Page 77 of Royal Guard

“OK, but....” I sat up, carrying her up with me until we were upright. She crossed her legs and sat on my thighs, our faces only a foot apart. “What if they’renot?”

She shook her head. “Nothing else makes sense!”

I scrunched up my brow. This wasn’t what I was good at. But this was what she needed me to do. So Ithought.“The weapons the assassins used,” I said at last. “All Garmanian. So if Garmania isn’t supplying them, who is? Are there any other countries Garmania sells its stuff to?”

“No. They’re highly secretive about their weapons tech. They’re proud that only they have it.” She shrugged. “Maybe the assassins bought it on the black market? There were lots of guns in circulation after the war.”

I frowned again, thinking back to Texas. “I can believe that for rifles, maybe even the explosives. But not the mortar they used to attack the ranch. You can’t buythatin the back room of a bar.”

“So itisGarmania behind it all,” she sighed and hung her head. “It has to be.”

“No!” I tipped her chin up to look at me. We were onto something, now. I could feel it. The wheels in my head might turn slowly, but once they started....”Think! There must be someone else who has Garmanian weapons. Some other country, an ally….”

“There isn’t! The only people who have their weapons are Garmania and—” She broke off and stared at me.

Even in the darkened room, I could see how pale her face had gone. “Who?” But she just looked ill. Something had occurred to her, something so horrible she didn’t dare touch it again.“Who?”

She swallowed. “Us.”

56

KRISTINA

The words came haltingly.It felt as if I was lying on fragile ice above a deep, black lake and every word was another blow with a hammer. “We captured lots of Garmanian weapons when we won the war,” I said. “But…” I shook my head. It couldn’t be true. If itwastrue, that meant…. “No,” I said. “No.”

Garrett and I stared at each other, the implications running through our heads. Then, very slowly, Garrett picked up the phone and passed it to me. “Call the military,” he said in that deep, Texas rumble. “Find out where they store captured weapons.”

My whole body had gone cold, my skin clammy with fear. I didn’t want to follow this idea any further. But….

Garrett took my hand in his big, warm one. I looked up at him and he nodded. Wherever this led, he’d be with me.

I dialed. It was midnight, but in the army there’salways someone on duty. I got a series of supervisors out of bed, gradually going up through the ranks until I found someone who had the answers. “We do still keep Garmanian weapons in storage, for training purposes,” I was told. “But as to exactly what and how much... unfortunately, Your Majesty, that information is classified.”

“Not to your Queen, it’s not,” I said sternly.

I could almost hear him gulp. Then the tapping of computer keys. “Incendiary mortar rounds…” he muttered.

I held my breath.

“No, Your Majesty,” he said. “We don’t have any of those.”

I let out a long sigh and leaned against Garrett for support. I was a mess of emotions: embarrassment, that we’d been wrong. Relief, that we had been. And despair that I hadn’t found some last minute way out: weweregoing to war. I politely thanked the officer and apologized for being terse with him.

“That’s quite alright, Your Majesty.” I could hear that he’d relaxed. “Pity you didn’t call a few weeks ago. Our records show we had fifty-two of those rounds then. But they were all signed out for a training exercise.”

I jerked upright. “On whose authority?”

“General Novak.”

I hung up the phone. Garrett and I stared at each other as ice water sluiced through my body. “Novak wants a war,” I whispered. “He never wanted the first one to finish. He thought we should have gone ahead and wiped them out. It was only my father who stopped him.”

“But how would he get in touch with Silvas Lukin?”asked Garrett. “He’s Garmanian, he’s the enemy.”

My mind was racing. “Lukin was a war criminal. He was in a special military prison right here in Lakovia... until he escaped.”

Garrett caught on immediately. He was a lot smarter than he thought. “And as head of the military, General Novak could visit Lukin in prison. The son of a bitch. He offered Lukin his freedom in return for helping to restart the war.”

“Lukin agreed, Novak arranged the escape, gave Lukin captured Garmanian weapons and told him to put his old squad back together.” My stomach lurched. “And then he sent them after me and my father.”