Princess: A Private Novel(8)

“Good night, Jane.”

Morgan opened the door and stepped inside his room, closing the door without looking back.





Chapter 11


AFTER A LONG day of travel, Jack Morgan needed a shower. After his moment with Cook, he made it a cold one.

Looking in the mirror, he told himself that it was for the best that nothing could happen with Jane. Last time they had been together, they were civilian and soldier, not boss and employee. With a sudden stab of emotional pain, Morgan remembered other affairs that had ended in more than a little heartbreak—they had ended in death.

There was a knock at the door.

Morgan’s heart pumped instantaneously—she’d come back.

“Who is it?” he called as he picked up his jeans from the bathroom floor and pulled them on.

The delay saved Morgan’s life.

Bullets pumped through the hotel room’s wooden door, sending splinters flying, the rounds chewing into the desk, biting pieces from the television and carefully laid-out refreshments. The sound of the shots was muffled, almost like a heavy tutting—whoever was out there was using a silencer. Morgan subconsciously counted the blasted rounds. They stopped at seventeen.

He took his chance and bolted from the bathroom. There was just a split second to take in the riddled doorway before he twisted behind the wall that separated bed from bathroom. He was out of the line of fire, but he expected the door to be kicked open at any moment. Whoever had fired would come through to finish the job.

Morgan looked to the window. The hotel was privately owned, and unlike with the big chains, the windows were not held almost shut to prevent suicides. He could make it out, he knew, but if the assassin had a partner, that’s where they would be waiting.

He looked above him at the ceiling panels. The time from the gunshots to his decision took mere seconds. Morgan pushed away a tile and hauled himself up into the cavity. Dust cascaded onto the bed, where it fell alongside pieces of splintered furniture that had flown across the room. Pressed in between floors like a coal miner in a seam, he scuttled backward, pushing by cabling that snagged at his feet. In moments, he had pulled the tile back into place.

And then Morgan held still.

If he made any noise he knew he would be an easy target through the thin ceiling panels. And so he waited as quietly as he could.

But there was no crash of the door being kicked off its hinges. No more gunshots. There was only the sound of terrified screams from other rooms in the hotel, and then a fire alarm. Morgan held his breath and held his position.

He waited.

He waited, and then he heard her.

“Jack?”





Chapter 12


MORGAN DROPPED DOWN onto the bed. He saw a rush of relief wash over Jane Cook as she realized he was uninjured.

“We need to go,” he told her. “Now.”

“The police are here,” she replied.

“That doesn’t mean we’re safe.”

“They’re armed. At least, she is.”

Morgan followed Cook’s eyes to the doorway. There was a woman standing there wearing dark jeans and a hoody, and in her hand by her side was a Glock 17.

He tensed.

The magazine of that weapon held seventeen rounds. The same number of bullets that had cut apart his hotel room.

“Who are you?” Morgan asked, wondering if she had reloaded, and if he could cover the distance to the woman before she could raise the weapon.

“I’m PC Sharon Lewis. I’m on Princess Caroline’s protection team. De Villiers sent me.”

“Call De Villiers,” Morgan instructed Cook.

Lewis laughed. “I’ve got a gun and you’re standing around half naked.” Her Welsh accent was thick to the point where Morgan almost struggled to understand her. “If I wanted you dead, well…”

Morgan said nothing. The words made sense on the surface, but he was ruling nothing out. Until he knew more, he would treat this woman as suspect.

Cook hung up her phone call. “De Villiers didn’t send her. The Princess did.”

“She sent me to see if there’s anything I can help you with,” Lewis explained, toying with the broken crockery of the tea set. “My guess is, that would be a place to sleep that isn’t a shooting range?”

Morgan allowed himself a wry smile. “It would be nice to go to sleep without wondering if I’ll wake up dead.”

“Get your stuff,” Lewis told them. “We’ll leave now.”

“Where are we going?” Cook asked her.

“You wouldn’t be able to say it even if I told you.” The Welshwoman grinned, pausing in the corridor to allow Morgan to finish dressing, and for Cook to grab her rucksack. “All ready?”

They were, and as the riddled door swung shut behind Morgan, one thought was clear in his mind.

Someone did not want Sophie Edwards to be found.





Chapter 13


COOK BROUGHT THEIR rented Range Rover to a stop. Ahead of them, the red brake lights of Lewis’s car were bright as she stopped at a gate and spoke to a pair of men who stood guard beside it.

After a moment of conversation, Lewis stepped from her car and walked over to Morgan’s window. She was followed by one of the men, who held a dog by a leash.