by Zoe York
“Julie—”
That was all he’d managed before she swung her backpack to her shoulder and took off.
“Just go! Hurry!”
“Jul—” he protested, but she was already gone.
— FOUR —
Seth blinked in her wake. Julie’s first two steps were a hurried walk. The next two were a jog, and then she was sprinting up the crooked path that ran between the café and the wall of the neighboring property.
“Julie?”
He’d been out that way once or twice. There was nothing back there but a squat toilet and a demon of a dog on a chain that was too long for comfort by about four links. The path ended in a cement-block wall topped with shards of broken glass that poked up like the toothy jaws of a shark. Where did she think she was going?
“Alto! Stop!”
Shouts rang out and footsteps pounded through the café. Seth spun to see four soldier-cops — big ones — taking up the chase.
Chasing Julie? Jesus, what had she done?
The dog out back started barking, and Seth pictured Julie staring desperately up that too-high wall.
“Watch it, man!” one of the backpackers yelped.
The first cop dodged the man’s chair then ducked under a fluttering red-and-blue blur — the café’s pet toucan, perched on a trapeze. A second man was right on his heels, holding a hand to the bulge in his jacket as if cushioning something inside. A gun?
“Hey! Stop!” The waitress protested the intrusion in the same high-pitched squawks as the wildly flapping toucan, but the men shoved right past her, sending a tray of pink-hued smoothies in tall glasses with green-and-yellow striped straws sailing through the air in a moment that played out in a weird slow-motion way in Seth’s mind.
Julie. Running.
Men. Chasing. Men with guns.
The smoothie glasses shattered on the hard floor, and something primal inside him roared. If he could have ripped out of his skin and turned into a grizzly, he would have, there and then.
Stop them! Save her!
But Julie’s words were still front and center in his mind. Get the bike!
Only she could say those words on the way to running full tilt into a dead end.
If he did as she said, he’d probably arrive just in time to see a handcuffed Julie being wrestled into a jeep, kicking and biting and cussing the men out all the way to some awful fate.
If he didn’t do as she said…she’d still be wrestled into a jeep, kicking and biting and cussing him out on her way to some awful fate.
He jumped to his feet, pushing his chair into the aisle to trip up the first man.
“Oi!” the man cried, going down hard.
Seth’s rising shoulder met the second man’s chin. There was a distinct “Ooof!” as the man reeled away.
“Hey, man!” Seth said, putting his hands up in feigned surprise. “Watch out!”
The man growled and clawed past. Bump — Seth detoured into the third guy and, whoops — tripped up a fourth. Apart from cursing, they all scurried onward, intent on their prey.
There was an explosion of growls and cries as the men ran out of sight and encountered the snarling dog. Cerberus — that’s what Julie called him. She used to butter the mutt up with food scraps and that special doggie-magic voice she used on animals, little kids, and slow-thinking bartenders. So she might just have a moment’s reprieve.
Still, there was that wall topped with a jagged row of broken glass — the third-world version of barbed wire. How would she get over that?
But if there was one thing Seth had learned about Julie in the week they’d spent in each other’s arms — other than she had silky skin and a sweet smile and legs that could play tricks on a man’s mind — was that the impossible was possible. That, and the fact that Julie hated being second-guessed. So he dashed through the pandemonium of the café and wheeled right, sprinting down the block. He spotted the bike behind a half-collapsed wall, pushed it onto the street, and hopped on. When he fired it up, his calf squeezed against something cool and smooth — the steel of a machete she kept strapped to the old leather saddlebag on the right side of the bike.
He roared around the corner, turned again to square the block, and came up parallel with the back of the café. And damned if Julie wasn’t already there, running toward him at full steam. Before he came to a stop, she swung up behind him like a cowgirl and thumped him on the arm.
“Go! Go!” she yelled, grabbing his waist.
— FIVE —
Seth twisted the throttle so hard, the front tire nearly came off the ground. They raced down the alley, scattering the two cops who’d made it over the wall. A third was half-falling, half-jumping off the top, and the fourth was perched awkwardly atop it, holding his hand and screaming in pain.
Julie’s hands squeezed his ribs. “Hit it! Go!”
“Jesus, Julie, what did you do?” he shouted over his shoulder.
“I didn’t do anything!”
Something cracked in the alley and whizzed past his ear, and he ducked on instinct. “Holy shit!” Were the men really shooting? At them?
Julie leaned in and shouted. “Faster!” She’d hollered quite a few instructions in his ear, once upon a time, and he’d always been more than willing to oblige. But this was life-or-death, and he was one step ahead of her, accelerating toward the next corner to get out of the line of fire.
A second bullet whistled past his ear the exact instant that Julie blurted a curse and lurched, throwing the bike off-balance. She clutched his shirt. He stuck out his right foot and scraped the sole of his shoe along the dirt road, trying not to wipe out.
“Julie?”
She righted herself and tightened her grip around his waist.
“Are you okay?” He threw the words over his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was unnaturally tight. “Go!”
He shifted his weight and took the corner at high speed. As soon as he did, his ears exploded with noise.
Beeeep!
For a split second, there was just that godawful noise and the sight of a metal grill barreling down on him — the front of a bus. A bus about to wipe him and his cowgirl into oblivion before he had a chance to say everything he needed to say to her. One of those wildly decorated Central American buses airbrushed in blazing colors, with red flames and a set of shark teeth painted around the hood.
He swerved at the last second, screaming inside. The bus shot past so close, he could feel the suck of air on his skin. A twist of the throttle took them through a cloud of blue exhaust and then into the clear.
The screech of bus brakes was still echoing in his mind as he gunned down the main street, heart hammering in his chest. He took the next left and rocketed down the coastal road with no clue where he was going, as long as it was away. Far away.
Julie’s hand bumped his arm and pointed left. He saw blood first, because her hand was smeared with it, but she was pointing so insistently that he had to look up to a winding dirt lane that disappeared into a strip of jungle.
“There! Go that way!”
There was just enough space to cut in front of a lumbering truck in the oncoming lane. He flew up the lane, around a tight corner where thick vines hung low over the road, and stopped, killing the engine. Julie was stiff against his back, listening for any sound of pursuit. Her chest heaved with panting breaths, just like his. Like they’d been sprinting for their lives instead of riding her vintage Kawasaki.
Vintage. Part of him chuckled inside. He’d called the bike old once, and she’d taken it as a personal affront.
“Lucy is not old!”
“Lucy?”
“The bike. And the word is vintage, not old.”
That was Julie; she had her pride. Bucketloads of it. That and a personality big enough to fill any inanimate objects around her with life.
Behind the curtain of trees, traffic rumbled by on the coastal highway. The noise rose as racing tires and a series of com
manding beeps sped by. Every muscle in his body tensed until the jeeps swept past, and the pitch changed then faded as the space around him filled with the calls of aggravated forest birds.
Seth closed his eyes. They were safe. For the moment, at least.
Without thinking, he crossed an arm over his chest to grasp Julie’s hand, still clutched at his shoulder. Something warm and sticky leaked onto his fingers. Julie’s body was rock hard. He twisted in his seat.
“Hey, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said between gritted teeth. “Let’s get out of here.”
His eyes traced the blood to her shoulder.
“Christ, Julie!”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Man, what did you do?”
She thumped his ribs. “I didn’t do anything! And why did you take so long?”
Only Julie would come up with a line like that at a time like this. If he wasn’t still shaking, he might have laughed out loud.
“Okay, let’s get out of here.” Easy to say, but what to do? The jeeps wouldn’t go far before they turned around and came back. Where could he take Julie to keep her safe?
His eyes swept right, and though he couldn’t see through the strip of jungle, he could smell the salt of the sea that lay beyond. Could picture the vibrant stripes of blues and greens, the silvery horizon.
He turned back to Julie, who was still panting and wild-eyed. She was so close, his heart stuttered and thunked, and he couldn’t help but cup her cheek. They were eye to eye, body to body.
He’d tried so hard to forget this — this pull that set in every time Julie got close. But it felt so right to have her there, even if the circumstances were all wrong.
He dragged his eyes away and straightened to kick the engine back to life.
“Where to?” Her voice wavered just the way her gaze had when he’d touched her.
“We’ll head back to town and hide the bike,” he said, twisting once more on the seat.
“They’ll find it. They’ll find us.”
Us. He liked the sound of that.
“Not if we hide it well.” He risked a cocky grin. “And not if we head where they won’t expect us to go.”
She looked at him, her green eyes questioning.
“The boat. We get on the boat and sail away.”
She stared at him like he’d just offered her a ride on a magic carpet. “The boat?” she murmured. “Your boat? Serendipity?”
His chest went all warm. “Yeah, Serendipity. Let’s go.”
— SIX —
“Julie?”
She blinked three or four times until the world came back into focus. There was a hand reaching out from overhead, a voice calling her name. The curved stern of a sailboat filled her vision, and the sea rocked beneath her. The voice came from somewhere higher up, past the metal piping that formed a rail at the back of the boat and above the curved letters that spelled the sailboat’s name: SERENDIPITY.
“You okay?” Seth asked from behind.
She blinked again, trying to break through the fog that had taken over her thoughts.
“Come on, Tobin, help her up,” Seth said.
Seth’s strong, steady presence must have let her slip into a daze, because she was still sitting in the dinghy, trying to process everything that happened. Being chased. Escaping on the motorcycle. Being grazed by a bullet, if not directly hit. Ditching the bike then hurrying to the dinghy to get to Seth’s boat, where his brother waited.
Tobin. That was Seth’s brother’s name. The funny one with the thousand-watt smile and cheeky grin. The kind who would fit right into a Chippendales lineup or the pages of a magazine. She’d met the brother about thirty seconds before meeting Seth, because Tobin was the one who’d immediately come on to her in a bar all those weeks ago. She’d brushed Tobin right off, uninterested, and Seth came over to apologize for his brother. She was going to dismiss Seth just as quickly, but somehow, she got stuck on those eyes, that quiet voice.
She winced as Tobin hauled her up by her bad arm.
“Jesus, what happened?”
She was wondering the same thing.
Seth left her in the cockpit, wrapped in a beach towel like a lost kitten while he and Tobin scurried around the boat, hurrying to weigh anchor. Funny how he’d always talked about inviting her aboard but this was her first time. He’d always had one excuse or another, most of them involving his brother. And anyway, they’d been having too good a time burning up the sheets in her beach bungalow to budge far. God, it hadn’t taken much for her to fall for him. Seth, the New York business consultant turned sea adventurer. What had she been thinking?
Warmth seeped into her body as she remembered the way he’d tilt his head to listen to her — really listen. The way he’d slowly stroke the length of her arm with one finger. The way his gaze would go all intent like nothing on earth was more important to him than her.
Yeah, a girl could be forgiven for falling for a guy like that. But falling that hard and that fast… That part was hard to forgive. She was supposed to be tough. Independent. Strong.
“Secure the dinghy. I’ll get the sail,” Seth called to his brother.
Julie looked around, trying to get oriented. Until now, she’d only seen the boat from a distance, but even that was enough to impress her. Not so much by its fanciness, because it was a smallish, older sailboat, but in what it promised. Adventure. New horizons. Just thinking about it made her lungs expand. That sense of possibility.
But she’d let her imagination get ahead of itself. By day three of their week together, she’d been silently hoping that she could keep seeing Seth. Thinking she might be able to hook up with him somewhere along the coast when she wrapped up her research. Together, they could sail from island to island and—
Silly girl.
She dropped her chin to her chest and closed her eyes as Seth came through the cockpit once again. His hand touched her arm and she found those honey-brown eyes studying hers.
“You okay?” His voice was scratchy, like there was too much sea salt in it.
A nod was all she managed, because having the warmth of him that close did all kinds of things to her heart, her mind, her tongue.
He wore a polo shirt she remembered. The one embroidered with the logo of the company he’d told her about quitting right after he decided to sail off into the sunset. The kind of shirt she imagined him wearing with crisp chinos on casual days at the office. Except now, it was weather-beaten and worn: a workingman’s shirt with tiny tears, oil stains, and a crumpled collar. Details that said this man was on the run, a little like her. A man going deliciously feral, one tropical day at a time.
He patted her knee and ducked below, and a minute later the engine was on. Julie forced herself to concentrate on what was going on. She’d never been one to follow a man blindly, damn it, and wouldn’t start now.
The boat seemed big and small at the same time. Big because all she’d ever been in were little racing hulls, and Serendipity was easily three times that size. Thirty-two feet, she remembered Seth saying, plus more for the bowsprit — the spar sticking out from the bow like an old-fashioned whaling ship had. The other boats in the anchorage were patched-up local fishing vessels or fiberglass showpieces that looked like they’d sailed straight out of a glossy magazine. Serendipity looked like something out of Treasure Island, albeit in miniature. It had dark wood rails and burnished copper-framed portholes. Brass winches and thick wooden pulleys. A spaghetti bowl of lines, running every which way. She could recognize some — the jib sheet, the furling line, the halyard — but had no clue about the others.
“’Scuse me,” Tobin said, reaching behind her for a line.
She was in the way. Her shoulder was throbbing, her head spinning.
“Um, mind if I clean up?” she ventured.
Tobin nodded without taking his eyes from Seth, who was busy at the base of the mast. “Make yourself at home.”
Three steep steps — ladder
rungs, really — and she was in the cabin, feeling a little awed. Just like Seth once told her.
“It’s kind of like a camper. A tiny, floating home.”
In front of her was a miniature kitchen with a sink, a two-burner stove, and a minuscule countertop squeezed into a corner. Across from it was a table covered by a chart, and on the wall above that was a control panel of switches and electronics: radio, GPS, and other instruments she didn’t recognize. All that fit in the tiny space flanking the steps. The rest of the cabin was taken up by a living area created by a U-shaped couch and a built-in table.
It was as cramped as a tiny studio apartment, but cozy too, thanks to the photos and mementos decorating the walls. The space of honor on the far wall was filled by a framed photo of a gray-haired man surrounded by a gaggle of young kids. That had to be the grandfather who’d left Seth and Tobin his boat. She’d bet anything Seth was the serious-looking ten-year-old on the right, holding the tiller. Tobin had to be the mischievous one next to him, tying knots in a line, and the others were sure to be their cousins.
My grandfather died last winter, she remembered Seth saying. He’d left his beloved boat to his grandkids, together with a small sum of money so that each set of siblings might spend some time reconnecting with each other and with the earth.
She let her eyes drift across the happy faces in the photo until they came to rest on the grandfather. Such wise eyes, such a lively face, in spite of all the wrinkles. A man like that, she would have loved to meet.
There were more pictures and postcards hung along the side walls — some old, some new. The most recent ones chronicled the journey the brothers had made from North America: there was a postcard from Charleston, another from Florida, then the Yucatán peninsula, and Belize. Tucked a little deeper along that side of the boat was a recessed bunk with a tousled blanket. Seth’s bunk? She leaned in for a closer look and smiled at the titles on the built-in bookshelf, most of them from Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series. Yep, it was Seth’s bunk, all right.