“Please don’t go,” Flicka said. “Let’s just leave. Let’s run. We can go somewhere, anywhere else.”
Dieter sat on the bed beside her. “We will, but we need to go to Paris, first. You need to meet with the lawyers who drew up your prenup so you can start divorce proceedings, if that’s still what you want to do?”
“God, yes. After last night—” Flashes of Pierre’s hands on her throat, a knife near her neck as he shoved her dress up, and the stink of burning gunpowder as she sprinted out of the suite as fast as she could. “He forced me. He held a knife to my throat while he dragged me into the bedroom. He shot at me. If he were a better shot, I’d be dead. I want that asshole in jail, I want to kill him, but that’s not going to happen. Divorce is the least of what I want to do to him.”
Bitter bile rose in her throat, and her head pounded harder. Her temples split with pain.
“I just want out. I don’t want to ever see him again.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “The whole night keeps replaying in my head. Every damn detail. Every smell of his weird smoky cologne and spilled whiskey. Every flash of light off the knife. Every rasp of his zipper. The way he opened his mouth so far when he screamed at me that the cords on his neck stood out. The way Quentin wouldn’t look at me, just stared straight ahead as he yanked me toward the bedroom. Every damned second of it.”
Dieter opened his hand between them on the sheets. “I should have been there. I shouldn’t have let you confront him alone.”
Flicka grabbed his hand, trying to hold on, trying to stay in the room with him rather than live through every terrifying second of the night before that was streaming through her head. Her joints creaked, and the scabs over her knuckles stretched painfully. “I wouldn’t have let you.”
“I’ll never fail you again,” Dieter said. His strong fingers wrapped around hers.
“You didn’t fail. It wasn’t you. I’m just shocked that he did any of it. I didn’t know he could. The violence, the rage, he shocked me. I’d never seen anything like that in him before.”
But she had. Pierre had punched one of his Secret Service agents in the mouth a few months before when he had fired him, and he had grabbed a paparazzo by the throat when he’d come too close to Flicka only a few weeks ago. And there had been other times.
Dieter said, “It’s shocking, when someone you trust, someone you love and admire, reveals themselves to have such evil in them.”
He must be talking about his ex-wife, the woman who had stolen millions from him and run off with another guy. “Yeah. It’s shocking.”
“It’s normal to want to run away, but you’ll have to stand and face him eventually, probably in court.”
Flicka tried to stop thinking, to feel nothing but the warmth of his hand around hers. “I don’t want to think about that right now.”
“Of course. But I’ll be there with you. I won’t let you be alone with him ever again.”
“I’m scared.”
“I’ll protect you.”
“I hate him.”
“I won’t let him touch you.”
“I just want to run.”
“And we will, but first I have to steal your passport, find out what they know, and spread a little disinformation. Last night, I ordered an enormous breakfast from room service, enough for two, but only on one plate. It should be here any minute.”
“I cannot imagine eating anything. I drank too much last night.”
“I need you to eat, to regain your strength and heal. And then don’t open the door for anyone at all, no matter what. Keep the television on very low, if at all. Make sure no one could hear it, even if they’re standing right outside and pressing their ear to the door.”
New fear stunned her. “Do you think he’s going to send someone?”
“I don’t know, but—” Dieter trailed off, thinking. “It’s too risky to leave you alone. I’m going to have someone stay in the living room. Don’t talk to them. Don’t make a sound. I don’t want even him to know you’re here if we can manage it. But I want you to have a last line of defense. I’ll be back as soon as I can, hopefully with your passport.”
Into the Lions’ Den
Dieter Schwarz
Don’t be Dieter Schwarz,
the stalwart Clausewitz to Wulfram’s Duke of Brunswick.
Be Raphael, the fallen angel,
because you have to lie to him
again.
Dieter signed for the breakfast tray from room service, showered and dressed, convinced Wulfram that they needed to meet in Pierre’s suite so Dieter could investigate the scene or some shit like that, and called Magnus Jensen, one of his commanding officers in Rogue Security.
Magnus arrived a few minutes later, striding into the living room of Dieter’s suite. He had been an operator with the Dutch special forces unit, the Korps Commandotroepen, before Dieter had enticed him away with promises of more money and adventure with Rogue Security. Magnus’s hair was dark, almost black, but his pale skin and ice blue eyes gave away his Scandinavian roots. “Yes, Schwarz. I’m here.”
“I want you to sit right here, in my living room, while I’m away. It shouldn’t be longer than an hour.”
Magnus glanced around the empty living room. “Is there coffee?”
“On the breakfast cart.” He gestured at the cart, where only a few bites of the toast, egg whites, and fruit remained on the single plate.
“Is it hot?”
“Should be. Don’t open the door for anyone except me, no matter what,” Dieter said. “Not housekeeping, not even if the damn police want in. And stay out of the bedroom.”
Magnus sniffed the mug that Flicka had managed a few swallows of coffee from, shrugged, and filled the cup from a coffee carafe. “Got it.”
“Do you need a sidearm or other weapon?”
Magnus set the steaming cup on the coffee table and reached around to the small of his back. He removed a handgun, laying it beside the cup. Another small pistol, three knives, a garrote wire, a kubotan, a Taser, and an expandable steel baton clattered into a pile. “Am I going to need more than that?”
“Probably not.” Especially since Magnus Jensen’s hands were his most dangerous weapons. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Magnus began concealing his weapons in his sleeves, pant legs, and waistband again.
Dieter had known that Magnus would be the right guy to call. Magnus knew when not to ask questions.
On his way to Pierre Grimaldi’s suite, Dieter returned texts for a few operators with questions about mopping up the end of the security operation for Wulfram von Hannover’s wedding. The operation was continuing, he told them, but he didn’t tell them why. He shouldn’t have enough information to make that decision yet, so he didn’t let on that he had far more information about Flicka’s whereabouts than anyone else.
At Pierre’s suite, he knocked and made sure to be studying his phone when the door opened.
Wulfram von Hannover, Flicka’s older brother who had raised her like a father, stood with his hand on the doorknob. He wore worry lines around his bright blue eyes and a dark suit. “Dieter.”
“Durchlaucht.” Dieter strode in, surveying where everyone was sitting.
Pierre Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco, sat on the couch, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his spread knees. He wore suit trousers and a white dress shirt, but his collar was unbuttoned. When Wulfram shut the door, Pierre didn’t even lift his head.
Quentin Sault, Pierre’s Secret Service colonel, leaned against the back wall, his arms crossed over his chest. He also studied the carpet.
Dieter hoped that Sault was damned ashamed of himself. He was supposed to be a security professional, not an accomplice to rape.
However, Dieter surveyed the room with no emotion, no anger, just as if he were analyzing one of the last places the person of interest had been seen. “When was the last time we have a confirmed sighting of Flicka?”
Wulfram sat in a chair near Pi
erre and gestured toward another one where Dieter could sit. “At the reception last night, she danced with you for a few songs—”
The memory of her soft, lithe form in Dieter’s arms last night, back when she was merely angry at Pierre for deceiving her about his reasons for marrying her, made Dieter want to pace the room to burn off the rage.
Instead, he lowered himself to the chair and nodded wearily, acknowledging that he had danced with her. “She danced with Yoshi afterward. Have we asked Yoshi if she said anything to him about going anywhere?”
Wulf shook his head. “You know those two. They teased each other about being drunk for a couple of songs, had a few more together, and then stumbled in opposite directions.”
Dieter examined Pierre, who still hadn’t said a word, lifted his head, or acknowledged Dieter’s existence. That was some interesting body language that cried out Pierre was lying about everything. “Why wasn’t she dancing with you?”
Pierre shrugged, but he still didn’t look up. “Flicka dances with whomever she likes. I’m not her jailor.”
Interesting denial, there. “So, you have one of those open, modern relationships, where you can both fool around with whomever you want?”
“Of course not. Don’t be daft. She’s the love of my life. We’re practically still newlyweds.”
“But you were dancing with other women last night, weren’t you?”
He shrugged his shoulders around his hanging head. “It was just dancing.”
“Was one of them Abigai Caillemotte?”
Pierre looked up at Dieter.
One of Pierre’s eyes was swollen almost shut and inflated with purple bruises. One side of his mouth was puffed, too, and blood had dried in the creases of his lips. He asked, “How do you know her name?”
Dieter sat back in his chair and crossed one leg, examining the evidence of a rather extensive injury, and wondered if Pierre had counted his teeth this morning. Flicka had fought hard, and he was justifiably prouder of her. Those bruises and scrapes on her knuckles had been hard-earned. “You get in a bar fight last night, Your Serene Highness?”
“That’s irrelevant,” he said. “How do you know about Abigai?”
“Flicka asked me to validate several documents and pictures last night. The name Abigai Caillemotte kept coming up.”
Pierre’s swollen lips peeled back from his teeth. “She’s no one.”
“That’s not what the paperwork says, is it?”
“I used to know her.”
Dieter looked at Quentin Sault, standing back there, but Sault was staring out the hotel room’s wide windows.
Wulfram was turning between Dieter and Pierre. Dieter almost felt a chill when Wulf so thoroughly turned off his emotions that he might as well have been a blue-eyed, steel robot sitting in the chair.
Dieter asked, “Did any of you receive a message, text, email, or anything?”
Pierre resumed staring at the floor as he and Wulf shook their heads.
“Sault, when did you try to track her phone?”
“This morning around six o’clock,” he said, still staring at the bright, summer morning outside the windows.
If that was true, then Dieter had already dismantled her phone by that time. Good. Score one for Monegasque Secret Service ineptitude.
He doubted it was true, though. Men had been chasing Flicka down the hallway. They knew she had run. They should have traced it right away.
Should have, but maybe they hadn’t.
He asked, “Why didn’t you try sooner?”
“She’s an adult,” Quentin Sault said. “She doesn’t have a curfew.”
“She was under your security umbrella,” Dieter said. “You shouldn’t have lost her.”
“She slips away,” Sault said. “She slipped away from everyone yesterday afternoon for several hours.”
“She’d been kidnapped. Rogue Security got her back.”
“We noticed your men circling around us. Where did she go last night, then?” His sarcastic sneer pissed Dieter off more.
Dieter checked his phone. “She entered this suite at two-forty this morning and intended to be in for the night. I have a photo. Pierre Grimaldi and Quentin Sault entered the suite at approximately three-oh-five. What happened then, Pierre?”
Wulfram was only watching Pierre now.
“She wasn’t here,” Pierre said, glaring at the carpet under his shoes.
“We didn’t see her leave. There is no record of her exiting the suite.” Dieter was daring Pierre to contradict him.
Pierre didn’t look up, and his voice was even flatter than before. “I said, she wasn’t here.”
So Pierre sucked at lying. Good to know. “Right. And what did she ask you about Abigai Caillemotte?”
“Get out.”
Damn, Dieter had been hoping that Pierre would storm out and Quentin Sault would go after him, leaving Dieter alone in the suite to retrieve Flicka’s passport, but Pierre hadn’t even raised his voice.
He said, “I need to look at her things to see if anything’s missing. And you need to tell me what she said to you last night.”
“Nothing is missing,” Pierre said.
“Her purse?” Dieter asked, knowing the answer to that one. “Her phone? Her charging cord? Clothes? Her passport?”
Pierre shook his head. “All here.”
“Wouldn’t she have had her purse and phone with her at the reception?”
“You said she came back here,” Pierre said.
“You said she didn’t. But you said her purse is here.”
Pierre looked up, exposing his beaten face again. One deep abrasion near his eye looked like a diamond ring might have been involved. “Quentin?”
“We don’t have her purse or phone,” Sault said, staring out the window. Reflected sunlight shone on his white skin.
“Then where are they?” Dieter asked.
“Missing,” Sault said, “just like Mrs. Grimaldi.”
Dieter didn’t twitch at the dig. He knew that wasn’t Flicka’s legal name. “Did you check surveillance footage?”
“Some of the security cameras were not working,” Sault said. “A surprising number were not functional, including one near the lift in the parking garage. She might have left the hotel.”
Dieter had electronically disabled the cameras at each end of his floor out of habit because he didn’t like other security firms watching him come and go, but he’d expected the others to be working.
“I’ll review the footage.” And thereby find a route to get Flicka out of the hotel without Pierre’s Secret Service seeing them. “I want to look at her luggage and clothes.”
“How would you know if anything were missing?” Pierre asked.
“I’m also looking for anything that shouldn’t be there,” Dieter said, lying his ass off. He just wanted to be alone with Pierre’s safe. “I’m looking for evidence or clues.”
Quentin Sault didn’t even respond. Dieter suspected depression or deep, deep guilt, and he hoped that Sault felt it like a knife stabbing his back during his every waking minute and suffered nightmares when he slept.
Pierre said, “Fine. Fine. I don’t care. Do what you want.” He stood and strode out of the suite.
Quentin Sault sighed and followed him.
Two out, one to go. Even Wulfram couldn’t know that Flicka was with Dieter, not if one of the Welfenlegion might be a turncoat and kill Wulf on Pierre’s orders in revenge for helping Flicka escape him.
Wulfram said to Dieter, “If she’s alive, we have to find her before Pierre does.”
Wulf had spoken in Alemannic, a Swiss dialect of German. The Monegasques probably wouldn’t be able to understand it if they were listening now or in surveillance footage, later. Germans generally couldn’t understand Alemannic, though the two languages were closely related.
Wulfram asked him, “Do you think he killed her?”
Dieter knew he had to lie again.
Telling Wulfram that terrib
le lie, that Pierre had probably killed Flicka, would devastate him. Dieter couldn’t imagine the pain of losing his baby daughter, Alina.
But if Dieter did tell him exactly that, if he drove a metaphorical knife through Wulfram’s ribs and sliced through his heart, Wulfram would act as if he thought Flicka were missing and probably dead.
If there was a traitor in the Welfenlegion, that lie might save Wulfram’s life.
And his wife’s.
And his unborn child’s.
But Jesus, thinking that he had lost Flicka would destroy him.
Dieter sighed. “I don’t know, Durchlaucht. You saw the damage to his face.”
Wulfram nodded. “She fought hard.”
“Yeah, she did.” Dieter should have stayed with her the night before. He shouldn’t have let her confront Pierre alone. Guilt drowned him. “I want to look around. Maybe something could tell us where she is.”
Wulfram nodded. “What should we look for?”
“Anything out of place. Anything wrong. Maybe something is missing that would show us her frame of mind. Like, did she take her passport? Or a credit card? Or her phone charger? If she didn’t take anything like that, then she was fleeing and has nothing with her, in which case we should look in the park near the lake or on the streets around the hotel.”
Wulf nodded. “Let’s look around.”
Dieter stood. “I’ll take the bedroom.”
He strode toward the bedroom, trying to get a few paces ahead of Wulfram.
The door to the bedroom was closed. Dieter shoved it open.
Inside, half the bedclothes were thrown on the floor, and Dieter hesitated as he surveyed the crime scene.
His lighter weighed in his pocket. The impulse seized him to spray lighter fluid on the bed and watch it burn.
But he was already halfway across the room toward the safe, and his hand reached toward the keypad.
Twelve. Enter.
In Shining Armor Page 2
