally he was able to lift the panel off and take a look at the jumble of electric cables that ran beneath it.
“What’s this?” Lauryn asked from behind him.
“Room to hide.” He pushed aside the cables and was able to create a small nook.
Room for one.
He looked around, his gaze settling on two cardboard boxes on a bottom shelf, and his decision was made. “You squeeze in here.”
“Not a chance.” She took a step back, as if to emphasize her words. She folded her arms in front of her, her shoulders stiffening.
“You’re smaller than I am.”
She eyed the hole warily. “Say I do get in there. Then what? I have no way to hold the panel in place from the inside.”
He took a thorough look at the smooth metal. “I’ll put the screws back in.”
“You want to wall me up? I better touch up my makeup. Something must have smeared and made me look stupid.”
She looked anything but, with her fine eyes throwing sparks as she faced him.
“This is what I’m thinking,” he said, tamping down his untimely masculine appreciation. “We leave the porthole open. When they come to give us food or water or to get us for more questioning, they’ll find the place empty. They’ll think we jumped.”
She considered him. “And because we’ve flown the coop, so to speak, there won’t be a reason to lock the door when they go to report to the captain.”
He liked her quick wit. “Exactly.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How about if I wall you in?”
Did everything have to be a battle with her? “I wouldn’t fit.”
“I don’t like electricity.”
“It gives heat and light, what’s not to like?” He was never going to understand women.
“I got shocked as a kid.”
That explained things. “You won’t get shocked now. Look, it’s all completely insulated. Just stay still.”
“And if you leave me behind?”
“You have to trust me.”
“Like you trusted me to swim for help?”
He rubbed his nape for a second. “It’s different.”
“Because you’re a prince and you think you can order me around.” Her hands went to her hips again as she glared at him.
He wanted to kiss her. Utter nonsense. The swaying of the ship was scrambling his brain.
“That, too,” he admitted. “Plus, I have the fork. And I’m not afraid to use it.” Maybe some humor would disarm her.
A smile hovered above her top lip. Then she said, “I want it to be noted that I’m trusting you, even though you were completely unwilling to trust me.”
Not entirely fair, to be certain. “Might I point out that between the two of us I’m not the one with a history of criminal activity?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I wish you would stop insinuating things,” she told him.
He motioned toward the crevice, pitying every policeman who’d ever had to interrogate her. “Are you going to get in there before someone comes or would you like to wait and chat a little longer?”
She drew a deep breath and did an about-face. “Let me see this.” She arranged a few more wires, turned again and stepped in backward. Flattened herself. “And where will you be?”
“Leave that to me.” He picked up the panel.
“Watch my nose,” she snapped at him.
Unnecessarily. He was already watching the parts of her that stuck out. Mostly her breasts, but they stuck out farther than her nose anyway.
His gaze traveled up and met hers. She looked miserable. He couldn’t blame her. On a rare impulse, he leaned forward and pressed a brief kiss on her lips, then gently put the panel in place to stop her in case she thought to retaliate.
“What was that?” she whispered furiously as the first screw slid into place.
Her lips had been incredibly soft. He could still feel the contact. “For good luck,” he said. Not that he really knew what the hell he was doing.
“I thought you didn’t believe in luck.”
She had him there.
“Just because I don’t believe in it, doesn’t mean we don’t need it.” Which made little sense. He hoped she wouldn’t notice.
He made quick work of the screws, made sure nobody could tell anything had been tampered with. Then he emptied the two cardboard boxes he’d noticed earlier, distributed their contents on the shelves so the extra parts wouldn’t be too obvious.