Rebecca York: Royal Lockdown

LIGHTS OUT

8:15 pm

It’s a hot summer night in Boston, and the sun has just set. The sky is a royal blue canvas against which the city skyline shines.

8:45 pm

Lighted boats glisten in the harbour, tourists gather under the twinkling lights and colonial streetlamps glow along old cobblestone streets.

9:00 pm

Jewels sparkle on the necks of world dignitaries partying at the Hancock Tower penthouse. Princess Ariana dances in the arms of exciting, enticing Shane Peters, whose ebony eyes gleam in the candlelight. Night has settled gently over Boston…

9:10 pm

…until the blackout hits.

As the city plunges into total darkness, only one man knows the reason why. The man who aims to wreak the revenge he’s sought for a decade.

And only he knows how far he’ll go to get it…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Award-winning, bestselling novelist Ruth Glick, who writes as Rebecca York, is the author of close to eighty books, including her popular 43 LIGHT STREET series for the Mills & Boon ®Intrigue line. Ruth says she has the best job in the world. Not only does she get paid for telling stories, but she’s also an author of twelve cookbooks. Ruth and her husband, Norman, travel frequently, researching locales for her novels and searching out new dishes for her cookbooks.

REBECCA YORK

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Shane Peters –As soon as the lights went out, the security expert went on high alert.

Princess Ariana LeBron of Beau Pays –She came to Boston to attend a diplomatic reception and ended up trapped in a terrorist attack.

Charlie Mercer –Did the president’s Secret Service agent do his job?

Ty Jones –The Secret Service agent couldn’t keep the vice-president from being kidnapped.

Chase Vickers –He was stuck in his limousine, out of the action. How could he help?

King Frederick of Beau Pays –He’d sent his daughter to Boston. Now he was sick with worry.

Liam Shea –Would he get his revenge tonight?

Colin Shea –He’d stop at nothing to kill Shane Peters and the princess.

President Stack –He showed his true colours as the commander-in-chief.

Vice-President Grant Davis –Was the past coming back to haunt him?

FBI special agent Ben Parker –Did he steer Shane and Ariana wrong?

FBI special agent Harold Wolf –They left him in charge of a mess. How was he going to save the situation?

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He could never get his life back. His good name. His career. But in just a few hours, he would exact his revenge against the man who had stolen everything from him. Or men. He had never been sure which of them had sandbagged him on that ill-fated rescue mission.

Tonight it didn’t matter who was the chief culprit. They would all suffer, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just the way it had happened to him on that long ago night when disaster had struck.

First he would scare the spit out of them. Then he would take away everything they held dear, like stripping the flesh off their bones. And when they were on their knees, bleeding and begging for mercy, he would give them mercy. He would end their miserable lives.

The law wouldn’t call it justice. But he had long ago given up his faith in the American justice system. If you wanted retribution, you had to go out and do it yourself.

He’d been humiliated in public and tossed in the slammer for a crime he hadn’t committed. And his wife hadn’t even stood by him. Either she’d believed the lies they’d told about him, or she hadn’t been able to take the guilt by association.

Right after he’d been convicted, Margaret had started divorce proceedings and tried to wipe out any vestige of their marriage from her life.

They’d had three sons together. But she’d changed his boys’ last names and moved them far, far away, where he could never contact them.

Poor humiliated Margaret had lived for five years in Oregon, then she’d died of uterine cancer. He figured that was God’s retribution.

And the beginning of hope for him. Without her around to constantly poison their minds, the boys had gotten back into contact with their father.

Now they were a family again. More than a family. A well-disciplined covert unit.

Without his sons, his plans for this night of terror would be impossible to carry out. But the boys were all in place, all ready to execute their roles in the drama that was about to unfold.

He had been out of prison for a year, making plans and setting up the conditions he needed. He looked at his watch. Eight ten. He had a little less than an hour before the show started.

His pulse was pounding, just as in the old days before a mission. Only this one was his creation. You could even think of it as performance art.

He had timed everything carefully. He had gotten his body into fighting shape with sessions at the gym and on the winding roads outside of town. He might be eleven years older than when they’d tossed him in the slammer, but he could keep up with his sons on a five-mile run carrying a ten-pound pack. And he could rappel down the side of a sixty-story building, if he needed to.

This sixty-story building.

He turned his head to the right and looked out the expansive windows at the panorama spread below him. From his vantage point, he studied the twinkling lights of the city. He could see the spire of Trinity Church. And Old South Church. And the skyscrapers that had sprung up in the downtown area.

It wasn’t quite dark yet on this summer night, but already Boston was relying on artificial light.

Not for long.

Smiling, he turned away from the window. Just getting into this secure location had been a major victory. Now it was time to don the uniform that would make him virtually invisible when the mission started.

He was leaving nothing to chance. Once again he began methodically checking the kit that held his equipment.

Making a list and checking it twice, he thought with a grin as he lightly touched one of the automatic weapons he’d stowed in a sports bag. But he wasn’t Santa Claus. Far from it.

He pulled out his gas mask and made sure it was ready to go over his face when he needed it. He checked the focus on his night-vision goggles.

Then he went on to the hostage kit, starting with the duct tape and ending with the hypodermic needles.

Everything was ready. Now all he had to do was wait for dark.

Chapter One

8:15 P.M., August 1

“May I see your picture ID, sir?”

The armed man made the request politely. But Shane Peters harbored no illusions about what would happen if he refused. He’d be hauled off to a cell in a Boston police station and held for investigation.

“Of course,” he answered as he pulled his wallet from an inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket and extracted his driver’s license.