Royal Captive Read online

  Their excuse was that none of her past transgressions could be proven. That they couldn’t punish her for her father’s sins. That even if she had a shady past once, she was reformed now, one-hundred-percent trustworthy and the best in the business.

  “Shall we?” she was asking with unbridled optimism, nodding toward the safe door that protected the crown jewels.

  He wished he could say, When hell freezes over. Instead, he stepped up to the iris scanner. “Istvan Kerkay,” he said for the voice recognition software. And with a soft hiss, the hydraulic lock opened.

  The lights inside came on automatically. He motioned for her to proceed first. As outraged as he was, he was still a gentleman.

  She gave a soft gasp.

  He didn’t blame her. The sight had the same effect on him, and he’d been in here hundreds of times. In glass cases that lined the small chamber were the most important treasures of the kingdom. The crown without which there could be no coronation and no new king. The specter. The Queen’s tiaras. A ceremonial sword with a gold-and-diamond handle that he remembered his father wearing when he’d been a kid. A robe woven from threads of gold, once worn at coronations but now put away for all prosperity as it had become too fragile to even touch.

  There were other treasures. The most important of the Queen’s jewels took up one long case. Another held the signet rings of all the old kings.

  She moved to stand in front of the main case.

  “None of those will be going anywhere, you understand,” he told her. “There’s a law forbidding any of the coronation jewels to leave the country.” If the Queen traveled to visit other heads of state, she usually took one of the lesser crowns or a simple tiara.

  She nodded, but seemed distracted, as if she’d barely heard him. From the corner of his eye, he caught her fingers twitching. She was flexing her hands inside her gloves.

  Probably thinking that he’d open one of the cases and let her take something out for closer examination. The temerity of her— He stepped back, ready to get her out of the vault. Everything about her being in there shouted wrong and went against his most basic instincts. “So now that we’re done here…”

  That green-gold gaze flew to him, still filled with awe. Her delicate nostrils were trembling. “One more minute, please.” She wasn’t exactly begging, but she was close to it. There was a luminous quality to her all of a sudden, as if what she was seeing was lighting her up from the inside.

  He understood exactly how she felt and resented having even this small thing in common with her. But he couldn’t deny that he had felt like this dozens of times in the past when he stood over a new discovery. No amount of time would have been enough. And he wasn’t about to indulge her, in any case.

  “Maybe another time,” he said, but thought, Not as long as I live and breathe.

  She walked out as if leaving physically hurt her, moving as slowly as possible, glancing back frequently.

  He sealed the door behind them and made a show of setting the locks, then pointed toward the back of the treasury. “I was thinking a few paintings and dresses.” A number of those had been severely damaged over the centuries and had to be extensively restored. Save a few square centimeters here and there, little of them was original.

  She looked back toward the vault and drew a deep breath before turning her attention to him. “I understand that you’re reluctant to let anything go. But we have to keep in mind that whatever I take to the Getty will also be going around the world to represent your country.”

  She was making a play on his pride. Smart, but she wasn’t going to trap him as easily as that. “Be that as it may, the safety of the artifacts is my first concern.”

  “And mine, as well.” Her chin came up, her eyes challenging him to bring up her past.

  Of course, she could easily dismiss anything he said as malicious rumor. A prince did not stoop to repeating rumors in any case. He said nothing.

  “I was thinking some of the artifacts left behind by the Brotherhood of the Crown,” she told him after a moment, wiping the small, triumphant smile off her face so fast he might have imagined it. “They make a compelling story. Eight brothers, princes, coming together to save their country. They were brave and dashing. It’s very romantic. I think their story is perfect to introduce Valtria to an American audience.”

  Definitely not artifacts of the Brotherhood. She was beginning to give him a headache. He’d returned from an overseas trip only that morning. He was tired and irritable, a dozen things clamoring for his immediate attention. He didn’t have time for this.

  “We have plenty of chances to discuss all that later. Now that you’ve seen the treasury, you should probably go and see the Royal Museum.” Let her be somebody else’s problem for a while. Her charm couldn’t do much harm over there. She could ask for all she wanted, and the museum director could promise anything she could hoodwink out of him. All final decisions on the items that would go on tour were Istvan’s. He could and would overrule any promise that felt injudicious to him.

  She threw a disappointed, longing glance toward the wall of safety boxes and the other vaults, then gathered herself. “Of course. The museum is on my itinerary.” She looked around one more time. “Do you have some sort of an inventory of everything that’s in here?”

  “Color catalogs.” A fine set. He’d put them together.

  “I would love to take a look.”

  “I’ll have them sent over to your hotel.” After he decided which catalogs she could see.

  He called a guard to escort her to the museum and stay with her. Then he took one last glance at the room, to make sure nothing was missing, before he headed back to his office.

  But when he was sitting at his desk at last, ready to tackle his correspondence, he realized he was completely exhausted. He’d flown home on the red-eye from Brazil where he’d given an address at a conference as the head of the European Society of Social Anthropology. He could never sleep on anything that moved, forget the first-class fully reclining seats of the plane. He had motion sickness, worse than the plague for someone who traveled as much as he did.

  He glanced at his watch. Maybe he could squeeze in thirty minutes of rest. He was used to taking short breaks like this when out in the field on a dig. They often had to work around the clock to beat collapsing tunnels or bad weather.

  Going up to his suite would have taken too much time, so he simply let his head rest against the back of the chair, stretched his legs in front of him and folded his hands over his abdomen. But far from refreshing, his sleep was restless, his dreams disturbing.

  He woke to desperate knocking on his door some time later, blinked hard while he ran his fingers through his hair, then adjusted the collar of his shirt as he sat up straight. Cleared his throat. “Come in.”

  Chancellor Egon burst through the door, breathing as hard as if he’d been doing laps around the grand ballroom. His eyes were wide with panic. “Miss Steler is missing.”

  “Is she now?” And good riddance. Things were looking up. She had probably assessed their security system, realized it was beyond her and given up whatever thieving plans she’d been nursing. Istvan’s heart was suddenly lighter as he looked toward the upcoming week.

  “We—” The Chancellor wrung his hands, apparently thinking this was some great tragedy. He was rather attached to the idea of the artifacts touring, his flying in for each opening and giving one of his interminable speeches on Valtrian glory. “We—”

  “What is it?” Istvan glanced at the antique clock on the wall and realized he’d slept a lot longer than he’d meant to. His gaze slid to Amalia’s photo in its silver frame under the clock, and his heart gave a painful thud as always. God, how he missed her.

  He focused back on the Chancellor, who was still hemming and hawing. “Anything else?” He didn’t have all day to waste on Miss Steler.

  The Chancellor went pale as he said, “Your Highness, I’m afraid— I have to inform you—” He took a deep br
eath and spit it out at last. “I’ve come from the treasury. We can’t find the crown jewels either.”

  Chapter Two

  “I want the security tapes.” Istvan paced the room. He wanted progress, and was getting anything but. No more than half an hour could have passed since he’d first received the news from the Chancellor, but, without answers, every minute of that time seemed unbearably long.

  He was at the security offices on the basement level of the palace with Miklos, Janos and Arpad. Benedek was on a world tour with Rayne, his opera-diva wife, in South Africa at the moment. Lazlo was still on his honeymoon on some undisclosed Mediterranean island.

  “There’s no security footage.” Miklos was seething, as well, ignoring the worried looks of some of the security personnel in the next room. He could be intimidating when angered, something that came from decades of army life. He could stare down a full platoon if needed. No doubt, he’d had already taken the staff to task.

  “This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. And if Miss Steler was involved, she didn’t work alone,” he said, and Istvan agreed.

  That the bastards could take as much as they had in half an hour and seemingly turn into smoke was amazing. The crown jewels were just the tip of the iceberg, albeit the most important among the artifacts that had disappeared.

  “The cameras went out?” he asked. “Don’t we have backup?”

  “We have an alarm that gets triggered if recording is stopped or if the tape is blank.” Miklos’s face hardened. “But recording kept going. We have half an hour of footage of Channel Three. Someone hacked into the system from the outside. That’s not supposed to be possible.”

  “And the people whose job it was to watch the monitors?” Arpad asked. “Killed.”

  The guards who’d protected the Royal Treasury had been murdered, as well. The mood in the office could not have been more grim.

  “How sure are you that Miss Steler was involved?” Janos asked.

  “One hundred percent. I showed her the treasury earlier. She begged Chancellor Egon to take her back there, telling him she needed to take more notes and think things over. She charmed him by asking for his help with the selection process.” The whole story came out once the Chancellor had calmed down enough to talk. “When the Chancellor had to run off for a quick meeting, she convinced him to leave her locked in there so she could keep working until he returned. He left her with a guard.”

  “And when he went back, the guards were all dead, and Miss Steler and the loot were missing,” Janos finished for him, still wearing a tux. He’d been pulled from a formal reception for the top economists of the nation.

  Istvan hated social obligations. Janos very much enjoyed that sort of thing.

  “Lauryn Steler,” Arpad was saying the name pensively, staring at the treasury’s blueprint.

  He should have seen it coming, Istvan thought. He should have fought harder to keep her from entering the country, or should have put her under heavy guard, or at the very least should have issued a preemptive order to forbid anyone from letting her near the treasury without his being present.

  “When we find her, we’ll find her team. Who is looking for her?” he asked, gathering his thoughts, pushing back on the regret and the anger. He needed to calm his mind to be able to think more clearly.

  “The police and every man I have available. Every border station, airport, train station, bus station and shipping port has her name and picture,” Miklos reassured him, but from the resignation in his voice it was clear that he knew how little those precautions meant in reality.

  Someone like Lauryn Steler would have multiple passports and could switch between identities with ease.

  Hell, she could be anywhere by now, traveling as a gray-haired grandmother.

  But she had to have left a trail, however faint.

  Istvan reached a decision. “I’m going out there. I have contacts.”

  To break into the palace she had to have local help, and he knew most of the local bad boys in the stolen arts and artifacts world, and had helped to put some of them behind bars one time or another. Anybody hit one of his digs or cherished museums, he went after them with a vengeance. He knew exactly where to look, whom to pressure.

  “We’re going with you,” his brothers said as one, moving closer together.

  “A reassuring show of loyalty. Thank you. But it would only complicate things.” A few years back, they had resurrected the Brotherhood of the Crown in secret, but in this case he was certain he’d be better off alone. “It’ll be difficult enough for me to get out of the palace unnoticed and go around asking questions without attracting media attention.”

  Arpad looked as if he might argue the point, but then said, “A brief press conference about a security breach should keep the media busy in the press room. Nothing about the loss of the crown jewels, of course.” He was always good at seeing the big picture and protecting others. All useful attributes for a Crown Prince.

  “We have things on hand for undercover ops. Disguise.” Miklos headed for the metal lockers in the back, the staff immediately clearing a path for him.

  “I can distract your bodyguard while you leave the palace,” Janos offered.

  Due to prior attacks on the royal family, at least one guard had to escort the princes at all times when they left the grounds, a recent royal order by the Queen that drove all of them crazy. They were all rather attached to their independence.

  Miklos came back with a box. “While you’re scouring the underworld for tips, I’ll investigate how they got in and out. I already have a forensics team over at the treasury. Whatever they find should give us some clues to follow.”

  Janos and Arpad were heading off, clapping Istvan on the shoulder.

  “Stay safe,” Janos said.

  “And bring the crown back,” Arpad added. “If we can get everything back in a few days, nobody needs to know what happened. If we can’t, we’ll deal with it then.”

  They all agreed on that, given the sharp political climate and their mother’s health. The Queen was feeling poorly again. Istvan swore he would solve this latest disaster before news could reach her and put more stress on her system.

  His hands fisted at his sides. This wasn’t just an attack on the treasury. This was a direct attack on his family and his heritage, the two things most important to him.

  “I’ll bring back the coronation jewels and see to it that Lauryn Steler pays miserably for taking them,” he promised.

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN BY the time he found the first usable clue. He’d dealt with thieves in the past and had a network of informants, one of whom came through half an hour earlier. The meeting left a bad taste in Istvan’s mouth. Now he owed a favor he knew he was going to hate paying back. But he understood that sometimes he had to compromise on smaller issues to obtain something that was even more important.

  The man had heard of something going down at the South Side shipyard tonight. A cousin of his worked there and blabbed about a recent bribe. Istvan had called in the tip and agreed with Miklos that a large-scale search would only draw attention and maybe even allow the thieves to escape in the confusion.

  And he wasn’t sure if anything would pan out here anyway. For all he knew, this could be some minor drug deal. He didn’t want to pull Miklos’s men who were doing random vehicle checks on the highways and had as much chance of finding something as he did. But he did accept the five corporate security guards Janos sent from his company.

  Hungry and tired, he watched the shipyard, alert for any movement. Hundreds of metal shipping crates were piled in orderly rows, giant cranes towering over them. He was near the loading docks, but with the shipyard lit up, he could see even the dry docks in the distance and the small cruise ship that was currently under repair.

  “Six vessels at the loading docks,” came the latest intel through his headset.

  “We’ll split up,” he ordered and moved forward to the first in line, a flat-bottomed riverboat.


  Since Valtria had no seaport, they used these boats to take cargo down through Italy to the mouth of the river. The shipping containers were then transferred to much larger ocean liners and made their way to various worldwide destinations from there.

  He took the first boat and realized quickly that he’d made a mistake. The containers were all empty, damaged. They were probably going no farther than the factory four miles down the river where they would be recycled. He checked the crew’s cabins and the engine house anyway, but found no one and nothing of interest. The boat was completely deserted.

  He scratched his nose, his face itching under the disguise Miklos had concocted. At least the sun was below the horizon, so he was no longer sweating.

  He sneaked back down the plank and caught sight of a small boat on the water, headed for shore. No lights. The motor wasn’t going either, no other sound disturbing the night but the waves gently lapping the docks. The boat drifted, although clearly there was someone at the helm.

  Istvan could think of only one reason why the man would want to remain unnoticed. He probably had something to hide. He could have come from the riverboat moored in the middle of the water. It must have been loaded earlier in the day and was still waiting for some permit and the go-ahead, but the captain had been kind enough to leave the loading dock so another vessel could take his place. South Side Port was often crowded.

  The captain would get his papers first thing in the morning when the office opened and be off posthaste to wherever he was going. Except, as Istvan watched, the riverboat pulled up anchor and began moving with the current. A quiet departure in the middle of the night.

  His instincts prickled even as he realized that every moment he hesitated, the riverboat would only move farther away from him. He jumped without thought, hit the cold water and came up for air, felt his pocketknife slip from his pocket, grabbed after it, but couldn’t find it in the dark. Damn. At least he still had his gun. He shoved it tighter into his waistband, then swam as fast as he could, carried by the current, grateful that the man in the boat didn’t seem to notice him, hadn’t heard the splash.