The Monegasque Secret Service had arrived a day after Dieter and Flicka had, and they had been in the way ever since. Pierre’s security chief, Quentin Sault, had the cold, hawk-like eyes of a KGB officer and the demeanor of a serial killer. He was good at his job, but his Secret Service agents were all screw-ups. Not one of them could hold down a damn position for more than five minutes.
While some of Quentin Sault’s Secret Service guys insisted on providing security for Flicka, others prepared a suite for the prince’s arrival.
Dieter hated that Pierre’s security guys had cut him off, and as soon as theWelfenlegionarrived, he tasked Luca Wyss and some others with providing a second layer of security around Flicka.
He would have done it himself just to make sure that she was all right, but Dieter was the ringleader of this circus that was the von Hannover wedding.
It was a good thing that he had sent more men to cover her, too. Luca had reported an hour before that Flicka had dodged through a few doors and lost the Monegasque Secret Service team, of course, because they couldn’t hold a damn position. After she had lost them, she went right back to her schedule of managing the wedding and had breezed through several meetings, including one about truffles and another about shrimp.
Luca and theWelfenlegionteam were still on her, though she hadn’t spotted them.
Dieter told Luca to have his men fall back just a bit so that she wouldn’t feel the need to bolt again. She was frighteningly good at ditching her security team. She’d gotten much better at it since she was a teenager.
He listened to reports coming over the radios and poured himself another cup of strong coffee. It was going to be a long day.
His radio squawked, and he heard Luca Wyss yell,“Nine! Code nine!”theWelfenlegion’scode word for a kidnapping.“Sheisse!”
Dieter glanced at the duty schedule on his computer screen, praying that his memory was wrong, but the schedule showed that Luca had been assigned to Flicka.
He staggered, grabbing the edge of the desk, and said to Luca, “Report.”
“They got her,” Luca said, his voice cracking as he yelled. “Black SUV. Volkswagen Touareg, current model. Driving southeast on Avenue Claude-Nobs.”
“License plate?” Dieter asked, his voice a low growl.
The radio blasted static. “EU plate. German designation. Couldn’t see the region code. I saw the last two numbers, three and nine. It pulled away before I could read the rest.”
“I’ll check here. Come back to the hotel for the cars.”
“Yes, sir,” Luca said. “I was too far. Another five yards, and I would have had her.”
“If you had been closer, she would have seen you, and then she would have slipped away again. If she had ditched us entirely, we wouldn’t even have known that she had been taken. Return to the hotel.”
“Yes, sir.”
A white-hot rage poured through Dieter’s muscles, and he strapped on his sidearm to go and get her back.
Frantic energy possessed him, and he craved to light all of Montreux on fire so he could carry her out of the inferno. Burning down the city that had taken her felt so right.
But first, Dieter had to tell Wulf that someone had kidnapped his sister, and then they would find where she was and who had taken her so they could mount another damned rescue mission.
This time, maybe Wulfram would stay outside the damn door until the room was cleared.
Revelations
Flicka von Hannover
I assumed Pierre was screwing around on me
with half of France and all of Monaco,
but I was wrong.
Flicka lay on the floor in the back of the black Volkswagen Touareg while it wheeled around corners.
Her kidnappers—her father’s security men whom she had known since childhood, all of them—had laid down one of the rear seats. When the SUV lurched to a stop, her head bumped the back of the driver’s seat. When it accelerated, she slid toward the cargo part of the SUV. Turning corners bonked her shoulders and thighs on the hard sides of the vehicle.
Noon sunlight blinded her when it shone inside, even through the dark tinting on the windows. Flicka squinted as they turned, and a bright square slid across her face again. Plastic fumes irritated her nose when she rolled too close to the carpeting.
