by V. K. Sykes
A moment passed before he responded. “I know he made you say that.”
Holly nodded her head as if she was continuing to listen. Cain shot her an impatient look.
“Just hang on, babe,” Micah said, his voice calm and low. “I’m in my boat not far behind you. I can see the ferry ahead.”
Thank God. Micah could always tell when something was wrong. Ever since they were kids, he’d always known, even when she’d tried to pretend everything was fine.
“Yes, I’m absolutely sure they didn’t get off,” she said in a stronger voice. She gave a nod as if she were acknowledging a response and then said, “Okay, I’ll meet you at the Portland terminal.” She hung up.
“Good. Give me back the phone,” Cain said.
He took it from her and shoved it in his jacket pocket.
When the ferry bumped against the dock, nobody in the cabin moved. That wasn’t surprising, since hardly anyone got off at Great Diamond going in this direction. The stop would be just long enough to board a few more passengers heading to Portland.
As soon as the gangway banged down onto the dock, Cain stood up, followed by Brandy. He slung the sports bag over his shoulder while his girlfriend grabbed the suitcase.
“Get up,” Cain said in that low, menacing voice. “You’re coming too.”
Holly’s stomach dived. “What? Why?”
Cain grabbed her arm and made her get up, then pulled her along with him. His free hand—the one with the knife—dug into her side again. As he hustled her up the stairs and then across the deck and the gangway, she frantically tried to figure out what to do. Part of her wanted to struggle, fighting back and taking her chances, but another part of her was paralyzed with shock.
Cain hustled her over to a nearby ramp that led onto a small floating pier where a single motorboat was tied up. There, Holly’s brain finally kicked back into gear. They were obviously going to take that boat and race off somewhere—there were certainly thousands of places to hide in the islands and coves all along the coast. But what did they intend to do with her? Let her go or make her go with them? Surely they must be thinking that, if they let her go now, they’d be long gone by the time she was able to alert Micah or anyone else.
Little did they know that Micah was closing in.
A moment later, Cain handed her off to his girlfriend—along with the knife—and jumped down into the skiff. Brandy held on to her arm while Cain flipped up the cover of the ancient-looking Mercury outboard engine. He was clearly intending to hot-wire the old thing.
Cain looked back up at Brandy. “Get her down here in the boat now and then untie the mooring lines.”
Brandy gave Holly a poke in the side. “You heard him, bitch.”
She stared at the two idiots. “You’re really going to kidnap me?”
God, she was so seriously tired of bullies pushing her around. Like these two, and even people like Jackson and her business partners. Yes, the knife made her nervous—very nervous—but she had no intention of just caving in to these insane threats. She’d figured out what she had to do.
Micah should be appearing any minute now. He had one of the fastest boats on the bay, and he knew they were at or very near the Great Diamond ferry dock. All she had to do was get away from Cain and let Micah take care of the rest.
“Of course, you’re our insurance,” Cain snapped. “Now get in the goddamn boat.”
Insurance? Clearly, Logan Cain had been watching way too many bad cop shows or thrillers, probably while he was stoned.
Muttering to herself, Holly climbed down into the small craft and sat on the bench in the bow where Cain had pointed. Fortunately, Brandy and the knife had remained on the dock, taking care of the ropes, so that would make things a whole lot easier.
As Cain turned away to focus again on the motor, Holly kicked off her shoes, preparing to get wet.
Micah figured Cain would try to get away in a boat—either one he’d left at Great Diamond or one he’d steal. He and Keele damn sure wouldn’t stay where they were, since there was no way they could hide for long on the small island.
He guided the Catalina around Echo Point and spotted Cain and Keele at a small pier not far from the ferry dock. He was less than a hundred yards away now, closing in fast. Cain was sitting in a skiff while his girlfriend was still on the pier, struggling with a mooring line. The outboard’s engine cover was up, which told Micah that Cain was trying to hot-wire it. But right now Cain’s back was turned to the motor, and he was yelling at Keele. She was yelling right back at him, her face beet red.
Holly was nowhere in sight. Micah huffed out a relieved sigh. They must have let her stay on the ferry, and Holly was probably trying to borrow a phone to call him right now.
Still, it had been a few minutes since the boat docked, and she hadn’t called yet, so that didn’t seem right. Could they have hurt her? That thought made him want to smash something into little pieces. Like Cain’s face.
He couldn’t let himself think like that. Just focus on the problem in front of you.
Without cutting power, he blasted his boat straight across the harbor directly at the skiff. Cain turned back to work on the skiff’s engine, and a few seconds later, it sputtered to life, belching out puffs of black smoke. Keele started yelling at Cain again, waving her hand and pointing in Micah’s direction. When Cain whipped around to look, Micah could clearly see both shock and panic spread over his face.
With Micah’s boat closing in so fast, Cain might be afraid it was about to ram him. If it did, while the Catalina would be badly damaged, the skiff and Cain would be blown to smithereens.
Barely slowing, Micah swerved hard to his right at the very last second, throwing up a gigantic wash that nearly overturned the much smaller boat. Craning to look over his shoulder, Micah saw Cain tumble over, scrambling for a hold so he didn’t get tossed into the water. Even over the sound of his outboard, Micah could hear Keele shrieking at the top of her lungs from the pier.
Micah spun the Catalina around in a tight circle, blocking the wildly rocking skiff. He throttled to a stop and braced himself as he pulled out his service weapon. Cain stared, stunned, at the gun pointing right at him. Keele stood frozen above on the pier, her mouth agape.
“Hands up, both of you,” he yelled.
Two sets of hands shot up in the air. Micah made a motion to indicate that he wanted them to climb into his boat. Once there, he intended to cuff them and head straight to Portland where Turner would take them into custody.
“Micah!”
Micah froze for a second at the sound of the voice, coming at him from the shoreline somewhere to his left. He glanced over toward the rocks near the ferry dock and, astonished, saw Holly there, soaked to the skin, her hair and clothes a bedraggled mess.
To Micah, she’d never looked more beautiful.
Chapter 29
With a weary sigh, Holly settled into her chair at the candlelit table for two in a quiet corner of one of her favorite Portland restaurants. She’d showered and changed at home after the marine patrol dropped her back in Seashell Bay. Then she’d hopped a ferry into the city and spent a couple of hours with Florence and Beatrice before heading over to meet Micah. To say it had been a long and tiring day was a vast understatement.
“So what happened after you got that horror show of a couple to the police station?” she asked.
“Cain lawyered up right away,” Micah said as he studied the wine list. “But Keele caved the second Griff dangled the possibility of a plea bargain in front of her. She’ll testify against Cain in exchange for a deal.”
“I guess true love only goes so far.”
He let out a sardonic snort. “She claimed Cain forced her to give him the names. At first he tried to force her to steal painkillers from Watson’s, but she refused. I guess giving him information on customers with narcotics was a compromise. She said she had nothing to do with the burglaries. Cain and Horton did Fitz’s place, and Cain did yours on his own.”
“I guess I should have kept him dancing after all,” Holly said drily. “But it still seems so crazy. They were risking a lot to get a few pain pills and some jewelry.”
“Cain convinced her it would be dead easy in a place like Seashell Bay. Said there’d be almost no chance of getting caught.”
She smiled across the table at him. “I guess he hadn’t reckoned on Deputy Micah Lancaster, had he?”
Micah shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed by her praise—and still smokin’ hot in his deputy’s uniform, despite everything that had happened during the long day. Holly would never forget how he’d looked when he roared his boat up to that pier, blocking Cain’s escape. He’d been the ultimate protective alpha male. And yes, he’d had a big gun to hold them at bay, but she had little doubt he would have taken them down with his bare hands if necessary.
Because nobody messed with Micah Lancaster’s people.
“Speaking of jewelry,” Micah said, “when deputies searched the bags Cain and Keele had with them, they found not just drugs but your diamond pendant and Florence’s brooch.”
“Oh, thank God,” Holly said, so happy for her aunt. “I mean about the brooch. I don’t much care about the pendant.” She hesitated a moment and then said, “When do you think Florence will be able to get hers back?”
“Hard to say. I’ll talk to Turner about it. Sometimes they’ll just photograph evidence and let it go back to the owner. Other times, they need to keep the stolen item locked up as evidence right through to the end of the trial.
“Ugh. Florence won’t be pleased if that happens, although at least she will get it back eventually. Maybe Cain will try to cop a plea too, once he knows his girlfriend is going to rat on him.”
“Maybe,” he said, as if it didn’t really matter. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I thought you were unbelievable today. I figure we make a hell of a crime-fighting team.”
She’d obviously surprised him today. When he’d realized how she’d escaped, his mouth had gaped open for a moment before he flashed her a huge and obviously relieved smile. Holly had then rushed over to the pier to help him. Micah had quickly and efficiently cuffed Cain and his girlfriend and then called the marine patrol to pick Holly up. He hadn’t wanted to leave her alone at Great Diamond while he took his prisoners into Portland, but she’d assured him she was fine.
“I didn’t do anything special,” she said. “You were the one who put your life on the line.”
He scoffed. “Holly, all the guy had was a knife, and I’m sure he knew it was hopeless once I got there. You managed to keep those morons from spinning out of control, and you showed huge courage in getting away from them like you did. Hell, you were the one who took all the risks.”
He obviously didn’t get it.
“Micah, I wasn’t afraid for myself,” she said. When his eyebrows went up in an incredulous lift, she waggled a hand. “Okay, I was a bit afraid, although I really didn’t think he’d use the knife on me. Cain’s probably not that stupid.”
“Don’t remind me about the knife. If I’d known about it earlier, I’d have probably had a coronary.”
“That’s kind of how I felt when I saw you aim your boat at them,” she said pointedly.
He frowned. “Why?”
She shook her head. “You are so dense sometimes. What if he’d had a gun, not just a knife? He could have shot you. Did you not even think of that possibility before you came charging in to the rescue?”
“Holly, I’m not an idiot. I went in really fast for that very reason. It’s hard enough to hit a stationary target with a handgun, let alone a guy blasting toward you in a bouncing boat. And I knew the wash would knock him clean off his feet as I closed in and swerved.”
“And what if he hadn’t been in the boat? What if he’d still been onshore, holding on to me?”
His dark gaze narrowed, like it was something he didn’t want to even think about. “I would have gotten the situation under control, regardless of the circumstances. That’s what I’m trained to do.”
“I’m sure Drew thought he had the situation under control until the second that RPG slammed into his helicopter,” she snapped.
When he stared at her with disbelieving eyes, she wanted to kick herself. Why in God’s name had she dredged that up?
You know why. Because she was starting to think about Micah the same way she thought about Drew—as if he belonged to her. And it had badly scared her to see him blasting in without a second’s thought for his own safety.
She flapped her hands at him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that, other than that it’s been a long day.”
“You really shouldn’t worry,” Micah said gently. “I’ve got a job to do, but I don’t take unnecessary risks.”
He must have seen the unspoken answer on her face. “Holly, I know what you’ve lost—all your friends do. And you’re right to say that none of us can really understand. You’ve gone through some impossible things, but you can’t keep pushing us away every time the subject comes up.”
“Impossible things? But they happened to me,” she countered.
“I meant impossible for us to grasp,” he said patiently.
Holly had known what he meant. But she’d automatically flipped into defensive mode, like she was hardwired to respond that way whenever anyone crossed her self-imposed boundaries. It was not her best quality by a long shot.
She was trying to think how to respond without sounding like a total bitch, when their waiter came by and took their drink order.
“Look, babe,” Micah said as soon as the waiter left, “I was just trying to say that I don’t want to see you spend the rest of your life stuck on some merry-go-round of what ifs. What if Cain had a gun? What if I didn’t get there when I did? None of those things happened, so worrying about them is pointless. You just end up feeling helpless and paralyzed.”
She nodded, because her rational mind knew he was right. How she actually felt though? Different story. “I know. I suppose my reaction is partly because I never thought anything like this could happen in Seashell Bay. I’d expect it in New York or Boston, but here? It’s almost like a… betrayal.”
“Seashell Bay isn’t under a dome. It’s not immune from assholes like Logan Cain. Nowhere is, except maybe some outpost near the Arctic Circle. That doesn’t mean it’s not still safe or a great place to live.”
“That’s my point,” she argued. “Terrible things can happen anywhere. People can get killed anywhere. In an instant, they can be taken away from you—forever.”
And there it was, the fear that refused to leave her. She was so afraid of losing the people she loved—to the point that she didn’t want to open her heart any more than she had to. And she did worry that it was crippling her.
Micah’s calm nod seemed to acknowledge and accept her fears. “Sure, but we still have to live our lives, not hide from them. Cherish what we have, not obsess about what we might lose if the worst were to happen. To paraphrase the Dalai Lama, we have to live in the moment and be happy with what we’ve got.”
She had to smile at that. “Well, look at you, Mr. Zen Master. Who knew?”
He flashed her a sheepish grin as the waiter approached with their wine. “Sorry if I sound preachy. I don’t mean to.”
“You’re allowed. I know you do it because you… you care about me.” She’d barely stopped herself from saying love.
“That’s one way of putting it,” he said in a wry tone.
Once the waiter had poured them each a glass, Micah cleared his throat. “How long are you going to be able to put off going to New York?”
Holly blinked at the sudden shift in conversation. New York seemed very distant at the moment. And the last thing she wanted to do was to think about her partners and all the challenges that awaited her in New York. Challenges that were now beginning to feel like the wrong ones.
Uh-oh. That thought was a no-go. Her career had saved her after Drew died. It meant everything t
o her.
“I don’t know for sure,” she finally said. “My partners are already hopping mad at me. Their idea of meeting family obligations seems to end at a weekend visit.”
“That’s just stupid.”
“If you think I’m driven, you should meet David and Cory.”
“You’re not driven. You’re just determined.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” she jokingly echoed.
Micah shook his head. “I’m really going to miss you when you leave, you know.”
Her throat went tight. “I’m going to miss you too, Micah. An awful lot.”
He leaned forward. “Holly, are you sure this New York thing is really what you want? Because it seems to me that you’re trying pretty hard to convince yourself, and maybe losing that argument.”
Wow. Nailed that one, dude. Home run.
Holly didn’t want to admit the true extent of her uncertainty—not even to herself, much less to Micah. She was in too deep with her partners to turn back now, or so it seemed. “Obviously I have some qualms about it. It’s a huge step. But I don’t want to stay in Boston much longer, and I really want to be a founding partner of my own firm. So how can I pass up an opportunity to do both?”
“I don’t know. But the fact that you’re asking the question instead of giving a direct answer tells me something.”
She gave him a mock scowl. “It was a rhetorical question, you big jerk.”
He rolled his eyes. “What I asked was if you’re sure that going to New York is what you really want. Because I get the strong feeling that you’re not sure. Maybe you really don’t want to go at all.”
“You know nothing, Micah Lancaster,” Holly said, trying to lighten the tone by imitating one of her favorite characters from Game of Thrones. Then again, that character had ended up dead, so maybe it wasn’t such a good strategy.
He shot her a puzzled look.
“It’s from a popular TV show,” she explained, feeling even more embarrassed.
“You’re really not going to answer, are you?”
“Micah, I don’t think this discussion will get us anywhere.”