Defending the Duchess (16 page)

She made it through the song, and somehow through the recessional, with everyone who’d come in ahead of her exiting before her. Through it all Linus stood at attention in his place, ready to lead her wherever she needed to go. He stood beside her in the receiving line as dignitaries
from area nations shook her hand, or nodded or bowed according to their custom.

When he disappeared for a moment, she felt a surge of fear that something might have happened. She glanced at the guards along the walls, but they looked as stoic as ever. And then Linus returned to her side. “Thirsty?” He held out a full glass of punch.

“What would I do without you?” She accepted the glass
gratefully.

After an informal hour of hors d’oeuvres presented by circling wait staff bearing trays, the orchestra began to play, and Monica cornered her to ask if she was ready to dance.

“Dance?” Julia felt sure she’d have remembered that part if she’d been warned ahead of time.

But Monica only laughed off her fears and pointed her in the right direction.

“Do you know how
to dance?” Julia asked Linus in a whisper as he led her to the center of the floor.

“I have three older sisters,” he explained with a wry smile. “They used me as a practice dummy. Just don’t ask me to jitterbug. Things might get a little crazy.”

His words brought a smile to her lips and eased her fears. Once she had the rhythm down and the cameras eased their most frantic snapping, she
relaxed and took advantage of a moment to chat. “You’ve got your earpiece in,” she noted. “Anything happening?”

“Everything’s been quiet so far. I hope your theory was right. Klein and Roland should know better than to try to get to you at such a populated event.”

“I’m grateful for that. I’d hate for anything to happen with all these people here. There’d be too great a chance of someone
getting hurt. But still...” Her words drifted off as more flashbulbs snapped, distracting her.

“Still?” Linus asked after they’d circled the floor for a few smooth moments.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m asking for trouble, but I almost wish something would happen while we have extra security in place. We’re prepared for them, or as prepared as we’ve ever been. And I want so much for
all of this to end. It won’t end until we catch them, and I can’t see how we’re going to catch them if they don’t make another move.” She’d no sooner spoken than she apologized. “I don’t want to put anyone in danger, but we’re all in danger as long as the killers remain at large.”

* * *

Linus heard the heartfelt note in Julia’s voice. It struck a chord inside him, echoing with the same
guilty resonance that had struck him when he’d realized the senseless scrawlings he’d picked out from the burnt papers were really key clues to solving the case.

“Don’t apologize for wanting to see justice served,” he murmured near her ear as the music changed and their steps slowed to match the rhythm.

She drifted closer to him, and he was glad to have her there, though he cautioned
his heart not to leap with too much joy, because she wasn’t his, not even for a moment. “If anyone needs to apologize, I do.”

“Why?” Julia’s surprise seemed sincere.

“I didn’t recognize the names of the other companies Motormech bought out.”

“I’m sure very few people outside of the Seattle area or technology fields would have recognized those names.”

“But I had the brochure.
I could have made the connection two days ago—”

“What do you mean by that? You picked out those names from the burnt documents, when I’d pored over them and spotted nothing but random letters. You didn’t get in the way, you moved the case forward.”

Linus wanted to make her understand, but he realized at her comments that he blamed himself for more than just missing the clue. She was
royalty now, and he was just her guard. He couldn’t act on his feelings toward her. He didn’t even have a right to raise the issue.

“You’re right,” he rushed to apologize. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Julia pulled slightly closer, her perfume swirling around him as they twirled across the floor. “I’m not upset—” Her voice broke.

Alarmed, Linus pulled back far enough
to get a clear look at her eyes. “Julia,” he tried to soothe her, tried to keep them dancing smoothly across the floor, but her steps faltered and he realized she was no longer up to dancing.

They’d made it through the first couple of songs, anyway. Could they slip away?

“I’m all right,” she said with a sniffle, not sounding the least bit all right.

“Let’s step out for some air.”

Julia didn’t answer out loud, only sniffled more as she leaned on his arm and he led her from the dance floor.

“Everything okay?” Simon’s voice buzzed in his earpiece.

As they escaped to the relative privacy of the hallway, Linus replied. “The duchess just needs a little air. Everything okay on your end?”

“All clear here. Tell the duchess to enjoy her evening.”

“Sure thing.”

They reached the interior courtyard and strolled toward the gardens, where the fountain was lit with colored lights, and strands of tiny white bulbs encircled the topiaries, casting a romantic glow across the flowers and hedges.

Julia inhaled the fresh air. “It’s a lovely night.”

To Linus’s relief, Julia sounded calmer. The tranquil garden had a soothing effect on him as well, and
he breathed out the tension he’d been feeling. After all the preparations they’d made, fearing for the worst, it seemed the night was going to go off without a hitch. The sounds of the orchestra filtered out through the open palace windows, and Linus imagined the swirling couples they’d left behind on the dance floor.

Suddenly his earpiece snapped to life again. “Get the duchess to a secure
location. We’re locking down the ballroom.”

“What’s the situation?” Linus asked as he guided Julia swiftly back in the direction of the palace.

“We have visual confirmation on the west wall. Two men have breached the perimeter. They knocked out the guard who tried to intercept them.”

“Where are they now?”

“It’s unclear,” Simon responded, his attention clearly on learning the
answer to that exact question. “I have running figures in the garden, but it’s too dark to say if they’re friend or foe.”

Linus rushed Julia toward the shallow steps to the cobbled courtyard.

“What is it?” Julia asked, holding her long gown up above her feet with one hand as she bounded up the stairs, clinging to his arm with her other hand for balance.

“Perimeter breach. They may
be in the garden.”

Julia glanced behind them and gasped. “It’s Roland,” she said, then shrank against Linus. “He has a gun!”

SIXTEEN

J
ulia shrank against the marble column as Linus covered her.

She didn’t hear the sound of shooting, but hardly found its absence reassuring.

Linus spoke in low, urgent tones into his earpiece as he held her tight against the cold pillar. “We have one armed perp in the garden. He’s north of the fountain, skirting the hedges slowly. I don’t think he knows we’ve
seen him.”

Julia could only guess that the splashing water from the fountain, combined with the orchestra music still pouring out of the palace, had kept Roland from hearing Linus. And with the cover of the many blooms and hedges, perhaps the man hadn’t spotted them yet.

Or perhaps he only wanted them to think he hadn’t seen them.

“Let’s get inside,” Julia said as she clung to Linus’s
lapels, feeling exposed in the wide open courtyard.

“They’ve locked down the ballroom to keep the intruder out,” Linus explained.

Julia closed her eyes, knowing it was for the best. From what she’d heard of the plans being laid in the past two days, if there was any breach of security, the palace would be locked down, but the events would continue on schedule to avoid panicking the crowd.
The people dancing in the ballroom were likely oblivious to the fact that the doors had been locked all around them, and that an armed intruder was creeping along the hedges just outside.

“The executioner’s escape,” she whispered to Linus, who seemed focused on whatever updates he was receiving via his earpiece. “If we stay low on the stairs, the balustrade will shield us until we get inside.”

She felt Linus’s nose brush her ear as he spoke in an urgent whisper.

“They’ve got the gunman on camera. He’s moving to the left.” Linus changed tones, addressing his fellow guards. “Tell me the moment his back is turned, and we’ll make a break for it.”

Julia tensed, holding her long skirts well off her feet, poised to run the instant Linus got the signal.

The courtyard seemed
deceptively peaceful. If she hadn’t seen the gunman with her own eyes, she would have had trouble believing that any threat could be lurking in the verdant gardens.

“Now!” Linus darted for the stone steps, ducking low as he ran with one arm looped around Julia’s waist, half shielding, half carrying her as they bounded together up the stairs, taking the shallow steps in twos and threes.

Julia couldn’t see her feet, but trusted that Linus’s steady grip would keep her from falling. Far more than a tumble down the stairs, she feared that the man behind them would see them in time to get a shot off in their direction.

To her relief, more columns shielded them from view as they paused at the blank wall of stones that camouflaged the secret entrance. “How did we open this last
time?” she whispered, frantically searching with her fingers for the protruding stone that had served as a handle.

Linus found it first and gave it a tug just as Julia heard plinking against the columns behind them. He shoved her through the opening and followed, pulling the door closed tight behind them.

“He’s got a silencer on his gun.”

“Those were bullets hitting the pillar?”
Julia panted hard from the combination of their sudden sprint and the surging fear she felt.

“I’m afraid so,” Linus said as he wrapped his arm around her again. “He spotted us.”

“Is there any way to lock that thing behind us?” Julia couldn’t see anything in the pitch black of the stone chamber.

“Not that I know of.” Linus fumbled with something, and a tiny penlight pierced the darkness
with its slender beam. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

Julia wanted to ask which way he thought they should go, but Linus was back to talking into his earpiece again, instructing the other guards to apprehend the man in the courtyard. Knowing how many extra soldiers they had on duty that night, Julia reassured herself that the man would be quickly apprehended, and the guests in the ballroom would
never have to know about the danger just beyond the palace walls.

But Linus tensed beside her. “What? No.” He spoke into the earpiece. “We have a gunman in the courtyard.” He sounded upset.

“What is it?”

“The guards are caught up containing the protests of irate guests who believe they should be allowed to leave the ballroom. With a greater potential for loss of life, their immediate
safety takes precedence over going after the gunman.”

“No,” Julia moaned, but her voice was buried under the sound of stone grating on stone.

A beam of light filtered in behind them.

“The stairs,” Linus whispered as he scooped her up again, bounding up the spiraling stairs with his arm slung around her waist.

It was all Julia could do to keep her skirt free of her feet. As
they came to the third floor landing, she instinctively leaned toward the panel that would take them outside.

“No,” Linus cautioned her. “To the roof!”

But a bullet ricocheted through the stairwell chamber, and Linus quickly changed his mind. “All right then.”

Julia realized as Linus leaned into the blank wall with his shoulder that they’d never figured out how to open the passageway.
His phone had rung while they’d been exploring, and they’d never made it past that point. She didn’t know what lay beyond.

The false wall gave way under the pressure of Linus’s shoulder and he pushed her though the opening, pulling the wall closed after them.

“Shh.” He buried his face in her hair so that he spoke directly into her ear with the softest of whispers. “He may not know which
way we went.”

Julia tensed, grateful for Linus’s arms around her. Just beyond the pounding of her heart, she heard a slight, shuffling echo as Hugo Roland scurried up the stairs. The sound faded upward, and Julia tightened her grip on Linus’s arm, praying Roland would miss them, praying the other guards would catch him before he realized where they’d gone.

“Is the third-floor courtyard
balcony clear?” Linus inquired into his earpiece.

But a moment later, the scuffling sound was back, growing louder as the steps drew closer, pausing at the landing where they’d pushed through the wall. Then a soft scratching indicated the man was feeling along the wall for the way through.

Linus didn’t speak, but Julia gathered the guards must have told him that the courtyard was clear,
because he swept his fingers along the outer wall, searching for a latch before shoving against the stones with his shoulder.

The wall cracked open in front of them just as the partition behind them gave way.

Julia squeezed through the narrow space, hoping to pull Linus out after her, but he recoiled back into the narrow space between the doorways, and she realized with desperate fear
that he was going to try to take out the gunman by himself.

“Stay clear—get down!” Linus instructed her as he dived back toward the armed man.

* * *

Linus knew he’d only have the advantage of surprise for a split second. He couldn’t waste it. More than that, he couldn’t allow Roland to follow them out onto the balcony. There would be nowhere to hide, no way to shield the duchess
except with his own body—and if the gunman brought him down, Julia would have no protection at all.

Instead he threw himself at the false wall between them the moment the man started through the opening, leading with his gun drawn.

Crack!

The stones caught Roland in the shoulder, squeezing him between the facade and its frame, but at the same moment, he squeezed the trigger.

The shot went wild. Linus grabbed Roland by the arm and slammed his hand against the wall, trying to knock the gun from his hand. When that didn’t work, he tried to pry it from his fingers.

But with both hands on the gun, Linus couldn’t keep the man from squeezing into the tiny room between the two false walls. With desperate urgency, he forced the gun from Roland’s hand.

It clattered
against the stone floor.

The man was through the door now, and there was hardly room in the narrow space for Linus to pull back his arm, let alone swing his leg around to kick the man. Instead he tackled him, lunging atop his shoulders and trying to force him back the way he’d come. But his oversize attacker only pushed his way forward, slamming Linus against the wall.

Linus slid low,
trying to punch his attacker, to push him away, but there wasn’t room to maneuver. Roland slipped one arm up and got him in a headlock, tearing at his hair, his ears, and the wire to his earpiece, which he tore free and flung away, taking the microphone with it.

“Linus!” Julia gasped from the doorway.

He turned his head to shout at her, to urge her to get away, but even as he spotted
the figure behind her, the man spoke.

“Freeze!”

It was Tom Klein. He swung the stone door open wide as he prodded Julia forward with the barrel of his gun.

Beyond them, in the rosy glow of the fountain’s lights, Linus glimpsed his fellow guards stealthily approaching the courtyard from the garden. From what he could tell, their attackers were unaware of the guards approaching.

But they were too late. Klein shoved Julia hard against Linus, stepped in after her, and closed the false wall tight behind them. “Upstairs,” he grunted, and Julia stifled a tiny gasp which could only mean he’d prodded her again with his gun. “To the roof.”

Roland had taken advantage of the interruption to reclaim his gun from the floor. The moment he had the barrel pointed at them, Julia
made a tiny wincing sound, and Linus angled his head around just far enough to see Klein slip a pair of handcuffs around her wrists.

Linus would have lunged toward them, but he was too far from the gun. Anything he tried now would likely only endanger Julia. A moment later, the man stepped past her, jerked Linus’s arms behind his back, and cuffed him, as well.

Linus’s heart sank. If
he’d had any shot at overpowering the two armed men, of gaining the upper hand during a moment of distraction, his hope was lost now. Without the use of his arms or hands, any fight he might try to start would be over quickly, and then he and the duchess would be only that much worse off. There was nothing for it but to do what the men said, and to pray. The words of the twenty-fifth Psalm cycled
furiously through his thoughts.

Save me from my enemies. Those who trust in You are not defeated, but those who rebel against You are defeated.
Linus glanced at the two henchmen who’d brought them so much trouble over the past week. They’d likely been the ones to pull the trigger on Fletcher Pendleton and Scott Gordon as well. But even then, they weren’t the real enemy. Someone else was giving
them orders.

Linus wondered if he’d ever learn who the real mastermind was behind Motormech’s deceits. He’d only ever seen Klein and Roland. Together the two of them ushered Linus and Julia up the stone steps toward the roof. Linus had no choice but to do what they said. He couldn’t risk Julia being injured.

He could only pray his fellow guards would figure out what was happening and
put a stop to it—but they’d have to be careful. If the guards burst in and spooked Klein or Roland, both he and the duchess would surely be shot.

And without his communication device, he couldn’t even warn the guards to stay away.

* * *

Julia stumbled up the stairs, goaded on by the prod of the gun barrel in her back, hindered by her long gown and the slippers on her feet. At least
the men had cuffed her wrists in front of her. She was able to more or less hold her skirt off her feet as she toppled up the stairs, now and again careening into Linus’s side without the free use of her arms for balance.

They reached the top of the stairs. No sooner had Julia guessed they’d come to the roof than Roland tugged the hatch open and shoved her through it.

She stumbled to
her feet on the gentle slope of the tiled roof. For a few fleeting seconds they stood in the open air, and Julia wondered what the men’s intentions were. Then a helicopter appeared out of the night sky and touched down on a flat stretch of roof along the peak.

The gunmen pushed them toward the craft, its blades still spinning.

“Don’t get on the helicopter,” Linus whispered as he flung
himself backward against the gunmen.

Startled, Julia ducked. She understood why Linus didn’t want her aboard the chopper—she feared that if they got on, they’d never return to the palace. Not alive, anyway.

She spun around in time to see Linus take out one of the men with a leaping kick. He landed on his feet, but between the slope of the roof and his inability to use his bound hands
for balance, it took him a moment to recover. In that time, the other figure advanced and clapped him across the cheek with his gun.

“Get on board!” the man shouted, shoving Linus at Julia while brandishing his gun.

Julia had no choice but to go where she was pushed. It was difficult enough to keep her balance and not slip down the tiles while going the direction they shoved her. Though
she couldn’t fault Linus for his courage, his skirmish had angered the gunmen. They looked ready to shoot if provoked any further.

They shoved Linus ahead of her into the copter, kicking him in the legs as they pushed him in. Then one of the gunmen plucked her up by her arms and tossed her inside. Before she had her bearings the door was closed, and she felt her stomach dip as the craft lifted
off again.

Julia struggled to catch her breath and assess her position. The helicopter didn’t have any seats, just a carpeted floor where she and Linus had been flung against the far wall. She felt the rise and fall of Linus’s shoulder with each breath and realized she’d landed with her face pressed against him, her tiara knocked askew, her knee throbbing from being knocked against the doorway
of the helicopter when they’d tossed her in.

“Are you all right?” she asked Linus in a whisper, praying he’d say he was.

“Shut up!” one of their captors shouted from behind her.

She startled at the sound and clamped her mouth shut, wondering where they were taking her and how she was ever going to get away.

They couldn’t have gone far, because moments later the helicopter sank
down and the blades ceased their furious churning. Bright lights assaulted her eyes as Roland and Klein shoved her out onto a graveled driveway. As her eyes adjusted to the floodlights trained upon them, Julia made a number of realizations all at once.