Page 43 of At Midnight

“Still, we’ll have to work on that at some point. I should leave now. It was nice seeing you, Ms. von Hannover, and I’m glad you’ve recovered from the other day.”

He strode out, his long legscovering the thick rug and then the inlaid wood floor of the entryway.

Flicka looked over at Alina, who was still stacking blocks. “I think that went well. Don’t you?”

Alina nodded at her and went back to stacking blocks.

Just as Flicka was ready to stand, she noticed a silver corner sticking up between the couch cushions where Bastien had been sitting. The silver edge enclosed a glass screen.

Good Lord, he’d brought her a burner phone, and it was just a few feet away.

The two Russian guards were standing at parade rest, their hands clasped in front of their tank-like bodies, watching her.

Flicka spread her arms and pressed the phone deeper between the cushions as she slid off the couch to the floor, hiding it.

She stacked blocks with Alina long enough that any normal person wouldsurely tire of such a thing and finally said, “Come on, Alina. Let’s go to the kitchen for a snack.”

Alina scooped her blocks into her little tray to take them with her.

Flicka got to her knees and turned, pressing her hands on the couch cushions to shove herself to standing.

Her fingers dove between the cushions and found the cool glass of the phone, and she slipped it and the cord wrappedaround it into her pocket as she stood and turned back to Alina.

The guards had already turned to go to the kitchen.

Perfect.

Flicka took Alina to the kitchen for cookies and then upstairs for a bit before the evening began.

Upstairs, the bodyguards stationed themselves in the guest suite, but there were no women guards to escort her to the bathroom when needed.

An oversight on their part.

Discriminatory hiring practices weaken any organization. The Russian guards really should have tried harder to recruit women.

The dilemma was that she wanted some people to know she was there so that she and Alina would be safer, but she didn’t want Pierre to know where she was so that he could harass her, kidnap her, or serve her court papers.

Also, if she sent a mass text to the world, hermillions of social media followers, and all the journalists’ phone numbers in her head, the reporters might find and rescue her, but Raphael and Alina might be immediately killed.

Raphael had told her about failing to find the mole in Wulfram’s organization, so as much as she wanted to hear her brother’s voice, she couldn’t call him.

She had to walk a delicate line.

In the bathroom, Flickatexted as quickly as she could, her fingertips flying over the screen.

Text after text peeled off the screen over her phone and flew through the cellular network.

That night, after some heavy petting in front of the bodyguards and a firm slam of the bedroom door, Flicka passed the phone to Raphael in silence, and he hugged her hard, whispering, “My darling little spy, when we get out of this,you are going to train the Rogue Security personnel on how a royal does black ops.”