by Susan Stoker
“Who wants the girl?” Gray asked again.
“It doesn’t matter if you kill me. He’ll still get the girl one way or another. He always gets what he wants.”
Frustrated, Gray forced the man’s head under the water for a beat, then hauled him above the waterline. “Where were you going to take her?”
The man grinned then. A sinister smile that made the hair on the back of Gray’s neck stand straight up. “It doesn’t matter where or who. He wants her. Bad. Even if you get her off this boat, he’ll come for her. And you can’t stop him.”
Gray blinked. What the fuck?
The boat tilted then, and both men slid across the deck toward the engine. Knowing he was seriously out of time and options, Gray got nose to nose with the man.
“I’m not only going to stop him, I’m going to kill him,” he vowed.
The other man opened his mouth to respond, but Gray didn’t give him the chance. He hauled him upward and turned him in his arms as if he were a five-year-old child. Within seconds, he’d broken his neck. Drowning him would’ve taken too much time. Time he didn’t have, if the height of the ever-deepening water was any indication.
Throwing the dead body aside, Gray started for the door. He’d wanted to take his time and torture the man, using the threat of drowning as a very real motivator, but with eight words, the man had sealed his fate.
Even if you get her off this boat . . .
There wasn’t supposed to be anyone on the boat other than the captain.
There wasn’t supposed to be an escort.
And the dancer certainly wasn’t supposed to be on the frickin’ boat. This was supposed to be a money drop, not a transfer.
Sloshing through shin-deep water now, Gray went back through the engine room door toward the only other place anyone could be.
He forced the other door in the hallway open—and stared in disbelief at what he saw.
Chapter Two
Allye Martin frantically yanked at the handcuff on her wrist. The explosion had scared the shit out of her, but the water that had begun to seep in under the door of her prison scared her even more. And she hadn’t thought she could be any more frightened than she’d been in the last forty-eight hours.
But nothing was more terrifying than knowing death was imminent. Being snatched off the street was bad. Facing the reality that someone had specifically targeted her hadn’t been her best moment. Seeing the water get deeper and deeper around the bed she was sitting on, knowing there was no way she could get free, to get out of the room and have a fighting chance, was horrifying.
Drowning wasn’t her idea of the best way to die. Bullet to the head—nice and quick. Head-on collision . . . hopefully immediate. Shanked? Not ideal, but if the knife cut her just right, it might not be so bad. Holding her breath until she couldn’t hold it anymore, knowing that when she instinctively gasped for air, she’d fill her lungs with water? Absolutely horrendous.
She tugged at her wrist for the one hundred and forty-seventh time, hoping against hope that either her wrist had magically shrunk and would now fit through the cuff, or the metal would somehow come loose from the headboard it was attached to. But neither happened.
Just as she was trying to decide if she should take in a huge breath of water as soon as it was high enough to make her death faster, or if she should somehow try to prolong the inevitable, the door to her prison was pushed open. She had no doubt it would’ve banged against the wood behind it if the water hadn’t slowed its movements.
Allye expected to see either the man who had cuffed her to the bed in the first place or the scruffy fisherman who’d tried to pretend he couldn’t hear her yelling for help when she was dragged below deck.
But it wasn’t either of those men. It was someone she’d never seen before, and she knew she would have definitely remembered seeing this man.
He was huge. Both muscular and tall. In fact, he couldn’t stand up straight in the room because of the low ceiling. She wasn’t short, but Allye knew without a doubt standing next to this behemoth of a man, she’d feel tiny. His jaw was square, and his lips were pressed together in a tight line.
He had short, dark hair and dark eyes. Eyes that were piercing in their intensity. He was wearing something that looked similar to a wet suit, except it seemed to have pockets that were bulging in places. His face had some sort of black paint or something smeared on it, which made it hard to really make out his features in the dim room.
They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity before Allye remembered where they were and what was happening. She had no idea if he was a good guy or a bad guy, but at the moment, it hardly seemed to matter. Not if he could get her out of there. She held up her arm, the handcuff making a jarring noise as it scraped against the headboard.
“I’m stuck.”
The words sounded silly in her head, but he didn’t seem to think so. He reached into a small pocket at his hip and pulled out what looked to her like a handcuff key.
He sloshed his way to the bed and leaned over her arm. Allye saw that it was, indeed, a handcuff key.
“Do you always carry handcuff keys when you’re lurking about in the ocean?” She winced at the question. She had a bad habit of blurting out whatever she was thinking, whether it was appropriate or not.
“Yup.”
She blinked.
One word. He’d said only one word, but it was enough for her to fall in love with his voice. It was low and raspy, and she knew if he recited the telephone book she’d gladly listen all damn day.
“Well . . . good. Then today’s my lucky day that you just happened to find me here in need of one. You know . . . ’cause the boat is sinking and all. The boat is sinking, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Um . . . I hate to bother you, but you didn’t by any chance see a really scary guy out there? He’s a little taller than me, black hair. Wearing jeans and a white button-up shirt? I know, totally inappropriate for the time and place, but that’s what he had on.”
When her rescuer just looked at her, she continued. “I’m only asking because, well, I don’t think he really wants me to leave, and I don’t want to run into him. And we will, you know, because this boat isn’t that big. So I just wanted to know if you’d seen him . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and she felt stupid as the big man just continued to stare at her for a second. Finally, he said, “You don’t have to worry about us running into him.”
She sighed in relief. She figured this man had probably taken care of the asshole who’d gotten great joy out of telling her what awaited her, but she’d had to check. “Awesome.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Still not knowing if she was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire or not, Allye scrambled off the bed. She winced when her feet landed in the water. She wasn’t wearing shoes, they’d been taken from her, but she still had on her jeans and T-shirt, and the water was absolutely freezing.
The man turned and waded his way to the door, still slightly crouched so he wouldn’t hit his head on the low ceiling, and Allye followed.
At the last second, she turned back and headed for the small desk in the room.
“What the fuck? Come on, lady! You said it yourself, the boat is sinking. We have to get out of here,” her maybe-rescuer, maybe-sex-slaver said impatiently.
Without a word, Allye palmed what she’d detoured to get and turned back to the man. “I know. I’m coming.”
When he turned his back once more, secure in the knowledge she really was following him this time, Allye slipped the flash drive she’d taken from the laptop computer on the desk into the zippered pocket of her shirt. Her kidnapper had left it in the room when he’d abruptly disappeared just before the explosion.
Content that even if the boat did sink to the bottom of the ocean, she’d still have something to show the cops to prove that she’d been kidnapped, Allye followed the giant out of the room toward the upper
deck.
He’d gotten to her in the nick of time, it seemed, because as soon as they stepped topside, the boat shifted again. The man threw out an arm to push Allye out of the way of various crap that had been lying on the deck as it came barreling toward them. Allye was thrown against the wall of the wheelhouse hard enough to make her grunt. But almost as soon as she hit, the man was there, holding her arm to help steady and steer her around the crates and fishing poles that were now scattered everywhere.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
He didn’t answer, but kept hold of her as they made their way upward, assisting her toward the back of the boat. He stopped to grab something black from a crate that had spilled open with the force of the boat’s movement. The deck was now tilting fairly alarmingly, à la Titanic, the light from the wheelhouse looking almost like a strobe as the boat pitched.
Allye glanced around, expecting to see another vessel, but when she saw nothing, she blurted out, “Where’s your boat?”
“Don’t have one.”
Allye stared at him in disbelief. If he didn’t have a boat, how in the world were they going to get back to the city? She opened her mouth to ask just that when he stopped at the back of the deck and crouched, pulling her down with him.
“Take off your pants,” he said brusquely, not looking at her. He was scanning the surface of the water. For what, Allye had no idea. She couldn’t see anything in the darkness all around them, and he’d said he didn’t have a boat. But she certainly wasn’t going to take off her jeans. No way. Screw that.
“Um . . . shouldn’t we be finding the emergency raft? Or the life jackets?”
He turned and looked at her then, his eyes raking over her hair, her face, then down her body, before coming back up to meet her gaze.
“In case you haven’t noticed, kitten, we’re sinking. Even if we did have time, we wouldn’t find either.”
Allye blinked. “But . . . it’s against the law not to have personal flotation devices.”
He stared at her for another second, then grinned.
Allye’s breath caught in her throat. Boy oh boy, when he smiled, it completely changed his entire countenance. He looked almost friendly. Almost.
“I’m thinking the fact that the owner of the boat was illegally transporting a kidnapped woman he was delivering to someone to be some sort of sex slave means that he wasn’t too concerned about making sure he had the proper equipment onboard.”
“True,” she mumbled, feeling kind of stupid. Then she looked around. “Where is the driver guy and that other asshole, anyway?”
“You really do need to get those jeans off,” the man next to her said without answering her question. “And you need to slip this on. We’re most likely gonna be in the water for a bit, and the second we go overboard, you’re gonna feel like you’ve got anchors attached to your hips if you don’t lose the denim.”
“But the water’s cold,” Allye protested, sounding ridiculous even to her own ears as she reached for the button of her jeans. She realized the black thing he’d scooped up from the deck and was now holding out to her was a wet suit. The thought of going into the ocean scared the hell out of her.
She was a good swimmer, though there was no way she’d make it long, not with the temperature of the water. But the boat was sinking faster and faster. Suddenly, putting on the wet suit seemed like a great idea. Even though it wouldn’t keep the water away from her skin, it would keep her warmer than if she were wearing only her T-shirt and panties.
All things considered, taking off her pants in front of this stranger was the least of her worries. Her only thought was getting the wet suit on before the boat disappeared beneath them.
“The water is cold,” the man said, and Allye realized he was responding to her asinine statement.
She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t. She had a million more questions and wasn’t sure she should trust this stranger. He’d appeared out of nowhere. With a handcuff key. And she hadn’t seen the other two men in a long time. Had he killed them?
Of course he had. Why else wouldn’t they be trying to stop them by now? Unless this man was a part of whatever this was? Maybe he was trying to make her think he was a good guy so she’d do whatever he said. She’d be easier to control that way, for sure.
“Maybe—”
“Get out of your head,” the man ordered, interrupting her before she could finish her thought. He squeezed her arm to get her attention. “I’m not one of them. I’m on your side. I’m gonna get you home. Trust me.”
“How’d you know what I was thinking?” Allye asked as she pulled the cold material of the wet suit up and over her arms. It was snug, luckily. If it had been too big, it wouldn’t keep her as warm. The events of the last forty-eight hours pressed down on her like a ten-ton weight, and she felt exhausted all of a sudden.
“Because it’s what I’d be thinking if I were in your shoes.”
“I’m not wearing any,” she said inanely, holding up one of her legs, indicating her bare foot.
He didn’t reply, but she thought she saw the corners of his mouth tip up before he controlled his reaction and wiped the emotion from his face.
Allye heard water lapping all around her, but kept her eyes on the man’s. She swallowed hard. “Are we really about to jump off this boat into the ocean without any life jackets? And you think what? We can just swim to shore?”
“Piece of cake,” the man said, smiling again.
“Maybe it won’t sink,” she said hopefully.
“Oh, she’s gonna sink,” her rescuer said with conviction.
The boat shifted just then, as if proving his words correct, tilting upward a bit more, forcing them to hold tight to the side. The ocean was closer now. He was right. All hopes of being able to cling to the bobbing boat until the Coast Guard or some other fisherman found them disappeared.
Closing her eyes, Allye took a deep breath. When she opened them, the man was still right there next to her, looking at her so intently it made her nervous.
“Ready to go, kitten?”
“Why are you calling me that?”
“Because you have two different-colored eyes. I had a kitten like that once. You remind me of her. Wide-eyed and innocent, but every now and then, she’d let me know she wasn’t to be messed with by scratching me with her claws.”
Allye rolled her eyes. “Great. I guess it’s better than you saying I’m possessed by the devil. Between my eyes and this white streak in my hair, you can’t imagine how many people have tried to ‘save me.’”
The boat made a loud groaning sound, and, without a word, the man next to her twisted and put his hands around her waist. Before she knew what he had planned, she was flying through the air and hurtling toward the churning ocean.
Gray felt bad for a split second, but when he saw the entire front end of the boat disappear, he simply reacted, wanting to get the woman he’d nicknamed “kitten” out of the way of danger. He didn’t want to be sitting on the end of the boat when it went under.
He knew even if he was sucked down with the boat, he could easily break free and kick to the surface, but the same likely couldn’t be said for Allye. He preferred to get her clear of the boat once and for all, rather than risk her being in danger.
Sparing a precious second to glance at his watch, noting it was a little past nine, Gray dove off the back of the boat without waiting to see if the woman’s head emerged between the waves. He hoped Black realized early that Gray wasn’t going to make it to their rendezvous point so they’d have to spend less time in the cold Pacific. He could take it, but he wasn’t sure about Allye Martin.
He didn’t give a second thought to the two men who would disappear forever along with the vessel. Their burial ground would be the bottom of the ocean, but their souls had most certainly already been sucked down to hell.
Gray immediately began swimming toward where Allye had landed, waiting for her head to pop up and for her to give him shit for throwing her
without warning.
Several seconds went by, and with each, Gray got more and more tense. Fuck, had she been hurt when she landed? He hadn’t even bothered to ask if she could swim. He’d simply reacted instinctively.
Just when he was about ready to dive below the surface and blindly search, he saw her. She was about twenty feet farther out from where she’d landed. He was stroking toward her even as he was wondering how she’d gotten there so quickly.
When he reached her, he didn’t worry about keeping his distance. He swam right up to her and put an arm around her waist, pulling her into his side and easily keeping them both above the waves.
“Are you hurt?” he asked brusquely.
The woman reached up and wiped her hair back from her face, the white streak visible amid her dark-brown locks. It truly was unusual . . . and interesting.
“No, but a little warning might’ve been nice.”
Gray relaxed a fraction. The last thing he wanted or needed was her getting shitty with him. He knew Black would come looking for him when he didn’t show up with the boat at the rendezvous point, but it was going to take a while.
He hoped Black had been able to locate and intercept the other boat. They needed more intel. Whoever was in the other boat might be the person who’d dropped her off. Lord knew he hadn’t gotten anything out of the owner of the fishing vessel, or the surprise asshole who’d been escorting the lady to whoever had bought her.
He hadn’t found what he’d expected when he entered the bedroom on the small boat either. He’d expected a freaked-out, scared-out-of-her-mind kidnapping victim. Instead, he’d found a calm and somewhat amusing woman who, so far, had done what was necessary to survive. Not only that, but she was attractive.
Allye Martin wasn’t an in-your-face beautiful woman, but she was pretty. She had a cute nose that turned up a bit at the end, and even though he hadn’t seen her outright smile yet, he’d spotted a dimple in one of her cheeks. Her lips were plump, and her dramatic cheekbones gave her face interesting angles. But her eyes . . .