been drugged did nothing to ease her fear when she opened her eyes and saw that they were descending a thin rope into the dark courtyard.
If she hadn’t still been holding her breath, she would have screamed her lungs out.
Presently they reached the ground and Zachary set Kristin on her feet, where she teetered for a moment, to flip the grappling hook loose from the terrace railing and wind the rope around one hand. Kristin lifted her hand to her mouth to stifle another yawn. “You’ll never believe what just happened to me in there—”
Even in the thin light of an autumn moon, Kristin saw the muscle tighten in his jaw. “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” he responded. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
Once they’d gained the palace wall, Zachary flung the grappling hook over the top, then wrenched on the rope to make sure it was secure.
“Not again,” Kristin protested.
“Get on my back,” Zachary ordered impatiently. “And for God’s sake, stop bitching. In case you haven’t noticed, your ladyship, I’m doing all the damn work!”
Kristin put her arms around his neck and climbed onto him piggyback style. “Think of it as just recompense for all the times I had to carry out the garbage and wash your socks,” she replied sweetly, her head clearing by the moment.
He started up the wall. “You never had to wash my socks,” he retorted, his voice sounding choked.
Kristin loosened her grip slightly. “It was a metaphor,” she whispered back.
“You know,” he grunted in response, straining to pull them both up the rope, “the prince probably deserves you. Maybe I should take you back there and let them finish the ritual.”
They’d reached the top of the wall, and Kristin could just rely make out the outline of a Jeep below.
“Jump,” Zachary instructed her. “We’re like ducks in a shooting gallery up here.”
Kristin’s heart hammered in her chest. “I’m not jumping!” she protested. “It must be ten feet to the ground!”
“Aim for the bushes,” Zachary answered, and then his hand pressed into the small of her back and she went sailing off the wall. He landed in the shrubbery only a moment after she did.
She flew at him, hands flying, bones aching from a jarring touchdown.
He caught her wrists and stayed the attack, and his perfect teeth flashed in an acid grin as he looked down at her. “No time for gratitude, princess. It won’t be long before they miss you.”
Kristin started to say that she didn’t want to go anywhere with him, but the memory of Jascha hurling her onto the bed stopped her. If Mai hadn’t come in when she had, Prince Charming would have slapped her senseless and then raped her. Anything was better than a lifetime of that. “If we hurry,” she said with a meekness she didn’t feel, “we can get to the Canadian embassy before Jascha’s servants sound the alarm. It’s just around the corner.”
Zachary thrust her into the jeep and got behind the wheel. “There isn’t any Canadian embassy,” he answered as they drove quickly away from the palace wall. “Not anymore. Hold on to your pedigree, princess—we’re leaving Cabriz the hard way.”
2
Zachary wheeled the Jeep through dark, narrow streets Kristin didn’t recognize. The city seemed strangely quiet. Empty.
“Where is everybody?” Kristin asked, raising her voice to be heard.
“Hiding. This is a military Jeep.”
Kristin swallowed and brushed her tangled hair back from her face with both hands. “You mean, people think we’re soldiers?”
“Probably.”
Uneasily, Kristin ran her hands down her thighs. She was wearing the pajamalike garb of Cabrizian peasantry, male or female. “Where did you get it?”
“I stole it,” he answered with exaggerated politeness. “Given your station in life, I tried to get an embassy limo with little flags on the hood, but they were all booked up—it must be prom night.”
Kristin’s temper rose steadily as they left the ancient city behind and started up a nearby mountain. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t any road. She folded her arms across her breasts. “Still jealous of the advantages I’ve had,” she replied. “Honestly, Zachary, envy doesn’t become you.”
The Jeep stopped with a jolt. “Let’s get one thing straight, princess. Anybody who wanted your life—” he jabbed at his temple with an angry forefinger “—would have to be one can short of a six-pack. And if you wouldn’t mind, how about a little gratitude? I didn’t have to take this job, you know!”
Kristin subsided, stung. She hadn’t had a chance to prepare for this encounter with Zachary, and the pain was intense. “You didn’t even ask if I wanted to leave,” she observed in a more moderate tone of voice.
Zachary guided the intrepid little vehicle into even more inhospitable terrain. There were towering pine trees all around, and enormous boulders. “Well, excuse me,” he replied dramatically. “I’ll drop you off at the next corner!”
“Stop yelling,” Kristin said with a sigh. Zachary hadn’t changed in the year and a half since she’d seen him. He was still bristly and uncommunicative—the dedicated agent through and through. “We’re going to be together for a few hours, so we might as well try to get along.”
The Jeep came to another lurching stop, and Zachary turned to her, smiling in amazed amusement. “A few hours?”
“Sure. There’s a helicopter hidden around here somewhere, isn’t there?”
He gave a hoot of derisive laughter.
“What’s funny?” Kristin demanded.
“You are. There isn’t any helicopter, your ladyship. We’re going to travel through the mountains on horseback. If we’re lucky—damn lucky—we’ll be over the border into Rhaos in five days.”
Kristin gulped. For a moment she actually considered turning back, going through with the marriage to Jascha. Held up alongside the prospect of five days with Zachary Harmon, under the harshest of conditions, life in the palace didn’t look so bad. “Oh,” she said.
Zachary jammed the jeep into gear, and they were moving up the mountain again. When they’d traveled for what seemed like hours to Kristin, in relative silence, he finally brought the vehicle to a stop. In the glare the headlights she could see two horses, saddled and tethered by long ropes to a tree. Nearby were canvas packs.
When Zachary shut off the lights, everything disappeared for a moment. Kristin waited for her eyes to adjust to the moonlight, but her recalcitrant rescuer immediately got out of the Jeep and started moving around in the darkness.
“I don’t see why we have to take horses,” Kristin reasoned as she lowered herself delicately to the running board and then the ground, “when we have a perfectly good Jeep.”
