not scared of you,” she told him. Not that he wasn’t physically powerful, but she had plenty of moves he hadn’t seen yet. “But while I know I’m not guilty, you’re too prejudiced and stubborn to believe that. And if you tried something …” He should know that she wasn’t going to stand still while he steamrolled over her. “I’ve worked hard to change my reputation and achieve the standing I have in this business. I wouldn’t want to ruin it by shooting a prince.”
He swore under his breath in French.
“Hey, I understood that.”
He glared. “So why don’t you tell me your perfectly innocent version of events.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Maybe you can convince me.”
If only. But it wasn’t as if she had anything better to do. A long tale might calm him enough so that she could untie him. She had to do that eventually. He was a prince. Despite what she’d said, she probably wouldn’t shoot him. But she couldn’t set him free until she could be sure that he wouldn’t try to overtake her and tie her up in turn. One of them would get hurt. And because he was a prince, she had a feeling that whatever the outcome of such a struggle would be, it wouldn’t be to her advantage.
“After you barely let me take a look at the artifacts in the treasury, I realized you were going to do your best not to let me back in there. I asked the Chancellor, who is a true gentleman by the way, to allow me some more time. I figured that was my only chance to do a thorough job and make sure I made the right choices.” The treasury was simply breathtaking, the most amazing place she’d ever seen. She wished—for a multitude of reasons—that they were both still back there.
“How convenient that the Chancellor had to step out,” he said with derision.
“Not at all. He was most helpful about the history of some of the objects. And he was very entertaining. A gracious host.” Unlike the prince had been, she thought, but left that part unspoken. No sense annoying an already-angry lion, even if he was tied and she had a gun on him.
“Which probably wouldn’t have stopped you from murdering him if he didn’t have to leave. Are you aware that nine men were killed? Men with wives and children who grieve them. Or were you rushing too fast to count?”
The anger in his voice was like a physical force, overwhelming and real. She thought of the young guard the Chancellor had left with her, and drew a slow breath. The man had pimples, for heaven’s sake. Couldn’t have been more than early twenties. Now he was dead, and others, as well.
“Fine, so it’s not fair that they died and I lived.” She pressed her lips together for a second, feeling the guilt, hating the prince for placing more blame on her and adding to the weight. “I was in the enclosure with the carpets and the war chests. We heard a commotion in front of the door. The guard rushed toward it. I thought I heard something that sounded like a gun being fired with a silencer. I slipped into the nearest war chest just as the door opened.”
He had the gall to laugh at that. “Oh, an innocent bystander. A victim even. Well done, Miss Steler. You’re a very creative woman. If my hands were free, I would clap.”
Keep it up and we’ll never be free. “Fine. Think what you will.” She stood and walked away from him.
“Thank you,” he called after her, as arrogant and full of himself as ever. “I think I’ll do that.”
She checked the door. Locked, just as she’d suspected. If she had her old tools, it wouldn’t have posed a problem, but she had nothing with her save a pen and a notebook that she’d left on the bottom of the chest in which she’d hidden. She’d figured whoever was breaking in would go for gold. How was she to know that they would take the war chest, too?
She walked back to Istvan. “Where are we exactly?”
“On a ship called Valtrian Freedom, heading south, not that you don’t know that better than I do. Out of curiosity, who is your buyer?”
She shoved the gun in the back of her pants so she could put her hands on her hips. She simply watched him for a while, trying to decide whether reasoning with him would be a waste of breath. It would be. But she found she couldn’t help herself.
“First, I don’t steal. Second, even if I did, I’d never be stupid enough to steal crown jewels. Not very low-profile, is it? And not marketable either. They’re easily recognizable. As stolen artifacts, they’d be completely useless. The safest way would be selling the stones separately and melting down the gold, but that’s such a small fraction of their value. And a good thief could easily steal gold and gems from a number of other sources with a lot less difficulty.”
He stared at her without a response. Apparently, her words had given him something to think about. Not long enough. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to,” he said after a while. “It could have been a crime of passion. You saw the coronation jewels and you couldn’t resist them.”
She shook her head. “You know it as well as I do that this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. This was a carefully planned and meticulously executed heist. There are not that many people in the world who have crews that can pull off something like this. And I’m not one of them.”
“No longer one of them?” he pushed. “Or are the rumors true and you always worked alone?”
She said nothing to that. She never discussed her past.
“You know these crews?”
Again, she remained silent.
“If you didn’t do this, do you have any idea who did?”
She shook her head.
She’d thought about little else while she’d been hiding in the chest. She had plenty of time on the way over here, then while she waited for the men to walk away from the container. Then she finally opened the top, busted the crate’s lid and climbed out. The container door had still been open. But she hesitated too long between escaping and staying with the royal treasures.
Then someone came in, and she thought it was one of the thieves, about to discover her. So she’d done what she had to. But while she was busy with him, the door had been sealed and she’d lost the option of leaving.
“Could you untie the belt? You may keep the gun,” he said.
“Aren’t you the magnanimous one? You’re in no position to negotiate,” she reminded him, but untied him anyway. He was considering other options at least and didn’t look as if he would attack her on the spot.
He rubbed his hands over his wrists, closed his eyes for a second, and for a moment looked almost vulnerable. Must have been a trick of the shadows.
“Are you okay?” she asked anyway before she could stop herself. She did hit him over the head pretty hard back there.
His fierce frown was an immediate rebuke. “Fine.” “Let me look at you.” She leaned forward to check his irises, chancing that he might grab for the gun, but couldn’t see much in the dark.
He drew back as if offended. “That’s not necessary.”
“Do you have any nausea? I could have given you a concussion.” Considering the way he’d been treating her, she felt only mildly guilty.
“You
