help anyone who got in the way.
“For the Cause!” Fowler whispered as adrenaline surged through his veins.
Chapter One
Tuesday, 1400 hours
“Ken, you’re breaking up! I can barely hear you!” Pressing the cell phone to her ear, Kaitlyn Wilson tried not to panic. Rain beat like a war drum on the roof of her SUV as she slowly made her way west on Route 9. She’d turned the windshield wipers on high speed, but she still couldn’t see a damn thing. “Are you still there?” she asked desperately.
“Major flooding…highway closed…”
Static crackled in Kaitlyn’s ear. “Should I turn back? Dammit!” The phone went dead and she swore again as she frantically tried to call her boss back. But it was no use. She’d lost the signal.
Okay, situation not good, she summarized as she tossed the cell phone onto the seat and clutched the steering wheel with both hands.
Since she’d set out for the prison less than an hour earlier, Route 9 had been transformed into a lake. Kaitlyn could no longer even see the pavement. It was only by instinct and sheer dumb luck that she hadn’t yet driven off the road.
She could feel the swirling water sucking at the tires as she slowed the vehicle to a crawl, trying to decide what to do. Keep going…or turn back?
Did she really have a choice?
With near-zero visibility, turning the vehicle around without sliding into a ditch would be no easy feat, and besides, she had no way of judging whether the road conditions behind her were any better.
She was in the notorious dead zone on Route 9 where cell-phone signals from the nearest tower were blocked by the mountains. And now static had overpowered the radio so that she couldn’t even pick up a weather forecast. She was, in effect, cut off from the rest of the world.
And the water continued to rise.
Why, oh why, hadn’t she listened to Ken when he’d cautioned her not to start off alone in the downpour?
“Are you crazy?” he’d shouted. “In case you haven’t been paying attention, the entire county is under a flash-flood warning.”
“I’ll be traveling on high ground for most of the way, and Route 9 never floods.” And by now Kaitlyn knew her way to the prison with her eyes closed. “If I leave now, I can get to the press conference before the heavy stuff hits.”
“Oh, you think? And just what would you call that? A drizzle?” Ken had cast a wary glance out his office window, where rain continued to fall steadily from a bleak, gray sky. It had been coming down nonstop all day.
Kaitlyn had breezily waved off his concern. “You worry too much. Besides, if I don’t get to the press conference, we’ll be scooped by the Independent Record, and you know you don’t want that,” she said, naming a rival paper.
Ken scowled. “I also don’t want the Highway Patrol having to fish you out of a ditch somewhere.”
At least he was gracious enough not to point out that it wouldn’t be the first time. “I know what I’m doing, Ken.”
His patience finally worn down, he sighed. “Okay, at least take someone with you. Let me get Cudlow on the horn—” He had reached for the phone, but Kaitlyn’s outraged screech stopped him.
“Cudlow?” She spoke the name with such utter disdain that Ken gave her a disapproving look. Kaitlyn didn’t care. There was no way she’d allow Allen Cudlow—the man who had almost single-handedly derailed her career at the paper five years ago—to accompany her to the warden’s press conference. No way in hell.
Her feud with Cudlow had started long before Ken Mellon had been brought in when the previous editor in chief had finally retired nine months ago. Kaitlyn had been ecstatic at the prospect of new blood at the Ponderosa Monitor because she and Cudlow, who was once the golden boy at the Monitor, were finally on equal footing.
“If you truly want to avert a tragedy, you’ll put down that phone,” she’d warned Ken.
He’d run his fingers through his thinning hair. “Okay, okay. I get it. You and Cudlow hate each other’s guts. I don’t know why and I don’t much care as long as it doesn’t interfere with your reporting. A little professional rivalry can be a good thing. Up to a point.” He gave her a warning glare over the top of his bifocals. “But don’t carry it too far.”
She shrugged. “Just keep him out of my way and everything’s cool.”
“And anyway,” Ken continued as if she’d never spoken, “I really can’t spare Cudlow this afternoon. If you insist on attending Warden Green’s press conference, I’ll have to send him to the state capital to cover Petrov’s arrival tonight.”
Kaitlyn’s mouth dropped. “You can’t do that! I’ve been working on the Petrov piece for weeks!”
“Both stories are breaking and you can’t be in two places at once.”
Kaitlyn hated it when he got all sensible. It usually meant that she was being unreasonable.
“So what’s it to be, Kaitlyn? Petrov…or the prison break?”
Decisions, decisions.
Kaitlyn bit her lip as she quickly weighed the possibilities. “Okay, look. If you have to send Cudlow to the airport to cover Petrov’s arrival…that’s one thing. But don’t give him the story. I’m this close to getting an exclusive.”
Ken’s gaze narrowed. “How close?”
Kaitlyn hesitated. “I’ve almost got it wrapped up.”
Not quite the truth, but thanks to some behind-the-scenes maneuvering by an old friend, Kaitlyn was inching closer to the “get” of a lifetime.
She might be a no-name reporter for a small-time newspaper in Podunk, Montana, but she had what even the network superstars didn’t have…an inside track with Nikolai Petrov.
Prince Nikolai Petrov to be exact.
The very sound of his name reminded Kaitlyn just how swoon-worthy the guy was. His good looks alone had melted feminine hearts all over the world, but since his impassioned speech before the United Nations, he’d reached near-rock-star status.
In a dazzling display of charm, integrity and sheer chutzpah, the crown prince of Lukinburg had implored the world community to step in and remove his own father from power for the sake of his impoverished and war-torn country. Then he’d embarked on a whirlwind tour across the country in an effort to win the hearts and minds of the American people in the event a U.N.-sanctioned, U.S.-led military invasion became necessary to overthrow King Aleksandr.
Each time the prince gave one of his heavily publicized speeches, his father would issue a stinging rebuttal from the safety of his palace in Lukinburg. The bitter family feud was being played out on the world stage, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher.
Working his way west, Petrov was due
