Heir in Exile (22 page)

As he cut the wheel hard toward the gate, he realized too late that the thing had been blown off its hinges. Someone had already rammed it. Sitting lopsided against the posts it sat between, the damaged gate was not now an obstacle.

Cursing under his breath, he sped toward the stairs. Stomping the brakes, Sander put the Hummer in park, opened his door and hit the ground running. Taking the steps in two great leaps, Mattias right on his heels, he timed his approach to the front doors so he had room to lever a foot up to kick them in. An obnoxious
bang
echoed through the foyer as he and Mattias, followed by several guards, rushed inside. More guards followed as the other Hummer screeched to a halt on the drive.

Low and fast, with his weapon at eye level, Sander moved room to room, sweeping each as he entered. He knew Mattias and half the guards had split off back in the foyer as planned, covering more ground in short order.

Several lights were on, most were off. It made for rough going where the drapes had been drawn tight, allowing little illumination in through the windows.

“Anything?” Sander shouted. He had a bad feeling in his gut. A really bad feeling.

“Nothing,” Mattias replied.

Sander turned toward three of the guards on his flank. “Check the basement. Report if you find anything.”

Three guards cut away and disappeared around an archway.

Other guards called down from upstairs a few moments later. “All clear!”

Sander stalked out into the foyer just as Mattias strode out of a library. He met his brother's eyes.

“They're gone,” Mattias said. “The whole house is empty.”

“He got to them before we could.” Sander snarled a curse in his mother tongue. As the guards came down the stairs from the second floor, Sander said, “Any evidence?”

“Your Highness, it looks as if it was a fast evacuation. Clothes are still on hangers and in drawers, beds unmade.”

“They can't be that far. Where would they have taken them, Mattias? What vacant building is close? He wouldn't risk bringing them to the main seat,” Sander said. The uneasy feeling turned into something more sinister. He felt as if he was overlooking something.

“There isn't anything that I know of in the East woods. Nothing sitting empty. There are several buildings to the south he might use,” Mattias said.

He stepped closer to his brother. It pissed Sander off to think his father was one step ahead of them. “I don't like it, Mattias. What if Aksel sent men to your place while evacuating this one?”

“I was thinking the same. We should return there immediately, secure Chey, and then figure our next step.” Mattias was moving as he finished speaking.

Sander left the building at a run. “Someone get on the phone and call the guards at Mattias's holding. Tell them they might have visitors.”

Chapter Seventeen

In the upstairs bathroom, Chey sat on the edge of the jacuzzi tub and tried to get her stomach to calm down. The toilet was close by, just in case she failed to control the churning nausea that had her in its grip. She wasn't sure what to make of this evening sickness—wasn't it supposed to happen in the morning? Thinking back, she remembered several mornings when she
had
felt nauseous, a fleeting hour of feeling icky before it passed.

Taking a deep breath, she stood up. Cool air would help. Descending to the main floor, she swung toward the kitchen and the back door that would allow her to stick her head out into the chill evening. Passing through the large dining room, she saw headlights from the street glint off the walls and a few metal sculptures.

Mattias had only been gone twenty minutes, if that. He and the other guards shouldn't be returning this fast. Maybe it was Sander, a thought that kicked her heart into an immediate, quicker rhythm. Pivoting on her foot, distracted from the nausea by the idea of seeing Sander, she went to the window to peer through a crack, still too wary of the circumstances to simply assume it was him.

Blinded by headlights, she squinted past the pane though no details of the vehicle, much less the driver, presented themselves.

“Miss Sinclair! Get back from the window.” One of the guards appeared at her side in seconds, curling a gentle but firm grip to guide her deeper into the house.

“That might be Sander...”

“It's not Sander. Nor is it Mattias,” the other guard said. He'd drawn his weapon, the muzzle aimed at the ceiling with his arm cocked against his side.

“What? Then who?” Chey, remembering Mattias's concerns and warnings, didn't appreciate the trickle of fear the unknown brought with it.

“We're not sure yet,” Olev said. “I think you should take her upstairs--”

The crack of the intercom interrupted Olev. Static cut through the voice that rattled into the foyer via the device.

It was the mother tongue, a language Chey didn't understand.

The guard at her elbow began guiding her toward the stairs. “Go up, Miss Sinclair? Please stay in your room until we figure out what's going on.”

“All right.” Chey didn't need to be asked twice. She was halfway up when the voice came through without the static.

Laur's voice. Speaking quick and urgent.

Chey didn't need to understand the language to recognize fear. “That's Laur! Let him in.” She descended to the foyer, wondering who had driven the man here.

“Miss Sinclair, he might not be alone,” Olev said, shooting her a pointed look.

Chey, caught between the desire to stay and find out about Laur or head upstairs, lingered on the bottom step. Indecisive. The other guard, Henri, pushed the button on the intercom to let Laur through the gate.

“Come get me if he's alone, please,” Chey said. It was the only way she felt all right about departing if the man needed help.

“We'll let you know,” Olev said.

Chey hastened upstairs and down the hall to her room. Closing the door, she engaged the lock. Pacing back and forth, she sorted through scenarios in her mind about what might have happened. Regardless, although Laur sounded upset, at least he was alive. Where were Sander and Mattias? Maybe they would arrive right behind Laur.

A flash of light across her windows alerted Chey to another vehicle at the gate. She couldn't see straight on from her bedroom's vantage point. The gleam of black she glimpsed with her cheek pressed against the cold pane sent a thrill through her.

Sander.
Bolting for the door, she exited into the hall and made for the stairs. The rollicking pitch of her stomach would just have to wait, she decided. She wanted to get Sander alone if everything was all right and tell him the news.

At the top of the staircase, she saw Laur with Olev and Henri. The men were speaking in their own tongue, rapid words that fell over one another. They were so intent, none of them saw her. She hurried down to the foyer.

“What's going on? Is that Sander and Mattias coming in behind yo--” Chey's words faded as the doorknob turned and the top lock snapped over. There was something sinister about the methodical precision with which the person on the other side used to gain entry. Her subconscious understood the danger before Chey had time to process what it meant. She crouched even as Olev herded her and Laur out of the foyer, gesturing to Henri with his gun hand.

Henri snapped off the lights and took up a shooter's stance right there in the archway between the foyer and dining room.

What frightened Chey more than anything was the
silence
of it all. One moment the men had been talking in hectic sentences, the next, darkness enveloped the house and everything went still and quiet.

Behind her, she heard the deadly
thwip thwip
of a silencer. Heart in her throat, Chey ducked into the kitchen, Laur at her side. For a big man, he moved with more stealth than Chey would have given him credit for. Olev guided them toward a long, skinny hallway on the other side of a row of cabinets. It ran the length of the house, with windows on one side, and a wall on the other.

Olev pushed them into a shallow, recessed area and twisted back toward the way they came, gun up. He fired within seconds, two successive pulls of the trigger. The silencer on the end of his weapon muted the sound.

She heard two thumps down the hall and guessed he'd just taken out two of the intruders. Did that mean Henri was dead? What about the other employees? She didn't know where they were or what they were doing.

Cautioning herself against all out panic, Chey waited with Laur hovering at her back. Shoulder pressed against the recessed wall, she glanced along it to see if there was a door leading either up or down. Nothing. No door, just a hutch with collectibles and a few potted plants.

From somewhere deeper in the immense house, Chey heard a gun that didn't have a silencer on it pop off two rounds. Intuition told her it was one of the household staff. There probably hadn't been time to fit everyone's piece with more hardware.

Laur set a hand on her shoulder, as if he wanted to reassure or calm her. Chey touched his fingers with her own. Hers trembled while his were steady. Olev continued to glance both ways down the hall, features stone-like and intent. Finally, after what felt like an eternity to Chey, he gestured them into the corridor.

She was afraid to expose herself. Olev could only cover one direction at a time, leaving another shooter several seconds to get a shot off. The hallway was narrow, too, without many places to hide. A potted plant or a decorative half table wasn't going to save them.

Darting out anyway at Olev's insistent gesture, she hugged the wall and went as quick as she could the way he motioned. Ten steps later, she saw what he was aiming for; a set of back stairs, for use by house staff, wound upward to the second floor. If she could reach her room, she could duck into the hidden passageway and at least get out of sight of anymore shooters.

Making a dash for it, she was three feet from the entrance when a shadow at the other end of the hallway snapped her gaze there. A shooter, bringing his weapon up.

Three feet suddenly seemed like a mile. A mile where every step felt as if she was wading through a vat of honey, slowing down her momentum. Laur brushed past her shoulder, putting himself between her and the shooter. The contact sent her into the safety of the stairwell.

A moment later, Laur slumped to a knee.

“No!” Chey, on her way up, paused to look back. Laur fell forward, landing face down in an ungainly heap. “
No!”

Olev appeared like an angel of mercy, shooting down the hallway over Laur's body.

Choking on a sob, torn between the desire to rush down and help Laur or dash upstairs to her bedroom and possible safety, she expended several precious seconds, indecisive. Leaving Laur to die in the narrow hall made her sick—but how would she feel if the shooter caught up to her and took her out as well?

She had a child to think about. An innocent baby who couldn't protect itself.
She
needed to be that person, to prioritize in a critical moment when her mind told her one thing and her heart told her another.

Turning, she ran up the stairs, tears streaming down her cheeks. At the small landing she encountered a door and opened it without thinking to go slow, check for danger on the other side. Swinging the door wide, she found herself at the very end of the hallway her bedroom sat off of.

Around the corner at the other end, coming from the direction of the main stairs leading to the foyer, another shadow emerged. Moving low and fast.

Chey had no time to go forward. Not another step. A scream ripped from her throat, deafening in the silence, as she backtracked to the smaller stairway. Olev bolted upward from the bottom, ready to defend her. Something knocked the door aside behind her, closing in quicker than she could escape. Then a strong arm clamped over her shoulder and across the front of her body, tugging her back against the solid bulwark of his.

Before she could scream, she heard Sander's voice near her ear.

“Stand down, Olev. It's me. Mattias and the others are behind me and also below.”

“Prince Dare,” Olev said, lowering his weapon. Tension all but crackled from the security guard. It eased as recognition set in.

Chey wilted with relief. Bringing her hands up, she clutched Sander's trapping arm and sank into the warm strength of his chest. Her heart was hammering so hard she thought it might pop from the pressure.

“Shhh,” Sander whispered. Then, to Olev, “I've got her. Go down and meet the others. Warn any employees that we're here so we don't have any accidental shootings.”

“Yes Prince Dare.” Olev retreated, pausing at the bottom of the stairway to kneel next to the fallen Laur. He felt for a pulse.

“Oh no,
no,”
Chey said when she saw Laur. She heard Sander pull in a surprised breath. “He was trying to save me. Push me out of the way,” she whispered.

A moment later they were both rushing down, Sander with an arm still around her, keeping her close.