LITMIR.BIZ

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fighting for my freedom. Something I most cherish,” he told her …and heard the motor start.

      He spun around in time to see the boat pull away, steered by Lady Adel.

      “Wait!” Sand flew up around him as he broke into a sprint. His busted knee slowed him. And the boat was too far, pulling away rapidly.

      They couldn’t leave him, dammit. Not here, not with Milda. “Wait!” He dashed into the surf after them to no avail. But he refused to give up. He swam like he never swam before. Like his life depended on it.

      One of the ladies gave him a smug little wave.

      The distance between them was growing.

      And growing.

      His lungs burned from the effort he put into propelling his body through the water. Then he stopped completely, at last accepting the unacceptable. He swore an unprincely streak and let himself sink for a moment, let the waves wash over his head before he pushed up to the surface again. He treaded water for another few seconds, too stunned to think. Then, as outrage took over, he turned to swim for the shore.

      He strode back onto dry land, fuming and dripping. “You!” He bore down on the woman of his nightmares. “Get on your cell phone and get another boat out here.”

      Her stricken look stopped him. They were practically nose to nose anyway, only inches separating them from each other. Her big blue eyes went impossibly wide. She smelled like spring, the perfume the Queen’s own parfumerie had created for her, a scent that lately haunted him, even in his sleep.

      “I want another boat. Pronto. As in yesterday.” He barked the words at her.

      She was very quiet all of a sudden.

      He didn’t have the patience for this. “Speak.”

      “My organizer fell into the water on the way here with the ladies.” She winced. “I’m a bad swimmer. I always get nervous around water. I should have—”

      “I don’t care about your organizer.” The damn thing was her ever-present companion. Her nefarious plans for his life were no doubt in it. He’d been so disconcerted by her sudden appearance on the island that he hadn’t even noticed it was missing. “Good riddance.”

      “My cell phone was tucked in the front.”

      He walked away from her before he said something he regretted. But called back, after a moment, “Will the guards be checking on us?”

      “No.” Her voice was small. A first. “They’re supposed to avoid contact at all costs. They’re to stay out of sight at all times. They won’t be following you or anything. We, um, wanted to give you and the ladies privacy. The guards are only here to prevent the paparazzi from getting on the island if they get wind of your trip. For all intents and purposes, we’re alone on an uninhabited island. That’s the feel I was going for to foster a certain sense of …”

      He glared, daring her to say the word “romance.” That and true love were her favorite things. He’d tried to tell her in vain that there came a time when a grown woman should stop believing in fairy tales.

      She closed her mouth without finishing the sentence, but she didn’t fool him. She was hopeless. He turned from her again, to survey the shore. There had to be a way off…. He thought of something suddenly. She was very methodical about ruining his life. She was definitely the type to plan for contingencies.

      He turned back to her. “What was the emergency plan? If I broke an arm, how would I have called for help?” He was a royal person. There was always a backup plan for unforeseen contingencies.

      She was studying her feet, her sandals half sunk into the soft sand. “The Lady Adel had an emergency radio in her medical bag,” she muttered.

      “The red bag on her shoulder?” He distinctly remembered the bag. It was the one the doctor walked to the boat with.

      Milda nodded weakly. “They’ll send someone back for us as soon as they land.” She looked after them, biting her bottom lip. The women and his speedboat were a dot over endless blue waves. “We’ll be back at the palace before nightfall, I’m sure.”

      He wouldn’t bet on it. “So basically, we could be stranded here for two whole weeks.”

      She still avoided his gaze. “I wanted to give you sufficient time to get comfortable with each other. I wanted to give the ladies enough time for their true colors to start showing. I only meant the best for you. For everybody.”

      A minute or so passed in uncomfortable silence, as they both contemplated the absurdity of the situation.

      Then she finally looked him in the eye. “Have you camped before?”

      He shook his head. “You?”

      Her face looked pinched. “I have a demanding business that I run all by myself. I don’t usually leave the city.”

      ROBERTO PUT ONE HAND above the other as he climbed the guard tower soundlessly. Below him, Sagro Prison was clouded in darkness, the island quiet. He gripped his sole weapon, the sharpened handle of a spoon, between his teeth. When he reached the top, he vaulted over and cut the guard’s throat before the man could raise the alarm.

      Had to be done.

      There was no way around it. He lowered the body to the wooden boards, wiped the warm blood off his fingers and took the rifle, waited.

      No siren sounded. He hadn’t been detected. The small Italian prison island was well guarded, but it was no high-security facility.

      He lowered himself to the ground where José and Marco crouched in the shadows. He was the boss of the small team, though they were all hired hands, working for a new Colombian drug lord who was trying to break into the European market via Italy, among other places. Except that they’d been caught on this trip.

      But he wouldn’t rot in a dank cell, he thought as they crawled their way to the fence where the hole they’d painstakingly prepared and covered awaited. He wouldn’t end up like his brother, Miguel, trapped in a Valtrian prison, then knifed by some local hotshot, dead two weeks before his release.

      The drug lord they both worked for was trying to wiggle his way into the European market at multiple points of entry. Roberto had a cousin with a small team in Romania. He wondered how the bastard was faring. Hopefully better than this.

      He was the first to reach the unfinished tunnel and head into the darkness. What little they’d left for tonight could be done in an hour. He dug with the flat rock they’d used to get this far, sweated, swore, but never stopped working. When at long last he’d reached the opening, only just clearing the fence, he tossed the stone aside then brushed the dirt from his eyes.

      “Hurry,” he said, speaking for the first time. This far out, nobody should be able to hear them.

      He came up into a crouch, suddenly dizzy from hunger. All three of them were starving. Over the past few weeks, they’d had to bribe too many inmates with food to get what they needed for the escape. They could have just as easily beaten the bastards into obedience, but fights drew the guards’ attention, and their small team needed to fly below the radar. They had to remain invisible. Then and now.

      “Keep low to the ground,” he said as they crossed the narrow slice of flat plateau. Then they unraveled their makeshift ropes, tied them together and lowered themselves down the rock face.

      Roberto reached the beach first. When they were all down, they gathered as much driftwood as they could find, then they used the ropes to tie a raft together. Marco was the fastest with the knots, the son of a fisherman, pulling his weight for the first time. They swam out beyond the breakers before climbing on, then paddled with their shoes as best they could—which wasn’t easy at all, as the waves were getting angry.

      Real paddles would have helped, but they’d had no place to steal them from and no time to make

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