Bulletproof Princess Read online

  "Uh-huh."

  She grimaced. Fine? Had she honestly said she was fine? To Frank? She needed a serious internal-radar check. In her position, only a fool would be fine. "I'm sorry. I'm coping."

  "That's better," he said, clearly glad to get the truth. "But don't you worry. Mrs. Dalton-Sinclair will help you set matters to right."

  She would. Renee always had been wonderful to Chloe.

  Frank drove to Sutton Place, a section on New York City's East Side, where Emma Bosworth stood waiting.

  Wrapped in a velvety black cashmere coat and standing next to her bruiser of a doorman, she looked like a tiny, fresh-faced angel, gentle and approachable. Unlike Chloe's brown, chin-length bob, Emma's hair was long, naturally streaked auburn and pulled up in a loose knot. She always looked elegant. Today, she wore pearls— and a black raw-silk Chanel suit. With her sea-green eyes, the effect was flattering and dramatic…and deceptive.

  Most of the Gotham Roses supported the G.R.C. with fund-raising for their chosen charity. They had separate and varied careers, like Madison's in real estate and Chloe's in investing. Those things told Renee most of what she needed to know about which Roses had the character, connections, skills and the will to become successful in their top-secret endeavors. But Emma didn't have a career. With Emma, none of that was needed. She was born to spy, and both she and Renee knew it.

  The limo stopped at the curb. Stern-faced and authoritative in his black uniform with looped gold braid at the shoulder, Emma's doorman left no doubt he was protecting the lady. That was endearing and amusing, considering the five-foot-three little lady could take the bruiser down in two moves.

  He opened the door and Emma gracefully slid onto the seat. "Thank you, Daniel."

  "Of course, Miss Bosworth. Have a good day." He shut the door and stepped back from the car.

  Chloe grunted. "How do you do it?"

  "What?" Emma asked.

  "Pull off looking helpless. It amazes me."

  "Fake it 'til you make it."

  "I hate it when you say that."

  "Okay, okay." Emma lifted a perfectly manicured hand. "The secret is what my mother called a demure demeanor." She dipped a pale pink nail toward Chloe's shoes. "Oooh, I love the Jimmy Choos. Are they new?"

  "Yes, and they don't pinch," Chloe answered, anticipating Emma's next question, and then asked, "Demure demeanor?"

  "It's like Jimmy Valentine taught us in training. You want your adversaries to underestimate you. The less skilled they think you are, the less effort you have to expend to kick their asses."

  That Chloe understood. After boarding school in Sweden and the unfortunate experience at Harvard, she'd gone through years of personal training. Everything from basic self-defense and FBI incidental shooting to Secret Service and Special Operations training for handling toxic substances, including bio-contaminates, in case the need ever arose. But on a personal level, the growing-from-girl-to-woman kind of training had been absent in her life. The only personal training her mother had deemed essential for Chloe had been of the "how to be a perfect princess" variety. If not for Emma and Renee, Chloe would have forever remained pathetically clueless in basic life skills.

  "Better step on it, Frank." Emma checked her Cartier watch, which her parents had given her for Christmas. The diamonds set around its face caught the sunlight and filled the interior of the limo with rainbows. "Otherwise, I'll have to tell Renee it's your fault we're late." She sent Chloe an innocent look.

  Frank grunted. "I'm damned if I'm taking the blame for you being tardy to tea with Mrs. Dalton-Sinclair, Miss Emma. It's cold out today and I don't see a thermos of hot coffee in your hands to keep me warm while you two go in and have your chat."

  "Well, the truth is out now, isn't it?" Emma frowned. "Chloe, can you believe we've got to bribe Frank to cover for us? Where's the dedication? The loyalty?"

  Chloe knew they were trying to cheer her up and calm her down. She loved watching Emma and Frank spar, but she couldn't bring herself to laugh.

  Frank had known both women since they were babies, which was why he absolutely refused to retire. Precious man. "She's got convenient amnesia again, Frank."

  "Damn right."

  "I do not," Emma insisted.

  "Then tell me this," Chloe said, putting challenge in her tone. "When we were at the country house, who sneaked us out to the stable at the stroke of midnight so you could ride that black monster horse while your Jupiter was perfectly aligned with your Mars?"

  "Aspected," Emma corrected her. "And it was Saturn. Jupiter and Saturn."

  "That Hellion earned his name, all right," Frank said, clearly remembering the horse and the occasion— and, no doubt, the stomped flower garden they hadn't been able to see in the moonlight but had heard plenty about it in the light of the next day. "Didn't tell on you two for burning down the playhouse, either."

  "Damn right," Chloe said, echoing Frank's favorite expression.

  "Oh, I remember that," Emma said. "We were smoking out there during a storm and, Frank, you pitched an unholy fit."

  He had. And he'd threatened them within an inch of their lives if he ever saw either of them with a cigarette again. Emma only indulged now and then, but she still hid her smoking from him. "He lied for us, Emma, remember?"

  "Ungrateful child don't remember nothing— including my damn coffee."

  "I remember you lying, Frank." Emma got in her dig. "You told Chloe's parents a lightning strike started the fire."

  "They believed him, too," Chloe said.

  "Okay, okay, okay. Uncle," Emma conceded. "You're loyal to the bone, Frank, and I'll love you forever for it."

  "Damn right." He sniffed, affronted but sufficiently appeased, and eased down the tree-lined streets, past old brownstones and through Central Park to the East Side of Manhattan. "While you ingrates are all warm and cozy, sipping your tea and hobnobbing with your friends in the Gotham Rose Club, you spare me a kind thought for being out here freezing my bones and going thirsty 'cuz someone— though I ain't naming no names— forgot my damn coffee."

  Emma pulled a gleaming brushed stainless thermos up from the floor. Laughter bubbled up from her throat. "Gotcha!"

  Frank looked stunned. "How'd you get that past me, girl?"

  "Daniel slipped it in when closing the door so you wouldn't see me carrying it." Almost giddy at getting one up on Frank, Emma passed the thermos through the lowered glass.

  Disgusted, he snorted. "Won't be happening again."

  "Nothing ever does," Chloe said and meant it.

  "You should know I'd never forget your coffee, Frank." Emma's eyes shone with total affection. "Forget my head maybe, but never your coffee."

  "It's happened." He hiked his chin.

  "Not in years."

  "True." He looked at her through the rearview mirror, and gave her a little wink. "I'll forgive you that one."

  "Well, it's about time."

  On the Upper East Side, at 68th between Park and Madison, Frank stopped the car and Chloe and Emma got out.

  Chloe bent to speak to Frank through the window. "You go somewhere warm. I'll call you when we're ready to leave."

  He looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "I'll be parked right here, Princess, to take you to the funeral."

  "I don't know if I'm going yet. There's no sense— "

  "Mrs. Dalton-Sinclair will guide you right," he said. "You go on now. I'll be here when you're ready."

  So fiercely protective, even now that she was grown. "Okay. But run the heater so your arthritis doesn't flare up."

  "I will." He sounded cross, but his appreciation for her concern burned in his eyes.

  "Enjoy your coffee— and no adding anything from the flask under the front seat."

  "You know about the flask?" He sounded stunned.

  "Of course, Frank." Chloe grunted. "Didn't you teach me how to spy?"

  "Damn right." He unscrewed the cap on the thermos. "But drink and drive?" He grumbled under his breath. "Girl
ought to know better."

  Chloe stepped away from the car and turned toward the building. Her breath fogged the cold, crisp air and hitched in her chest. Most people looked at the Gotham Rose Club and saw a beautiful brownstone with a white facade, a wrought-iron gate, and the understated quality that comes only with old money and generations of restrained taste. Chloe looked at it and saw the one sanctuary in her life outside of Frank's car where she was valued and accepted on her own terms and merit.

  Emma reached the gate and tapped the buzzer. "So, are you wishing Marcus was alive so you could kill him again, mourning him, or what?"

  "Yes."

  "Damn." Emma frowned up at the security camera, then walked through the gate. "I figured. But you're not questioning your feelings for Jack, right?"

  "No." Thank God. Chloe followed Emma and the gate closed behind her. "I don't trust many men— too many have put the screws to me. But I do trust him." A little chill crept up her spine and settled in her neck. "If this relationship doesn't work, none will."

  "Don't be stupid. It'll work. Jack loves you, Chloe."

  She felt it, but she didn't know it. "Does he?"

  "Yes, he does," Emma said with resolute conviction.

  "Time will tell."

  "I guess it's inevitable that you'd be skeptical after Marcus." Emma walked up the steps that led to the front entrance. "Did Olivia tell you what this meeting is about?"

  Olivia Hayworth was one of Renee Dalton-Sinclair's oldest friends and her personal assistant. Their ties went back to their post-college service in the Peace Corps down in Colombia. Unfortunately, Olivia was as closemouthed as Renee. "Just to come for tea at ten o'clock, but come on, Emma. This is about what I'm supposed to do now— about the engagement and Marcus and the kidnapping. What to keep quiet and what to tell."

  "I know that." Emma stopped on the landing. "I just wanted to make sure you were thinking straight enough to know it. All this likely has the honchos giving live birth to cows on their desks."

  "Probably."

  "Renee's going to tell you to go to the funeral as Marcus's fiancée, then to come back here for an updated briefing."

  "Did she tell you that?"

  "Of course not," Emma said. "But I feel it in my bones."

  Chloe respected Emma's bones far more than her own judgment. They'd proven right more often.

  "Play the grief-stricken fiancée. The press will be easier on you."

  "The press is never easy on any of us." Especially that bitch, Rubi Cho. Maybe the Roses should get together and buy the New York Reporter and then fire her ass.

  "Smile." Emma elbowed Chloe.

  She looked up at the surveillance camera but didn't smile.

  The front door opened and Olivia stretched out her arms to take their coats. "Renee is waiting for you in the sunroom."

  "Has she noticed we're late?" Chloe asked.

  "Of course." She lowered her voice and offered her usual friendly advice. "Apologize going in."

  "We'll blame Frank," Emma whispered.

  Chloe frowned. "You do and I'll tell him."

  Moving to the left, Chloe paused to soak in the heat from the fire crackling in the huge walk-in fireplace.

  The club's entrance was an expansive room meant to impress. It did so, quietly and completely. Sunlight streamed through its long windows and streaked across the intricately patterned parquet floor, and Renee's favorite Debussy played softly in the background, pleasing to the ear. Chloe never had pinpointed the location of the speakers, though Emma swore that Alan Burke, their resident wizard of all things electronic, had somehow fused them into the crown molding.

  Her heels clicking on the floor, Chloe passed the streams of soft, flowing drapes and slowed her step at the grand staircase, unable to resist letting her gaze sweep up its exquisitely carved rosewood banister to the second floor.

  The G.R.C. proper was on the first and second floors. Renee's private quarters were upstairs on the third and fourth floors. And, though few beyond the nearly twenty Rose agents knew it, several more floors built below the club formed a maze of secret offices and task-specific quarters, including a spa, a firing range and a research library. Those floors were protected by many of the same security systems used in the White House.

  "Hurry, hurry," Olivia said, with a wave of her hand. "You've got twenty seconds before you're officially late."

  Being "officially late" required the offending Rose to create two hundred twelve handwritten notes of apology: one to every Rose and member of Renee's staff. The heiresses might be overindulged elsewhere, but not in Renee's club. In four years, no Rose had been exempt, regardless of tragedy, trauma or upset. And not one Rose had committed the "thoughtless, ill-mannered, inexcusably rude" infraction twice— though Porsche Rothschild had made arriving at the last possible second a new art form. But she loved to push boundaries. Chloe was just fine with hanging between the established lines.

  Picking up her pace, she rushed down the hallway to the back of the brownstone and breezed past the open French doors into the sunroom. "Sorry we're late." Chloe took Olivia's tip.

  Emma came up from behind and stopped beside her. "We are not late."

  "Almost late, then," Chloe amended.

  "Very close, darlings, but you've made it on time." Renee stood and dropped a kiss to Chloe's cheek, then to Emma's. "Please, sit down."

  "Thank God." Emma collapsed on the sleek sofa.

  Chloe watched for Renee's reaction, but noticed instead her presence and royal bearing, both so natural they had to be instinctive and not learned. She was forty-one, classic and timeless in an effortless way, with flawless skin. Her rich auburn hair was styled in an elegant French twist that suited her bone structure as well as her amethyst Rucci suited her coloring. Renee looked exactly as she always had to Chloe: as if she, and not Chloe, should be wearing a crown.

  "Are you all right, darling?" Renee clasped Chloe's arm.

  "I'm fine." Inferior, but fine. She crossed her ankles and bumped her handbag. Fortunately, nothing spilled out.

  Olivia came in pushing a teacart laden with Renee's favorite gold-rimmed bone china, Chloe's favorite blueberry muffins and Emma's raspberry tarts. She discreetly glanced down at a preprinted card telling her how Chloe and Emma preferred their tea, poured, served, and then addressed Renee. "Do you need anything else?"

  "No, thank you." Renee clasped her cup and sent Olivia a nod so slight that even watching for it, Chloe nearly missed it.

  Olivia caught the cue and closed the French doors on her way out. Chloe's heart beat a little faster. Emma's bones were right; this wasn't a personal advice session.

  "There's no sense in delaying this," Renee said. "Chloe, I've discussed your situation at length with the Governess and her consultants, and they advise you to go to Marcus's funeral today as his fiancée. The press must not know what really happened to you."

  "Okay," she said uneasily. The person they all knew only as the Governess was Renee's boss, a high-ranking individual positioned somewhere in the labyrinth of government, whose true identity remained unknown even to Renee. That was for everyone's benefit and safety. "But why not?"

  "There's been a development, darling. I'll explain everything after we return from the funeral. It's complicated."

  "Complicated?" Emma's bones were batting a thousand. "Does it involve a mission plan?"

  "Actually, it does. But I'd prefer to wait until after— "

  "Just tell me, Renee." Chloe's nerves snapped. "Otherwise, I'll be thinking about nothing else but what's coming and imagining all kinds of horrible things."

  "Not as horrible as this," Emma predicted.

  Renee shot her a look to hush, and Emma shrugged. "You might as well tell her now."

  "Sometimes you're too perceptive for your own good, Emma, dear. Work on that."

  "I'll try." She reached for her teacup.

  Renee shifted her gaze to Chloe, and her eyes filled with regret. "It appears that the Marcus situation is mor
e complicated than we originally thought."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He may have been involved with the Duke, Chloe."

  Stunned, Chloe tried to grasp that. The Rose agents were in constant pursuit of the criminal mastermind they called the Duke. The nickname had begun as an inside joke about the elusive lawbreaker's seeming arrogance, but over many years he had become the Governess's obsession, involved in all manner of dark activities. Many of the Rose agents' missions concerned disrupting his illegal practices and trying to bring him to justice. Thus far, they'd come close but he had eluded them.

  Marcus didn't have the stomach for those kinds of activities. He couldn't have been involved with the Duke.

  Okay, so as an attorney Marcus had represented half the mob, that was true, but none of the Rose agents had successfully tied him to even one illegal act. His refusal to withhold evidence was what had frustrated the mob into putting out a contract on Chloe. "I don't doubt you, Renee, but I just can't believe it."

  "I know it's difficult, darling, especially considering that our initial investigation didn't reveal anything on this. But, as you know, the Governess has more extensive resources at her disposal, and she has multiple Intel reports suggesting it's highly likely that Marcus had direct ties to the Duke."

  "Direct ties in what way?"

  "Her sources believe the Duke is using an escort service that operates citywide as a front for a multitude of felonious activities."

  "Escorts?" Shock flooded Chloe. "You think Marcus was involved in a prostitution ring?"

  "We aren't sure," Renee said, tilting her perfectly coifed head. "While the escort service is a legitimate front and its clientele proves it, we suspect it has a dual function. Something Marcus may have known about."

  She was afraid to ask. But Renee was clearly waiting, giving her time to assimilate the shock before giving her more information. "And the other function is…what?"

  "The white-slave trade."

  Chloe dropped her cup.

  Chapter 2

  Chloe endured the funeral wearing Marcus's engagement ring and avoided the prying eyes of the press afterward, thanks to Frank's pre-positioning the limo.