by Kay Hooper
She had reminded herself over and over that the attraction between her and Michael was just that—an attraction. And simply because B followed A, it didn’t inevitably follow that an attraction between two people had to be acted on. It was the wrong time, the wrong place—and each of them had too many demons chasing them.
She told herself those things over and over. Futilely. Offering to prepare breakfast had not been sparked by the drive of hunger but rather by the need to be busy, to do something. Unfortunately she was too good a cook to have to pay attention to what she was doing; and her mind wouldn’t be distracted from dwelling on disturbing things.
Her emotions were jumbled, her self-knowledge was askew for the first time in years, and she was powerfully drawn to a man she hardly understood. A man who didn’t bet on long shots. Danger lay behind her, and ahead of her, and there were lives at stake.
Normal is what you get accustomed to.
Her own words, spoken to reassure Michael that his sister’s life had most likely been, to her, normal. But Robin knew Michael’s life wasn’t “normal.” A man would never become accustomed to dangers that threatened the emotions and the spirit as well as the body. And especially not if that man gave hostages to fortune in the shape of a sister … or a lover.
At the same time Robin also knew this was Michael’s life, by his own choice, and not likely to change. Men like Michael wouldn’t change course often, or easily. If he lived long enough, he would doubtless one day head an agency, like her father, where the field work would be limited. Limited—but not nonexistent. His would always be a dangerous life.
Realizing her thoughts were becoming entirely too wrapped up in speculation on the future, Robin hastily forced herself to concentrate on the cooking. But it was hard.
She called Michael when the meal was ready, and they ate sitting across from each other at a tiny booth that took up half the galley space. Robin was silent, highly conscious that her chaotic emotions could easily present a danger in the coming hours; Michael was equally quiet and preoccupied.
She didn’t speak until he rose to carry his plate to the tiny sink and rinse it. The automatic action caused her a curious pang, and she thought, He’s been alone a long time.
“Michael?”
He was refilling his coffee cup and leaned back against the doorjamb instead of returning to the booth. “Yeah?” he responded quietly.
“When all this is over, and Lisa’s safe again, what will you do?” She wasn’t about to suggest a different ending to the tragic situation—and she couldn’t stop thinking of the future.
He looked at her steadily. “If you’re asking whether I’ll decide to get into another line of work because of what’s happened to Lisa, the answer is no. I would if Lisa asked me to, but she won’t.” He hesitated, then said roughly, “I don’t know anything else, Robin. This is the life I was trained for, the life I know better than any other. I wasn’t naive when I made my choice years ago, I knew what it meant. I don’t regret my choice.”
She had been right, but it didn’t make it easier. “I see. I thought that was the way you felt.”
“And so?” It sounded like a reluctant question, as if he weren’t sure he wanted an answer.
“And so … I’m not surprised by your answer. You wouldn’t be in this business if the answer had been different.”
“Then why did you ask?” Another reluctant question.
Robin looked at him and forced a wry smile. “Just trying to find out what really makes a hero tick, I guess.”
“Study somebody else, then. I’m no hero.”
She returned her gaze to her coffee, unable to hold her own with his restless but intent eyes. She could feel something happening inside her, as if a door had opened, allowing her to see something in herself she’d never before seen. Hardly aware of speaking, she murmured, “Maybe that’s the charm of real heroes; they don’t know they are.”
Michael set his cup aside and took one step to reach the booth, grasping her arms and pulling her abruptly to her feet. “Get it through your head,” he said tightly. “There’s not one damn thing that’s heroic about me, Robin. I do the job I’m paid to do because I happen to be good at it. If I were good with plants, I’d be a gardener, good with engines I’d be a mechanic.”
She stared up at him, trying desperately to resent the strength in him, the purpose. She couldn’t. “But you happen to be good at doing dangerous things. And you almost never bet on long shots.”
A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Never. Not this kind.”
“What if the long shot bets on you?”
“It’s one chance in a million, Robin, and more than odds against us. You’d only get hurt.”
Robin didn’t move as he turned away, and spoke only when he was at the door. “What about you?” she asked unsteadily.
He paused for an instant to look back at her, his face taut and eyes burning. “Me too,” he muttered, and headed topside.
After a while she moved automatically to clean up the galley. She felt shaken by what she had seen in herself—and by what she had seen in Michael. In both cases there was pressure building, something growing beyond their abilities to control it. And they both knew it. Neither could run, and there wasn’t time enough to just stop and try to think it through. It was like watching a storm overtaking you, Robin thought, and knowing you were powerless to stop it or escape it.
Storms often left a shambles in their wake; she didn’t know what this would leave.
Robin wanted to stay below and try to pull herself together, but the sound of the engine of an approaching boat impelled her to quickly climb to the deck. And she almost welcomed the diversion, even though her common sense told her it could mean trouble. But she had barely reached the deck when the hail from an approaching cabin cruiser stopped her in astonishment.
“Ahoy!”
“It’s Teddy,” she said blankly as Michael reached her side. She barely had time to notice he held a gun in one hand before he’d slipped it inside the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. “How in the world …?”
“Looks like we’ll get the chance to ask,” Michael answered dryly, studying the boat as it slowed, and finally drifted to come alongside with a gentle bump.
Teddy, her riotous mass of red hair flaming around her small, vivid face, leaned over the side of the bigger cruiser and grinned down at them. “Hi, there.”
“What’re you doing here?” Robin asked.
“We’re the cavalry, of course,” Teddy responded, unperturbed. As two other women joined her, she introduced them. “This is Raven Long, and our skipper here is Kyle Kendrick.” She directed her interested gaze to Michael. “I’m Teddy Steele. And you must be the captain.”
“Michael,” he said, and nodded slightly at Raven, the only one of the three he had met before. “Mrs. Long.”
“Raven,” she corrected him, then gestured to the boats. “Can we lash these two beasts together? We need a conference.”
Five minutes later Michael and Robin had joined the women on their boat, which was considerably larger than his. And Michael, highly conscious of passing time, didn’t waste any of it.
“I don’t know how much you know,” he said, “but I’m on a tight schedule and—”
“The Dragon Lady,” Raven interrupted calmly, “is anchored at the Maze. It’s all right; Dane’s keeping an eye on it.”
“Dane?”
“Surprised me too,” she said, smiling a little as she leaned back in her deck chair. “I saw him late last night and got the story out of him. We were about to leave Miami a couple of hours later when he showed up and said he was coming along.”
Michael frowned, a bit unsettled. “Just don’t tell me he’s watching the yacht in plain sight and wearing one of his famous white suits.”
“You wouldn’t know him,” Raven assured him. “He’s in a little fishing boat, decked out with everything from a fly-covered hat to a bottle in a brown bag. Occasionally he bursts in
to drunken song or creative swearing. There are, by the way, half a dozen other such fishermen in that area, all perfectly legitimate; you couldn’t pick Dane out of the bunch.”
Still frowning, Michael said, “I still don’t like it. If there’s that much activity in the area, Sutton has to be getting nervous.”
“Doubtful,” Kyle told him. “There happens to be a fishing tournament going on, and it’s an annual thing. Some of the men on Sutton’s yacht have dropped lines into the water; looks like they’re using the event as cover themselves.”
Michael relaxed somewhat. “And what about you ladies?”
Teddy grinned at him. “We’ve been zipping in and out of the islands getting yelled at for disturbing the fish. Raven said that the best way to get into a situation where you couldn’t help drawing attention to yourself was to draw a lot of attention.”
Eyeing the three women dressed in bright swimsuits that would have turned the head of a stone statue, Michael had no trouble believing they’d drawn a great deal of attention. “I see.”
“We know the whole story,” Raven told him, serious now. “We’re here to help, Michael.”
“Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do.” He had no difficulty in sounding sincere. “But Sutton has a hair-trigger finger, and his men are worse. You can’t—”
“You can’t do it alone,” Raven told him. “Two against at least a dozen? No matter how good you are, you can’t ignore the odds. And Sutton doesn’t know any of us; you’re the red flag.”
“It’s too dangerous. I can’t ask—”
“You’re not asking,” Teddy said, studying her fingernails with a frown.
Michael drew a deep breath and, without looking at Robin, said tautly, “You came to help Robin. Help the both of us by getting her out of this mess now, before she gets hurt.”
“I’d say it was too late for that,” Kyle said quietly.
Michael glanced at Robin and wished he hadn’t; the hurt in her eyes was obvious. He felt like a bastard.
Raven leaned forward and held his gaze with violet eyes that had suddenly gone dark and hard. “You may not know much about our abilities, Captain, but you do know Hagen has pulled us into messes like this for the past few years. What we didn’t know in the beginning, we’ve learned. And if that doesn’t convince you, I’ll tell you something else. I know exactly what those girls on the yacht are going through. Exactly. Because I’ve been there myself. Because my sister died at the hands of slavers. I could no more walk away from this ‘mess’ than I could stop breathing—and that goes for my friends here.”
After a long moment Michael said, “I’m sorry. Ever since I found out Sutton had Lisa, all I’ve been able to think about is how responsible I am for it.” He sighed roughly. “But you’re right. All those girls have to be gotten off the yacht safely. And I can’t do it alone.” He looked at Robin, adding, “I’m sorry, Robin.”
She didn’t return his gaze, but nodded slightly.
Raven glanced at them curiously for a moment, then sat back in her chair. “We didn’t exactly come up with a plan,” she told Michael, “but we have started a couple of things in motion.”
“What things?”
Teddy answered. “Sutton will leave the yacht about midafternoon today. And it’s a good bet he’ll take at least a couple of his men when he goes.”
“Goes?” Michael looked at them. “Goes where?”
“He’ll have to take care of a business crisis,” Raven said limpidly.
“How did you manage that?” Michael asked blankly.
“It wasn’t too difficult. Dane found out that Sutton has a hell of a lot invested in various gambling parlors in Miami. It was fairly simple to gather all the addresses together and arrange to tip the police.”
“It could be days before he’d find out,” Michael objected slowly.
But Raven was shaking her head. “This time he’s going to hear about it by afternoon. Dane said you’d remember the man with the diamonds.” She waited for Michael’s nod, then continued. “It seems that man is a close friend of Sutton’s, and a business partner. Not public knowledge, you understand. Dane had a game scheduled with him for tonight in one of Sutton’s places. Dane also has a trusted friend who’s going to get a message to Mr. Diamonds by lunchtime warning him that Dane’s heard all those parlors are going to be raided tonight. Mr. Diamonds, by the way, is in the habit of looking to Sutton for guidance, and he knows Sutton is aboard the Dragon Lady. He also knows where the yacht anchors, and Sutton’s emergency radio frequency.”
Michael was impressed. In fact, he was delighted. “How on earth did you manage so much in just a few hours? And how, by the way, did you arrive here before us?”
Kyle smiled at him. “We’ve been taught a number of devious tricks. We also have—between us—contacts all over the country. We got all the information on Sutton before we left New York, thanks to Robin’s very complete package to Teddy. Dane did most of the rest.”
“As for how we got here so quickly,” Teddy said, “it was in a helicopter from Miami. A jet helicopter. And we’ve rented a big house on the coast no more than a mile from the Maze. This cruiser came with the house.”
Michael mulled that over for a moment, and it was Robin who asked the next question.
“You said you’d set a couple of things in motion. What’s the other thing?”
Calmly Raven said, “The news will break sometime after Sutton leaves the yacht that the fishing tournament in the area has a special prize this year. It will be announced by the local radio station—which Sutton’s men listen to constantly.”
“What prize?” Michael asked.
“Twenty thousand dollars to the fisherman who brings in the biggest catch,” Raven said. “Within an hour the entire area should be bow to stern with hopeful anglers.”
“Damn.” Michael looked at her thoughtfully. “And since Sutton’s men will know about it, and won’t be able to wave their guns around to ward off the crowd—”
“A plausible diversion,” Robin said softly. “They’ll be paying so much attention to the fishermen, they won’t even notice us.”
“We should be able to get close,” Raven agreed.
“Have you already arranged that?” Michael asked.
“Pending your approval,” Teddy told him. “The contest officials and the radio station will be notified as soon as Sutton leaves the yacht. And the prize is being offered—officially—by a company in the area that handles fishing equipment. If any of Sutton’s men are suspicious enough to call and check it out, they’ll find the deal’s legitimate all the way.”
“And just to make sure we don’t find ourselves tripping over eager fishermen,” Raven said wryly, “Dane was busy before the sun rose, casually passing the word among his fellow fishermen that the best fishing is around the two islands south of the Maze. Those islands are close but not too close. So, hopefully, while Sutton’s men are watching the water traffic to their south, we can circle around, cross the island from the north, and reach the yacht while their attention’s focused elsewhere.”
Michael looked at them for a moment, a smile tugging at his lips. “Is there a base you haven’t covered?”
“That was the easy stuff,” Teddy dismissed. “The trick is still going to be getting the girls off the yacht. Distracted or not, those men are armed. Six of us, counting Dane, but we can’t just swarm over the boat.”
“When the cat’s away …” Robin murmured suddenly in a thoughtful tone.
Raven met her eyes, then nodded slowly. “Maybe. If we could lead a few of those guys astray, get them off the yacht …”
“They’re professionals,” Michael objected, seeing where this was leading and not happy about it.
“And they’ve been under a great deal of strain,” Raven pointed out. “Stuck on that boat and not allowed to touch the girls. The girls are probably drugged; certainly they’re locked in a cabin or two. They don’t really need all those guards. And maybe a few of
those guys would love to be invited to a party.”
Michael narrowed his eyes. “If we survive this, your husbands will lynch me.”
“They’d be the first to understand,” Teddy assured him blithely.
“What if the guards bring their guns to the party?” Robin asked.
Raven smiled slightly. “Teddy brought her usual supply of tranquilizer darts; we’ll be armed too.”
“I don’t like it,” Michael said.
Robin looked at him levelly. “What choice do we have?”
He nodded slowly, getting the point. “You’re right. What choice do we have?”
FIVE
THE BLACK ANGEL rode her sea anchor easily on the calm water, engines silent. Michael hadn’t dared take her in any closer, wary of risking Sutton’s recognition of the boat. Nor was he prepared to circle around to the north, leaving his enemy with a clear escape route to the south. He and the women agreed that if Sutton moved at all, he would most likely head south since that presented his best chances of leaving U.S. territory quickly and safely.
All of them knew they were battling the clock. Their best guess was that Sutton had initially planned to have only Lisa on his yacht by the time Michael came hunting him; the crackdown on boats around the coast had forced him to keep the other girls aboard days longer than was safe or practical. He would soon be forced to decide which was his priority: revenge against Michael or the valuable cargo of the girls.
Both Michael and Dane felt strongly that revenge would come out on top; therefore, they had to move against Sutton before he decided to cut his losses. He was a man who took few chances, and the girls would never be freed alive.
Michael knew only too well that the plan he’d agreed to with the others was one that depended on a number of opinions and instincts. And the linchpin of their entire plan was that Sutton would return to Miami once he heard of the danger to his investments. Only then could they hope to lessen the odds against them by attempting to “divide and conquer” the security force on the yacht.