Elle took a slow look around, taking in the blond giant in front of her and the six equally large men dressed in head-to-toe black armed with assault rifles and smaller dart guns. Walther hadn’t been joking about the tranquilizers. Her gaze slid to the Scooby-Doo door hidden in the bookshelf. She could make it, but could she get through in time?
“I do like that you have such spirit. It will serve you well as queen.” He paused and gave her a grin that chilled her soul. “With a little molding, of course.”
Getting to the hidden door wasn’t an option, and if they got her with a dart gun and knocked her out, she had no hope of escape. One of the first lessons Dom had taught her in their one-on-one training sessions was to always keep as many options as possible open. If she didn’t give in to the panic gnawing away at the back of her brain, she could still come out on top.
The Resistance, for all their faults, wouldn’t leave her to the Fjende’s not-so-tender mercies. Dom never would. He’d find her; she just had to keep her head until then. If nothing else, she lived to fight another day. And she would.
“Fine,” she said making her tone as haughty as she could. “Let’s go.”
“As you command, Your Highness.” He led her to the balcony of her room and grabbed her around the waist before hooking himself to a thick nylon rope line. “Don’t fight. A drop from this high won’t kill you, but you’ll be lucky to walk away with a broken leg.”
With that tiny bit of warning, he hauled her over the banister, and they zipped down the two floors to the garden below. As soon as she stood, the men in black formed a wall of solid, silent muscle around her and ushered her to the waiting helicopter.
Trepidation settled like cement around her
feet with each step closer they got to the navy blue helicopter adorned with her family’s royal seal on the doors. She looked left, then right. Barely any sunlight could get through between the guards’ close-pressed bodies.
Leaning down to avoid the helicopter blades, Walther swept open the door. “After you, Your Highness.”
Anxiety making her skin itch even as she desperately searched for a way out, she crouched and got onto the helicopter. Another huge guard stood outside the door on the opposite side, effectively blocking escape from that route.
She sat down in the seat closest to the door anyway; perhaps she’d have a second to make a move when they landed. Walther took the seat next to her, reached across her lap, and fastened the seat belt tight. A second later the door closed, and then they were aloft. Figuring the best defense right now was to act as royally aloof as plausible, she angled her face away from Walther. The pinprick against her neck told her just how big a mistake that choice was. Liquid fire surged through her system, holding her prisoner to her own body. She couldn’t lift her arms. Her legs were useless. Her eyes began to drift shut.
“Oh, no, Princess, no going to sleep just yet. We’ve got something to show you,” Walther yelled into her ear, loud enough she could hear him despite the noise of the helicopter blades chopping through the cold mountain air. “Look down.”
He grabbed her chin and turned her so she faced the window. The chalet glimmered in the setting sun as it sat surrounded by mountain peaks as far as she could see. Her foggy brain tried to make sense of why he wanted to her watch, but all that kept going through her head was that Dom was down there. Her Dom. The one who despite how mad she was at him right now was her person, the one she wanted. The one who would come for her, just as she would always come for him.
“Five, four, three,” Walther chanted, “two, one.”
The chalet exploded into a massive ball of orange fire, the force of which shook the air around the helicopter and jostled her chin loose from Walther’s grip. Her head fell forward, landing with a hard thump against her chest, and her body was held upward only by the strength of the seat belt across her waist and shoulders. Dom had been in there. Somewhere. Another explosion rocked the helicopter, knocking her head so her forehead rested against the window and she couldn’t turn away from the fire and smoke billowing from the chalet.
Misery squeezed her heart, squashing it until there was nothing left. The last thing she’d told him was good-bye, when even as she’d said it, she’d known it wouldn’t have been forever. Not between them. Their lives had come crashing together wish such force that they’d been melded together. No single word was going to sever that.
A third explosion boomed, and the chalet came crumbling down. Dom was down there, somewhere, in the smoking rumble. He wasn’t dead. She wouldn’t believe that. She couldn’t. A silent scream rang in her ears, the mournful keening of loss mixed with the raw fury.
Using every bit of strength that she had, she slid her gaze over to the man whom she’d someday kill slowly and with as much pain as possible. He didn’t seem bothered by the hatred he had to see blazing in her eyes.
“And that, Princess, is what we do to those who try to take on the Fjende.” Walther laughed and sat back in his seat, closing his eyes like a man without a care in the world.
If she could have moved a single limb, she would have torn him to shreds before shoving him out of the helicopter, even if that meant she plummeted to her death with him. She didn’t want to believe Walther. How could anyone have survived the attack? No one could have, not even Dom.
Chapter Thirteen
Dom strained to hear the voice above the static on the backup radio that was their only communication with what was left of the team outside.
“She’s not here,” Sergeant Christiansen said, the words garbled but the message clear.
The vise on his chest loosened a few turns. “How can you be sure?”
“Thermal scan was negative,” Christiansen said. “It confirms the report from Bravo Company, which had visual of a small unit escorting a prisoner to a helicopter.”
Reports of the royal jet taking off from a private airport in Harbor City had come in within an hour of the first explosion. Dom didn’t believe in coincidence. “We’ll operate on the assumption she’s on her way to Elskov, but I want that part of the chalet excavated first.”
“Copy that, sir,” the other man said. “Should I send a secondary team to your area?”
“Negative.” He disconnected the line and shoved back from the keyboard.
He’d broken through the mechanism holding the operations room door locked, but it wouldn’t do any good now. The metal door whined as the fire blazed on the other side of the chalet’s security room. Dom’s ears still rang from the explosions that had rocked the chalet to its foundations. The only thing that had saved them was the fact that his paranoia had convinced him to build the security room into the side of the mountain; otherwise, they would be buried under several tons of the stones used to build the chalet. The explosions had been too strong for any other outcome to be possible.