Page 72 of The Unlikely Spare

“Move!” I roar, my weapon clearing its holster as I sprint toward Nicholas.

But he’s already in motion, abandoning his speech mid-sentence to leap down from the podium. For one brief moment,I think he’s following protocol, moving toward me or another member of his protection team.

He isn’t.

Instead, he heads toward a group of schoolchildren who had been positioned in the front row for a photo opportunity. They’re frozen in place, too young to process what’s happening, while adults scramble around them in panic. The smoke is spreading their way.

My chest constricts so tight I can’t breathe. Nicholas is putting himself between the children and danger, herding them toward the nearest building entrance.

Leaving himself completely exposed. An easy target.

“Get down!” I bellow as a loud bang echoes across the parade ground. It’s the flash-bang detonating.

The concussion hits like a physical blow, setting my ears ringing. White light sears across my vision. I push through it, relying on muscle memory and training.

Through the expanding smoke, I can make out Nicholas still shepherding children through the door, pushing them to safety while remaining exposed himself.

The eejit. The brave, reckless, fucking eejit.

“Multiple assailants converging!” I bark into my comm, never taking my eyes off Nicholas. “Northeast building entrance! Need immediate backup!”

The smoke is thicker now, reducing visibility to maybe ten meters. Another flash-bang detonates somewhere to my left, closer to Nicholas’s position. The overlapping waves of sound and pressure are disorienting, designed to confuse and incapacitate.

Nicholas has got the last child through the door and is about to follow when two figures emerge from the smoke.

Both in naval uniforms, they move with coordinated purpose, rushing the prince from different angles.

Nicholas reacts faster than I would have expected, dodging the first attacker with a sidestep.

But the second man is already there, grabbing Nicholas’s arm, attempting to drag him toward what I now see is a vehicle idling at the edge of the parade ground.

Engine running, doors open.

Fuck.

I don’t hesitate. The shot I fire goes high, deliberately over their heads. A warning, but enough to make the first attacker flinch and duck. Nicholas uses the distraction, driving his elbow into his captor’s solar plexus.

The man’s grip loosens and Nicholas tears free.

But there are more of them now, emerging from the smoke like ghosts. Three, maybe four additional figures, all converging on Nicholas’s position. He won’t make it back to the building entrance—they’ve cut off that route.

“Change direction!” I shout at him, already adjusting my own path to intercept. “Three o’clock! Move!”

Thank fuck, Nicholas listens to me. He immediately pivots and sprints toward a small maintenance building to his right.

I intercept the nearest attacker with a tackle that would have made my Gaelic football coach proud. We hit the concrete hard, the impact jarring through my bones.

The man is solid muscle beneath the fake uniform, but I have desperation and rage on my side. One precise strike to the temple, and he goes limp beneath me.

I roll to my feet immediately, assessing. Blake has the woman with the flash-bangs on the ground, knee in her back. Singh’s locked in hand-to-hand with another hostile near the podium.

The smoke is starting to thin, but the chaos continues—civilians still running, security forces responding, sirens wailing in the distance.

But all I care about is Nicholas.

He’s nearly at the maintenance building when the first attacker—the one he’d dodged—recovers enough to lunge after him. Twenty meters. Too far for me to physically intercept.

I fire again, this time aiming low. The 9mm round catches the man in the thigh, spinning him around with a scream. He goes down hard, clutching his leg. Non-fatal, but he won’t be chasing anyone.