Princess in Peril. Rachelle McCalla

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      “Do you know them better than you knew Alfred?”

      She tensed, and Levi could feel her head shaking regretfully in the darkness.

      “I suppose,” she whispered softly, “we can’t trust anyone because we can’t be sure of whose side they’re on.”

      “The Americans should be trustworthy.”

      “Perhaps.” For a moment she sounded overwhelmed, but she seemed to draw quickly from that royal well of strength. “Let’s get moving then. I still intend to find a first aid kit if we can.”

      Levi was impressed with how quickly she made up her mind and how silently she made her way up the stairs. He counted seven, eight, nine steps before his head knocked into something solid.

      “Stop,” he whispered quietly as a breath while moving to shield her head.

      His burned fingers were momentarily squeezed between her high-piled hair and the obstruction. Tears sprang to his eyes but he stifled an exclamation. Finding her ear beside him, he whispered, “There’s an obstruction above us. It may be a trap door. I’m going to try to lift up.”

      He eased his shoulders up against it, but even when he began to apply greater force, nothing budged.

      “Does it have a latch of some sort?” Isabelle whispered back. He could feel her hands skirt past him in the darkness, and a moment later he heard a soft click. “Try it now,” she whispered.

      This time when Levi applied pressure upward, the ceiling moved silently, though the space above seemed to be just as dark as the tunnel they’d come from. With only a slight rustle from her evening gown, Isabelle slid through the opening, and Levi followed after her, closing the door softly after they were both out.

      Isabelle’s hand traveled up his arm, and he felt her fingers tug on his earlobe. At her prompt he leaned down and she whispered silently into his ear. “Should I try my light?”

      Feeling for her hands, he covered the light, then nodded. “Go ahead.”

      The light came on and slowly he allowed more of its miniscule glow to shine. The two of them looked around at the statues and marble plaques, their blank-eyed stone faces deeply shadowed.

      Isabelle shivered at the sight of the stone faces, whose forms hid the ancient bones of her ancestors. “The mausoleum,” she whispered. They’d toured it once when she was very young, but no one had been buried under the cathedral in several generations, so she’d had no cause to visit it again. Her sole impression was that it was a frightening place cluttered with dead upon dead, which seemed to go on forever.

      But then, she’d been only about eight years old when she’d made that tour. Surely it wouldn’t be so frightening now that she was twenty-four.

      Her light dimmed, and she snapped the phone shut again. Although complete darkness shrouded everything from her sight, she was acutely aware of the looming stone figures and tried not to imagine their blank eyes staring back at her through the darkness. She had to remember that the insurgent threat against her was far more real than her fears of the dark and the dead.

      “Do you know your way around in here?” Levi asked in a hushed whisper.

      “No. Do you?”

      “I’ve never been down here before.”

      “I visited once, but it was a long time ago. All I really remember is … “ The memories stumbled through her mind, tripping over themselves like the patent-leather shoes she and her sister had worn as they traveled hand-in-hand through the tour, nearly running in the end, chased by fear, wanting only to find the sunlight. She stepped instinctively closer to Levi, the only human figure in the room who lived and breathed. “I didn’t like it.”

      “Do you know which way we should go?”

      Isabelle searched the long-buried memory, sorting through the fright to find some tidbit that could help them. “We came in through the back of the church and came out at the front. The mausoleum runs the length of the cathedral, with family crypts branching off on either side.” She pulled his tuxedo jacket more tightly around her. “Most of these bones are more than a thousand years old. No was has been buried here in generations.”

      “So we should try to find the central hallway?”

      “That much shouldn’t be difficult. Then we go one way or the other. The trick will be not to get sidetracked, or we could end up wandering around here—” Her voice broke off as she heard a distant boom, the first sound to penetrate the deathly stillness.

      “The trick will be to avoid detection.” Levi’s words were spoken in a near-silent breath by her ear.

      Isabelle also tensed, listening to the sound Levi had obviously heard. Distantly, echoes reverberated through the still air. Footsteps? And muffled voices.

      “Search every corner.” The command rose above the sound of footsteps—many sets of footsteps. Someone was in the mausoleum looking for them!

      Isabelle grabbed Levi’s arm and whispered, “What are we going to do now?”

      “The footsteps are all coming from the same direction. We need to run the other way.”

      Isabelle raised her hand to open her phone again and light their way, but Levi’s fingers quickly closed over hers.

      “No. No light.”

      “I can’t see where I’m going.” Isabelle protested in near-silence as Levi tugged her along beside him.

      “No light,” Levi repeated. “It will lead them straight to us.”

      They shuffled forward, and Isabelle couldn’t help but wonder if they weren’t leaving a trail of footprints for their pursuers to follow. But tourist groups went through the mausoleum several times a week, if not several times a day. Hopefully their footprints would blend in.

      For a few moments they bumped along in darkness, here and again meeting the rounded sides of cold stone statues or the walls themselves. Then Isabelle’s peering eyes were shocked as the bulbs that ran along the central hallway illuminated.

      “They’ve turned the lights on,” she whispered softly, her words nearly drowned by the echoes of boots on stone floor and the muffled shouts of the approaching men.

      Because the branching crypts weren’t lighted, she turned toward the light of the central hallway.

      Levi pulled back on her arm. “They’ll see you.”

      “But we’re sitting ducks in here. There’s no way out of this chamber unless we get to the main hallway.”

      Already the boom of footsteps pounded closer. She didn’t know how thoroughly the men were searching the sprawling chambers, but they were closing in on them.

      “We’ll have to hide.”

      Isabelle looked around. The life-size statues were almost big enough to hide behind.

      Almost.

      “Where?”

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