Cursed

by Melissa Michelle Green

  Before he could get himself in between them though, he was shocked to see that Jami had the desk chair in her hands and was lunging at their attacker full force.

  She crashed into him and fell to the side with the force of the impact, but she bought Val enough time to recuperate. Val took advantage and picked the chair up while the man was still trying to get to his feet and hit him with it. This time he stayed down, and Val stood crouched over him, breathing heavily.

  Jami was still on the floor and appeared to be looking for something. He could hear footsteps approaching, someone had heard their assailant shouting.

  “Hey, get over here and hide behind the door. Someone else is coming!”

  “No, just a second, I’m sure I saw—”

  “Well aren’t you two quite the pair of troublemakers?”

  Val turned to face their new opponent with dread.

  When the other man’s expression turned from sarcastic to shocked, Val followed his gaze to see Jami standing next to the unconscious man with a gun in her hand.

  “Step inside and shut the door, quietly.”

  He looked over his shoulder as though he were contemplating racing back the other way, but she clicked the safety off and placed her finger on the trigger. This convinced him that she knew enough about the gun to shoot him because with no further hesitation, he stepped inside and shut the door.

  Snarling, he threatened, “You’re never going to be able to get the jump on everybody.”

  Val was slow to respond, still trying to make the image of Jami standing there with a gun in her hand fit with everything else he knew about her, but Jami’s response was immediate.

  “Well, we’ve got two down, and this boat isn’t that big, how many other assholes can you have up there?”

  The fucker twisted his narrow face into a sneer. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Stupid bitch, we should’ve killed you both.”

  “Hey now, that’s no way to talk to a lady.” Val gathered his wits and stepped forward.

  “Who the fuck are you, John Wayne?”

  Val noted his definite American accent while he ground his teeth to avoid rising to the bait.

  He tipped his chin at the guy, leaning in to whisper in Jami’s ear, “This guy look familiar?”

  She began to shake her head then stopped, mouth open, “Holy crap.”

  “Yep, creepy photographer guy from the hotel patio.”

  Using the rope that had been tied around their wrists, he secured the asshole the same way, making him lay down on the floor so he could tie his wrists to those of the unconscious man.

  He stood, stepping closer to Jami, and lowering his voice, said, “Do you really know how to handle that thing?”

  She nodded, pushing her lips together. “Yes, David, the FBI agent I told you about, has shown me a few things. I’m nowhere near as good as my sister, but I know how everything works.”

  Seeing the determination on her face, Val didn’t suggest that he take the gun from her. Instead, he crouched to search their kidnappers for anything that might be useful, finding only a small pen knife in the front pocket of the one still out cold. He stuffed a pillowcase cover in the other guy’s mouth. Wouldn’t do for him to yell and get everyone’s attention as soon as they stepped out the door.

  “All right, next. You follow behind me, keeping an eye out and the gun up. I’ll take the lead. First person we encounter I’m going to jump, then will use the gun to encourage them to cooperate.”

  “Got it.”

  They slipped out the door with no problems and Jami immediately recognized the layout of the boat, it was almost exactly like the one that she had chartered. She gestured with the gun and leaned forward to whisper in Val’s ear, “The flybridge is above us, somebody’s got to be up there.”

  He acknowledged her statement with a sharp nod but pointed to the built-in benches around the table opposite them. His diving gear was piled on top of the table and her luggage had been torn open and was piled on the benches.

  He whispered, “Passport.” But she had already moved to the pile and was digging through, coming up triumphantly with a small bag.

  She unzipped it and smiled at him. “Got it.”

  He wasn’t looking at her though, he had noticed that some of the items in the piles looked familiar. Holy shit, that was his stuff!

  “Some of this is mine.”

  He dug through as well, finding his passport along with his wallet.

  “No sign of the research I had with me, but this means that these guys paid that kid to leave me in the middle of the ocean. That wasn’t just a robbery. They are definitely after the pendant.”

  Jami’s face paled, but he was no longer surprised to see the steel in her eyes.

  They heard movement above them, and he put a finger to his lips, gesturing at the stairs. She nodded silently and followed him as he crept up.

  A man was dozing on the bench in front of the pilot’s wheel, and Val took the easy way out, taking the gun from Jami’s fingers and swiped it sharply on the guy’s head before he even noticed he had company. Once he was unconscious, Val recognized him as the guy who’d been taking pictures of Jami at dinner.

  Jami shuddered when he pointed it out. “That’s just creepy, knowing someone’s been following me.”

  The difficult part proved to be getting him down the stairs, so Val ended up dragging him, with Jami supervising and holding the gun in case he woke up.

  He heaved and grunted getting the bigger guy into the cabin with the other two, but he managed it. He used a length of rope that Jami brought him from one of the supply cabinets to tie the third man to the bed frame.

  Once he was secured, they worked together to go through the rest of the boat to be sure no one else was on board. As soon as they were sure they were alone Jami used her cell to call the dive shop, explaining that they’d been attacked by pirates and that they needed to send police out to check on Illeana and Stefano.

  Then they went back up to the flybridge, and it didn’t take Val long to figure out where they were.

  “Well, turns out these fuckers actually did us a favor, babe.”

  She raised her eyebrows at the endearment but didn’t say anything, and he chalked that one up as a win, continuing without making a point of it. He nodded at the color beginning to ease out over the water as the sun crept up. “We were out most of the night, we’re only a few miles from the mainland.”

  “We’re almost all the way back to Greece?”

  “Yes. Which, now that we have the pendant, is exactly where I want to be. We need to get back on American soil ASAP.”

  He watched her face as she followed that train of thought.

  “So, you’re going to take the pendant back to California with you?”

  Val shook his head as he adjusted course slightly and set the autopilot for the closest port in Greece. He’d take control back when it was time to pilot the rest of the way in.

  “You know, I was lying there for an hour while you were unconscious. I was trying to get our ropes undone, had no idea where we were, who these guys were, or where the pendant was. But all I could think about was you. That you were in danger. That you might get hurt.”

  He moved away from the instrument panel and stopped directly in front of her.

  “Sure, the necklace belongs to my family. I wanted to find it though, for her. I wanted to finish what my mother had started. Well, I did find it, but it looks like she started something that I can’t finish without you. And frankly, I don’t want to.”

  He moved a lock of hair from her cheek gently. “I think we should go to Colorado. I think we need to have a family meeting, or whatever, with your sister and all of your friends. We need to figure out what our next move is, and we all need to be on the same page. The asshole who paid these guys to kidnap us to find this pendant has got to be the same guy who caused all the trouble with the chalice and the dagger. But now we have some leverage.”

  He’d been watching her face
as he spoke, watching as the clouds cleared from the swirling coffee and caramel in her eyes and a smile tilted the corners of her lips up.

  “What are you thinking?”

  His heart pounded; he couldn’t believe he was actually nervous. What if she said she just wanted to take the pendant and go home without him?

  20

  Jami felt like she was going to explode. She’d gone from terrified to proactive to doubtful in twenty minutes and now the hope that was surging through her was almost unbearable. She had been more afraid of Val’s answer than she had been when she woke up with her hands tied behind her back.

  She realized somewhere along the way that what had happened to her hadn’t made her weaker, it made her stronger.

  She’d already survived it once, and she’d only been six years old. She was twenty-seven now and had spent most of her life afraid of the next horrible thing that might happen. When she had been faced with the actual next worst thing, it hadn’t been that bad.

  She hadn’t freaked out. She had planned, executed, and generally handled herself pretty damn well.

  But just now, when Val had turned to face her, his face so serious, her first thought had been, That’s it, he’s just going to want to take the necklace and go home. I will have done all of this for nothing, and worse, somehow, I started trusting him along the way.

  Now when he stood before her, not even trying to hide the hope on his face, all she felt was joy.

  Joy that they were alive, that she had pushed herself this hard, and that he was standing in front of her asking for more time together.

  The sun had just come up and there were no longer any shadows to hide in. The color was high in Val’s cheekbones from the sunshine and exertion. He was still wearing the plain white T-shirt and jeans that he’d fallen asleep in the night before. The silver gray of his eyes looked deeper here near the ocean, reflecting the colors around them, and his dark hair barely brushed his shoulders, making her want to thread her fingers through it and pull him to her.

  Instead, she placed her right hand on his chest, feeling his warmth through the shirt, and his heartbeat increase.

  She didn’t feel any hesitation, any shyness. She felt happy.

  Confident.

  She smiled. “Come to Colorado. We’ll figure everything else out. But you can do one more thing for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “Kiss me.” His eyes turned smoky, and her breath hitched when he laced his right hand through her hair. He kissed her lightly, gently, just teasing her lips.

  “You are amazing. And I want to do so much more than kiss you. But not here, and not now.”

  He pulled back. “We have about two hours before we hit the mainland. Did you find your phone? We need plane tickets.”

  “And showers. I’d kill for a shower.”

  He winced playfully. “Let’s be careful with the killing jokes for now, hmm?”

  They spent an hour putting their luggage back together, doing inventory to see what was missing, and taking a quick shower. Only their research was missing.

  “Dammit!” Val scrubbed his hand through his still damp hair. “It pisses me off that all the research is gone. I’ve read it all through a couple of times, but I would’ve liked to have been able to compare it to what you had, maybe we could’ve come up with something new.”

  “I know, I feel the same way. I didn’t mention this earlier, but nobody knows where I am. I took that research, basically stole it, and snuck out of town.”

  At Val’s incredulous look, Jami elaborated, “They’ve been taking care of me my whole life, and to be fair, I never pushed back. As a matter fact, I think I thought that’s how it was supposed to be. And honestly, anything else seemed really scary for a long time.”

  “So, what changed?”

  “I don’t know when, and I don’t know why, but at some point, I realized that as much as I love my house and my dog and my family, I wasn’t happy. I guess I just want…more.”

  “That I can definitely understand. I think, for a while now, I’ve been going through the motions. I’m good at my job, and when I get interested in something, I can write a hell of a story about it…even if I do say so myself. But now I’ve got myself into a situation where I need to get a good story turned in or they’re going to fire me. And my instinct was ‘Oh shit, that can’t be good, can’t have that happen’. But now I think I needed a kick in the ass.”

  She wanted to ask what he’d done to get to the point where he thought he’d be fired, but he was fiddling with the cell phone they’d taken off one of the guys in the cabin, it was one of those burner phones she’d seen people talk about in movie. Her life had gotten entirely too weird. They’d searched it for a while but there were no contacts, and all the calls and text messages, if there had been any, had been deleted.

  When it started vibrating, he almost dropped it in surprise.

  He met her eyes, and she bit her lip, then shook her head no. “Better not. We don’t know what David can get off it, and we don’t want them to know we have it yet, right?”

  “Good point. I’ll turn it off in case they’re tracking it somehow.” He slipped the phone into his carry-on and turned to the pilot’s console. “Time to bring this baby in. Now, cross your fingers that they didn’t steal it and we don’t get arrested.”

  “Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that!”

  If the boat was stolen then they either weren’t spotted or nobody had reported it yet, they managed to dock and disembark with no complications.

  Jami had managed to get the last two seats on a flight out of Athens, but they were going to have to race to make it.

  Val shoved their bags into the back of the taxi, and they were off.

  They had charged their own dead phones on the boat after they’d dug them out of the pile and Jami was lost in thought, staring out the window at Athens as it wizzed by when her phone vibrated with a text message alert. Actually, five, she realized when she picked up her phone, as well as three missed calls.

  All from her sister, of course. Considering how long she’d gone without hearing from her, it wasn’t too bad, Jami thought.

  All the messages were variations of Where are you? and Are you OK? and Please answer me, so Jami texted her sister back.

  Heading home today, I’ll text you when I land. I’m safe. Lots to tell you.

  She smiled when she got a response back immediately, she could picture her sister pacing with the phone in her hand.

  FFS, you scared me to death. Glad you’re coming home. Love you.

  Love you too, sis.

  She tucked her phone into her bag as they pulled up in front of the airport and smiled at Val’s questioning look. “My sister, checking up on me.”

  “Well, Jesus, I hope you didn’t tell her everything that happened, she’ll have a heart attack.”

  “No, I’ll wait and tell her in person.”

  Val nodded as he tipped the taxi driver and they hurried inside the airport. They were out of breath by the time they got to the gate and the flight attendant was getting ready to shut the door.

  “Wow, you guys barely made it.”

  They settled themselves in two seats in the back row of the first-class section and heaved a sigh of relief at the same time.

  “Man, that was a hell of a twenty-four hours.”

  “Holy crap, I didn’t even think about it that way. No wonder I’m starving!”

  Val laughed out loud at that and the young woman sitting across the aisle from them glanced over curiously. Jami was amused to see her expression change to one of obvious interest. She thought about that as they took off and were served their meal, noting the petite blonde’s attempts at surreptitious looks. Val didn’t seem to notice, or he didn’t care. Or maybe he was used to it. Either way, all it did was serve to remind Jami how insanely hot he was.

  Val pulled the shade down over the window on their row and they both leaned their chairs back. He had his eyes closed and his
breathing had evened out when she realized she was staring at him. She started guiltily and squirmed. Without opening his eyes, he reached over with his left hand and rested it on hers.

  “Don’t worry, babe. Nothing to do on this flight but catch up on our rest so you might as well relax. I’m right here.”

  Oddly, that did help her settle down, and she drifted off to sleep with the airplane blanket under her chin, dreaming of another boat trip with Val— one that didn’t involve kidnappers.

  21

  VAL WOKE up a couple of hours into the flight and carefully climbed over Jami to avoid waking her up. He adjusted her blanket for her before he headed down the aisle to the restroom, smiling at how she’d managed to make herself comfortable. She’d been so jumpy when they first sat down, he wasn’t sure she was going to be able to get any rest. He was glad she was sleeping; he had a feeling things were going to get crazier once they were in Colorado.

  He was washing his hands when his phone buzzed. He checked to see that it was his editor asking for a status on the story.

  Fuck.

  He wasn’t ready to tell her that he was out; he still had some things to figure out. He thought he could probably still put together a pretty decent story for them, the problem was the only angle he had was Jami. And he didn’t want to use her for the story, especially knowing who she was.

  Making good progress, I’ll have something to you in two days.

  He turned his phone off after sending the message and returned to his seat to try to get some more sleep.

  The next time he woke up, Jami was awake and watching a movie on the screen on the back of the seat in front of her. When she saw that he was awake she smiled and removed her headphones.

  They spent the rest of the uneventful flight laughing over the comedy they watched together, eating, and chatting.