Royal Line (Tattered Royals #1) - Carrie Ann Ryan Page 0,63

between making sure that London’s tracker hadn’t moved and checking weapons. At his feet were boxes of ammo and our vests. I watched as he methodically clipped in ammunition, checked magazines, and made sure our vests were fully loaded with everything we would need for a small arsenal. I didn’t know how many men we were going to face or who exactly had taken her, but I made a call to some friends of mine that had a security firm in New York. They had international agents, and I put out the SOS and asked if they had anyone close by to please send them in.

“Has the beacon moved?”

Olly’s voice was quiet. “No. They’ve stopped. Looks like they are at Le Bourget Airport for private planes.”

My hands worked the steering wheel, sliding back and forth, and back and forth. It didn’t make any fucking sense. Why the hell would someone not just kill her where she was? Why not leave Sparrow behind?

Olly was obviously running those same questions through his mind. “Doesn’t something bother you about all of this?”

I lifted my brow. “What do you mean?”

He frowned at me. “None of this shit makes any sense.”

“We’re on the same path, Olly. For starters, it’s like London fell into my lap, literally. And if I hadn’t seen someone try and kill her with my own two eyes, I’d take this whole situation with a good dose of skepticism. I know she doesn’t want us to look at her brothers, and honestly, they have nothing to gain if she dies. If this law goes into effect, her brother, the king, loses everything. But they are the only ones who knew where she was going.”

Olly nodded. “The problem is that everything I was able to find on the family, including details about the obscure law, seems to prove they didn’t know anything about it until recently as there have been zero moves on their part to stop it from happening. Including the king. He’s been the damn monarch for years. Plenty of time to make an heir, unless he can’t. Then there are the other brothers, one of whom obviously has been in the press a lot, Breck. I’m surprised he doesn’t have any children anywhere, but currently, there are none we’re aware of. If they are responsible for this, it makes no sense they’d let her leave the country in the first place.”

“That’s exactly it. There must be something we’re missing.”

Olly shrugged. “Unless they needed it to look like an accident. You said you found her in a ravine on the side of the road, right? And then, when you pulled her out, another car came by, basically attempting to finish the job?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Maybe whoever is doing this needs it to look like an accident.”

I frowned at that. “So what? Did you find anything in that law that indicated that assassinations would change the requirements?”

He frowned, then tapped several more keys. “Not in so many words. But there is something vague about limitations on royals who commit crimes. It doesn’t say what kind of crimes, but anyone convicted of committing those certain acts will lose their place in the line of succession.”

I frowned at that. “So that was probably put in place to keep people from assassinating a king’s new bride or basically, killing everyone off to move the royal line over a branch or two on the family tree. And London has got three older brothers, and it would be even harder to kill three additional people. Their parents died, but that was thirteen years ago. Anyone else who might have a claim to the throne, which would primarily be her aunt—”

Olly shook his head. “Actually, no. Her aunt is too old. No new monarch can be coronated if their age is over sixty. If you’re sixty while you’re on the throne, fair enough. You’ll stay for as long as you want or until you die. But the line will automatically go to the next eligible heir in this case because the aunt is over sixty and she’s not currently sitting on the throne. So that leaves out the aunt.”

“Christ.”

He typed on his keyboard some more. “That just leaves London’s cousin, Barkley, as next in line. From what I can tell, he’s a grade-A douche. Like the biggest, laziest kind of douchebag you can find. Drugs. Alcohol. Women. But he’ll be king if this law is followed.”

“At the very least, that’s an incentive to get London to marry,