Page 35 of Trapped with the Undercover Prince

“Your Highness, please wait in the safe zone,” Louis suggested diffidently. “It would be helpful if you could guide assistance to us when it arrives.”

Zar opened his mouth to reply, but a woman’s screams for help caught everyone’s attention.

She was leaning out of a broken window in the nearest rail car. It had smoke pouring out of it like water through a sieve.

Zar rushed toward the car with others following him. Louis went to the connecting door and tried to open it, but it was jammed. Zar joined him, and they both pulled on the handle. After a moment, it popped open.

About ten feet inside, a man hovered over a woman lying in the aisle. Zar stopped and knelt next to her. Blood had matted the woman’s hair over her left temple, and her wrist was bent at an impossible angle.

“What’s wrong with her?” the man asked. “She won’t wake up.”

“There is a doctor here who can tell us,” Zar told him in a calm tone. He gestured at a couple of other train employees. “These men will help you take her to see the doctor.”

The man wiped the back of his bloody sleeve across his face then nodded shakily. Two other employees picked the injured woman up, and between the two of them made their way out the door. The woman’s husband followed after them, shaking and stumbling over debris.

Zar took a deep breath, then plunged into the smoke and began opening berth doors to ensure everyone had evacuated.

He found a family of four huddled together in the second berth he opened.

“Everybody out,” Zar ordered. “We’ve cleared a path.”

The father nodded and herded his family out.

The next berth revealed the body of a man in his forties, his head twisted around much too far. Zar checked for a carotid pulse. He shook his head. Another death to add to the list of murdered victims. When he got his hands on the terrorists responsible for all this... Nothing good would be the result.

Zar sucked in a lungful of smoke, then spent the next few seconds choking on it. Coughing, he stumbled a few more feet, the sound of a child crying pulling at his ears. He followed the noise to the door of a sleeping berth and fumbled for the door handle. Searing heat had him snatching his hand away. Zar tore off a strip of fabric from the sleeve of his borrowed jacket and covered his palm with the fabric so he could try the door again. It was locked.

The crying turned into screams.

Zar put his shoulder to the door, once, twice. It cracked then buckled, and he shoved it open. A little girl crouched on the floor next to a moaning woman, tears clearing trails in the soot covering the child’s face.

Zar grabbed the child and put her down in the aisle, then he scooped up her mother.

Louis came through the smoke and picked up the child, and Zar followed him out of the car. Five seconds after they exited the rail car, the roof collapsed in a cloud of sparks, smoke, and flame.

There were now a lot more injured people lying on the cement floor near Anna. Zar deposited the woman he carried next to the rest. Louis set the child down next to her mother.

Two men left a moaning teenaged boy on the ground next to Anna, his shoulder obviously out of alignment. Then an elderly man with blood streaming down his face and neck was dragged and dropped at her feet.

People seemed to be walking or limping toward her from every direction, some of them carrying others or leaning on someone else.

So many people. So much blood.

The terrorists had so much to answer for.

Anna examined someone on the ground with gentle hands and a calm smile.

She glanced at Zar for a moment, only a moment, but it was enough time for Zar to read a myriad of emotions on her face. Fearlessness, compassion, and encouragement. Her smile was full of grit and grim determination.

This was one woman he could depend on.

A shiver shot down his spine. He’d almost lost her in what had to be an attempt on his life. The train hadn’t just derailed; there had been an explosion. One that all but destroyed the royal car. If they’d been in it, like they should have been... Anna had saved his life.

“Sir,” Jean Paul limped toward him.

“What happened to your leg?” He hadn’t been limping a few minutes ago.

“I tripped, but it’s fine.”

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