Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Read online

  Secrets have power. Sometimes secrets are the only power you have. Once I know his secrets, I’ll know how to fight for him.

  The call from my FBI agent is a buzz on my calf where I keep my secret cell. I steal into the fourth-floor bathroom and lock the door. I’ve been trying to stay out of the private bathrooms due to Donny—it’s a perfect place for an ambush. But I can’t wait until I’m off work.

  “Where’d the prints come from?” she asks. “How’d you come by them?”

  “That wasn’t part of our deal. Telling you that.” I close my eyes and say a little prayer that she doesn’t get pissed off and hang up. She could keep my money and not deliver.

  “They appear twice. He first surfaces as a John Doe in a psych unit in East Webster, Minnesota. Two years back. Are you near a computer?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I took the liberty. This was the fucking kid who came out the woods up north. Come on, East Webster? All those camera crews? Where were you two years ago?”

  “Um…Libya.” I’m wary. Agent Hancock usually doesn’t go beyond the prints.

  “Yeah, well, they pulled a kid out of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It’s huge—hundreds of square miles of primitive wilderness, millions of acres—”

  “I know the place,” I say, heart pounding. It’s not far from Fancher. East Webster is in the next county. “What about the kid? A lost kid?”

  “Not just lost. A kid who grew up wild there. A wild boy. You know? Raised-by-wolves shit?”

  “That actually happens?”

  “Oh, yeah. Bottoms of his feet like shoe leather. Two years back. Savage Adonis. Google it.”

  “Savage Adonis?”

  “That’s the name the media gave to him. He got on our radar for a number of reasons. Border control shit with Canada. Nobody was thrilled to hear some kid was living completely wild up there, because the terrorists start looking at that and getting ideas about what they could do undetected.”

  “What happened to the kid?”

  “That’s the strange part. When they pulled him out, he was half-dead from a wound, an infection, something like that. He was conscious, and he could speak, but he wouldn’t give up his name or anything. Once they got him to the hospital, they figured out he’d been living utterly wild, possibly for most of his life. Doctors can tell that on a physiological and behavioral level. It seems this kid was violent. Extremely unhappy to be closed up between four walls. And apparently quite the looker. The story of this stunningly beautiful kid got leaked. A wild kid with movie-star looks, raised by wolves. The paparazzi went insane. Prices for a clear photo of him went into the six figures.”

  Right then there’s a knock at the door. “Just a sec,” I call out, eyeing a shadow under the door. The shadow moves away. I close my eyes. Please don’t be Donny.

  “Are you in touch with the subject?”

  “I can’t say,” I whisper breathlessly. Telling her that is not part of our agreement, and she knows it. “I need the rest of the story. I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “You had legions of paparazzi up in this nothing town up on the Minnesota Iron Range. A gorgeous, mysterious wild boy…the way things were headed, his image would’ve been on every computer screen, every supermarket rag, every news show…his own reality show. Teen idol shit. It was human interest but also scientific interest. Some of the experts had this idea he’d become some kind of superalpha, kind of like domesticating wild wolves, because you’re not out there surviving those winters without wolves. There were a few kids in Siberia who survived like that. Everybody wanted a piece of the supposedly beautiful wild boy. Well, you can imagine.”

  “Whoa.”

  “It’s a miracle no decent photos got out. But the director of the medical center was ex-military, and he ran security like a World War II general. One staffer lured Savage Adonis out a side entrance while he was coming out of anesthetic from some procedure, and we got one shit picture out of that. It was a feeding frenzy for the poor kid, and a few people went to jail off it—I’m forwarding you a shot that never got out. A while later, just when Savage Adonis mania was at its peak, it all got shut down.”

  “Shut down?”

  “East Webster authorities came out and did a press conference and said it was a hoax. The identities of the people involved in the hoax were under wraps because the person or persons were underage. Something else broke that week, and paparazzi cleared out, and that was that. We dropped it then, too. Better for us that it turned out to be a hoax, in terms of border security image.”

  “But you’re not convinced.”

  “It always smelled funny. We all thought it. We heard rumors he’d broken out. He had hair down past his shoulders, a beard. Did somebody decide to clean him up and get him out of there for his own sanity? Did he run back to the wilderness? Why wouldn’t anybody talk? Was there money involved? There were a lot of questions.”

  “Christ.” I drop to my knees and peer under the door. I’m completely paranoid Donny is out there, waiting to do a push in.

  “Here’s what’s interesting. The fingerprints turn up a second time. A year ago, right around Halloween. Rhone County, Minnesota. But the case number is behind a wall. Classified. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t run it for the gaps and seen the number skip. It’s a glitch. Unfortunately, you need clearance to crack in.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about with the gaps and the number skip, but I hear the word “classified” loud and clear. “Tell me you cracked in.”

  “It’s classified, Ann. Classified information,” she says. “National security.”

  “What does the wild boy have to do with national security?”

  “You know what a…broad umbrella that is. Broad.” There’s a pause, as if she’s choosing her words carefully. “Things get classified for a lot of reasons. It’s possible things get classified just because somebody is playing keepaway. Still. I can’t give you that number or any details.”

  “I see,” I whisper, head spinning. Her message between the lines is that I’m not paying her enough for that level of risk.

  My blood races. What the hell did 34 do to be deep-sixed like he is? “Thank you.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me where you lifted the prints from? I wouldn’t mind knowing. Be grateful to get the end of that saga.”

  An investigator to the last. Her message is loud and clear—she wants to know, and she’d owe me one if I told her. But I have to think about 34. “Let me sleep on it,” I say. “I appreciate this.”

  “Wish I could help you more.”

  “I understand,” I say. “Thank you for trying.”

  I take a quick look at my email for the image, and there it is. It’s a blurry shot taken from the shoulders up, and it’s definitely Patient 34. He glares at the camera, beautiful and feral and even a little otherworldly with long beautiful curls half in his face. Scruffy beard. He’s like an angry mystic, pulled down off the mountaintop. So alone. So beautifully, intensely alive.

  And actually, she helped me a whole lot, giving everything she could between the lines. She gave me a place—Rhone County. A date—around Halloween a year ago. The fact that she thinks somebody paid to get it classified, which means it’s likely not about national security. Pay-to-classify is a something agents hate almost as much as journalists.

  Rhone fucking County. A place where parking-lot fender-benders make headlines. I don’t need a case number, and she knows it.

  My beautiful, feral boy. What did he do?

  I hold the phone to my chest, staring at the crack of shiny tile outside the door. My gut says Donny’s out there. Fourth floor. What was I thinking coming up here in the afternoon? There’s nothing scheduled up here until dinner. I grab a plunger and press it into the toilet and flush once. Again. Then I call maintenance and report an actively overflowing toilet. I shove a toilet paper roll into there.

  And wait, hoping they’ll hurry. I’m missing rounds.

  Ten
minutes later, Jerry the janitor is at the door. I let him in and speed the other way. Donny’s nowhere, but he was there. I know it in my bones. When you’re a journalist, you learn to trust your instincts.

  I get on my rounds and start making up time, but my mind is on 34. I do a quick search of the Rhone River Tribune on my phone while I’m between tasks. I’m unhappy to see there was nothing written about it. Or maybe there was, and it got deleted.

  The rest of my shift seems to take forever. I get out of there with a group, make it home by five, and go right online.

  There’s plenty about the Savage Adonis, and all of it is based on speculation and interviews with the campers who found him, mostly descriptions of his injury and his incredible beauty, his huge muscles, his bare feet like shoe leather.

  One of them gave him water, and the wild boy whispered “thank you.”

  The breathless descriptions from unnamed sources go on and on. The wild boy’s amazing beauty. The wild boy’s strength. Speculation about his age—about twenty seems to have been the consensus—and how he would have survived. Background on other wild kids—the ones from Siberia, two from France, another from Africa. Anonymous interviews from medical staff that he can talk, that he wants to get out. A few anonymous campers come forward with tales about fucking the wild boy.

  Just like Agent Hancock said, the paparazzi feeding frenzy exploded overnight, and half the story was coverage about the coverage. Everybody waiting for the first pictures of the wild boy like he was the royal baby. There were bounties for those pictures until it was declared a hoax.

  I hit the Rhone River Tribune a little harder. I pay my two bucks to get behind the paywall and into the archives. Nothing. I try other area papers. Same. Nothing.

  Screw that. I grew up in small-town Idaho. I worked summers on the local paper. Something happened out there. They erased the coverage, but people know. I scroll to the bylines of the townie stories from a year ago. Reporter Maxwell Barnes was the main guy covering the area.

  I flip to the paper today. He’s still there. Still writing.

  I pull up a map. An hour away. My head is spinning. It might be hunger. I have no money and nothing but rice in the kitchen. Rice takes forty minutes. And I need 34’s story now. I remember a pack of Gummi Bears in the bottom of my airline bag. I grab it and get out.

  Second problem: I have enough gas to get to Rhone River, but not back.

  I run back into my ugly 1970s piece-of-shit building and head into the boiler room, which is full of tools and junk. I find a bunch of tubing. I pull my car to a shaded corner of the lot and siphon some extra gas from the neighbor below me. It’s an asshole move, but he plays his stereo loud in the middle of the night. So now we’re both assholes.

  I twist the cap closed, spitting to get the taste out of my mouth. I throw the tube in my trunk and take off.

  The only person at the Rhone River Tribune office is the production person. I tell her I’m doing a Stormline story that relates to an area incident. She gives me Maxwell Barnes’s cellphone number without too much trouble. We journalists help each other out. He agrees to meet. He gives me his address and tells me to come on over.

  Barnes is raking leaves in front of a small bungalow that sits on a road that runs like a zipper through the forest. He’s thickset, maybe forty, with a genuine smile and wire-rimmed glasses. I like him instantly.

  I thank him for meeting me.

  “Stormline,” he says with a squint. He knows it, and he’s not judgmental about it. “Is this off something I reported on?”

  “It’s more something you didn’t report on,” I say. “Halloween weekend last year.”

  His eyes twinkle. He knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  I do him the courtesy of giving him what I have. “There was an incident. There was a police report filed, but it went classified. I looked to the Rhone River Trib, and nothing’s there. I came up on the Beckerton County Reporter just a ways out of Boise. A house gets egged, and we’d do a story. Someone sneezes, and we’d do the story.”

  He smiles wistfully. The smile of somebody who’s been stymied.

  “This is just between us, but in the course of working one story, I’ve run into an institutionalized John Doe. Heavily sedated. Things feel off.”

  Maxwell nods.

  I’m taking a risk giving him this much, but sometimes you give a story to get a story. “I’m supposed to be researching something completely different, but everything about how this guy is being held is wrong.”

  “He’s institutionalized.”

  “Yeah.”

  He grunts. “We had something happen…this is off the record, okay? But you can get it from other people around here as easy as you can from me.”

  Meaning he’s prevented from talking about it, but if I need a source, I can go find one. “Sure.”

  “I signed something,” he says. He’s trusting me here.

  “Got it,” I say. “Absolutely never talked to you.”

  “Southwest of here, you have part of the reservation, and then a lot of hunting land. There was this guy, Pinder, who’s got a no-trespassing posted parcel, or had one. But it was odd, because he wasn’t using it for hunting. He seemed to live in his cabin. He came into town. He said he was a researcher. Kept to himself.”

  Maxwell shrugs and continues, “He was in and out for years. Then one day, some hunters hear yelling. Some guy, yelling for help. They follow the voice, and it’s like something out of one of those shows—there’s a man in a cage in there, and from the looks of things, he’s been in there a while. Kept like a wild animal. Metal bars, plexiglas panels—for soundproofing, the cops thought. There’s a body on the ground. Dead. It’s Pinder. Holding a guy in a cage and nobody knew. You know how much I wanted to tell that story?”

  “I can only imagine,” I say.

  He goes on with the story. The man apparently strangled Pinder through the bars and called for help. The cops torched the lock open and got him out, but he attacked them.

  “What was this guy like? Violent? Crazy? Did you meet him?”

  “I interviewed one of the hunters who found him. He said the guy seemed normal at first, carrying on conversation like a regular guy. The cops got the lock open, and he slips out and heads for the door. One of the cops tried to keep him from leaving, and that’s when this guy went wild. Well, he’d been in a fucking cage for a year. Guy broke a cop’s arm and hit another in the face on his way out, and that man lost use of an eye. It was a hard hit.” He goes through the rest. The manhunt through the woods. A vet finally brings him down with a tranquilizer gun.

  “Did you ever get a name on the captive?”

  “No. They had him out at the station,” Maxwell says. “I get there to find things shut down. I can’t interview him. The cops aren’t talking. Next I hear, the feds have the case, and the guy’s gone. And the owner of the paper didn’t even want us calling it ‘resisting arrest’ in our police blotter. This was a hostage situation with a murder, and it got covered up. You know what kind of juice covers that up?”

  “It would’ve been a national story,” I say.

  “Easily.” He gives me everything else he can. He can’t do the story or be a source, but he really, really wants me to do it.

  A few minutes later I’m driving off, heart pounding, because this is a story and a half. I sketch out a timeline while I drive. I figure there were two weeks between his capture and the commitment testimony of the psychiatrist in Duluth. So where was the hearing? It’s like he bypassed the entire legal system.

  I speed on down the wooded road.

  Patient 34 has powerful enemies who have gone to great lengths to hide him. This thing is bigger than me. I have to work safe and smart.

  And I realize that my best ally is actually Stormline.

  Stormline is disreputable, but it has a hell of a bank account and a great legal team, and they’d do anything to help me…if they could have this story.

  A “Where is the Sa
vage Adonis Now?” story where Savage Adonis turns out to be criminally insane is a sad story. A tragic story. But a “Where is the Savage Adonis Now?” story where he only ever tried to be free and now he’s been stripped of his identity and deep-sixed inside an institution for the criminally insane, deprived of due process?

  That’s a unicorn of a story.

  But it’s also tricky. Patient 34 is vulnerable and possibly quite dangerous.

  The light of the media is really 34’s best hope right now.

  I hesitate a moment before calling Murray, my editor.

  The light of the media is probably not something Patient 34 would choose, considering he was sent into a shark tank of paparazzi while he was weak from surgery. It would have felt like a vicious attack. Publicity will bring them back again.

  Still.

  I put in the call. My editor is there, of course, because nobody in New York ever leaves the office.

  As soon as I utter the words “Savage Adonis,” he sucks in a breath. He had people on-site the first time around—of course. He’s all about Savage Adonis. He tells me he wants to send his top guy, Garrick, a total slimeball.

  I tell him it’s me alone or nothing. He wants proof. Pictures. I want money. I want the resources required to get the story right. He wires a few thousand dollars into my account to get things started.

  I hang up and drive in silence. This is how 34 gets free—the bright light of the media. An exposure of what was done to him. It’s the best I can do for him.

  And I feel like total shit.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lazarus

  My executive coach Valerie says there is a new lesson to be learned every day. That the world is full of knowledge. Here’s my lesson for today: a home for the criminally insane? Not hard to break into.

  We put a team on the underground cables around five in the morning, taking out the alarm system.

  The perimeter guards are the only heavy guns here. We bribed one to fake an illness and leave early. We wait for the other to get the call from his wife about an intruder. As soon as he’s out of there, we ice the other two. We turn off the electrified fence. We pull our stockings over our faces and roll in.