that who you think is after you?”
“Photographers shoot with cameras, not guns.” She toyed with the edges of the magazine, riffling the pages. “And Kyle isn’t the one giving the order to chase us. He’s a good guy, prince or not.”
Mark was inclined to agree. As one of the Horsemen, he had crossed paths with the crowned heads of several kingdoms, including Prince Kyle. He’d seemed pretty levelheaded—but the fact that he’d had this woman and then let her get away—well, that was just foolish.
Mark turned her story over in his mind, still trying to match the glittering arm candy with the serious, frightened young woman next to him. “Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. A royal court is a well-oiled machine. Kyle is only one piece of it.”
“What does that mean?”
“He might be a nice guy, but there are plenty of people at court who aren’t. It’s not just all parties and polo. Vidon has been at war with its neighbors off and on since the Crusades.”
“But he always knew he would marry Princess Amelie from the kingdom next door. Their families have been fighting forever. He wanted to end the war and, from what he said, so did she. Marriage would unite Marcari and Vidon.”
Her matter-of-fact tone surprised him. “You don’t mind that he’s marrying another woman?”
She shrugged. “He’s a prince. He has to marry a princess. Besides, we were just friends.”
Just friends. Not the statement he’d expected, but relief eased his shoulders. A silence fell over the car for a moment, leaving only the sound of the road and Jonathan’s aimless humming. Mark struggled to tune it out. Whatever kept the kid from talking, it wasn’t his vocal cords.
They passed through a tiny hamlet that was nothing but a gas station and a place that sold pies. A bored-looking horse swished flies and stared morosely over a broken-down fence. Mark checked the rearview mirror. Still no one tailing them.
“Your son can still be used as a pawn, even if he’s not a legitimate heir.”
Bree snapped the magazine shut. “He’s not the heir. He’s not Kyle’s. I wish people would believe me.”
“There are people who might benefit from saying he is.”
“Seriously?” she scoffed. “These are tiny kingdoms. Nice, lots of Mediterranean beaches and all that, but Texas could swallow them both and leave room for snacks.”
“Neither country is big, but the income from tourism, especially gambling, is huge.”
“Still, how would kidnapping Jonathan help anyone?”
Mark wondered how much he should say, but decided she deserved the straight goods. “Not everyone wants the match between Vidon and Marcari. Their feud is so old, it’s become a way of life for some people. Even a means of making money.”
And then there was the whole supernatural issue. Amelie’s father, the king of Marcari, had an old alliance with the vampires. The Company and the Horsemen had his personal support. But right next door, the vampire-slaying Knights of Vidon had kept the feud between the two nations alive—and had most recently left a fan letter in Mark’s bedroom.
Which meant the his-and-hers sets of gunmen were probably the same people. Mark had to get her to the safe house, whether she liked it or not. He turned to Bree, who was biting her nails.
“Think about it,” Mark said softly. “What if people believed Jonathan was the only heir? What if someone stopped Kyle’s wedding to Amelie so there would be no real heirs?” Or what if they killed the royal couple? But Mark didn’t want to say that out loud.
Bree gave him a look packed with excitement, reluctance and another emotion he couldn’t name. “I didn’t put everything together before now. What you say makes more sense than I want to admit to.”
“Why?”
Her grave eyes held a glimmer of something he hadn’t seen before—trust. “Someone tried to sabotage the wedding before. I was there, firsthand.”
Mark tensed, his gut mirroring the conflicting emotions on her face. Knowing her story would connect them. Part of him wanted that. Another part wanted to run free, back to his island, untethered.
But that wasn’t an option. He had a duty as a Horseman. Even more than that, Bree’s vulnerable expression made him push on. “Before?”
“I used to work for a design firm. We got the commission to do the wedding clothes. Weird, eh? I was working on the outfits for my friend’s celebrity wedding. My ex-boyfriend, if you believe the tabloids.”
Mark nearly veered off the road. He knew this part of the story already. “There was a fire in the design studio. It destroyed the whole collection, except the wedding dress. That was found later.” Mark had been one of the Horsemen who’d returned the gown to Princess Amelie. Jack Anderson, the Horseman called Death, had died doing it. By all the fiery hells!
Bree closed her eyes, suddenly looking excruciatingly young. “Yes, all the clothes for the wedding were burned up. Except for the dress.” A tear leaked out from under her lashes.
“What is it?” Mark asked gently, although he felt a wave of anticipation surge through him. He was finally getting somewhere with her.
She opened her eyes, giving him a long, steady look. “You don’t need to get any more involved than you are.”
“The dress wasn’t the whole story, was it?”
She sighed, giving in. “No. There was something else, another reason they might be tailing me besides Jonathan. My boss, Jessica Lark, was murdered before the fire was set.”
So that was the murder she’d witnessed. Mark felt a chill go through him. “There were rumors that Lark had an assistant, but the name on the payroll records was a fake. There was no way to find out who you really were.”
“I was hiding from the press. Jessica kept my real identity off the books as a favor, especially when it turned out that we were the ones working on the wedding designs. I wanted my work to be taken seriously and not regarded as fluff because I was a rich girl playing with fashion.”
Mark felt a knot of suspicion forming in his gut. “You realize that doesn’t look good. Everyone thinks you’re the prince’s ex. The wedding was sabotaged. Lark was murdered. You would have been the prime suspect.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice growing hard. “I would be if you don’t know the whole story. But think about it. The police are good at their jobs. The whole thing with Jessica’s records slowed them down, sure, but the police should have been able to get past that.”
“So why didn’t they?”
She turned her face toward the window, speaking so softly he barely heard her, even with his excellent hearing. “The murderers don’t want me in police custody. For some reason, they want me and Jonathan for themselves. And to keep hunting all this time, I think they must have a lot of resources.”
Mark shifted his grip on the steering wheel. He had to get her to the
