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They struggled for endless seconds, strength against strength. Then out of the corner of his eye Trace saw a shadow move from the doorway. He tried to shift, to turn so the man he was fighting had his back to the door, but it was too late. Something crashed down on Trace’s left shoulder, and his grip on the knife hand slackened momentarily. It was just enough for the man in black to twist free.
He feinted at Trace, but then someone else was there between them. “No!” Small bound hands pushed the knife away from Trace’s chest, and when the blade was jerked back the princess cried out in pain.
The soft curse issuing from the other man’s mouth barely registered in Trace’s consciousness, and he was gone before Trace could close with him again. Then the only sounds were footsteps running lightly down the hallway...and a tiny moan close by. Part of him wanted to give chase, but he needed to see how badly the princess was injured before he did anything else.
He clicked on the light switch and saw her crouched on the floor cradling her bound hands against her body. Blood seeped from between the tightly clenched fingers of her left hand and stained her nightgown, but she didn’t seem to care about that. “You are okay?” she asked Trace anxiously, her gaze running over him from head to toe. “He did not hurt you?”
Her question sliced through him, and he didn’t trust himself to answer. He knelt beside her and quickly unbound her wrists, noting automatically and filing away the fact that they weren’t tightly, cruelly tied. It was something to think about. Later. Not now.
He tried to take her left hand in his, and she resisted at first. “Let me see it, Princess,” he said softly, prying her fingers open with gentle hands. Then he cursed fluently under his breath. The knife blade had left a gash across the entire palm. It wasn’t deep, but it was long and still bleeding. Trace knew that at the very least it would leave a hell of a scar, and might possibly involve some nerve damage.
He curled her fingers closed to contain the bleeding and stood up. A minute later he was back with a clean washcloth and a towel. He used the washcloth as a pressure bandage, then wrapped the towel carefully around her fist before knotting it securely. “That’ll hold until we get you to the hospital, but it’s going to need stitches, maybe even surgery.”
He drew the princess to her feet and sat her in the armchair in the corner of the room—away from the windows—then picked up the phone and dialed 911. When he was done he told her, “The ambulance is on its way. How do you feel? Light-headed? Dizzy?”
She shook her head. “I am fine.”
She wasn’t fine, and the bloodstains on her nightgown bore mute testimony to that fact. “Stay here,” he said in a voice that came out more harshly than he knew. “Keep that hand elevated and don’t try to stand up—I don’t want to come back and find you out cold on the floor. I won’t be long, I’m just going to see if anyone else was injured, and open the gate for the police.”
* * *
Trace sat in the emergency waiting room, staring futilely at his hands as he waited to hear about the princess. His left shoulder ached abominably, but he hadn’t bothered to have anyone at the hospital look at it. He’d received his share of injuries over the years, and knew his body well enough to know there’d be a bad bruise, but nothing worse than that. Nothing compared to the injury the princess had suffered.
He’d been in touch with the Boulder police, who had been and gone, then reported back to him that they had found next to nothing. No DNA evidence. No fingerprints. Just a few footprints in the snow, two overpowered Zakharian bodyguards, and two disabled active alarm systems. He’d already contacted the DSS and called the Jones brothers to bring them up to speed. Then he’d called Walker, waking him from a sound sleep, and gotten the agency involved. Even if the Boulder police couldn’t find anything, it was still possible the agency might uncover something, but he wasn’t holding his breath.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was it couldn’t be anything except an inside job. If it was the last thing he did, he was going to find out who it was. Someone was going to pay. Someone was going to pay dearly for every drop of blood the princess had shed...protecting him.
* * *
Trace stood in Cody Walker’s office early Saturday morning, the second time he’d been there in less than two weeks. He’d asked his boss to meet him at the agency instead of going to the house because he had to raise a question—not an easy question, but one he couldn’t ignore—and he didn’t want Keira around when he asked it. He knew that if Walker couldn’t help him find the answer no one could. Next to his former boss, Nick D’Arcy, there was no one he respected more than Cody Walker.
