Despite the trepidation clutching his heart, Sebastian reached for the phone with a steady hand. He had learned long ago to control his physical reactions because he’d had to have a steady finger on the trigger. But he couldn’t control the curse from slipping through his lips when he heard only a dial tone.
“She’s gone?” the deputy asked.
Sebastian jerked his head in a rough nod. “Did you get the number from the caller ID?”
“It was blocked,” the young man replied.
“Can you trace it?”
The deputy’s face flushed. “I don’t think the call lasted long enough.”
“Then maybe she is coming here—to talk to me. Maybe she only wanted to know if I was here.” That had to be it. To collect the money for her eyewitness account, or her cockamamy story if the persistent reporter and the sheriff were correct, she needed to talk to him.
“Or she’s setting up a trap,” Sheriff Wolf said. “You and the other royals have been threatened. There have been previous attempts on some of your lives.”
Sebastian gave in to a slight grin. “You believe it is now my turn?”
“And thanks to that press conference you just held, they know where you are.”
“So they will storm the courthouse to kill me?”
“Prince Stefan was nearly shot outside this very building, his security guard killed,” the sheriff reminded him, his voice pitched low so that any of the lingering reporters would not overhear. “These are bold criminals.”
The royals had been warned that they were all in danger even before they’d landed on American soil. Then the limo had exploded, probably when someone had suspected they would all be riding in it. No one had been able to determine who was behind the explosion, so they were still in danger. “We have taken precautions.”
“Your security force?” the sheriff scoffed.
“It is true that some of our men have proven themselves without honor and allegiance.”
“As you said, with the proper incentive…”
Money. Vengeance. Jealousy. Sebastian wasn’t certain exactly what had compelled their men to turn against them, and because of that, he wasn’t certain he could trust any of the others to not turn as well. “That is why I must remain here, in case the witness does want to talk to me. No one else can be trusted.”
“No one?” the sheriff asked, his jaw tensing with anger.
“It is not only our security team that has been bribed.”
“True.” Law enforcement had also been involved in some of the attacks.
“Because no one can be trusted, we have no option but to protect ourselves.”
The sheriff shook his head. “You have another option. Go home. Go back to your islands and away from the danger and let me do my job without your interference.”
“We will not leave until our friend is found.”
“Then I hope like hell that was the witness on the phone and that she’s coming in to talk to you.”
Sebastian narrowed his eyes and studied the younger man’s face. Was he telling the truth? Of everyone Sebastian had met in Wyoming, he almost trusted Sheriff Wolf. But with lives at stake, he couldn’t allow himself to trust anyone but Antoine. “I can take care of myself, Sheriff.”
“Danny was right about your military training?”
Sebastian nodded.
“But being a sniper is different than being the one who’s hunted. In the service, you remained a safe distance from the action. If you stay here, you can’t.”
“I’m not certain Barajas would be a safe distance from the action.” There was a chance that his and his brother’s enemies had been behind the explosion in hope of killing him and Antoine. Because of their military background, they had several enemies.
The sheriff expelled a ragged sigh of resignation. “The danger could follow you home. It probably is better that you all stay where I can protect you.”
Sebastian chuckled. “As I said, Sheriff, I will protect myself as well as the witness. I will wait here until she arrives to claim her reward for the information she’s been withholding.”
“You could have a long wait,” Wolf warned. “It may already be too late for that witness.”
I
T WASN’T TOO LATE
. She could turn around and head to the Wind River Ranch and Resort to collect that last check, like she had intended. But instead Jessica steered the Suburban around a couple of television station vans that still lined the street. Even though it had been a few hours since the prince’s press conference, they remained outside the three-story beige brick county courthouse that housed the sheriff’s office. Was he still here?
She maneuvered the ranch vehicle into an empty space quite a ways down the block. Then she glanced at the cell phone she’d dropped onto the passenger seat. Why had she called? Because of his damned eyes, imploring her to do the right thing. But was this the right thing?
If one of the camera crew captured her on film and nationally broadcast the coverage…
Would he recognize her? She glanced into the rearview mirror and even after nearly five years of this auburn color and long, straight style, she barely recognized herself except for her eyes. She could have tried to hide the brown with colored contacts, but she wouldn’t have been able to hide the fear that she’d never stopped feeling. Not with him out there, determined to find her.
And kill her.
But it wasn’t just her life she risked by coming here. She could be risking the sheik’s, too. What if he was safer if no one knew he was alive? But she remembered the anguish and frustration in Prince Sebastian Cavanaugh’s blue gaze, and guilt churned in her stomach. He had to know what had happened to his friend. She had to tell him.
Her fingers trembling, she fumbled with the handle before opening the driver’s door and sliding out of the vehicle. Then, head down, she hurried past the reporters’ vans. She hesitated outside the county courthouse before pushing open the door and stepping inside. Security scanners blocked the foyer, but while she stepped into a line, she could see into the outer office where the conference had been held. A few reporters waited while cameramen filmed the deputies taking calls.
Were those calls coming from people trying to claim the reward? But no one else had seen what she had, except for whoever she’d spied driving away from the scene. Maybe that person had decided to come forward and Jessica didn’t need to be here; she didn’t need to risk her own safety. Or Samantha’s.
She stepped out of the security line and backed toward the doors. She couldn’t risk going inside with all those cameras. But before she could turn away, Prince Sebastian looked up from the desk over which he’d been leaning. And his deep blue gaze met hers.
Panic accelerated her pulse, so that it leaped at her throat and hammered at her wrists. Even though several feet and people separated them, she had confirmation that the television screen had not made him more handsome than reality. With his golden brown hair, those piercing eyes and his long, lean body, he was as handsome in person as he’d been on the screen. More so even. Heat flashed through her along with the panic.
But then a camera flashed and another lens turned toward her, and panic won out. She turned and ran. But the sick feeling in her stomach warned her that it was already too late. Coming here had been a mistake. One that would probably get her killed.
Chapter Two
When the redhead turned and ran, breaking that strange connection between them, Sebastian’s breath shuddered out. Then, after those breathless seconds that he’d held perfectly still when their gazes had met, he moved again. Shoving through the security screeners, he pushed open the doors to the courthouse and raced after her.
She had to be the witness because he’d glimpsed the fear in her dark eyes, which had widened when the cameras had turned on her. The reporters hadn’t missed his interest in the woman who’d entered the courthouse but hesitated at the screeners. Sebastian had wanted to draw out the witness, not just for information about his friend but also to warn her.
Apparently she didn’t need his warning; she already knew she was in danger. And she ran as if an assassin—not a prince—pursued her. Despite his legs being longer than hers, he had to run to catch her. She’d already jumped inside her rusted SUV, but he grabbed the door before she could swing it closed.
“Let me go!” she implored him, her voice cracking with fear.
He shook his head. “You cannot leave until you say what you came here to tell me.”
“I—I didn’t come here to talk to you.”
“You are not the one who called and asked if I was at the office?”
Color suffused her delicately featured face. “No—No, that wasn’t me.”
He would not need Antoine’s assistance to determine if she spoke the truth or lies. She was not a very good liar. “Then why were you coming into the courthouse?”
“Uh, I have a ticket to pay.”
“You left before you paid it,” he pointed out.
“I—I forgot my checkbook.”
“Show me the citation,” he challenged her.
The color in her cheeks deepened to a darker red, nearly the same shade as her long auburn hair. “I forgot that, too.”
“You’re quite forgetful,” he mused. “Is that why you haven’t come forward before?”
Breaking the connection of their gazes, she ducked her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just got that ticket.”
“That will be easy enough to verify with Sheriff Wolf. What is your name?”
She tugged on the door handle. “You don’t need to verify anything. Just let me leave.”
“Not until you share with me what you saw that night.” Had Amir survived the explosion or had someone removed his body to conceal his murder? But that made no sense. Why leave the chauffeur’s burned corpse and remove Amir’s?
Of course, none of it made sense. They had come to the United States to propose trade agreements that would benefit this country as well as COIN, especially the methods Prince Stefan Lutece had developed to make oil drilling environmentally safe. These methods were the only reason that Sebastian and Antoine had agreed to drill on Barajas, but they needed a buyer for that oil. They needed money for health care and other social services, so nobody else left their island for Europe or America. And so that the voice inside his head wouldn’t keep telling him that he wasn’t cut out to be a ruler or a protector.
“Tell me what you saw,” he demanded, his frustration gnawing away at his usually rigid control.
She flinched but stubbornly repeated, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You cannot claim the reward until you share your eyewitness account of the explosion.”
“I don’t want a reward.”
“Of course you do,” he said, dismissing her claim. “That is why you came here. And why you wanted to make certain I would be here when you arrived—to collect your money.” Not to ambush him as the sheriff had warned. Of course, if that had been her plan, he had stepped neatly into her trap when he’d raced after her. But when their gazes had met and held, he’d felt no threat from her—only
to
her.
She shook her head, and her hair nearly brushed the shoulder of his suit because he stood so close to her—close enough to smell her summer fresh outdoors scent. “I don’t want your money.”
He held in a snort of derision, not wanting to offend her despite his anger over her taking so long to come forward. She obviously had more pride than money. The color of her vehicle was indiscernible from the rust eating away at the metal. Her clothes had also seen better days. Her jeans were torn, her dimpled knees peaking through the holes in the washed-out denim. The cuffs and collar of her blue plaid blouse were frayed, the mismatched buttons straining across her full breasts.
Awareness raised the dark hairs on his forearms and heated his stomach. Despite her threadbare attire, she was an attractive woman—beautiful even with her wide, brown eyes and delicate features. But stubborn, too. No matter how much she denied it, she needed his money.
He glanced around her and checked out the inside of her vehicle. The seats were torn, foam protruding through the rips in the upholstery. The headliner hung low, separated from the roof. But it was what he noticed in the back that drew his attention. Some kind of booster-type car seat was buckled into a seat, empty for now. But she must have a child, unless she’d borrowed someone else’s vehicle. “Are you a mother?”
She followed his gaze, her breath audibly catching. “That’s not any of your business.”
He focused on her left hand that clutched the door handle. The fingers were bare but for scrapes and calluses. That didn’t mean she wasn’t married with children. She might have just removed her ring because of the manual labor she obviously did. He ignored the disappointment that cooled the heat in his stomach.
His attraction to her was ridiculous anyway. He dated only princesses and heiresses—women clad in designer gowns, not ragged jeans. Women who wore jewels, not calluses. As Grandfather had constantly lectured him and Antoine, princes could marry only princesses and vice versa. King Omar had practiced what he’d preached; he’d married the princess of a small European country lost during a civil war, and he’d brought her to reign over Barajas with him. If only their princess mother had listened to her father and married a prince instead of a mercenary…
He needed to make this woman listen to him. “What you witnessed makes you my business.” That was the only reason for his interest in her.
“I didn’t witness anything. I don’t want your reward. I just want to leave,” she said, her voice shaky with frustration and that fear she wasn’t able to conceal.
“If you don’t want my money,” he said, carefully hiding his skepticism, “then how about my protection?”
“Protection?” she asked, her eyes widening as she stared up at him.
“Is that not why you didn’t come forward earlier—because you were too frightened?” And perhaps not just for her own safety but also for the child she might have, if that car seat belonged to her. From her reaction, he was almost certain that it did. So she had a child. But did she have a husband? He suspected not because if she had someone to protect her, she should not be so scared. “You need not be afraid.”
She didn’t hold in her snort but expelled it softly.
He lifted his chin, offended at her derision. He was a ruler—coruler—and a former military officer. How dare she doubt him and remind him of someone else in his life who always had? “I will protect you.”
J
ESSICA LAUGHED
. She need not be afraid? She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been afraid. “You can’t protect me.”
No one could.
“Have you already been threatened?” he asked, his voice deepening with concern. “Is that why you haven’t reported what you’ve seen?”
She had other reasons for not reporting, like that relentless media coverage. Had any of those reporters followed them out? Had they caught her image on camera? Even before the explosion, the coverage of the COIN summit had been national—broadcast on every network to every city. She’d tried hard to avoid the cameras every time she came to town or went to the Wind River Ranch and Resort. Until today she was pretty positive she’d been successful.
To see if the reporters had followed her like the prince had, she tried to look out the driver’s door, but she couldn’t see beyond him. He was too big. Too broad. Too close, so close that with every breath she drew, she inhaled him. He even smelled like a prince: regal and rich—musk and leather and a faint trace of citrus. His scent filled her lungs and had her heart pounding furiously. “I—I have to go.”
“You’re not leaving until you tell me what you saw that night,” he ordered as if she were one of his subjects or his servants.
She was certain that would be the only relationship he’d ever entertain with someone like her. He’d boss her around and bully her—just like…
“I can’t stay!” she said, her panic escaping in a squeak that cracked her voice.
Those reporters couldn’t have missed how he’d chased after her. Even though she couldn’t see beyond his broad shoulders, she was certain that they had followed him. They would have to follow the story. She shouldn’t have come here—shouldn’t have let his blue eyes persuade her to risk everything for him. To ease his fear for his friend, she’d confronted hers. Why?
He was nothing more to her than a handsome stranger. And a stranger was all he could ever be.
She tugged harder on the handle, but the door didn’t budge. He held tight to the edge of the rusted metal. With her right hand, she jammed the key in the ignition, and with a silent prayer that it would start the first time, she turned the motor. The engine miraculously roared to life, the Suburban shuddering from the high idle and the missing exhaust.
“What are you doing?” the prince demanded, shouting to be heard over the motor.
She slammed the transmission into Drive and stepped on the gas, pulling away with the door hanging open. The metal slipped through the prince’s grasp. He ran, as if trying to leap inside the vehicle with her, but she accelerated. Then, with her hand shaking, she slammed the door shut.
She spared him only a glance in her rearview mirror. Standing in a cloud of exhaust, he stared after her as if dumbstruck that she had disobeyed him and that she had escaped him. For now. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach warned her that he would be just as relentless as that other man in tracking down her.
“W
HAT THE HELL
—”
Sebastian echoed the sheriff’s sentiments as the man joined him in the street. What the hell had just happened?
“—were you thinking!” Wolf yelled. “Running after her like that, you could have been running right into her trap.”
“She didn’t trap me.” Except in her gaze, with her fear and vulnerability.
“She freaked at the courthouse’s security screening,” Wolf said. “Most likely because she was armed. You’re lucky you didn’t get your damn head blown off.”
Sebastian’s temper flared; he did not like being reprimanded like a child or a fool even though he had to acknowledge that he might have acted like one. The fear in the woman’s eyes had brought out his protective instincts so that he’d worried only about her safety and not his own.
“She was not armed,” Sebastian insisted. Or more than likely she would have pulled the gun on him to get him to leave her alone.
“The sheriff is right, Your Highness.” Brenner, the head of the Barajas security detail, said. “You should not have left the courthouse without our protection.”
“I am fine,” Sebastian insisted, even though his pulse raced just like she had raced away from him. “Or I will be when I find her.”
“She is the witness?” Wolf asked.
Sebastian nodded.
“Did she tell you what she saw?” Brenner asked.
“Not yet,” he replied. “The reporters frightened her off with their cameras.”
“That’s why I had my deputies detain them,” Wolf said, his mouth curving into a slight grin as he glanced back toward the courthouse.
“I thought you didn’t believe she was the witness,” Sebastian said. “You were concerned that she might be another hired assassin.”
“And if that had been the case, I didn’t need any more collateral damage in Wind River County.”
“There has been quite enough,” Sebastian agreed. “I need to find her so that we can prevent something happening to anyone else. I need to learn what she saw.” He needed to know if Amir lived or…
The sheriff rubbed his hand along his jaw as if struggling with something. Then, with a sigh, he admitted, “I know where you can find her.”
“Where?”
“The Double J. That’s who the plate is registered to.”
He had been talking to her long enough for the sheriff to run the plate, and still he had not convinced her to tell him the truth. “Where is the Double J?”
“It’s about halfway between the Wind River Ranch and Resort and the Rattlesnake Badlands on Snake Valley Road, the same road where the limo exploded.”
Sebastian turned toward Brenner and held out his hand. “Give me your keys.”
“Your Highness, I will drive you.”
He shook his head. “No, I cannot risk anyone else frightening her off.”
“But she could still be—doing as the sheriff suggested—setting a trap for you.”
“She is not going to ambush me.” He feared she had something almost as bad planned, though. “Instead, she’s going to run away.” Flee, before she told him what she’d seen that night. “I order you to turn over your keys. Now.”
Unable to ignore a direct order, Brenner, his hand shaking, dropped the keys into Sebastian’s palm. “But, Your Highness—”
Ignoring the security detail’s concern, Sebastian rushed off toward the black Hummer parked directly outside the courthouse, behind the sheriff’s white Dodge SUV. Sebastian had already wasted precious minutes arguing with these men and had lost miles of road to her. After gunning the engine, he pressed hard on the accelerator, determined to close the distance between them.
But the traffic in town had him slowing and steering around other vehicles. Several minutes and more miles passed until he neared the drive leading to the resort. He sped past the turnoff for the resort and traffic thinned to just one vehicle ahead of him—a white panel van. Like a snake, the road wound through the lush valley, and at a curve, he caught a glimpse of the rusted SUV just ahead of the van. He accelerated and steered to the left, to pass the van. But it sped up and veered across the line, cutting him off.