The Wrath of the King (15 page)

Gunnar stepped away from the opposite table where he'd been marking positions of troops and went to Sander's side. “They seem very risky, but I don't see another way in or out. I have no idea how you'll get your hands on the uniforms, either, without raising suspicion.”

“I sent Natalia back to the family seat hours ago. If anyone can finagle several uniforms from the men, it's her.”

Gunnar frowned. “You trust Natalia to help you?”

Sander straightened, tossing down the pencil he'd been marking the maps with. “This is her test. If she tips our position off, then no, I can't trust her. I figured she deserved a chance, though, and I do think under the circumstances that she's our best option of getting the uniforms we need.”

“If a truckload of men show up here, all this will be for nothing,” Gunnar said, sweeping his hand toward the maps.

“I've got lookouts stationed. We'll be gone before they touch the front door.” Sander clapped a hand on his brother's shoulder and turned back to the maps. He disregarded a bout of vertigo and continued to ignore the pain from other wounds. There was no time to pander to cuts and bruises, not when lives depended on him. Blinking black and white pin-dots from his vision, Sander picked up the pencil and was about to take up where he left off when a knock came at the door.

Gunnar stiffened, glancing between the door and Sander.

“Come in,” Sander called.

The door opened and Natalia swept in, resplendent in elegant clothing suited for official Royal business. Thick wool slacks of dark brown, a thin sweater three shades lighter and two loops of different colored scarves around her throat. Heels and complimentary jewelry finished off the formal effect. A guard followed carrying a large duffel bag.

“Piece of cake,” Natalia said, gesturing to the guard to set the bag on the desk. She unzipped the duffel and pulled out the jacket to one of the uniforms, snapping it taut between her hands.

Sander knew that if his sister had outed him, his lookouts would have already spotted those sent to either kill him or capture him again. It appeared Natalia's change of heart where he was concerned was genuine. Instead of looking at the garment, he watched his sister's eyes. Sander couldn't detect any deceit or betrayal in the blunt glances she gave him.

“Excellent. You got three, yes?” he asked, bracing a hand on the table next to his hip. The pencil lodged itself between two of his fingers.

“Yes. Three full uniforms. I also found out where they're keeping her,” Natalia said. She laid the jacket over the open duffel. “The Red Room. At least that's where she was when I left the family seat. Unless he moves her, you should find her there.”

“That was an unexpected piece of good luck. How did you manage that?” Sander asked.

“Dare, you
do
realize who you're talking to, don't you?” Instead of snark, Natalia's query held a hint of affectionate tease.

“Now that you mention it...”

“Exactly,” Natalia said, picking up where Sander left off. “You look like hell, though. Don't tell me you're going to leave tonight.”

“That's what I said.” Gunnar added his agreement to Natalia's that Sander looked like hell.

“Of course we're going tonight. No time like the present to take back what's ours,” a voice said from the doorway.

Sander smiled, grim but pleased, when he saw who stood there. “What's
mine,
you mean. Leander, this is my brother Gunnar and my sister, Natalia.”

Leander, attired in his usual guard uniform, tipped his head toward each. “Your Highnesses.”

Gunnar frowned and Natalia gave Leander a suspicious look.

“Who is this?” Gunnar asked. “An
American?”

“Leander is one of Mattias's best friends. Someone I've always been able to trust with my life,” Sander replied. He and Leander were the only two in the entire safe house—probably the only two in all of Latvala—who knew why Mattias was currently unaccounted for. That Leander was here at all spoke volumes to just how dire Mattias's own situation must be.

“I don't understand. We've never met, or I would have remembered the distinction of my brother's best friends,” Gunnar said, clearly hesitant to give his own trust to the stranger.

“We were never meant to meet, not really,” Leander said, his Latvala accent gone from his words. “I'm here because, inadvertently, Mattias sent me.”

“That makes no sense,” Natalia said.

“It does if you know what we know,” Leander retorted with a gesture between himself and Sander.

“He's right. But what we know isn't knowledge I'm prepared to depart now, or ever. So take my word for it that Leander is here for our benefit. We're standing here wasting time with semantics when we need to be preparing to leave.” Sander turned back to the map, aligning the pencil to paper.

“You look like you need about ten hours of hard sleep before we even think of leaving,” Leander said.

Sander speared a withering look over his shoulder when Leander unknowingly parroted Gunnar and Natalia. “Sleep is for the weak. Let's get on it. I want to depart before midnight.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” Leander tapped his heels and bowed his head, feigning allegiance.

Sander snorted and got down to business.

The hours till midnight ticked steadily away.

. . .

All roads leading to escape proved difficult to reach. Chey didn't know Paavo's holding well enough to plan a clean exit, not without alerting the guards, staff or members of the military spread out over the countryside. She didn't know who she could trust or who might be swayed to her side. It was dangerous to approach security already entrenched in Paavo's home and on his property, since it suggested to Chey that they were some of the most loyal.

They had to be.

Faking contractions might encourage Paavo to end her life early, rather than allow her to give birth to a live heir. That was a risk she couldn't take. Faking contractions in hopes he would send her to a hospital was out. She'd checked the french doors only to find them locked leading to the balcony. A pointless venture anyway, considering how high up she was and how far a fall it would be if she attempted to climb down the castle via precarious foot and handholds. Before pregnancy, that might have been a viable option. Now, with her extended stomach, she wouldn't have good balance or a secure reach.

There had to be some other way.

Pausing before a tall, broad window, bathed in moonlight, Chey considered what options were left.

Not many.

She couldn't just walk out the door into the hallway, and any excuses to go downstairs would seem like just that—excuses. Convinced pleading with Paavo would do no good either, Chey stared out at the milky landscape and sought a better solution.

Bribery, out.

Threats, out.

Hoping the guards left their posts, wishful thinking.

What she needed was obscured passage, a way to slide past the guards in the hall and down a back stairway leading to an exit that wasn't well known.

With sudden insight, Chey departed the window and stood in the center of the room to get her bearings. The enormous bed sat against the right wall, the bathroom and closet to the left. Straight ahead, a wall of windows. Behind, the door to the hallway.

Making her way to the bed, she began the tedious process of searching for a hidden panel. This castle was as old as the family seat, she was sure of it—perhaps even older—and the odds of hidden passageways for Royalty to escape were good.

Finding
the entrance was another matter. Built to look like part of the room, a person could search for hours and days and never come across the latch, switch, depression or other identifying opening. Her experience with the passageways in Mattias's castle and the family seat, however, gave Chey an advantage. She knew generally what to look for.

It was how she understood that just because there wasn't a crack in the wall, didn't mean there wasn't a doorway present. Forty minutes after the search began,
she hit pay dirt. After checking an oil painting three times, finding nothing, she went back to it and set her fingers to follow the shallow groove
behind
the outer edge. Feeling a demarcation line in the gold leaf, she grasped and pulled.

A section of wall creaked and whispered as it opened, the seam disguised behind a flap of striped wallpaper. The scent of musty, stale air hit her nose from the darkness of the hidden passageway. She needed a flashlight, or a candle. Something to see by. Otherwise, she might take a tumble down a flight of stairs.

Finding a tapered candle sitting on a half table against the wall, she searched the entire room and could not produce matches or a lighter. Frustrated, she was about to put the candle back when she spied the fireplace. Surely, someone had a device to ignite the kindling. She turned up a long lighter with enough fluid to spout a flame. With the candle lit, she backtracked to the window and opened it five inches, hoping to throw anyone off who might check on her. Chey was counting on the late hour to dissuade the guards or Paavo from doing just such a thing. If she was truly lucky, no one would show up until morning, giving her the entire night to make an escape.

Stepping into the gloomy passage, she eased the panel closed and let her eyes adjust to the dimness. Slow and steady. That was the way to get from here to the ground floor without a mishap.

. . .

Wynn hated the fleeting sense of guilt that ate away at her good intentions. She hated the contradicting emotions she felt about a man who didn't deserve them, and she certainly hated her hesitation to take this devastating step she needed to take. In the hours between discovering Chey resided within the walls of the castle and now, only one answer presented itself as a viable way to distract the mass amount of security patrolling the hallways: fire.

She didn't pursue the idea that this event might purge her guilt, a metaphorical burning that would turn her attraction to ash. It was just a fire, only a fire, a means to an end. Chey needed her, needed a distraction as surely as Wynn did, so they could flee the holding together.

In a perfect world, the escape would work just like that. This
not
being a perfect world, Wynn tried to plan for the unexpected. She had disabled the fire alarm in the room to give the flames a chance to catch hold, to delay discovery long enough for Wynn to get to the Red Room.

Standing in an upstairs parlor, the fireplace roaring in anticipation of Paavo's return, Wynn took a good look at the irreplaceable pictures on the walls, the antique furniture and expensive collectables in curios or on desktops. Several paintings were of ancestors, she thought, regal men and women with intense, staring eyes.

To set fire to such a room was unthinkable, yet Wynn had no other alternative. The guards numbered too many, were too suspicious of her right out of the gate, and to dawdle longer meant possibly putting Chey's life in danger. Earlier in the day, Wynn had played an innocent game with one of the waitstaff's children, pulling the information from the little boy without seeming to. She knew the child would forget all about the game, or if not the game, then the contents of it.

With knowledge of the Red Room's place in the castle committed to memory, Wynn snatched up a roll of papers she'd brought with her in the guise of files and stuck the end into the fire.

There was no going back now.

Taking the lit end to the draperies, she started a flame there. Then to a tapestry, which caught and burned immediately, and finally to an enormous Persian rug that traveled beneath four pieces of heavy, gilt furniture. Coughing against smoke, she threw the ragged ends of the papers down before they burned her fingers and dashed to the door. Up here, in this particular hallway, fewer security roamed. She knew because she'd scouted out the best location to start a fire while pretending to go back and forth on errands for her 'boss'.

Schooling herself not to run and draw attention, Wynn descended a floor, taking a back route around to the main hall. Ducking into a shady niche covered with scads of faux ivy, she waited until the first shouts came.

It didn't take long.

Pounding feet sounded along the corridor beyond the niche, guards running toward the commotion while calling their brethren up from below. She waited for a break in the flow, darting out from cover with a made up story sitting idle on her tongue, waiting for release should she be stopped and questioned. Although she could smell smoke, Wynn couldn't yet see it traveling high along the ceilings of the hallway.

Please, please let it be enough to keep them busy for a while longer.

Instead of running down the stairs, Wynn caught the banister for the staircase leading up. She took the steps by twos, stretching her stride out of necessity. Desperation made her a touch reckless.

Hitting the landing, she broke into a run as a general alarm went off three floors below. Wynn cut into a dark room when she heard men approach from Chey's direction, waiting until they plunged down the stairs she'd just come up. Calls for 'all hands' assured that every guard available within hearing range attended the emergency; a fire was more critical than standing guard at a locked door with a heavily pregnant woman behind it. Wynn had counted on security deciding Chey wouldn't get far even if she
did
manage to get the door open.

Coming up on the correct room, Wynn wilted with relief to see a deadbolt accessible from the outside. She didn't need a key to throw the bolt over and open the door.

“Chey! It's me. Hurry, I've created a...Chey?” Wynn paused when she didn't see Chey anywhere inside. Rushing to the bathroom, she called for Chey in urgent whispers.

Nothing.

Chey wasn't in the closet, in the attached office or out on the balcony. For a few moments, Wynn suffered through a bout of panic that someone had already killed Chey and the baby. Where else would Chey be, if not here? Maybe she'd been moved. She searched several other rooms along the corridor, all empty.

Back out in the hallway, Wynn knew she needed to make a quick decision. Someone would trace the fire back to her, she was sure of it. Somehow, some way, with enough time, Wynn was confident she would be found out. Which meant she needed to leave the castle by any means necessary. Without Chey, a fact that made tears sting the back of Wynn's eyes. There was no help for it. She couldn't linger any longer. There wasn't time to do a thorough search of every bedroom, sitting room and parlor.