Page 30 of At Midnight

Message

Flicka von Hannover

What Pierre didn’t say

was more important

than what he did.

Alina was down for her morning nap, so Flicka was flipping through the television channels on the TV in the guest suite, looking for news, any news.

Damn, she missed her phone. If she had a phone, she could have gotten out of this weird guest-hostage-kidnapping thing in an hour.

Seriously, with the phone numbers in her head, she could have mounted an assault on a small country or staged an A-list celebrity ball in the front yard and just walked out under the cameras.

Except she didn’t have a damn phone.

Or a tablet.

Or a computer.

Or even a text-based e-reader.

And thus, she was mad as hell and terrified and bored out of her mind.

At least she had Alina for company.

Raphael’s mother Sophie had offered to find her a nanny, but Flicka needed somebody to talk to. Alina might not be up for a philosophical debate, but she was fun to play with.

Plus, with Alina here, Sophie stopped by Flicka’s beautifully decorated prison cell several times a day to deliver necessities and clothes, and she usually stayed to hang out and talk. It was beginning to be a joke thatthe housekeepers should follow her in with a tea tray because it was going to be called for eventually.

Dieter and the otherWelfenlegionhad warned Flicka her whole life about how horrible it would be if she were kidnapped, but she’d pictured fewer vases in niches and less velvet upholstery in her dungeon. The food that was at the formal suppers and delivered to the room was really good, too.

As hostage situations went, this didn’t suck.

A knock rattled on the suite’s door.

Flicka pushed herself off the couch to go over and unlock it. Raphael locked it on his way out every day, and Flicka hadn’t had a chance to flip the latches back to unlocked.

On the other side of the door, Sophie stood, clutching a piece of paper. She was as perfectly put together as ever in caramel slacks anda silk blouse, her makeup, flawless. Flicka did not doubt that if she fell down the stairs at three in the morning and Sophie came down to see what the ruckus was, she would have her lipstick and earrings on.

“Hi, honey,” Flicka said, standing back to let Sophie in. “Alina’s down for her nap. What’s up?”

Sophie stood outside the door, fidgeting with the paper, and it rattled in her hands. “Valeriandoesn’t want to show this to you, but I thought you needed to know what’s going on. To be clear, I want you to throw this horrible thing in the bin right away.”

Flicka kind of wanted to slam the door in Sophie’s face and simultaneously to snatch the paper out of her hands.

Horrible,horriblethoughts assailed her, like maybe Dieter was dead somewhere, and that was a picture of his mutilatedcorpse.

She kept her voice light and serene. “Is Raphael all right?”

Sophie’s eyebrows dipped as much as they could. “Well, yes. Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Well, the picture, or whatever it is—”

“Oh, no. Raphael is perfectly healthy as far as I know and probably grumbling at the tedium of bank business and drinking too much coffee. He was always more active than his sisters, butlittle boys are. I keep telling him he needs to switch to tea or chocolate.”

Flicka asked, “Wulfram and Reagan? Are they okay? Is it from the news?”