Chapter Nine
Sebastian caught Jessica just as she was running up the steps to the porch. He wrapped one arm around her waist and clasped his palm across her mouth. “Shh…they could still be inside.”
Her eyes widened, her fear edging toward hysteria.
“I’ll go in first,” he said. “You call Sheriff Wolf.” He pressed his cell into her hand and gently pushed her back toward the Suburban.
She hesitated and opened her mouth, as if about to argue with him. Then he withdrew his gun from the waistband of his jeans. She nodded and, with shaking fingers, punched numbers into his phone.
Forcing his heart rate to steady and his breathing to slow and even out, he crept up onto the porch, the worn stair treads barely creaking beneath his weight. Even before his military training, he’d learned how to move without making a sound. His gun drawn, he stepped through the open door into the foyer. Buckshot had torn the faded wallpaper on the foyer walls and peppered the door with holes, so that sunlight shone through it like Swiss cheese.
Something horrible had happened here. Sebastian blamed himself. That van must have followed him earlier despite his efforts to run them off. And when Sebastian had thwarted their attempt at the resort to grab Jessica, they had come back to the ranch to wait for her. Or perhaps it had been the other shooter—the one from the badlands—who had been watching him all along.
Jessica’s friend, the owner of the ranch, must have tried to stop them. Where were they—the woman and the little girl?
He had not seen the van or any other vehicle, so he was almost certain the people who’d broken into the house were gone. Otherwise he would not have left Jessica alone outside. But still, he moved silently through the house, in case one of them had stayed behind. He peered through archways into rooms filled with overturned furniture.
A moan emanated from behind a closed door. He carefully pushed it open, as far as he was able with a body lying behind it.
Blood. So much blood…it flashed him back to other bodies he’d found. But that had been a long time ago, so he shook off the old memories.
He dropped to his knees to check for a pulse. But before he could reach out, floorboards creaked behind him. There was someone else in the house. He ducked behind the door and lifted his gun. Although he had not fired one since his last deployment, he was ready to shoot.
And kill.
T
HE PRINCE’S PHONE
clutched in her hand like a weapon, Jessica ventured into the only real home she and her daughter had ever known. Seeing the bullet holes and damage to that home had her flinching with pain. She fought down the scream and the sobs that burned her throat.
She couldn’t give in to panic now, not when her daughter and Helen needed her. And maybe Sebastian needed her, too. While she’d waited—those agonizingly long minutes outside—she hadn’t heard anything. Not a gunshot. Not a shout. Not even a cry for help.
What had happened? Where was everyone?
A murmur emanated from the phone, but she pressed her hand tighter over it. She didn’t want to give away her presence in the house. But she also didn’t want to break her connection with the sheriff’s office, either. They were on their way, but they’d wanted her to stay on the phone and keep them apprised of the situation.
She had no damn idea what the situation was. Or where her friend and her daughter were. Shaking with fear, she crept down the hall. She glanced through the archways into the front parlor and the living room as she passed them. The rooms were empty but for overturned furniture and pulled-out drawers.
She crossed the wide hall to the dining room and pushed open the door…as far as it would go against the body blocking it. Before she could look down to see who was lying on the floor, something else caught her attention.
The barrel of the gun pointed directly at her face. She sucked in a breath, but before she could expel it in a scream, the gun lowered. And the prince stepped out from behind the door.
“Damn it, Jessica,” Sebastian said, his voice low with frustration. “I told you to wait outside. I have not yet secured the house.” But instead of rushing off to another room, he dropped to his knees beside the body.
And so did Jessica, her heart rising to her throat and choking her as she saw all the blood. It stained her friend’s gray hair and covered her swollen face. “Helen!”
“She’s alive,” Sebastian assured her, his fingers closed around the older woman’s wrist. “But she needs an ambulance.”
Jessica thrust the phone at him. “They’re sending out police cars.” She hadn’t asked for an ambulance. She’d hoped they wouldn’t need one. Tears streamed down her face as she leaned over her friend.
Was the woman even conscious?
The prince spoke into the phone, giving them his assessment of Helen’s injuries and relaying the urgency for medical assistance.
“Helen, I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “So sorry…”
The ranch owner moaned and shifted on the floor.
Jessica reached for her hand. Helen’s nails were torn; she’d fought off her attackers. “Helen, where is Samantha? Did he get her?”
The older woman tried to squeeze Jessica’s hand, but her grip was weak and her hand dropped back to the floor. If Helen had been conscious when they’d found her, she wasn’t now.
“Helen!”
“She’s breathing. An ambulance is coming. She’ll be all right,” the prince assured her. His arm slid around her shoulders, offering comfort as well as protection. He kept glancing around, checking the corners of the room for Helen’s attackers.
“Stay with her,” he said, “while I check the rest of the house.”
Removing his arm and his protection, he left the room then. He left her alone at Helen’s side, clutching the battered woman’s limp hand. Jessica wasn’t worried about him coming across the men who had so horribly beaten her friend.
But for them, the house felt empty. Too quiet now that Helen had stopped moaning, so that no one else could have still been inside. She didn’t even hear Sebastian moving around; he moved more silently than the wind that blew through an open window. She only noticed his return because she felt his presence.
“They’re gone,” he said, his hand dropping to her shoulder and squeezing gently as he leaned over her.
“What about Samantha?” she asked, the words burning her heart as well as her throat. If the child had been hiding, she would have come out when she’d heard Jessica’s voice. “Where is my little girl?”
H
ER VOICE, THICK
with emotion as she asked that heartbreaking question, reached inside Sebastian and squeezed his heart in a tight fist.
“We’ll find her,” he promised and hoped it was a promise he would be able to keep. “The police will be here soon, as will Antoine and the most trusted members of our security detail. We will begin an extensive search for her then.”
She squeezed her friend’s hand and then lurched to her feet. “If she’s not already gone, she’ll be hiding. I taught her to hide if strangers ever tried to break into the ranch.”
Darkness filled Sebastian’s mind, blinding him to all but the past. Memories pummeled him, memories of hiding in the dark, of daring not to breathe, of trying to quiet even his own heartbeat so that they were not discovered. But unlike the child who might be hiding alone, he’d had Antoine. He’d had chubby fingers clutching his hand, reminding him that he was not alone.
He cleared the emotion of those old memories from his throat and asked, “Where would she hide?”
Jessica glanced to the open window. “She could be anywhere. I taught her to run and hide.”
Many years ago, his father had taught him and Antoine that same serious game of hide and hope like hell to never be found.
Sirens wailed, announcing the arrival of the police cars and the ambulance. But beneath that noise, Sebastian heard another one. A faint clunk of something dropping and rolling across a hardwood floor.
He reached for his gun again, but Jessica clutched his hand and stopped him.
“Maybe it’s her,” she said, hope lifting her voice. “Maybe she’s still here.”
Or perhaps one of the men had been left behind and Sebastian hadn’t discovered him in his first search of the house. Before he could share that concern with Jessica, she rushed off to follow the noise coming from the back of the house, under the stairwell that led up from the country kitchen to the second story. The empty space beneath the steps had been enclosed with oak cabinets and doors to add to the cupboard space of the kitchen.
When Jessica reached for the handle on the pantry door, he caught her wrist and stopped her. “You don’t know that it’s her.”
“No man would fit in there,” she said. “The space is too shallow.” She shrugged off his grasp and pulled open the door.
A broom, a bucket and a vacuum cleaner filled the space. There was no small body cowering inside.
He squeezed Jessica’s shoulder, knowing that she must be filled with disappointment. But she reached inside the pantry and pushed aside the back panel of the cupboard to reveal another dark space, one that led deeper under the stairs and had no light except for the flashlight that rolled across the floor. But it was turned off or burned out.
The unlit hiding space brought him back more than thirty years to that dark closet in which he and Antoine had hidden. They hadn’t been able to see anything…until much later when they had finally crawled out.
But they’d heard everything. And they’d felt everything.
“Samantha!” Jessica called out, fear cracking her voice. “Baby, are you in there?”
And if the child was hiding in the dark space, she would be able to hear and feel how terrified her mother was. The terror radiated off Jessica in waves that were drowning her and probably threatened to tow the child under with her.
Because the four-year-old could feel Jessica’s fear, he was careful to control his own. But he was feeling fear, too—fear that he was getting too involved with this single mother and with the little girl he had yet to meet.
“Samantha,” he murmured gently, “you can come out, sweetheart. The bad men are gone.”
“Prince Sebastian is telling the truth, honey,” Jessica added. “They are all gone. And you can hear the sirens. The police are on their way. You’re safe.”
Something shifted in the shadows, but the child would not come out.
“You’re smart,” Sebastian praised her. “You have found a very good hiding place. When my brother and I were young boys, we had to hide often from bad men. But we never knew how long to hide before it was safe to come out again. So my father gave us a code word he would use to tell us when it was safe to come out of hiding.”
“Sebastian?” Jessica uttered his name in a gasp of surprise over his admission. No one knew about his and Antoine’s past. King Omar had kept the true story from the media.
“This code word had to be something that only our father and my brother and I would know. No one else could guess at it then. No one else could trick us to come out of hiding.”
Tires squealed as cars stopped in front of the house. But Sebastian’s focus remained on the darkness. “So your mother needs to tell you something that only the two of you know. She needs to remind you of a secret only the two of you share, so I will step away now. I will go talk to the policemen and when you’re ready to come out, perhaps you can talk to the policemen, too.”
He stepped back from the dark, intending to give Jessica and her daughter this moment alone. But just as he turned around, someone moved quickly—coming out of the shadows to clasp his hand.
He stared down at the little girl. Her golden brown hair was tangled around her tear-stained face. Dust and cobwebs clung to her faded jeans and striped shirt. She stared up at him with eyes as wide as her mother’s, but instead of the warm brown, hers were a smoky, serious gray.
“You’re the prince,” she said. “From TV.”
Jessica had dropped to her knees in front of her child, her arms winding tight around the girl’s small frame. “Thank God you’re all right. Thank God you were hiding.”
Just because she’d been hiding didn’t mean she hadn’t heard everything that had happened in her house, to her friend. He entwined his fingers with hers. “You were very smart to do as your mother told you,” he praised her again, like he wished his grandfather had once praised either him or Antoine. “But why did you come out before you and your mother shared a secret?”
“We did,” the child replied. “You’re the secret.”
He chuckled. “I’m the secret?”
“You’re real,” she said, her voice full of awe. “You’re a real prince.” She glanced at his jeans and boots. “And you’re a cowboy, too.” She turned toward her mother. “Helen was wrong. Princes can be cowboys.”
He opened his mouth to tell her that he was no cowboy. But she was smiling up at him—a smile that lit up her whole face as if sunshine beamed right out of her eyes. And it warmed him from the outside in, straight to his heart.
He had been right to be afraid. He was in too deep with Jessica and with her beautiful, brave little girl. He was falling for them both—and he, better than most, knew that loving someone didn’t mean that you would always be able to protect them.
But he vowed then, as he stared down into that little girl’s smiling face, that he would try as hard as his father had. And if, like his father, he failed, he would at least die trying.
Chapter Ten
“Helen will be all right, then?” Jessica asked again, needing assurance.
The E.R. doctor, a young dark-haired woman, stood over the bed where an unconscious Helen lay, looking so battered and broken. “She has some broken ribs, a fractured nose and a concussion. We need to keep her for observation because of the concussion. Barring any complications, she will be able to go home within a couple of days.”
Home.
Alone.
Guilt clutched at Jessica, stealing her breath. She would not be able to go home with her friend. She couldn’t take care of Helen. She and Samantha had to leave. And in the long run, that would be better—safer—for Helen to have her out of her life. Hell, it would have been better for her had Jessica left years ago, or at least weeks ago when all the royals had descended on Dumont with their media coverage and press conferences.
She stepped out of Helen’s room and leaned against the corridor wall, trying to catch her breath. Since finding the door of the ranch house forced open, she hadn’t been able to breathe. After several deep breaths, she dug out the cell phone she’d grabbed and shoved into her pocket before Sebastian had driven her and Samantha to the hospital. It wasn’t the prince’s phone. It was the one she and Helen used on the ranch, and now she punched in one of Helen’s preprogrammed numbers.
A gruff voice uttered no greeting, just a, “Damn, woman, you don’t need to keep checking on me. I’m fine. It will all work out just fine.”
“Mr. McGuire, it’s Jessica. Not Helen.”
“Jessica?”
“I—I live with Helen.”
“Yes, I know who you are, but why are you calling me?” He groaned. “Oh, God, the sirens…I thought they were heading to the resort, that there was more trouble with those damn royals. Guess I should have known Callie would let me know if there was a problem there since she’s fallen for one of those visiting sheiks.”
Callie was the rancher’s daughter and the assistant to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. She worked out of D.C. but had been born and raised at the Seven M Ranch in Wind River. It was on the other side of the Rattlesnake Badlands from the Double J.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the royals, Mr. McGuire.” Even though Prince Sebastian believed otherwise, she knew better. This was all her fault. “Helen’s at the hospital.”
He audibly sucked in a breath. “She’s hurt?”
“Yes, sir. She’ll be fine, but they’ll be keeping her a couple of days for observation.”
“What happened? Horse throw her, or did she cut herself with some power tools?” he asked, then grumbled, “Damn stubborn woman works harder than any man I know.”
“I know.” She could only hope to be half as strong as Helen Jeffries was. But Helen had once been like her, an abused wife. That was how, at their first meeting in town four years ago, Helen had known what Jessica had been through and how badly she’d needed a friend. “But this wasn’t an accident. Helen was attacked and beaten.”
Curses rattled the phone. “Who did this? Who hurt her? Did Sheriff Wolf catch them?” “Not yet.”
“I bet this has something to do with the press conference one of those princes held this morning, stirring everything up again.”
“Did Helen tell you that I was the witness he was asking to come forward?”
“Helen never tells anyone’s business,” he defended his lady friend. “I just put it together this morning when I saw his press conference on TV. Before then I never even knew there was a witness. Then it made sense that it was you. You work up at the resort, and that road is the only one between it and the ranch.”
So Sebastian was right that whoever was behind that explosion could have figured out she was the witness and come after her because of that. But the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach warned her otherwise.
“None of what has happened around here has really been the royals’ fault,” she found herself defending them, specifically Prince Sebastian Cavanaugh.
“No,” he agreed with a heavy sigh. “But trouble just finds them.”
Jessica could see down the hall to the waiting room where Sebastian waited with Samantha. The little girl clung to him, sitting on his lap, her arms wrapped around him. Since climbing out from beneath the stairs, she had not let him go. If not for him, she might still be in her hiding place. He’d reached out to her, not just physically but emotionally. He’d connected to her little girl on a level that Jessica had not been able to.
Because he had lived through a similar situation…
From whom had he and his brother had to hide?
“Is she awake?” Clay asked.
“Helen?” Of course he was talking about Helen. She turned away from the waiting room. “Not yet. She has a concussion, so they’ve put her in a medical coma to avoid any swelling.”
His breath rattled the phone. “Probably a good thing because if she was awake that damn woman would be tracking down the guys who did this herself.”
Jessica smiled and agreed. “She probably would.”
“I’m on my way, but if she wakes up before I get to the hospital, can you tell her that I, that I…”
Her smile widened. “Yes?”
“Just tell her that I’ll be right there, okay?”
It was good that he would because Jessica couldn’t be there for her friend. But she wasn’t sure that Clay would be, either, in the long run. The two only casually dated. Neither wanted anything deeper or more complicated, or so they claimed.
Jessica understood. She didn’t want anything complicated, either, which was all that her feelings for Sebastian were—a complication. They had no future. If Evgeny had found her, as she suspected, then she had no future at all.
“I
S THE SHERIFF
still out at the ranch?” Sebastian asked, speaking into the cell phone he’d turned on despite the warning on the waiting room wall prohibiting their use. While some of the staff glanced at him, no one tried to enforce the rule. Of course he wasn’t the only one breaking it.
Jessica had used her phone already to call one of Helen’s friends. Now, while she waited for that friend to arrive, she let Samantha play games on the phone at a table in a corner of the waiting room. But she stayed close to her, as if worried that someone would storm in and grab the child from her arms.
“No, he’s left,” Antoine replied. “The forensics experts are still here, collecting evidence.” And apparently Antoine was overseeing their collection.
“Is Jane there?”
“Yeah, she finished up with your Hummer and came out to this scene. She’ll compare the bullets found here to the slug she pulled from the armrest.”
They’d fought earlier over Sebastian not immediately reporting the shooting, but perhaps his brother understood now that he had not been willing to let Jessica out of his sight even then. And now—never…
Or at least not until whoever was after her was apprehended. Then once she was safe, he’d have to let her go. What kind of future could they possibly have with her home in America and his home and responsibilities all in Barajas?
She’d been willing to leave her home out of fear. Would she leave it out of love? Not that he expected her to fall in love with him. Or he with her…
He shook off the wayward thoughts and focused on what was important. “Did they find anything that might lead us to the men in the van?”
“They found the van in the Rattlesnake Badlands,” Antoine replied.
“That is where those shots came from.”
“You need to go out there with the sheriff or Jane and point out exactly where those shots came from.”
“I can’t leave Jessica and Samantha.”
“They are not your responsibility,” Antoine said.
“They’re in danger, possibility because my press conference revealed her as the witness. They
are
my responsibility.”
Antoine did not argue with him.
“They found the van,” he said. “What about the men?” He would not let Jessica and Samantha out of his sight until they had been apprehended.
“The van was empty and on fire,” Antoine replied. “That was how they found it so easily.”
“That was how the men destroyed whatever evidence they might have left that would have led to their whereabouts.”
“We’ll find them,” Antoine vowed.
Samantha glanced up from her mother’s cell phone and smiled at him—that smile that lit up her face and the entire room and his heart. Her mother stared up at him, too, but her beautiful face was tense, with no smile. And those big eyes of hers were dark and full of fear.
“We have to find them,” Sebastian said. Movement near the doorway drew his attention from Jessica and Samantha. “The sheriff’s here.” He clicked off his cell.
The dark-haired man headed toward Jessica, but Sebastian stepped in front of him. “Sheriff, I need to speak with you.”
“You should have called me earlier.” Like Antoine, he was apparently not happy that Sebastian hadn’t immediately reported the shooting. “Right now I need to talk to Ms. Peters.”
“I was there at the ranch, too,” Sebastian reminded him.
“I need to talk to her about Helen Jeffries,” the sheriff said.
“I doubt this attack had anything to do with Mrs. Jeffries.” From everything Jessica had said about the woman, she seemed like a saint—someone very unlikely to have any enemies.
“I doubt that, too,” the sheriff admitted. “Those men were probably looking for Ms. Peters.”
Sebastian’s guts twisted with dread and fear. “I am certain they were looking for Ms. Peters.”
The sheriff nodded in agreement. “Because of what she witnessed.”
“You heard what she had to say,” Sebastian reminded the lawman. “She didn’t see anything that would lead to whoever was behind the explosion. Nor did she see anything that would lead us to Amir’s whereabouts.”
“Apparently they don’t know that.”
That was what he had believed, too. But maybe Jessica was right, and there was someone else after her. Some monster from her past…
A
WEIGHT DESCENDED
on Jessica’s chest, stealing the breath from her lungs. She couldn’t inhale from the mass she was suffocating under, the pressure bearing on her to run. Before it was too late…
But she couldn’t drag her gaze from the man standing on the other side of the room. Even though he was deep in conversation with the sheriff, he kept his implacable stare on her, as if unwilling to let her out of his sight.
Then he walked away from the sheriff and crossed the room toward her and Samantha. The little girl vaulted out of her chair and launched herself at Sebastian, climbing up his body and into his arms.
Jessica understood her daughter’s reaction. She wanted to crawl into his arms herself, but she couldn’t afford the luxury of dumping all her problems on someone else. Doing that to Helen could have cost the woman her life.
“Sheriff Wolf would like to talk to you,” Sebastian said.
“Me or…” She glanced at Samantha’s face. The child hadn’t said anything about what she’d heard while she’d been hiding in the closet, and Jessica hadn’t wanted to ask her until the child was ready to talk. She also suspected that she was not the person who should talk to Samantha about that. Neither was the sheriff.
He shook his head. “He’ll ask Helen about what happened.”
The little girl shivered when he said her friend’s name. Jessica had been careful that her daughter not see how badly Helen had been injured. She’d kept her in the kitchen until the ambulance had carried Helen to the hospital. Jessica had assured the little girl that the woman was fine but that the doctors were just being extra careful because Helen was so special.
“Then why does he want to talk to me?” Jessica asked. She didn’t want to sit for another inquisition like she had at the resort. Once Clay arrived at the hospital to be with Helen, she intended to take Samantha and leave Wind River forever.
“He wants your statement about what happened at the ranch,” he replied. “We took off after the ambulance before he had a chance to talk to us.”
“He didn’t talk to you very long,” she observed.
“I didn’t have as much to tell him as you do,” he said.
Her gaze slipped from his handsome face down to her daughter’s. “You want me to tell him about…”
“If you really believe he’s the one behind what happened today…”
Maybe she had jumped to conclusions. Maybe those men were only after her because of what she’d witnessed and it had nothing to do with Evgeny.
“I don’t know what to believe right now,” she admitted as exhaustion tugged at every muscle, weighing them down so that it took effort for her to rise from her chair.
“You can believe me,” he said. “You can believe that I will protect you and Samantha.”
She wanted to point out that he hadn’t even been able to protect his own friend from the explosion, but she couldn’t be that cruel. And it would be cruel because she knew how protective Sebastian was; it had to be killing him that his friend had been hurt, or maybe worse, and he hadn’t been able to help him.
“I’ll talk to the sheriff,” she agreed.
“You’ll tell him about…?” He glanced down at Samantha, who rested her head against his broad shoulder, as Jessica longed to do. They were being careful to avoid particulars while they talked, but the child must have picked up on the tone of their conversation. And probably on Jessica’s fear.
Had she let that fear make her irrational? Of course there was no doubt they were in danger, and she would be more foolish to not be afraid.
But she shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s been five years. Maybe there’s nothing to tell the sheriff.”
“Teresa!”
The shout—and the voice—drew her attention to the door. And to the man who’d just walked into the waiting room. Both the name and the man were from her past. If only they would have stayed there…
But as it all washed over her—all the pain and fear—hysteria rose and then bubbled out of her throat in a scream.