by S. M. Butler
They had no choice but to get Ace back to shore as fast as possible, and that was going to entail calling a helicopter.
“Ivy,” Ace choked out, his voice thin. “They took Ivy.”
“Easy,” Dane said, his heart thundering. Because he’d been considering the possibility they’d shot her. That maybe she’d fallen overboard and drowned, or died from a gunshot wound. That they’d be trolling for her lifeless body and he’d be wondering how he’d hold it together when they found her.
Ace gripped his arm with surprisingly strong fingers for a man who’d been shot. “Afraid… My fault.”
“What? What do you mean it’s your fault?”
“Dude,” Iceman said, wrapping a hand around Dane’s wrist. “Careful.”
Dane realized he was squeezing Ace’s arm and let go. But he wanted to shake the man and make him spill. His fault what?
“Phone.”
Dane wasn’t sure what the man was talking about, but he looked around the deck for a phone, found it lying on a cushion. It was wet, but not submerged in water. Dane dried it off and slid the bar.
“Code,” he barked.
“Four, five… nine, eight.”
Dane punched it in and Ace’s phone opened to him. “What am I looking for?”
“Max…,” he wheezed. “Messages.”
Dane brought up the messages and clicked on Max. There was a dick pic, which he did not appreciate in the least, but it was the conversation that chilled him. Mostly it was normal, flirtatious. But the last comment was the one that changed the tone.
I’m sorry. I had no choice.
Shit. “We need to get someone to pick this guy up.”
Ice settled in Dane’s gut. He found Max’s contact information in the phone and gave it to Chase, who radioed it in.
“Chopper’s on the way,” Chase said. “Team heading out to collect Max.”
Dane wanted to snarl. “What about the boat these bastards were in? It can’t be gone. It’s only been a few minutes.”
“Shark Four is in pursuit of a craft, but it’s too fast.”
“We’ll lose her,” Dane said, frustration and fear bubbling inside him.
“We won’t let that happen,” Iceman replied. “No fucking way. We’ll get her back.”
Dane looked up at the sky as if he could make the chopper come faster. But the sky was silent… and time was running out.
*
“Where is my submarine, Miss McGill?”
Ivy’s head pounded and her mouth was dry. She heard the voice, but she couldn’t seem to open her eyes to look at whoever was speaking. She tried to shift her body from its cramped position, realized she was lying on a hard surface. Her cheek was cool where it touched wood.
And then water splashed down over her head and she sputtered. She accidentally breathed some in and she coughed violently. Her lungs ached and her throat burned. Somehow she managed to push herself up against the wall until she was half sitting, half lying.
She cracked an eye open and peered into the room. It was dark other than a beam of light coming from a point in front of her. The light shone on her, and she blinked to stop the stab of pain in her eyes.
Where was she? And—oh my God, Ace! She scrambled up a little higher, her chest aching as she dragged in air. The last thing she remembered was Ace slumping on the console—she’d scrambled to her feet from where she’d been knocked down, but the boat had hit another wave before she could get to the console and she’d fallen against something and hit her head.
Now she was here.
“My submarine, Miss McGill. Where is it?”
Ivy licked her lips and tried to focus on the man who’d spoken. The room she was in was big and bare, with only a chair and a table and a light. A warehouse of some kind, confirmed by the smell of oil and fish.
And then her gaze landed on the man. A slick man in an expensive suit. Tall, black hair, slightly balding. She recognized that face…
Miguel Ruiz. Oh holy shit.
“Where is my partner?”
“Do you mean Mr. Martin? Unfortunately, I do not know. He is not the one I’m interested in at the moment.” He bent down and grasped her chin. His grip was not kind. “You cost me a lot of money, Miss McGill. I am not a happy man. If you give me back my submarine, I may let you live.”
His fingers softened a bit—and then they trailed down her bare flesh, between the exposed rounds of her breasts in the bikini top, and her skin crawled. Her gag reflex was strong at the moment, but she wouldn’t let him see it. It would only anger him.
“I don’t have your submarine, Señor. The men you tried to negotiate with have it.”
“You are as pretty as your mother was. Maybe even prettier.”
Shock flooded Ivy. “You knew my mother?”
Miguel Ruiz laughed. “Knew her? So Maya never told you.”
Ivy’s heart skipped. A chill rolled down her spine. “Never told me what?”
Ruiz straightened and turned away, walking back to the chair he’d been sitting in and sinking down again. He crossed his legs one over the other and picked up a slim cigarillo from the metal table. Then he lit it and blew out a column of smoke.
“All this time you’ve spent trying to take down my network. Trying to end my business as if you have the right. And you had no idea.”
“I know my mother died because of you. I know she thought she had nowhere to turn when my father abandoned her. You used her. Your people used her—and she died.”
Razor blades sliced Ivy’s throat as she spoke. Her voice was almost a hiss.
“Did you not ever wonder how your mother knew to come to the Ruizes in the first place?”
“She was Colombian. Her family probably worked for you or knew someone who did.”
He laughed. “Oh yes, her family. My family, Miss McGill.”
He took a drag on the cigarillo while her mind whirled. Was he saying…? She shook her head. No. No, she would have known. Someone would have told her. Granny? Did Granny know?
Oh, God.
“I see you are shocked. My little sister ran away with an American sailor when she was only eighteen. She was back ten years later, begging to return to the fold. I gave her one task to do. One simple task…”
“Simple? Swallowing sealed condoms full of drugs isn’t simple! And it isn’t safe. Did you even care when one of the condoms burst and killed her?”
He shrugged. “These things happen.”
Ivy choked. He’d made his own sister run drugs? As a way to punish her for leaving home in the first place? God, he was sick! If she could get her hands around his neck, she’d squeeze until there was nothing left.
“You’re disgusting. You don’t care about anything but pouring more of your poison onto the streets, addicting more innocent people—”
“Innocent? You make it sound like they don’t have a choice. But they do, Ivy. They all have a choice, and yet they snort or smoke or shoot up anyway. If I weren’t fulfilling their need for escape with my product, someone else would. So why not me? No,” he said, shaking his head, “you are a naïve girl—and a stupid one. Now tell me where to find my submarine before I get angry.”
Ivy wanted to cry. And scream. This man had killed her mother. This man—this horrible, horrible man—was her uncle. It was unfathomable. And disgusting. How could she be connected to someone like him?
She felt betrayed, sick. And furious. Rage boiled hot in her belly, her blood. She wanted to kill this man, and yet she was the one at his mercy. Something inside her snapped. It was a risk, a huge risk, but she was going to take it.
“I don’t know where your sub is,” she spat. “But I know where it might be sometime tonight. I can take you there.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
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“They were tracking Agent McGill by her phone,” Colonel Mendez said.
Dane stood as still as a rock and watched the colonel talking on the sat-link video call.
“Agent Martin�
��s boyfriend was working for Miguel Ruiz, and he planted GPS-tracking programs in both their phones. It’s subtle technology, undetectable through normal means. They wouldn’t have known anything was wrong.”
“Can we track her with it?” Dane asked.
“We’ve got the frequency, so technically yes. But nothing’s coming up yet. It’s possible they’ve turned off her phone or taken her somewhere that’s shielded. If she comes on the grid again, we’ll find her.”
Dane wanted to howl. That was the problem. She might not come on the grid at all, and Mendez knew it as well as they all did. For one thing, Miguel Ruiz wouldn’t let her keep her phone once he had her. He might also end her life and dump her in the ocean for the sharks to eat before HOT could do a damn thing about it. And then what?
There was a hollow spot in Dane’s chest that said he might lose his mind if that happened. He wasn’t supposed to care so much—but he did. Goddamn, he did.
Chase put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “If they’d wanted her dead,” he murmured, “they’d have killed her when they shot Ace. There’s something else going on, and they need her for it.”
Dane looked at the guys gathered round. They weren’t his SEAL team, the guys he was used to working with—but they were every bit as good. They were thorough, professional, and the kind of warriors he was happy to have at his back. Hell, he was happy to be a part of them—and that surprised him in ways he hadn’t thought about.
They were in the Army and he was in the Navy—but they were able to do things he hadn’t considered as a SEAL, like take on missions such as this one with a freedom that he still hadn’t wrapped his head around.
After the attack on Ace and Ivy, they’d had to regroup. Bad Medicine was still out, but they hadn’t made contact with the sub. HOT had gathered on a single boat now that the sun was going down. This one was bigger and faster than the fishing boats they’d had before and was designed to attack swiftly and quietly.
He knew the tangos were still the priority, but damn if it wasn’t killing him not to know where Ivy was. In spite of the excitement of this mission, the state-of-the-art equipment, he wanted to bail. He wanted to go after Ivy and let these guys deal with the Freedom Force.
But that wasn’t happening because he had nowhere to go. Fuck.
“Agent Martin is out of surgery,” the colonel continued. “He’ll make it, though it’ll probably be a long recovery. He’ll be on desk duty for quite some time.” Mendez looked away from the screen for a minute and then nodded to someone before turning back to face them. “Agent McGill’s phone is transmitting again—moving east southeast in a line toward where she was taken.”
“We have to intercept them,” Dane said, his heart hammering.
Colonel Mendez’s expression didn’t change. “No need, son. They’re coming straight for you.”
“Uh, sir… do we have time to wait?” Matt asked.
Dane’s chest tightened, but he knew why the question had to be asked. It was the kind of question he’d have asked if he was leading this team and Ivy wasn’t his girl. His girl.
Mendez’s mouth curved into a grin. Dane hadn’t known the man for very long, but he knew enough to realize the colonel wasn’t much of a smiler. That was encouraging. Wasn’t it?
“A little bit of time, yes. Oh, and Viking?”
Dane hadn’t looked away from the screen for even a second. “Yes, sir?”
“Got a surprise for you. Your SEAL team is on the way. ETA in about twenty minutes. You boys get Agent McGill—and then meet the SEALs and go get that fucking sub for the sake of every human being on this planet.”
*
Ivy was handcuffed to the railing of the thirty-foot yacht. Miguel Ruiz stood at the helm along with another man. Six more men sat in the stern, holding rifles across their laps. Ivy bit the inside of her lip and tried to calm her racing heart.
She’d fed Ruiz a load of bullshit about the submarine surfacing tonight when she really didn’t know if that was the case or not. All she knew was that she needed to get back to the zone and hope that HOT was still there. If they weren’t, she didn’t know what she would do.
Plan B, whatever that was.
Ruiz flipped her phone in his hand. She’d given him the access code because she’d had no choice. There was nothing in there for him other than a few phone numbers to DEA headquarters. Her boss’s number was there. Ace’s. A few other agents, but nothing critical. Some numbers were committed to memory, like the number she needed for her contacts at the CIA and the FBI. Not that those contacts usually did her much good considering the intel services didn’t work well together. But it was something she’d cultivated, and something she kept tucked away for the future.
Future. Assuming she had one after tonight.
“It’s really too bad you don’t want to work for us,” Ruiz said, turning to her as the yacht rode the waves. “You could have gone far in this business. Maybe taken over someday.”
The thought made her want to retch. “Not interested in peddling death to kids.”
He snorted a laugh. “So self-righteous. Maya was too, until she needed us again.”
She hated hearing him mention her mother with such familiarity. She was still reeling from the knowledge that her mother was a Ruiz—that she was a Ruiz.
“She had no choice.”
His dark eyes glittered. “Is that what you think? That she had no choice? That she couldn’t have kept working doing something—anything—else? No, Maya returned because she was tired of working hard. She remembered the wealth and the prestige of being a Ruiz. She wanted it again, and she wanted you to grow up with those privileges instead of living on food stamps and wearing cheap clothing from secondhand stores.”
Ivy’s heart hurt. She’d been eight when her mother died, and she remembered complaining bitterly that her clothes weren’t as nice as her friends’ clothes. But was that enough to send her mother crawling back to a dangerous lifestyle?
“You didn’t have to force her to smuggle. You chose to do that, not me, so stop trying to blame me for what happened to her.”
He laughed. “You are guilty and you know it. But don’t worry. After tonight you won’t have to feel guilty ever again.”
“You said you might let me live if you got your sub back.”
“I said might. I’m undecided.”
She knew the bastard was completely decided and had been from the first. He intended for her to die. Family ties didn’t mean jack to this asshole. They didn’t mean jack to her either in this case. If she could forget she and Miguel Ruiz shared the same DNA, she’d be a happy woman.
“You still don’t have your sub. If you plan to kill me anyway, maybe I won’t tell you where to look. If we’re off by even a mile, you won’t get it back.”
“Yes, but getting my sub could mean the difference between a quick and painless death or something a bit more creative.”
Ivy stared at him, refusing to look away even though she knew he wanted her to. But she hated the bastard, and if this was her last night on earth, she wasn’t going down cowering.
He laughed—and then he slapped her so hard her cheek cracked against the Bimini support. The blow stung and she tasted blood. A reckless part of her wanted to glare at him again, but she very wisely kept her head turned and stared at the water. The sun was setting, and the sky blazed pink and purple to the west and black to the east. The water turned indigo.
Was it really only last night that she’d lain in Dane’s arms and felt as if her world was right somehow, even though it terrified her? And was it really only this morning that she’d told him there could be nothing more between them? That one night of passion was all she had time for?
God, she felt like such a fool. She hadn’t stopped feeling a damn thing for him. Now that she might not ever see him again, she knew how deluded she’d been. She still loved the big, bad, intense man who’d stolen her heart in a bar one night. Since the moment he’d walked over and asked her to
dance, she’d been his.
Nothing had changed—and everything had. They weren’t the same people they used to be—but he was the only one who made her feel like letting go. She’d resisted that feeling for so long, been terrified that if she let go, she’d fall. But Dane would be there to catch her. She knew that now.
Too late.
It was full dark by the time the boat reached the coordinates where Ruiz’s men had shot Ace and captured her. Oh, Ace. Dear God, she hoped like hell he’d survived, but she doubted he had. He’d fallen, and there’d been so much blood. He hadn’t moved at all before she’d been knocked out.
“Where is my sub?”
She was getting tired of the broken record. “We have to wait.”
Ruiz’s jaw was a hard line. “You had better not be lying to me, girl.”
Ivy lifted her chin. Please let HOT still be here. Please let them be patrolling the waters and let them come investigating.
“I’m not. They’re supposed to meet their contact at midnight one nautical mile to the east. If we move closer now, we could spook them. We have to stay here.”
Ruiz moved toward her, and she cringed before she could stop herself. But all he did was uncuff her from the support and then cuff her wrists together in front of her body.
“We’re going below,” he told the man at the helm. “Notify me when there’s something to report.”
Ruiz grabbed her by the arm and shoved her down the stairs. Her feet caught in the wrap she’d tied around her waist so many hours ago and she fell to the bottom. Ruiz was on her in seconds, dragging her up and throwing her down again on the nearest cushioned surface.
It was only when he jerked the wrap from her body that she began to understand his purpose. Horror clawed its way into her throat. He was her uncle. Her uncle!
“Don’t look so surprised,” he told her as he shrugged out of his shirt. “You’re a beautiful girl… and I’m a man who appreciates beauty…”
Chapter Twenty-Four
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