Page 38 of Cooper

“Shit.” She’s immediately on her feet, reaching for a pair of cargo pants I hadn’t noticed hanging over the back of a chair.

“Babe, what?—”

“This is an all-hands drill,” she says, not missing a beat as she slides her feet into boots that were on the floor beneath the chair. “That means you too. Get dressed as quickly as you can, please.”

She doesn’t have to tell me twice.

Injured or not, I know what this means.

She’s talked about drills, and I know they’re timed and treated like an actual attack. There are staff-only drills and all-hands drills. Staff only means it’s just the Protectors, palace staff, and/or immediate royal family members, excluding kids and nannies. All hands means everyone. Newborns, sick, elderly, support staff, visitors, anyone and everyone.

Which includes me.

And that means I’m going to slow Natalia down.

FOURTEEN

Natalia

I’m used to drills,but I’m usually in charge of Casey and Levi or just myself. I’ve never had a guest like this before, especially not one who’s physically challenged at the moment. I know in my gut Sandor did this on purpose to test me, and I’m not sure what to do. I know what I’msupposedto do, but damn, making the choice between leaving Cooper behind or allowing him to slow us down significantly is difficult.

“I need a weapon,” he says, wincing as he pulls on sweats.

I hesitate.

“You’re going to have to leave me behind,” he says. “Give me a weapon to protect myself. I know it’s a drill, but you’re supposed to behave as if it’s the real thing, right?”

I nod.

“Do you have an extra weapon?”

I don’t respond and simply run to my closet, reaching up to engage the fingerprint sensitive lock on my biometric gun safe. I pull out my personal weapon, a Sig P626 9mm pistol, and hand it to him.

“It’s loaded. Are you ready to go?”

His eyes gleam as he straps on the holster I have it housed in.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Our eyes meet, and I head for the door.

We probably lost about six or seven seconds talking about the gun, but that’s okay. We have ten-second margins of error. The only issue will be getting through the halls to the nearest tunnel entrance. I know he can’t make it in the allotted time, but I can probably help. He’s bigger than I am, but he’s not huge like Sandor or Axel, who are both massive.

“Do your best to keep up,” I call over my shoulder.

At a time like this, where the drill happens when I’m off-duty, I don’t have anyone specific to protect. The idea is for as many of us as possible to get to the tunnels and the meeting point, which is what we would do if this was truly an attack. We gather in a couple of places and from there we would be assigned protection duty.

Cooper nods. “You do what you have to do. I’ll make it.”

“You don’t know where the tunnels are, so I need to guide you. Let’s just do the best we can.” We hurry down the hall toward the stairs—elevators are prohibited during a drill or attack—and I hate watching Cooper grimacing in pain, but there’s no help for it.

There’s noise in the stairwell and I look back at Cooper.

He’s dragging.

Moving, definitely faster than most people who’d just gone through the physical abuse he’d suffered in Iraq, but definitely not like normal. Or like me.

I turn and reach for him, putting an arm around his waist.

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