“What have we got so far?” Z asked as he stalked back into the palace’s security command center with Deacon following. Several of the security guards paused to stare at the huge, muscled, African-American soldier in their midst before turning discreetly back to their work. “Everyone, this is my good friend and fellow Navy SEAL, Deacon Jones. He’s in town temporarily and will be helping me coordinate the rescue efforts for my wife and child. Whatever he says, take it as if it were a direct order from me. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the guards said.

Z gave his friend a quick glance before moving to the large black table in the center of the room where various maps and pages of notes were scattered. “I need a rundown, people.”

The bulky guard who’d been assigned to watch over Z stepped forward. “Sir, while we were traveling back here from the pub, I took the liberty of coordinating with the other guards and compiling the information into a single report. I thought it might be more expedient than interviewing everyone one-by-one now.”

Z blinked at the guy for a minute, feeling a bit stunned. “Thanks, uh…”

“Felix, sir.” The guard smiled and handed Z his tablet with the report brought up on screen. “And my pleasure.”

“Call me Z.” Z grinned at him before scowling down at the screen. “Right. According to this report, she was abducted at fourteen hundred hours from outside the florist shop. Her captors put her in the back of a black SUV and sped off in an easterly direction. There appeared to be two muscle guys and the driver. All wore ski masks with no distinguishing marks or distinctive clothing.” He set the tablet aside and focused on the maps of the area spread out before him on the table. “Sounds like a basic bag and snatch.”

The routine jargon they used for kidnappings clogged his throat because this situation was anything but ordinary for him. This was his beloved wife, his precious child involved. But he had to keep some sort of control over his emotions, keep his heart out of it so he could think rationally and clearly. Otherwise, they could lose valuable time.

Deacon placed a strong hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get ‘em back, man.”

“I know.” He just hoped that bastard Silvester didn’t do anything to her before he and his men arrived. The thought of anyone harming Es had his blood boiling and his fingers itching to grab his weapon. Z shook it off as best he could and concentrated on finding a solution. “Okay. Given the time frame we’re dealing with and their direction of travel, I’d say these would be the best exit routes out of the city.”

“You think they left town?” Deacon asked, frowning.

“Makes the most sense. I’m betting her cousin was behind this. He’d want to get Es as far away from the palace as possible. Guys, can you bring me a list of the most recent threats we’ve received?”

He went over the information, sure he’d seen something come in recently…

“Here! Look at this.” He handed a paper to Deacon. It was an email that had come in shortly after the announcement about the coronation ceremony details. “Look at the last verse of that little poem. With the princess locked in her shabby castle by the sea, the rightful king will become what he truly ought to be. If that doesn’t have Silvester written all over it, I don’t know what does.”

“Sir,” another guard said, approaching. “I’ve been working on the dossier for Silvester and think there might be a viable location where he would have taken the princess.” The guard pulled up several pictures of a modest-looking cottage near the center of an isolated peninsula. “It was a summer home belonging to Silvester’s grandmother. Both he and Princess Esme are familiar with it, having both spent time there as children. Silvester inherited the home and the property after his grandmother’s death a few years ago. We’ve been tracking his movements, however, and did note that he recently paid several visits to the property shortly after the king’s death.”

“Where is he now?” Z asked, trying to locate the home on the map in front of him.

“His itinerary shows him at an opening ceremony for a new office building downtown, but the palace guards at that location claim he never showed up,” one of the other guards said from his post in front of a computer. “Let me see if I can pull up the footage of his limo.”

“How close was this office building to the florist shop where Esme was?” Z asked.

“Several blocks,” the guard said.

“Close enough for this dude to make a detour,” Deacon said.

“Agreed.” Z took a deep breath as a picture of the kidnapping began to form in his head. Silvester had to have been planning this for a while, watching and waiting for the perfect moment to catch Es alone. Dammit. Z had had his misgivings about meeting Deacon today for lunch and now he knew they’d been well founded. Seemed Silvester had a mole within the security team. If only he’d stayed his course, kept watch over Es, she might be safe and sound and here with him right now. And the baby. Oh, God, his son. If anything happened to his child now, he wasn’t sure he’d survive it.

“Hey, man.” Deacon slapped him on the back. “This wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known—”

“No. I should have known. That’s the problem.” He tossed the tablet down on the table. “It was all right there, in front of my face, but I didn’t put two and two together. The fucking poem, all his snide remarks, the waiting and the watching.” He cursed under his breath and turned away, ashamed and embarrassed and more scared than he could ever remember being in his life. It was like the night his parents died all over again. They were gone and Z was stuck waiting to hear something, anything, about them. He felt helpless, hopeless.

He slammed his fist against the wall, ignoring the stares of the guards around him. Pain shot from his hand up his arm, jarring him out of his self-pity. This was getting him exactly nowhere. Stewing in recriminations would not help him find Es and their son. He might have been a scared kid all those years ago, but now he was a full-grown, fully capable man and he’d be damned if he’d sit around and wait for Silvester to play his next cards.

A new idea occurred. “Can someone pull up a map of the locations of the previous terrorist attacks here in the city?”

Soon the information popped up on one of the large, flat-screen wall monitors. Z stood before it, arms crossed. “Silvester’s been scheming behind Es’s back for months. Ever since we went to DC. He stayed back home in Prylea and started dismantling all the things King Renault had put into place, thinking he’d be the next ruler. That included temporarily shutting down military training exercises here in Prylea. God, why didn’t I connect the dots before?”

“Well, you have been a bit busy over the last few months,” Deacon said, snorting.

“Funny. Not.” Z gave his friend a flat stare. “Any word on that surveillance footage of the limo yet?”

“No, sir,” the guard said. “But I did find something else.”

Z and Deacon walked over to where the guy was sitting behind his computer and stared over his shoulders at the screen.

“There were no distinguishing marks on the SUV the kidnappers used to abduct the princess, sir. But look here.” He froze a frame of footage and zoomed in on the license plate. “The license plates were a dead end. Stolen. But look here, there’s a small sticker in the upper right-hand corner. Some kind of parking permit, perhaps. Anyway, I was able to hack into the police surveillance footage of the city and surrounding areas and track any signs of this same plate heading in an eastern direction.”

“And?” Z asked, squinting at the fuzzy black and white image on-screen.

“And we got a match, finally. Looks like our SUV was spotted heading toward the coast about two hours ago.”

Adrenaline pounded through Z’s system as he rushed back to his maps on the table. “Okay. That coincides with my theory about that cottage at the beach. Can we get a drone out there to be sure?”

“Already on it, sir,” Z’s bulky bodyguard said. “We should be getting a signal right about… now.”

Aerial views of a rather barren-looking landscape soon appeared, with waves pounding the shores of the slender peninsula in the distance. The drone gradually grew closer and a house appeared, appearing as desolate as the area around it. There was one access road in and out. Z’s gut tightened with stress and yearning. Part of him wanted Es to be there, just so he’d know for sure where she was. The other part of him hated the fact that Silvester was such an asshole to leave a pregnant woman to fend for herself in some isolated cottage. She could be hurt. She was surely tired and hungry and thirsty. There’d be hell to pay if he ever got his hands on that bastard Silvester.

“Sir, I’ve got it!” the guard at the computer said. Z and Deacon rushed back over to the screen to see a shot of the same SUV that had taken Es out of the city, now departing from the house on the peninsula. With the windows tinted black, it was impossible to see who was inside, but Z doubted they’d take Es all the way out there only to turn around and bring her right back again. He inhaled deeply and shut his eyes, focusing on his gut instincts. Deacon was right. He should’ve been listening to his gut the whole time. And his gut was telling him Es was there, in that house by the beach.

“She’s there. I know it.” He turned to head back to the maps. “Now, we need to figure out a rescue plan.” Z riffled through the maps until he reached one with a detailed layout of the peninsula. “I’d love nothing more than to swoop in by helicopter and get my wife, but that would only put her in more danger, especially since Silvester most likely left at least one guard there to watch her. He’s evil as hell, but he’s not stupid. Deacon, what do you think?”

“Water’s probably the best route.” Deacon studied the same map of the peninsula. “Get a couple boats, leave from this port here then circle around to the house from here. Take them by surprise. Guards won’t be expecting that, not this time of year, anyway.”

Z felt a bit of his tension ease as he looked up at his best friend and trusted SEAL cohort. “You staying to help?”

“Hell yes. Just tell me where you want me, dude.”

“Perfect.” He turned back to address the room at large. “Guards, gather round. We’ve got a princess to save. Listen up. Here’s what we’re going to do…”