The Princess Predicament (9 page)

“No, he wouldn’t have,” Cosmo agreed. “You keep making the mistake of assuming our orders are coming from the king.”

Oh, God!
The royal security force had been compromised and the royal jet hijacked.

Whit doubted he had to worry about their bringing them back to St. Pierre. He had to worry about their bringing them anywhere.

Alive.

* * *

G
ABRIELLA
’
S
HEART
POUNDED
fast and furiously, and it wasn’t just because she was a somewhat nervous flyer. She had her hands braced against opposite walls of the tiny bathroom. And her ear pressed to the door, she heard everything being said between the men.

They weren’t acting on her father’s orders. She figured that might have been the case when she’d boarded and recognized the man she had shot. The fact that he’d already been aboard the plane meant that he was working with the men from her father’s old security team. And she doubted her father would have approved that man nearly shooting her. Because he would have if not for Whit knocking him out.

She had suspected then how much danger she and Whit and their baby were in. So she had feigned the fainting and sickness to get away from them.

Having her suspicions confirmed actually produced a flash of relief before panic overwhelmed her. These men didn’t work for her father.

So who did they work for?

The person who’d left that note threatening her life? Or Linus’s father, determined to carry out his creepy plot? Or were they working for themselves, having come up with their own retirement plan: ransom?

If that was their plan, they might let her live—at least until they got money from her father. But what about Whit? They had no reason to keep him alive.

She had been waiting for the royal bodyguard to help her. But he was the one who needed her help. She had only just realized that when she heard him goad the men.

“You can’t fire those guns on a plane. One stray bullet and you could bring it down.”

Were they already going to execute him?

She eased open the door slightly and peered through the crack. Whit was in the aisle, pushing against the men standing between him and the cockpit.

“Then we’ll make sure all of them hit you,” Bruno replied, lifting his weapon to point the barrel right at Whit’s chest.

The men were so focused on him that they didn’t notice as Gabby eased out the door. She stepped into the aisle and snuck toward the back of the plane—to the cargo hold.

Assess the situation...

Charlotte’s words echoed inside Gabby’s head. Her former bodyguard had used this very scenario as an example in order to teach Gabriella how to protect herself during a plane hijacking.

Gabby remembered giggling at the time, totally amused that her bodyguard had been so paranoid that she’d thought something that farfetched could happen aboard the St. Pierre royal jet. But now that the scenario had become a reality, Gabriella was frantically trying to recall the advice Charlotte had offered. She wanted that voice inside her head, but all she could hear was Whit’s.

“Bullets have a tendency to go right through me,” he cockily replied and rolled his wounded shoulder as if to prove his point.

Damn him and his macho bravado...

If he got the renegade guards to fire, he would not only die but he would risk the whole plane going down. Gabby needed to find a parachute. Because sometimes the most effective mode of self-preservation was escape...

She pushed open the door to the cargo hold, hoping she would find at least a parachute—hopefully more. But as she slipped into the hold, a commotion erupted inside the plane. Flesh connected with flesh as men threw punches and kicks.

Gabby flinched with every grunt and groan—as if the blows were hitting her. And inside her belly, the baby flipped and kicked. Whit wasn’t the only fighter. Gabby could fight, too, and not just how Charlotte had taught her. She could fight now as a mother fighting to protect her child.

And her child’s father.

She only hoped she found something to help Whit before it was too late and the men had already killed him.

Chapter Nine

Pain radiated from Whit’s shoulder throughout his body—to every place a blow had connected. But he had landed more blows than he’d received. He had even knocked out a couple of the men.

But then Bruno lifted his gun again, this time swinging the handle toward Whit’s head. He ducked and the blow glanced off his wounded shoulder.

He groaned so loudly that his throat burned from the force of it. Pain coursed through him, but rage followed it, chasing away the pain. Blind with anger, Whit reached out and jerked the weapon from Bruno’s beefy hand.

Before he could slide his finger onto the trigger, barrels pointed at him and triggers cocked with ominous clicks.

“Drop it!” Cosmo ordered.

Whit shook his head. “You’re not the one giving orders here. Who is?”

“You’re not going to find out,” Cosmo said. “You’re going to be dead long before we land.”

Even though he’d grabbed a weapon, there were still too many fighting him. He might not make it off this plane, but he had to know about Gabby. “What about the princess? Does the person giving orders want her alive or dead?”

“What does it matter to you?” Cosmo asked. His eyes narrowed and he nodded. “Ever since you started at the palace, she was always asking everybody about you and following you around, mooning over you. So is that baby she’s carrying yours?”

Whit clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together with frustration that he couldn’t claim his baby. Doing so might risk the child’s safety and Gabby’s. The last man who had thought he’d kidnapped her, but had abducted Charlotte instead, had wanted to get her pregnant with his own child. Even though Prince Linus was in custody, he was still a wealthy man; he or his father could have paid these guys to abduct the right woman this time.

Cosmo took Whit’s silence as affirmation and shook his head in mock sympathy. “Too bad you’ll never get to see it being born.”

Because they were going to kill Whit or because they were going to kill Gabby, too?

“Shoot the damn gun!” The order echoed inside the cabin, but it was a female voice that uttered it. A sweet, strong voice—Gabby’s. She stood near the entrance to the cargo hold.

When he’d heard her stop her fake retching, he’d figured she was going to sneak out of the bathroom soon. So he’d provided a distraction for her. That was why he’d started swinging despite being outmatched. He had wanted to distract the other men, so they wouldn’t notice her. Apparently she’d gone from the bathroom to the cargo hold. Looking for an escape or a weapon?

“Whit,” she said, making it clear her order was for him, “trust me—shoot the gun!”

“What the hell?” Cosmo whirled toward her with his gun drawn.

And Whit couldn’t trust that the other man wouldn’t fire. So he did. He lifted his gun and fired a bullet through the roof of the cabin.

The other men cursed as the plane dropped, losing altitude fast. Whit leapt over them, heading toward Gabby. He had fired the gun because he’d figured out her plan; he only hoped it wouldn’t get them killed.

* * *

“Y
OU
TRUSTED
me,” she said, surprised that he had actually fired. And afraid that he had. She swung a parachute pack toward him.

But the plane lurched and Whit nearly missed it. And he narrowly missed the hands reaching for him as he grabbed up the pack and ran into the cargo hold with her. He shoved the door shut and jammed something against it. “There better be another way out,” he said. “And fast...”

She pointed toward the parachute and turned her back toward him to show she’d already put on hers. His hands caught the straps, pulling them tight, as he double-checked all the lines and cords.

“Are you sure parachuting will be safe for the baby?” he asked.

“Getting shot will be a hell of a lot less safe,” she pointed out, as the men fired now, shooting their guns into the hold.

Whit pulled his pack on and adjusted the straps, pulling them taut. His shoulder wound was again oozing blood, which trickled down his arm in rivulets. The parachute straps were going to stress the wound even more. She should have considered that, should have thought of something else. But he agreed, “We have no other option now.”

“Is the plane going down?” she asked, as it continued to lose altitude.

“Probably crash landing. We have to get out soon.” He hurried over to the luggage door to the outside and struggled with its latch. “I think I can get it open...”

She hadn’t thought out any of her plan. Maybe Whit shouldn’t have trusted her. Maybe he shouldn’t have fired. But if he hadn’t, he would probably already be dead. While she hadn’t been with him these past six months, at least he had been alive. At least she’d had hope that he might one day become the man her naive heart had believed he was. But if he was dead...

Then Gabby had no hope.

“Come here.” He held out his hand. “We have to be ready to jump when I open this luggage hatch.”

She’d faked getting sick earlier but her stomach lurched now, threatening to revolt for real. She hadn’t thought this plan out well—hadn’t considered all the consequences. She had parachuted before—with Charlotte, who had set up a scenario eerily similar to this so that Gabby would be prepared if her plane were ever hijacked.

Gabriella had loved the freedom of parachuting, the weightlessness of floating on air. But she hadn’t been pregnant then. She’d had no one else to worry about except herself.

The door to the cabin vibrated as if one of the men were kicking it or slamming his shoulder into it.

“We have to do this now,” Whit said. “We’re dead for sure if we don’t.”

And possibly dead if they did...

He opened the door to the outside, causing the plane to buck as if they were trying to ride a crazed bull. Whit grabbed her hand and tugged her out with him—sending them both hurtling through air.

If only there had been time to tell him...

Tell him what?

That she loved him? Six months ago she’d thought she was falling for him, but she hadn’t even known him. She’d been attracted to his masculine beauty and his aura of strength and mystery. And the fact that he hadn’t seemed to give a damn about anything or anyone...

She’d wished she could have been like that—that the queen’s rejections and cruelty hadn’t mattered to her. But she’d thought the woman was her mother, so she’d been devastated and desperate to please—so desperate that she’d let her father bully her.

And she’d let people lie to her—because she’d felt the secrets and hadn’t probed deeper. She hadn’t demanded the truth because she’d been afraid to hear it. She hadn’t thought herself strong enough to handle it.

But she was a hell of a lot stronger than she’d realized. She was strong enough to jump out of a crashing plane.

But she wasn’t strong enough to tell Whit that she had nearly fallen for him...before she’d begun to fall with him...

All she could do was hold tightly to his hand and hope she didn’t lose him—hope that she didn’t lose her baby or her life.

* * *

H
E
WAS
LOSING
her. His arms ached, his shoulder burning, as he struggled against the straps, tugging off the chutes before they pulled them both under water. Part of the chute, the part they’d slipped on with the straps, was a life jacket. But it was thin and barely enough to keep them above the surface of the choppy water. They had landed in the ocean—with no land in sight.

And only God knew what waiting, beneath the surface, to devour them...

After the struggle on the plane, his wound had re-opened. Was his blood baiting the water? Maybe he should leave her before he drew sharks to them. He tried to peer beneath the surface but the setting sun reflected off the water, blinding him. Making the water look as if it were all blood...

“Gabby!”

She squeezed his fingers. She had been clinging to his hand since they’d leaped out of the dropping plane. “I’m here...” But she sounded sleepy, groggy, as if she were so exhausted that she was about to pass out.

Whit recognized the signs in her voice because he felt them in his own body. He pushed his legs to kick, to keep them above the waves that kept lifting them only to drop them again. Water slapped his face, as if trying to keep him awake. He needed that because the life jacket wasn’t enough to keep his head above water, but only enough to keep them from dropping to the bottom of the sea. It would make their bodies easier to find when they were dead...

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

“And the baby?”

She smiled. “He’s fine. Kicking as if he’s trying to swim, too.”

“He? You keep calling the baby a boy,” he realized. “Do you know...?”

She shook her head now, her wet hair slapping across the surface of the sea. “I don’t know for certain. It’s just a feeling I have.”

A gut instinct. Whit understood that, but unfortunately the gut instinct he had now was bad. If only he’d had more time before they’d jumped, he could have tried to find supplies to take along. But he might have lost them anyway, like he had the gun he’d shoved into the back of his jeans. It had fallen out when they’d hit the water and sunk like a rock.

“I can’t believe,” she said, “that we survived...”

His gut tightened with dread as he worried that she spoke too soon. “We survived the plane crash,” he agreed.

But would they survive a night in the sea?

“Did it crash?” she asked, leaning back to stare up at the sky. It was nearly black now, the last of the light glowing on the surface of the water. There were no lights in the sky.

“Not near us...” He had worried that it might go down as they were jumping and take them both out as it crashed. While he and Gabby had been drifting on air, he’d caught glimpses of the plane as it spiraled forward and downward. With its speed, it had gone a good distance ahead of where they landed in the water.

But given the waves and tides, some of the wreckage could drift back toward them.

“But you think it crashed?” she persisted. Maybe she was so concerned because she needed a distraction, or needed to make sure that the men weren’t going to come after them again. But knowing her, she was probably worried about the well-being of the men who would have killed them with no hesitation or remorse.

“I don’t know.” And truthfully he didn’t. He’d been in worse situations and had had pilots pull up the throttle and safely land the aircraft. “I don’t know who the pilot was. The king’s pilot could have handled the changes in cabin pressure. He could have kept it in the air and landed somewhere.” But he knew it hadn’t been that pilot, or the plane wouldn’t have been waiting at the airport as long as the men had complained they’d been waiting.

She expelled a breath of relief. “Yes, they might be okay, then...”

She really was too good—too perfect—to be real. He must have conjured her up from those old, half-forgotten fairy tales. He wasn’t as perfect as she was. Hell, he wasn’t even close to perfect or forgiving or caring. So he had to ask for clarification, “You’re worried about men who would have had no qualms over killing us?”

He tensed as he glimpsed something dark in the water, moving just beneath the surface. Beneath them. Had the sharks begun to circle? They, too, would have no qualms over killing them.

“When I told you to shoot,” she said, in a voice hoarse with remembered panic and with regret and probably dehydration, too, “I—I didn’t realize that the plane might crash...”

“It doesn’t matter if it did,” Whit said. “You were in danger.” And still was, with no land in sight, and the waves getting rougher. Their bodies bobbed as the waves lifted and then dropped them—almost as if the water toyed with them, giving them hope only to dash it away. He held more tightly to her hand, his own going numb with cold and the effort to keep hanging on. “You had to save yourself.”

“I—I don’t know for certain that they would have killed me,” she said, her teeth chattering slightly.

With the sun no longer warming the water, it had quickly gone cold. Flesh-numbingly cold.

“You think they only intended to kidnap you?” They hadn’t seemed concerned enough about her safety, and they knew the king well enough to know that he would have paid no money without proof of life.

“I don’t know what they intended to do with me,” she said with a shaky sigh. “But I do know what they intended to do with you. They were definitely going to kill you, Whit.”

He shivered but not just with the cold. He’d had close scrapes over the years, probably more than his share even for a marine and a bodyguard. But he’d always managed to figure his own way out. Until now...

“So you weren’t worried about yourself,” he said. “You were worried about me.” He wasn’t used to people worrying about him. His mother certainly hadn’t when she’d packed up her stuff and left him with his father. Back when they’d been friends and partners Aaron had worried, but then Aaron worried about everyone.

“They had no reason to keep you alive,” she said, “and more reasons to want you dead.”

“With a bum shoulder and no weapon, I didn’t pose much of a threat to them,” he pointed out.

She chuckled. “But you’re Whitaker Howell. You’re a legend for the feats you’ve pulled off in battle, for the people you’ve protected as a bodyguard. They would see you as quite the threat.”

“Or quite the pain in the ass,” he said. “And it probably didn’t help that I brought in my own men to take their jobs when Aaron and I were hired as co-chiefs of royal security.”

She must have shaken her head because a wet piece of her hair slapped against his arm. Her hair and her skin was so cold. He wanted to put his arms around her and warm her up. But then he risked them both slipping under water.

“So you parachuted out of a plane to save me,” he mused. “And here I was the one who promised to protect you.” A promise he was still struggling to keep, as he tried to keep them both afloat.

Water splashed her face, and she sucked in a breath and coughed. And as she panicked, her head slipped beneath the choppy surface. Whit panicked, too, but he didn’t let go of her hand. And with his other arm, his injured arm, he dragged her back up. She sputtered and coughed again, expelling salty water from her constricted lungs.