Her Passionate Protector

by Laurey Bright

  "Look, I don't know their names. And this is … it's confidential, you know? You won't go to the cops?"

  "Why not?" Rogan asked. "I'm sure they'd be interested."

  "You want to know or not?" Joe began to look belligerent. "No cops, okay? D'you want to get me killed?"

  "Frankly," Brodie drawled, "why should we care?"

  Joe tried a weak version of his usual cocky grin, somewhat spoiled by the fact that he winced again when a cut on his lip opened. "You're the good guys," he said. "I know you're not killers."

  "And the bad guys are?"

  "They thought they'd got me dead last night. Musta followed me when I went to the can at the hotel bar—y'know it's outside. It was dark, and when I came out they were waiting for me. Didn't see their faces but I know who sent them. I never had a chance against three of them." He looked down at his knuckles, which were bruised and grazed, evidence that he'd put up a fight anyway, Brodie thought. "Don't remember much, but I woke up in the water. They'd knocked me out and chucked me in the harbor to drown. Or maybe they thought they'd already killed me." He grinned again, more of a painful grimace but holding a vengeful malice.

  "I'm tougher than they bargained for. But if they think I'm dead I'd rather stay that way."

  "And you want us to help you," Brodie said. "In return for what?"

  Sienna said, "Shouldn't you go to the police, Joe? If they really tried to kill you—"

  He shook his head impatiently and Brodie gave her a pitying look. After seeing how futile their own attempt to bring in the cops had been, she still had her innocent belief in the omnipotence of the long arm of the law?

  Joe swallowed his mouthful of toast. "I go to the cops and I'm a dead man for real."

  Brodie explained to Sienna, "Crime on Parakaeo is the odd pub fight on a Saturday night, driving a moped under the influence, growing a bit of backyard dope, maybe the occasional jealous husband taking a machete to a fence jumper. The jail is unlocked every Friday night so the prisoners can go home for the weekend, and if they don't come back the constabulary—all two of it—rounds them up. They're not equipped for the kind of thing we're up against."

  "So tell us," Rogan said to Joe, "why they want to kill you."

  Joe looked uneasy, picking up his cup to gulp some coffee. "They think I double-crossed them."

  Brodie leaned forward. "You were working with them—the guys on the trawler?"

  Joe avoided his eyes. "I didn't know what they had in mind," he muttered. "The plan was for me to tell them if you raised gold. That's all."

  "And once you'd satisfied their curiosity," Rogan suggested, "they'd sail happily off into the sunset? Pull the other one, Joe."

  "All right," he said grudgingly. "They were going to take it off you."

  "With a please and thank-you?" Brodie inquired.

  "They said if you gave it up no one would get hurt."

  Brodie made a disgusted sound of disbelief. "And what were you getting out of it? A share?"

  Joe looked more ill at ease than ever. "Look, I'm sorry, guys—but if I didn't agree they said they'd kill me."

  "You did agree," Brodie said, "and they tried to kill you anyway."

  "You were ready for them. They reckoned I'd given them away. I tried to tell them last night it wasn't my fault but they wouldn't listen." Joe hunched over his plate, shuffled in his seat. "In a way they were right."

  "You blew the safe," Brodie guessed. "But not for them."

  Rogan said, "Making sure of your share in case they didn't come across with the goods after all?"

  "I figured if I could get hold of some of the gold—y'know, just a coupla bars or so, I could disappear once we got back to shore, get away from them. I tell you, those guys scare me." Joe rubbed the back of his head, and flinched. "I've got a headache," he mumbled.

  "Too bad." Brodie was unsympathetic, mad all over again at Joe's treacherous behavior, putting them all at risk—including two innocent women. Sienna was looking big-eyed and shaken, maybe remembering how they'd been fired on at sea. Besides, his arm still ached and burned, and he was getting sick of nursing it so he didn't open up the cut again. "Did you sabotage the winch?"

  Joe hesitated. "I needed a bit of time before I had to contact them and tell them we'd found the gold. Well, until the safe was open, I didn't know for sure anyway."

  "And once we had all the gold on board," Rogan guessed, "you got on your satellite phone and told them they could come and help themselves."

  Sienna said, "If Joe was in touch with the trawler all along why didn't they keep out of sight? Surely they knew you'd be suspicious of them hanging around?"

  "That's a point." Brodie shot her a look of respect.

  Joe shrugged. "To keep an eye on what was happening, I guess. And let me know they were around. They didn't trust me. I know it made you nervous … but not half as nervous as it made me!"

  Brodie reluctantly took his gaze from Sienna. "So who are these guys?"

  "I told you, I don't know. Never gave me names."

  "Don't give us that," Brodie said wearily. "How did they know you were working for us?"

  Rogan remembered. "You came looking for me at Rarotonga. They put you up to it?"

  It wouldn't have seemed so coincidental at the time, Brodie supposed. News about new jobs coming up spread among the exclusive worldwide community of professional divers with the speed of light. Rogue wouldn't have been surprised that a veteran like Joe, one he'd worked with before, should have heard a rumor about his plans.

  "Word was around at Raro," Joe confirmed, "that Rogue Broderick was fitting out a barge and hiring divers. I'd just finished a job and this guy … approached me."

  "And," Rogan said, "offered you a share in our treasure if you'd spy for him and his pals."

  "It wasn't just that," Joe said defensively. "The thing is … my last job was a bit dodgy." His voice dropped and he looked about nervously, as if afraid of eavesdroppers. "I didn't know what I was getting into when I took it on. They were hard men—I mean, really hard men."

  "What last job?" Rogan asked.

  Joe licked his cut lip. "They … were bringing up something illegal. That's why I agreed to keep them in the picture about the Sea-Rogue job. They threatened me, and I couldn't go to the cops because of the other thing—I don't want to end up in jail."

  "Better than ending up dead," Brodie commented.

  "You thought you'd get away with neither," Rogan said. "Trouble is, Joe, you picked the wrong side."

  Brodie frowned. "So these were the same guys you did the last job for?"

  Joe shifted in his seat, and took another bite of toast. "If you guys go to the cops—" his eyes lifted under their swollen lids "—I never said anything."

  Rogan regarded him thoughtfully. "Your friends aren't the only hard men on the planet," he said. "We might not murder you, but those thugs scared my wife half to death, and they could have killed us all. I'm already tempted to add a few more colors to all those pretty ones on your ugly mug."

  "I'll help," Brodie promptly offered.

  Camille's gaze flew to her husband's face. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Sienna too looked up at Rogan's implacable expression, then caught Brodie's eyes. He gave her a concentrated stare and an infinitesimal warning shake of his head, and she bit her lip.

  "I said I'm sorry," Joe muttered.

  Rogan swept the apology aside. "These guys were after the Maiden's Prayer, tried to get at it before we arrived, and you were their diver. You're the one who cleaned out the surface stuff from the site and blew that first hole in the hull—isn't that right? And later on you knifed Brodie."

  Sienna made a stifled little sound.

  "Come on, Joe!" Brodie's patience snapped. "You want us to save you from these crooks, you've got to tell us what you know about them." He leaned down, his face inches from the other man's. "Personally I'm itching to pay you back for taking a knife to me."

  "You wouldn't hit a man with a broken arm, Brodie.
"

  "I reckon it about makes us even, don't you think?" Brodie thrust his bandaged one forward.

  "I didn't mean to hurt you. When you came after me I panicked. I didn't know it was you."

  Brodie recalled Sienna chiding him for chasing the mysterious diver and sent her a fleeting glance as he straightened. Her expression was apprehensive rather than I-told-you-so, her skin pearl-white. Hell, she'd been through too much trauma in the last thirty-six hours. This was a far cry from her safe academic world.

  Remembering he'd goaded her into accepting the job with

  Pacific Treasure Salvors, Brodie found his temper rising further. Folding his arms to resist the temptation to plant a punch on Joe's already damaged nose, the very action reminding him again who he had to thank for the nasty twinge he felt, he glowered down at him and said grimly, "So tell us the rest, mate. Before I lose my cool altogether."

  Joe threw up his good hand. "Okay, okay. It was me—and a couple of their guys—not professionals. Sport divers. We were on the trawler. Found some coins and stuff scattered round the site but we couldn't get inside the wreck. Bloody amateurs. I told them they needed better gear and better divers. They didn't have the right equipment, said they didn't have time."

  "So you must have known they were poaching," Brodie interjected.

  Joe didn't answer that. "I warned them blowing it would prob'ly make the timbers fall in and destroy some of the stuff. The other bloke didn't like it either. But the boss guy just said we could use the trawler winch to clear the debris and get the gold out. He reckoned the rest wasn't worth bothering with."

  "What other bloke?" Rogan inquired.

  Joe picked up his coffee cup and put it down again. "There were two of them—not sailors or fishermen. They told the trawler skipper what to do—guess they'd hired him."

  Brodie supposed the trawler was one of the ships Drummond had used to smuggle his stolen antiques and heritage items to unscrupulous buyers around the world.

  "They had this big argument," Joe went on, "about the explosion damaging the other stuff in the wreck. The boss guy…" He paused, rubbing his eyebrow, and his voice dropped. "He won. But when we started dragging out the timbers the winch broke down—that's what gave me the idea later on about disabling the winch on the barge. The boss man was fit to be tied. Sent me and the others down again but we couldn't move the rubbish off. And it was like I said it would be, impossible to get at the gold. We sailed back to Raro, and when we heard you were there already I was told to get on the team, no matter what."

  "And then they followed us. While you kept them informed." Brodie's tone was filled with contempt.

  "You don't understand!" Joe's voice rose. "I said the boss guy won the fight—remember?"

  Something chilled Brodie's spine. "Yeah?"

  "He killed the other guy. Took out a gun and shot him in cold blood!"

  There was a silence, while the water slurped at the Sea-Rogue's hull and a seabird distantly screeched. Somewhere on shore a woman was singing, children called to each other and one of them laughed.

  Joe was breathing fast, the sound loud and harsh, each breath accompanied by a grunt of pain. With a shaking hand he picked up his coffee and gulped down the remainder. The cup thumped to the table. "He'd have done the same to me if I didn't do what he wanted."

  Rogan spoke finally. "What did this guy look like?"

  "A business type. Sharp clothes, medium height, brown hair. Ordinary, except he's got these cold eyes."

  "What color?"

  "Color?" Joe hesitated. "Blue, I think. Gray, maybe." He shrugged. "Sort of in between."

  Rogan said softly, "Sounds like Drummond, all right. I always knew the guy was a killer. But he usually got someone else to do the dirty work."

  Brodie said, "Maybe he ran out of employees. We know one's dead, one's in jail. So hard to get good help these days."

  Nobody laughed.

  Joe spent the day lurking in Brodie's cabin and nursing his sore ribs. Camille offered painkillers but he shook his head, apparently afraid they'd make him sleepy, and afraid to close his eyes.

  "Drummond and his henchmen have got him spooked, all right," Brodie said quietly to Rogan as they stood on deck together.

  "Yup. What are we going to do with him?"

  "No use handing him over to the cops here. If we got him back to New Zealand the police there might be interested in news about Drummond."

  "I don't fancy sailing all the way home with him and the women on board."

  Brodie nodded. "We'll send Sienna and Camille back on the plane with the treasure."

  "Alone?" Rogan frowned. "They should be okay, but I think one of us should go along."

  Guessing he wanted to be with his wife and make sure no harm came to her, Brodie was silent.

  "If we don't try to keep it secret that we're loading the gold onto the plane," Rogan said, "sailing the Sea-Rogue back home should be safe enough."

  "With Joe on board?"

  "All he wants to do is lie low. I don't think we'll have any more problems with him."

  "Still, we don't know what Drummond's next move might be. Or if Joe's really been straight with us. He might still be holding back on some things. Suppose the Sea-Rogue was followed? They might not believe that everything's on the plane."

  It was a dilemma. Both men wanted to protect their women—and Brodie realized that was how he'd begun to think of Sienna. Yet neither wanted the other to risk a possibly dangerous journey back to safe harbor. "You go on the plane with your wife," he said reluctantly. "I can sail the Sea-Rogue back."

  Rogan smiled slightly in appreciation of the offer. "Thanks, but it's my boat. Toss you for it," he said.

  In the end it was Rogan who stayed with the Sea-Rogue, recruiting Tilisi to sail with him. Camille objected to being sent off with Sienna, only slightly mollified by the news that

  Brodie would be flying with them. "You can both stay at my place until Rogan gets back to port," he said.

  "Brodie will look after you," Rogan said. "And there's no sense in going to a hotel when he's got a perfectly good spare bedroom."

  It might have been Sienna's quickly masked dismay at the prospect of sharing a house with Brodie alone that finally swayed Camille.

  All the artifacts from the wreck were carefully packed and loaded onto the plane when it arrived, and within three hours it was landing in Auckland. Granger was there to meet them, with an armored van and security guards to transport the gold to the bank, and other precious finds to secure storage at the museum where Sienna had arranged for a specialist restorer she knew to look after them.

  Sienna had asked for two small crates to be kept separate. "Those are things I'd like to work on myself. None of them are worth millions—more the kind of stuff that the poachers were willing to destroy to get at the gold. And I'm paid to work for PTS, not twiddle my thumbs waiting around for something to do."

  When they got to Brodie's house after dark and he'd shown them the room they were to share and unpacked the car they'd hired, the crates were stowed in a spare room that held some diving gear parked in a corner, a snooker table and nothing else.

  Sienna asked Brodie, "Can I use that? Could we put a board over it or something?"

  "Yeah, okay. I'll sort something out in the morning. Are you girls hungry?"

  On the way from Auckland they'd bought bread, milk, butter, eggs and bacon. Brodie got to work in the kitchen and the smell of bacon and eggs and coffee wafted through the house. Sienna too found her taste buds waking up, and when he presented her and Camille with crisp bacon and barely filmed eggs plus hot buttered toast on the side, she ate all of hers.

  "That was nice," she said sincerely, looking up at him as she pushed away her plate.

  His smile was crooked. He held her eyes, a hidden message lurking in his, and she remembered she'd said the same thing about their night together on Parakaeo. Camille smiled in a puzzled way at her, and Sienna shook her head.

  Next day Brodie sa
id, "Will you be all right if I go down to the shop to check everything's okay? I'll lock the door behind me."

  Sienna cast him a glance of amusement. "What do you think might happen to us?" She looked out the big window at the sunlit street, deserted but for an elderly man and the big Labrador dog trotting at his heels. A glimpse of tranquil blue-green harbor was visible at the bottom of the slope. A world away from a dark night on the deep ocean and a pack of pirates with a submachine gun.

  "Can't be too careful," Brodie growled. "Rogan's trusting me to look after you two. If anyone comes to the door don't open it unless you know them."

  He returned with a sheet of marine ply that more than covered the pool table, plus a couple of bar stools for Sienna and Camille to perch on while they worked on the artifacts.

  "Anything else you need?" he asked Sienna.

  "Some big plastic tubs like the ones we had on the barge?"

  "Sure. I'll scout around the port. And I'd better get groceries too. What else?"

  "A water distiller. I'll come with you," Sienna said. "I need to find someone who can sell me some sulphuric and nitric acid, and I'd like to get my hair done if there's time. Or I could go on my own later." The salt air had played havoc with her curls, making it impossible to keep them in any sort of order. She needed a conditioning treatment as well as a trim.

  "Looks fine to me," Brodie said, causing Camille to send Sienna a sympathetic grimace. "You're not having it cut, are you?"

  "Just tidied up," she said, giving him a direct look that dared him to make any further comment.

  "Okay, we'll go after lunch."

  He'd bought fresh mussels from a boat in the harbor and cooked them for lunch, steaming them open and serving them with white wine, chives and whole-meal bread.

  "You're a gem, Brodie," Camille told him when they'd finished. "I don't know why some woman didn't snap you up long ago."

  He grinned at her across the low kitchen counter where he'd seated himself opposite the two women, and transferred his gaze to Sienna, lifting his eyebrows slightly. "Sienna thinks no one would have me."

  Camille looked at her friend questioningly.