Thomas nodded. Mia and his sister Christine were still close friends even after all these years, and he’d been glad to get that news. “Uncle Navy told me that, too.”
Tasha was still clinging tightly to herself. “I wish I’d been there to hear him skewer the queen.”
“He’s an admiral,” Thomas reminded her. “He didn’t come close to skewering anyone.”
“No, I know,” she said. “But he’s gotten really good at scathing subtext. That had to be entertaining.”
“I’m not sure I’d use that word,” Thomas said.
“Anything you can share?” she asked, adding, “From the debrief. Oh, and just for the record, in my defense, Andrea volunteered to go out for another. Filet mignon,” she added. “For you. So I could eat yours.”
“Andrea?” he asked. He hadn’t met an Andrea when they first arrived at the hospital.
“The queen’s assistant.”
“The queen’s assistant.” Thomas suddenly seemed to be unable to do anything but repeat Tasha’s words. “She sent her assistant?”
“Her top aide, yes.”
Apparently, the queen finally appreciated just how important Tasha was to the prince.
“So what’d you find out?” she asked eagerly. “Who were those men in the woods?” She stopped herself. “Wait, you probably want to shower and change. You’re standing there, holding your real clothes.”
“Nah,” Thomas said. “It’s okay. It’s not really that complicated a story. I mean, it’s absolutely as stupid as you can imagine—”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Were we right?” She glanced toward the open door, and lowered her voice to nearly inaudible. “It was Hendrake?”
Queen Wila’s Shakespearian-named uncle. “Yeah,” Thomas told her. “The story’s already going public. So you don’t have to...”
“Okay, good,” she said. “Wow. Hendrake.”
“His original target was you,” Thomas said, and the surprise on her face turned to shocked disbelief. “And yeah, he was definitely trying to pin it on a terrorist group—the car bomb. It was set to go off after they let you get away, when the SUV stopped. But the team of geniuses who came up with the plan didn’t bank on you traveling with your own bodyguard, so the kidnapping team didn’t know what to do with me. Apparently, they didn’t want to shoot me and add a gunshot victim to what was supposed to be a simple terrorist bombing.
“Luckily for me, disposing of my body was also outside of their pay grade,” he continued. “They figured if they knocked me out and stripped me, I’d die from exposure. They seemed to think that a dead naked Black guy found frozen to death in the mountains near where you died would add to the mystery. That I’d be considered more suspect than victim—you know, maybe I lost my shit and killed you...?”
“As if Uncle Alan would’ve ever believed that,” she whispered.
Thomas nodded. “Yeah.”
“They also didn’t know how ridiculously hard you are to kill,” she said. “Or how hard I’d be to kill because you were with me.” She shook her head, still overwhelmed and a little confused. “But... why me? Why would Hendrake...?” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“Baby bump,” Thomas told her, and even though her mouth dropped open, she immediately understood.
She made a sound that was half outrage, half laughter. “Hendrake thought I was pregnant, so he was trying to kill what he thought was Ted’s heir?” She’d hit it squarely on the head, but she was still missing pieces of the bigger, crazier picture. “But then what? That doesn’t bring him any closer to the throne. I mean, unless he was also planning to kill Ted, his little brother, and the queen.”
Thomas nodded, and her eyes widened again. “Seriously?”
“Their plane was going to crash—not right away,” Thomas told her. “That might’ve been suspicious immediately following your death, but in a few months, yeah. Apparently, his plans changed when he got a tip from some oligarch buddies in Russia—about the coming attacks in America. He decided to use the chaos to kill the royal family in the ski lodge—it was supposed to burn with them in it. Of course, the queen got a tip, too, and when they escaped, he was back to hunting you down. Thankfully the mercenaries he hired were bush league.”
“Not all of them,” Tasha pointed out. “Did Hendrake actually confess?”
“No, but one of his top advisors kept records and made audio recordings. Great-Uncle H is in custody. The FBI is rounding up the rest of his New England army right now,” Thomas said. “You—and Ted—are safe.”
She slowly sat down on the edge of the bed as the reality of what he’d just told her sank in.
“I tried asking Ted why he came back,” Tasha told him, her eyes huge in her face. “I mean, why didn’t he just tell someone—my uncle or you know, the FBI—about the bomb shelter, and that he believed we’d be hiding there. He was pretty loopy, but he told me that he didn’t know who he could trust—or who’d be listening in on the phone call.” She laughed again—a hard exhale of air that had little to do with humor. “God, maybe he’s known about the threat from Hendrake for a while. He was always so worried, and I... I teased him relentlessly. I used to sing him the theme from Game of Thrones, and pretend I needed to taste his food before he ate anything.” She took a deep breath and exhaled hard again. “I owe him an apology.”
“I’m pretty sure he’ll forgive you,” Thomas said. “Look, I’mma go find a shower.”
“Why don’t you just use Ted’s?”
And yeah, this room had a door that led into a bathroom. “This room’s got a shower?” In his experience, which was mostly from VA hospitals, the rooms usually didn’t.
“We’re VIP, baby,” Tasha said.
That was one hell of a borrowed use of Ted’s royal we. Even if they both squinted, Thomas was not in that subset. Not even close. “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“I know he’d be fine with it,” she tried to reassure him.
But really, would he? He sure as hell wouldn’t, if he were Ted.
And now Tasha was looking hard at him, as if she were really seeing him for the first time since he’d come into the room. “Are you okay? I know this is supremely weird.”
Thomas didn’t get to answer—although he wasn’t sure what he could even say, considering their conversational restrictions—before the sudden sound of voices from the hallway made Tasha look over at the open door.
She rose from her perch on the bed. Thomas turned, too, to see a petite, gray-haired woman in a black pantsuit entering the room.
“Hallo!” she said cheerfully. “You must be Lieutenant King.” She pronounced it the British way—Lefftenant King. “I’m Andrea.”
Thomas forced a smile. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Goodness,” she said as she looked from him to Tasha. “Shall I run back to Lord & Taylor’s to get him trousers and a jumper? Perhaps an overcoat?” She checked an expensive-looking wrist watch. “The shop closes at eleven—but I’ll call and asked them to stay open.”