Kitabı oku: «Personal Protection»

Chapter One
August—Kansas City, Missouri

After the explosion in the palace square, the businesspeople and government officials Ivan Mostek needed to talk to in Kansas City had refused to travel to Lukinburg. They were concerned for their safety, and rightly so. The shrapnel scars on his back were still pink and tender from that attack.

But he wouldn’t give up on the new government’s vision to reform his country.

So, the prince had come to Kansas City. These negotiations were going to happen, no matter what a few leftovers from the old regime thought of him. They’d lost their power and weren’t above using an assassination to get it back. Perhaps the threats he faced were coming from loyalists who believed the modernization of their country would irrevocably change it, and they’d lose their cultural identity. What they’d lose was any kind of standing as a first world country. Their economy was dying, and the old ways didn’t feed his people.

Ivan Mostek, Crown Prince of Lukinburg, the symbolic leader of his country and heir to the throne, had no intention of giving power back to the thugs that had nearly ruined their country, nor did he intend to destroy any of the things that made Lukinburg so uniquely special. The plan was a good one. But he had to survive first. Survive this trip to the States. Survive until his coronation and hopefully live a long and healthy life afterward as the leader of Lukinburg.

The first step in that plan meant leaving his country and traveling to Kansas City for a week. The second step meant surrounding himself with people he trusted. That was proving more of a challenge than he’d expected since it seemed that no matter what security measures his team put into place, the threats kept coming. So, he’d put in a call to KCPD to ask for help from strangers. The local police had no ties to Lukinburg. He was counting on them to provide a layer of protection that couldn’t be influenced by politics, fear of change or revenge.

Striding up the steps from his limousine, Ivan followed his chief of security, Filip Milevski, into the lobby of Fourth Precinct headquarters. His trusted adviser and good friend, Aleksandr Petrovic, followed right behind him, while another bodyguard, Danya Pavluk, brought up the rear. His third bodyguard and new driver, Eduard Nagy, would park the car and wait for them to finish their respective meetings.

After lining up their visitor badges, Filip, a tall, beefy man with graying sideburns, punched the button to call the elevator. “I will escort you to your meeting with Captain Hendricks. Then Danya and I will meet with the SWAT captain and senior patrol officer to coordinate security at your public appearances.”

Ivan smoothed the knot of his tie and nodded. “Do not forget to have them set up extra officers outside the Lukinburg embassy on Saturday. Your team can work with embassy security inside, but the ball will dramatically increase traffic and bring many wealthy and important local and state people to that part of town.”

“I forget nothing,” Filip huffed, as though it was an insult to remind him. The elevator doors opened, and he waited for the car to empty before leading them inside. “I do not understand why you could not stay at the hotel and let me handle the police department. This Joe Hendricks you are meeting with is not on my list of contacts.” No, but Chief of Police Taylor had recommended the precinct captain when Ivan had called to ask for the secret favor. “I cannot control your safety when you surprise me with meetings that are not on your agenda.”

Ah, yes. Filip loved his routines. If he had any idea what Ivan was planning behind his back, he’d be livid.

“I told you, this is personal. You do not need to be involved.”

“But it is my responsibility—”

“I am inside a police station. I will be fine without you hovering over me.” He grinned at Aleks, who was people watching the comings and goings of officers, detectives, visitors and staff through the lobby checkpoint and service counters. He flicked his friend’s arm to get his attention. “You should have brought a camera,” he teased.

Aleks’s grin formed a bright crescent of white in his long black beard. “Did you see that plaque on the wall? They have created a memorial to a little girl—”

“Aleks...” Ivan urged his friend to join them. “Business first. Sightseeing later. You know we must—”

“Hold that elevator!”

Ivan’s sentence trailed off and he instinctively grabbed the door as a woman with a dirty, soot-streaked blond ponytail darted onto the elevator. She pulled in an equally grimy, handcuffed man by his upper arm and guided him to the corner farthest away from Ivan and his staff, ordering her captive to face the wall. Filip cursed under his breath as he and Danya quickly positioned themselves between Ivan and their guests and allowed the doors to close.

“Thanks.” He saw the woman wore fingerless gloves when she pushed some flyaway strands of hair off her face. He also saw the badge hanging from a chain around her neck. Ivan’s senses tingled with an alertness he had to hide. “Sorry. I didn’t relish dragging this dirtbag up the stairs or waiting for the next elevator.”

She wore a long, dusty man’s coat over jeans and worn leather boots that were nearly as big as his own feet. Gloves? Coat? Boots?

In August?

No wonder there was a sheen of perspiration on her pink cheeks.

As intrigued by her apparent toughness as he was curious about her ratty, overheated appearance, he offered her a succinct nod. “We are happy to oblige the local constabulary.”

Her prisoner glanced over his shoulder at Ivan. “What’s that mean?”

“Quiet.” The officer nodded toward the keypad and asked Filip to push the button for her. “Third floor, please.”

“We should not share an elevator, Your High—”

“This is fine,” Ivan insisted, reaching around his security chief to press the number three button himself. It was probably best not to advertise his real identity just yet. Not until all his security was in place. “We are here to make friends with the people of Kansas City, not make their lives more difficult.”

“You talk funny,” the handcuffed man slurred, laughing at their accents.

And he smelled funny. Dreadful, actually, as Ivan crinkled his nose up against the odors of urine, body odor and smoke filling the confined space. At least, he hoped it was the criminal and not the female officer escorting him who reeked of the streets. Ivan had been trained to keep such negative observations to himself and be a polite gentleman at all times. “English is not my first language.”

“Your English is better than mine, pal.”

“Dougie. Sorry about that, sir.” The woman jerked on the handcuffs, warning her prisoner to be quiet again. Apparently, standing still and keeping his mouth shut was an ongoing battle for the twitchy bum. “I am already in a mood. Don’t push it.”

Even though the woman wasn’t terribly chatty, Ivan noted that she was extremely observant. She marked their number and position on the elevator as it began its ascent. She sized up the flak vest and guns Filip and Danya wore beneath their suit jackets and pulled back the front of her coat to keep her gun within easy reach. Although he wanted to reassure the woman that they meant her no harm, backing up that claim would mean that he’d have to identify himself and his entourage. And Ivan wasn’t ready to reveal anything when he had this much of an audience surrounding him.

His training in the Lukin military had made him observant, too. The woman had an ordinary face. She was of average height and indeterminate shape, thanks to the bulky coat she wore. In addition to a stylist, she needed a comb and a shower and a much more cooperative prisoner. Ivan curled his fingers into his palms, fighting back the urge to push Filip and Danya aside and assist her with the recalcitrant man who muttered and fidgeted instead of obeying her authority. Maybe a good twenty years older and hundred pounds heavier than her, the man seemed familiar with handcuffs and causing trouble. No wonder she’d been anxious to get him into a jail cell or interview room and off her hands.

He also noticed she had green eyes.

And lips. Ivan averted his gaze as if he’d uttered that ridiculous observation out loud. Of course, she had lips. But they had drawn his attention to the middle of her flushed face. Despite her determined lack of femininity, her lips were pink and asymmetrical, sleekly defined on top and decadently full on the bottom. She had a mouth that reminded him just how delightful it was to kiss a willing woman, and just how long he’d denied himself that pleasure.

“Y’all ain’t cops, are ya?” Her prisoner twisted around again, ignoring her order to face the wall. “With your fancy suits and fancy accents. Damn foreigners.”

“Douglas Freeland,” she warned. “You be nice to these people.”

“I ain’t been nothin’ but nice this morning. I got a sickness and you know it. You set me up.” He called her a crude name that fisted Ivan’s hands with the need to shut him up and make him apologize. He was embarrassed to see his bodyguards ignoring the verbal abuse and staring fixedly at the elevator doors as they slowed to a stop. “I ain’t goin’ back in.”

The moment the doors slid open, the prisoner twisted out of her grasp. In the next second, he spun around and butted his fat, bald head against her more delicate skull.

The urge to intervene jolted through Ivan’s legs as she tumbled to the floor. But Filip and Danya pushed him against the railing, blocking him from the scuffle. “Protect the prince!”

Not that the officer apparently needed his or anyone’s help. Before the man got both feet off the elevator, her legs shot out and she tripped him. Then she was on top of the guy with a feral yell as she smushed her attacker’s face to the floor. Several other officers from the third floor had rushed to help, but they stopped in their tracks, backing up a step as she hauled the prisoner to his feet. The big man wasn’t muttering anymore. She pushed him against the seam between the wall and the elevator, using him to prop the door open while she checked his cuffs and evened out her breathing.

Filip took Ivan by the arm to lead him off the elevator. But Ivan didn’t need to be sandwiched between his bodyguards. The woman, despite the blow to the head, seemed to have the situation under control.

Still, he knew the toll hand-to-hand combat like that could take on a person. There would be bruises, and her head would be throbbing. He shrugged free of Filip’s grip. “Are you all right, miss?”

“Officer. Officer Valentine.” Her green eyes widened with a message that could be understood in any language. Get off the damn elevator already and let me do my job.

“Very well. Gentlemen.” They all exited the elevator and headed to the sergeant’s desk for directions to the captain’s office.

With a nod to the officers who’d come to her aid, Officer Valentine pushed a long tendril of caramel-colored hair off her face and walked her prisoner through the maze of desks on the main floor. Her dialogue trailed off as they went their separate ways. “That was your big plan? Escape onto a floor filled with cops? Now I get to add a second assault charge...”

Relief that Officer Valentine was all right, as well as admiration at how she’d handled the situation herself, eased the tension inside him. Ivan wondered at the rush of adrenaline he felt ebbing from his system and chalked it up to jet lag finally catching up with him.

* * *

“THIS IS EVERYTHING on my schedule while I am here in Kansas City.” Ivan forwarded the text from his chief of staff, Galina Honchar, to Captain Hendricks’s phone. In turn, Joe Hendricks, the captain of the Fourth Precinct, copied the list of events and locations to his administrative assistant in the adjoining office and asked her to make a printout. “Occasionally, a meeting runs long or something unexpected comes up...”

“Last-minute changes could be handled by the liaison officer you’re asking for,” the captain finished. “She’ll be able to keep me in loop, so I can have whatever assistance is needed on standby.”

That was part of his plan, Ivan conceded. “That would be a benefit to your department.” But he was asking for something more than a communications liaison with the local police.

After sending Filip and Danya off to their respective meetings, the only person from Lukinburg here with Ivan on the third floor was Aleksandr Petrovic. Last he’d seen, Aleks was cooling his heels in Captain Hendricks’s outer office, chatting up the captain’s administrative assistant. Even though the woman wore a wedding ring and was obviously pregnant, flirting and having a good time seemed to be hardwired into Aleks’s DNA. He had survived the mines and poverty of Moravska, relying on hard work and sheer determination to leave his past behind him. His friend had been a city kid, raised in a modest neighborhood in St. Feodor, and had used that innate charm to impress the right people and negotiate one successful business deal after another. To look at them now, with their tailored suits and limousines, Ivan and Aleks seemed to be cut from the same cloth, but their personalities and backgrounds couldn’t be more different. Still, Aleks was the one confidant the prince had trusted with the real goal of this meeting, and, if he wasn’t too distracted by the woman out there, was keeping an eye out for when Milevski and the rest of the security team returned.

Ivan was learning that secrecy was practically impossible for royalty. But that secrecy was necessary. The crumpled note sitting like a fishing weight in his pocket warned him that keeping his secrets was a matter of life-and-death. “I told my security chief that I have reconnected with an old flame in the US from my military days, when we did joint operations with other countries. That is why I am making this request privately. They believe I am being discreet for romance’s sake, not because I suspect a breach among the members of my entourage.”

The black man with the weathered face and receding hairline nodded. “I can help you with your request to place an undercover operative inside your delegation for the duration of your visit. I’ve lined up a couple of candidates of the appropriate age for you to meet.”

Ivan reminded him why he sought him out for assistance. “Finding a woman who served in the military is the only plausible way I could think of for me to have met an American and have had the time to develop a relationship with her. I worked with several American soldiers when I was in the military police.”

“I haven’t told them why they’ve been summoned to my office yet. I have to admit, this feels a bit like I’m playing matchmaker.”

“I assure you, that is not the case, Captain.” A tinge of awkwardness heated his skin. “I do not like that I have been forced into this situation. But I must choose a woman today, before I leave this building. My people must get used to seeing her with me. Masquerading as my...paramour...is the only way I can guarantee that we will have time alone to discuss who wants to kill me and devise strategy to unmask the traitor or traitors before they do me or anyone else harm. If I simply take on an American bodyguard, my security team will expect to be working together with that person. Since I do not know who I can trust, I require an ally who reports only to me, one who can convincingly play the role of consort to a prince, and whose qualities meet the needs of this very delicate investigation. I do not care what she looks like or if she fits some profile I would put on a dating site. She only needs to be good at her job.”