by Alice Sharpe
“Who are you working for?” Analise demanded. “The environmentalists are a ruthless group at times, but I can hardly believe they would resort to outright murder—”
“No, Princess, they would not have the stomach for such daring, you’re right. Let’s just say it’s in my government’s best interest that the pipeline not go through Chatioux. It would have been easier if your country had passed on the undertaking, but no matter, we will win it by default when your country is shamed into oblivion.”
“Russia,” Analise said. “I cannot believe they would sanction—wait, you’re from some splinter group, aren’t you?”
“True patriots may hide but they never disappear,” Bierta said with fervor. “And Chatioux may vote to sanction the pipeline, but once this diary is made public, your country will be in shambles and the pipeline will go where it belongs. Now hand it over.”
“No,” Analise said, and shoved it back inside her coat. “You’ll have to take it off my dead body. I can’t believe you got through the security checks…?.”
“Bierta Gulden checked out perfectly because she was exactly what her records said she was, a modest Chatioux woman with impeccable references and years of experience in domestic service. Unfortunately for her, she met with an untimely death right after I claimed her identity. Much as you’re about to do. Give me the diary or I’ll shoot the man.”
“Like the ‘accident’ that befell my Seattle driver?” Analise demanded.
The woman called Bierta smiled again. “There’s irony in that. I don’t know who killed that man. Apparently, he had enemies of his own. The incident in Seattle was unrelated to my mission which began and will end in Wyoming. I just wrote a few notes insinuating it was directed at you to make you uneasy. To get you to run to your daddy for protection.”
“But it didn’t work that way, did it?” Analise said.
“Just keep in mind no one would have died if you had simply told the king to vote down the pipeline.”
“Don’t try to blame your devious behavior and its consequences on Analise,” Pierce said in a low voice.
Analise shook her head. “It’s okay. She’s a fraud. Nothing she says can harm me.”
Anger flashed in Bierta’s eyes. “I’m a fraud? What about you, Princess?”
“Me?”
“You’re the one who’s going to marry a man she doesn’t love, not me.”
“Don’t you dare compare us,” Analise said, fists clenched at her sides. She even took a few angry steps toward Bierta.
Bierta smiled. “Why not? Are you afraid your noble intention to sacrifice yourself won’t stand up to scrutiny?”
“I am nothing like you. You lie—”
“And you don’t?” Bierta scoffed. “Your whole life is a lie. Oh, yes, I’ve been following you long enough to know what Pierce Westin means to you. And yet you would leave him to marry another man.”
“She’s right,” Pierce said. He’d just sensed a possible way out of this. Bierta was enjoying this banter with Analise to the point she seemed to have forgotten all about the diary. She was distracted…?.
Analise, predictably, turned on him. “You’re taking her side?”
“You don’t love Ricard. You love me.” He grabbed her shoulders and steered her around to face the light as though trying to see her face better. This put them almost a foot closer to Bierta.
“You love me,” he repeated. “You’re willing to break my heart, and for what?”
“For her country,” Bierta said with a trace of grudging admiration.
“I don’t want to live like a nomad,” Analise said, looking up at him.
“Then I’ll throw away my suitcase.”
“But you just bought out your partner.”
“I’ll un-buy him out. Unitex can have Westin-Turner. We’ll both be rich.”
“I don’t care about money.”
“I know you don’t. Besides, we’ll live in your castle. I’ll clean the moat, whatever you want, just marry me.”
“For heaven’s sake, Pierce—”
“Wait just a second,” he interrupted and he stepped toward her which meant she backed toward Bierta. Closer and closer… “Aren’t you the one who said I was running from marriage? Here you have a legitimate proposal made in front of a witness and yet you resist.”
“I want children,” she said, glancing up at him.
“I know you do. I know exactly what you want and what you need, and I wouldn’t offer my hand to you if I wasn’t prepared to meet those needs.”
It was deathly quiet. All three of them seemed caught up in this little farce.
“No castle,” Analise said suddenly.
“What?”
“Wyoming. Here, on the Open Sky.”
“Here?” Bierta said. “Why here?”
Analise looked over her shoulder at Bierta as she spoke. “I could be happy here. I could be free here. And more important,” she added, gazing back at Pierce, “You could be happy here, too. If you gave yourself a chance. If a wife and family is really what you want.”
“I do,” he said, and damn if it didn’t sound like a vow.
Bierta’s laugh sliced through the moment. “Isn’t this touching? Doomed lovers pretending a future. Okay, I’ve been as patient with you two as I’m going to be. If you won’t give me the diary I will force you both into that pit. Sooner or later, the diary will be found with your bodies and by then I’ll be someone else. And if you don’t jump, then I’ll use your gun, Mr. Westin, to kill your bride and then you. A murder/suicide. The media will make you both infamous.”
It was now or never. He raised his hands as though to plead, pretended to stumble on the uneven ground and instead launched his six-plus feet directly at Bierta’s gun arm, figuring even if he took a bullet it would give Analise time to escape.
The weapon flew out of Bierta’s hand as he knocked her arm down with all his force. But the woman was quick and strong, and before he could rebound from the momentum of his launch, she’d come at him with both hands raised. She hit him with a karate chop that sent him flat to his back, knocking the air out of his lungs, banging his head against the rocks. For a second, he was dazed.
Analise’s voice brought him around and he struggled to sit up, unsure how long he’d been out. He found Bierta holding Analise by one arm, a gun pointed at her temple. Not just any gun, either. His Smith & Wesson!
Analise looked beyond fear, eyes as dark and deep as the orifice into which she was careening as she clawed at Bierta. “Who else is involved in this?” she demanded. “Tell me!”
He staggered to his feet as quietly as he could, scanning the heavily shadowed rock floor for Bierta’s gun. With her muzzle pointed at Analise’s forehead there was no way he could chance another rush. She might have time to shove Analise to her death or shoot her.
“No more talking,” Bierta hissed as she pulled Analise toward the rift.
He saw what he took to be the gun over by one of the fissures. He hurried toward it, gripping his head in a vain attempt to stop it from spinning.
“Bierta, or whoever you really are, tell me who’s in this with you,” Analise insisted, her voice commanding.
His fingers grasped what appeared to be the grip of Bierta’s gun. Too late he recognized it for what it was—a fragment of human skull stained by the earth. He dropped it quickly as he caught movement from the corner of his eye and spun around so fast he fell against the fissure wall.
“I know you’re over there,” Bierta said, swiveling the gun to point at him as she shoved Analise toward the chasm. “You don’t want your true love to die alone, now, do you?”
A shot bellowed as Analise, propelled forward by Bierta’s arm, disappeared into the rift.
ONE MOMENT ANALISE was fighting to give Pierce time to come after Bierta and the next, gunfire and crumbling rocks sent her flying into the abyss.
Desperately clutching the chasm lip while her legs dangled over the chasm, she tried to find a foothold. S
he could do this. She had to do it. She’d seen Pierce collapse at the same time Bierta released her iron grip on Analise’s arm. Had Bierta’s gun gone off? It must have. Analise was almost positive Pierce had been hit.
She had to get to him.
But her fingers kept slipping and the muscles in her shoulders and arms, still stressed from being bound for hours the day before, once again set up a cacophony of protests as she fought to support her weight. She gasped out loud as the toe of one boot found a perch on an obtrusion in the wall, and she tried to use it to brace herself. She kept slipping.
The sound of running footsteps thundered in her ears. Someone was yelling. Had Bierta come to step on her vulnerable fingers? A shower of loose rocks rained down on her head, but then she felt the solid grip of hands clamping onto hers, grunts of exertion, and then the relief of being pulled slowly upward, her face ground into the side of the chasm as she struggled to help by using her feet.
At last the grip slipped under her arms and with a final yank, more than half of her body lay on the cavern floor. She heaved her legs over the side and took a deep breath, then rolled onto her feet, expectation making her pulse jump. Pierce had to be okay if he’d pulled her to safety.
Brushing tangled hair away from her scratched face, she could hardly believe her eyes. “General Kaare?”
He looked almost sick, his skin pasty in the subdued light, his tall figure stooped. “Princess Analise, are you all right?” She noticed his hands shaking as he patted her down in an uncharacteristically familiar manner.
She looked past his concerned face to the two dark heaps on the cavern floor, separated by only twelve feet. His gaze followed hers.
“Stay here,” he commanded, picking up a rifle and looping the strap over his shoulder.
“I need to go to Pierce—”
“Please, let me do that. Please, Your Highness.”
Pierce’s still shape spoke to her in a million silent ways, robbing her of the ability to move. She nodded as tears ran down her cheeks, her gaze never leaving Pierce.
The general knelt beside Pierce. With each moment of utter silence, a little piece of hope died within her. When at last he stood, he looked back at her and shook his head.
Analise clutched her stomach and bent over. As the general moved off toward Bierta, she finally surmounted the cold grip of fear that had cemented her in place. She stumbled toward Pierce, barley able to see through a flood of tears, unable to believe he was gone. It had to be a mistake.
The general caught her arms. “Bierta is dead, too.”
“I don’t care about that woman,” Analise mumbled. “Pierce—”
“Don’t look at him,” the general cautioned. He shook her a little. “Analise, listen to me! She must have shot at him the same second I shot at her. Her bullet got him in the face. He wouldn’t want that to be your last memory of him.”
“I have to see him. I have to—”
“Please, Princess. There may still be danger. I brought a snowmobile. We need to get you and that diary out of this cave. We need to destroy it. Think about your family.”
The diary! She’d all but forgotten it. She grabbed her midsection and was relieved to feel the book still under her jacket, caught in the elastic band at the hip. She had to burn it. She had to save Chatioux from ruin. Something good had to come from all this tragedy.
Kaare’s arm snaked around her shoulders. With one last longing look toward Pierce’s body, Analise let the general lead her away.
Chapter Twenty-One
The long passage between caverns was dark except for the light from the general’s flashlight. Analise recognized the spot where she and Pierce had stopped to trade accusations and then had succumbed to their feelings for each other. The light briefly illuminated the scuffle marks in the dirt that attested to their rush to make love.
He had loved her…?.
Her heart was a stone now, and it sat heavy in her chest.
How had she ever convinced herself she could return to Chatioux and marry Ricard and bear his children and that it was the right thing to do? It seemed impossible she could have been so naive. This had to be the very essence of bittersweet—to finally understand what was important right on the heels of losing it forever.
“How did you get here?” she asked, tearing her gaze away from an imprint of Pierce’s boot in the dirt next to one of her own.
“I told you, a snowmobile.”
They rounded the rocky outcropping and were swallowed by darkness except for the one light the general shone in front of their feet. “But how did you know to come here?”
“I happened to glance out my window and saw Bierta stealing across the field so I followed her. I knew either she or Vaughn had to be involved and it was hard to picture him actually doing anything risky.”
“And the diary?” she added, sliding her fingers over the embossed cover. Her mother’s secrets had led Analise here, to this place and this time. It had cost many people their lives, including Pierce. She wished the earth would open up and swallow the damn book—and her.
“I heard you talking to Bierta. I put two and two together.” He was walking briskly. When his light illuminated a shallow basin in a rock, she grabbed his arm.
“Stop,” she said. “We’ll burn the diary right here. I don’t want to take it outside this cave. I have a lighter in my pocket.”
“As you wish.” He knelt, propping the rifle against a small stalagmite. “Princess? I know how upset you are, how difficult this is for you. Hand me the book.”
She put it in his hands, glad to be rid of it. History needed to die right now. He took it gently and she patted her pockets for Harley’s novelty lighter which she found easily.
That’s when she realized the general was thumbing through the pages of the diary, reading the passages with the help of the flashlight.
“Don’t read that,” she said firmly. “Here, give it to me, I’ll burn it.”
He looked up at her. “I remember these years,” he said softly. “Your father was convinced your mother was the only woman he would ever love. But I suspected she was carrying on with a married man in America. I could never prove it, and here it is in black and white.”
“General Kaare, please, don’t tell me anything else. Just give me the book.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “Your father wouldn’t listen to my suspicions, refused to even hear them. He ‘suggested’ I join the military and then he made sure I was assigned abroad for the next thirty years. I was as good as in exile.”
“But you’re long-standing friends—”
“‘A king has no friends.’ That’s what your father told me once. He was an egotist then, putting his own desires ahead of his country’s, and he’s one now, refusing to acknowledge the mistakes he’s made.”
Analise, taken aback by the bitterness in his voice, knelt down next to him. “You’re talking about my father, your good friend,” she said softly, prickles biting her skin like a horde of tiny gnats. “The past is over.”
His face appeared a mask as he met her gaze. “Is it? Perhaps not.” He slipped the book into his jacket pocket and stood up.
“What are you—”
“You’ve given me the means to revenge,” he said. “I was willing to allow Chatioux to founder on your father’s watch. Bierta convinced me she could ruin our chances for that pipeline and it would have served your father right. But this diary, this is a treasure. How far will your father go to protect himself and your brother? I intend to find out.”
Trembling anew, Analise rose, too. “You know he’s dying,” she said. “What will torturing him now accomplish?”
He shook his head. “You can’t begin to understand how much I loathe the man,” Kaare said. “And your brother is just like him, full of himself.” Kaare threw back his head and laughed. The sound was dry and hollow. “And to think the boy is nothing but a school-teacher’s son. That means you’re in line for the throne, you’ll be queen. It will tear t
hem all apart.”
“Give me that diary,” Analise insisted.
“You aren’t queen yet,” the general said. “Come to think of it, Princess, I don’t think you should return to Chatioux. With you dead, perhaps the king will see reason and do what is right for Chatioux.”
“Which is what?”
“If I save the country, I see no reason why I shouldn’t rule it. Your father has enough life left in him to pave the way for me. I’m sorry, dear, but you’re in my way.”
He was standing between her and the outside. The cavern around them was pitch-black except for the one small pool of light at Kaare’s feet. As he reached for the rifle, she knocked the flashlight to the ground and heard the satisfying shatter of glass. She took off the way they’d come, stumbling over rocks, afraid to look back, bumping into stalagmites, skinning her legs right through the denim.
“You can’t get away, Princess. I don’t need a flashlight. I have a night-vision scope,” Kaare called out after her. “How do you think I killed Lucas Garvey?” A shot rang out and hit something nearby.
She found the outcropping by sheer luck and ducked around into the tunnel, running for her life on more even ground.
Until she ran into something solid.
PIERCE KNEW WHO it was, even in the dark.
Especially in the dark.
He flashed on the light just to reassure her though he knew the bloody condition of his face and clothes might scare her instead. With realizing it was him, her eyes went from terrified to incredulous. “Oh, my God,” she said, hugging him tightly. “I thought you were dead!”
And then she snatched the light away from him and turned it off. “He’s after me,” she whispered, tugging Pierce back toward the burial cavern. “He has a scope…?.”
He didn’t have to ask her who—he knew. He also knew the rifle and the damn scope—they belonged to Cody. General Kaare must have heard the location of the gun-case combination when Pierce told Pauline where to find it.
“He killed Lucas,” Analise whispered as they hurried in the dark.
That’s what he’d noticed in the case the night before. Kaare must have taken the weapon when he came after them in the snow, killed Lucas, then returned the weapon to its case. He’d left the scope attached and it hadn’t been before but Pierce had been too exhausted to figure out what was different…?.
