in the back of her pants so she could put her hands on her hips. She simply watched him for a while, trying to decide whether reasoning with him would be a waste of breath. It would be. But she found she couldn’t help herself.
“First, I don’t steal. Second, even if I did, I’d never be stupid enough to steal crown jewels. Not very low-profile, is it? And not marketable either. They’re easily recognizable. As stolen artifacts, they’d be completely useless. The safest way would be selling the stones separately and melting down the gold, but that’s such a small fraction of their value. And a good thief could easily steal gold and gems from a number of other sources with a lot less difficulty.”
He stared at her without a response. Apparently, her words had given him something to think about. Not long enough. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to,” he said after a while. “It could have been a crime of passion. You saw the coronation jewels and you couldn’t resist them.”
She shook her head. “You know it as well as I do that this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. This was a carefully planned and meticulously executed heist. There are not that many people in the world who have crews that can pull off something like this. And I’m not one of them.”
“No longer one of them?” he pushed. “Or are the rumors true and you always worked alone?”
She said nothing to that. She never discussed her past.
“You know these crews?”
Again, she remained silent.
“If you didn’t do this, do you have any idea who did?”
She shook her head.
She’d thought about little else while she’d been hiding in the chest. She had plenty of time on the way over here, then while she waited for the men to walk away from the container. Then she finally opened the top, busted the crate’s lid and climbed out. The container door had still been open. But she hesitated too long between escaping and staying with the royal treasures.
Then someone came in, and she thought it was one of the thieves, about to discover her. So she’d done what she had to. But while she was busy with him, the door had been sealed and she’d lost the option of leaving.
“Could you untie the belt? You may keep the gun,” he said.
“Aren’t you the magnanimous one? You’re in no position to negotiate,” she reminded him, but untied him anyway. He was considering other options at least and didn’t look as if he would attack her on the spot.
He rubbed his hands over his wrists, closed his eyes for a second, and for a moment looked almost vulnerable. Must have been a trick of the shadows.
“Are you okay?” she asked anyway before she could stop herself. She did hit him over the head pretty hard back there.
His fierce frown was an immediate rebuke. “Fine.” “Let me look at you.” She leaned forward to check his irises, chancing that he might grab for the gun, but couldn’t see much in the dark.
He drew back as if offended. “That’s not necessary.”
“Do you have any nausea? I could have given you a concussion.” Considering the way he’d been treating her, she felt only mildly guilty.
“You didn’t.”
“You don’t know that. Anyway, if you feel sleepy, try to stay awake.”
“I do not have a concussion,” he said, stiff-lipped.
His obstinacy was ticking her off on every level. “You’re too tough to get a concussion from a girl, is that it?”
He came to his feet and strode away from her, stopped as far as the crate allowed, then stared back. An image of buffalo came into her mind, pawing the snow, blowing steam out of his nose. No need to share that with him.
She gave him a minute before she followed. “How far is the nearest seaport?”
“Trieste would be two hours at the most.”
She considered options and backup options, trying to come up with an escape plan. “What do you think will happen when we get there?”
“If we’re lucky, they’ll open the container to transfer the stolen goods. That’ll give us a chance to make a break for it.”
“I don’t believe in luck.” She peered through the darkness and tried to map the place.
The prince gave a brief nod. “Me neither.”
So for two hours they searched every corner, tried to find a weak spot where they could break out—there wasn’t one—and made plans on what they’d do once the riverboat reached port and the container would be opened.
Except that it wasn’t.
No sooner did the boat stop moving than they felt the container lift as a crane hoisted it in the air. She slid against the prince who in turn slid against the back wall, then shifted quickly to the side, saving them from being crushed to death by some unstable crates.
He wedged himself into the corner and held off what had to be a couple of hundred pounds with his bare hands. Then the container settled with a loud clunk and everything stopped moving.
“I take it this would be the ocean liner,” she said, a little rattled, which annoyed her. She didn’t like thinking that the prince might have just saved her. She prided herself on being a self-sufficient woman. She didn’t want to owe anything to any stuck-up, prejudiced Valtrian royalty.
She handed his gun back to him, a kind of payback, she supposed.
“I’m not too keen on going on an ocean voyage at the moment.” Prince Istvan strode to the front and pointed at the lock from the inside. “Are you sure you can’t open this?”
“Not with my bare hands.” That was as close to admitting her shady past as she was comfortable with.
“I have a tool for you.” He pointed the mean-looking handgun in the general direction. “Show me where to shoot.”
“It’ll be too loud.”
“Not if I shoot just as they rattle the next container into place.”
She felt around in the near darkness, then grabbed the barrel of the gun and pressed it against the right spot.
“Here.”
He aimed. They waited. Then when they could hear chains creak and the corner of the next container bump against another, he squeezed off a shot. Inside the container, the sound seemed deafening. But she had a feeling that with all the machinery and the noise of the harbor outside, it had been barely noticeable. Still, they waited a few minutes. When no one raised the alarm and no one came to investigate, the prince drew back, then slammed his shoulder into the door before she could stop him.
That had to hurt. She winced.
“Patience.” She stepped over to examine the damage to the lock. “You’ll need at least one more shot.”
Except that the crane seemed to move on to the other side of the ship. He waited on the spot anyway, in case the crane came back. It didn’t. An hour or so later they felt the ship shudder, the engines start and the ground move under their feet. Istvan used that distraction to fire off his second shot, which did the trick at last.
This time when he shoved his shoulder into the door, it opened.
Four inches.
Just enough for them to see that they were blocked in by another container in front of them.
“Trapped.” She closed her eyes for a moment against the disappointment and frustration. She could have banged her head against the metal. They should have done something much sooner, on the riverboat. But the prince had thoroughly distracted her, and now it was too late. The very reason she always worked alone. A partner was nothing but trouble.
“Going