distinction. He and Pierce Westin were both in their mid-thirties, but there all similarities ended.
She wouldn’t think about Ricard right now. She had the rest of her life to do that.
“Let’s talk about who’s trying to kill you,” Pierce said, glancing over his shoulder again, the flash of his eyes surprisingly warm. “Is this person the reason you came to the ranch? Are you here for refuge?”
“No, I made arrangements to come here months ago and this situation is relatively new.”
“Months ago and Cody never told anyone? That’s pretty amazing.”
A little flutter in her throat kept her from responding immediately. She’d insisted on riding with him to have the privacy in which to reveal the true nature of her visit. Allowing herself to get sidetracked would squander the opportunity.
“Princess? You still back there?”
“I want to explain why I begged you to let us stay—”
“And I’d like to hear it,” he interrupted. “But first tell me about the would-be assassins just in case your general is right and one is hiding behind those rocks over there with a howitzer. Start with what you were doing in Seattle.”
She glanced at the rocks, then shook her head. “We were attending an environmental symposium.”
“And someone tried to do what? Shoot you, shove you in front of a bus?”
“Nothing so direct. Two days ago I received an anonymous note. It warned that if I valued my life, I would convince my father to vote against the natural-gas pipeline proposed for Chatioux. There was no way to respond, but I could have told the writer that while my father will weigh my opinion, in the end will do what is best for our country. He would never put family over duty.”
“He sounds like my father,” Pierce said.
“Are you close to your father?”
“Not exactly,” Pierce said. “I’ve been back here three days and I think we’ve spent all of ten minutes in each other’s company.”
“Why? What happened between you?”
He laughed but the sound held little humor. “Don’t try wiggling out of your story by trying to uncover mine. When does the king vote?”
“In five days. The parliament is divided so my father’s vote will be the deciding factor.”
“And how is he leaning?”
“Construction of the pipeline would bring in much-needed revenue. Our country is in the middle of great flux. There aren’t enough jobs to keep our young people employed and they immigrate elsewhere in alarming numbers. We import too many things and export too few. This weakens us socially as well as economically and that puts our national security at risk. It’s all interconnected and Russia would love to see us crumble.”
She sighed again. “The bottom line is this pipeline would make the difference between a brighter, safer future and a continuing spiral downward resulting in citizen unrest if not out-and-out war on our borders. If environmental concerns can be met, my father has no choice but to embrace it.”
“Can these concerns be met?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s what you’ll tell him?”
“Of course. But Mr. Vaughn doesn’t agree with me.”
“Mr. Vaughn. He’s the diplomat who scurried to the car with the skulking woman?”
“The woman is Bierta, my personal maid. Mr. Vaughn was Chatioux’s official delegate to the symposium. I was unofficial. He wants everything to stay as it has always been. He claims it’s because of the environment, but I don’t know, he’s kind of odd. And since these threats started, he’s worried he’ll be standing too close if someone tries to kill me.”
Pierce muttered, “It doesn’t sound like your father trusts this Vaughn fellow’s opinion or he wouldn’t have asked you to go and act as his ears.”
“My father is a thorough man, a good king. I have ordered everyone to keep this threat a secret from him until after the vote. I do not want him put in the position of having to choose.”
She didn’t add why. Her father’s declining health was not known outside the family.
“The general alluded to something that happened in Seattle. Was this separate from the threatening note?”
“Yes,” she said, the memory of the attack once again vibrant and chilling.
The horse started down a dip in the road and Analise slid forward against Pierce’s back. It was impossible not to have some body contact, but she did her best to keep it minimal. Forced closer than before, she suddenly noticed the way his hair waved against the back of his neck, right above his collar, dark against his skin, fine and tender-looking. He appeared to have a tan.
“Princess?”
She blinked a couple of times as the horse began the climb to the other side of the gully. Her grip tightened around his waist. “On the last day of the symposium, my driver didn’t show up to transport us between hotel and convention center. Mr. Vaughn had rented a car, so he offered to drive but he got terribly lost. We ended up in a bad area of town in a narrow alley where people seemed to be living. Claude, my bodyguard from home, got out of the car when a group of men started pushing at it.” Analise paused. Her pitch had risen as she spoke, the words tumbling one after the other.
“There was a terrible fight. They broke poor Claude’s arm in two places. He had to stay in the hospital so the general hired a new man from an American agency to fill in.”
“The charmer I met at the airstrip?”
“Not so charming.”
“Are you saying that because he’s actually said or done something suspicious or because he glowers all the time?”
“I think it’s the glowering. Plus, I had to ask him twice not to smoke in front of my cousin. Toby is allergic.”
“Anything else happen in Seattle?”
“That’s all, I guess. Claude was hurt but I was never even threatened. I don’t see how any of it could have been planned. We were simply lost. Mr. Vaughn was as terrified by the events as I was.”
“I’m kind of surprised he joined you for this leg of your trip,” Pierce said. “He sounds like the kind of guy who would have preferred staying in a plush room back in the city.”
“I was surprised, too. But he insisted he wanted to see something besides hotel rooms and on behalf of goodwill, I relented.”
“And what about your cousin? Did you really take a little kid to a symposium on the environment?”
“Of course not. He was visiting his Canadian grandparents during spring break. It was prearranged that he would join my entourage for the journey back to Chatioux and the visit to the ranch.”
Pierce was silent for a few moments before he mumbled to himself.
“Did you say something?” she asked, unconsciously pressing against his broad back. She lowered her voice, looked ahead of him down the road where she could barely see the dark shape of the brown horse carrying Toby. “Is something wrong? Did you see something?”
“Just a second,” he said, and yanked the reins to the right. The pinto climbed the rocky bank, cresting a ridge pocketed with drifts of snow left over from the last storm. Below them, the truck slowed and its windows rolled down.
Analise held on tight to Pierce’s coat, unsure what was going on. It crossed her mind that perhaps she’d been wrong, that perhaps this wasn’t Cody Westin’s brother, that he was an imposter, working for whomever had written that disturbing note.
“Go on ahead