* * *
She pounced on Alec the minute he walked through her door. “You traitor,” she accused him, her eyes narrowing, but playfully. “You talked to the king again.”
He didn’t even try to deny it. “Yeah, I did.”
“But why?”
“Because you didn’t deserve to be looked at with suspicion, or have anyone second-guess what you did on Sunday. And the only one who could fix that was the king. You told me the king was the reason your captain let you return to work so soon, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“So I talked to the king. Man-to-man. I respected the hell out of him before this, but now...now I totally get why you Zakharians love him so fiercely. The loyalty he gives his men is incredible. Unbelievable, even. And unexpected. No wonder you give him your complete loyalty in return.”
He smiled suddenly, as if at a memory. “You know, McKinnon told me the king sent men to spy on him when he was falling in love with the princess. Men with orders to kill him, if necessary, to protect her.”
“I do not see what there is to smile about that,” she said, puzzled.
“Then the king kidnapped McKinnon—although he already had a plane ticket to come here—and brought him by stealth to Zakhar, to ask him one question,” Alec continued. “And to force him to see what he’d done to the princess by lying to her. By telling her he didn’t love her.”
“I still do not see—”
“Ruthless. The king is ruthless where someone he cares about is concerned,” Alec said in the deep voice that never failed to thrill her. Still smiling, but the smile was a little crooked now. “I am, too, Angel. I’m ruthless where you’re concerned.” He put his arms around her and drew her close. “Don’t ask me to change, because I can’t change who I am any more than you can change who you are. I told you I want to be the one who gives you everything you need, and I do. I always will. Even if you don’t think you need it.”
* * *
Aleksandrov Vishenko eyed his minions coldly. “And how is it the Zakharian prince is still alive? I thought the plan was foolproof. Were there not two assassins? And was there not a backup? Someone on the inside?”
The first man started to say no plan was foolproof, but one look at Vishenko’s face and he decided discretion was the better part of valor. The second man was apparently made of sterner stuff. “Two men are dead,” he said practically. “At least they cannot talk. One is a prisoner but, as previously arranged, he named Prince Nikolai as the instigator of the assassination plot. And with Prince Nikolai dead—” he shrugged “—nothing can be traced to you.”
The first man jumped in eagerly. “And word is that even though the little prince is not dead, the king is now focused exclusively on rooting out any other conspirators on their security teams. So he has been distracted...exactly as you wished.”
“Exactly as I wished?” Vishenko asked in a rumbling volcano of a voice that made the two men quail. “If it had been exactly as I wished, the king’s son would be dead.” He let that sink in for a minute. “And what of your other assignment?”
The first man cleared his throat. “There has been some progress there,” he said cautiously. “We sent out the word on the woman...and the increased reward. The higher reward may have done the trick. An informant thinks he may have spotted her in—” He glanced at the other man, a frantic question on his face.
“Denver, Colorado,” the second man supplied smoothly. “Why she would be there we don’t know, but we have sent a man to investigate.”
Vishenko nodded his approval. “Good. Very good. Let me know what he learns.”
* * *
The phone rang, waking Alec from a sound sleep. He’d long ago learned how to wake immediately—you couldn’t function effectively as a bodyguard if your brain was groggy when you first woke up, not even for a few minutes—so he was sharp and alert when he grabbed the phone. “Hello?”
“Did I wake you? Sorry,” his sister, Keira, said, but the perfunctory way the apology was offered told Alec she wasn’t sincere.
Keira wouldn’t be calling him at this hour of the night if it wasn’t important, so he didn’t bother with small talk. “What’s up?”
“Trace asked me to check on a name last week, and Cody authorized it,” she said, referring to her husband, McKinnon’s boss in the agency. “He wanted anything I could uncover, including any work visas, tourist visas, et cetera, that might have been issued in that name—and let him know what I found.”