get a seat for Ms. St. John,” the prince ordered sharply in his odd accent. “Immediately.”
One of the lesser aides quickly stepped away from his own chair and offered it to Veronica.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling at the young man.
“Sit down,” the prince commanded her, stony-faced, as he returned to his seat. “I have an idea, but it cannot be done without your cooperation.”
Veronica gazed steadily at the prince. After she’d tackled him earlier today, he’d been dragged away to safety. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since. At the time, he hadn’t bothered to thank her for saving his life—and apparently he had no intention of doing so now. She was working for him, therefore she was a servant. He would have expected her to save him. In his mind, there was no need for gratitude.
But she wasn’t a servant. In fact, she’d been the maid of honor last year when his sister married Veronica’s brother, Jules. Veronica and the prince were practically family, yet Tedric still insisted she address him as “Your Highness.”
She sat down, pulling her chair in closer to the table, and the rest of the men sat, too.
“I have a double,” the prince announced. “An American. It is my idea for him to take my place throughout the remaining course of the tour, thus ensuring my safety.”
Veronica sat forward. “Excuse me, Your Highness,” she said. “Please forgive my confusion. Is your safety still an issue?” She looked down the table at Senator McKinley. “Wasn’t the gunman captured?”
McKinley ran his tongue over his front teeth before he answered. “I’m afraid not,” he finally replied. “And the Federal Intelligence Commission has reason to believe the terrorists will make another attempt on the prince’s life during the course of the next few weeks.”
“Terrorists?” Veronica repeated, looking from McKinley to the ambassador and finally at Prince Tedric.
“FInCOM has ID’d the shooter,” McKinley answered. “He’s a well-known triggerman for a South American terrorist organization.”
Veronica shook her head. “Why would South American terrorists want to kill the Ustanzian crown prince?”
The ambassador took off his glasses and tiredly rubbed his eyes. “Quite possibly in retaliation for Ustanzia’s new alliance with the U.S.,” he said.
“FInCOM tells us these particular shooters don’t give up easily,” McKinley said. “Even with souped-up security, FInCOM expects they’ll try again. What we’re looking to do is find a solution to this problem.”
Veronica laughed. It slipped out—she couldn’t help herself. The solution was so obvious. “Cancel the tour.”
“Can’t do that,” McKinley drawled.
Veronica looked down the other side of the table at Prince Tedric. He, for once, was silent. But he didn’t look happy.
“There’s too much riding on the publicity from this event,” Senator McKinley explained. “You know as well as I do that Ustanzia needs U.S. funding to get their oil wells up and running.” The heavyset man leaned back in his chair, tapping the eraser end of a pencil on the mahogany table. “But the prospect of competitively priced oil isn’t enough to secure the size funds they need,” he continued, dropping the pencil and running his hand through his thinning gray hair. “And quite frankly, current polls show the public’s concern for a little-nothing country like Ustanzia—beg pardon, Prince—to be zilch. Hardly anyone knows who the Ustanzians are, and the folks who do know about ’em don’t want to give ’em any of their tax dollars, that’s for sure as shootin’. Not while there’s so much here at home to spend the money on.”
Veronica nodded her head. She was well aware of everything he was saying. It was one of Princess Wila’s major worries.
“Besides,” the senator added, “we can use this opportunity to nab this group of terrorists. And sister, if they’re who we think they are, we want ’em. Bad.”
“But if you know for a fact that there’ll be another assassination attempt…?” Veronica looked down the table at Tedric. “Your Highness, how can you risk placing yourself in such danger?”
Tedric crossed his legs. “I have no intention of placing myself in any danger whatsoever,” he said. “In fact, I will remain here, in Washington, in a safe house, until all danger has passed. The tour, however, will continue as planned, with this lookalike fellow taking my place.”
Suddenly the prince’s earlier words made sense. He’d said he had a double, someone who looked just like him. He’d said this person was an American.
“This man,” McKinley asked. “What was his name, sir?”
The prince shrugged—a slow, eloquent gesture. “How should I remember? Joe. Joe Something. He was a soldier. An American soldier.”
“‘Joe Something,”’ McKinley repeated, exchanging a quick, exasperated look with the diplomat on his left. “A soldier named Joe. Should only be about fifteen thousand men in the U.S. armed forces named Joe.”
The ambassador on McKinley’s right leaned forward. “Your Highness,” he said patiently, “when did you meet this man?”
“He was one of the soldiers who assisted in my escape from the embassy in Baghdad,” Tedric replied.
“A Navy SEAL,” the ambassador murmured to McKinley. “We should have no problem locating him. If I remember correctly, only one seven-man team participated in that rescue mission.”
“SEAL?” Veronica asked, sitting up and leaning forward. “What’s a SEAL?”
“Part of the Special Operations,” Senator McKinley told her. “They’re the most elite special-operations force in the world. They can operate anywhere—on the sea, in the air and on the land, hence the name, SEALs. If this man who looks so much like the prince really is a SEAL, standing in as the prince’s double will be a cakewalk for him.”
“He was, however, quite unbearably lower-class,” the prince said prudishly, sweeping some imaginary crumbs from the surface of the table. He looked at Veronica. “That is where you would come in. You will teach this Joe to look and act like a prince. We can delay the tour by—” he frowned down the table at McKinley “—a week, is that what you’d said?”
“Two or three days at the very most, sir.” The senator grimaced. “We can announce that you’ve come down with the flu, try to keep up public interest with reports of your health. But the fact is, after a few days, you’ll no longer be news and the story will be dropped. You know what they say: Out of sight, out of mind. We can’t let that happen.”
Two or three days. Two or three days to turn a rough American sailor—a Navy SEAL, whatever that really meant—into royalty. Who were they kidding?
Senator McKinley picked up the phone to begin tracking down the mysterious Joe.
Prince Tedric was watching Veronica expectantly. “Can you do it?” he asked. “Can you make this Joe into a prince?”
“In
