a frustrated hand through his hair, exposing the silvery flecks that framed his close-cropped ebony hair. “We need to look at that footage. Can you describe the car you saw?”
“It was a car,” Ava told him, recalling all she could.
“Make or model?”
Ava bit her lip. She hadn’t looked closely enough to see any details—most of her attention had been on the pain in her legs and all the confusion around her. The ringing in her ears hadn’t helped her focus at all, either.
“Color?” Jason prompted.
Ava pinched her eyes shut, replaying the memory. “Dark?” She couldn’t say anything more certain than that.
To his credit, Captain Selini neither laughed nor rolled his eyes. “We’ll have to look at the footage. Are we done here?” he asked the bomb tech.
The squad member nodded. “We’ll give you a call when we get the results on those samples.”
Ava walked alongside the captain as he headed back toward the pedestrian gate in the palace wall, to the royal-guard headquarters building that lay inside the palace grounds. They passed the smoldering remains of her car, and she glanced at it, her steps wavering as she considered what might have happened if she hadn’t stopped and turned back to face the captain.
She could have been killed. At the very least, it would have been her face that was disfigured, instead of her ankles.
Suddenly the captain took hold of her arm. “Are you okay?”
Ava wanted to dismiss his question with a laugh, but she had to struggle to catch her breath, and she felt uncharacteristically unsteady on her feet. Attempting to straighten, to pull away from the support of his hand on her arm, she instead stumbled forward unsteadily, her high heels catching in the gaps between the cobblestones.
Jason clasped one hand around her waist. For an instant, she feared he was going to hoist her over his shoulder and trundle her off as before, but instead he met her eyes with surprising concern. “Don’t look at the car,” he told her in a soothing voice. “Just walk slowly. One foot in front of the other.”
In any other situation, Ava would have snapped at him. But it was all she could do to lean on his arm and step slowly forward as instructed. She glanced at his face and found his eyes on hers, concerned, reassuring. His eyes, which had only ever seemed cold and steel-gray before, now held a hint of compassion she hadn’t expected.
“I am not an invalid,” she told him sharply as soon as she found her voice. She needed to push him away. It was her personal policy not to trust anyone. She’d learned that lesson the hard way, enough that she didn’t usually forget. Trust led to pain. Always.
And yet, for the moment at least, it seemed she needed him. His strong arm kept her upright, when otherwise she might fall. She felt so light-headed, the memory and the fear swirling together in her mind. What would have happened if Jason hadn’t stopped her from reaching her car? And why had someone planted a bomb there? Granted, she didn’t go out of her way to be nice to people—not anymore, not since the two people she most trusted on earth had taken advantage of her trust so horribly.
But surely her newfound assertiveness hadn’t prompted the attack. Perhaps she had become prickly, maybe even harsh. She’d only meant to keep people from getting too close to her. She’d never dreamed it would be enough to provoke someone to attempt to kill her.
THREE
Jason watched the images on the security screens as Oliver replayed the relevant moments. As he’d feared, Ava’s car had been parked on the edge of the security camera’s range, with only the rear bumper in view. The vehicle she’d watched drive away moments after the explosion had been far beyond that. They didn’t get so much as a shadow.
“That’s it?” Ava asked impatiently from where she stood near his elbow. “You haven’t got a single image of any of it?”
“You parked beyond the range of our cameras,” Jason explained, trying to keep the frustration he felt from entering his voice. The woman could be difficult to deal with on a good day. She was already upset enough.
“I normally park closer, but that was the nearest spot when I arrived this morning.”
Convinced the screens had nothing more to show him, Jason turned to face the wedding planner. Her tone might have been icy, but her eyes were round with fear.
As well they should be. Among the many questions that vied for his attention, the foremost was whether the woman had been specifically targeted, or if her car had been randomly chosen for its position near the palace, but beyond the range of his cameras. Until he could answer with confidence that she had no more to fear than anyone else, he needed to take steps to keep her safe.
“Stay here and review the footage,” he told her. “I have some phone calls to make.”
Jason strode to his office, thinking quickly. There were apartments built into the rear wall of the palace grounds. Once used to house servants of the royal family, they continued to provide lodging for long-term guests and staff, even some of his guards. If he could secure a vacancy, the wedding planner could stay inside the safety of the palace walls, under the watchful eyes of his guards.
“Where are you going?” Ava’s demanding tone carried down the hall after him.
Jason mustered up his patience as he called back to her, “To my office to make some phone calls.”
“So you’re just leaving me? That’s it? I don’t have a car anymore. What am I supposed—”
He raised a hand to shush her. “The phone calls are for your benefit. I’m trying to find you a place to stay.”
“It was my car that blew up, not my apartment.”
“You don’t need a car.” Jason reached his office and hurried inside, wishing he could close the door and keep her out.
“Yes, I do! I have a business to run.” She stomped into the office after him. “I’ve got a wedding in eight days and another in less than four months. I have work to do.”
“The guards can drive you.”
“Guards? I don’t want—”
“I don’t care what you want. It’s for your safety. I’m going to find you a place to stay near the guards.”
“I don’t want to stay near your guards! They want to throw me in the river like a sack of kittens.” A note of despair carried through her bossy tone.
“No, that was me, as I recall.” Jason hoped his admission might deflate her anger. For a moment, as he glanced at her to gauge the effect of his words, he thought he caught a glimmer of gratitude in her eyes—as though she understood the effort he’d put into his gracious words and appreciated the gesture.
But in an instant, cold fury snapped into her eyes again. “You wish I’d made it to my car before the bomb went off, don’t you?”
Jason glared at her, wondering if he’d imagined the gratitude in her eyes. Why would she be so mean to him if she understood he was trying to assuage
