by Tawny Weber
“I’ll be careful,” Lila promised grimly, her knees giving a quick tremble in remembered terror. “I’m only staying long enough to find out whether Alberto Rodriguez is dead or alive. If he’s alive, I’ll give him my pitch, I’ll convince him to take the job, then I’ll get the first flight home.”
“And if he’s dead?”
Lila threw her hand in the air. She’d already reported it to the police. To a SEAL. What was left?
“I’ll get someone to listen,” she vowed.
“Lila, this whole thing makes me nervous. You should come home tomorrow. Your dad made arrangements already. Use those. Come back to California. You’ll save in travel costs, make nice with your dad, get back home safely, get your dad’s support. You do that event your dad wants, make some new connections, find us a handful of needy new clients. It’s a win-win.”
Lila pushed aside the dregs of crappy tea and looked around the hotel room with its brilliant colors and tired art. She glanced out the window at the gorgeous moonlit ocean and shadowy figures, any one of which might be a murderous killer.
“Okay. Maybe,” she acknowledged, sinking into the bed as her faith in herself sank as low as her energy. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She clicked off, tossed the phone aside and rubbed her hands over her face. She wished she could wipe away the aching confusion. When that didn’t work, she shoved to her feet and, snagging her robe from the closet, headed for a hot bubble bath.
She’d soak away her worries, then she’d go to sleep.
She’d decide on the rest on the morning.
* * *
But by morning, all Lila had was a headache brought on by a lack of sleep and the million questions and doubts ricocheting around in her mind.
She was 100 percent sure that she didn’t want anything to do with her father.
She was 90 percent sure she’d witnessed a murder.
She was 85 percent sure the man she’d seen killed was Rodriguez.
What she wasn’t sure of was what the hell to do.
Since she didn’t, she finished packing and tucked her key card in her pocket before leaving her room to see if the local drugstore was open yet. She needed something for this headache, something for the nausea in her belly and, maybe, a bowl of fruit.
“Buenos días, senorita,” the pretty girl at the front desk greeted with a smile bright enough to add to Lila’s headache. “You have messages.”
Of course she did. Lila took the pink slips of paper the girl held out without a word. She knew who they were from, what they said, and couldn’t quite summon the energy to be annoyed. Instead, she tucked away the reminder to try again later along with the messages.
“Can I get aspirin?”
“I’m sorry, senorita. We can’t dispense medications.”
“Where’s the nearest pharmacy or drugstore?” she asked, looking around the quaint lobby.
Walking a lot faster than the easy stroll she’d enjoyed the previous evening, she followed the simple directions to the edge of the beach.
Instead of containing partying people, this morning’s crowd was sparse. The handful of people on the street looked like they were heading for work, a handful biking with baskets filled with fruits and vegetables. She peered at each of them, trying to see if she saw murder on any of the faces.
She was pretty sure murderers were more the night prowling sort than the veggie carting kind. But how could she be sure?
She couldn’t.
She hadn’t seen the shooters’ faces. She’d seen half of a man holding a gun, and heard two male voices. That wasn’t enough to pick them out from the crowd.
Still, the knots were so tight in her stomach that she figured she’d better get nausea medicine along with the aspirin.
For now, she just needed to forget about it. Enjoy the view, she told herself, glancing past the sandy dunes at the white-tipped waters beyond. The fishermen were out, she noted, seeing their boats dotting the horizon. Anchored next to a rickety looking dock of dry, rotted wood was a cabin cruiser that looked too battered to brave the crashing waves.
She felt a little like that boat.
Rough.
Unstable.
And seasick.
Or maybe it was the nerves bouncing around in her belly making her woozy.
She hurried around a pair of dogs into the tiny convenience store with its poster-plastered windows and local candy display. Five minutes later, a small paper bag in one hand and her head now throbbing so hard she could feel every beat of her heart, Lila headed back to the hotel. And yes—her shoulders drooped—to her father’s pilot.
Independence was all well and good, and something she’d spent years chasing. But even knowing the cost of giving it up, Lila didn’t see any other choice.
She wasn’t going back to that restaurant by herself. She didn’t care if Chef Rodriguez jumped out of a cake he’d baked himself and yelled surprise. She’d relived that body hitting the floor a dozen times in her dreams.
Her father had said he’d have the helicopter here at eight, so it’d be here at eight. She was already packed, so maybe she had time for breakfast and a whole handful of meds.
She glanced at her watch, then someone jostled her shoulder. A beefy hand grabbed at her as if to steady her steps. Before Lila could snap that she was fine, before she could do more than turn her head, the same hand slapped over her mouth, another wrapping around her waist to drag her toward the beach.
She jammed her heel into the guy’s leg. When it got her a curse and slowed him a little, she kicked a few more times. He yanked her into the deep doorway next to a bike shop to get a stronger grip on her.
She squirmed, wrenching her arm this way and that, trying to yank it free enough so she could reach into her purse. There was pepper spray in there. She never traveled without it. She just had to get her hands on it. One finger on the canister, and she’d be able to blast this hulking man right in the damned face.
Or she could scream. Screaming was good. Even at six in the morning on a deserted beach, there had to be someone out there who’d hear her. But now that he’d readjusted his grip, he continued dragging her to the beach. Through the tall tufts of grass, she could see a dock, and glinting in the morning sun, a boat.
Lila fought harder.
He managed a few dozen feet before she was able to wiggle her jaw enough that his hand slid higher. As soon as his finger hit the seam of her lips, she bit, hard, grunting her triumph at the taste of blood.
But while her abductor uncovered her mouth to shake off the pain, he didn’t release her.
So all Lila could do was scream.
And hope someone—anyone—would hear.
Chapter 6
Travis didn’t know what had woken him from a dead sleep, but his eyes flew open. Heart racing, he jackknifed into a sitting position, forgetting that he had crashed in the hammock. It went swinging like a carnival ride as he looked around, trying to get his bearings.
The beach.
Yeah. He was on the beach.
He squinted at the sun as it rose over the ocean and deemed it about six in the morning. The beach was empty but for a few bodies curled up here and there in singles and pairs. Leftovers from the previous night’s bonfire, he supposed.
So what had woken him?
Another nightmare?
He had only a vague handle on his last dream, but he was pretty sure it’d included bare skin and hot pleasure instead of vicious pain.
So that probably wasn’t it.
He tried to puzzle it out, but all he could come up with were images of silken hair, sweet curves and a spike made to jab into his temple.
Then there was a scream.
Another scream, he realized, shoving gracelessly to his feet.
That’s what’d woken him.
Lila w
as in trouble.
He was sure of it.
* * *
Oh, God.
Lila squirmed, trying to loosen the rope wrapped around her wrists. Her flesh burned as she twisted her hands from one side to the other, but the coils held tight.
Her earlier headache was now pounding hard enough to make her eyeballs throb, so she gave up twisting long enough to close them and let her head fall back against the wall.
Over the murmer of two men’s voices fading into the distance, she could just imagine her father’s response, his litany of I told you so’s as familiar as her own name. He’d pay a ransom. She knew he’d pay. She should have a little gratitude, and dammit, she was digging deep trying to find some.
But as much as she wanted to be rescued, as terrified as she was about whatever was going on, over what these men might do to her, she knew that if her father ransomed her, she’d never stop paying.
He was a man who expected a high return on his investments.
Maybe she could stay here.
She squinted her eyes open just enough to look around the cabin. Styrofoam showed through the fake-wood laminated walls dotted with the same black mold sweeping over the green Astroturf-style carpet. The dead fish scent was almost strong enough to overpower the aroma of musty mold.
She didn’t want to stay here.
She wanted to go home.
Since the only sound she heard was the ocean, she forced her eyes open all the way and looked around.
She had to swallow three times to get air past the terror bubbling up in her throat. Once she’d found air, she managed to focus on the space.
No thugs in sight.
Nothing that looked like weapons of torture.
Maybe they kept the torture devices in another cabin.
Fingers clenching and unclenching behind her back, she multiplied sevens in her mind until her heart rate slowed enough to stop choking her.
Think, she told herself, letting her almost clear head fall back against the wall. Then, remembering what was on the walls, she yanked it upright again as fast as she could. Barely resisting the urge to scream, she shook it hard to try and get rid of anything that might’ve crawled into her hair.
She had to get out of here.
Now. God.
How?
She twisted again, this time her entire body instead of just her hands. When twisting didn’t work, she squirmed, wriggled and damn near contorted herself into a pretzel. But the ropes didn’t budge an inch.
She clenched her teeth tight to keep the scream from exploding from her throat. Her vision went black, white spots dancing in front of her eyes until she forced herself to breathe again.
Breathe and think.
Okay.
Maybe she should scream. Someone might be close enough to hear her. They’d come looking, stage a rescue and get her the hell out of here.
Then again, if the goons were on this boat, screaming would bring them running. And despite snapping her teeth on one goon’s hand, she hadn’t managed to get a solid look at any faces.
She didn’t know if she’d been grabbed over the chef’s possible murder, or if she was here in some crappy kidnapping quest.
And she was pretty sure that she wanted to get out of here before she found out.
* * *
Travis wasn’t up on the voices of every female resident or tourist in Puerto Viejo, so he couldn’t scientifically explain why he was sure those shrieks he’d heard were from Lila. In any case, he rolled out of the hammock, slammed his feet into shoes and hit the sand at a hard run.
The scream had come from the edge of the boardwalk. He scanned faces as he ran for anyone who looked like they might have seen or heard a thing. It took less than ten minutes to confirm that it was the curvy blonde who had been grabbed. That it was only one guy, whose description ranged from a short blond man with a beard to a huge bruiser with a scar.
His knee was throbbing by the time he’d finished asking around. Since the direction the guy had hauled the blonde was as vague as the guy’s description, Travis ran the most likelies and loped painfully toward the beach. The gamble paid off when he saw the deep furrows in the sand.
Since the ruts ended at the grayed wood dock, Travis took a second to review his options. He could get the cops. All it’d take was a whistle to get someone’s attention. He could let the cops make the call. But their competence was iffy, and after the crap with Garcia last night, and every encounter he’d had with Montoya, he simply didn’t trust them.
So he was on his own.
Outside his teammates, that was the way he preferred it.
So he assessed the situation.
It was possible Lila’s captor had a boat waiting, but Travis hadn’t heard a motor. He didn’t see a wake. So the likeliest possibility was that the guy had dragged her to one of the boats on this dock.
Process of elimination ruled out the ski boat, Manny’s dad’s fishing boat and the oarless rowboat, leaving a cabin cruiser he hadn’t seen before.
Target sighted.
Chances were high that Lila’s captor was armed. But unless there were a dozen of them with automatic weapons, Travis figured he would have to handle it bare-handed.
He kicked off his shoes and walked silently into the water. An easy swim around the perimeter gave him a view through three of the four portholes and assured him that the cabins were empty. Which meant Lila was in that last cabin. Whether or not she was alone was the question. He did a through recon of the top deck to assure himself that it was clear.
Travis grabbed on to the side of the boat, then hesitated.
And took a deep breath.
He’d been involved in a hell of a lot of rescue missions. He’d gone behind enemy lines to reclaim his men. He’d once rescued a freaking kitten from a palm tree—and how the hell that tiny ball of fluff had scampered thirty feet up was a puzzle.
Bottom line, he was an expert at scooping the needy out of messes.
So the fact that he had what might be nerves skittering down his spine over doing what came naturally was an irritation. But he had to actually stop and take another slow breath. He regulated his heartbeat, then silently flipped over the side of the boat.
Travis kept low, angling across the trash-ridden deck to the ladder that led below. He waited for the silence to shift. When it didn’t, he slid down the rails, gripping tight to hold his weight so his feet made no impact when he set down.
He had the layout of the boat firmly in mind and knew which cabins he’d scoped were empty. Whoever had grabbed Lila appeared to be gone. But training was training, so he checked each one before pulling out his pocketknife to pick the lock of the last door.
Hand on the knob, Travis listened carefully before twisting it open. He slid inside, silently pulling the door shut behind him and looked around the dimly lit cabin.
His jaw clenched at the sight of Lila tied to an exposed pipe. She was holding it together really well, but her fear was obvious. She was trembling hard enough that her feet bounced on the floor, her breath catching with each inhalation while she gnawed on her bottom lip.
He wanted to plow his fist into the face of the son of a bitch who’d grabbed her. He wanted to make him suffer for every second of fear she’d felt.
And he’d do just that, he silently vowed.
First, he’d get her out of here. He’d stash her somewhere safe. He’d figure out what the hell was behind her abduction, and who the hell had grabbed her.
Then he’d kick their asses.
But he had to start with the rescue part.
Immediately, he decided, watching her throw her head back.
“Hello,” Travis said quietly, figuring he’d better head her off before she let loose the scream he saw building up there.
Blond hair tumbled around her flushed face, her mer
maid eyes sparking fury as she glared. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth poised to lose it. He had the feeling that if she weren’t tied up, she’d fly across the room and try to kick his ass.
Then, as if suddenly realizing who was dripping seawater in the doorway, her mouth snapped shut and her eyes widened. She released her breath and her shoulders seemed to sag in relief.
Damn, she looked good.
“What the—”
“Quiet,” he warned, keeping his voice down. The boat was empty, but sounds carried on the water and he didn’t know when her captor would return.
At his admonishment, her mouth snapped shut. He watched with interest as she yanked herself in line. She took two deep breaths, which did some interesting things for her T-shirt, then pressed her lips together. She fluttered her lashes, narrowed her eyes, then shifted those full lips into a sexy smile.
“What took you so long? Aren’t Super SEALs supposed to move faster?”
He couldn’t figure out why, but her mouthy lack of appreciation made him want to grin. Instead, he gave her a hard-eyed scowl and arched one brow.
“You want out of here or not?”
She caught her breath, then let it go.
“Yeah. I want out of here.”
“Then stop squirming so I can free you.” The shut up he wanted to add to that was unspoken, but from the fury in her eyes, she obviously heard it all the same.
Damn, that was sexy.
He used his pocketknife to make quick work of the ropes around her ankles, then moved behind her. The rich, flowery scent of her hair wrapped around him tighter than the ropes around her wrists. He figured swimming to the rescue had earned him a little pleasure, so he breathed deep as he worked the blade through the three layers of hemp.
Untying her probably wasn’t as sexy as tying her up would be under different circumstances. But it sure put images of that scenario in his head.
Nice.
As soon as he’d cut the ropes, he rubbed his hands over her wrists to get the blood moving again. Her skin was like silk, her bones delicate. His hands moved slower, his thumb sliding along her flesh, easing the welts. She was still trembling.