He pushed to his feet and padded to where Laimure stood navigating the waters. The waves weren’t as high, but their gray ting mirrored the clouds still swirling above them. James knew they’d passed the worst of the storm, but he wouldn’t be satisfied until they’d ported.
“How’s our path?”
“Another half day and we’ll hit calmer waters,” said his deck officer.
“Call Nicholas to switch with you in an hour. I’ll be in the engine room.”
Nicholas was on the bridge when James made his way back from hunting down Presley and checking the engine room. The Romanian barely glanced away from the wide expanse of ocean gleaming outside the windows.
“Your phone rang,” he said before James could open his mouth.
The sat phone sat exactly where James had tossed it earlier. He eyed it, determining the wisdom of calling back and the patience it would require to deal with Bishop, but he knew it needed to be done.
He dialed.
“Crow.”
No Captain this time, James noted with mild amusement.
“Have you decided?”
“This is highly classified,” the man insisted in what James could only deduce was his urgent, agent voice. “It could jeopardize the life of our asset.”
“Asset, that’s spy talk for undercover agent, isn’t it?”
Bishop hesitated. It was clear enough that James took it as an affirmation.
“The girl is part of a very crucial, years in the making operation, Mr. Crow. Everything must go per the plan or we may lose our window.”
James ignored the mister jab.
“I can appreciate that, but you have yet to tell me what you’re going to do with her and what my involvement in all this is, because you promised me a pivotal role, Mr. Bishop. You promised me revenge. I have waited patiently for four years for you to keep your word. When you do finally grace us with your call, it’s to take the girl. Nothing more. Well, I did my part. I got the girl. Now it’s time for you to hold up your end.”
“I understand you’re upset, but I explained to you that matters like this don’t happen overnight. There are steps, critical and unavoidable markers that we must cross. Infiltrating, creating inside men, creating trust, this takes years. With the girl, we will now have our foot right inside De Marco’s enterprise.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
Bishop sighed. “Have you ever heard of a hero complex, Mr. Crow?”
James gritted his jaw, but wisely remained mute.
“A grateful father being brought back his treasured daughter, unharmed, will get you just about anything you ask for.”
James drummed the tips of his fingers on the desk. “So, you kidnapped the girl just to take her back and be the hero? That’s your plan?”
“Essentially. There are other matters—”
“I’ll get back to you.”
James hung up before another word could be exchanged. He tossed the phone down on the desk with a noisy, and possibly damaging, clatter. The sound had Nicholas turning, but his question died on his lips when James placed a finger against his own mouth, silencing him. He rose to his feet, took the phone and walked out with it onto the catwalk. He pitched it into the ocean.
“What are you doing?” Nicholas stood in the doorway to the bridge, arms folded.
“It was bugged.” James stepped back inside, shouldering past the other man when he didn’t move right away. “Or maybe it wasn’t, not entirely sure.”
“What?” His second was eyeing him like he’d lost his mind.
“It’s part of the plan.” James regained his chair. “We take the girl, MI5 gets her from us, returns her to De Marco. But a plan like that needs a scapegoat, someone to take the fall, someone to blame. That’s us. Only Bishop can’t afford witnesses.”
Nicholas cursed in Romanian. “I knew we couldn’t trust him.”
“I never did.” James rubbed a hand over his jaw. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we need to prepare. If my assumptions are correct, that clicking I’ve been hearing through the sat phone was him bugging us, tracking our every movement. He just lost element of surprise. But he still knows our last position.”
“What’s the plan?”
James sucked in a breath and made an instinctive leap. “Turn us around. We’re heading back.”
Chapter Nine
The giant brought Cora her meal that night, and like most deliveries, he said nothing as he set the tray down on a crate. He dusted his hands on his pants and turned straight back towards the door without a single glance in her direction.
“I’m Cora,” she blurted before he could leave.
Warm, shrewd eyes bore into her, narrowing the longer he took to calculate his answer. “August.”
She offered her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
He hesitated. He studied her open palm with the chin tilted curiosity of someone faced with a life altering decision. She’d never seen anyone so conflicted about a handshake.
“Thank you for the food,” she said instead, using her unaccepted hand to motion to the platter of roasted chicken, steamed veggies, and whole wheat bun.
Had she hoped for a shred of dialogue, a sliver of conversation during her endless hours of isolation, she was left sadly wanting when he merely inclined his head and walked out. The hinges whined pitifully, a desperate little shrill she felt resonate all the way through her.
Then she was alone again, abandoned with her own inner voices and misery.
Christ, she was so bored.
The veggies needed salt, but the chicken was perfectly seasoned and tender. It practically melted in her mouth with every bite. She ate the whole thigh, the bread, and even the diced carrots and broccoli. She left the empty plates on the tray and sat on the cot.
She counted the square sheets of metal bolted into the walls. She counted the four, fat screws bolted into each slab of metal. She counted the number of crates and the number of wood panels along the sides. She flopped onto her back on the thin mattress and willed herself to sleep. Leaving that plane of existence was the only outlet to sanity she had remaining, but even she’d maxed her sleeping quota, because each time she tried, it became less and less. It was only a matter of time before it stopped all together, when she’d slept so much she couldn’t ever again.
Mercy arrived with the disturbance of hinges and the door being forced open. August’s return for the dishes was accompanied by Nicholas, which immediately prompted Cora upright.
“Come with me,” he commanded from the doorway.
“If I want to live?” Cora challenged with a quirk of her eyebrow.
“Yes,” he replied without missing a beat.
Despite it all, Cora felt her lips twitch at his ability to actually make a joke. She hadn’t thought it possible, yet even Nicholas almost grinned. Almost. It was for that reason she didn’t argue when she pushed to her feet and followed him through the stairs and corridors to James’s room.
The door stood open and the man himself sat at his desk, an untouched plate at his elbow. His left hand wielded a pen that drifted gracefully over the papers before him. His right hand held a chilled beer half poised to his lips, as if he’d started to drink then got distracted. He lowered it when they entered. The bottle made a dull thud when it hit the table.
“Have a seat.” He motioned to the only available spot—the bed. The unmade bed. The bed layered with memories of his hands and mouth moving and gliding with expert ease over the hills and valleys of her body. “Cora?”
She’d taken too long. He was staring at her now, taking her in, and she prayed to God he couldn’t see the burn creeping up her chest to fill her cheeks.
“I’m all right standing.”
His chair squeaked as he turned to face her fully. He didn’t push her, but he joined her on his feet. His gray eyes held hers from a bleak expression. Something in it sent her heart into her stomach.
“What?”
Even as sh
e asked, she could see the answer in the firm lines of his mouth. She could feel it vibrating through the room, tainting the air with a coppery taste. She tried to swallow it down, but the vile paste only made her want to gag. All she could do was stand her ground and face whatever was coming.
She became aware of the other man in the room, the one stationed just inside the door, the one wearing the same expression as his captain. Nicholas seemed to be waiting for her to do something rash, maybe scream hysterically and throw herself at his boss, claws first. Maybe he thought she’d try and run, not that she’d get far ... unless she dove into the ocean. Which made her think maybe they didn’t want her dead, or dead by her own hands. Maybe they planned to chop up pieces of her and send them to her father. That made the most sense.
“We’re taking you home.”
Still shrouded in all the grotesque possibilities, Cora wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly, or if those words were merely figments of her imagination, because home hadn’t been in her morbid scenarios.
“What?”
James rested one ass cheek on his desk, reminding her of a teacher about to deliver a failing grade.
“We’ve already rerouted course,” he told her, gesturing to the window with a nod of his chin. “It’ll be a couple of days, but you’ll be back with your family by the end of the week.”
The air she’d trapped in her lungs expelled in a rush, like letting air out of a balloon. “What ... are you serious?” A disbelieving laugh escaped her. “You’re taking me home? Just like that?”
James nodded slowly. “Just like that.”
“Did ... did you talk to my dad? Is that why—?”
“No,” he said. “We’ll contact him when we hit land.”
Not sure what the protocol was for a situation like that, Cora simply stood there, hand clapped over her grinning mouth. Part of her wanted to scream and jump up and down. The other part of her wanted to fall to the floor in hysterical sobs. But all she could do was stand there, unable to catch her breath.
“I don’t ... I don’t know what to say ... thank you.”
Rather than respond, James ran a tongue over his bottom lip and stole another glance at his partner. The two held gazes a full heartbeat before she was the main focus once more.
“There is one thing before you go back.”
The euphoric sensation lifted a fraction, but didn’t dissipate entirely. She was too heady with the thought of going home to spot the hidden meaning behind those words. The ominous nature of them should have had her taking a step back.
“Okay, what?”
James pushed to his full height, an almost dismissive gesture. “We can discuss that later. Nicholas is going to take you back to your room for now.”
A part of her knew she should push. Her father had always warned her about simply accepting things at face value. Anything worth having should never be given away that freely, and he was giving her the one thing she wanted more than anything without offering her his price for it.
But what did it matter? Whatever he wanted, she would get. Possessions were simple things to achieve. She had things, and if it was something she didn’t have, she would get it. Short of murdering someone, she would do whatever he wanted.
How bad could it be?
The next two days were excruciating, calculated solely by the comings and goings of August, and the occasional interruption by Presley escorting her to the bathroom. No one else came for her. Not James, or Nicholas. Both seemed more preoccupied with other matters, which suited her just fine. For the first time since her captivity, her own company was all she wanted. There was no one to question why she couldn’t stop grinning.
She was going home. Nothing else mattered.
On the sunset on her final day, her last supper never arrived.
She kept watching the door, wondering if her anticipation was making it feel like hours had gone by when it hadn’t. But the obstacle remained firmly sealed, a barricade against the world.
It reached a point where she began to wonder if maybe James had lied.
It was possible.
It wasn’t like she could see the coastline, and even if she could, she had no idea what to look for. They could very well be all the way around the globe by now. The whole thing could have been a trick to keep her quiet, to keep her compliant until they arrived. Then she’d have no choice but to go wherever they took her.
The paranoia was all consuming. It ate at her until she couldn’t focus on anything else. It nearly drove her to climb the walls, to bang on the door until somebody answered and gave her peace of mind.
When the door finally opened, it was so unexpected, Cora jumped. The bedsprings jangled loudly, and were ignored as Nicholas entered in his usual stoic manner. He stopped just inside.
“The captain wishes to see you.”
Cora was shoving past him even before he finished speaking.
She wished to see the captain as well.
The cabin door was shoved open by her, but Nicholas held it until she’d passed under his arm. Then he shut it, trapping her in with the man in the dimly lit room.
He stood next to a small, square table set for two. There were no candles, or soft music, not even a table cloth, but the intimacy of it prickled the uncertainty she could feel itching along the back of her neck. It increased when he pulled out a seat for her and motioned her to sit.
She didn’t move.
“What is this?”
“Dinner.” He patted the back of the seat. “We have things that need to be discussed and we don’t have a lot of time to do it.”
Accepting that that seemed reasonable, she relented. Her sock-clad feet whispered with her shuffle forward. The chair was held as she lowered herself into it. It was nudged into place before a plate of spaghetti.
The gallantry was unnerving. She would never have accused him of being a gentleman, of being capable of such a thing as manners. Thus far, he’d been nothing but brute force and unwavering authority.
This side of him scared her more than all the others combined.
“Are we nearly to land?” she asked, breaking the silence.
James claimed his seat across from her. “We’ll arrive by dawn.”
That familiar brewing of excitement frothed in the pit of her stomach, distracting her from his momentary lapse in character. She could barely contain herself.
“Then I can see my parents?”
Silver eyes rose and met hers over the twin simply placed meals. “Nicholas will contact them in the morning and set up a place to meet.”
She had to bite her lip to keep from making a sound. She had to curl her fingers and sink the nails into her palms to keep from trembling too hard, so afraid that if he knew how much this meant to her, he might take it away just to toy with her.
Just to terrorize her.
Just because he could.
The twisted fact of that only convulsed in her stomach, a coiling barb digging in.
“You said you wanted to discuss something.” She picked up her fork; spaghetti had never looked so delicious. “Is it your conditions? Have you decided?”
“I have.”
She twisted a heap of pasta around the prongs, but kept it on the plate, not trusting her grip to hold all the way to her mouth.
“What is it?”
One heartbeat.
Two heartbeats.
His silence bore into her, a pitiless weight testing her resistance. She could feel herself wavering beneath it, beneath his stare, beneath those damn eyes. There was no mercy there, no kindness. Yet despite the absence of compassion, the silver radiated with heat, a dark, twisted beckoning that transformed her spit to ashes.
Whatever he wanted from her, she no longer felt like she could pay it. The cost was already too high.
He must have known this, because he smirked, and nothing had ever terrified her more.
“You’re going to marry me.”
The fork slipped from her fingers. It struck
the edges of her plate with a deafening clatter, and was immediately forgotten.
She started at him, certain he was out of his fucking mind. “What did you say?”
“It’s a small price to pay for your freedom,” he justified as if that made everything better. “And it’s what I want in return.”
She couldn’t breathe. The air had grown thick, muggy. Swamp air, but brutally cold. Brittle. She could feel herself suffocating.
“You’re crazy.”
The corners of his lips became razor blades, cutting, cruel in their rise. “I’ve been called worse.” He unleashed her from his stripping gaze and peered at the lump cooling in his plate. He prodded at the noodles with the tips of his fork. “Only now...” His lashes lifted. She was caught in his trap all over again. “I’m your crazy.”
“No.” Her voice hitched. “I won’t.”
One shoulder barely lifted in a dismissive twitch that must have passed for a shrug. “Marry me, or we turn around and you’ll never see home again.” He checked his watch. “You have twelve minutes to decide.”
Her heart clapped an unsteady beat that sent violent shockwaves through the rest of her. She could taste it pumping her blood, could taste it at the back of her mouth. Ashes. It tasted like ashes, sickness. Pennies. She wanted to throw up.
“Eleven.”
Her head spun. A wicked rush of vertigo that sent her scrambling from her chair to the trash bin next to his desk. She hit the floor with both knees and retched.
Her lunch and breakfast hit the bottom, soaking the wades of crumpled paper. It permeated the room, absorbing the scent of tomato sauce and making her sicker.
“Not the reaction a guy hopes for when proposing.”
His musing sounded muffled beneath the dull buzz packing her brain like cotton. She didn’t hear him get up, didn’t hear him move until her hair was being scooped up off her neck, away from her face. The coolness of his touch nearly had her face turning into the gentle comfort.
He waited, patiently saying nothing until there was nothing left but her quiet sobs and shuddering wheezes.
“Good?”
At her unsteady nod, he folded himself, crouching until he was practically sitting next to her. Her hair was released. Those same fingers tucked beneath her chin and turned her face, a face wet with sweat, tears, snot, and vomit to his.
Blood Script Page 11