Prince Incognito (15 page)

“What?” Her mother took hold of her right wrist and turned the pages so she could read them. The color drained from her face. “Where did you get these?”

“It doesn’t matter. I need—”

“No. You don’t.” Her mother’s grip on her wrist tightened,
and she pulled her back toward the stairs. “You’re coming with me.”

Lily tried to pry her arm away, but her mother’s grip was surprisingly strong, and her attitude uncharacteristically fierce. What had happened to the obsequious woman Lily had known all her life? “Mom, you don’t understand.”

“No,
you
don’t understand. Your uncle David is within hours of taking the power he was born
to control. You’re not going to do anything to stop him.” She pulled her toward the stairway. “He’s going to be king.”

“But Uncle David can’t be allowed to become king.”

“Don’t say that!” Her mother slapped her across the cheek. “I’ve put up with your insolence long enough. Your uncle David will be king, and I will be his queen. And no one—not you, not your pathetic excuse for a father,
nobody will take that away from me!”

Lily blinked back the tears that had sprung to her eyes at her mother’s sudden swipe. It took her a moment to make sense of what Sandra Bardici was saying, but slowly, the pieces fell into place. “You’re on Uncle David’s side?”

“I have been for years, Lily. Who do you think had the foresight to invest in the Bardici bid for the throne? Certainly
not your father. No, I’ve done it all myself, even when I had to go behind his back. I sold everything, and when he refused to sell, I did what needed to be done to liquidate our assets.” She pulled Lily up the steps after her.

Shocked by her mother’s words, Lily didn’t resist her pull up the stairs. “You poisoned the horses because Dad wouldn’t sell them?”

“
Somebody
had to do it.
We couldn’t afford to keep them alive.”

“You killed my horses.” Anger snapped inside her, and Lily jerked her hand free, pivoting back down the stairs. She had to find her uncle David. She had to stop him, before he became king and her mother, queen.

“Lily, no!” Her mother lunged after her, but she was still several steps higher on the stairway, and Lily bounded down the last five
stairs in a single leap.

Her mother grabbed at the empty air, but her momentum was too great for her, and she keeled over the edge of the railing, falling the last ten feet onto the marble floor below. “No!” she screamed. “You’ll pay for this!”

Judging by the racket her mother was making, Lily figured the woman hadn’t been injured too badly. She ran down the back hall searching for
her father, her uncle or anyone who could tell her where the men had gone.

* * *

David Bardici pointed the gun at Alec. “Where is the Scepter of Charlemagne?”

Alec debated how best to answer. Was there any point trying to lead the man on in a satisfactory way? “If I give you an answer, how will you know I’m telling the truth?”

“You will tell me the truth, or you will die!”
Bardici took aim with his gun, and before Alec even realized the man wasn’t bluffing, he sent a shot into Alec’s left shoe.

Pain speared up through his foot, and he sagged slightly, but quickly straightened.

The general stared at him with rage-reddened eyes and nearly screamed his question as he asked again. “Where is the Scepter of Charlemagne?”

Alec looked down at the blood
that had begun to seep from his injured foot into the pale pink cobblestones of the courtyard. How many more shots could he take?

It didn’t matter.

He had no choice. He lifted his head and faced Bardici. “I will never tell you.”

Bardici took aim at Alec’s other foot just as a female voice carried through the courtyard.

“Wait!”

* * *

Lily followed the sound of
the gunshot and nearly flung herself into the midst of the armed men. “Don’t shoot.” She waved the papers as she skidded to a stop in front of Alec, facing her uncle. “This man is under my protection.”

David Bardici sneered. “I can shoot you as easily as him.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Lily lifted Basil’s abdication documents high in her hand. “These papers prove that Basil renounced any
claim to the throne. Alec and his family are the rightful rulers of Lydia.” She blinked upward, surprised by how many armed soldiers surrounded them, then smiled. “And now every Lydian soldier here knows that Prince Alexander is the rightful heir, not you.”

“Give me those!” David lunged for the papers.

Lily flung her arm backward to keep the documents from his grasp. The two soldiers
handcuffed to either side of Alec lifted him back and away. Lily tried to follow them, but their retreat was too slow for her uncle. He snatched the papers from her hand as he whipped his gun toward her.

At that moment, her father stepped in between them, pushing his big brother backward, away from Lily. “Don’t touch her!” he yelled, shoving the general away.

David raised his gun and
Michael grabbed his wrist, grappling with him, the gun pointed high in the air, neither man in control.

As David struggled with his brother, the general called out to the soldiers standing by. “Shoot him! Shoot Alexander!”

Lily turned to face Alec as the soldiers who were handcuffed to his wrists unlocked the cuffs, though they still held him up as he sagged between them. She had no
way of knowing how much blood he’d lost, but judging by the pool of red that stained the cobblestones, he could bleed out in short order. She needed to help him.

“Shoot him, I said!” David screamed, still struggling with his brother for control of the gun.

“Alec?” a soldier called down from the wall, “should we shoot General Bardici?”

Alec looked up with a weak smile toward the
voice that had spoken. “He needs to stand trial for his crimes. Capture him.” In spite of the strain in his voice that betrayed the seriousness of his injury, his words carried clearly, and the men on the ground rushed forward.

“Not so fast!” Sandra Bardici limped forward from the doorway, her gun trained on Alec. “If anybody moves, I’ll blow him away.”

The sight of his wife wielding
a gun must have startled Michael, because he faltered, and David quickly got the upper hand—control of the gun and the papers he’d snatched away from Lily.

David backed toward his sister-in-law.

“Sandra?” Michael looked at her in dismay as she pointed the gun toward their group.

A sneer traced across his wife’s face. “It’s over, Michael. I’ve waited long enough. I’m leaving you
for your brother.” David shuffled sideways until he stood beside her, then lifted the papers he’d taken from Lily to where a flaming torch burned brightly, fire illuminating the courtyard.

The papers burst into flame, the orange tongues licking upward toward David’s hand until he dropped the black wisps of ashes to the ground.

With triumphant smiles, David and Sandra darted into the
house.

Lily dropped down at Alec’s feet. Whatever else was going on, Alec had to have his injury attended to. There wasn’t time to worry about the documents, her mother’s sudden revelation or anything else.

A few soldiers moved forward uncertainly.

“I need a first-aid kit,” Lily told them as she worked Alec’s shoe from his foot as quickly and gently as she could. “And he needs
something to drink—juice or soda, something to replace the fluids and blood sugar he’s losing.”

The soldiers scrambled away, and the two who stood on either side of Alec lowered him to the ground.

“I need to get to the Hall of Justice.” Alec looked as though he’d crawl away if only he could gather his strength.

“You’re not going anywhere until this injury is taken care of, or
you’ll pass out before you get there.” Lily peeled back his bloody sock to reveal a clean shot through the foot. Fortunately it was straightforward—the bullet had passed straight through—but it had sliced several vessels that were losing blood quickly.

Soldiers appeared with first-aid kits, and Lily quickly located a tourniquet, wrapping it above the wound. “You’re going to need to have
those veins repaired, Alec. We’ll have to get you to the hospital.” She looked him full in the face.

A soldier held a bottle of juice for him, and Alec swallowed a few gulps. “I need to get to the Hall of Justice by midnight. How much time do we have?”

The man at his right arm checked his watch. “Twenty minutes. If we hurry, we might just make it.”

Realizing the importance of
the trip and Alec’s determination to do his part to help his family, Lily quickly bandaged the wound, tying it off with as much pressure as she could to staunch any further loss of blood. “This should hold you for now, but I want you admitted to the hospital as soon as you get that paper signed, do you understand?”

Appreciation shimmered in Alec’s eyes. “Thank you. I have to get going.”

As she tied off the bandage, Lily told him all she knew. “My uncle and the other Lydian generals are working for someone who goes by the number 8. You’re going to have to stop them all before this will end.” She stood, and the soldiers eased Alec to standing.

“Take it easy,” she told him. “I’m going to get the documents.”

“Your uncle already burned them up.”

“Those were
only copies.” She cast a quick smile over her shoulder as she ran toward the house.

Lily left Alec in the care of the soldiers. She didn’t want to leave his side, but at the same time, she needed to produce the real abdication documents to prove her uncle had no right to rule. Besides, she didn’t feel she had any right to be close to him after the way her uncle had used her to get to Alec.
The only way she knew to make up for her role in his capture was to do what she could to help his family.

That meant retrieving the papers she’d hidden inside.

As Lily hurried through the dark halls, she heard footsteps behind her and glanced over her shoulder, but didn’t see anyone. Was she being followed?

Ducking back into a doorway, she watched as a figure ran past in the
darkness, only recognizing her father after he had passed.

Where was he headed? Unwilling to be deterred from reclaiming the critical documents, Lily took the next corner to the spot where she’d tucked the papers under a hallway rug. She skidded to a stop just as a voice sounded behind her.

“Lillian. How nice of you to join us.”

Spinning around, she watched her uncle pass through
the filtered moonlight that poured in through a window, the gun in his hand glinting silver in the darkness. Lily froze. She didn’t dare reach for the papers now or she’d give away their location.

“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to leave you behind. You’re far, far too handy to have around.” David advanced, holding the gun on her, and grabbed her by the wrist.

“Are you coming?” Sandra
rounded the corner, spotted them both, and smiled wickedly. “Ah, perfect. Let’s bring her with. The copter’s ready. Come on.”

With her uncle dragging her by the arm and her mother prodding her in the back with the gun, Lily had no choice but to go with them. They turned down the hallway where her father had disappeared moments before. She almost missed him standing in the shadows of a darkened
doorway, but she caught his eye as she struggled past.

“Help! Help me!”

“Shut up. No one can hear you anyway.” Her mother rammed the gun into her back.

As they made the next corner, Lily looked back in time to see her father dart silently from the doorway in the other direction.

He was running away.

FOURTEEN

A
lec rested most of his weight on Titus and Julian as he hopped quickly toward the car. They didn’t have a moment to lose. Even with the streets empty in the middle of the night, it would likely take them all of fifteen minutes to reach the Hall of Justice.

And then he still had to get inside.

A soldier ran ahead, opening the car door for him, and Alec balanced
himself on the open door as he ducked in.

“Alec!” Panic infused the familiar voice behind him, and Alec turned to see Lily’s father Michael running toward them. “They have Lily! They’re taking her with them!”

“Who?” Alec’s stomach plunged.

Michael’s answer didn’t surprise him. “Sandra and David. They’re holding guns on her—they mentioned a helicopter.”

Titus grimaced. “The
copter’s in the front courtyard. Get in the car. It’s fastest this way.”

Alec dived into the backseat. “To the front courtyard!” he screamed at the driver.

The man put the car in gear and peeled out. “I thought we were going to the Hall of Justice.”

Alec’s heart clenched. If he went after Lily, there might not be time to make it to the Hall of Justice by midnight. But if her
armed uncle took her, he might never see her again.

Not alive, anyway.

There would have to be time for both. “The front courtyard,” he repeated. “Quickly!”

Tires squealed as the driver took the corner at a tight clip. Titus and Julian hadn’t taken the time to get in, but ran behind the car as they cleared the corner of the mansion.

Alec had the door open as the car squealed
to a stop. He leapt out on his good foot, balancing his weight on the open door. Ahead of him the copter’s rotors surged through the night air as Sandra shoved Lily ahead of her through the open side door of the helicopter.

“Alec!” Lily screamed at him, but arms reached through the door and jerked her in.

Sandra spun around with her gun, shooting wildly in his direction before diving
inside the aircraft just as it lifted off.

Boots skidded across the cobblestones as Alec’s fellow soldiers came to a stop.

Already the helicopter was high above them. There was no way to reach them.

Lily was gone.

He’d failed her.

Alec pounded a fist impatiently on the hood of the car, then turned to his friends. “Get in. We’ve got to hurry if we’re going to make
it to the Hall of Justice.”

Titus and Julian piled into the car with him, and the driver took off. Alec watched the digital minutes on the dashboard clock moving relentlessly closer to midnight.

11:53 p.m.

11:54 p.m.

They entered the city with three minutes to go before midnight, and Alec felt sick fear creep up from his stomach. Though the men had been silent so far, Julian
offered, “Perhaps they won’t mind if you’re a few minutes late.”

11:58 p.m.

11:59 p.m.

They squealed to a stop in front of the Hall of Justice at 12:02 a.m., and Titus jumped out, pulling on the double doors, which didn’t budge.

“Try the side doors,” he suggested, piling back in.

They pulled around the corner in time to see the red taillights of another car pulling
away.

Titus jumped out again and checked the doors while Julian leapt out the other side and waved at the car that had just pulled away ahead of them.

The taillights blinked as the car shifted into reverse, coming to a stop just in front of them. A man stepped out, and Alec recognized Kirk Covington, the man who’d been accused of killing his brother Thaddeus six years before.

Alec hauled himself out of the backseat. “Kirk!” He tried to call out, but was disappointed by the weakness in his voice and the stars that danced across his vision at the sudden exertion of standing.

“Alec?” Kirk trotted toward him. “Is that you?”

“Am I too late?”

Kirk shook his head regretfully. “We had to beg them to keep the building open until the clock chimed midnight.
There was nothing we could do after that.”

“Alec?” A female voice pierced the night, and Alec watched his little sister Anastasia emerge from the car ahead of his. She ran toward him and threw herself into his arms.

Alec slumped against the car, nearly toppled by the petite princess.

“Careful!” Julian warned her.

Concern filled Stasi’s face. “Are you okay? You look awful.”
She patted his cheek.

“I barely made it here.” Alec felt himself waver, and he looked at the locked doors. “I didn’t make it here in time.”

The realization sunk in slowly as he watched the excitement on his sister’s face turn to disappointment.

He had arrived too late. He’d failed his family.

He’d failed everyone.

Leaning heavily on the doorframe, he fought to keep
his eyes open.

“Alec?” Stasi’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Are you okay?”

And from even farther away, he heard Julian say, “We need to get him to the hospital.”

* * *

“We should be glad the Bardicis have fled,” Levi Grenaldo insisted as he paced in the small hospital room. “The three of them have a majority over Isabelle and Stasi, but as long as they’re afraid
to show their faces, they won’t be able to exercise their right to rule.”

Alec groaned impatiently from his hospital bed. Thankful as he was that his sisters and their new fiancés had filled him in on all that had happened, he still didn’t like what he was hearing. “Parliament won’t budge on the forty-eight-hour rule?”

“I felt foolish asking.” Isabelle wrapped her arms around Levi
and stilled his pacing. “They’ve done all they can to support us, but they’ve got the United Nations looking over their shoulder and the media criticizing their every move. They can’t change a rule two days after they made it. They’d lose all their authority in the eyes of the people and the nations of the world.”

“Then we’ve got to find Lillian.” Alec swung his legs around to the side of
his bed.

“Oh, no.” Kirk lifted his feet by the ankles and spun him back around again. “We’ve been over this already. Just be glad she’s gone.”

Alec sat up higher and stared Kirk down. In spite of Stasi’s reassurances that their brother, Thaddeus, was still alive, Alec still wasn’t completely over the six-year grudge he’d held against the man who’d been accused of killing Lydia’s heir.
He glared at the man who’d proposed to his sister the day before. “What would you do if they had Stasi locked away somewhere?” He turned to Levi. “How would you feel if Isabelle had been taken?”

He looked back and forth between them. “Lily risked her life for me.”

Isabelle shook her head. “She’s a Bardici. She’s the enemy.”

“She is
not
the enemy,” Alec seethed. How could he make
them understand? “As long as David Bardici remains at large our family will never reclaim the throne.”

Everyone was silent for a moment before Stasi sighed. “We don’t even know where they’ve taken her.”

Hope fluttered its weak wings inside his heart. “We haven’t been able to find her anywhere in Lydia. That leaves only one likely place—Bardici’s compound in the North African desert.”

“But we have no authority there, no allies on the ground.” Levi was a lawyer specializing in international law and Isabelle’s new fiancé. He stepped closer to Alec’s bedside. “From what you’ve told us, Bardici’s compound is manned by Lydian soldiers. If they’re under his control, you can be sure he won’t have told them anything that would make them question his orders. He has every advantage
over us.”

“Levi’s right,” Kirk concurred. “Even if Bardici only has a few dozen men at his disposal, we’d need a team at least as big to secure his stronghold. How are we going to transport that many men there? We’re down to one helicopter.”

“Sanctuary International has helicopters,” Isabelle began, referring to the organization Levi’s family operated, which had helped her escape the
ambush.

Her fiancé cut her off. “Not in the vicinity. By the time we arrange to have them flown here, we might as well fly commercially into Tripoli and rent a bus to the compound.”

“Aah.” Alec made an impatient noise and swung his legs over the side of the bed again. “I’m not going to sit here bickering while Lillian is imprisoned by her uncle. I’ve let you all down by not signing
the document. The only way I can make things right is by bringing Bardici into custody with Lillian’s testimony to put him away for his crimes.”

His sisters and their fiancés exchanged worried looks.

“But Alec?” Stasi questioned softly. “How can you be so sure she’ll testify against him?”

Alec rose shakily onto his one good foot. “I will find her. And then you won’t have to question
her allegiance anymore.”

* * *

Lily knotted the bedsheets to the curtains and let them fall past the balcony almost to the ground. If Alec had made it climbing up, she could make it climbing down. And then she’d find him. She’d get back to Lydia somehow, and give Alec the papers that proved her uncle had no right to rule. And maybe, if she was really lucky, he’d be willing to overlook
all the nasty lies her uncle had told about her intentionally betraying him.

The sheets held as she climbed down, and she hurried through the night across the open sand, mindful of the dangers of the desert that Alec had taught her about. She had a single bottle of water, and knew where to find the trickling waterfall where they’d left the horses. Would the animals still be there, or would
they have given up and gone in search of more plentiful forage? For their own sakes, she prayed they’d be okay.

* * *

The rotor blades sliced the evening air as Alec leaned his head through the open door of the helicopter, his binoculars trained on Bardici’s compound looming on the horizon. His eyes landed on a familiar sight—the knotted sage green window curtains extending from a window.

“That’s Lily’s signal. She’s there.”

“She has a signal?” Titus questioned him. He and Julian had agreed to accompany him along with four other men—the maximum number their copter could safely carry.

“Is she expecting us?” Julian asked. “It might be another trap.”

Alec leaned against the doorframe as the helicopter moved toward the compound. “I’m not going to ask any of you
to go in—” he began.

“We
volunteered
for this mission,” Julian reminded him. “We just want to know what we’re getting into.”

“There’s no way of knowing until we’re on the ground,” Titus reminded his friend. “When Kirk and Levi tried to come along, we told them they needed to stay behind to keep the princesses safe. We told them we’d take care of it. So, let’s take care of it.”

Alec grinned at the soldiers. “You two are better friends than I deserve.”

“Nah.” Titus shoved him in the shoulder. “We just don’t want you to do anything stupid, like trying to head in alone. You don’t need another injury.”

“Take it easy on that foot,” Julian insisted, nodding at the stiff walking boot that allowed Alec to hobble, however gracelessly, without further injuring his
foot.

The helicopter sank toward the ground inside the compound courtyard. Alec and his men had gone over their plan and its contingencies plenty of times.

They were Lydian soldiers. Bardici’s men were Lydian soldiers, too. Alec had an order, signed by his sisters and Michael Bardici—the ruling representatives of the monarchy according to the Oligarchy Covenant outlined by Parliament—removing
David Bardici from his post as the General of Lydia’s army. He also had a warrant to arrest the man for treason.

Whether the men at the distant outpost were aware of the events that had unfolded in Lydia, and whether they would recognize the order remained to be seen. If the soldiers opted to follow their general, Alec and his men would be easily overcome by the forces that outnumbered them.

Armed soldiers surrounded the copter before the skids touched down.

As planned, Julian and Titus exited first. As high-ranking officers who had recently been stationed at the compound, their authority was quickly recognized, and they explained to the men on the ground the need to capture Bardici.

To Alec’s immense relief, the soldiers grinned at the news, and saluted him when
he stepped from the copter.

“This way.” One of the men on the ground waved them toward the building. “We’ll have to move quickly.”

Alec hobbled after the men as they poured into the building. He heard shouting up ahead, and wished he could move fast enough to see what was happening. When he came around the corner of the hallway, he found the men clustered around a closed door.

“Bardici’s in there.” Julian waved him forward. “He ran in just ahead of us with a woman beside him. They’ve barricaded themselves inside.”

“David Bardici,” Alec called. “You have been removed from your post and are wanted on charges of treason. Come out nicely, or we’ll shoot the door down.”

“You don’t dare shoot into this room,” David Bardici’s unmistakable voice called back. “I
have Lillian in here with me. If you ever want to see her alive again, you’ll go back to where you came from.”