Johan slept deeply, even if he couldn’t sleep for long. It seemed crazy that in the middle of everything going on, he was able to relax down to his bones, but being with Tracy had loosened all the tension he’d been carrying and more. She was perfect in every way, and her responses to him had left them both sated and happy.

He opened his eyes with regret when his phone’s alarm went off as the first rays of dawn peeked through the boat’s portholes. If he had his way, he and Tracy would enjoy a leisurely and passionate day out on the boat, far from royal duties and troubles. But as soon as the last bits of sleep began to drain away from him and Tracy started moving, hinting that she was awake too, the daunting task in front of them swooped down on him.

“What time is it?” Tracy gasped, sitting up. She didn’t bother to gather the sheets around her body, which meant Johan was treated to the tempting sight of her bare chest, then her backside as she leapt from the bed.

“It can’t be long past dawn,” Johan said, reluctant to break the hazy spell of desire that begged him to lure Tracy back into bed. He stood, reaching for his clothes that lay scattered on the floor and furniture beside the bed. “And dawn comes early at this time of year.”

Tracy raced to dress, but paused in the middle of fastening her jeans to study him with an appreciative eye. Her lips pulled into a sly grin. “That was some night last night.”

Johan let out an ironic laugh, zipping his trousers, then moving to sweep her into his arms. He kissed her as deeply as he dared, careful not to go so far that he’d forget what they had to do in favor of going back to bed. “You have no idea.”

He kissed her again quickly, then stepped away to finish getting dressed. He could have used a shower, but there wasn’t time.

Tracy wore a satisfied smile as she finished dressing. Johan loved that he’d put that look on her face, and as soon as everything was over, he intended to make her smile like that a lot more frequently. For the first time in what felt like forever—although it was more like eighteen hours—his mind was looking ahead to things that could happen after Marina and Lindqvist were brought to justice, after his mother’s marriage was made official, and after life returned to normal. He couldn’t imagine his life without Tracy by his side. And even though it was still way too early to think about long-term future plans—plans that would add the title “Princess” to Tracy’s name—his heart longed to go there.

He was still contemplating those world-changing thoughts when he and Tracy climbed up to the deck and looked out across the dim, dawn-kissed morning. Johan went to lift anchor while she moved to the edge of the deck.

“Wow. The rig looks so different in the light,” Tracy said.

“I would hardly call this light yet.” Johan glanced around. “We’ve probably got about half an hour until the sun actually shows up on the horizon.”

“But it’s light enough.” Tracy squinted at the rig. “It looks almost like a random collection of shipping containers and some scaffolding now.”

Johan nodded. “And we’d better get there while there’s still enough darkness to conceal us.” He moved to the captain’s chair and started the engine.

Tracy sat as close as she could to him on the bench behind the captain’s seat. “Will we be able to sneak up on them with the engine as loud as it is?”

“I doubt it,” he said with a frown.

“So if anyone is there, they’ll know we’re coming,” Tracy said, gravity in her voice.

“Unless they’re still asleep.” He didn’t think that was something they could count on.

But as the boat drew near to the rig, Johan became convinced it was abandoned, or nearly so. Under normal circumstances, there would have been more lights on the rig’s main platforms and more boats moored nearby. The whole thing had a ghostly, vacant feeling—one that chilled him to the bone.

“Well, someone’s here,” Tracy said as they reached the edge of the rig, where the slip and ladder leading up to the main platform stood.

She nodded to another, small boat tied to the slip. It wasn’t anything fancy, but the fact that it was there proved someone else was on the rig. Johan cut the engine of Mack’s boat and moved to the side to fasten it to the slip, with Tracy’s help.

“Should we call the police now?” she asked.

Johan stared long and hard at the rig’s supports, the other boat, the platform above them. “They know to come by nine one way or another. Let’s just see if the rig is really abandoned first.”

“Right,” Tracy snorted, shaking her head at him.

“So much for not taking risks,” he muttered once Mack’s boat was secure. “This was just supposed to be a reconnaissance mission.”

“Yeah,” Tracy laughed, a flash of adrenaline in her eyes. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to avoid diving in this time.”

“All the same,” Johan said, meeting her eyes and holding them, “don’t go out of your way to find trouble. We’re here to see if Marina and Lindqvist are here, and to discover any further evidence that would prove what they’re up to. The police will get involved, whether we call them now or not, which means that we don’t have to be heroes.”

“Just because we’re not heroes doesn’t mean we can’t be the ones to figure out what’s going on here,” she replied, a light of challenge in her eyes. “But I hear what you’re saying. I solemnly swear that I’ll try not to get myself killed.”

Johan grinned in spite of himself. As much as he hated Tracy’s tendency to land herself in hot water, he loved her enthusiasm and determination to get to the bottom of things. He loved her. And if he was going to build a life with her, he was pretty sure he’d have to get used to being completely frustrated with her from time to time.

“Well,” he took a deep breath, “let’s do this.”

Taking care to stay as quiet as they could, they climbed out of the boat and onto the rig. Johan spent about three seconds worrying whether Tracy was up to the physical challenge of climbing to the platform and snooping around, but as soon as he saw the way she shot up the ladder, as if it were nothing, those fears subsided. She might have been in better shape than he was, and he worked out regularly.

The main level of the rig was as silent as the rest of it, but it felt slightly more familiar than staring up at the structure from underneath. A metal deck ran around the perimeter of the bulky structure. Several doors stood in the walls, but until they determined where each door led, it would have been foolish to go rattling the doorknobs and pushing each one open. The problem was, without schematics or the first clue how oil rigs were configured, they had nothing to go on.

“Okay, what now?” Tracy asked after they’d walked all the way around the rig, passing two sets of stairs leading up in the process, and returned to the ladder. “Do we go up to the next level? Or do we start opening doors?”

Johan ran a hand over his face and let out a breath, thinking. “Let’s try a few doors first, just to see what we’re dealing with.”

Tracy nodded, and they started their second circuit of the rig. The first door they came across was locked, but the second opened easily.

“Whoa,” Tracy murmured as they pushed it open and flicked on the lights. The fact that there was power when the rig had looked abandoned wasn’t a good sign. The room was clearly some sort of control center for the rig. Panels of instruments and a few computers sat in silence beside empty desks and counters. “Most of it is turned off,” Tracy went on. “If turned off is the right term. Can you turn an oil rig on and off? And if so, why do the lights come on?”

“I don’t know,” Johan said. He took a step deeper into the room, scanning everything and trying to make some sense of it. “I tell you what, though. Even if operations here are shut down, they can’t have been down for long.”

“How do you know?” Tracy glanced around, trying to see what he was seeing.

“It’s still warm in here.”

“So?” She looked to him.

Johan shrugged. “Anything like this—made of metal and sitting in the Baltic Sea—is going to lose a lot of ambient heat if it’s not fully functional for long. If this rig truly was abandoned and out of commission for any length of time, it’d be cold. And those lights you mentioned wouldn’t work. Always check the lights.”

“Good point.” She took another look around. “So things were active here until very recently. Whoever was running the rig must have shut everything down and sent the workers away. But when?”

“I don’t know,” Johan answered.

They took a quick look around, but there was nothing to indicate any activity or any hint of who had been there. Everything had been removed but the equipment that was built into the room. They were forced to leave and keep checking doors, hoping to find more information.

“Did you hear something?” Tracy asked when they were back out on the deck, approaching one of the sets of stairs.

They both froze, and Johan listened. The rig was full of sounds, but they could easily have been caused by the slight breeze or by sea birds landing somewhere above them. And they could have been caused by Marina or Lindqvist, or someone else up to no good.

He motioned for Tracy to keep going. None of the other doors on the bottom level were unlocked, so they cautiously made their way to the second level. The first unlocked room they found there was an abandoned bunk room. Two bunk beds lined the walls of the narrow room with a bureau at the far, windowless end. The beds had been stripped of all coverings, and the bureau was empty.

“Not exactly the Ritz,” Tracy said, glancing around.

“I think that’s why working on an oil rig is considered one of the toughest jobs out there,” Johan said.

There wasn’t much more to see, so they moved on. They found one other bunk room before stumbling across what looked like a galley and dining room, also empty and abandoned.

“Do you think someone deliberately set out to make it look like this place was abandoned a long time ago?” Tracy asked as they edged their way to the last door on the second level.

“Probably.” Johan nodded. “Especially since that would be the perfect way to cover their asses in case the authorities got involved.”

“Which they will in….” She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket, then said, “Two hours.”

Knowing the time sent Johan’s adrenaline soaring. He picked up his pace, reaching for the handle of the last door and easing it open.

The second they stepped into the room and turned on the lights, he knew they’d hit pay dirt. They were in an office. It was small, square, and crowded with desks and filing cabinets, but unlike the rest of the rig, it wasn’t empty. Far from it.

Tracy blew out a breath and raced to one of the desks. “Would you look at this.”

The computer was on. It showed an entire desktop filled with files. Tracy slid into the desk chair, grabbing the mouse and sliding it across the screen. As she clicked through a few things, Johan turned in a circle, studying the room. It was undecorated and businesslike, but the filing cabinets were still stuffed, and reports on the rig’s output and shipments were tacked to a corkboard. He stepped over to get a closer look, and was rewarded with proof that not only had the rig been recently operational, until a few days ago, it’d had a tremendous output.

“Johan. Oh my gosh, look at this.”

The urgency in Tracy’s voice had Johan rushing to Tracy’s side. He leaned over her shoulder to look at what she had up on the screen. He didn’t need to wait for an explanation. The truth was glaringly obvious at one glance.

Tracy had pulled up a program with a complete record of financial transactions involving oil sales and payments under the guise of a handful of trading and oil companies. Several African nations were mentioned, but by the looks of things, a company in Côte D’Ivoire was the broker for those transactions. More damning still, Marina’s name was all over everything. She was listed as CEO for several of the smaller companies.

“Marina Magnusson,” Tracy said, clicking through a few more files. Bank statements, trade contracts, financial records. All of them were for Storm Holdings, Ltd., and all of them had Marina’s name on them.

“Not Lindqvist,” Johan said with a sigh. Any hope he’d had that his aunt had been dragged along out of a sense of love or duty toward her boyfriend vanished.

He peeled away from the computer and pulled open one of the filing cabinets to see if they confirmed what was on the computer. Sure enough, the records that filled the cabinets showed the same thing—statements and contracts dating back almost a decade, all of which had Marina’s name and signature on them.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, letting out a painful, disappointed breath. “Aunt Marina is behind all of this. She’s been running whatever kind of company this is for years.”

“It’s a holding company.” Marina’s voice sounded from the office’s open door. Johan whipped to face her, and Tracy nearly fell out of her chair. Marina stood in the door with her arms crossed, Lindqvist hovering behind her. “It’s a company that owns other companies.”

Johan forced himself to recover fast. “Aunt Marina, you can’t do this. It’s illegal.” He took a step toward her.

Marina laughed. “Of course I can do it. I’ve been doing it for years, as I assume you’ve just found out.”

“But why?” Johan asked, heart racing and aching. He’d known Marina his whole life. A huge part of his mind didn’t want to accept that she could be an unrepentant crook.

“Why?” She blinked at him as though he were simple. “Why else? Do you think I can afford the things I want in life on the salary of a royal lackey?”

“But you’re a princess,” Tracy said, jumping to her feet and scooting closer to Johan’s side.

Marina stared at her, mouth twisted in a smirk. “Being a princess, seventh in line to the throne, gets you nothing these days. And now that you boys are grown up and on the verge of starting families of your own,” she went on, turning to Johan, “I stand to get an even smaller piece of the pie. I knew a long time ago I had to take things into my own hands or else I’d end up as some pathetic old has-been living on royal charity.”

“But you could have used your talents and intelligence legitimately,” Johan argued. He wanted to step forward and plead with her, as a nephew pleading with his aunt, but the coldness in Marina’s eyes made him feel like he didn’t know her at all. “You were in a position to do so much good.”

“I was in a position to steer things so that I could get exactly what I wanted,” she said.

“So what Dr. Hayes said was true,” Tracy gasped. “You were using your position as Queen Viktoria’s advisor to manipulate things to your advantage.”

“What self-respecting royal wouldn’t use all her advantages to get what she wanted?” Marina said with an arrogant shrug.

“A self-respecting royal would put their country and their family first,” Johan said. Every last bit of affection he’d had for his aunt was dying a quick and spectacular death. “Mother understands that. She raised her sons to understand it too.”

“And look where it got her?” Marina sniffed. “Married to a bumbling fool of an American who has no respect for tradition and power.”

“Dr. Hayes had more respect in his little finger than you have in your entire body,” Tracy growled. “You’ll go to prison for this.”

“Will I?” Marina glanced at Tracy as though she were dirt. “I sincerely doubt it.”

“As soon as the authorities get one look at this room, you’ll be done, Aunt Marina,” Johan said. He reached for his phone to check the time and to call for the police to come immediately. It would take them less than half an hour to get there by air.

“I’ll take that.” Marina swiped the cell phone from his hand before he could think to defend it. “Herman, get her phone before she does anything stupid.”

Lindqvist shot forward, surprising Tracy, who had also thought to take out her phone. Johan jerked toward Lindqvist as he manhandled Tracy, who was too stunned to fight back once Lindqvist had her at a disadvantage. But before Johan could land so much as a single blow, Lindqvist wrenched Tracy’s phone away and dashed to the deck outside, like the coward he was.

“Now, if you’ll excuse us,” Marina said, blocking Johan from going after Lindqvist. Johan’s instinct was to shove past her to wring Lindqvist’s neck, but even after everything he’d just learned, he still couldn’t bring himself to raise a hand to his aunt. “Herman and I have a much bigger boat to catch. And I’m afraid there’s about to be a fire on this rig. Sad that so much equipment will be lost, but it will destroy other evidence.” She turned to go. “Oh, and thank Mack for lending us his boat. If you ever see him again.”

She turned and stepped out of the room with a nasty smirk. A second later, before Johan could get over his disbelief that his aunt would do what she was doing, the door slammed and a lock clicked. They were trapped.