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check the man for a pulse. He was alive, just unconscious. And that might not last long. “Who is this? And why did you shoot him?”
    “He tried to kidnap me,” she said, apparently willing to admit that much even though she wouldn’t admit to who she was. “So I grabbed his gun.”
    Whit uttered a low whistle of appreciation. Even without a weapon, the guy would have been intimidating, yet she’d managed to disarm him, too. Maybe she wasn’t Princess Gabriella. “How do you know he was going to kidnap you?”
    “He tried to drag me out there,” she gestured toward the big open doors in one of the metal walls, “to a plane.”
    As Whit glanced up to follow the direction she pointed, he noticed men—about four of them—rushing in from the airfield. They must have heard the shots, too. And they were armed.
    “We have to get the hell out of here,” he said.
    Or the man’s friends were liable to finish what he’d started—abducting Gabriella. And Whit with his shoulder wound and his borrowed gun were hardly going to be enough protection to save her.
    She must have seen the men, too, because she was already turning and moving toward the street. Whit kept between her and the men. But they saw the guy on the ground, and they saw the gun in Whit’s hand.
    And they began to fire.
    * * *
    “W HAT ’ S WRONG ?” Charlotte asked anxiously. “What did Whit say?”
    It wasn’t so much what he’d said as what Aaron had overheard when he’d been on the phone with his friend. But Charlotte was already worried about Princess Gabriella; he didn’t want to upset her any more.
    She settled onto the airplane seat across from him. After her trip to the restroom, her eyes were dry and clear. She’d composed herself. But how much would it take for her to break again?
    She’d already been through so much—kidnapped and held hostage for six months. And she was pregnant, too, with his baby.
    Aaron’s heart filled with pride and love. But fear still gripped him. He wasn’t like Whit; he couldn’t hide his emotions. Whit usually hid them so well that Aaron had often doubted the man was even capable of feeling. But he’d heard it in his voice—his fear for Princess Gabriella’s safety—once he’d realized she was also where the shooting was.
    “I know something’s wrong,” Charlotte persisted, but she pitched her voice low and glanced toward the back of the jet where the king had retired to his private room. “Tell me.”
    Aaron uttered a ragged sigh of resignation and admitted, “I heard shots...”
    Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Someone was shooting at Whit? He wouldn’t have had time to get a gun yet. He won’t be able to defend himself.”
    On more than one occasion, Aaron had seen Whit defend himself without a gun. But he hadn’t been injured then. “Whit wasn’t the one getting shot at.”
    She gasped. “Gabby? Was it Gabby?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. But from the way Whit had reacted to the news that the princess was pregnant, too, he was pretty sure that it was her. “It’s a dangerous country. It could have been rebel gunfire. It could have been anything...”
    “Call him back!” She reached across the space between them and grabbed for the cell phone he’d shoved in his shirt pocket.
    But Aaron caught her hand in his and entwined their fingers. “He won’t answer,” he told her. “He needs to focus on what’s happening. And there’s nothing we can do from here anyway.”
    That was why he hadn’t wanted to tell her. She would want to help, and that wasn’t possible from so many miles away. That feeling of helplessness overwhelmed Aaron, reminding him of the way he’d felt when Charlotte had been missing. He’d been convinced that she was out there, somewhere, but he hadn’t been able to find her.
    Now Whit needed help—Whit, who’d so often stepped in to save him—and Aaron was too far away to come to his aid.
    Panic had tears welling in her eyes. “We can have the pilot