Page 4 of His Runaway Princess

She missed that.

Even as the thought sprang to mind, Amalia didn’t understand where it came from.

She’d had her share of male attention. Being a princess helped. The tabloids seemed to think she was quite attractive. One of them even put her on their top ten royal bachelorettes list.

That had made her quite uncomfortable.

To her chagrin, she’d encouraged some of the attention a bit too much. She - and they - never crossed any real lines, but still too much.

Like the captain the year before. The one who’d been working with the separatists, but had managed to ingratiate himself to her family and have himself declared trustworthy.

She found it impossible to stifle the yawn that came on quite suddenly.

Ryker laughed again and took off his coat. “Here. Use this for a pillow if you’d like. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Amalia believed him. So she took his coat, pulled it around her with her arms snuggled inside, then leaned toward Ryker.

With her head on his shoulder, she dozed.

2

At least Ryker knew he was trustworthy.

The princess probably shouldn’t have trusted him quite so easily. The drunken man who’d approached her earlier wasn’t what he seemed. There had been something in his movements, in the clearness of his eyes, that told Ryker it was at least partially an act.

So what did he want with the princess?

Keeping an eye on that guy and any others had to be Ryker’s top priority for the moment, but he also pulled his official tablet out of his bag. Maybe he could get secure enough service to reach out to Justin from here. It didn’t seem overly likely, but worth attempting.

The secure signal locked on just long enough to download a couple of communications from the palace. Before typing up one of his own, he read through them, frowning at the first one before glancing back over at the man lying on the other seats.

Potential Compromise of Communications

The subject line of the email appeared far more innocuous, but unless the person who compromised the secure means of communication also had access to high level code words and other means of obscuring information, they’d never know what the message truly meant.

Fantastic.

It would increase the difficulties for his team and all of the others exponentially until they could get it sorted, but overall, it wouldn’t be a huge imposition as long as everyone stayed close to home. He didn’t think there were any major trips coming up, unless something had changed while he’d been away.

It would, however, impede his ability to get in touch with Justin.

And there wasn’t a codename for Princess Amalia, so he couldn’t communicate the danger like he would about Princess Genevieve or any of the other members of the Quatremaine family.

As he scanned the interior of the ferry, he wondered if he could upgrade to a cabin for the last hour or so of the trip. If he did, would the princess be willing to use it? Without him, of course, though he would be nearby.

Deciding he would if the opportunity arose, he composed a message to Justin.

Tiny - Having a great time in Pagosa. Made a new friend. She’s hot. Exploring on her own. Can’t let her do that. Extending my stay for a while. Will be back eventually. Will let you know when I’m going to return.

Justin would understand that something happened, that Ryker couldn’t talk freely about it, and he’d be in touch when he could safely do so.

The sentence fragments and informal tone of the email would be an immediate clue even if he wasn’t able to work in any other references to what was going on. With a lack of details and codenames, he wasn’t sure what more he could do. “Tiny” was Justin’s code name when something had gone awry, but not so terribly that their world could come crashing down. Ryker didn’t know who had come up with using the last three letters of the head of security’s name to create the code name. Justin wasn’t a small man by any means, but he wasn’t so overly large that the name became ironic.

Just typing the moderately crass statement about the princess made him cringe, but it might help them figure out who he was with.

If the Øyanordians reached out for help.

If Justin and his team didn’t know Princess Amalia had disappeared, they would have no reason to put two and two together.

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