Tears smeared the blood spattered on his face. “No,” he whispered, then he lifted the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Anna ducked, her hands in front of her face as the members of his Guard rushed to the body.
Zar tried to go to her, but the men closest to him got in his way.
“Please, Your Highness, let us clear the scene first. He could have explosives on him.”
“Anna? Anna!” he called out to her.
She pulled her hands away from her face and looked at them. They were shaking. “I’m okay.”
One of the Guard rose to his feet and announced, “Clear.”
Zar shouldered his way out from behind the human shield and went to Anna. He put his hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet.
She was as pale as Anton had been before he... “Let’s get you out of here.”
She nodded, and he urged her toward the kitchen door, but after a couple of steps, she planted her feet.
“There’s something I have to do first.”
“Whatever it is, it can wait.”
She looked at him, her gaze haunted. “No, I’m not sure I can ever come back here, so it has to be now.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but she spoke first. “Besides, your grandmother asked me to do this.”
“What is it?”
“Your grandmother gave my grandmother something to hide during the war. A ring with a really big blue diamond in it.”
“She asked your grandmother to hide the Blue Ice Diamond?” He couldn’t believe it.
“Yes, and my grandmother told me where she hid it.”
“Good God. All right, well, where is it?”
Anna moved to the center of the room and looked up at the wooden beams holding up the roof. There wasn’t a lot of room between the beams and the ceiling, but there were smaller lengths of wood that joined together to form the peak.
“Up there?”
“Yeah, she said it was hard to get to.”
“Did she say how she got up there?”
“Nope.”
“A ladder?” Zar asked.
“We could put her in a harness, throw a rope over one of the beams and hoist her up there,” one of the guard’s men said.
Everyone looked at him.
“What? It’s how my uncle cleans the stained-glass windows high up in the castle.”
“Sir,” someone said as they came in from outside. “There’s a bunch of scaffolding out here. I think we can make something that will get Dr. Anna up there.”
He looked at Anna. She wore her don’t bother trying to argue my mind is made up face.