Hell or High Water

by Julie Ann Walker

  Olivia…round with my baby. The thought of getting a woman pregnant had always terrified the holy frickin’ hell out of him. But imagining Olivia carrying his child filled him with a sense of…rightness. A sense of completion that he didn’t know had been missing in his life until now, when she—

  No sir. He shook his head. Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve yet to convince her to—

  A tentative knock sounded on the door.

  He growled his displeasure at the same time Olivia groaned. “That better not be you out there, Bran!” he barked, hissing as he pulled out of her wet heat. He watched his retreat with avid interest, noting how pink and swollen she was. How wet. And just like the motherfrickin’ sixteen-year-old he’d regressed to today, the sight was enough to have his blood warming again, pooling low in his groin. He couldn’t get enough of her. Figured even if he had her a thousand times, the sight of her, naked, sated, biting her lip, would have him wanting to have her, needing to have her a thousand times more.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Bran said through the door.

  “Again!” both Leo and Olivia called in unison.

  “I needed to let you guys know we’re about to have some company,” Bran said. “A deep-sea fishing boat was sailing by us on its way back to Miami. They hailed on the radio to say they’ve sprung an oil leak. They’re gonna tie up to us in a couple minutes and borrow a few quarts in the hopes it’ll be enough to get them where they’re going without having to call in a tow from the Coast Guard.”

  “A fishing vessel?” Leo called, pulling off the condom, wadding it in toilet paper, and tossing it in the trash before reaching for the swim trunks and T-shirt he’d laid over the opposite end of the bathroom vanity when he changed into Maddy’s brother’s wet suit.

  “Yeah, we must be close to a good fishing hole or channel or something,” Bran said. “I’ve seen three or four deep-sea fishing boats pass by our starboard side since we’ve been anchored. And get this, the name of the boat with the oil leak? It’s Breaking Wind, for crying out loud. You gotta love those crusty, beer-loving fishing boat captains and their warped senses of humor.” He chuckled.

  “I’ll be on deck in a sec,” Leo assured Bran.

  “No need. We’ll handle it. I just figured I better let you guys know—”

  “I’ll be on deck in a sec,” he said again.

  “Yeah. Roger that.”

  He heard Bran’s muffled steps move toward the door of the cabin as he stepped into his swim trunks. Olivia hopped down from the countertop. It caused her breasts to jiggle in the most amazing way. He groaned. “Stop bein’ so damn sexy, woman. You tryin’ to kill me, or what?”

  “You’re one to talk,” she said with a saucy grin, leering at his package before he pulled his swim trunks over his hips. Then she stepped into the shower, bending to retrieve her soggy clothes. He not only got a peek at her pert bum shoved in the air, but the plump pink lips of her womanhood as well. The blood rushed from his head so quickly that he had to grab the counter to steady himself against the sudden onset of dizziness.

  “You’re doin’ that on purpose,” he accused.

  “Just taking advantage of an opportunity when it presented itself,” she said, parroting his earlier words back to him. And this was why he loved her. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, the sex was amazing. But it was her wit, her spark, her…intangible something that made him grin, that made his heart warm, that made him want to listen to her tease him for hours before he grabbed her up and hugged her, kissed her, screwed her blind.

  He was grinning like an idiot as he pulled on his T-shirt, watching Olivia wring the water from her clothes. “I could ask Maddy if there’s a clothes dryer on board,” he offered.

  “I’ll finish wringing the water out, slip on the robe”—she pointed to the navy-blue terrycloth garment hanging on a hook on the back of the door. The precise way the belt was folded and tied told him the robe was freshly cleaned—“and then meet you upstairs and ask her myself.”

  “I suspect everything with the approachin’ fishin’ boat is on the up and up. But the way this day has gone, I’m not takin’ anything for granted. So just in case things aren’t on the up and up, I was sort of hopin’ you’d be willin’ to hang down here for a bit,” he said, his grin widening because he already knew what her answer would be. The same as it was the last time. And right on cue…

  “Not on your life,” she harrumphed.

  He chuckled, shaking his head as he turned the knob and opened the door. The love inside him was so huge he thought it a wonder his skin was able to contain it without bursting open to spew forth heart-shaped confetti. “I reckoned as much.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  7:22 p.m.…

  Olivia blew out a breath the minute Leo closed the door and simply stood there, trembling. He had no idea how much his words had both touched her and brutalized her—That’s what Rusty was talkin’ about when he said we needed to start really livin’. What we just did, you and me, darlin’, that’s what it’s all about.

  Touched her because he was right. What they’d shared was beautiful. Glorious. The reason poets composed sonnets, musicians wrote songs, and writers penned stories of love and triumph.

  Brutalized her because…Rusty. That one name, spoken aloud, reminded her why the beautiful, glorious thing they’d shared could never last. Because she’d lied to Leo from the first minute she knew him, betrayed him each moment after that by withholding the truth, and killed a man he loved like a brother with one split-second decision…

  “I received an interesting bit of information yesterday,” General Al-Ambhi said in his thick accent, leaning back in his desk chair and spinning a letter opener in his right hand. Its sharp edges caught the overhead light, glinting ominously with each twirl.

  “What was that?” Olivia asked from her seat across from him, careful to keep her expression only mildly curious though all her internal green lights had flicked to a foreboding yellow. Ever since she’d received the call from the rebel general to come to an impromptu meeting at his house, she’d been uneasy.

  On the surface, the two of them had a friendly relationship. She was the CIA attaché to the SEAL Team charged with training his men in battle tactics for the ongoing fight in Syria. And he was the rebel leader who was sympathetic to Western ideals and the promise of what would hopefully one day be a democratic society.

  But that was just what was on the surface…

  Because underneath all that charm and ideology, General Al-Ambhi was a traitor to the rebel cause he claimed so fiercely to fight for. He was secretly in league with the Islamic State—ISIS or ISIL or IS or whatever else you wanted to call them. She preferred the title Evil Incarnate. And little did he know that she was playing both sides of the board too. The CIA had grown wise to his double dealings and had sent her in to feed him disinformation. The wide world of international intrigue coming full circle.

  “I heard you were to meet five of your assets within IS last night in a coffee shop,” he said slowly. “So I followed you to determine their identities.”

  Okay, now her internal green lights weren’t yellow, they were flashing red and blaring out warnings. Only those within The Company knew she’d planned the clandestine meeting. How the hell had Al-Ambhi found out? It didn’t make any sense. Unless… Is it possible there’s a leak?

  The thought sent a cold chill slicing up her spine until she fancied it was the tip of that letter opener he was holding.

  “Why would you want to know their identities?” she asked carefully, remaining perfectly still though her thoughts were spinning.

  Al-Ambhi tsked. “Come now, Agent Mortier. Let us stop playing these games. You know I am not really fighting for the rebels. And I know that you know. I have known that you know for a while now.”

  Her breath wheezed out of her, dry as the wind whipping around the concrete wall surrounding the perimeter of the general’s compound. The cold metal of her Sig P228 was an acute ache against
the small of her back, and the smell of her own fear was sharp in her nose. “How?” she asked, surprised to hear her tone was steady, considering her heart was racing a mile a minute.

  “Really?” He cocked his head, dropping the letter opener on his desk. The resulting thunk sounded particularly loud. Her insides winced, but her outside remained rock steady. “You find the how more interesting than the why?”

  Play along, Mortier. Just play along.

  “Okay.” She shrugged unconcernedly, so he wouldn’t know she was sweating bullets and close to pissing her pants. There were a million ways for this to go horribly wrong and not one way she could fathom for it to go right. “Why? Why wait so long to let me know you’re on to me?”

  “Because I needed leverage.” He smiled, his tanned face splitting around a mouthful of white teeth. Al-Ambhi was a handsome man. With curly black hair and flashing dark eyes. But that beauty was only skin deep. On the inside, he was hideous. What else could explain his affiliation with a group that slaughtered, raped, and beheaded on a whim?

  “Leverage for what?” It was hard not to spit out the words like rancid meat.

  “For blackmail, of course.” His smile widened. He sat forward, running one long, knobby-knuckled finger over the cellular phone lying faceup beside the letter opener. “You see, I am sick of this whole mess. The fighting. The sneaking around. The endless battle for this beastly country. I left my position in the Al-Assad regime because I thought, like in Libya and Egypt, the rebels would quickly see victory. Take over governing. And I wanted to make sure to position myself at the very top of that new government.”

  And suddenly it was perfectly clear. He had no morality. No conscience or cause. He was simply an opportunist, a man out for no one but himself. And that was what accounted for his inner ugliness. “And when that proved to take too long, you threw in your lot with IS,” she snarled, no longer able to maintain her emotionless facade.

  “Exactly.” He continued to stroke the phone. A shiver of repulsion rippled through her. “But I have come to realize there is no hope for them. They are too violent, too unstable. They have too many enemies in the region now. They will never be allowed a caliphate. At most, they may be able to rule a small plot of sand somewhere no one wants or cares about. It is not the future I pictured for myself.”

  “Which is where I come in.” She curled her hands into fists when he nodded. “What do you want?”

  “Fifty million dollars in a Swiss bank account and assurances from your government that I will not be hunted.”

  Jesus, fifty million? He’s got a giant set of brass clackers!

  “And if I don’t give you these things, you’ll call your buddies in the IS and out my assets,” she said, gritting her teeth until they creaked.

  “Precisely.”

  Her mind raced through the possibilities. She knew Morales wouldn’t go for fifty thousand, much less fifty million. The lives of the five locals she’d groomed and trained to infiltrate IS weren’t worth all that much to the CIA, worth even less to Uncle Sam. But they were worth something to her. Because those five men had families and homes. They had loved ones who were counting on them to come back to them. They had everything she’d never had. So very much to lose and yet they’d still agreed to lay it all on the line. They were brave, good, valiant men, and she couldn’t just sit back and let them die.

  “My boss will never agree,” she told the general.

  “Then I am left with no other choice.” He grabbed the cell phone.

  Olivia’s Sig was in her hands before she even realized she’d reached for it, pointing it straight at Al-Ambhi’s face. “Don’t.” Just the one word.

  “Ah.” He smiled again. That oily smile. That wretched smile. “But you see, I must. If I cannot have the Americans and their money protecting me, then I will have the IS and their gratitude protecting me.”

  “I’ll kill you before you ever make the call,” she warned.

  “No you won’t,” he scoffed. “If you kill me, my men will kill you. You and the soldier you have waiting outside.”

  The soldier she had waiting outside…Rusty Lawrence. The SEAL who’d been assigned her bodyguard for this meeting because, even though they were all supposed to be friends here, an unaccompanied female was always a target. Al-Ambhi was right. She and Rusty wouldn’t make it out alive if she pulled her trigger. But when she weighed two lives against five, she just couldn’t see how the ledger added up in their favor. Except, maybe…

  “Not if I tell your men you’re really working for IS.” She was breathing hard now. She couldn’t help it. And her Sig was trembling in her grip.

  “Pfft.” He waved a hand through the hot, arid air. “They will never believe you. You are an American, after all. A great infidel. A great liar.” He waited a beat, and when she didn’t lower her weapon, he rolled his eyes and punched in a number, holding the phone to his ear.

  He would do it. She could see it in his eyes.

  And he must have seen that she would do it too. Because his face slackened and his mouth fell open right before she squeezed her trigger.

  Olivia gripped the handle on the door of the shower, anchoring herself in the here and now. Trying to forget the way the general’s skull had exploded, the horror of the blood and the gore. Trying to forget the way Rusty had burst into the room, taking one glance around before yelling at her to run. Trying to forget the sound of the rebel gunfire that had cut him down when they were racing through the hall toward the back of the general’s house.

  A million times she’d gone over that day and tried to figure out what she could have done differently to keep everyone alive. And a million times she’d come up with nothing.

  She blew out a ragged breath and stepped from the shower, draping her wet clothes over a towel rod. She was just slipping on the robe and cinching the belt when she heard raised voices out on deck. The hair along the back of her neck lifted in warning, and her heart took off like it was in a race and someone had fired the starting pistol. She was slipping out the door, running across the guest cabin, and dropping to her belly in the main living area two seconds later.

  She could see through the big windows and in the glow of the Black Gold’s exterior lights that a fishing boat had indeed tied up to the back of the yacht. But that’s not what had her kissing carpet. Hell no. What had her kissing carpet was the five dark-skinned men who were standing at the fishing boat’s railing pointing weapons straight at Leo and his guys. For their part, the SEALs were locked and loaded, aiming their M4s right back in a good ol’ fashioned high-seas standoff.

  She lifted her chin, trying to see where everyone else was, and got a glimpse of Maddy and the crew of the Black Gold standing stock-still and slightly off to the side. Their hands were raised in the air. And the deckhand, Nigel, appeared to be holding two quarts of oil.

  What the ever-loving fuckety fuck? How? Why? Who?

  She hadn’t a clue. Figured whatever the hell was going on, whoever the hell these new guys were, it was simply the olive atop the shit sandwich that was this day.

  She glanced at the occasional table where she’d laid the AK-47 and crawled over to it, the carpet beneath her smelling so strongly of deodorizer that her eyes watered. Carefully slipping the weapon onto the floor, she checked the clip, found it half full, and gently reinserted it, wincing when it clicked into place with a loud snick. Then she was belly crawling toward the door that led out onto the main deck.

  Fear was a hot fist squeezing her heart. Guilt was a rough stone sitting in the pit of her stomach. Leo was out there. Brave, beautiful Leo. The man she loved. And there was a rifle aimed at his head. It was unthinkable. Untenable. She would never forgive herself if—

  She cut off her own thoughts as she slowly, cautiously slid open the door. A night breeze blew into the main cabin. It ruffled her damp hair and slipped under the lapels of the robe, bringing with it the smell of fish and sea. And the sound of a man’s voice…

  “Give us the c
ase with the chemicals,” he said, his accent so slight it was hard to tell exactly where he was from. Certainly not Miami, though the brief glimpse she’d gotten of his attire would say otherwise.

  “No!” Leo yelled in return. She held her breath and scooted over the threshold, standing slowly, careful to keep herself concealed behind the wall of the living quarters. Night had fallen over the Straits of Florida. Only a dim line of sunshine kissed the sea along the western horizon, limning the sky in an eerie orangey-red. Silver stars were beginning to punch through the darkness overhead. And since the waves had died down, the glassy water reflected the pinpoints of light until it looked like there were two skies. She noted all of this in passing as she skirted around the side of the main cabin and carefully took the port-side stairs down to the lower deck. She crept forward slowly, turkey-peeking around the edge of the living quarters twice to get her bearings.

  “Give us the chemicals!” the stranger shouted again, his voice carrying out over the dark water.

  “Fuck you!” Leo barked.

  “I believe you are the one who is fucked!” The stranger snorted a laugh. “We have you outgunned.”

  And that’s when Olivia made her move. She stepped from around the corner, the AK-47 raised to her shoulder, a head wearing a floppy hat smack-dab in the crosshairs of her sights. “Count again!” she yelled.

  * * *

  7:26 p.m.…

  At the sound of Olivia’s voice, Leo briefly closed his eyes and managed, just barely, to stifle a pained groan.

  Brave, fearless, idiotic woman! Why can’t she just stay put? Oh, right. Because she’s brave and fearless. Shit on a shovel.

  The group of men glanced at her from the corners of their eyes, but they didn’t stop aiming at Leo and his friends in order to center her in their sights. He took comfort in that. That’s right, assholes. Just keep pointin’ those sawguns right here.