Around Rae, he was acting normal.
Or at least as normal as Flicka had ever seen him act.
Good Lord, he was laughing out loud. He only did that behind closed doors. Usually, closedandlockeddoors.
Flicka frowned, uneasy at the change in her older brother. She didn’t want him to get hurt.
The security men rustled around her, readying themselves for the rush to the cars.
Behind her in the crowd, Pierre was talking to his security guys in Monegasque, a bastardized Italian dialect, though she never described it that way to Pierre or anyone else from Monaco, of course. While Flicka would have liked to walk to the cars with her new husband, they were separated for security reasons. Should there be a problem, their security would each cover them rather than risk a mix-up.
She glanced backward.
Pierre, darkly handsome with a chiseled jaw and cheekbones, was chatting with one of his security guys who was trying to do his final checks before the dash to the cars.
Between her and Pierre, Dieter towered over the crowd of black suits, his blond hair and gray eyes lighter than most of the other men. He caught her eye as his gaze swept past, surveilling the area and the crowd, and he frowned at the collection of black suits around her.
Beside her, a man said in French, “All right, let’s go.”
He was one of Pierre’s security guys, not one of Wulf’s private mercenary force. Wulf’s guys called themselves theWelfenlegion,a silly reference to the private army of the last Hannover king, George V.
These guys were Monegasque Secret Service, however, notWelfenlegion.
Ahead of Flicka, Wulf and Rae, accompanied by his battalion, began to walk and opened up empty space between his security personnel and Flicka.
She walked with the security men, her high-heeled shoes a little unsteady on the cobblestones under her feet. Princesses don’t stumble, however, and she strode toward the sunlight streaming through the open double doors.
They moved,en masse,through the hallway of the Basilica Sacre-Coeur.
When they hit the back doors of the basilica, the security men broke their tight formation and fanned out, pushing back the crowd while Wulf, Rae, Flicka, and Pierre strode with just a few security staff to the waiting black SUVs.
The noontime sun blazed overhead and washed their shadows down to black puddles at their feet.
Flicka was a slim, white-draped silhouette glowing amongst the black-suited men, an easily visible target. She watched the roofline for flashes of lens flare as much as the security guys did. Her brother Wulf had been the target of an assassination attempt when he was eight. She had seen the hideous scar on his back many times, though he had tattooed a dragon over it a few years ago.
Flicka had lived with the specter of death over her head every day of her life. She was more than aware that her own birth date was just over a year after the crazed gunman’s attack on her brothers, Wulf and Constantin. They were fraternal twins, a fact obvious from pictures of them. Wulf had startling, crystal-blue eyes, kind of like hers were dark, clear green, but Constantin’s eyes had been gray.
Constantin had been killed in that attack, cut down in front of Wulf, and so the Hannover royal family had been short on heirs. Thus, her parents had produced another child, who had unfortunately been a girl. Her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer before they had tried for another male heir, and Flicka suspected that her father hadn’t cared enough to find another wife and impregnate her.
Violence and trauma echoed through their family lines.
She kept up with her security guys, who were watching the roofs and crowd more than looking at her. Her job was to stay with them.
Ahead of her, Rae and Wulf reached their SUV. Wulf started to hand Rae inside.
Flicka and Pierre were yards behind them and veered off for the next SUV.
The high roofs on the houses standing shoulder-to-shoulder around the basilica would be perfect vantage spots for snipers.
Flicka was halfway across the courtyard, watching for lens flashes, when the sparkle of sunshine on glass caught her eye.
A person stood at the back of the crowd over by the basilica’s white walls, holding a long, dark gun, aiming.
Her breath blasted out her mouth in a scream.
A man’s hands were already on her shoulders, spinning her underneath him and hurtling her toward the ground. Her back thumped the grass and earth.
Dieter’s gray eyes were wide as he followed her down and scrambled to gather her arms and head under his body as he crouched. His shoulder touched her forehead, and he bowed his head over hers. “Stay down. For the love of God, Flicka, stay down. Don’t move.”
