Page 31 of A Valiant Prince

She rolls her eyes and gives me a look. “Seriously? I’m pretty sure the King of Montelandia would most certainly have a say in where his son was sent on a temporary exile. And I can’t believe my dad would let Victor dictate where we would be sent, but…perhaps, I mean, if Marcus agreed too,” she replies.

“Exile? Isn’t that a bit extreme?” I ask.

“Whatever. I feel like I’m missing things, so many things,” she says. Her finger taps the corner of her keyboard as she studies the screen.

“OK, let’s start with what doesn’t fit together,” I suggest, lying back against the headboard and grabbing another cookie because I have a feeling this will take a while.

Chapter Nine

“Well, we know someone inquired on the dark web to hire an assassin to kill you. But we don’t know who. We know someone planted a bomb on board Uncle Hans’s plane and now at the summer palace, but again, who? We know M made it to the Bahamas and then Norddale, but where he is now, I have no idea. We also know that some influential people in Norddale and Montelandia were accused of being anti-monarchists twenty-some years ago,” she states.

“Alright, so who would want me dead?” I ask her.

She tilts her head to the side and considers my question.

“Anti-monarchists, maybe. Sten, possibly. But why us now? There would have been no indication you were coming back with us until right before the flight, and we know the bomb was planted on the plane earlier than that based on when the video glitches occurred. So, who would want to kill us and you? Same person or group? Different people and it’s just a coincidence?” she ponders.

“You think it could be a coincidence?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “My gut tells me no. It’s too…the odds are just too great for it not to be connected,” she says.

“OK,” I respond slowly. “So, then who would want to kill members of both the royal families?” I ask her.

“Now that, my dear, is the million-dollar question,” she replies.

“And let me guess, we don’t have the million-dollar answer yet?” I say.

“Nope. But, we are going to find out,” she says.

We begin a marathon session of research. I haven’t studied this hard since college. Fine, if I’m being honest with myself, I have never done research like this, ever. Of course, my life and others have never been at stake either. Pete makes us all sandwiches for lunch, and we eat them in the bedroom while we continue to work. At some point in the mid-afternoon, Anna sends Lucas to go buy her a printer.

“I just need to look at some of this, not on the screen,” she says, surprising me because her life is on a screen.

“Whatever you need,” I reply as I look through article after article, news clip after news clip. By dinner time, I’m mentally exhausted.

“I need a break, Anna,” I say to her. I’ve all but forgotten the reason I originally followed her in here this morning. I lie back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling. We’re no closer to figuring this out than we were six hours ago.

Anna stops her typing and turns to me. She pulls out her hair band and lets her hair fall down around her shoulders as she walks over to me and plops down on the bed, lying back too, so we are side by side.

“I feel like the answers are just out of grasp,” she huffs.

I reach down and grab her hand, holding it in mine.

“I think we need a break,” I say.

“I know. Maybe we can relax for a bit tonight,” she suggests.

“No, I mean, let’s take tomorrow off. Let’s do something fun,” I say, leaning up on my elbow and looking down at her.

“What do you have in mind?” she asks, her eyebrow raised.

“Ever been to Niagara Falls?” I ask her.

Her eyes go wide. “Uh, nope. But isn’t that really far away?” she asks.

I shake my head. “A few hours, but we can get up early and be there by mid-morning,” I say. “And then we can come home at night.”

She looks at me for a long minute, contemplating my idea. “OK. Let’s take a break. Maybe clearing our heads will help. But good luck talking our security team into this idea,” she says.

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