Claimed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 3 (13 page)

Now it was Stefan’s turn to stare. “Why would I hold the sea at fault for doing what the sea does? My parents took a chance being out on the sea that night, much as Ari did when he flew off in his plane. It wasn’t the fault of all yachts, everywhere, that their boat was unable to withstand the pounding it took. It was not the crew’s fault that they did not survive despite their best efforts.”

He delivered this with an icy calm, but not a robotic one. Nicki got the impression he really did believe what he was saying.

“Do you miss them?” she asked, her voice small.

Then a soft, sad smile creased his lips. “Every day. But the pain has changed, over time. It doesn’t go away. But it becomes…different.”

Stefan kept his manner relaxed, but inside he was berating himself. There was no purpose in confiding in Nicki, no matter how easy it was to say what he honestly felt. She would be leaving shortly after their return to Garronia, and he knew himself that information shared was power lost. Somehow, he had lost power with Nicki.

Not that she realized it yet. She chattered on as their food arrived, and turned the talk quickly to the images she’d captured on her video blog. In fact, her manner was overly lively, almost agitated, and he glanced at her hands as she reached for her sparkling water.

They trembled. Was she really that nervous around him?

Nicki’s bright words pulled him out of his reverie. “Out of curiosity, what happens if we do find Ari—and he is some sort of criminal?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s face it. He showed up on a foreign shore, no passport, no identity, possibly out of his mind. He got arrested, let’s say, and put in this work camp place. The crown prince of Garronia, mind you, cooped up by Turkish officials like a common vagrant, despite a countries-wide search for any scrap of information about him.”

Stefan quirked a smile. “It would pose an interesting political challenge.”

“Beyond that,” she waved her spoon. “What do we do, shout and point ‘Oh my God, it’s the prince!’? I don’t think so.”

“If we have positive visual identification, we’ll try to extract him immediately. If that task is beyond the abilities of the men we’ve brought, then it will become an escalated effort. Obviously, if we can avoid that escalation, that would be ideal.”

“Obviously,” Nicki said wryly.

“If we don’t have positive visual identification, or if the identification isn’t of Ari proper, but his remains, or more fragments of his clothing or the airplane, then it becomes more difficult. The burden of proof will be on us, and we can’t act with speed or any sort of stealth. The Turkish government will be made aware of our efforts, and it could become an international incident.”

“None of that sounds ideal, either.”

He grimaced. “It most definitely does not.”

“So let’s consider it from the other direction. Ari is alive and relatively healthy, simply imprisoned. Maybe he knows who he is, maybe he’s afraid of sharing that information, for fear he’ll be killed. After all, he’s been rotting in there a long time.”

Stefan pursed his lips. “You might want to avoid the term ‘rotting’ as you consider relaying this story to the queen.”

Nicki winced. “Fair enough,” she said. “He’s been a guest of the Turkish officials in Alaçati for nearly a year. He’s been biding his time, hoping for an out, and if he sees or any friendly faces from Garronia, he can shout out, draw attention somehow. Then it could all be explained away as a misunderstanding.”

“True, if he’s lucid enough to engage in such a subterfuge. But it still relies on us getting close enough for him to see us. Which is a more challenging issue.”

“Not so challenging.” Nicki swiveled her head to peer at the mountainside. “There are new ruins up there, and ruins mean dollars, once they’re cleared enough for tourists to pay to go gawk at them. You can bet they are moving heaven and more importantly, earth to get that to happen, especially with the windsurfing competition coming up. We’re in high season, and that’s potentially thousands of dollars a week that could be going to the city’s coffers. If the thing isn’t open already, it will be soon. And that’s exactly where you think they might be keeping the imprisoned vagrants.”

“So?”

“So what better way to promote the new archaeological wonder of Alaçati than have it as part of my video blog tour of the expo? It’s the latest and greatest development for the city, it’s got the wow factor with those vistas from the mountainside, and it’s being overseen I’m sure by Omir. So he’ll get all the acclaim his heart desires if we promote it. As long as it’s anywhere close to being ready, it’s a no-lose situation for him. And once we’re there, maybe we can see how we can break into the asylum-prison place, or whatever it is. Easy peasy.”

“I suspect it will be anything but.” Nevertheless, Stefan couldn’t discount her words entirely. He needed more information—and he needed his men to gather it. He signaled to the server for their check, and considered Nicki anew. “These are good ideas. Logical. It’s helpful.”

The smile she flashed him confirmed his earlier concern. It wasn’t that Nicki was starved for attention. She was brash and active, always ready for the next challenge. She sought attention and she got it. But she didn’t get attention for certain things—her mind, her logic, her discernment. Maybe that bothered her more than she realized.

They walked leisurely back to the boat, the camera over Stefan’s shoulder. As he’d expected, his men were waiting for him when he returned—all of them.

Even better, the two he’d assigned to the park had more information.

“Possibly a sighting, it was too long ago to be certain,” Tamas said, in English for Nicki’s benefit. “A full year.”

“So quite close to the crash event.”

“Very close,” Tamas said. “But he was here, closer to the city than we’d expected. And the woman who spoke with us knew it was June, because it was the beginning of the tourist season. She said his manner was definitely that of a falling-down drunk man. He’d been beaten up pretty badly, but though he staggered around, he didn’t have any broken bones, that she recalled. He was big and strong, and she and her children stayed away from him. The next morning, the trucks came and everyone hid—but not this man. He simply watched them pull up. When they approached him, guns drawn, he cowered down, covering his head with his hands.” Tamas grimaced. “He seemed crazy to this woman. And the account fits what we’ve heard elsewhere.”

Stefan said nothing for a long minute. “This was June,” he commented finally. “He’d been missing for maybe two weeks then, nothing more. How had he not been found by a search team? Was he disfigured?”

“We don’t think so,” Tamas shook his head. “The woman recognized him from the picture. Said his nose was out of joint and there was old, dried blood in his hair, but the eyes were right, the hair and the height and weight.”

“It’s enough to go on,” Stefan said. To think that Ari could have been here all this time, as Nicki had put it well—rotting in a Turkish detainment center, forced to work by hauling rocks and dirt away from a monument while his own family lived in luxury not a half day away.

The queen would not be the only one who’d have difficulty accepting that reality.

“We need to get into that asylum,” he said. He turned to Tamas. “Find out everything you know about it. Who owns it, what it’s officially being used for. Ask our contacts if there’s any known unofficial uses for it we should be aware of. The squatters know it as a work camp, but what other theories are out there? We need to be prepared for them all.”

Tamas nodded. “We’ll have satellite imagery of the site and the adjacent ruins later tonight, as close as we can get to it. We’ll also scout out methods of ingress and egress, who visits and for how long, what deliveries, etc. There will be a way in.”

“There will.” Stefan turned to Nicki. “And now, we have to get ready for a party. Be sure to pack whatever you need into an overnight bag as well. As tourists go, we’re giving Alaçati the full treatment.”

Chapter Eleven

Nicki straightened her dress down her legs, unusually awkward with the thigh high length. The racy dress would be frowned on in central Turkey, she thought—but in the coastal resort towns, attire was much like that in any European city. And normally she had no problem showing off her legs. She’d earned them the hard way, and she strode with strength and confidence. But the vivid blue dress had been chosen by Lauren, along with the strappy sandals, and the silky, swishy style felt foreign against Nicki’s skin.

“Nerves,” she muttered. She hadn’t been paying attention to eating regularly and staying hydrated, so that wasn’t helping either. But the vlogs were all queued and ready for release, and she’d scheduled them to drop over the next twelve hours. No one could accuse her of not doing her job.

Now she stood in the lobby of the most prestigious hotel in Alaçati waiting for Stefan, who’d sent her on ahead while he cobbled together all the information he could about the new attraction on the southern ridge of the city. There was little officially said about the ruins, but that hadn’t stopped him from leaning on his unofficial sources. From those accounts, it was an early Christian-era church, made yet more interesting by the clearly pagan temple remnants beneath it. The combination, though common enough, would add an intriguing twist for tourists to the resort town. There was definitely money to be made.

A flutter of activity made her glance up, and sure enough, it was Stefan causing the commotion, crossing the open lobby as if he owned the place. He was perfect in his suit, somehow seeming formal though the jacket was cut casually and his soft buttery trousers were summer weight perfection. He wore no tie and his white shirt was open at the collar, but that didn’t take away from the aristocratic figure he cut as his long strides ate up the distance between them.

“Nicki,” he said as he reached her, his gaze sweeping over her. He offered no further comment though as he took her arm and curled it into his.

“Is it too short?” she murmured as they moved to the elevator bay. “It’s too short, isn’t it?”

“There is no such thing as too short on your legs,” Stefan said, his impossibly polite accent at odds with the roughness of his voice. “I suppose I have Lauren to thank for it.”

Nicki grinned, and the tension eased between them, allowing her to catch her breath. “She thought you’d approve.”

“She’s a woman of unparalleled discernment. Here we are.”

They stepped into the elevator and rode the full distance to Omir’s penthouse suite. When the doors opened, the party was in full swing, and Nicki relaxed a notch further. She was used to navigating the noise and bustle of a large group of people.

And she had plenty to work with, here. Easily a hundred people crowded the network of connected rooms, and all the rooms spilled out onto a wide, equally populated veranda. The hotel, one of the tallest in the city, had a commanding view of both the mountains and the sea, and Nicki gravitated toward the outdoors even as Stefan’s hand pressed on her arm.

“We had another separate verification of a man matching Ari’s description being taken by city police,” he said quietly. “With the promise of money, the squatters yielded the few trinkets they’d taken from his stash in the woods. One of them was an altimeter component.”

“Oh,” Nicki said, her eyes wide. “He made it this far. If he…maybe…”

He squeezed her arm. “We’re offered an unparalleled view of the city tonight, and the sun has not yet set. Perhaps we’ll be able to glean something new about the asylum or the ruins.”

“Ambassador Mihal, Miss Clark.” The booming voice of the Turkish tourism secretary interrupted them, and Stefan turned neatly. “Thank you for gracing my humble party this evening.” He and Stefan shook hands, then he turned to Nicki. “As enchanting as I remember you,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips.

“You’re too kind.” True to her role despite the odious man, Nicki’s smile was genuine and her words warm. Nevertheless, a part of her couldn’t deny a thrill of vindication as Stefan stiffened beside her. He suffered the Turkish man’s embrace a moment longer of Nicki’s hand, then spoke up, drawing the man’s attention.

“We had the opportunity to tour the city somewhat today after you left us. It is every bit as idyllic as you described it. You are right, you have done much to enhance its natural beauty with the development of its buildings and lands.”

“You see? I was not boasting when I said that Garronia would do well to learn from its neighbors,” Omir said, too loudly. Stefan looked pained and Nicki disengaged herself from his arm and pointed to the buffet table. He nodded, a bit too relieved. As she moved across the room, she wasn’t sure if he simply wanted her to eat, or if he worried about her virtue at the hands of Omir. Either way, his concern touched her in a way that most men’s wouldn’t. It didn’t irritate her—it was simply…nice.

“Snap out of it,” she muttered, pausing at the buffet table. In truth she wasn’t hungry, but having food in her hand would provide her with the needed business for her to blend in with the crowd. She chose fruits and cheese and bits of spiced bread, then headed to the veranda, pausing only to pick up a glass of champagne from a passing server.