Royal Wedding Threat

“Oh!” Ava threw back her head with a sarcastic fake laugh. “And the gunmen who ran amok during Duchess Julia’s titling ceremony—was that an example—”

Jason gave up trying to type and instead reached across his desk toward the woman, pointing one finger as he spoke. “That is precisely why I can’t allow you to attempt to hold a royal wedding on an island. If gunmen can get inside these walls, they can easily attack an island.”

“Precisely my point. If either location is equally vulnerable—”

“They’re not vulnerable!” Jason snapped, wishing to end the conversation and get back to typing his report.

“Then there shouldn’t be a problem with using the island of Dorsi—”

“The island of Dorsi is off-limits. No one is allowed to step foot on that island.”

“All the more reason why it’s perfectly—” Ava rose to her feet as she tried to cut off his words.

But Jason would not be interrupted. “It’s too dangerous. It’s forbidden!” Jason found he had to stand as well, just to make himself heard. Besides, he couldn’t let the redhead tower over him.

“It’s absolutely not dangerous. My clients have already vetted the location—”

Outraged, Jason leaned across his desk. “No one is allowed to step foot on Dorsi.”

Ava planted her hands on the desktop and glared at him across the shiny surface. “I already have.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Princess Stasi and Kirk Covington took me there to show me where they wanted to hold the ceremony—in the ruins of the ancient cathedral where the Lydian kings and queens of old were married.”

“You’ve been to the island of Dorsi?” Jason had been there once, too—a memory he’d prefer to forget. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Maybe too dangerous for you.”

“I’ve been there—to retrieve a dead body.”

To his satisfaction, Ava looked the slightest bit startled by his words. “Whose dead body?”

“My predecessor, Viktor Bosch. He was captain of the royal guard before me. I was appointed after his death.” To Jason’s relief, his words silenced the wedding planner. “His death was a direct result of the dangers of the island. I cannot allow—”

But the woman’s fury rose with renewed vigor. “You cannot refuse a member of the royal family.” She leaned farther across the desk, invading his side.

“I can if it endangers safety.” Jason leaned forward again, wishing to push the woman back out of his space, using physical force if necessary. “And I already have.” He grabbed a self-inking stamp from his desk drawer and slapped the word against the paper with so much force droplets of red ink splattered around the letters.

Rejected.

Ava grabbed the stack of paper away from him. “You can’t—”

Jason tugged back on his half of the papers. He needed to file it with the king’s office to make it official. “I already did.”

“It’s not your decision to make!” Ava tugged on the pages.

Jason felt her fingers slipping and pulled harder, certain he’d nearly gained the advantage. “I’ve made the decision! It’s done,” he shouted over her words, even as she increased the volume of her demands.

Suddenly the door across from him swung open, and Jason looked up to see Galen and Titus, two of his royal guardsmen, standing in the open doorway, watching his wrestling match with the wedding planner in obvious shock and amusement.

“We did knock.” Titus cleared his throat. “No one answered.”

“We heard sounds of distress and felt it in the best interest of your safety to open the door,” Galen added.

Hoping to take advantage of the momentary distraction, Jason gave the papers a final hard tug. To his surprise, however, Ava held on so tightly his efforts pulled her partway onto his desk.

The wedding planner glared up at him furiously.

Jason stopped tugging on the papers but didn’t release them. While letting her keep hold of the papers wouldn’t result in her getting her way, he couldn’t bear the thought of giving her the satisfaction of prevailing over him, not when she’d already gotten her way so many times. It was almost as though she held more authority than he did—it hadn’t escaped his noticed that his men in the gatehouse had unlocked the pedestrian gate for her, even though he’d been right behind her.

As the youngest captain in the history of the royal guard, he didn’t always feel as though his men thought he deserved his position of authority over them. Ava’s constant triumphs degraded his power—which complicated his efforts to keep the royal family safe.

Titus continued, “The Sardis bomb squad has found something they want you to see.”

Immediately concerned, Jason asked, “Is it safe?”

“It’s a small bit of residue on the ground,” Galen clarified. “They think it might be bomb-related material. The dogs sniffed it out.”

“I’ll take a look.” Jason glanced at Ava. “You can stay here.”

“I’m coming, too.” She shot him a look that said she wasn’t about to back down.

Having fought the woman enough times before, Jason had learned to pick his battles. He didn’t need his men to watch him be defeated by the wedding planner. “Fine. But the papers stay here. And you’ll do as I say.”

He heard Ava make a noise in her throat, followed by hushed snickers from his men.

Jason chafed, not just that the woman so openly defied him, but that her disobedience was obvious to his men—and apparently amused them to the point of barely stifled disrespect. His men—the royal guards who’d served alongside him for years—were drilled in decorum. They understood ceremony and symbolism and the dignity of their positions. But the newest recruits from the army, including Titus, were a rougher sort, more interested in proving their strength than polishing their shoes. If the royal guard hadn’t desperately needed the manpower, he’d have sent the men back to the army.

His inability to control the wedding planner set a particularly bad example for his men. At a time when he wanted the new recruits to learn etiquette and protocol, Ava Wright made them snicker and crack jokes behind his back.

He needed to regain full control of the royal guard.

Too bad the wedding planner seemed equally determined to control everything within her reach.

If he was going to control the royal guard, he’d have to set things straight with the wedding planner first.

* * *

Ava watched as the captain bent to inspect what appeared to be a random patch of cobblestones. They were a little over a block away from the place where her car still smoldered, a blackened testimony to the violence that had invaded her morning.

“We’ve taken samples,” a member of the bomb squad told the captain soberly. “We’ll have to process them at the lab to learn exactly what it is, but based on the dogs’ reaction, it’s most likely residue from an explosive.”

They stood about eight feet from the sidewalk—where the driver would have stepped through the door of a compact car, had a vehicle still been parked there. Ava tried to sort out what the men were saying. “So whoever put the bomb in my car may have parked here, in this spot?”

“Exactly.” Jason nodded. “We can review the footage from the security cameras on the palace wall to see if they picked up anything, although I’ll warn you, the cameras are designed to protect the walls, not the streets of Sardis outside our jurisdiction. We might not have gotten much. What was the time window that your car was parked on this street?”

“I arrived to meet with the princess shortly before eight, then stopped by your office to get your approval on the wedding plans. You kept me waiting.”

Jason didn’t apologize. “The explosion happened shortly after ten. That’s more than a two-hour window. Any number of vehicles may have come and gone in that time.”

Though she was tempted to point out to the captain that he might have narrowed the window by agreeing to see her when she’d first arrived at headquarters, another thought made her heart beat with apprehension. “A car pulled away from this spot right after the explosion.”

Both the captain and the members of the bomb squad looked surprised.

“You mean you saw a car drive off?” Jason clarified.

Ava nodded, the memory rushing back clearly now. She was certain of what she’d seen. Everything had happened so quickly, and yet she distinctly recalled seeing a car pull away—in the back of her dazed mind, she’d thought to herself the driver was fortunate to have parked ahead of her on the street. Otherwise the vehicle would have had to drive past her smoldering car to leave.

The bomb tech scowled at the captain. “The person witnessed an explosion, but instead of checking to see if everyone was all right, he fled?”

“Maybe he was scared?” Ava suggested, her voice betraying that same emotion.

“Or guilty.” Jason ran a frustrated hand through his hair, exposing the silvery flecks that framed his close-cropped ebony hair. “We need to look at that footage. Can you describe the car you saw?”

“It was a car,” Ava told him, recalling all she could.

“Make or model?”

Ava bit her lip. She hadn’t looked closely enough to see any details—most of her attention had been on the pain in her legs and all the confusion around her. The ringing in her ears hadn’t helped her focus at all, either.

“Color?” Jason prompted.

Ava pinched her eyes shut, replaying the memory. “Dark?” She couldn’t say anything more certain than that.

To his credit, Captain Selini neither laughed nor rolled his eyes. “We’ll have to look at the footage. Are we done here?” he asked the bomb tech.

The squad member nodded. “We’ll give you a call when we get the results on those samples.”

Ava walked alongside the captain as he headed back toward the pedestrian gate in the palace wall, to the royal-guard headquarters building that lay inside the palace grounds. They passed the smoldering remains of her car, and she glanced at it, her steps wavering as she considered what might have happened if she hadn’t stopped and turned back to face the captain.

She could have been killed. At the very least, it would have been her face that was disfigured, instead of her ankles.

Suddenly the captain took hold of her arm. “Are you okay?”

Ava wanted to dismiss his question with a laugh, but she had to struggle to catch her breath, and she felt uncharacteristically unsteady on her feet. Attempting to straighten, to pull away from the support of his hand on her arm, she instead stumbled forward unsteadily, her high heels catching in the gaps between the cobblestones.

Jason clasped one hand around her waist. For an instant, she feared he was going to hoist her over his shoulder and trundle her off as before, but instead he met her eyes with surprising concern. “Don’t look at the car,” he told her in a soothing voice. “Just walk slowly. One foot in front of the other.”

In any other situation, Ava would have snapped at him. But it was all she could do to lean on his arm and step slowly forward as instructed. She glanced at his face and found his eyes on hers, concerned, reassuring. His eyes, which had only ever seemed cold and steel-gray before, now held a hint of compassion she hadn’t expected.

“I am not an invalid,” she told him sharply as soon as she found her voice. She needed to push him away. It was her personal policy not to trust anyone. She’d learned that lesson the hard way, enough that she didn’t usually forget. Trust led to pain. Always.

And yet, for the moment at least, it seemed she needed him. His strong arm kept her upright, when otherwise she might fall. She felt so light-headed, the memory and the fear swirling together in her mind. What would have happened if Jason hadn’t stopped her from reaching her car? And why had someone planted a bomb there? Granted, she didn’t go out of her way to be nice to people—not anymore, not since the two people she most trusted on earth had taken advantage of her trust so horribly.

But surely her newfound assertiveness hadn’t prompted the attack. Perhaps she had become prickly, maybe even harsh. She’d only meant to keep people from getting too close to her. She’d never dreamed it would be enough to provoke someone to attempt to kill her.

THREE

Jason watched the images on the security screens as Oliver replayed the relevant moments. As he’d feared, Ava’s car had been parked on the edge of the security camera’s range, with only the rear bumper in view. The vehicle she’d watched drive away moments after the explosion had been far beyond that. They didn’t get so much as a shadow.

“That’s it?” Ava asked impatiently from where she stood near his elbow. “You haven’t got a single image of any of it?”

“You parked beyond the range of our cameras,” Jason explained, trying to keep the frustration he felt from entering his voice. The woman could be difficult to deal with on a good day. She was already upset enough.

“I normally park closer, but that was the nearest spot when I arrived this morning.”

Convinced the screens had nothing more to show him, Jason turned to face the wedding planner. Her tone might have been icy, but her eyes were round with fear.

As well they should be. Among the many questions that vied for his attention, the foremost was whether the woman had been specifically targeted, or if her car had been randomly chosen for its position near the palace, but beyond the range of his cameras. Until he could answer with confidence that she had no more to fear than anyone else, he needed to take steps to keep her safe.

“Stay here and review the footage,” he told her. “I have some phone calls to make.”

Jason strode to his office, thinking quickly. There were apartments built into the rear wall of the palace grounds. Once used to house servants of the royal family, they continued to provide lodging for long-term guests and staff, even some of his guards. If he could secure a vacancy, the wedding planner could stay inside the safety of the palace walls, under the watchful eyes of his guards.

“Where are you going?” Ava’s demanding tone carried down the hall after him.

Jason mustered up his patience as he called back to her, “To my office to make some phone calls.”

“So you’re just leaving me? That’s it? I don’t have a car anymore. What am I supposed—”

He raised a hand to shush her. “The phone calls are for your benefit. I’m trying to find you a place to stay.”

“It was my car that blew up, not my apartment.”

“You don’t need a car.” Jason reached his office and hurried inside, wishing he could close the door and keep her out.

“Yes, I do! I have a business to run.” She stomped into the office after him. “I’ve got a wedding in eight days and another in less than four months. I have work to do.”

“The guards can drive you.”

“Guards? I don’t want—”

“I don’t care what you want. It’s for your safety. I’m going to find you a place to stay near the guards.”

“I don’t want to stay near your guards! They want to throw me in the river like a sack of kittens.” A note of despair carried through her bossy tone.

“No, that was me, as I recall.” Jason hoped his admission might deflate her anger. For a moment, as he glanced at her to gauge the effect of his words, he thought he caught a glimmer of gratitude in her eyes—as though she understood the effort he’d put into his gracious words and appreciated the gesture.

But in an instant, cold fury snapped into her eyes again. “You wish I’d made it to my car before the bomb went off, don’t you?”

Jason glared at her, wondering if he’d imagined the gratitude in her eyes. Why would she be so mean to him if she understood he was trying to assuage her concerns? He’d wondered before, while arguing with her, if she wasn’t actually trying to pick a fight with him, to egg him on instead of making peace.

But why would she do that?

Really, for all he’d done for her that morning, bandaging her cuts and dropping everything else on his morning schedule, she ought to have shown him a little appreciation. “I wish the bomb hadn’t gone off at all. I wish there’d been no bomb. But since there was, and since you were the recipient, intended or not, we’ve got to put you under guard.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Someone may be trying to kill you. That car that pulled away may have been the bomber, waiting to see if his efforts worked. If so, he knows you’re still alive. Given the risks he’s taken so far, there’s no reason to think he isn’t going to try again.”

Ava blinked at him. “I don’t have time for this. I have work to do.”

“So do I. The longer I argue with you, the further I fall behind. Let me make some phone calls and we’ll see what we can do to keep you safe until we sort this out.”

Theresa Covington, the palace household manager, answered his phone call. He inquired about an available room among the palace-wall apartments and was relieved that Theresa was able to reserve an apartment for Ava. “Thank you, Theresa. Have a lovely day.” He closed the call with the household manager and smiled at Ava.

She scowled at him. “What?”

“I’ll drive you to your apartment so you can pack a bag.”

“I’m not staying among your guards.”

“You’ll have your own apartment. There are guards also staying in the palace-wall apartments. Theresa told me you stayed in one when you first arrived in Lydia, before you found your own place.” Jason stepped past her down the hall, poking his head into the switchboard room to tell Oliver where he was going.

Ava followed him, still frowning. “I don’t appreciate this loss of my freedom. I have an important job to do.”

In spite of her protests, she followed him to the royal garages.

Jason chose a bulletproof vehicle. Only the new limousines, ordered since the insurgent ambush the previous summer, had armor plating, and he couldn’t justify driving the wedding planner in a limo. The bulletproof sedan should be more than adequate for a quick trip to Ava’s apartment.

Fortunately Ava’s place wasn’t far from the palace complex, and the drive passed in silence. Jason would have fumed at the woman’s rudeness, except that he’d seen that glimmer of fear in her eyes, that wounded little girl who’d peeked out when she thought no one was looking, and he began to wonder if she wasn’t picking fights with him on purpose. Perhaps her anger was a ruse to distract him from something deeper. But what?

Jason parked in front of Ava’s building, just across the street from her door. “Wait for me to walk you in,” he told her as he put the car in Park and turned off the engine.

But to his chagrin, the woman ignored him, stepping out as he pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the driver’s side door. Ava quickly rounded the front of the vehicle and glanced up and down the empty street before darting across toward her door.

Jason saw it all in a single glance—Ava’s unsteady, injured trot across the two empty traffic lanes; the charcoal-gray Volkswagen Jetta that pulled out from the curb just over a block away the moment Ava turned her attention from looking both ways to walking; and the squeal of tires that betrayed the VW’s sudden acceleration.

Jason leaped into action, shouting at Ava to hurry as he ran toward her. She was already in progress crossing the street. The car approached in the same lane he’d been driving in, on the side of the street opposite her apartment. If she hurried, she’d be out of the way in time.

But even as Jason bounded toward her, he glimpsed the car swerving toward them, into the other lane. Ava was hobbling far too slowly in her three-inch heels. She’d never make it.

With only half a second to act, Jason scooped an arm around Ava’s waist and leaped with her toward the curb. He had her nearly to the sidewalk when the Jetta, oblivious of the curb or the neat little flower patch in front of Ava’s apartment, swerved onto the sidewalk, knocking his legs out from under him and sending his back smashing into the windshield and side mirror.

It was a glancing blow, but the force was enough to send them both airborne for several feet. Jason tightened his arms around Ava, tucking her head into the relative safety of his chest as they hit the sidewalk and rolled.

He looked for the car, fearful the vehicle might swing around and take a second pass. The two of them were high up on the sidewalk now, nearly against the steps of Ava’s building, but the curb hadn’t stopped the car before, and if it decided to pin them to the concrete steps, not even his embrace would shield the wedding planner from injury.

To his relief, he saw the Jetta disappear over the rim of the hill, speeding away. Unfortunately, given the distance, he couldn’t make out the plate number.

Jason turned his attention to Ava next. “Are you okay?” He had her still tucked tight against him, but pulled back just far enough so he could see her face.

One red-nailed hand clutched his shirt. She blinked up at him. “What was that?”

Even more disheveled than after her last brush with death, the wedding planner didn’t look at all her usual prickly, put-together self. Jason felt his heart twist with sympathy. “That,” he groaned as he rolled onto his back in preparation for sitting up, “is proof that whoever bombed your car this morning is targeting you specifically.”

* * *

Ava pinched her eyes shut and held tight to Captain Selini’s shirt. She didn’t like the man—couldn’t stand him most days—but right now she’d have gladly buried her face against his shoulder and sobbed.

The captain spoke rapidly into his earpiece, instructing his dispatcher to send men in a car. But his words came in shallow gasps and his face turned deep red as he struggled to breathe.

“Are you okay?” Ava asked in a whisper, scrutinizing his features as she awaited his response. Had the car simply knocked the wind from his lungs, or was he seriously injured?

Her conscience stabbed her. If she’d waited to cross the street with him as he’d said, would they still have been hit? The car had struck him directly and thrown him hard against the cement. What if he died because she hadn’t listened?

It occurred to Ava as she stared at his face that the captain wasn’t as old as she’d assumed him to be, in spite of the early gray that flecked his hair. For all the times she’d argued with him, she’d never bothered to look at him closely—part of her personal policy against getting close to any person in any way. But now as she watched him from inches away, she realized he was hardly any older than she was.

Jason Selini groaned as he sucked in a breath.

Ava rolled onto her side, out of his way as he struggled to sit up. “Can I help you?” she asked, extending one hand, realizing only when she saw that her hands were empty that she’d left the plans for Princess Anastasia’s wedding in the car. Suddenly the plans didn’t seem so important. The captain appeared to be in real pain.

“Is your back broken?”

Jason winced. “I’m wearing body armor.” He strained to breathe. “That took the bulk of the blow, probably saved us both, but my steel plate is dented now.” Captain Selini grasped the steps as he pulled himself to standing. “Let’s get off this street.”

Suddenly fearful that the dark car might return, Ava hurried to her door and let them into the small shared foyer, then led the way to her apartment door, unlocking it carefully.

“Wait.” Jason’s hand covered hers. “They know where you live. They were waiting for us.” He ran his hands around the door frame. Ava assumed he was checking for trip wires or a triggering device of some nature.

Fear pounded from Ava’s heart to her ears in one beat. “They’d have to come through the front door to get to this one. They’re both locked.”

“Open it slowly.” The captain relented, straining to breathe, his face frightfully red.

Wishing she could hurry and help the captain before he passed out, Ava nonetheless did as instructed, watching and waiting, ready to spring away if the captain gave any sort of signal at all.