Taking advantage of the moment of privacy, Kris grazed a hand over her back and slanted a soft-eyed glance at her mouth as he passed her.
“Tell me.”
His demand had been hard as granite; his fingers had been equally unyielding at her core.
“Tell me how you want it.”
She flushed, having not even known to want it like that.
As the guards straightened, Kris said, “Don’t mind me,” and crossed the room to drop into a languid sprawl behind his desk.
“We’ll make this snappy.” Frankie closed the door with her heel, adjusting her grip on the folders. “But before we start, who made the best joke on Philip’s hair?”
A pause as everyone looked pointedly at Hanna.
“It’s just,” the guard said, “it looks like it was subjected to an incredibly isolated extreme weather event.”
Frankie snorted, Kris said, “Ha,” and Philip grumbled as he patted his head.
Then Frankie caught Hanna eyeing off her hair and swiftly moved things along.
“Right,” she said. “The authorities have confidentially reopened the case regarding the late royal family’s deaths. This is following Prince Kristof’s testimony about the violent attack on Prince Tomas and his friend Jonah Wood in Montana three years ago, which we covered at yesterday morning’s briefing.” She tapped the folders against her palm. “The detectives’ search—and ours—has shown that four of Prince Tomas’s attackers have contacts in Kiraly who worked on the renovations of the west wing. This could be coincidence. Or it could be an indication that whoever orchestrated Tomas’s attack is also behind the balcony collapse. These people might all be from the same network.”
Unease blew through the room, shifting feet and stiffening shoulders.
In a casual movement, Frankie stepped back to lean against the door. She opened the top folder and flipped through its contents. She saw none of it. Dread was too busy squeezing her throat closed, robbing her of focus.
Holy hell. This was real.
Somehow, she’d managed to disconnect from it. To treat the threat like an abstract problem to be solved, but if the incidents were truly connected—
Someone wanted Kris and his brothers dead.
And weren’t afraid to act on it.
A feverish rush made her skin too hot and too cold at once.
Kris was watching her. She flicked over another page, refusing to look up. He’d see the panic in her eyes—would ask about it later. And she didn’t want to voice this fear. It was poised like a tipping point inside her, a confession that would unbalance her control and drag a landslide of vulnerability down with it.
I’m scared for you.
I don’t want to lose you.
I can’t live without you.
Reality whipped down her spine. Her fears shied away. What the hell was she doing?
She’d wanted to be with him since they’d met, and now she couldn’t muster the courage to be honest with him? His life was in danger—and she was too chicken to be emotionally intimate. You’re everything, he’d told her, like the sweetest secret, and she’d batted it away without a thought.
Stupid. So unbelievably stupid.
She plucked the top photograph from the folder.
“This morning,” she said, her voice miraculously level, “guards were assigned to discreetly monitor these contacts. And tonight, we got lucky. All subjects converged at a pub called the Bull’s Quest at ten-thirty this evening. Photographs show that upon arrival, each of them wore an identical pin, indicating it’s some kind of club.”
Hand not quite steady, she held up the top photograph. A close-up of a circular silver pin on a shirt collar, hollowed out with a capital ‘A’ in the center.
“Anyone recognize the symbol?” she asked.
“Anarchism.” This from Zoltan, one of Tommy’s guards.
“Spot on.” She kept her back against the door, maintaining a pose of late-night weariness to cover her previous overwhelm. After the night she’d had, it wasn’t hard to feign. “It’s possible we’ve got ourselves some violent anti-authoritarian rebels.”
Kris frowned behind the desk. “These people want chaos?”
“Anarchy is more complex than chaos, Your Highness,” Zoltan said, turning to face Kris with an air of respectful neutrality. “That’s reductionist and a common misinterpretation of the movement. Many anarchists believe in a highly organized society, but don’t feel they can entrust the management of their lives to kings or other rulers, and seek to build a democratic society from the bottom up, instead of the top down.”
Kris blinked. “Right.”
“That said, we do seem to have a group of extremists on our hands,” the guard finished.
Did they ever.
Frankie cleared her throat. “I’ll find out if they accept new people into the group. If they do, I’ll join them the next time they meet.”
In the corner of her eye, she noted Kris sit forward slowly. “What if they recognize you?” he asked, and even though his voice was admirably calm, none of the guards turned to look at him. In fact, he was the only person looking at her in a room of fifteen people. The privacy was discreetly granted, the guards looking at their shoes or out the windows, but it betrayed they all knew Kris’s concern sprung from affection and that this particular exchange wasn’t any of their business. “It could be dangerous.”
She held his stare. “They won’t recognize me.”
His forearms were on the desk, hands clasped together. “You’ve been seen in public as my bodyguard.”
Shame slid down her sternum. “I won’t be going as myself.”
With a nod, he ran his tongue along his back teeth and looked away.
“Right.” Her tone hauled everyone’s attention back to her. “Do not share this information or investigation with anyone outside this tower. Do not share the possible connection between the attacks with your primaries.” She glanced at Hanna, Peter, and Kris’s night team. “Clearly you’re the exception.”
Lazlo, a mid-forties guard with a shaved head and oversized shoulders, raised a polite hand. “Markus is still officially king.” He pointed out. “Should the king not be made aware of such critical news? If not of the possible connection between the attacks, then at least the possibility that the late royal family’s deaths weren’t an accident?”
Frankie glanced at Kris. “Your Highness?”
He frowned back. “I don’t like the idea of telling Mark and not Tommy.”
“So we inform them both?”
Stricken, he shook his head. “I don’t want to cause Tommy additional anxiety. The threads are still too loose. Can we wait until we have something concrete to tell them?”
Frankie and Lazlo both gave a nod.
“Any other questions?” she asked.
They all shook their heads.
Blowing out a hard breath, she extended the bottom folder to one of Tommy’s night guards standing closest to her. “This is everyone who attended the anarchist meeting this evening. I’ll email you the image files shortly. You spot any of them near your primary, you send out an alert and take immediate evasive action. We don’t know whether they have a new plan, so expect the worst.”