But when he was sitting at his desk at last, ready to tackle his correspondence, he realized he was completely exhausted. He’d flown home on the red-eye from Brazil where he’d given an address at a conference as the head of the European Society of Social Anthropology. He could never sleep on anything that moved, forget the first-class fully reclining seats of the plane. He had motion sickness, worse than the plague for someone who traveled as much as he did.
He glanced at his watch. Maybe he could squeeze in thirty minutes of rest. He was used to taking short breaks like this when out in the field on a dig. They often had to work around the clock to beat collapsing tunnels or bad weather.
Going up to his suite would have taken too much time, so he simply let his head rest against the back of the chair, stretched his legs in front of him and folded his hands over his abdomen. But far from refreshing, his sleep was restless, his dreams disturbing.
He woke to desperate knocking on his door some time later, blinked hard while he ran his fingers through his hair, then adjusted the collar of his shirt as he sat up straight. Cleared his throat. “Come in.”
Chancellor Egon burst through the door, breathing as hard as if he’d been doing laps around the grand ballroom. His eyes were wide with panic. “Miss Steler is missing.”
“Is she now?” And good riddance. Things were looking up. She had probably assessed their security system, realized it was beyond her and given up whatever thieving plans she’d been nursing. Istvan’s heart was suddenly lighter as he looked toward the upcoming week.
“We—” The Chancellor wrung his hands, apparently thinking this was some great tragedy. He was rather attached to the idea of the artifacts touring, his flying in for each opening and giving one of his interminable speeches on Valtrian glory. “We—”
“What is it?” Istvan glanced at the antique clock on the wall and realized he’d slept a lot longer than he’d meant to. His gaze slid to Amalia’s photo in its silver frame under the clock, and his heart gave a painful thud as always. God, how he missed her.
He focused back on the Chancellor, who was still hemming and hawing. “Anything else?” He didn’t have all day to waste on Miss Steler.
The Chancellor went pale as he said, “Your Highness,
I’m afraid—I have to inform you—” He took a deep breath and spit it out at last. “I’ve come from the treasury. We can’t find the crown jewels either.”
Chapter Two
“I want the security tapes.” Istvan paced the room. He wanted progress, and was getting anything but. No more than half an hour could have passed since he’d first received the news from the Chancellor, but, without answers, every minute of that time seemed unbearably long.
He was at the security offices on the basement level of the palace with Miklos, Janos and Arpad. Benedek was on a world tour with Rayne, his opera-diva wife, in South Africa at the moment. Lazlo was still on his honeymoon on some undisclosed Mediterranean island.
“There’s no security footage.” Miklos was seething, as well, ignoring the worried looks of some of the security personnel in the next room. He could be intimidating when angered, something that came from decades of army life. He could stare down a full platoon if needed. No doubt, he’d had already taken the staff to task.
“This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. And if Miss Steler was involved, she didn’t work alone,” he said, and Istvan agreed.
That the bastards could take as much as they had in half an hour and seemingly turn into smoke was amazing. The crown jewels were just the tip of the iceberg, albeit the most important among the artifacts that had disappeared.
“The cameras went out?” he asked. “Don’t we have backup?”
“We have an alarm that gets triggered if recording is stopped or if the tape is blank.” Miklos’s face hardened. “But recording kept going. We have half an hour of footage of Channel Three. Someone hacked into the system from the outside. That’s not supposed to be possible.”
“And the people whose job it was to watch the monitors?” Arpad asked.
“Killed.”
The guards who’d protected the Royal Treasury had been murdered, as well. The mood in the office could not have been more grim.
“How sure are you that Miss Steler was involved?” Janos asked.
“One hundred percent. I showed her the treasury earlier. She begged Chancellor Egon to take her back there, telling him she needed to take more notes and think things over. She charmed him by asking for his help with the selection process.” The whole story came out once the Chancellor had calmed down enough to talk. “When the Chancellor had to run off for a quick meeting, she convinced him to leave her locked in there so she could keep working until he returned. He left her with a guard.”
“And when he went back, the guards were all dead, and Miss Steler and the loot were missing,” Janos finished for him, still wearing a tux. He’d been pulled from a formal reception for the top economists of the nation. Istvan hated social obligations. Janos very much enjoyed that sort of thing.
“Lauryn Steler,” Arpad was saying the name pensively, staring at the treasury’s blueprint.
He should have seen it coming, Istvan thought. He should have fought harder to keep her from entering the country, or should have put her under heavy guard, or at the very least should have issued a preemptive order to forbid anyone from letting her near the treasury without his being present.
“When we find her, we’ll find her team. Who is looking for her?” he asked, gathering his thoughts, pushing back on the regret and the anger. He needed to calm his mind to be able to think more clearly.
“The police and every man I have available. Every border station, airport, train station, bus station and shipping port has her name and picture,” Miklos reassured him, but from the resignation in his voice it was clear that he knew how little those precautions meant in reality.
Someone like Lauryn Steler would have multiple passports and could switch between identities with ease. Hell, she could be anywhere by now, traveling as a gray-haired grandmother.
But she had to have left a trail, however faint.
Istvan reached a decision. “I’m going out there. I have contacts.”
To break into the palace she had to have local help, and he knew most of the local bad boys in the stolen arts and artifacts world, and had helped to put some of them behind bars one time or another. Anybody hit one of his digs or cherished museums, he went after them with a vengeance. He knew exactly where to look, whom to pressure.
“We’re going with you,” his brothers said as one, moving closer together.
“A reassuring show of loyalty. Thank you. But it would only complicate things.” A few years back, they had resurrected the Brotherhood of the Crown in secret, but in this case he was certain he’d be better off alone. “It’ll be difficult enough for me to get out of the palace unnoticed and go around asking questions without attracting media attention.”
Arpad looked as if he might argue the point, but then
