McKinnon's Royal Mission (15 page)

“I am, too.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Trace said sincerely. “But where does that leave me? Only a few people knew the alarm codes, and Keira’s brothers are on the list. They were both off duty, which looks suspicious...if you’ve got a suspicious mind. And I do.”

Walker nodded. “I do, too.”

Trace grimaced. “I can’t rule out either of them as suspects, and God knows I want to. Everything in me says they’re innocent, but without some kind of proof they’re not involved... Hell. What am I supposed to do? I changed the alarm codes immediately, of course. But I had to give the new codes to Alec and Liam—Alec’s on duty today and tomorrow, then Liam Monday and Tuesday. If one or the other is involved—or both—I don’t think they’ll let anything happen when one of them is guarding her, especially now—that would be too suspicious. And I just don’t see either of the Jones brothers letting suspicion fall on the other one. They’re pretty close. Besides, it’s too soon after the first attempt. So I think the princess is safe until I go back on duty on Wednesday.
If
they’re involved. If they’re not, who knows if she’s safe for a single minute?”

“You want me to ask the State Department to beef up her security?”

“They’re already working on that. The DSS has a plan. And the Boulder police department is adding an extra ride-by patrol at night. I can’t fault their response time the other night—they got there damn quick—but that extra patrol won’t hurt.”

“Then what? You want me to have Keira’s brothers pulled off the assignment? Replace them?”

Trace made a sound of frustration and sank into one of the chairs in front of Walker’s desk. “Hell, I don’t know. What would you tell State and the DSS?” he said, playing devil’s advocate. “That one or both of them
might
be involved? Ruin their careers when I haven’t got even a shred of proof? When it’s more likely one or more of the Zakharians who work for her? They had the codes, too.” He recounted what the princess had told him about why her brother had sent her to the US, and about not really trusting anyone—not among her household or her bodyguards. “God, I can’t imagine what that’s like,” he said, shaking his head, “wondering if the people who’re supposed to protect you are going to betray you.”

He sat lost in thought for a moment, then continued. “And if the Jones brothers are innocent, then I’ve just put the princess in more danger because she knows them and trusts them a hell of a lot more than she trusts her Zakharian bodyguards. And they’ve done a damn good job until now. I’ll be gone by the time she returns from Christmas break, and I don’t want to leave her with total strangers. Not if I don’t have to.”

“Okay,” Walker said in that reasonable way he had. “Let’s go over it from the top then. Together. Walk me through everything that happened. Let’s see if we can spot something. If we can rule Keira’s brothers out, we’ll both feel a lot better.” He added drily, “I’ll be damned if I want to break news like this to Keira.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later Walker picked up a pen from his desk and leaned back in his chair. A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and he whistled tunelessly.

“What?” Trace demanded. “What did I miss?”

“I think you were just too close to it.” His eyes met Trace’s. “And your personal involvement isn’t helping your objectivity.”

Trace froze. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“If that’s the way you want to play it, fine,” Walker said. “But I’ll tell you exactly what Callahan told me two and a half years ago when I was falling for Keira. ‘Just don’t let it get in the way of the job. You can’t fight what you feel. But you
can
lock it away. I know.’ And the hell of it was, he was right.” He laughed softly. “The hell of it is, Callahan’s
always
right, damn him.”

When Trace didn’t respond, Walker said, “Okay, forget I ever brought it up and focus on what you just told me.”

Trace replayed everything in his mind and was just about to shake his head, indicating he wasn’t seeing what Walker was seeing, when the light popped on. “If the Jones brothers are involved, why weren’t all three security systems disarmed?” he asked softly. “Why was the passive system left on? That doesn’t make sense. It’s as if someone wanted the alarm tripped. As if someone wanted me to respond to the intrusion.”

“Exactly. If either of them gave the access codes to the intruders, why not give all of them? If the passive alarm hadn’t gone off, those men would have succeeded in kidnapping the princess and getting clean away. You wouldn’t have known a thing until it was too late.”

“Also, why weren’t the princess’s hands bound tightly?” Trace added. “It didn’t even take me a minute to untie her. And why wasn’t her mouth taped? Real kidnappers wouldn’t give a damn about hurting her, and they would have wanted to make sure she didn’t cry out, call for help.”

“Right again.”

A thought occurred to Trace and he voiced it. “You don’t think the State Department... No, that doesn’t make sense. Does it?”

“Some kind of convoluted plot to make the king of Zakhar think someone’s trying to kidnap his sister? What would that accomplish?” Walker chuckled wryly. “Except make him
not
trust us to protect her?”

“Not that exactly,” Trace said slowly. “But what if the State Department wanted him worried about his sister’s safety? And at the same time, wanted to make him grateful to us for saving her? That tracks, doesn’t it? You said when you asked me to take this assignment that Zakhar is critically important to the US’s strategic plan for NATO and Europe. And if the king is grateful to us...” He deliberately left the sentence unfinished. “I know those men spoke a few words in Zakharan,” he added, “but that could have been a ploy to make the princess think they were Zakharian nationals—something she’d be sure to mention to her brother—so he wouldn’t suspect a setup.”

Walker cursed fluently, then said, “I hate to say it, but there’s sort of a crazy logic to the idea. It makes as much sense as anything else makes sense, I guess.” He tossed the pen he was playing with back onto the desk. “Damn it. That means Keira’s brothers could still be involved.”

“Yeah.” The two men exchanged serious looks. “But if so,” Trace said, “at least they were acting under orders from our government, and not selling out the princess.”

“You really think...”

After a minute Trace shook his head, quashing the possibility he’d just raised. “No, not really. Some smart idiot in the State Department might have cooked up the plan, but if so, why not bring me into the loop? Too dangerous not to, don’t you think? I could have killed one or more of those men. Easily. They couldn’t possibly predict what I’d do, how I’d react in that situation. If bullets started flying, the princess could have been killed or gravely injured. And that would have serious negative consequences for our government. Besides, I don’t think Alec and Liam would have gone for it, even if they were ordered to. They’re too smart. They would have seen the same holes in the logic that I just did, and they would nix it immediately.”

“That brings us right back to the question of why. Why was the passive alarm system left on?”

Trace let his breath out in a whoosh. “No idea. But at least I can cross Keira’s brothers off my suspect list. That’s a load off my mind.”

Walker hesitated, then said, “I think I’ll run a little background check on them anyway. It won’t hurt, and Keira doesn’t have to know. And I’ll bet you anything they’re telling the DSS the same thing—to run a background check on you, just in case.”

Trace laughed under his breath. “Yeah. No bet.” Then his expression turned serious. “The next question is, what has the State Department told the king? They had to tell him something—he and the princess are really close. They talk fairly often on the phone, and I’m sure she wouldn’t keep something like this from him.”

“I can find out for you.”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”

Trace had jumped up and was heading for the door when Walker stopped him with a question. “You still want off the assignment, right?”

Trace turned, his hand on the doorknob. “That hasn’t changed. Besides, the State Department has already lined up my replacement. Didn’t you know?”

“Yeah, but this is still your assignment until he comes on board in January. I wasn’t sure if this incident had changed your mind or not.”

Trace shook his head. The self-recriminations he’d submerged during his conversation with his boss came roaring back as he remembered how he’d failed to protect the princess. As he remembered the blood staining her nightgown. As he remembered the seventeen stitches that had been required to close the wound she’d received trying to protect him.

“It’s possible the tail on you isn’t related to Vishenko or the New World Militia after all,” Walker said. “I spoke with Callahan yesterday, and he’s sure no one’s following him or his family. And if he says he’s sure, I believe him. So maybe it’s related to the kidnapping attempt. Have you considered that?”

“I thought about it,” Trace said grimly. “I’ve done nothing
but
think about it. I even wondered if someone was trying to maneuver me into thinking I was putting the princess in danger so I’d withdraw from the team. They might be gambling it would be easier to get to her if I’m not around. Anything’s possible. But no matter what, I still need off.”

“Because of that personal involvement you’re
not
having with the princess?” Walker shot at him. A question for which Trace had no answer.

Chapter 14

F
inals week was almost over, and since Mara had no finals to give on Friday, she gathered up all the books and personal items she wanted to take with her to Zakhar and packed them in her briefcase on Thursday afternoon. The next week was Christmas, but she had delayed her scheduled departure until the morning of Christmas Eve, wanting as much time with Trace as she could possibly manage before she left. Andre had been understanding—he had assured her one of Zakhar’s royal air force planes would be available to her whenever she was ready.

She hadn’t asked Trace to reconsider his decision not to go with her to Zakhar. She’d thought about it after the last time at his cabin, but ever since the kidnapping attempt last week he’d been...unapproachable. Distant. And for much of the time he simply hadn’t been around to ask. He’d gone with her to the hospital after the attack, then had accompanied her home and watched over her in silence, pulling a chair up beside her bed and sitting in it until she fell asleep.

He’d still been there when she’d awakened two hours later. He hadn’t argued with her when she’d insisted on going to school—it was the last day of classes before finals, she’d told him, and she couldn’t possibly be absent. He’d just looked at her with shadowed eyes, red-rimmed from lack of sleep, and said three words in a tone of voice that brooked no defiance, “You’re not driving.”

Her chauffeur had driven Trace and her to and from the university that Friday. Mara refused to admit it to Trace, but she was completely exhausted by dinnertime, and fell asleep right afterward. When she woke Saturday morning Alec was there and Trace had disappeared. He hadn’t returned until late Tuesday night, long after she’d gone to bed. He’d shown up for duty right on time yesterday morning and did his job with his usual thoroughness and efficiency, but the man she’d come to know, the man hidden inside the one the rest of the world saw, was gone.

He wouldn’t even talk to her. She’d tried to initiate a conversation with him yesterday, but after several monosyllabic answers she’d given up. And today was no better. He hadn’t uttered a single word other than what was absolutely necessary. Now he sat in a chair by the door, ostensibly reading one of the three newspapers he always carried with him, but he hadn’t turned a page for the past hour.

Mara sighed and double-checked the grades she’d already posted via computer. No mistakes there. She felt a little thrill of pride that every one of her students had done no worse than pass. She had her share of weak students in her calculus class, not to mention her share of malingerers, but somehow she’d pulled it off. Her tests weren’t easy, and she had a reputation as a tough but fair grader. Mathematics wasn’t a “fuzzy” subject, after all—the answers were what the answers were, and that was that. But she’d patiently tutored the weak students, and somehow had managed to either inspire the malingerers or put the fear of God into them—not a single student had failed. And she had a handful of incredibly gifted students in her graduate classes who were her pride and joy as a professor.

Her professional life was in splendid shape, and she could hardly wait for Christmas break to be over so she could get back to teaching next semester. It was only her personal life that was in a shambles—because of the man sitting like an immovable block of granite right beside her office door.

She checked her email one last time, posted her congratulations to her students on her blog along with a “see you next year” farewell message using only the fingers of her right hand, then shut her laptop off and packed it away in her computer bag. She fetched her parka from the stand, shrugged it on and zipped it up. She pulled the woolen mitten she wore over the bandage on her left hand from her pocket. She briefly considered asking Trace to help her because the bandage made it awkward to get the mitten on, but decided against it and struggled on her own until she was successful. Then she pulled her right glove out of her other pocket and donned it, too. With nothing left to do, she finally had no choice but to speak to Trace. “I am ready to go.”

He stood immediately, folded the newspapers she knew he hadn’t really been reading, and shoved them into the backpack he carried to help him blend into the crowd of college students on campus. He drew his ski jacket on but didn’t zip it up—unless the weather was too severe he always left his jacket open for quick access to his SIG SAUER. When the weather was bad the pistol was moved to his jacket pocket and his hand stayed on it the entire time, but it wasn’t too cold today. He slung the backpack over his left shoulder. “Ready,” he told her. But his eyes refused to meet hers.

When Mara had first started teaching at the university she had naturally expected her bodyguards to assist her with lugging all her paraphernalia between the SUV and her office, but she had quickly learned that was something they never did. Alec had explained it to her the very first day he accompanied her to school. It wasn’t that they were being rude or inconsiderate—their job was to keep her safe. That meant keeping their gun hands free and their eyes alert for danger signs. Being weighted down with her computer bag or briefcase would make them less effective as bodyguards, and was simply out of the question.

It was second nature now for her to carry her own things, so even though her left hand was still mostly unusable she slung the strap of her computer bag over her shoulder, grabbed her briefcase and purse with her right hand, and followed Trace from her office. She set everything down and pulled the door shut behind her, testing it to make sure it was locked, before picking her things up again.

When she turned around she saw that Trace was watching the nearly deserted hallway with hooded eyes. Not even in the early weeks of the semester had he looked as hard and cold as this, and Mara sighed.
There is nothing I can do about it now,
she told herself.
But when we get home...I have to talk to him. I have to find out what is wrong. If I do not, he will probably disappear as he did last week, and I will not see him again until he comes back on duty next week. Then I will only have one day with him before I leave.

Maybe his pride was bruised because she’d been injured in the attempted kidnapping, just as Keira had been a few years ago when she’d taken a bullet meant for another man. Was that why he refused to talk to her? Was he feeling responsible because he’d failed to protect her? Didn’t Trace understand he
had
kept her safe? That he had foiled the kidnapping attempt—one man against three—and that she owed him her life?

She remembered the nightmare terror that had gripped her when she’d been dragged from her bed and known she was being kidnapped, terror that had changed into something even more terrifying when she thought Trace might be killed. If that had happened she wouldn’t have cared what happened to her. A cut hand was a small price to pay when compared to his life. She had only done the same thing Keira would have done, after all. Somehow she had to make him understand.

They walked in silence to the faculty parking lot. On Monday Liam had suggested that with the injury to her left hand it might be best for her chauffeur to continue driving, but Mara had stubbornly refused. “I will just drive slower,” she had insisted. “I will be careful.” It wasn’t as if she couldn’t use her left hand at all, she just had to be careful not to pull the stitches loose.

Liam wasn’t to know, nor Alec either, and especially not Trace, but she was trying very hard to wean herself away from reliance on the household staff that had been such a part and parcel of her life up until now. She’d had no choice the Friday before, not in the face of Trace’s adamant stance on not letting her drive. But she wasn’t completely incapacitated, and she didn’t need her chauffeur to drive her. She was trying her best to become as self-sufficient as most American women, and one woman in particular.

When she started out she had it in her mind to pattern herself on Keira Walker. The two women had become friends of sorts in the past few months, and since Mara knew Trace thought the world of Keira, what better role model could she pick? Trace didn’t know it, but weeks ago she’d started taking cooking lessons from her French chefs on the days Trace wasn’t on duty. Alec and Liam had been amused, but had willingly eaten her modest efforts. It wasn’t until she’d let it slip to them that she was trying to become more like Keira that Alec laughingly told her, “Keira can’t cook. Our mom gave up trying to teach her because she refused to learn.”

Mara had been taken aback by that, but not daunted. So maybe cooking wasn’t a skill Keira had ever acquired, but it would still make Mara more able to function on her own if she had to. And she wanted to prove to Trace she didn’t need a large household staff to survive. Otherwise, how would he ever come to believe she could be anything other than the princess she was? How would he ever realize the only one she truly needed in her life was him?

The drive home was as silent as the drive to work had been, and Mara had plenty of time to think. Trace’s refusal to talk to her hurt, but it gave her the opportunity to consider long and hard about what was really important to her, and what she would willingly give up to keep him in her life.

Money was something she had always taken for granted. When she turned twenty-one she’d inherited a sizeable fortune from her mother, much of which resided in a trust. She didn’t need the salary she earned as a professor at the university, and in fact had arranged to donate her salary anonymously to the general scholarship fund. Andre paid for her bodyguards since they were all in the Zakharian military, but she easily paid for the rest of her staff and all the household expenses out of the income she earned on the trust’s invested principal. But she knew from things she’d read that some American men could be touchy about money, particularly when the woman had it and they didn’t.

Trace was a proud man. A self-made man. Everything he had he’d earned himself, and Mara admired him tremendously for it. Most of her principal was in an unbreakable trust that benefited her and any heirs she might have, and if she died without issue the trust would revert to Andre and his heirs. But there was enough money under her personal control to give a proud man pause. “Fortune hunter” was an ugly title, but one she knew the tabloids wouldn’t hesitate to use. She’d lived her whole life as a target of the tabloids, but Trace hadn’t, and she had to shield him if she could.

To do that she had to convince him she could survive on a lot less. All she really needed was enough money to maintain her stable. Trace
couldn’t
ask her to give up Suleiman—he loved riding as much as she did, and she had it in her mind to provide him with a mount worthy of him, a mount to equal Suleiman so they could race together like the wind. But other than that her needs were few. A chance to teach, to share her love of mathematics with her students. A chance to write, to leave something of herself to posterity. And Trace. She needed him. Needed his love. More than anything else she needed his love.

Then a thought occurred to her, startling in its simplicity, but something that should have occurred to her a long time ago.
Maybe the reason he never told you he loves you all this time is because of the money. Maybe he is afraid people will think the worst. Maybe he is afraid you will think the worst, too. Maybe he is waiting for you to say something first because of that.

By the time they got home Mara had convinced herself her supposition was the truth. She turned to Trace the minute they walked in the front door and forced him to meet her eyes. “We must talk.”

He stared at her, impassive. Then he said, “You’re right. I’ve been putting it off, but...”

Mara glanced around the front hallway and saw two of her staff passing through. “Privately,” she said in an undertone. He nodded, and she added, “Give me five minutes to take off my things. I will meet you in my sitting room.” She didn’t wait for acknowledgment, just headed for her bedroom. She dumped briefcase, purse and computer bag unceremoniously on the chair beside her bed, and in frantic haste removed her jacket, mitten, glove and glasses, leaving them lying on the bed.

She hurried to the bathroom and wasted a minute rubbing away the little indentations her glasses left, and tucking in the stray tendrils of hair that had escaped her careful chignon. Then she stared at her reflection for another half a minute, wishing she was as beautiful as Trace was handsome. A wasted wish. She pressed her lips firmly together and gathered up her courage. “He loves me as I am,” she reminded herself solemnly. “I am beautiful in his eyes.”

If Eve had looked like you, Adam would have gladly left Eden.
Trace had said those words to her less than three weeks ago. And he had meant them, she knew it. He’d bared his soul to her that day. Now it was time for her to do the same. She headed straight for the sitting room before her courage failed her.

* * *

Trace had steeled himself for the upcoming confrontation, but he was afraid of what the princess might say if he let her start the conversation. So the minute she entered the room he whirled to face her. But as his gaze focused on the white gauze bandage wrapped around her palm, the words that came out of his mouth weren’t the ones he’d planned to say. “Why the hell did you do it?” he asked her abruptly. “Don’t you know any better than to get in the middle of a knife fight?”

He couldn’t drag his eyes away from that bandage, beneath which were those seventeen stitches. The cut had been straight and not too deep, and thankfully hadn’t required surgery, but each stitch was an indictment of him, and what he had failed to do. His anger at himself made him lash out at her. “Don’t you know any better than to grab at a blade that way with your bare hand?”

She stared at him for long seconds as if taken aback by his accusation. As if she had no idea this was what he’d wanted to talk to her about. “I thought he was going to hurt you,” she said finally, in a low voice. “I thought you might be killed.”

Trace swore, and she flinched. “It’s my job to keep
you
safe,” he said. “Not the other way around.”