Her Passionate Protector

by Laurey Bright

  "The hell with the air chambers," Brodie muttered. "Get the guy with the gun." He dared to poke his rifle over the coaming and loose off a shot, aiming at the man with the fire-spitting gun, not sure if he'd found his mark, not even sure he wanted to know. It was the first time he'd ever shot at a human being.

  He thought about Sienna down below, and the lurid stories he'd heard about what pirates sometimes did to women. All of them sickeningly true. Setting his jaw, he raised himself to the deck, lying prone and steadying the rifle as the dinghy turned again, sending up a shower of foam. Deliberately he sighted on the figure he could dimly see near the bow, holding a long-snouted weapon, and pulled the trigger.

  The man jerked and slid down in the boat; his gun fired again, this time into the air.

  Tilisi whooped and leaped up onto the deck despite Rogan's sharp warning. He aimed his speargun at the boat as it roared by, and the silver point headed straight and true, the line snaking after it until the spear embedded itself in the ballooning pontoon side of the dinghy.

  Tilisi jumped back into the cockpit, all grinning, cocky triumph, and began reeling in his spear. Brodie swore at him for a bloody stupid bastard and fired off another shot at the boat where there seemed now to be some confusion, someone yelling in what sounded like a foreign language. The inflatable was slowly collapsing, at the back and side.

  This time it didn't return the attack, but roared off erratically into the night. With at least two holes in it, it would be almost unmanageable and half full of water, and although the occupants probably wouldn't drown before they got back to base, they and their guns would be wet.

  Light was beginning to break over the horizon. The sound of the dinghy's motor faded in the distance. Hunk called, "Hey, are you guys okay?"

  Rogan dared to lift his head, and then stood up. Brodie followed, and found his legs were unsteady. His injured arm was on fire with pain, and when he looked down he saw the bandage was soaked in blood.

  Tilisi jumped onto the deck, waving. "All okay," he crowed. "We got them!"

  "Sienna…" Brodie said, turning to the companionway, even as Rogan plunged toward it, saying hoarsely, "Camille!"

  And there they were, white-faced and looking shocked but unharmed.

  Rogan pulled Camille into his arms, and fear left Sienna's eyes as she saw Brodie. He wanted to follow Rogan's example and haul her close, but he had no right, and she probably wouldn't appreciate being smeared with his blood.

  She saw it and her eyes widened. "You opened the wound again!" And, looking over at the barge, "Where's Hunk?"

  Her anxiety gave Brodie a buzz that eclipsed the renewed pain in his arm. He grinned at her. "It's okay. No one got hurt." No one who mattered, anyway. Fleetingly he recalled the man with the machine gun, and told himself that whatever the guy got was only what he deserved.

  The rest of the crew joined them, slapping him and Rogan and Tilisi on the back. Brodie winced at an overenthusiastic hug from Hunk, easing his arm out of the way as the man said, "I thought we'd be picking up bodies. How'd you get away with it?"

  "It must be a bit hard to aim when you're in a speeding boat," Brodie guessed. "Lucky for us."

  Rogan said, "They must have hoped they could sneak on board and hold us up. Shooting at us from the boat was a bit desperate. Let's hope that's the last we see of them."

  The Sea-Rogue was battered but still seaworthy. "I don't suppose they wanted to sink her," Brodie said over coffee and toast in the saloon after Hunk had repaired a couple of stitches and dressed Brodie's wound again. "If they knew we had the gold aboard there'd be no sense in sending it to the bottom of the ocean again."

  The excitement over, the crew had gone back to the barge to have an early breakfast and prepare for their departure. But just in case, they were taking turns to keep a lookout for any further activity from the trawler.

  Rogan took breakfast to their prisoner and reported, "He still reckons he's innocent. Didn't know a thing about any attempt on the treasure."

  "If we went through his stuff," Brodie said, "d'you think we'd find any evidence?"

  Camille demurred. "Shouldn't we wait for the police?"

  Someone thumped on the deck above, and they all looked up, Brodie leaping to his feet. Damn, but he'd got jumpy with all that had happened in the last couple of days.

  Tilisi poked his head in. "The tug's in sight."

  By the time the tug reached them the trawler was long gone, rapidly disappearing off the Sea-Rogue's radar screen. The policeman, a massively burly six-foot-six islander with legs and arms like tree trunks and a patient expression, looked a bit disapproving when they said they had a prisoner.

  "What evidence do you have against this man?" he asked sternly.

  "He was signaling," Brodie insisted, "to the guys who tried to kill us this morning."

  "Tried to kill you?" the officer repeated skeptically. "Do you have proof of this?"

  Brodie swallowed a sarcastic retort, gesturing at the splintered wood over the companionway, the shattered glass still lying about. "They fired on us with a submachine gun!"

  "They came from a trawler called Scorpio," Rogan told the officer. "It's been hanging about here on and off since we arrived. They used an inflatable."

  "Ah—you saw the boat leave the trawler?"

  "No!" Brodie growled. "It was dark. But they couldn't have come from anywhere else."

  "If it was dark," the policeman said, "how do you know there was no other ship in the vicinity? You see, we have to be careful to get our facts right. It wouldn't do to cause an international incident by arresting a perfectly innocent ship from some other country."

  He wasn't, it was clear, convinced that Joe wasn't perfectly innocent too, as the diver continued to maintain. "Using a flashlight at night is no crime," the policeman worried. "It's not enough to detain him in custody."

  "Can't you hold him for questioning at least?" Brodie demanded, exasperated. "Someone shot up the Sea-Rogue. You can at least investigate! Look through his things and find out if there's anything suspicious there."

  Somewhat reluctantly the policeman agreed he could do that, but Joe had to be there when he did it.

  Rogan and Brodie accompanied them. They'd untied Joe's hands and hoped the serviceable pistol the policeman wore at his waist was enough to deter any mayhem. Certainly an attempted escape was unlikely since there was nowhere to go.

  The search turned up a satellite phone and a pistol, along with a clip of ammunition. Brodie wondered if they would have found some plastic explosive if they'd searched earlier. Though, presuming Joe was the safe-blower, he'd had plenty of opportunity to throw such damning evidence overboard.

  "Is this licensed?" the policeman queried, holding the pistol.

  Joe shrugged. "Yeah. Don't have the license with me though."

  To Brodie's relief the policeman confiscated the weapon anyway. "When you prove it's legal," he said, "you can have it back."

  The satellite phone, he pointed out, was not illegal, and when Rogan asked Joe why he carried such an expensive piece of technology, Joe said, "I've got a family, right? I like to keep in touch."

  "A family?" Brodie queried. It was the first he'd heard of Joe being a family man.

  "Parents." Joe glowered. "They're getting old. I need to keep an eye on them, okay? Brothers. And my girlfriend."

  The policeman looked sympathetic. Family ties meant something to him. "I can't arrest a man for having a phone."

  "Try the redial," Brodie suggested.

  The policeman looked at him, and pressed the button, listened and shrugged. "No such number."

  Joe smirked. "I must've dialed a wrong one."

  Glumly Brodie and Rogan watched as Joe packed up his things and made ready to leave with the others.

  "There will be an investigation," the policeman promised before climbing back aboard the tug. "Piracy is a serious matter, but unfortunately some countries are less vigilant than they might be about policing it."

&nbs
p; "They could hardly be less vigilant than that!" Brodie growled in disgust as he watched Joe board the tug with the other divers for the journey back to Parakaeo. Looked like the guy was free and clear.

  "The cop's got a point," Rogan admitted. "When you look at the evidence it doesn't seem all that strong. Like Granger would say, it won't hold up in court."

  They stuck with the tug and the barge all the way back to the little island port. A cruise ship was tied up at the wharf where the freighter had been when they left, and along the foreshore, tents and booths had sprung up where the locals were selling handcrafts, shells, coral, pearls and hand-dyed pareus to the tourists.

  Rogan handed out checks to the team, including generous bonuses and the promised gold coin. He passed Joe's envelope to him in tight-lipped silence. Joe took it, ripped it open to check the contents, turned away with a two-finger salute and shouldered his pack, and after climbing ashore to the wharf, strode toward the hotel where the divers would await the twice-weekly flight out to Rarotonga, and from there to wherever in the world their next job was.

  Tu and Tilisi organized students of the dive school into a twenty-four-hour watch on the Sea-Rogue—fit, strong young men, who took turns to sit in pairs on the wharf and keep their eyes peeled for any strangers or suspicious activity. At the first sign of trouble they could muster most of the male population of the port within minutes.

  A sleek oceangoing cabin cruiser with a blue hull and white superstructure nosed into the harbor near dusk and dropped anchor. An inflatable runabout took ashore three men, who ambled up the rise toward the hotel.

  "Anyone we know?" Brodie queried Rogan.

  "Don't recognize them," Rogan answered. "The boat though—I might have seen that before. At Mokohina?"

  Brodie squinted at it. "Not a regular. I don't remember seeing it."

  "Maybe I'm wrong. Are we going for a drink at the hotel?"

  "I guess the guys expect us." A farewell drink with the team before they dispersed was normal. "What about the girls?"

  "I'll ask if they want to come. It should be safe enough either way—Tu's boys will be around, and if the burglar alarm goes off we'll probably hear it from the hotel."

  The bar was crowded, the locals outnumbered by tourists. Brodie looked for the three men from the motor cruiser but couldn't identify them.

  It was a subdued farewell. The team occupied a couple of tables and the drinks flowed freely, paid for by Rogan, but the fact that Joe sat alone in a shadowed corner of the crowded bar, sinking glass after glass of beer, introduced a sour note.

  When he got up and slouched out of the door that led to the back of the hotel the atmosphere lightened a little. Olin and Tilisi snagged some pretty female tourists from among the cruise-ship passengers soaking up local color in the bar, impressing them with tales of their diving adventures. By the time the remaining Sea-Rogue crew left, the celebration was developing into a real party.

  Brodie held the door open for Sienna and Camille, and before he let it go a man brushed by him without thanks, wearing a white jacket over a striped shirt and wraparound sunglasses. Some rich guy off the cruise ship, Brodie guessed, used to having lesser mortals open doors for him. He grinned to himself as he caught up with the others. Rogan had his arm about Camille, and Brodie debated taking Sienna's hand in his, but decided he'd better not.

  Something teased at the back of his mind about the stranger in the doorway, some memory that wouldn't come to the fore. Had he seen the man somewhere, sometime? Hard to tell with those glasses on. Maybe he was famous as well as rich, pretending he didn't want to be recognized. As if anyone on Parakaeo would care.

  After the women had gone to bed, leaving the two men in the saloon, Rogan said, "Think we could persuade Camille and Sienna to take a plane back to New Zealand?"

  Brodie grinned. "In case the trawler's lurking about, waiting for us to sail with the treasure on board? I don't fancy your chances. Did Camille promise to obey you?"

  "You were at our wedding," Rogan reminded him. "You should know she didn't."

  Brodie didn't say he'd been preoccupied with wondering if the bridesmaid was as pretty as her back view promised, not really listening to the words.

  "I'll talk to Granger," Rogan said, "and see what we come up with."

  Brodie was asleep in his bunk when he heard a thump at the side of the boat, bringing him out of a dream in which Sienna featured, sitting on the prow of the Maiden's Prayer with her hair streaming in the current, her pink-tipped breasts an invitation, that neat belly button just begging for a forefinger to explore it—and below that a few inches of smooth skin and a tail, all gleaming gold scales like coins overlapping each other, culminating in a waving silver fin…

  Brodie muttered a curse and woke up. The bump came again, then something that sounded like a groan.

  Flinging back the sheet, he padded out into the saloon and groped his way up the companionway.

  The boys on the wharf came to their feet. The sounds had come from the seaward side of the boat where the dive ladder was. He turned toward it as the boys leaped on board.

  A hand clung to the ladder. Dimly he could see an upturned face. A hoarse, slurred voice said, "Help me!"

  They hauled him aboard, despite a yell of pain when they grabbed him, and he slumped onto the deck, breathing heavily, with a hitch and a groan at each inhalation. Brodie gingerly turned him over, eliciting another, louder groan, and at first didn't recognize the bruised face with puffy, half-closed eyes, a swollen nose that was probably broken, and blood mixed with water flowing from cuts over the cheekbones and on the lips. One arm was bent at a weird angle, and when Brodie touched it the man yelped, "Jeez, Brodie!"

  Looking at him more closely, Brodie said, "Joe?"

  "Don't … throw me overboard, 'kay?" Joe said weakly, then seemed to lapse into unconsciousness.

  Brodie dug a couple of fingers into the man's neck and found a pulse still beating strongly. "Look after him," he said to the boys, and went down to fetch Rogan.

  The women followed Rogan up to the deck. Joe seemed half-conscious, enough to mutter "No!" when Camille suggested taking him straight to the island's only hospital. "Not the hospital," he said. "They'll get me…"

  "Who?" Brodie asked. "Who beat you up?"

  Joe didn't seem to hear. "Don't tell anyone. Please, guys. Rogue … sorry…"

  He drifted into unconsciousness again. Brodie poked him in the ribs, some of which he suspected had been broken, but got no reaction. "We ought to chuck him back," he said.

  Sienna looked up from her horrified contemplation of Joe's injuries. "You can't do that!"

  "Yeah, I know." It was hard not to feel sorry for the guy, in the circumstances. "I wonder who did this to him."

  Rogan said, "Maybe he'll tell us when he wakes up again. That could be useful."

  Brodie grunted. "I guess. D'you think it's safe to keep him on board?"

  "Safe?" Sienna sounded scornful. "You surely don't imagine he's a danger to anyone, the condition he's in? He needs a doctor."

  "We'll send for Hunk," Rogan decided, and one of the island boys was dispatched to find him while the other helped Rogan and Brodie carry Joe to the saloon, where they laid him down on a blanket on the floor. Camille fetched a pillow and lifted his head, her hand coming away smeared with blood. "He's been hit on the head too, I think."

  Hunk arrived and while Joe, partially roused, groaned and muttered, he confirmed Brodie's diagnosis of cracked ribs, set the broken arm and said, "He's had a blow on the head. Keep an eye on him and wake him up now and then, make sure he doesn't slip back into unconsciousness. He's a tough nut—he'll probably fully recover in a few days."

  "And when he does we'll have some questions for him," Brodie said after the medic, sworn to secrecy, had left.

  The two boys were also told to keep quiet about what had happened, but Rogan said, "I wouldn't count on it."

  They cleaned their uninvited guest up and put him in the second bunk in Brodie'
s cabin, where Brodie could keep an eye on him. Except for the several times Brodie poked him awake according to the doctor's instructions, he slept like a log—if logs gave a grunt of pain with every breath.

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  In the morning Rogan reported, "Granger's chartering a plane to fly the treasure back to New Zealand. It'll be landed in Auckland and he'll make sure the gold's stored safely with his bank. The plane should arrive within a couple of days."

  They were having breakfast in the saloon with the women when the door of Brodie's cabin opened and Joe stood there, stark naked and swaying. His face and body were a patchwork of blue and purple and red, and his right arm rested in a sling while his left arm cradled his ribs. "Sorry, ladies," he gasped. "Where the hell are my clothes?"

  Camille said coolly, "We're drying them for you, but they're still damp."

  Brodie said, "You can borrow some of mine." He got up and pushed the man back into the cabin. In a few minutes they both reappeared, Joe now attired in shorts and a T-shirt that were a size too small for his bulky frame.

  Rogan picked up his empty plate and cup to take them to the galley. Joe staggered to the table and sat at right angles to Sienna. Camille put coffee in front of him and offered toast.

  "Thanks," he said as she buttered it for him, before seating herself again beside Sienna. He cast a glance around at their wary, hostile faces, the men now standing shoulder to shoulder.

  Brodie said, "What happened?"

  "I got jumped."

  "Yeah, we know that." His voice heavy with sarcasm, Brodie added, "Now tell us you don't know who did it."

  Joe shoved toast into his mouth and bit into it, wincing. "Would you believe me?" he mumbled.

  "No," Brodie assured him, "we wouldn't. And if you don't want to be thrown out on your ear you'd better start telling us what's going on."