The Outlaw Prince's Captive - Holly Rayner Page 0,20

would have come in the front door if I hadn’t seen that. But you tipped me off, so I came around the back.”

“Do you understand that you’re under arrest?” Francesca asked him, irritated by his cockiness. “Are you aware that you’re facing criminal charges for a very serious offense? You’re the primary suspect in a hit-and-run in Manhattan, and I have to tell you, the evidence is pretty conclusive.”

Something flickered across Lindström’s face, an expression Francesca couldn’t quite put a name to. It was the first sign of doubt or discomfort she had seen from him.

“You don’t have to make this difficult on yourself,” she said. “Right now you’re resisting arrest, and that’s going to make things much worse for you once we get back to the States. I’m willing to overlook this if you start cooperating.”

To her utter consternation, Lindström laughed.

“You’re not going to take me back to the States,” he said.

“I most certainly am,” she protested hotly.

He shook his head. “You can’t,” he said. “Konäs won’t extradite me to the U.S.”

“I don’t know what you think you know,” Francesca said, “but you’re wrong. Konäs does extradite to the United States. It was negotiated at the same time as our extradition treaty with Sweden.”

“Yes,” Lindström agreed. “But the extradition treaty doesn’t cover me. As a member of the royal family, I’m not subject to certain laws. And one of those laws is the extradition law. I can’t be sent back to the United States.”

Francesca opened her mouth and found that she had nothing to say.

Was he right? If he was…how could she have missed that detail in her preparation? If he couldn’t be extradited, there was no point in her being here at all. The moment he had set foot on his home soil, he had been free and clear.

Suddenly, she felt overwhelmingly angry. This was all Voles’ fault. He had been the one who had sent her here. He had been the one who had set the expectation that she would return home with Lindström. As her superior, wasn’t it his job to know the extradition laws?

There had been nothing about members of the royal family being exempt in the file she had been given. She was sure of that. She would have remembered if there had.

And what was she going to do now? There was no way to bring Lindström back to stand trial. Her only hope was that he was lying about the law…but it was a feeble lie, if he was, since a moment of research would reveal whether it was true or not.

“Put that gun down,” Lindström said, sounding tired. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

“You don’t tell me what to do,” Francesca said. “I’m the officer here.”

“Are you going to shoot me?” His voice was so condescending.

And, of course, she wasn’t going to shoot him. But for a hair’s breadth of a second, she almost wished she could, just to make a point.

She was in charge here. And he didn’t seem to realize that.

“I’m not going to kill you,” she said. “I haven’t ruled out disabling you, if that’s what it takes to get you to cooperate.”

“You have the safety on,” Lindström said.

Francesca cursed herself. Of course she would end up facing that rare suspect who could actually spot the safety on the gun. Most suspects would have been so frightened by the very fact of a gun pointed at them that they would have been unable to think critically. Lindström was obviously a bit more clear-headed.

I underestimated him, she thought ruefully. I’ve been thinking of him as a good-hearted man who made a terrible mistake and thought he could run from it.

But now it seemed to her that perhaps that wasn’t what he was at all. Perhaps he was a villain, a cold man who did not care and had never cared about the lives of others. He didn’t seem remorseful about what he had done, that was for sure.

“You’re determined to resist arrest, then?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t accept your arrest,” he said. “For one thing, I’m innocent.”

“Sure you are,” she snapped. “And how do you explain the video footage I have of you committing a hit-and-run? How do you explain the fact that you fled the country?”

For the first time, he looked bothered. “I didn’t flee the country,” he said. “I live here. I came home. Is that a crime?”

“You live in New York,” Francesca countered. “Everyone knows that. Your business is there. You’re telling me you just happened