countless beds and broken Max’s mother’s heart long before she died of leukemia.
His mother had died when Max was fourteen, his father when he was eighteen, and his desire to be part of the royal farce, as he saw it, sometime between the two life-shaping events. Although he’d inherited the title of duke when his father died, he refused to use it. Soon after his father’s funeral, he’d joined the royal army.
But two years later had found him feeling just as restless, just as displaced as ever. So he’d packed up a few belongings and left his father’s country, hoping to find his true destiny somewhere within his mother’s homeland.
To his surprise and relief, his grandfather had welcomed him with open arms and put him up in the house where his mother had known happier days. For Max it turned into the homecoming he’d hoped for. After searching for his roots for twenty years, he’d finally found a place for himself.
He’d conceived of the agency six months after his grandfather’s fateful encounter with a robbery suspect had landed Bill flat on his back with nothing to look forward to. He’d deliberately chosen the detective agency to give his grandfather’s life a purpose. As a bonus, it had given him one, too.
Bill watched his grandson look at the note and could almost hear the wheels turning in the younger man’s head. Max had a call to make. He turned his wheelchair around again, heading for the door.
“Open the door for me, boy. I need to get one of those dinky cups of coffee they overcharge you for at the café,” Bill told him, referring to the small coffee shop located along the outside perimeter of the eight-floor office building.
Max crossed to the door, opening it. He knew what this was about. Nobody respected space the way his grandfather did. “You don’t need to clear out.”
Bill spared him a kindly look. “Figure I’ll give you some privacy.”
Max closed the door after his grandfather and went back to the desk. Taking a seat, he placed the message down on the blotter and studied it for a long, silent moment before he finally picked up the receiver. Blowing out a breath, he pressed the series of numbers that would connect him with the palace. Something akin to a melody resounded as he tapped on the keys.
It took awhile for the connection to kick in. The line, he knew without being told, was a private one which went directly to the king’s own offices, circumventing the army of secretaries and go-betweens that were usually encountered when making such calls.
The only person Max had to go through was the King’s personal secretary, a gruff old man named Albert who was exceedingly protective of the monarch’s time. Only after Max had volunteered the name of his father’s last mistress did Albert believe he was who he claimed to be and put him through.
“I would have thought that old bulldog would have died years ago. What is he, eighty?” Max asked when he finally heard his uncle’s deep voice say hello on the other end of the line.
“Eighty-two,” the king corrected. “And I couldn’t get along without him. Maximillian, my boy.” There was sincere pleasure in the monarch’s deep voice. “How long has it been? Never mind, whatever the time, it has been far too long.”
Max knew exactly how long it had been. Though he cared a great deal for his uncle and aunt, and was very fond of his brother Lorenzo, his visits to Montebello were few and very far between.
“Almost eight years since the last visit.”
“Eight years,” Marcus marveled. Where did time go? It seemed like only yesterday that the boy had gone. “Don’t believe in overstaying your welcome, do you, Maximillian?”
Max knew that his uncle’s time was far too valuable for Marcus to have called only to shoot the breeze. There was some other reason behind the call.
“Something like that. My grandfather said you called with urgent business.” He embellished slightly, but he had a feeling he was on the right track.
“I’m surprised he gave you the message. He was rather evasive about when you’d be in when I told him who I was.”
Max smiled to himself. He knew how cantankerous his grandfather could be. A plainspoken man, Bill made it clear that royalty didn’t impress him. “You have Albert, I have Grandpa.”
“I see your point,” Marcus conceded graciously. He would have liked nothing better than an opportunity to catch up with his dashing, nonconformist nephew, but there were more pressing issues at hand. “Well, then, to business. I need a favor.”
It was rare that Marcus ever asked for anything. Still, time had taught Max to qualify things and not jump in headfirst, eyes shut. “As long as it doesn’t involve returning to Montebello on a permanent basis, you only have to ask.”
Marcus paused. When he spoke, there was a detectable sadness in his voice. “Dislike us that much, do you, Maximillian?”
It wasn’t the country or his relatives that Max disliked, it was the memory of his father that haunted him.
“I’ve always been more American than royal, Uncle Marcus, you know that. I never fit in. Too much pomp and circumstance to suit me. Life is to be savored and explored, not sampled through a gilded cage. What’s the favor?”
Marcus weighed his words carefully. “It would actually be right up your alley, as you ‘Americans’ say. I hear you’re a private investigator these days.”
Max knew that his uncle possessed an extensive network for garnering information, not the least of which was Gage Weston, the nephew of the king of Penwyck. Marcus usually had all the answers to his questions before he ever voiced them aloud.
“Yes, I am.”
“Doing well?”
To the untrained ear, it sounded like a typical conversation between a man and the nephew he hadn’t seen in years.
“Yes,” Max said.
Marcus laughed. “Talkative as ever, I see.” And then his voice became audibly more serious. “All right, Maximillian, I need you to track down a Kevin Weber for me. I’m told he recently—” there was a pause as Marcus hunted for the right words “—jumped bail, I believe it is called. He is wanted for crimes committed in a small town in Colorado.”
“That’s the expression.” Max frowned as he wrote down the name. So far, this wasn’t making any sense. “What do you want with a so-called American bail jumper?”
There was another pause, a longer one this time. And then Marcus said, “Nothing is what it seems, Maximillian, but for now, that is all the information you need. Weber has been spotted in a small town in New Mexico. Tacos or Chaos—”
“Taos?” Max suggested, trying not to laugh.
Even now, he could picture his uncle, his stately brow furrowed as he tried to remember. Marcus was the one his mother should have married, the stable, noble older brother, not his far more outgoing, charming younger brother who broke hearts as a way of feeding his own need for adulation and adoration. Max would have gladly called Marcus “father.”
“Yes,” Marcus declared. “That is the place. I need this Weber brought back to Montebello.”
They both knew that Weber was not the man’s real name, but because, despite precautions, you never knew who was listening, the alias the man went by in America would suffice. In truth, “Weber” belonged to a group that was as evil as its name: the Brothers of Darkness. It was they whom the king suspected might have something to do with Prince Lucas’s disappearance. Ever since the news broke that Lucas had survived the plane crash over the Rockies a year earlier, the royal family had been searching for the long-missing and beloved Prince of Montebello. Ironically “Weber” was wanted for trying to break into the Chambers ranch, the very place Lucas had last been seen. And now that the king’s intelligence agency had positively identified Weber as a member of the Brothers, there was no doubt, in the king’s mind anyway, that Weber had not