‘‘Yes. The country needs to see Lucas officially installed as heir.’’
‘‘Do you think the bombing is connected to the uncertainty about the succession? Tamir—’’
‘‘Good Lord, Drew, the last thing we need is to sling a fresh batch of accusations at Tamir! We barely made it through the last few months without a war.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ Drew said shortly. ‘‘I know.’’
‘‘Sorry.’’ He rubbed a hand over his head. ‘‘It’s been…difficult.’’
‘‘I was about to say that Tamir, however unwittingly, did play host to a number of those Brothers of Darkness fellows. Nasty bunch. They aren’t what they once were, thank God, with their leaders either dead or in prison, but there must still be some isolated cells operating. I heard they’re taking credit for today’s fireworks.’’
‘‘And just where did you hear that? We don’t know who called in the—yes?’’ Lorenzo’s attention swerved to the uniformed officer who approached.
‘‘Pardon me, Your Grace.’’ The young policeman looked nervous and excited. ‘‘Captain Mylonas would like to see you. He’s detained a suspect.’’
Drew’s eyebrows rose. Either Mylonas had gotten very lucky, or he was hassling some poor Tamiri visitor who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. After Drew’s encounter with the captain, he was betting on the second possibility.
‘‘Where?’’ Lorenzo said tersely.
‘‘In the security office off the atrium.’’
Lorenzo started moving. ‘‘Your limo’s out front, Drew.’’
‘‘If you don’t mind, I’ll go with you. If there’s anything to this, His Highness will want to know. I can brief him when I reach the palace.’’
Lorenzo acknowledged the sense of that with a nod.
Montebello’s airport was no Heathrow, but it was a fair stretch of the legs to reach the security offices, located slightly west of the center but not in the bombed section. Drew was tired. His head had started to pound and his lungs were issuing warnings of another coughing fit by the time they reached the office where Captain Mylonas had sequestered his suspect.
Who was not at all what Drew had been expecting. He stopped in the doorway.
‘‘Your Grace.’’ The captain practically clicked his heels together when Lorenzo entered. Mylonas was a small man with a small, round paunch. His mustache was so black and precise it looked inked on—a forlorn attempt to add distinction to a bland face. ‘‘I am pleased you could come so promptly.’’
‘‘You have a suspect, I understand.’’
‘‘He has heatstroke,’’ the suspect muttered. ‘‘Or maybe his mother dropped him on the head as a baby. That would explain it.’’
Good Lord, Drew thought. Her voice was as perfect as the rest of her.
Mylonas’s suspect had skin the dusky olive of the Mediterranean. Her face was oval, the features imbued with that fluid sensuality some Italian women possess. Black hair rippled down her back like wind-rumpled water. She was dressed plainly enough in a red T-shirt and khaki shorts, but the T-shirt was tucked in at an absurdly small waist, the shorts revealed legs that made him clench his teeth, and that soft red cotton clung with intimate favor to what might be the finest pair of breasts he’d ever seen.
Or mostly seen. The T-shirt wasn’t as tight as he might have wished.
‘‘Your name?’’ Lorenzo asked crisply.
‘‘Rosalinda Cira Giaberti. Call me Rose. And you are?’’
The sweet insolence of her tone had Drew smiling. This was a terrorist?
‘‘Lorenzo Sebastiani.’’
A blink cleared some of the boredom from those fine, dark eyes. ‘‘Pardon me, Your Grace, for failing to recognize you. You seem to have left your coronet at home.’’ When she glanced at Drew her brows lifted in haughty inquiry. ‘‘You aren’t a Sebastiani.’’
‘‘No. Call me Drew, Signorina Giaberti.’’ His smile suggested that if she didn’t call, he would. Soon. ‘‘It is signorina, isn’t it?’’ There was no ring on her left hand.
Her mouth twitched in amusement. ‘‘And if it isn’t?’’
‘‘Life is seldom fair, but rarely is it that absurdly malignant.’’ For some reason his bantering tone slipped, as if he’d spoken nothing more than the truth.
She tipped her head, curious, and met his eyes.
The hairs on his forearms stood on end. He looked into those dark eyes and he knew—he was going to have her. When and where didn’t matter. He would have this woman naked and damp and crying out for him.
Her eyes widened. A small, alarmed jerk of her head snapped the contact.
‘‘Signorina Giaberti called in the bomb threat,’’ Captain Mylonas announced with relish.
It took a second for Drew to throw off the odd spell and understand what the man had said. When he did, his stomach contracted in quick, hard denial. But however his body rejected the implications, his mind knew very well that lovely packages could hold ugly surprises. Yet he still wanted her.
How far had he sunk?
The woman was unimpressed by the implicit accusation. Her glance at the captain was annoyed, no more. ‘‘Madre di Dio. It was a warning, not a threat. You might consider thanking me.’’
‘‘Thanking you? For attempting to kill hundreds of innocent people?’’
‘‘I tried to kill no one. If I hadn’t called, the building wouldn’t have been evacuated and the fire—’’ She broke off suddenly. ‘‘I warned you about the bomb. I didn’t threaten you with one. The distinction may be subtle to one of your intelligence, so I will give an example. If I say that looking at your smug, shiny face might cause me to lose my supper, that is a warning. If I say I’m going to vomit all over your pretty uniform unless you go away, that is a threat.’’
Drew choked on a laugh, then doubled over as another coughing fit hit.
Lorenzo took a step towards him. He waved his cousin back, stepping out into the hall so he wouldn’t interfere with the interrogation while his body tried to eject the lining of his lungs. He ended up leaning weakly against the wall, eyes watering as he dragged deep breaths through his raw throat. His head pounded, a hard, hot throb of pain. He blinked the moisture back.
One of the police officers was staring at him. Bloody hell. In another minute he’d have the fool over here asking if he needed medical attention. He made the effort to straighten, glancing down at the scuffed white tiles of the floor…
And the world slipped behind a wall.
Sounds, color, vision—all were still there, but removed. Distant, as if everything had slid behind glass. The pain in his head went from a throb to a long slice of agony.
Not again—please, not now. Not again.
But his plea was as trapped as the rest of him. As if someone had taken a grip on two corners of the world and pulled, the square tiles of the floor stretched into parallelograms. Pain became pressure, livid, explosive, almost living, as if it could burst out of his skull and splatter his brains on the white, elongated tiles. He tried to move, to at least close his eyes. And couldn’t. He could only stand frozen while the tiles melted and the beast behind his eyes rose in a huge wave—