Ava looked the slightest bit startled by his words. “Whose dead body?”
“My predecessor, Viktor Bosch. He was captain of the royal guard before me. I was appointed after his death.” To Jason’s relief, his words silenced the wedding planner. “His death was a direct result of the dangers of the island. I cannot allow—”
But the woman’s fury rose with renewed vigor. “You cannot refuse a member of the royal family.” She leaned farther across the desk, invading his side.
“I can if it endangers safety.” Jason leaned forward again, wishing to push the woman back out of his space, using physical force if necessary. “And I already have.” He grabbed a self-inking stamp from his desk drawer and slapped the word against the paper with so much force droplets of red ink splattered around the letters.
Rejected.
Ava grabbed the stack of paper away from him. “You can’t—”
Jason tugged back on his half of the papers. He needed to file it with the king’s office to make it official. “I already did.”
“It’s not your decision to make!” Ava tugged on the pages.
Jason felt her fingers slipping and pulled harder, certain he’d nearly gained the advantage. “I’ve made the decision! It’s done,” he shouted over her words, even as she increased the volume of her demands.
Suddenly the door across from him swung open, and Jason looked up to see Galen and Titus, two of his royal guardsmen, standing in the open doorway, watching his wrestling match with the wedding planner in obvious shock and amusement.
“We did knock.” Titus cleared his throat. “No one answered.”
“We heard sounds of distress and felt it in the best interest of your safety to open the door,” Galen added.
Hoping to take advantage of the momentary distraction, Jason gave the papers a final hard tug. To his surprise, however, Ava held on so tightly his efforts pulled her partway onto his desk.
The wedding planner glared up at him furiously.
Jason stopped tugging on the papers but didn’t release them. While letting her keep hold of the papers wouldn’t result in her getting her way, he couldn’t bear the thought of giving her the satisfaction of prevailing over him, not when she’d already gotten her way so many times. It was almost as though she held more authority than he did—it hadn’t escaped his noticed that his men in the gatehouse had unlocked the pedestrian gate for her, even though he’d been right behind her.
As the youngest captain in the history of the royal guard, he didn’t always feel as though his men thought he deserved his position of authority over them. Ava’s constant triumphs degraded his power—which complicated his efforts to keep the royal family safe.
Titus continued, “The Sardis bomb squad has found something they want you to see.”
Immediately concerned, Jason asked, “Is it safe?”
“It’s a small bit of residue on the ground,” Galen clarified. “They think it might be bomb-related material. The dogs sniffed it out.”
“I’ll take a look.” Jason glanced at Ava. “You can stay here.”
“I’m coming, too.” She shot him a look that said she wasn’t about to back down.
Having fought the woman enough times before, Jason had learned to pick his battles. He didn’t need his men to watch him be defeated by the wedding planner. “Fine. But the papers stay here. And you’ll do as I say.”
He heard Ava make a noise in her throat, followed by hushed snickers from his men.
Jason chafed, not just that the woman so openly defied him, but that her disobedience was obvious to his men—and apparently amused them to the point of barely stifled disrespect. His men—the royal guards who’d served alongside him for years—were drilled in decorum. They understood ceremony and symbolism and the dignity of their positions. But the newest recruits from the army, including Titus, were a rougher sort, more interested in proving their strength than polishing their shoes. If the royal guard hadn’t desperately needed the manpower, he’d have sent the men back to the army.
His inability to control the wedding planner set a particularly bad example for his men. At a time when he wanted the new recruits to learn etiquette and protocol, Ava Wright made them snicker and crack jokes behind his back.
He needed to regain full control of the royal guard.
Too bad the wedding planner seemed equally determined to control everything within her reach.
If he was going to control the royal guard, he’d have to set things straight with the wedding planner first.
* * *
Ava watched as the captain bent to inspect what appeared to be a random patch of cobblestones. They were a little over a block away from the place where her car still smoldered, a blackened testimony to the violence that had invaded her morning.
“We’ve taken samples,” a member of the bomb squad told the captain soberly. “We’ll have to process them at the lab to learn exactly what it is, but based on the dogs’ reaction, it’s most likely residue from an explosive.”
They stood about eight feet from the sidewalk—where the driver would have stepped through the door of a compact car, had a vehicle still been parked there. Ava tried to sort out what the men were saying. “So whoever put the bomb in my car may have parked here, in this spot?”
“Exactly.” Jason nodded. “We can review the footage from the security cameras on the palace wall to see if they picked up anything, although I’ll warn you, the cameras are designed to protect the walls, not the streets of Sardis outside our jurisdiction. We might not have gotten much. What was the time window that your car was parked on this street?”
“I arrived to meet with the princess shortly before eight, then stopped by your office to get your approval on the wedding plans. You kept me waiting.”
Jason didn’t apologize. “The explosion happened shortly after ten. That’s more than a two-hour window. Any number of vehicles may have come and gone in that time.”
Though she was tempted to point out to the captain that he might have narrowed the window by agreeing to see her when she’d first arrived at headquarters, another thought made her heart beat with apprehension. “A car pulled away from this spot right after the explosion.”
Both the captain and the members of the bomb squad looked surprised.
“You mean you saw a car drive off?” Jason clarified.
Ava nodded, the memory rushing back clearly now. She was certain of what she’d seen. Everything had happened so quickly, and yet she distinctly recalled seeing a car pull away—in the back of her dazed mind, she’d thought to herself the driver was fortunate to have parked ahead of her on the street. Otherwise the vehicle would have had to drive past her smoldering car to leave.
The bomb tech scowled at the captain. “The person witnessed an explosion, but instead of checking to see if everyone was all right, he fled?”
“Maybe
