Captain's Paradise: A Novel

by Kay Hooper

  Robin had never been so afraid, and she had never been more determined to control her fear. The single most important realization Michael had forced her to face was that she had hedged the biggest bet of her life. She had failed an exam she should have passed easily, and that failure had marked her.

  This was a test she had no intention of failing.

  The side of the yacht nearest them, the starboard side, had been empty of activity as long as they had watched, but they waited until they heard Raven’s clear, merry voice hailing the boat before they slipped into the water. Occupied with swimming as quietly as possible, they didn’t catch much of the shouted conversation, but it appeared Raven was castigating them for having redneck friends who were making a shambles of her cruiser’s cabin.

  Her language was decidedly colorful, and seemed to amuse the men remaining on the yacht.

  Reaching the yacht and moving carefully to a point where they could climb aboard unobserved by the guards, they trod water for a few moments, and then Michael very cautiously tossed the grappling hook up to the brass railing. It caught with a barely audible thud. Within seconds he was climbing the knotted rope quickly and easily.

  Robin followed a moment later, not quite as quickly but with no wasted time or motion, and Dane came up after her.

  They were pressed against the wheelhouse, and the sounds of Raven’s conversation with Sutton’s men were clearer now; she was still giving them hell, and they were still laughing and encouraging her.

  Robin found herself automatically reaching for her gun and thumbing off the safety, holding it in a two-handed police grip at her right shoulder, pointed upward. She remained beside Michael as Dane eased toward the bow; until she got safely below, his job was to keep watch and make certain they weren’t surprised by an approach from the front of the yacht. Then, when Robin was below, Dane would ease around to the port side and come at Sutton’s men from the bow while Michael advanced on them from the stern.

  Michael slipped along the wall of the wheelhouse, edging toward the stern until he could peer around and locate the entrance to the cabins below. Dane had provided a sketch of the complete layout of the yacht, and their movements once they got on board had been planned carefully.

  Michael whispered, “The guards must be on the other side of the wheelhouse; I can’t see them.”

  “I’m ready,” Robin murmured.

  Michael nodded once and exchanged places with her, holding his gun ready. “Three minutes, then Dane and I make our move. We’ll be as quiet as possible. As soon as the guards topside are disarmed, I’ll be heading below.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll cover you.” He looked at her, his hard gray eyes lightening briefly in what was almost a smile. “Watch yourself, honey.”

  “You too.” Robin managed a smile, drew a deep breath, then slipped around the side of the wheelhouse. Her bare feet made no sound on the deck, and it took only the space of heartbeats for her to cross the required space to the stairs leading below.

  And this was the part of the plan that, by necessity, had been loosely constructed. The best efforts of Dane and the ladies had not told them how many men, if any, might be belowdeck. They had theorized that a ship of this size, with at least ten men usually aboard, could have a cook, even a steward; they had no way of knowing if one of the “guards” was also the pilot, if one or more men had remained below since the yacht had been under observation, or if there was a crew in addition to Sutton’s thugs.

  Robin’s job was to quickly and quietly secure the area belowdeck and avoid a hostage situation; if she missed even one man, that man could conceivably reach the kidnapped girls before Robin found them. Since the men topside were heavily armed, they posed the immediate danger. But if Michael and Dane were unable to quietly disarm those men, it would sound a warning to anyone below—which was the sole reason she had a three-minute margin in which to work.

  Though her memories of her own time aboard the yacht were clouded, Robin was reasonably sure there had been no guard posted outside the cabin door where she and the other girls had been held; the drugs had apparently made that unnecessary. However, the night she had jumped ship, the storm had required that all hands be topside and busy, which had left her escape route clear.

  But she couldn’t be sure the situation was the same now. She couldn’t be sure about anything at all.

  She went down the stairs in a low crouch, gun ready, tensely hesitating two steps from the bottom to search the area visible from her position and trusting Michael to watch the top of the stairs to prevent her from being surprised from behind. At the bottom of the stairs began a long, narrow L-shaped hallway with several doors opening onto this first arm. The hallway was clear and well lighted. The gallery was just to the left of the stairway, the main cabin, a lounge, to the right, and then, according to Dane, a number of smaller cabins.

  Robin had escaped the cabin located at the very end of the hallway, and Lisa had been somewhere close by. But the cabins in between had to be checked, one by one.

  With the clock in her head ticking away the seconds, Robin came down the remaining two steps, and then pivoted, gun leveled, when she caught a glimpse of movement to her left.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered very softly.

  The man staring in horror at her gun didn’t seem disposed to disobey the order. He was standing in the galley, preparations for a meal all around him, and he was old enough to have few illusions left to him.

  “I’m not with them,” he managed thickly. “I’m just the cook.”

  Robin didn’t have time to reply to that, but she knew very well he had to be aware of the kidnapped girls and she wasn’t feeling very charitable. “Turn around. Hands behind your back, feet apart. Wider!” She hadn’t raised her voice, but the bite in it must have convinced the man she meant business; he followed the orders instantly.

  Standing well back and making certain he remained off balance, Robin found the pair of handcuffs in her belt by touch and with one hand slipped them quickly over his wrists and tightened them. Briefly she nudged him with the gun barrel. “On your knees.” And when he had obeyed, she added, “I’m not alone here. If you make a sound, or try to move, you’ll die. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Her instinct told her he wouldn’t make trouble; she had no time to gag him or take any other precautions. Easing cautiously back out into the hallway, she began to move away from the stairs, hardly aware that her police training was guiding her stance, every movement, barely conscious that her fear, for the first time, was a buried thing. All her senses were probing, listening, all her attention focused on what had to be done.

  She listened briefly at each door, then opened one after another cautiously and scanned the interiors of the rooms. They proved to be empty; she left the doors open as she moved on to the next, and the next.

  The clock in her head told her she had less than a minute left before Michael and Dane would make their move, and there were still doors to open, cabins to search.

  Reaching the bend in the L-shaped hallway, she pressed flat against the wall and peered cautiously around. The hallway was empty. Five doors, the two of them nearest her, thank God, standing open. That left one door on each side of the hallway, and one at the end.

  Robin opened the door on the left of the hallway first, and almost laughed aloud in relief. The tiny cabin was empty except for a girl in the single bunk. Obviously unconscious, she had dark blond hair and looked pale, but her breathing was audible.

  Lisa.

  Robin eased the door shut again and moved silently to the door at the end of the hall. There was no sound from within, and she opened the door slowly. The cabin was almost pitch-dark; Robin remembered then that the portholes had been covered over by tightly closed lids from the outside, preventing any light from entering the cabin.

  Senses flaring, probing the darkness, Robin stepped into the cabin and listened. Breathing. But, of how many people? There was a light switch;
she reached for it cautiously.

  And the silence was shattered, in a nerve-jarring instant, by the vicious chattering of an automatic weapon on the deck above.

  Robin whirled, her heart in her throat, fear for Michael running through her body like ice. Before she could take more than a single step, the last unopened cabin door was yanked open, and a big, muscled man wearing only baggy trousers burst out into the hallway.

  He wasn’t heading for the stairs; he was going for Lisa’s cabin. And he had a gun.

  Robin didn’t hesitate. In the instant granted to her she aimed by instinct and training and squeezed off a single shot. The silencer on her gun muted the usual violent sound so that all that emerged was a whistling pop, and the man’s gun clattered to the floor as he fell back against the wall with a grunt of pain, holding a bleeding hand to his chest.

  “You!” Malignant eyes fixed on her as Robin stepped carefully from the dark cabin, and he started to push himself away from the wall.

  Robin remembered him; she owed most of her bruises to him. She held the gun steady, aimed at the center of his chest, and met his gaze squarely as she spoke very quietly. “Don’t.”

  Whether he would have given in to unreasoning rage became a moot point just then. Thudding footsteps rapidly approached them, and Michael came around the corner with his gun ready. His taut features eased instantly as he saw she was safe, and Robin felt a relief stronger than any she’d ever known make her knees go weak. He was unhurt.

  With the increased odds against him, Robin’s prisoner began muttering curses but made no further attempt to try brute strength against bullets.

  Michael kept the man covered but addressed Robin quickly. “Lisa?”

  She jerked her head toward the door without taking her eyes from the wounded man. “In there.”

  He kept his eyes and gun on the man until he could slip past him in the narrow hallway, then disappeared into Lisa’s cabin.

  Not three minutes later Dane came around the corner. Like Michael, he was whole and unhurt, gun ready. “We’re batting a thousand topside,” he said cheerfully but with a wary eye on the wounded man. “How about here?”

  Robin managed a smile. “Here too. Could you take care of this one while I check on the other girls?”

  “My pleasure.” Dane smiled gently at the man. “Come on, sport, you can put a Band-Aid on that wound before you join your friends on deck.”

  Robin waited until they vanished around the corner, then turned quickly and went back into the darkened cabin. She flipped the light switch on, then sagged in relief when she saw two bunks and two cots occupied by four young women. All of them appeared to be unconscious, but otherwise seemed unharmed.

  Taking up what little remained of the floor space in the cabin was a third cot, empty.

  It was where Robin had experienced her nightmare.

  An hour later all of Sutton’s men, either tied up, unconscious, or both, had been transferred to the deck of the yacht, where those able to muttered curses and dire threats.

  Both were ignored.

  Michael, once satisfied that Lisa was unharmed barring her drugged state, helped Dane in the transfer of the men from the big cruiser. Kyle had brought the cruiser neatly into the cove and alongside the yacht, and the two vessels had been tied together for the duration.

  Outside the cove the fishing tournament went on, the intent fishermen glad the commotion was over and not very concerned about what had happened in the cove. A single small boat had wandered into the cove, and the fisherman at the tiller, ignoring the spectacle of unconscious men being carried onto the yacht, asked Kyle, who was nearest to him, how the fishing was there. Kyle, never at a loss, told him politely that it was lousy and not likely to improve. He accepted her word, and putt-putted back out of the cove with an intense look on his face.

  “Talk about being addicted to a sport,” Dane muttered with a shake of his head, then went to stand guard over their prisoners while the others met in the hallway outside the two cabins still containing five unconscious, unaware young women.

  “Michael, you’re the only one of us with any kind of official status,” Raven said. “It’s your call. Do we radio the Coast Guard, or not?”

  Michael was leaning against the doorjamb of Lisa’s cabin, holding Robin’s hand in his and glancing into the cabin from time to time to keep an eye on his sister. He was frowning a little, but despite that his face looked more at peace than Robin had ever seen it.

  “How long is Sutton likely to be tied up in Miami?” he asked Raven slowly.

  She smiled a little. “Days if we’re lucky. Hours if we’re not. If we call the Coast Guard in, they’ll immediately contact the FBI, and they can contact the police in Miami once we make our statements implicating him in white slavery and kidnapping.”

  “That’s no guarantee the police will be able to find him,” Michael noted.

  “No,” she agreed. “And we don’t know if he has a contact schedule for his men on this boat. If so, and they miss the contact, he’ll be alerted that something is wrong—and he could head for parts unknown before anybody gets near him. We could also have at least one of his men waiting on the coast with his launch who could alert him to any Coast Guard activity in the area.” After a moment she added quietly, “Chances are fifty-fifty the police won’t catch up to him for this before he’s somehow alerted. On the other hand, I don’t see that your chances of catching up to him right away are any better.”

  Michael glanced at Robin, smiled slightly, and nodded as he looked back at the former agent. “That was my reading. We do things legal from this point.”

  Robin felt relief sweep over her. She had been afraid Michael would be bent on getting his own justice, and he wasn’t a man who would be easily stopped. At least he was willing to try the formal route first.

  Raven was nodding. “Right. We have a doctor standing by at a private hospital in Fort Myers. These girls seem all right, but they’ve been heavily drugged for days and it’s a good bet they’re also dehydrated. They need to be under a doctor’s care. We can transfer them to the cruiser, and Kyle and Teddy can have them in Fort Myers within hours. A small security team is also standing by to protect them—particularly Lisa—around the clock.”

  Michael’s smile widened a bit. “I think I’ve asked this before, but is there anything you haven’t thought of?”

  She grimaced slightly. “I couldn’t think of a way to catch Sutton red-handed without endangering the girls. Or a way to cut through the formalities. That means that you, Robin, Dane, and I have to remain here to do all the explaining. Dane and I because we can place Sutton on this yacht; you and Robin because of every other reason, including background information and the fact that Robin was kidnapped herself. We’ll get enough flak as it is for having spirited the girls out of here, but we should get by on the grounds of needed medical attention.”

  “Lisa will be fine,” Teddy assured him. “Someone will be with her all the time, and the moment she wakes up we’ll tell her you’re safe.”

  Michael glanced back into Lisa’s cabin, and nodded. “Then let’s do it.”

  It took almost another hour to move the unconscious girls onto the cruiser and make them comfortable, and then Kyle, with Teddy aboard, headed north toward Fort Myers.

  The sun was beginning to set by then, and Michael went back across the Maze to bring his boat around to the cove after radioing the Coast Guard and explaining the situation. He had only just returned and tied up alongside the yacht when a Coast Guard cutter and a number of suspicious officials arrived.

  Raven and Robin had managed to change into jeans and blouses before the cruiser had gone, and both Michael and Dane had found a moment to change as well, but none of them had eaten since lunch and they all found the questioning process extremely wearing. Darkness fell, and still the officials were trying to get every last detail, and questioning again all those they had.

  They strongly disapproved of the fact that Robin had carried
and used a gun she had no license for; they were bewildered by Raven’s involvement; they spoke sternly about the kidnapped girls having been removed from the scene of their incarceration; they showed a marked, though veiled, hostility toward Dane; and Michael’s credentials were viewed with open suspicion.

  None of them was allowed to leave the yacht or to contact anyone.

  By the third hour, though all four were accustomed to dealing with police and officials in one way or another, Michael, Robin, Raven, and Dane were all conscious of threadbare patience.

  The situation might have continued until long into the night, but there was the sound of an approaching engine, an abrupt flurry of footsteps on the deck above—and a deep, commanding voice began to take charge with a vengeance.

  Robin, sitting with the others in the lounge as they were being questioned—again—by two FBI men, sat up suddenly with a jerk, her eyes widening.

  “Good Lord,” she exclaimed.

  Michael, who had also recognized the voice, kept his arm around her and met her startled gaze with a smile. “I figured he’d be showing up sooner or later.”

  “You know?” She blinked, then began to smile. “He’s your boss, isn’t he?”

  “ ’Fraid so,” Michael confessed. “I made the connection with the names a while back, but because I hadn’t been in touch with him since before you and I met—”

  “You didn’t feel the need to tell me?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What are we talking about?” Raven asked with interest, ignoring the suspicious stares of the FBI men.

  Before Robin could reply, a tall, powerful-looking, silver-haired man in his late fifties strode into the room and sent a single sweeping glance around the room out of vivid green eyes. If the eagle’s glare paused on Robin for an instant, it wasn’t obvious, and passed on immediately to the two FBI agents. So rapier-sharp was the glare that no one in the room would have been surprised if those special agents had begun looking for wounds on their bodies.

  “What the hell,” he asked politely, “is going on here?”