“Where are they? Belowdecks or on the bridge?”
“I saw them take Maddy and the captain to the bridge,” Nigel said. “But that was a while ago.” When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple appeared to stick in the column of his long, skinny neck. “Please, sir. I need w-water.”
“Later.” Bran waved him off. “After we check your story.”
He slapped the tape back over Nigel’s mouth despite the man’s sputtered objections. But he wasn’t as heartless a bastard as he was making himself out to be. He turned to his friends. “Help me drag them into the shade next to the living quarters.”
He grabbed Nigel’s collar while Mason, the sorry sonofabitch—Bran still hadn’t quite forgiven him for that stunt he’d pulled earlier—took hold of the other dude. Together they scooted the men along the deck until they were flush with the main cabin and in the soothing cool of the shadow it cast.
Mission of mercy complete, Bran said, “Let’s double-time it up to the bridge.”
The three of them opened the forward door to the living quarters. Crouched low, their fingers on their triggers, they advanced while checking left, right, and center. As they crossed the big, central room with its plush furniture, gargantuan-screen TV, and expensive-looking art, Bran resisted the urge to whistle.
So this is how the other half lives?
He couldn’t imagine it. Although ever since he’d come down with the treasure-hunting bug, he’d been trying his best to do just that. All of them had big plans for their share of the loot. Important plans. But sayonara and see you later to that little dream. Because without a salvage ship, it would be impossible to locate the remains of the Santa Cristina. And even if they pooled the limited funds they had left and combined them with the half-mil Olivia was paying them, they still wouldn’t have one-fifth of what it would take to replace Wayfarer-I.
Clusterfuck…a motherfriggin’ clusterfuck if ever there was one.
But he’d have to worry later about what he now planned to do for the rest of his life. Because the three of them were at the stairs leading up to the bridge. And this is where it got tricky. Hallways and alleys weren’t called fatal funnels for nothing. If whoever was at the top of those stairs decided to throw open the door and start spraying lead, there wasn’t much they could do to protect themselves. The usual duck-and-cover wasn’t an option. Well…the ducking part could still be accomplished, but the only cover available was each other. And that thought sucked so hard he decided to name it Hoover.
“Stay frosty, boys,” he whispered softly, his senses on high alert. Taking the lead, he saw the muzzle of Mason’s rifle appear in his peripheral vision. Once again, Wolf was bringing up the rear, watching their backs so they didn’t have to keep their heads on a swivel. As a group they advanced, slowly, steadily. Then the sound of a thickly accented voice shouting, “Move boat or I shoot!” necessitated they pick up the pace.
“Go, go, go!” Bran commanded, and the three of them raced up the stairs. Throwing open the door and looking down the sight on his rifle, he took in the scene in an instant. A gray-haired man wearing a captain’s uniform—Tripplehorn, no doubt—stood at the controls, his ankles shackled together by a neon-green zip tie.
A blond-haired boy in a navy-blue bathrobe was on his knees near the captain’s feet, hands and feet cuffed by more zip ties, the yawning black mouth of the terrorist’s AK-47 leveled at his temple. Maddy Powers? Must be the son of the oil tycoon. As for the terrorist himself? He looked like a cannoli full of crazy when his dark gaze shot up upon their entry, his mouth morphing into a ghoulish sneer.
Bran had seen that expression a hundred times on the faces of fanatics. It was devoid of reason, devoid of humanity, and completely devoid of mercy. This guy was outnumbered and outgunned. But instead of throwing down his weapon and giving up, he was itching to take the captain and the kid with him while he chose suicide by SEAL. Goddamnit all to hell.
The world around Bran disappeared, his entire focus squeezing down to a two-foot-by-two-foot area that was the tango’s head and torso. His finger tightened on his trigger as he automatically ran through the five S’s: slow, smooth, straight, steady, squeeze. But the boy must’ve come to the same conclusion about the terrorist’s intent, because with a banshee cry, he rammed his head into the terrorist’s crotch. It gave Bran just the opening he needed. As soon as the barrel of the Kalashnikov was no longer pointing at the kid’s face, he squeezed off a round that echoed around the well-appointed bridge like a cannon shot, rattling the windows and making his ears pop. It hit the rat bastard just above his left eye-socket.
Even though the movies got most things wrong in portraying gunshot victims—for instance, a body very rarely flew backward upon impact—one thing they got right was what happened to a human skull when it was introduced to a 5.56mm NATO round. Blood and gray matter splattered onto the bridge’s port-side window in a macabre mess, and the tango crumpled to the floor like a rag doll, his knees simply folding beneath his lifeless body and his arms falling wide. The AK-47 clattered on the polished hardwood floor and slid to a stop against the bulkhead.
It all happened in under three seconds.
Bran lowered his weapon, the world snapping back into focus as he drew in a deep breath, clocked his heart rate and breathing, and advanced into the room. Mason and Wolf continued to draw down on the scene, ever ready, ever steady.
He’d made it two steps in when he realized the boy wasn’t a boy at all, but a diminutive woman. His first clue was the hot-pink panties—after head-butting the terrorist, and with her wrists tied behind her back, her forward momentum meant she’d ended up face-first on the floor, her bottom thrust into the air, the hem of her robe pooling around her waist. His second clue was the shape of her plump ass. Seriously, it was the type of heart-shaped butt worthy of worship by native peoples.
The third clue was her voice, all cute and girly. Of course, her words were anything but. “Jesus Christ and all his followers! Quit starin’ at my ass and help me up, would you?” She rolled onto her side. “This guy stunk like buzzard bait before he was dead. Lord help me if I get a snoot full of what he smells like now. We’ll have more than blood and brains to clean up, if you catch my drift.”
Huh. He would have expected crying, not cursing. Pleading, not pluckiness. Clearly the woman was—
He stopped dead in his tracks when she lifted her chin to look at him. She was a mix between Miley Cyrus and Carey Mulligan, with one hundred percent Julia Roberts lips—the top being slightly plumper than the bottom. Most people would call her “cute as a button.” Bran would call her the yellow mist to his Green Lantern, the kryptonite to his Superman, the water to his Human Torch. Because one look at her and he was powerless, speechless, and…strangely, inexplicably…captivated.
Chapter Thirteen
2:55 p.m.…
In any other situation, one where she hadn’t been beaten, hog-tied, held hostage, and forced to watch a man get shot right in front of her, Maddy might have considered the tall, granite-shouldered man standing in the middle of the bridge house swoon-worthy. I mean, there’s all that tan skin, that wide chest, and that shock of wavy brown hair. As it was, she had been beaten, hog-tied, held hostage, and witnessed a violent death, so his mute, slack-jawed stare left her feeling decidedly…er…unsettled. Pissed even. Anger was her go-to emotion today, it seemed.
“Hello?” she huffed. “Mr. CIA Agent?”
That seemed to jog him out of whatever stupor he’d fallen into. He shook his head, sending water droplets raining onto the floor at his feet. His bare feet. Hmm. Nice toes. And that was a weird thought to have at a time like this, wasn’t it?
Shock. She was clearly in shock.
“Why did you just call me that?” he demanded as the two men who’d stormed into the room with him started forward. One looked like he belonged as an extra in the movie Dances with Wolves. And the other should be sporting a leotard and slamming chairs over other men’s backs. She’d swear on a stack of b
ibles his thighs were the size of the trunks on the camphor trees growing in her backyard. Or, as her daddy would say, he was big enough to hunt a bear with a switch.
“I—” she began, but stopped and gulped when the Dances with Wolves extra came at her with a knife. Thankfully, he only attacked the zip ties at her ankles and wrists before moving on to Harry—who had collapsed into the captain’s chair, his eyes glued to the body of the man whose brains were now outside his skull and all over the bridge’s window.
Don’t look, Maddy, she told herself as she pushed into a seated position, her fingers and toes coming alive in a rush of pins and needles. She didn’t keep her gaze averted because she thought Lead A-hole didn’t deserve what he’d gotten. She’d seen that…thing…move behind his eyes when the door burst open, and she’d known he was going to kill her if she didn’t do something quick; hence the head-butting. But she’d gone nearly thirty years without suffering night terrors that starred near-headless corpses, and she’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much.
Suddenly, Mr. Swoon-Worthy-on-Any-Other-Day was stalking toward her, the machine gun he’d used to bring down Lead A-hole now strapped to his back. And when she pictured CIA agents, they were smooth-talking, martini-drinking, 007 types. Definitely nothing like the three scruffy, tattooed men who surrounded her.
“Why do you think I’m CIA?” he demanded again, wrapping a hand around her upper arm and pulling her to her feet, not un-gently. Still, there was no mistaking the strength of his grip. She sucked in a breath and was pleased to discover he smelled like salt water and good, healthy American male. A welcome reprieve from Lead A-hole and the stank-ass of his odor-whelming cohorts.
“I say,” Captain Harry blustered, “unhand her.” He tried to push up from the chair, but Mr. Swoon-Worthy-on-Any-Other-Day’s friends each slapped a hand on his shoulder, keeping him firmly seated.
“I’m all right,” she assured the captain.
“Yeah,” the guy manhandling her said. “She’s fine. As long as she tells me why she thinks I’m CIA.”
He was like a dog with a bone. “Oh, for the love of— Because he thought y’all were CIA,” she said, waving in the general direction of Lead A-hole’s body. Was his hand twitching? No. No, it most certainly was not. That would be too awful and…gulp. “And then when he sank your ship with rocket launchers and I watched you come after his men in a dinghy with guns a-blazin’ Yosemite Sam-style, that pretty much sealed the deal for me.”
She addressed her answer to the hollow of his throat, where his strong, steady pulse beat heavily. But she was fairly sure his gaze was drilling a hole into the top of her head, so she chanced a glance into his eyes. Instantly, she forgot about the body and twitching hand. Because this guy’s eyes were…well…pretty. With very girly-looking lashes. Promptly she decided to shorten his name. Mr. Swoon-Worthy, it is.
“Why?” she demanded. “Are you not CIA?”
“Not by a long shot,” he told her just as the back door to the bridge banged open, admitting a wild-eyed woman holding yet another machine gun. Sweet blue blazes! Did I stumble into World War III? And if these folks weren’t with the Central Intelligence Agency, then just who the heckfire were they? DEA? NSA? Definitely not Coast Guard…
“Damnit, Olivia!” the big, golden god who shouldered his way into the bridge behind the woman bellowed. “I told you to let me go first!”
The lady, Olivia apparently, quickly took in the scene and lowered her weapon once she realized Mr. Swoon-Worthy had already neutralized the threat.
“And I told you I’m not one of your men to go following your orders,” she replied with a huff. “I’m an asset. Which you’d know if you pulled your head out of your ass and stopped with the high-and-mighty this-is-men’s-work-so-why-don’t-you-go-paint-your-fingernails-darlin’ bullshit.”
Golden God rolled in his lips as if fighting a smile. And even though Maddy hadn’t a clue what was going on, and even though her heart was still racing a million miles a minute, she found herself feeling an instant kinship with this Olivia woman. She considered any chick who wasn’t afraid to stand up to men twice her size to be a sister from another mister.
“Gentlemen”—Olivia turned away from the dripping-wet Golden God to address the others on the bridge—“I take it the yacht has been secured?”
“We haven’t checked belowdecks yet,” Mr. Swoon-Worthy said. “But one of the two dudes trussed up on the main deck said he counted—”
“You spoke to Nigel and Bruce?” Maddy interrupted, her galloping heart tripping over itself. Lord, she’d been worried sick about them. “Are they all right?”
Swoon-Worthy glanced down at her. Once again, she was struck by those eyes. Brown. So heavily lashed it looked like he was wearing eyeliner and mascara. Warm. The light in them certainly didn’t say coldhearted killer, but there was a body on the floor to prove that wrong. A body she continued to studiously ignore because that wasn’t liquid and solid matter she heard dripping off the window and onto the floor. Nope. Nah. It surely wasn’t.
“If you call being sunburned and dehydrated all right,” he said, “then, roger that, they’re fine. Although, come to think of it, I can’t really vouch for the one with the foul mouth. He strikes me as a guy suffering from asshole-itis.”
Foul mouth? He had to be talking about Bruce. Maddy had noticed the engineer used “bloody” every other word. But if he was strong enough to curse, that meant he was okay. She blew out a relieved breath. No one had died or been seriously injured by her decision to approach that dinghy full of strangers—well…except for the strangers themselves—and for that she sent up a silent prayer of thanks.
“As I was saying,” Swoon-Worthy continued, “Nigel said he counted seven tangos. Given the six in the dinghy we took out, and this one here, we may’ve got them all, and—”
“Tangos?” Maddy interrupted again. “That’s what the military calls terrorists, isn’t it?” So she’d been right all along. She really had been hijacked by a group of radicals. Good God almighty! It was one thing to suspect, another thing entirely to know. Her knees threatened to give out on her. Good thing Swoon-Worthy still held her in a firm grip. She could feel the heat of his wide palm all the way through the terrycloth of her robe.
“What do you know about what the military calls things?” He scowled heavily. A lesser woman might have shrunk away from that look. But growing up in a house filled with males meant she was immune to testosterone-laden facial threats.
“I watched Captain Phillips. The Navy SEALs in the movie called the bad guys ‘tangos’ and…” It suddenly hit her. These rough-and-tumble men looked a lot like the ones portrayed in the film. “Are y’all SEALs?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at Dances with Wolves and Sir Lifts-Weights-a-Lot. Both of their eyes rounded, and she turned back to tilt her chin back, way back—being five feet tall had its disadvantages—to search Swoon-Worthy’s face.
“We’re not—” he began, then shook his head. Once again little drops of water showered from the thick strands of his hair. A few landed on her face. For some odd reason, she didn’t brush them away. They grounded her. Gave her something to concentrate on besides her somersaulting insides and spinning head, not to mention they distracted her from that hand that wasn’t twitching and those sounds that weren’t biological matter splatting onto the floor.
“It’s not—” She lifted a brow when he stopped again. “We’re the ones asking the questions here!”
“Well, there’s no need to get your boxers in a twist about it,” she scolded him.
He blinked down at her, his expression one she’d seen plenty of times on the faces of the men in her life. It was a mixture of exasperation and bewilderment. “Can you believe the balls on this one?” He posed the question to the people in the room while pointing a finger at her.
“Maddy,” Captain Harry said, “perhaps it’s best if you—”
“First things first,” the woman cut off the captain. She walked in Ma
ddy’s direction, water sluicing down her bare legs and leaving wet footprints on the floor. Maddy noticed she didn’t spare the body sprawled in front of the console a single glance. Maddy couldn’t blame her. No one wanted to see that. She considered asking someone to run downstairs and grab a sheet to cover it, but the raven-haired gal preempted her with, “We need to make sure the boat is secure. Are there any more tangos on board?”
“No,” Maddy assured her. “There were just the seven.”
“Good.” Olivia nodded, smiling. Maddy was surprised to discover the woman was much younger than she initially assumed. The way she handled the weapon and the confident fashion with which she carried herself—not to mention she sort of seemed to be in charge here—spoke of years of experience. But her unlined skin and bright, twinkling eyes said she was either really well-preserved or not a lot older than Maddy herself. Late twenties, maybe early thirties.
“Your Intel and the footage from the warehouse said there were eight,” Golden God said, and now that he wasn’t shouting, she recognized his voice and his Deep South accent from the radio.
Intel. As in intelligence? And they claimed they weren’t CIA or SEALs? Who else talks like that? She’d seen enough Jason Bourne and Mission Impossible movies to know government-speak when she heard it. Not that movies always got it right, but still…
“It did,” the woman agreed, letting her eyes drift back to Maddy. “You won’t care if I send two men belowdecks to check your story, will you?”
“Be my guest.”
She watched Olivia glance toward Dances with Wolves and Sir Lifts-Weights-a-Lot. She didn’t utter a word. None were needed apparently because the men re-shouldered their weapons and disappeared through the bridge’s interior door.
“Now,” the woman said, her voice dark and throaty, reminding Maddy of an NPR host. “You want to tell us what happened?”
“I do.” Maddy nodded. “Just as soon y’all tell me who the hell you are.”
Hell or High Water Page 19