I'm so overwhelmed by all your wonderful comments and everyone who has read this so far. Honestly, thank you so much. I hope this chapter lives up to expectations!


Chapter Three

Dead bodies.

Bodies – as in more than one. It was hard to make out any detail in the darkened corridor, but the still lumps she could see on the floor were unmistakeable.

"Oh my God," Elizabeth said on a rushed breath that was forced from her lungs like she'd been punched. She felt as though she had. She hadn't been expecting the dead people.

Henry's hand slid up from hers to hold onto her arm and he shifted closer to her as they stood in the corridor just outside the ballroom where an attack – a massacre – was taking place. He lifted his other hand to press one finger to his lips in a gesture to say that they should keep quiet.

He was right. They had seen masked men enter the ballroom from the front, but they didn't know who had been responsible for the deaths in the corridor. Someone had obviously done it, and there was a chance that they had yet to leave. They could be close by.

Or watching them.

Don't think about that.

Finally, the lights started to flicker back to life, either the power to the building restored or an emergency generator kicking in. Elizabeth blinked in the sudden if shaky brightness, the light making her squint for a moment until her eyes had adjusted and the pulsing in her head had calmed. Then she forced herself to look at the people lying dead on the ground, making herself look beyond the blood and the shock on their faces and the sheer awfulness of it to anything that might provide some information. What she realised made her blood run cold.

There were two people on the ground who were obviously party guests trying to flee. From the look of it she'd guess that they had been gunned down from behind as they ran. Whoever was responsible was obviously not abiding by even the bastard's code of honour that suggested shooting unarmed people in the back was wrong.

That was awful enough, but there were four other dead bodies along the corridor, and all of them were dressed in the official charcoal grey uniform of the security staff at the presidential palace. They were the people charged with protecting the life of the President of Petria, and all of them appeared to have taken a bullet to the back of the head. Like they had been executed.

"They were hit at the same time," Elizabeth said, despite Henry's warning to keep quiet. "The rest would have had time to react if they were shot one at a time. It happened at once."

Henry nodded in agreement, looking at the dead security team – two men and two women – lying in the corridor. They were in pairs, and both pairs were near doors. Their murderers must simply have opened the doors at the right moment and shot them in quick succession, before they could reach for their weapons, before they even knew what was happening. "I don't like this," Henry said.

It was an understatement, but Elizabeth knew what he meant, and agreed with his assessment. The nature of the killings suggested a worryingly competent level of organisation and coordination, as well as considerable resources in terms of both personnel and equipment. It also meant the attack on the ballroom was not in isolation and was in fact coordinated with a wider event that went beyond shock value. Elizabeth was frantically trying to think ahead to the end game of what the perpetrators were after so she could try and find a way to subvert their plans, but she did not yet have enough information to put together a cohesive theory.

And there was the small matter of getting out alive before anything else.

The noise from within the ballroom was quietening ever so slightly, and that was cause for concern. It meant that the initial attack was likely nearing completion and the next – unknown - phase could not be far away. Whatever was supposed to come next, it didn't seem wise for the Secretary of State to be around while it happened.

"That way," Henry said, pointing down the corridor. It was a route they had come earlier in the evening when they had arrived at the back entrance of the palace for the reception. If they went down the corridor, to the right and down a flight of stairs they would reach the entrance where they had left the car and two Diplomatic Security agents.

It was risky, but better than heading a different route that would take them deeper into the unfamiliar palace and further away from an escape. As long as the DS guys had not been targeted in the same way as President Zembrovko's security team, they should be OK.

And if they had been targeted, what then?

Elizabeth couldn't let herself think about that yet. They had to be OK. She had to make sure, if nothing else, that Henry was OK. She needed to get him out - and preferably wanted to get herself out with him. That was all that mattered, and she would do it no matter what.

Whatever happened, whatever was going on, she would deal with it.

Easier said than done.

Even with her firm resolution and priority, she couldn't quell her rising stress levels as she and Henry started to make their way down the corridor, keeping close to the wall and looking around every couple of steps in case anyone was lying in wait or creeping up behind them. Henry still had a death grip on her arm and she could feel the sweat on his palm even through the long silk sleeve of her blue ball dress, an indicator that he was not as calm as he appeared to be. Elizabeth was aware of a slight pulsing just above her left eye, where her forehead had struck the ground earlier. The pain wasn't bad, just a minor bump, but it reminded her of its presence every time she turned her head to check they weren't being followed by anyone likely to kill them, making her wince. She didn't think that her heart had beat so fast or as loudly since that awful time in Iran a year ago.

She only needed one more bad thing to happen before the day was out to make the visit to Petria overtake the Iran incident and become her worst foreign trip to date as Secretary of State. Given her luck overseas, maybe it would be wise to take Conrad up on his offer of being his Vice President after all; she'd probably get to stay in the country more.

They were nearing the corner that would take them to the staircase down to the exit when it happened.


There were voices coming from just past the stairwell and around to the left.

She shouldn't care who it was or what they were saying. She should care only that the voices were beyond the corner she and Henry needed to take and so irrelevant as long as they didn't move any closer or realise that they weren't alone. She was so close to not caring, but as they came up on the right hand turn into the stairwell, they paused for one last look around the corridor, and the new angle gave her a different vantage point.

Her blood ran cold in her veins.

Behind her, Henry sucked in a breath and held it, and she knew that he had seen it too.

Around the corner, President Zembrovko was being held at gunpoint.

Without thinking about it, Elizabeth started to step forward until a split second later reason kicked back in and stopped her – along with Henry's hands banding around her biceps and pulling her back to his chest. "Don't," he whispered in her ear.

She wasn't sure what she had been trying to do, but she strongly felt the need to do something.

Artur Zembrovko had his hands in the air, surrendering to whomever it was that was holding the gun on him. Elizabeth couldn't see them from where she and Henry hid just inside the door to the stairwell, could only see the barrel of the gun on one side of the stand-off and the back of the President on the other, the bald spot on the back of his head shining with sweat. She noticed that his suit didn't quite fit him properly, a little too tight around his middle.

She noticed something else, too; something bigger, more important.

Something was missing… someone.

His wife. Where was the President's wife? Emilia had been present earlier in the evening, dancing with her husband when the first shot was fired. Had she made it out?

Then Elizabeth noticed that there was dark red blood coating Zembrovko's hands and his head kept turning between whoever held the gun on him and something down on the floor to his left. She coupled that with the obvious, raw distress in his voice and she thought that she knew what had happened to the man's wife.

She swallowed heavily and was about to turn and press Henry further back from the door and down the stairs to the exit – needing more than ever to get him out, desperate to get him out – when something made her pause.

The man holding the gun on Zembrovko said something. She wasn't entirely sure what because he spoke quietly and they were too far away and she wasn't completely fluent in Russian, the main official language of Petria, but she knew the voice that spoke it.

"Oh my God, Henry," she said, quietly.

His breath disturbed her hair. "What?"

Zembrovko took a stumbling step backwards before Elizabeth could answer Henry, coming more fully into their line of vision. He was followed by the man who held the gun and then she had no need to explain to Henry because he got it for himself.

The man with the gun was Gleb Kodalov, the country's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. His arm did not waver as he trained the gun on Artur Zembrovko.

Elizabeth knew enough Russian to understand what was said next, but she didn't really need to: the expression on Zembrovko's face was universal. "Please," he said, his tone pleading and begging. The blood on his hands was running down his wrists to stain the cuffs of his dress shirt.

Minister Kodalov tilted his head to the side for a moment, regarding his boss with a smile. Then he straightened up and he sounded completely valedictory when he said, "Say hello to your new president." A pause. He cocked the gun. Then he said, "Now say goodbye."

He fired.


President Conrad Dalton was just finishing up a budget meeting with some of his finance staffers when his Chief of Staff pushed open the door and entered the Oval Office without knocking, a little out of breath like he had just sprinted the short distance from his office.

"Mr President," Russell Jackson said, casting a glare over the other people he found in the room.

Annoyed at the rude interruption, Conrad was a little cool when he answered. "Can we help you, Russell?"

"I need the room for a minute, sir. Now."

It was in his mind to object, to tell Russell that he could say whatever it was he had to say in the presence of everyone else, but he quickly decided against it. Russell's usual approach might best be described as 'barrel straight in and don't worry about saying please or thank you unless absolutely necessary' and he could therefore come across as a little over dramatic at times, but he did tend to know where the boundaries lay. He didn't barge into closed door meetings in the Oval Office without a good reason, and so Conrad nodded in agreement. The well-trained staffers he was meeting with dutifully collected up their papers and trailed out of the door, obviously not fast enough for Russell, who was shifting from one foot to the other, practically vibrating with energy.

"What is it, Russell?" Conrad asked as the last staffer left the room.

There was a delay in the answer as Russell ensured the door was shut before walking over to join Conrad standing by the Resolute desk. His voice was the slightest bit shaky when he spoke. "We're getting reports of a developing situation, sir. Details are sketchy and intelligence is pretty thin at this point, but it has been confirmed that the Presidential Palace in the Petrian capital of Rusapol is currently under attack."

Conrad frowned. That was certainly important news, and something he needed to know about for sure, but it wasn't something that necessitated the abandonment of an important meeting in the Oval Office and a breakout of sweat on Russell Jackson's top lip.

His brain reminded him then of something important, and he got it a second later. Now he understood the urgency. No doubt he had instantly developed a sweat moustache to match that of his Chief of Staff. Acid rolled in his gut. "Bess is there."

"Yes, sir. And Henry."

"Do we know if-?"

Russell cut him off before he could complete the question. "No information, Mr President."

Not good enough. "Get some information. Fast."

Russell didn't bother to reply. The speed with which he left the room in the direction of his own office and an international phone line was answer enough.


At the sound of the gunshot, Henry used his grip on Elizabeth's arms to haul her back from the doorway and into the stairwell. They didn't have long. Now that Zembrovko was dead – Zembrovko was dead – it was likely that things would move fast.

Henry could hear Kodalov saying something in the corridor, and it sounded like he was closer than before.

Yeah, definitely time to move.

Once they were in the stairwell, Henry took Elizabeth's hand and they started down the stairs towards the exit, moving fast. He could feel her hand shaking in his and couldn't decide whether it was down to the fear or the adrenaline.

Probably both. He was certainly feeling both.

So that was how you execute a coup. Huh.

They reached a small landing and rounded the corner to continue down the final flight of stairs, almost there. Once they reached the door it would only be a few metres to the car, where at least some of Elizabeth's DS agents would hopefully be waiting for them.

He was so focused on the exit, on getting down the stairs before they could be noticed by Kodalov, that he didn't notice the door on the small landing until it was way too late, when it had already been pushed open and a man barrelled through and shouted when he saw them poised to descend the final flight of stairs to escape.

There was no time to react as a hand darted out and caught Henry's arm in a death grip. Panic flooded his veins and he turned his head to Elizabeth with the intention of telling her to run for it, but the man from the door reached out and instilled a grip on her arm, too. She sucked in a harsh breath at the unexpected contact and it caused Henry's fight instinct to kick into overdrive.

Oh, no, you don't.

With a shout, he wrenched his arm from the tight hold and whirled around to face the man.