His Forbidden Princess(6)
Everything seemed fine, but he wished the princess would keep with the program.
Finally, she went into the store. Thank God.
“You need to calm down, Stuart. She was just being nice to the kid and his mother.”
Nice. He didn’t want her to be nice; he wanted her to stay safe. Being nice, being vulnerable, is what got people killed and no one was going to get killed on his watch.
Especially not Sofia.
Settling into the stiff plastic chair that had been bolted to the floor. Ian continued to watch the street outside. It was a really nice late spring day. If he wasn’t working he’d be outside someplace, running, or maybe out on a boat with a rod and reel, not necessarily trying to catch anything, but just to kill time on the water. Ian hadn’t done anything to kill time recently, he didn’t relax.
He just worked.
His chirping cell phone broke his train of thought. “Stuart.”
“Ian, we have a problem.” It was Lisa, one of the analysts in Washington with whom he often coordinated. She was smart as a whip, and not an alarmist. If she said there was a problem, there was a problem.
He straightened and listened. “Go. What is it?”
“You know the threats we’ve been watching regarding the royal family in Aubonne?
There’s been an attack. The queen, the archduke, and Princess Anna were traveling to their residence in the mountains and someone ran their car off a narrow road. There were at least three gunmen and if it wasn’t for some very smart driving by their bodyguard, they’d all be dead.”
“Shit.” Sofie.
Ian turned to his partner. “Go into the store, find the princess, and as quietly as possible, get her out of the store and into her car.”
“What should I tell her?”
“Just tell her there’s been an emergency change of plans and it’s necessary for her safety.”
“Okay. What if she says no?” Paul stood, putting on his suit jacket.
“She won’t.” She’d better not.
Paul nodded and headed out of the van, “Whatever you say, boss.”
Ian went back to his phone conversation with Lisa. “Get a couple of agents to the
Waldorf. I want that place locked down. Everyone gets checked. Everyone. I don’t care if it’s the General Manager’s grandmother.”
“Got it,” the voice responded in his ear. “Are you on your way there?”
“I’m going to the office first. I need to figure out our next step, but I should be there soon.”
Ian waited until Sofie was out of the store and her car safely on its way. Once he was back in the van, Ian started the engine to get them back to the office. He had an idea. It was radical, but the more he thought about the information coming in, the more he thought about the way the attack on her family went down, the more Ian believed there was someone inside the palace who knew the family’s movements.
Which meant someone knew exactly where Sofie would be and when she would be there.
He had to change that.
Paul slid into the passenger seat. “She was pissed.”
Ian chuckled. “I bet.”
Sofie was a firecracker when he’d first met her, and he was happy to hear that hadn’t changed. She took shit from no one. Well, no one except her mother. “She didn’t make it too hard, did she?”
“No, but her personal secretary? Louis, some French guy, was insane. I swear I almost knocked him out.”
Ian made a mental note about the secretary, because the last thing he needed was anyone running interference when Sofie’s life was at stake. Seeing her was hard enough, but now Ian was putting himself back in her world and he had no idea how they were going to handle it. He had to be the professional. He had to keep his distance. But he also knew this was Sofie, and that changed everything. The last thing he needed were members of her entourage going off the rails.
He also had to consider every one of them was a suspect.
His first thought was that she needed to go into hiding until they caught the bad guys.
But where? Someone was in the United States ready to go after her, and it was Ian’s job to keep that from happening.
A cup of jasmine tea was exactly what Sofie needed and her lady’s maid, Ella, always seemed to know. She hadn’t seen anyone from her security team since they’d deposited her back in the hotel, and she didn’t know the reason why she’d been fetched from the store and driven back to the Waldorf. Nothing had been said except that there was an emergency and that they, whoever they were, wanted her in a secure location.
She could have objected, but her bodyguard reminded her that she had to respect safety directives. Every time she got that reminder she remembered her brother, who didn’t take heed and paid with his life.