Obviously Charlotte hadn’t told her old partner about her surgery, so neither would Aaron. If she had wanted the U.S. Marshal to know about her physical transformation, she would have informed him already. Maybe she hadn’t trusted this guy. And if she hadn’t, Aaron didn’t dare trust him, either. “Someone needs to keep an eye out for the goon that was guarding her door.”
They’d waited until the muscular man had slipped outside for a cigarette. “And maybe check around to see if Charlotte’s been visiting her.” He doubted it. If this was the princess and Charlotte knew she was here, she would have broken her out of this creepy hospital long ago.
Unless Charlotte wasn’t who Aaron had thought she was. Unless she was the one keeping Gabriella here…
The Marshal nodded in agreement. “I can ask some of the nurses about her visitors and keep an eye out for the big guy.”
“The princess knows me,” Aaron said, “so I’ll talk to her.”
Trigger glanced inside the room again. “Just because she knows you doesn’t mean you’re going to get any information out of her.”
“Maybe not,” Aaron agreed. “But maybe she can shed some light on what happened in Paris—”
Trigger interrupted with an urgent whisper, “And what happened to Charlotte!”
“Exactly,” Aaron said with a nod. “I have to try to find out what she knows.”
Trigger’s shoulders drooped in a shrug of defeat, as if he was already giving up. “Don’t expect much. I doubt that girl knows anything. I worked with Charlotte for four years, and I never knew what was going on with her.”
“I had a partner like that, too,” Aaron muttered beneath his breath as the U.S. Marshal headed toward the nurses’ station.
Was it possible that Whit had sold out? Was he the one behind what had happened in Paris?
And what about Charlotte? Had he been wrong about her, too? Maybe she’d had her own agenda where the princess was concerned.
Only one way to find out…
He clutched his fake ID badge and swiped it through the security lock beside the door. After a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching him, he slipped inside the room and shut the door at his back.
She didn’t awaken; she didn’t even stir in her sleep or shift beneath the thick blankets covering her. Was she all right? Or heavily sedated?
If she was Charlotte, then whoever had brought her here would have had to keep her subdued somehow. Drugs made sense.
He stepped closer, checking for an IV, but there was nothing. However, her arms were strapped to the bed railings.
“Are you all right?” he whispered, reaching out to touch her. He tipped her face toward him. He’d been able to tell the women apart—because Gabriella was younger with a wide-eyed innocence. And because Charlotte had made his heart race. But now his heart slammed against his ribs when he noticed the angry bruise marring her silky skin. “Oh, my God…what the hell happened to you?”
This injury was not from the struggle in the hotel room. Much of the bruise was still brilliant with color; it was a recent wound.
Despite his hand cupping her face, she didn’t react to his touch. Her lids didn’t flicker; her thick lashes lay against her high cheekbones. He ran his fingertips along the edge of her jaw toward her throat to check for a pulse. But as he leaned over her, his arm brushed against her stomach and beneath the blanket, something shifted, almost as if kicking him.
It wasn’t just her body beneath the heavy blankets. Or at least it wasn’t the shape of her formerly lithely muscled body; it had changed due to the rounded mound of her stomach.
“Oh, my God!” He felt as if he had been kicked—and a hell of a lot harder than that slight movement against his arm.
This woman was pregnant. So she couldn’t be Charlotte, who had been adamant about never becoming a mother. She had to be the princess. But he hadn’t known…he hadn’t realized…that the princess must have already been carrying a royal heir when she and Charlotte disappeared.
While he stared down at her stomach, she moved. Suddenly. Her hands wrapped tight around his throat, pushing hard against his windpipe. Despite the pressure he managed to gasp out one word, “Charlotte.”
He had no doubt now—he had found Charlotte. And if her death grip was any indication, she wasn’t happy that he had.
“CHARLOTTE…” she whispered the name back at him. It felt familiar on her lips. Was it her name? Or had she used it for someone else?
She wanted to ask the man, but for him to reply, she would have to loosen her grip. And then she wouldn’t be able to overpower him. She’d caught him by surprise, playing possum as she had; otherwise she never would have managed to get her hands on him.
He was nearly as big as the other guard. But his body was all long, lean muscle. His hair was dark, nearly black, and his eyes were a startlingly light blue. His eyes struck a chord of familiarity within her just like the name he’d called her.
Did she know him? Or had she just seen him before in here? He had one of those name badges clipped to what was apparently a uniform shirt. It was a drab green that matched the drawstring pants of what looked like hospital scrubs. So he obviously worked here.
She needed that badge to escape. She needed to escape even more than she needed to know who the hell she was. But her grip loosened, as his hands grasped hers and easily pulled them from his throat. She cursed her weakness and then she cursed him. “You son of a bitch!” She wriggled, trying to tug her wrists from his grip. But his hands were strong. “Let me go!”
“I’m trying to help you,” he said, his voice low and raspy—either from her attack or because he didn’t want to be overheard.
“Then get me the hell out of here!”
“That’s the plan.”
Her breath shuddered out in a gasp of surprise. “It is?”
“It’s why I’m here, Charlotte.”
“Why—why do you think I’m Charlotte?” The question slipped out, unbidden. And now she silently cursed herself. If Charlotte was the woman he’d intended to free, then she should have let him believe she was Charlotte.
Hell, maybe she was.
His eyes, that eerily familiar pale blue, widened in surprise. “You’re not?”
God, now he wasn’t sure, either.
She should have kept her mouth shut, but maybe she had done that as long as she had physically been able. Her voice was raspy, as if she hadn’t used it much lately. Or maybe someone had tried choking the life out of her, too.
She needed to get the hell out of this place. But should she leave with a stranger? Maybe he posed a bigger threat than the man with the Glock.
He studied her face, his gaze narrowing with the scrutiny. “Princess
