Baited
Page 1
She hated that he was hurt.
“When I thought you were dead,” she whispered over Will’s lips, “nothing could make the pain go away.”
He breathed against her, as if he also couldn’t believe she was with him. “I’m not about to leave you, Kat,” he said, voice low and tortured. “Not when we could finally get what we deserve out of life.”
She was beyond wondering exactly what he meant by that, if he was talking about the money she stood to inherit or if he was genuinely wishing they could be together again. Who cared right now? Why care?
But what if all this emotion had only been brought on by the terror of the boat wreck, the island….
The killer.
Kat locked her arms around him, rocking in cadence to a faint alarm signal that was growing louder, louder….
Danger. Danger. Danger….
Dear Reader,
Believe it or not, I turned in a blurb for a “deserted island” story months before Lost became a TV hit. I wanted to write about a Japanese pearl diver because, when I was just a tyke, I used to love this exhibit at Sea World—an attraction that, sadly, was shut down years ago. But I never forgot the female divers (or the pearls!). On a visit to Japan, I took a minitrip to Mikimoto’s Pearl Island, where I was lucky enough to see an ama exhibition (and buy pearls, natch). But something was missing from my ama-gets-shipwrecked story…and my editor, Susan Litman, provided the extra kick: Why not make this a mystery? I loved that, and this book was born.
So get ready to play a very deadly game of Survivor with Katsu Espinoza, an Everygirl Bombshell. Thank you so much for reading about her adventures!
Crystal Green
Crystal Green
BAITED
Books by Crystal Green
Silhouette Bombshell
The Huntress #28
Baited #112
Silhouette Special Edition
Beloved Bachelor Dad #1374
*The Pregnant Bride #1440
*His Arch Enemy’s Daughter #1455
*The Stranger She Married #1498
*There Goes the Bride #1522
†Her Montana Millionaire #1574
*The Black Sheep Heir #1587
The Millionaire’s Secret Baby #1668
‡A Tycoon in Texas #1670
§Past Imperfect #1724
The Last Cowboy #1752
Harlequin Blaze
Playmates #121
Born To Be Bad #179
Innuendo #261
Silhouette Special Edition
Her Gypsy Prince #1789
CRYSTAL GREEN
lives near Las Vegas, Nevada, where she writes for the Silhouette Special Edition, Silhouette Bombshell and Harlequin Blaze lines. She loves to read, overanalyze movies, do yoga and write about her travels and obsessions on her Web site, www.crystal-green.com. There, you can read about her trips on Route 66, as well as her visits to Japan and Italy.
She’d love to hear from her readers by e-mail through the “Contact Crystal” feature on her Web page.
To Pamela Harty.
Thank heavens for the day you and Deidre took me into the family of your agency.
I appreciate all you do.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Prologue
As another scream tore through the island forest, Katsu Espinoza stopped in her tracks, trying to get a lock on where the sound was coming from.
The pulse in her head kicked to a deafening beat while she lifted her face to the gray sky, panting, blinking as a drop of rain bled from a palm frond and splashed onto her forehead. She tightened her grip on the long screwdriver in her hand—the best weapon she’d been able to scrounge from their meager store of supplies back at the cave.
Please, Kat thought, prayed, please give me another sign to follow.
Even if the sign was another tortured yell that would let her find the next victim—whoever it was—before it was too late.
At the same time, she wished for silence. God knew what the killer was doing to the screamer. From what she and the other survivors had seen of the previous victims, she didn’t want to guess.
Blood running to the ground from the mutilations…
Eyes staring in dead terror at nothing…
Mouths open in silent cries…
Kat shut her eyes against a surge of nausea, but the vivid red images of flesh kept stabbing into her.
One victim.
Two.
Three…
Murder. A killer in the midst of a group of people she’d set out on a boat tour with only days ago. It’d started off so innocently, just like any other morning where you got out of bed, brushed your teeth, ate your breakfast and did your thing.
But then the storm. The wreckage. This island.
Even now, she couldn’t believe what a nightmare the harmless little cage-diving expedition had turned out to be. Couldn’t believe a person like her—a normal girl whose biggest problems included endlessly paying off old credit-card debt and navigating a hapless love life—was actually chasing down a killer.
But all that was behind her, a hazy dream that was just as out of reach as the thought of being rescued from whatever nameless piece of land they now existed on.
As Kat waited, a flash of lightning flickered, whitening the sky and the forest around her. A rumble of thunder shook the air, then the chop of her own labored breathing. Tiny explosions of raindrops on leaves echoed her crazy heartbeat while she stood braced, ready to run toward…
Another shriek: Nooooo…aaaahhhhh!
Startled, adrenaline sparked her forward, toward the sound.
Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod…
Kat took hold of the screwdriver as if it were an ice pick and charged forward, parting the vegetation, dodging leaves, tripping over vines and sloshing through the mud.
The cry ripped her in two, because part of her wanted to help but the very average I’m-not-a-super-hero part only wanted to stay alive.
Before she could really think about what she was doing, she stumbled into a clearing, screwdriver poised.
Opposite her, the newest victim sat slumped against the trunk of a tree, blood and raindrops mingling on a terrified face. His mouth, gaped open, still held a frozen yawp for mercy. His hands were wrenched behind the tree—obviously tied. When the victim spotted her, he leaned forward, eyes widening.
Lips forming a soundless word.
Help.
Kat hitched in a breath as she took a sharp look around. Dark foliage. Quickening raindrops. A body…two bodies…sprawled in the high grass to her right.
Legs turning to slush, she dragged her gaze away and fought to walk to the victim. Still, she couldn’t help eyeing the bodies, trying to see who they were.
Or who they used to be.
Careful, she told herself. What if this newest sacrifice is hiding something behind his back? What if he’s the killer, and he’s tricking you, luring you into something you won’t be able to handle?
Don’t trust anybody.
“Who did this to you?” Kat whispered, crouching. She still had the screwdriver ready, just in case.
The victim’s eyes weren’t focusing, and she could tell he was struggling to stay conscious. Could she get him back to the caves in time so they could be saved?
The next blinding second, the victim’s gaze
fixed on something behind Kat, mouth falling open again…But it wasn’t to answer Kat’s question.
His blood-rimmed mouth was starting to scream.
Dread flew up Kat’s spine. Blinded by panic, she instinctively grabbed a handful of mud, preparing to whip around to throw it in the face of whoever was at her back, then follow up with the screwdriver. She’d fought in too many brawls back home to lose her street sense. It was second nature to strike first.
But she never had the chance.
Chapter 1
Three Weeks Earlier—Just Another Day at Work
Kat knew it was going to be a long day the second Yoko Nakamura muttered, “scum” and tripped her as they entered the Neptune Point Pearl-Diving Show boat.
Kat decided to ignore her self-appointed rival, instead taking position at the back of the small, open-sided vessel. Once there, she adjusted the sexed-up ama uniform—an isogi—that Neptune Point made her wear for the entertainment of the tourists who visited the San Diego theme park. The garb featured an almost-puritanical white hood, but when the isogi’s long-sleeved white shirt and extended wraparound skirt got wet, the costume turned transparent. Anything for the sake of entertainment, right? But the effect was a far cry from what a traditional Japanese pearl diver would have looked like back in the heyday of the trade.
Yet it wasn’t like Kat was here to sell truth. Hell, she wasn’t even a full-blooded, one hundred percent natural Japanese girl herself—not with all her dad’s Mexican-American genes running willy-nilly all over her facial features and under her skin. Nope. Her job was to present a fantasy, to whet appetites so the crowds would shuffle from the observation bleachers and into the cultured-pearl shop after the show, spending their hard-earned cash on things she could never even dream of affording. Things like blue seed-pearl necklaces, creamy bracelets, exquisite rings.
Tracy Ito, wonder-roomie and best friend, took her spot in between Kat and Yoko, and their driver took off from the prep dock toward the entrance of the Pearl Lagoon. Tracy was also fully garbed in ama finery.
“Think you can chill out today, Yoko?” Tracy asked.
The other diver ignored Tracy, concentrating on smoothing out her own isogi instead. Kat had been enduring problems with Yoko ever since her rival had joined the shift a couple of weeks ago. She hated Kat for a hundred reasons: mostly because Kat had beat Yoko out for the lead diver position—and the slight raise that went with it. A prideful Yoko had taken this to heart. She was constantly messing with Kat underwater, snatching oysters from under her grasp to make sure she had a higher count in the unofficial, normally playful daily competition to see who could bring up the most booty. No bones about it—Yoko was determined to position herself to take over Kat’s job when the time came.
A meaningless rivalry, Kat thought. But Yoko’s dislike was also more personal.
Light-skinned and so very Japanese on the calm surface, Yoko had reportedly lived in the U.S. for about six years—it’d been enough time for her to develop a Yankee-style habit of “keeping it real” and expressing her true opinions, unlike a more tempered girl from her old country would. Back home she would’ve been encouraged to hide her racial disgust of Kat in public. But here, in this country? Nah.
Yoko finished fussing with her uniform then shot Kat a cool sidelong glance. Three guesses as to what was coming next.
“Eta,” Yoko mouthed without giving voice to the insult.
Finally past her limit, Kat made a move toward the other woman, only to be held back by the levelheaded Tracy.
Good thing, because anyone familiar with Japan knew what eta meant. In spite of Kat’s limited knowledge of her Japanese mother’s culture, she knew it was a slur for a social underclass known as burakumin, a taboo subject no one dared discuss in polite company. Burakumin were considered unclean in part because of their blood-related professions: leatherworkers, slaughterhouse workers, and the like.
Scum of the earth, Kat thought. That’s what her mother’s family had been. And that’s why Mom had jumped at the chance to marry Lieutenant Joe Espinoza, who’d whisked her out of Japan and into the golden country of Disney and Levi’s jeans—the culture Mariko Okamoto had worshipped.
Little had she known that, after she died, her own mixed-blood daughter would suffer in America just as Mariko had in Japan, nicked by slurs that were just as hurtful.
Not that Katsu would ever let anyone know that.
“Eta,” Kat said, testing the word and calming down only because she knew it would nettle Yoko. Their boat glided nearer the lagoon. “I don’t know, Tracy. I kind of prefer what the kids in middle school used to call me.”
Tracy, ever the willing straight man, didn’t miss her cue. “And what did they call you?”
“Spic-anese.” Kat nodded proudly. “Has a more clever ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Definitely a keeper.”
Predictably, a flustered Yoko quickly flipped both of them off, and, as they rounded the corner into the lagoon, slid her hands into a graceful two-handed wave aimed at the audience.
“What a pill,” Tracy whispered, also morphing into super ama, speaking through her smile and waving at the crowd while keeping her head slightly lowered in an act of submission and shyness.
Kat followed suit, liking her job—and the decent paycheck—too much to play Yoko’s destructive game right now. “Water off my back—that’s all she is.”
They circled the rim of the small arena, making sure to push the stereotype of the adorable Asian doll to its fullest. Hey, it was in their job descriptions and it paid the bills. If they’d been real ama, they would’ve presented a different picture: Their bodies would’ve been muscular and maybe even chubby, the better to keep warm against the water. Their hair would’ve been shorter and their skin tanned by the open elements. Actually, the Neptune Point Pearl Divers looked more like geisha than laborers; they were made up to be slender, petite, quiet, pale.
At least from a distance.
Under the isogi, Kat was anything but the cliché. Even if she applied waterproof cosmetics to lighten her complexion, in her off hours she proudly wore the slight rosy-tan skin she’d gotten from her dad. Her almond-shaped brown eyes were just a little wider than the other amas’, but she’d inherited her mother’s delicate chin, gently shaped cheekbones and tea-brown hair, which Kat wore to her shoulders. The white costume hid a streamlined body, chiseled by hobbies such as surfing and skin-diving.
A twenty-four-year-old water baby and good ol’ American melting pot. A mixture of everything life had thrown at her.
Tracy chatted as the boat putted by the audience. “Hey, look, your boyfriend’s here.”
Kat scanned the front row, finding an older, too-thin man wearing a baseball cap, a tiki-print shirt and sunglasses. He was hunched over, leaning his forearms on his khakied thighs.
“Boyfriend?” Kat asked. “Duke?”
“You’ve spent enough time with him these past months. I don’t know, Kat, I’d totally go for your new pal, if I were you, even if he is old. The guy’s loaded and a sugar daddy could pay off those debts of yours. Know what I mean?”
“Nice, Tracy.” Kat didn’t know what else to say. Her quick friendship with Duke Harrington couldn’t be debated under a modest smile or even in the few seconds they had before the lagoon show really began.
He was someone to hang with. A mentor. And Duke liked to drop into the pearl-diving scene every once in a while to watch her work and take slow walks through the park. Just enjoying life while he could.
Kat offered him a welcoming wave, but he responded a little stiffly. Her heart jolted.
Was it a bad day, like the ones she’d seen him suffer through before he’d had stomach surgery and gone on the new medication? And here she’d thought that this round of treatment was supposed to be helping.
The smell of gasoline and ocean wind accompanied the gurgle of the boat’s cut engine. As the show’s announcer began her presentation—a spiel aimed at convincing t
he masses to buy pearls—the amas dipped into the murky lagoon constructed for the exhibition. Before each diving session, technicians transferred oysters from a pearl farm to the water, making Kat’s job a smooth one.
Four times a day and then home to check the surf report. She had a beautiful life.
She swam to the side of the boat and grabbed a small, open barrel-shaped basket and tied it to herself. It would float next to her, a receptacle for oysters. After fixing a mask over her face, she sliced forward, pushing the basket in front of her as the emcee’s happy voice filled the arena.
“The ama, who dive for everything from seaweed, abalone, shellfish, lobster, sea urchins and octopus to oysters, are usually female in Japan. It’s said that perhaps women can withstand the stress of the cold water better than men, or perhaps they’re more capable of conserving heat.”
Kat took one last look at Duke, glad for every day he could be here. Glad that his stomach cancer hadn’t physically barred him from coming to her shows…yet.
Just before Kat dove, Yoko swam to the spot next to her.
“Eta,” she said again, diving under.
Frustration singed through Kat’s chest, but she quelled it. Dammit, she’d spent most of her life here in the States blowing off the comments of prejudiced ignoramuses, so why was one stupid word from a jealous cow like Yoko bothering her?
She wouldn’t let it.
Kat hesitated only a moment, staring at the water, just like she did with every dive, building her confidence.
Every time you go under, you win, she thought.
No fear. No problem.
After a deep breath, she dove headfirst, heart in her throat, caught in a silken web of excitement and wariness.
Silence enveloped her as she darted down, propelled by well-worked muscles. She was at home now, cradled by liquid comfort, suspended in a hushed womb where nothing could touch her. Here, she could feel her dad’s presence again, his own love of the ocean all around her. It was the only place she could channel him now, the only place that cushioned the pain of losing him…and the failure of their relationship.