Royal Captive Read online

  “Come on.” Istvan tossed the dead man’s rifle to her, then ran, probably in case anyone had been close enough to hear the muffled shot and was coming to investigate.

  The whole incident lasted less than thirty seconds, Lauryn thought bewildered, running after him, her heart still banging desperately against her chest. Violence always shook her. Even back when she’d made her living in ways less than one-hundred-percent honest, she never took a weapon to a heist, prided herself on being able to get in and out unseen, unconfronted.

  The prince had been quick in a crisis situation, acted without hesitation, done well. Maybe too well, she realized suddenly, for a prince.

  “Where did you learn all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?” she asked as they slowed.

  “Basic self-defense training all the princes received.”

  She nearly laughed. “I wouldn’t buy that at a two-for-the-price-of-one sale. Want to try again?”

  “A couple of years ago, I led an expedition to the Middle East. I was searching for the remains of a caravan a Valtrian king sent to the Far East a few centuries ago. The whole caravan had perished. I was trying to find some trace of it and figure out what happened to them, but my crew and I ended up stumbling into the middle of some serious tribal warfare.”

  She looked at him and felt her lips stretch into a shaky smile.

  “What is it?”

  “You live a more interesting life than I gave you credit for.”

  He flashed a smile back, the first he’d ever given her. It transformed his face in the moonlight from handsome to dazzling, and she had to catch her breath.

  She’d thought of him as a soft academic before who’d been bitten by the archaeology bug. Sure, he published a lot, but she always thought someone else did the lion’s share of the fieldwork. She couldn’t picture a prince with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, getting his hands dirty. But suddenly it looked as if there was more to him than being a high-born professor. Those princely manners hid a warrior spirit.

  She couldn’t say she wasn’t fascinated by it.

  “This changes everything,” he said.

  She blinked, afraid for a moment that he could read her thoughts. “What does?”

  “The man I shot back there. He will be missed. A thorough search of the ship will be conducted.”

  “Maybe he was a stowaway.”

  “He was a member of the crew, sneaking off for a drink.”

  “Why? Those guys looked like nothing more than thugs. I doubt they’d frown on a little whiskey.”

  “Maybe he was Muslim, forbidden to drink. He can’t very well do it in front of the captain or he’d be punished.” He cheered up. “If the crew is Muslim, it could mean we’re heading to one of the Muslim countries in the region.”

  “And why is that good?”

  “We’ll be there by morning.”

  As opposed to being stuck on the ship for days for a cross-Atlantic voyage to South America or the United States. She was beginning to see his point.

  Hopefully, the rest of the crew wouldn’t notice that one man missing until then. In the chaos of landing and unloading, the prince and she might be able to slip off the ship unseen and alert the authorities.

  Not that life had ever been that easy for her, she reflected the next second as they came around the corner and ran right into the armed posse that was patrolling the deck.

  Chapter Four

  “Why are you on my ship?” the captain was yelling at them in Turkish, waving the gun his crew had gotten off Istvan. His eyebrows were like fat, hairy caterpillars, wiggling with each word on a face that was lined by age and weather. He had a thick nose and a blunt chin he thrust out as he narrowed one eye. “Are you spies? Are you police?”

  They were on the bridge where the instrument panels took up most of the space. The open sea was visible through a bank of windows, stretching endlessly toward the horizon.

  “Stowaways,” Istvan responded in the man’s own language, glancing at Lauryn, who probably didn’t understand any of the conversation and was scared to death.

  Not that she showed it. On the surface she looked as if she was holding up, which was good. He’d found that in situations like this, the key was not to show fear.

  “Where did you come from?” Only the captain was asking questions. The rest of the officers worked the instruments. The posse that captured Istvan and Lauryn contended themselves with pointing their guns and looking menacing.

  Istvan kept his gaze on the captain, ignoring the half-dozen weapons. “Valtria.”

  “Stowaways from Valtria.” A bushy eyebrow went up. “I ask you again, what are you doing on my ship?”

  The fact that this crew was armed, too, like the one on the riverboat had been, didn’t necessarily mean they were criminals. A lot of ocean liner crews armed themselves these days in response to the increasing pirate attacks off the coast of Africa. But the interaction between the captain and the crew said they were hiding something. And the captain was angrier than he should have been at a couple of stowaways. His small, calculating eyes kept returning to Lauryn and not in a good way.

  “We’re running from the law,” Istvan said to distract him. If the man was doing shady business himself, he might sympathize.

  “Why?” The captain pointed the gun straight at Istvan, his full attention back on him.

  Istvan gave a small nod to Lauryn to reassure her, wishing she could understand what was going on, then put his hands up in a capitulating gesture. Now that he’d seen the crew and how well-armed they were, he had to accept that his plan of taking over the ship had been overly optimistic.

  “You’re a rich man. No criminal.” The captain’s eyes narrowed.

  And Istvan caught his mistake at once. Raising his arms caused his shirtsleeve to fall back and reveal his gold watch. Getting caught lying could be the worst thing at the moment.

  The man cocked the gun. He didn’t look as if he was giving them another chance to explain.

  But Lauryn rushed forth with an explanation anyway. “We only pretend to be rich. We’re thieves,” she said in near-perfect, unaccented Turkish.

  Istvan stared at her. The woman was full of surprises. Definitely not one to be underestimated.

  “When I was young, in my country thieves got their hands cut off.” The captain’s scowl deepened, but at least he wasn’t shooting. He was measuring up Lauryn.

  Istvan used the distraction and eyed the man on his right. He might be able to lunge for the man’s rifle. He shifted his weight, getting ready.

  “Lucky for us, you’re not a policeman.” Lauryn smiled with a hint of teasing.

  The captain smiled back and Istvan did a double take.

  “I wouldn’t go as far as to say that you’re lucky.” He swept his gaze over her from head to toe. “You don’t look like a thief.”

  “Let me reach into my clothes and I’ll prove it to you,” she challenged him.

  Armed men stood behind them, their guns pointed and ready to shoot. The captain nodded to the goon behind Lauryn and the man moved his rifle barrel forward so that it would touch the back of her head.

  She rolled her slim shoulders for a brief second before she reached into her waistband and brought out a pocketknife, tossing it onto the floor at the captain’s feet.

  “That’s mine!” One of the armed men stepped for ward, flashing her a dark look.

  A watch came next from her bra, similarly claimed.

  Then some pocket change of Turkish currency from her socks, a lighter from her shoe, a blue medal of the evil eye—a common charm in the Middle East. By the time she tossed a small black book on top of the heap, the men looked ready to strangle her, but the captain was laughing, the lines around his small eyes crinkling with mirth.

  “And he’s a thief, too?” The man pointed at Istvan with the gun that he’d relaxed during the performance.

  Istvan’s muscles stiffened. Now they would expect him to put on a show like she had. Brilliant. Because, of course,
he had absolutely nothing.

  But Lauryn said, “Mostly I’m the thief and he’s the muscle.”

  The man nodded at that, looking Istvan over one more time, his gaze settling on his left wrist. “The watch?”

  “An excellent fake.” He pulled it off immediately and held it out, an offering.

  One of the men snatched it out of his hand and the expensive timepiece immediately disappeared.

  Istvan didn’t care about the watch. He kept stealing glances at Lauryn. When on earth did she have time to pick these men’s pockets anyway? Their struggle when they’d been apprehended had been brief, had been kept brief purposely by Istvan because he didn’t want her to get hurt.

  The captain shoved the handgun into his waistband, a calculating expression coming to his face as he glanced from one stowaway to the other. “Maybe we’ll be friends, eh?”

  The rest of the men still had their weapons aimed. They weren’t as amused by Lauryn’s party tricks as their captain.

  The man assessed the prisoners for another few seconds, then seemed to come to a decision when he turned away from them, looking out to sea. “Take them to one of the aft storage cabins. I’ll deal with them when we reach Mersin.”

  The crew grabbed them and didn’t worry much about bruising. They were shoved forward, taken down narrow hallways and stairs, a rifle barrel stuck between Istvan’s ribs to guide him to their destination. He took note of every turn, the location of every door.

  Then they were stopped and he was thrust forward into a small cabin. Lauryn came next, pushed with enough force to lose her balance. He caught her before she would have crashed into the metal shelving that nearly filled out their makeshift prison cell. She felt fragile in his arms, although he knew she was anything but a lost little lamb. He’d seen her in action.

  The door closed and locked behind them before they could have turned and tried any trick for getting out of there. She stepped away without looking at him, brushed her clothes off and took a minute to survey the place. “Welcome to the presidential suite,” she said in a wry tone.

  Hardly. The storage cabin was barely three meters by three meters with a single porthole, which was their only source of light. The switch for the metal-mesh-protected bulb overhead was outside the door and the men hadn’t cared enough to turn it on for their prisoners.

  His stomach growled. He ignored it. He had a feeling it’d be a long time before any food came their way. Lauryn didn’t exactly steal herself into the men’s hearts when she’d picked their pockets.

  Her performance was more than confirmation enough that at least some of the things rumored about her had to be true. But because her “skill” saved their lives, he couldn’t very well hold that against her just now.

  “You speak very good Turkish.” He checked the shelves, but found nothing beyond spare parts for the ship’s machinery.

  “I traveled a lot with my father when I was younger.”

  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.