The Duke's Covert Mission. Julie Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ panic.

      When she could think halfway rationally again, her shy-woman’s mind took over. It had always been her way to take stock of a situation before speaking or acting. If she had a plan, if she knew her way around a place or people, she was less likely to freeze up, more likely to act on her natural human instincts.

      So much for her night on the town. Morning had come, or maybe it was afternoon, she couldn’t pinpoint an exact time from the sunlight filtering through the greasy windowpanes.

      Her Cinderella dress had been transformed into rags during the night. The skirt was torn at the waist seam, and a palm-size smudge dirtied one hip. A two-foot length of lace trim dangled like a tail from her petticoats. One of the shoulder straps had been ripped from the bodice, leaving it up to the gown’s stiff boning and tight fit to keep her decently covered. She tugged at the dipping neckline and let her arm rest there, in a gesture of self-defense rather than an attempt to find any real warmth. As her fingers drifted up to her neck, she clutched at the bare skin there.

      The ruby choker.

      Gone.

      She touched her bare earlobes. The diamond drop earrings.

      Gone.

      She plowed her fingers into the messy upsweep of her hair. Lucia’s tiara.

      Gone.

      Along with the beaded purse in which she’d carried her own silver watch in.

      “Oh, no.” Ellie rubbed her hands up and down her arms, oblivious to the ache of bruises that dotted her skin.

      They’d robbed her. They’d stolen Lucia’s self-designed jewelry and Ellie’s own, less-valuable trinkets.

      She blinked back the tears stinging her eyes. It didn’t make sense. Yes, she’d worn diamonds and rubies—works of art. But there would have been hundreds of other guests at the ball with far more expensive jewelry and purses and wallets to steal.

      Something more than a simple theft was going on here. This felt personal.

      Drugging her. Murdering Paulo. Abandoning her here—wherever here was—didn’t make sense.

      Abandonment.

      That was when the silence registered.

      That was when the panic gathered strength.

      “Hello?” Her voice echoed off the walls and got swallowed up by the damp air. “Hello?”

      New York City was a constant hum of traffic and people, machinery and music.

      The silence here pounded in her ears, mocked her attempt at bravery.

      This wasn’t New York City.

      She scrambled to her feet. “Hello!”

      She’d been abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Abandoned! Her teeth chattered from fear as much as from cold. Left behind. Unnoticed. Forgotten. Never missed. Alone.

      “Help me!” Her native European accent thickened as an age-old fear seized the opportunity to resurrect itself.

      She dashed for the stairs but was jerked to a sudden halt that toppled her off her feet. The hard landing jarred her hands and triggered a jolting reminder of her battered knees. But the pain didn’t frighten her half as much as the ominous clank of metal scraping against metal behind her. Ellie rolled over onto her bottom and yanked up the hem of her skirt.

      “No.” She tapped her fingers at her temple, nervously pushing at her nonexistent glasses. “No!”

      A steel band had been cuffed around her left ankle. And a shiny new chain of stainless steel had been padlocked to the cuff. She traced the path of interlocking links, each the size of a golf ball, to a steel O-bolt anchored into the center of the concrete floor.

      Chained to the floor like one of the elephants she’d seen at the Korosol Royal Circus last year.

      Ellie climbed to her feet and, like that sorry animal, paced as far as the chain allowed.

      Whoever had put her here had measured the trap carefully. Even at its fullest length, with her leg stretched out behind and her body tilted forward as far as she could go, she was still a good two feet from the bottom of the stairs. The windows hovered above the reach of her outstretched hand. The only thing within her grasp was the broken-down furnace and a knee-high wooden stool.

      “All the comforts of home,” she whispered. If one was a condemned prisoner on death row.

      Ellie sank down onto the stool and hugged herself, refusing to surrender to futile tears.

      “You’ll think of a way out of this, Ellie.” She tried another pep talk, but the echo of her voice did little to encourage her. She’d made it all the way from her mountain home to the capital city of Korosol la Vella. She’d made it across the ocean to America. She’d made the harrowing journey through crosstown traffic into the heart of New York City.

      “I’ll make it out of here, too.”

      The question was—how?

      Her jewelry was gone, along with her purse and her stole.

      And her shoes.

      Anything that might be used as a weapon had been taken from her. The tiny canister of pepper spray in her bag. The house key attached to it. The heels of her shoes.

      Ellie sat up a little straighter as she latched on to one hopeful thought.

      If they’d disarmed her, that meant her kidnappers were coming back. They hadn’t abandoned her. Yet. They’d prepped her for their return.

      As if the thought of her abductors had the power to summon, she heard a key turn in the lock at the top of the stairs. Ellie shot to her feet and moved behind the stool, putting the one available obstacle between her and her visitor.

      The door opened and a single, bare lightbulb switched on over the bottom of the stairs, bathing her in an austere circle of light and creating a translucent wall of dust motes in the heavy air. The tread of footsteps on the stairs told her it was a man, one who was balanced and sure on his feet, despite his bulky silhouette.

      Ellie squinted to see who had come to visit her in her prison cell, but the lightbulb created shadows that hid the man’s face. He moved through the curtain of dust and she could see that better illumination wouldn’t help her identify him. He wore a black knit stocking cap that covered everything but his eyes.

      Just like the men last night.

      Ellie shivered as he walked toward her. He seemed to grow larger and suck up more of the breathable air with each step. She jumped back, needing space, needing room to run. “Don’t come any closer.”

      He stopped. Though she couldn’t see his eyes in the play of light and shadow, she felt his stare. Her skin crawled as if his hands and not his assessing gaze were touching her.

      “What do you want with me?” Her voice sounded as shaky as her backbone.

      No answer.

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