He didn’t like it. Not a bit.
It didn’t help matters that she’d changed out of her robe and into a set of loose, gray yoga pants and a soft, pink V-necked T-shirt. The latter accentuated the bright glow of her platinum-blond hair, setting off her dewy cheeks and rosy lips. Dude, the woman was a real-life cherub. A sexy cherub. And standing next to her made him aware of himself like he’d never been before. Here he was, this big oaf, all hairy and hard and menacing. The polar opposite to her tiny delicacy. Like a grizzly bear next to a crystal vase or some such shit.
And it was that tiny delicacy that made him want to march up the stairs to the bridge and kill that asshole terrorist all over again. Because when he’d asked about the tender-looking bruise on her cheek and the bigger one on her neck, she’d admitted the rat bastard had hit her. Three times! And for that the man should’ve had to suffer. He should’ve had to—
“Waitin’ on them to come up with whatever it is y’all are lookin’ for sort of makes me feel like Brad Pitt in the movie Seven,” she mused.
He may not like her nearness, but he did like the sound of her voice. It was high and sweet, filled with elongated, twanging vowels. And it was a good thing he liked it, because in the nearly two hours he’d known her, she hadn’t shut up. In case she wasn’t aware, he felt it was his place to inform her of the fact.
“So, is your mouth just naturally attached to a motor? Or is talking nonstop the way you deal with stress?”
The look she gave him was the same one she might have given a hair stuck in her dessert. Ballsy. “The former,” she informed him. “My mama says I could talk the legs off a chair. But it’s been my experience that when it comes to motormouths, it takes one to appreciate one.”
His chin pulled back. The woman was so goddamned ballsy. For all she knew, he could be the kind of guy to chuck her overboard for saying something like that. Lucky for her, he wasn’t. Unlucky for him, she was right. He had been accused by his teammates, more than a time or two, of never knowing when to zip it.
“Touché,” he allowed. “And sure, I’ll play.” He figured there were worse ways to spend the time waiting for Leo and Wolf. “Why do you feel like Brad Pitt in the movie Seven?”
“You know…” She made a face, waving her hands. “What’s in the box? What’s in the boooxxx?”
Despite himself, he felt one corner of his mouth twitch. “Are you a Brad Pitt fan?”
Please say no. ’Cause I look nothing like the dude…Whoa! Where the shit did that come from?
“Nah.” She twisted her lips. Because the upper was fuller than the lower, it made her look like she was pouting. He’d always had a thing for upside-down mouths. “I’m more of a cinema-in-general fan. You name it,” she boasted, “I’ve seen it and can tell you the leads, the director, and usually the writer too.”
Now that was interesting. He considered himself a bit of a movie connoisseur. Or, more truthfully, a film geek. When he was a teenager, he would sneak into the theater just about every night of the week. Initially he’d done it because it was a warm place to sleep in the wintertime and a cool place to sleep in the summertime. But then he’d started to actually watch the movies, and he’d fallen in love with the idea of spending two hours getting whisked away on an adventure or running from a serial killer or watching two people fall head-over-ass in love. Yes, he liked romantic comedies, so there.
He turned to face her fully. “That sounds sort of like a challenge,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
She looked up, her steel-gray eyes sparkling in the sun rays glinting off the waves. He had to suppress the urge to kiss her cute, uptilted nose. Weird. He’d just gotten laid last night by a bodacious redheaded tourist he’d picked up in the Green Parrot Bar on Key West. She’d ridden him like a rodeo cowgirl for a good forty-five minutes before finishing him off with a sloppy, though intensely exuberant blow job. Which meant it was too soon for him to be suffering from too-much-backed-up-testosterone-itis. Then again, he’d always been a sucker for blonds. Especially ones with upside-down mouths and tight little bodies.
“A challenge?” She shook her head. It caused the long swoop of her bangs to fall across one delicately arched brow. “Nah. It’s just a fact.”
“Care to prove it?” he taunted.
“Hit me with your best shot, big boy,” she taunted right back, scooting a bit closer. She smelled fruity, like pears or something equally feminine and delicious. One sniff and all his internal gadgets went haywire.
Somehow he managed to ignore the upheaval in his body and came back with, “I thought we were playing Name That Movie not Name That Tune, Pat Benatar.”
“Stalling?” Now she was smirking. And she looked sort of…devilish. He liked it.
Racking his brain for a good one, he was eager to put her to the test. Aha! “Okay, so James Dean plays Cal Trask who’s unhappy with just about everything in his life, including his relationship with—”
“East of Eden,” she interrupted, shaking her head. “I expected so much more from you. I mean, it’s James Dean, for the love of two-steppin’. The man’s a legend among women. Show me someone with ovaries who hasn’t seen everything he’s ever played in.”
He stuck his tongue in his cheek, narrowing his eyes. Obviously, he’d underestimated her. Now he was attempting to take her measure.
She waited a beat. Then two, before impatiently asking, “So that’s it? One piddle-O volley and suddenly you’re—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Naomi Watts plays an amnesiac who searches for clues to—”
“Mulholland Drive.” She shook her head as if he were pitiful. Just pitiful. “And, really, that one is not director David Lynch’s best.”
“What?” he blurted, getting into it and, astonishingly, enjoying himself. His bad mood vanished like mist hit by the heat of her wit. “And I suppose you think Lost Highway was?”
“Sure enough.”
“Ha! I’m sorry. But there’s no comparison between Bill Pullman’s performance and Naomi Watts’s performance. She blew the roof off that role.”
“Says you.” She shrugged a shoulder. “But maybe that’s because you’re a guy, and Naomi Watts is a hot blond. Oh, and also because it’s now clear you’re an idiot.”
The twinkle in her eyes and the way she was fighting a smile told him she was having as much fun as he was.
“In case you weren’t aware,” he informed her haughtily, “idiots are a barrel of laughs and super cool to hang around. That’s why they’re the rage in all the villages.”
She couldn’t hold it in any longer. She barked out a laugh. And then they stood grinning openly at each other, caught up in the game and the banter.
“I’ve got one for you,” she said after a bit, the tilt of her head decidedly feline, like that of a cat watching a mouse’s nose protrude from a hole. “But fair warnin’, this one’s a doozy. If you get it, I’ll…” She trailed off.
He was suddenly breathless. “You’ll what?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, laughing. “I have no idea what kind of boon to give a guy who’s basically a big question mark.”
How about a kiss? Okay, this was getting out of control. He was pretty much a hornball 24/7, but…wow. Just wow. “How about…” He tapped his chin. “If I win, then you hafta tell me the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you.” For some odd reason, he wanted to know more about her.
“And if I win?” she asked, reaching toward her hair as if to push it behind her ear. Her fingers faltered when she discovered there was nothing to tuck back. New haircut, apparently. A pretty daring one at that. And, damnit, he liked that too.
“I tell you the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Deal.” She stuck out her hand. He hesitated to take it. And when he finally did, he realized why. Her palm was baby soft, her hand tiny compared to his, and his dirty mind immediately conjured up an image of what her fingers would look like wrapped
around his dick. Said dick twitched to life. Oh great. That’s just great.
“So, Alan Ladd stars as a Naval gunnery officer durin’ World War II,” she began. “But here’s the thing. He’s a pacifist. And he refuses to fire on an unidentified plane. Of course, when this gets out to the others in his unit, they label him yellow-bellied, a guy they can’t depend on. Turns out the plane was one of their own, but that doesn’t really change anything. The whole movie is about the conflict between conscience and duty. Name that film.”
Oh, fangul. It was right there. On the tip of his tongue and the edge of his brain. “Who directed it?” he asked.
“Are we allowed to give clues?” She was smirking, sure she’d won.
“Since we never officially stated the rules, then yeah.”
“Hmm.” She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think that’s…”
“Aha!” He pointed at her face. “It’s because you don’t know who directed it. And you said you could name every film, the leads, the director, and usually the—”
“Rudolph Maté,” she said. He grinned gleefully. “Hey! You tricked me!”
“Maybe,” he admitted with an exaggerated shrug. “But regardless, I now know what the movie is. Drumroll, please.”
She rolled her eyes. When he looked at her expectantly, as if he was prepared to wait all day, she huffed and started rolling her tongue. “Dddddddddddd.”
“The Deep Six!” he crowed triumphantly. She blinked up at him, her mouth hanging open. Yeah, because he’d pulled that one straight out of his ass. Talk about an old, totally esoteric film. He was impressed with her choice. Of course, he wasn’t going to tell her as much. Because where was the fun in that? “What?” He grinned. “No applause?”
The sound of clapping—slow clapping—echoed from behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see Mason standing there. “Hey, bro. What’s up?”
“I think you just named our salvage company,” Mason said, head cocked contemplatively.
Bran blinked at him, trying to comprehend. He couldn’t, so he asked the only question available to him. “What the huh?”
“Deep Six Salvage.” Mason rolled the words around on his tongue like he was tasting them. “It’s fuckin’ perfect. There are six of us. We make our living in the deep.”
“And in case you’re forgetting,” Bran said, “our salvage ship was deep-sixed a couple of hours ago. Without it, we don’t have a company, nameless or otherwise.”
“That’s not true,” Olivia chimed in from the swim deck below. “I told Leo I’d make sure you guys—”
“Hang on just a cotton-pickin’ minute here,” Maddy interrupted. Bran looked over to find her hands fisted on her hips. Her very curvy hips. Some people might say they were too curvy for her small frame. Yo, and some people are morons. “Y’all are really salvors?” Her light-brown brows were drawn together. “I thought she said you worked for the government.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder at Olivia.
“It’s…uh…” Bran rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. He thought he’d left the days of keeping secrets behind him. And quite honestly he’d preferred it that way. “It’s complicated,” he finally admitted, watching her cute button-nose wrinkle. The freckles across the bridge melded together, like brown sugar atop a scoop of vanilla ice cream. “We’re salvors working for the government on this gig, and—”
That’s all he managed because a subtle splashing had all eyes swinging toward the location buoy. Bobbing beside the white marker was a shiny metal box kept afloat by two neon-yellow lift bags.
Maddy turned back to him, her expression wry. “What’s in the box? What’s in the boooxxx?”
Chapter Sixteen
5:15 p.m.…
Banu punched the End button on the side of his satellite phone and narrowed his eyes. Through the tinted windows of the wheelhouse, the sea was a pristine, endless undulation of low waves as far as the eye could see. But that had not been the case five minutes ago…
“Nassar is not answering?” Ahmed asked, frowning.
“No,” Banu growled, his jaw sawing back and forth, his mind conjuring up all the unique and exciting ways he could slowly kill Nassar if the asshole had fucked things up for them. For him.
“It’s possible the debris we just passed had nothing to do with us or Nassar or that salvage ship he spoke of,” Ahmed assured him. “Styrofoam breaks off docks and floats out to sea all the time. Cushions that are not tied down fly off boats every day. There was nothing out of the ordinary, if you think about it.”
“You’re right.” Banu nodded. Inwardly he couldn’t help but wonder, though. Because the currents in the Straits were viciously strong. And if Nassar had sunk the salvage ship, it was possible some of the wreckage could have floated out this far. He checked his watch. Three and a half hours since the last time we spoke, said the hour and minute hands. And the man’s a fucking lunatic, added a voice in his head. “So why isn’t he answering?”
Ahmed made a rude noise. “Nassar probably forgot to put a new battery in the phone. And since their ship sank, there is no way for him to charge the one he has or get a new one. I am sure it is nothing, brother. Wait and see. You will triumph still. And your name will be immortalized in songs of jihad for centuries to come.”
Now that turned Banu’s frown upside-down. Immortalized in song, huh? Like Davy Crockett or Rasputin. Like fucking Beethoven or Henry VIII! Okay, okay. Maybe he was overreacting. Seeing problems where there weren’t any. But could you blame him? This was his chance. This was The One! And it had to work. He’d come too far to go back now. Too many arrows were now pointing in his direction for him ever to return to Jonathan Wilson’s life…
* * *
5:42 p.m.…
Hallelujah! And thank you, sweet baby Jesus!
From the corner of her eyes, Olivia saw Wolf toss his fins and goggles onto the swim deck before climbing the ladder. It was from the corner of her eyes, because her gaze was laser-locked on Leo, bobbing in the water at the back of the yacht, waiting his turn to climb aboard.
The hour between the capsules rising to the surface and his emergence had felt like an eternity. Two eternities. Mason and Bran had assured her it was good it was taking him so long to make the ascent. It meant things were solid gold, hunky-dory. He was hitting all of his safety stops, and so on and so forth, yada yada.
In her gut, she’d known they were right. And her head couldn’t refute their logic, not after everything she’d read about deep dives on her flight from DC. Was that just this morning? But her heart? Yeah, her heart was another matter entirely. She would swear the thing had refused to beat the whole time he was down there, only stuttering to life when his blond head poked above the waves.
“Are you experiencing any joint pain or dizziness? Any shortness of breath?” she called to him, frantic to hear his voice. She’d never forgive herself if—
“Nope,” he told her, whipping off his goggles and shaking the seawater from his shaggy hair. The burnished-gold locks glinted in the light sparkling off the water and she squinted, not able to look directly at him. He was like the sun himself, all bright and beautiful. So damn beautiful. He grabbed the ladder and tossed his fins and goggles onto the deck. “And my dive computer says there were no decompression violations. I should be good to go.”
“It’s too soon to tell,” she insisted. Mason and Bran grabbed his arms and hauled him aboard. Water sheeted off him and his equipment, creating an immense puddle at his feet that gathered in the grooves of the deck before racing back to rejoin the sea. “But nearly half of the cases of DCS present symptoms within the first hour, so if you don’t show any signs of—”
He leaned over and smacked a kiss on her lips, effectively shutting her up. “Relax, darlin’. I’m fine.”
Darlin’. The endearment went all through her, and it sounded delicious in his Deep South accent—dawlin. No one had ever given her a pet name before. Well, there was that French asset she’d slept with a time or two who
’d called her “ma belle.” But he’d only done it when he was in the middle of an orgasm, so she figured that didn’t really count.
“Did you get the package?” he asked, shrugging out of his tanks and handing them to Bruce, who was waiting nearby. The crew of the Black Gold had been extremely helpful, thanks in no small part, Olivia presumed, to the former positions she’d learned they held in Britain’s Royal Navy. They had probably taken part in their fair share of operations just like this one where the name of the game was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. As for Maddy? Well…as far as Olivia could ascertain, the woman was just flat-out imperturbable.
“Yes,” she assured him. “Mason swam out to retrieve it as soon as it surfaced. Captain Tripplehorn agreed to lock it in the Black Gold’s safe until the A-Team arrives.”
Having shed his gear belt and dive computer, Leo reached behind his back and hooked a finger in the loop of the cord attached to the wet suit’s zipper. Pulling it down to his waist, he peeled the neoprene off his arms and chest. Miles upon miles of tough, tan skin glowed with health. And when he lifted one arm to glance at his diver’s watch, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged.
“Speakin’ of,” he said. “Shouldn’t they be here by now?”
She shook her head. “I called…uh…my boss.” She was careful not to name names since it was common knowledge that Morales was the director of the CIA. And until he told her otherwise, she was keeping as much information as she could about who they were and who they worked for from Maddy and her crew. “I told him the package was safe. He said to thank you, and—”
“I didn’t do it for him,” Leo rumbled, giving her a “look.” One that was full of heat and promises of dirty deeds done between cool, cotton sheets. Oh God.
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