CHAPTER 10 - CEASE AND DESIST
LOUISA

“So you’re saying that you didn’t get a call from Lucas to say he wouldn’t be in?” Louisa insisted on the phone as she rifled through the filing cabinet. “Not so much as an email?”

“No,” The rather cranky embassy officer snarled. “Nothing.”

“Is that usual?”

“Louisa, I really think you should stop badgering me about Lucas and do what all your colleagues are doing; trying to find the Crown Prince.”

Louisa scowled.

“That’s precisely what I am doing, I’m just trying a different tactic,” She said as calmly as she could. “Look, 2 people going missing on the same day? Does that seem like a co-incidence to you? Specifically, Alexi’s tertiary bodyguard? Maybe some-one wanted Lucas out of the way to make the job easier.”

“But the job wasn’t any easier,” the Officer snapped. “Chen kindly volunteered when Lucas didn’t turn up, and even if she hadn’t’ve volunteered, we’d’ve had to have put some-one else on surveillance Louisa, either way.”

“Chen volunteered?” Louisa frowned.

“That’s what I said. Now unless you’ve got anymore stupid questions...”

“Sure, I don’t suppose if you know if Chen has a sister, do you?”

“I wouldn’t know, and I don’t particularly care,” the officer said, then sighed. “Look Louisa, you’re looking at this too hard.”

“Or not hard enough,” Louisa mused, retrieving a file and flipping through it. “Look, I’m a bodyguard, I’m designed to be paranoid. Some-one has to look too hard at things. Thanks for your help, such as it is.”

She hung up and stuffed her phone back into her pocket, flicking through the file. Lucas’ file, specifically, his stats, vetting, history... absence history... Not one day off save for 2 days sick leave in June last year... and the minimum amount of annual leave they were required to take. No girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/significant other, lived alone... perfect bodyguard material, Louisa thought, flipping through the file further and stopping. Yanking the cap of her pen off with her teeth, she scrawled on a piece of paper and tucked it into her pocket, shutting the file and bunging it back into the drawer, shutting it with a casual bump of her hip, then hesitated.

She turned back and opened it again, flicking through the files until she found Chen’s, and balancing the file on the drawer, flicked through it. It was a thinner file than Lucas’ had been, but then Lucas had been working for the Royal Family considerably longer. She flicked through the file to the vetting section and scanned down the page. And her eyebrows shot up.

“Well I’ll be damned. One sister, Dong-mei Dumas, nee Chen, married to Jonathon Dumas with one child, Nathan Dumas,” Louisa snapped the file closed, feeling slightly rattled.

She’d been so certain that Chen had been lying, guilty until proven innocent, and this was a real wrench. She stuffed the file away and slammed the filing cabinet, padding down the stairs.

“Louisa?”

Louisa looked up with a start, then quickly bobbed a curtsey.

“Ma’am,” She said respectfully.

Queen Vasya stepped down towards her, dressed in a long blue dressing gown and a white nightdress, her long blonde hair falling down around her face. There wasn’t much of his mother in Alexi, but they both shared the same eyes.

“It’s 3 in the morning Louisa,” Vasya remarked.

“You know me Ma’am, virtually nocturnal,” Louisa said, then frowned. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Oh no,” The Queen gave a hollow laugh. “I didn’t go to sleep at all. I keep... thinking.”

Louisa swallowed.

“So do I Ma’am,” Louisa said quietly. “You do know, we won’t rest until we get Alexi back, don’t you?”

The Queen gave Louisa a long look, then stepped closer.

“I want you to stop Louisa.”

Louisa’s mouth actually fell open. It took her a few seconds to recover, then she regained her composure, and Queen Vasya gave a small smile and continued.

“I want you to stop,” She repeated. “If you do find him... Enough people have died and got damaged already Louisa, and I don’t want you to all go charging in and getting yourselves, and Alexi, killed. I know you’d all do it a million times over, just as Jonas did, and Dimitri would have, but I don’t want any of you to make that final sacrifice, and I don’t want Alexi harmed either. We’ll get the second proof and the demand, and then we’ll get our son back.”

And Louisa couldn’t stop herself.

“What if we don’t?” Louisa asked quietly. “Your majesty, I’ve been worried about this since it all began. This doesn’t feel right. It’s not a normal kidnapping. What if we don’t get him back?”

The Queen turned to face her, looking so tired. So damn tired.

“What else would you have me do Louisa? What more can I do?” She demanded. “I have never been this helpless. We have to get him back Louisa, we will get him back. Or I don’t know how I’m ever going to live again.” She fixed Louisa with those dark blue eyes. “You don’t have children, do you Louisa?”

Louisa shook her head.

“Then you have no idea what I’m going through. And you can’t understand my decision. But stop Louisa. We’re going to do what these men tell us to do. I am not risking my son’s life,” Vasya drew herself up. “Cease and desist.”

Louisa reeled back, as if punched, then swallowed. She closed her eyes for a moment, squashing her emotion, drawing herself emotions back into check... then opened her eyes, meeting the Queen’s eyes and ripping off a salute worthy of a Guardsman.

“Ma’am.”

Vasya gave a sad smile.

“I’ve lost you too,” She said quietly. “Figures.”

Louisa frowned.

“It took me 3 months to pick away at your perfect exterior to the point where you’d so much crack a joke in my presence. And now that carapace is back,” Vasya sighed. “Praise God that you’re not a Queen, Louisa. And thank God that you’re not a mother.”

The Queen turned on her heel and vanished back into the sleeping quarters. Louisa took a moment to suppress her anger, currently seething inside of her like a nest of vipers. What she needed, Louisa thought grimly, was something she could punch the living daylights out of.

She retrieved her phone and bounced down the stairs to the main door, dialling as she went, then almost ran straight into some-one. Chen. Holy hell, the woman got everywhere.

“Sorry,” Louisa said grudgingly.

“Louisa,” Chen nodded to her, impeccable as always. “I thought that you were supposed to be going home?”

“That was the plan,” Louisa replied, hiding her scowl. “The Queen called me in for a word.”

“Oh really?” Chen looked surprised. “What about?”

Louisa shrugged.

“She wants me to stop looking for Alexi. She wants us all to pull out, she’s scared that we’ll get too close and spook the kidnappers and they’ll kill him,” Louisa folded her arms.

“She may have a point,” Chen remarked musingly.

“Well it’s a retarded point,” Louisa snapped, then reigned herself back. “If you want me, I’ll be at the gym.”

Chen checked her watch, a delicate silver clockface on a silver chain on her wrist.

“It’s quarter past 3,” She observed.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re going to the gym?” Chen repeated.

“Yeah,” Louisa rolled her neck. “There’s a place near here that’s open 24/7. Probably a good thing, or I’d’ve punched some-one by now.”

Chen raised an eyebrow.

“I thought that you were all for control.”

Louisa’s eyes lanced straight into Chen’s.

“Control is suppression,” Louisa stated. “And suppression is unhealthy. I’m all for keeping myself balanced, and if I have to mash the stuffing out of something to keep that balance, so be it.”

And she was out of the door before Chen could reply.