Smash and Grab: Action-Packed Thrilling Romantic Suspense (Callahan Security Series Book 2)

by Lori Matthews

  “Great. Any good news?”

  He did a double take. “Why are you wearing that?”

  “I thought it would be better if we didn’t leave our clothes behind. That way they won’t know for sure we were here.” His eyes darkened as they ran up and down over her dress. Unbidden heat uncurled in her belly and spread like wildfire across her whole body. She swallowed hard.

  “Ah, I think you should change, too.” She handed him his clothes. He nodded but stayed silent.

  “Any sign of the yacht or Scar?”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “I think they’re close. I caught a glimpse of a yacht on the other side of the island. It disappeared behind another island, but if it’s them, they’ll be here before too long.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. It was getting harder and harder to see his features in the encroaching dusk, but she could feel his eyes boring into hers. “Are you up for this? Paddling off the island?” He stared hard. “If not, we can try and hide out here or make some sort of a stand…”

  “There’s no way we could hide. And we don’t have enough weapons, ammo, or people to hold them off. No, we have to go,” she stated flatly. He nodded once and then pulled her in for a bone-crushing hug. Just as quickly, he let her go.

  “Grab a flashlight and the rest of the supplies.” He glanced around the kitchen. “We’ll leave right after I change and return these clothes to the bedroom.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll focus on the other islands. We could use some luck right now.”

  He smiled down at her and dropped a quick kiss on her nose. “Yeah, we could.” He left the kitchen to change.

  It took forever, and she was practically dancing by the time he got back. “What took you so long?”

  “I cleaned out the bedroom and put all of the towels back.” He made a face.

  “I know, I feel bad about it, too. The couple who lives here are going to come home and use dirty towels and clothes. Still they have bigger things to worry about like a tree through their roof so there’s that. Maybe they’ll wash all of their clothes anyway just in case a creature or bugs got in.” She shuddered. “That would definitely creep me out.” She grabbed the bags of supplies off the counter.

  “Come on, that’s the least of our worries.” He ushered her out the door and reset the alarm.

  “Why are you resetting the alarm?” she whispered.

  “If they come this way, they probably won’t bother to hack it. They’ll just set it off. Sound carries far at night. It will give us an idea of how far behind us they are.” With that, he closed the door, took the travel mugs from her, and moved toward the boathouse. He stopped and listened a couple of times, but if he heard anything, he didn’t tell her. She didn’t hear anything, so she took that to be a good sign.

  He let them into the boat house, closed the door after them, and turned on the flashlight. It was a New England style boathouse, built right over the water. There was room for a couple of boats in the middle and a walkway all around.

  Logan pointed with the flashlight. “There’s the kayak. Help me get it down.”

  She set down the bags of supplies then went to the other end and grabbed the small craft off the wall. It wasn’t heavy since it was one of the cheap plastic ones, which was kind of surprising since everything else in the house was so upscale. They lowered it into the water.

  “Figures it had to be bright orange. Why couldn’t it have been black or navy or something?” she mumbled. There was a jet ski parked in the water next to where they put the kayak. “We should take that.”

  He shook his head. “Not sure where the keys are. I couldn’t find them earlier, and I have no idea how much gas is in it. Even if I did manage to hotwire it, it also makes noise. They would definitely check it out and find us. If they were just using the yacht, we might be able to out run or out maneuver them, but they have jet skis and a speedboat. We can’t outrun those.

  “The best thing we can do is travel silently. If we manage to do that, we should be able to make it.” He raised the flashlight to the wall.

  There was a map of the Bahamas with their island clearly marked. It also showed Nassau. They were about twenty miles from their destination. That was a lot of paddling. She frowned.

  “I also found this.” He held up a compass.

  “You know how to use one of those things?”

  He sighed loudly. “Look, I might not be a SEAL, but I was in the Navy. I can use the compass.” His voice was tight.

  Apparently, she’d insulted him. She knew she should probably apologize. After all, he’d calculated for tide and current during their swim. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  He helped her into the kayak. It was one of those orange plastic ones where she could sit in the hull so she had space around her. Logan handed her the bags, which she tucked in by her legs, and then he handed her one of the oars. He got in behind her with the other. With a couple of smooth strokes, they were out of the boathouse and on their way. He held the flashlight low in his seat before turning it off.

  “OK,” he whispered. Then he turned the kayak and started paddling.

  They paddled along in silence—the only sound was their oars slicing through the water. The water had been a little rough when they started, but it started to smooth out. The sky was clear, which made her nervous. The sun had dipped below the horizon and it was finally getting truly dark. She glanced up at the half moon in the sky. At least it wasn’t full.

  Logan’s navigation was benefiting from it, however. He hadn’t bothered to check the compass again. She knew because he hadn’t turned on the flashlight they’d brought. She could only assume he either knew where he was going or was navigating by the stars, which didn’t seem too damn likely, but she was too afraid to ask.

  As they continued paddling into the still night, the silence pressed down on her. They passed the occasional island but no one seemed to be on them. She tried to think about happy things but the ache of her shoulders and her palms from all the paddling was making it difficult. She had blisters already.

  Her ears strained for every sound. Panic bubbled up in her chest. Desperate to stop it, she blurted out, “Why didn’t you tell your family you want to be a chef?” It was a deeply personal question, but for some reason it was the first thing that had popped into her head. Besides, she really wanted to know the answer.

  Silence hung between them for a good minute, long enough for the panic to swell again. She was literally praying she could keep it together when he finally spoke, startling her.

  “When we were kids, my brothers and I would talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Gage wanted to be a professional surfer, and Mitch wanted to do any extreme sport, didn’t matter which one. I would say I wanted to be a lawyer and win big cases, because even then I knew I couldn’t hold a candle to them when it came to sports. I just didn’t share their love for it.

  When I was sixteen, I went to work for my father for the summer. He made me start as a gofer for the guys installing the alarm systems, but by the end of the summer, I had learned how to install the systems myself. My dad was impressed, I guess. He told me I was more like him than my brothers were. And he admitted he was glad one of us was following in his footsteps. Over the next few summers, as my brothers kept doing their sports and bringing home their trophies, he took me under his wing and taught me how to thrive in business.”

  He stopped speaking again, and she couldn’t hear his oar hitting the water anymore. She wanted desperately to turn back and look at him but thought it might break the spell.

  “It took a long time for me to realize that, although I was good, maybe even great at working in corporate America, I just didn’t have any passion for it. My brothers have always had passion for their work. I never did.

  “It started out small—I used to watch a lot of Food Network when I wanted to wind down from law school, and then work later. There were a few things I tried out on my
own. It was something fun to do, and I always loved watching my mom cook when I was a kid. Before long, I was coming up with my own recipes, and I started holding dinner parties for my friends. I’d find myself thinking of ways to tweak recipes at work.

  “When Dad announced he was retiring and my brothers wanted to take over the company, I went along with it, thinking that maybe if it was my own company, it would be different. I would be passionate about it.” He stopped speaking again, and his oar splashed through the water.

  “Anyway, it just didn’t work out that way. I like working with my brothers, more than I even thought I would, but it still doesn’t excite me the way cooking does. I guess all this is a very long-winded way of saying I haven’t told them because I don’t want to let them down.

  “Neither one of my brothers has the right skillset to take over the company just yet. They need more time and experience. And if I tell them I want to quit, it’ll put them in a tight spot. I promised my mother I’d look after them, and my dad deserves to retire without worrying about the future of the business, especially now. Maybe one day I’ll have my own restaurant, but not right now, so why bother talking about it?”

  Her heart constricted in her chest. “I know exactly how you feel,” she said, the words bursting out of her. She turned back to glance at him. “Family expectations can be hard to manage.” His intense gaze made her feel exposed so she turned back around. This wasn’t something she could talk about while looking at him.

  “My mother died when I was just a baby, and all my life, I heard how wonderful she was. She was like a star, lighting up any room. Her laughter was infectious. She was beautiful, bold, smart, and an amazing businesswoman. She built an empire through sheer willpower and guts. And the descriptions go on and on, each one more flattering than the last.”

  She sighed. This next part was harder to get out; she’d never shared it with anyone, not even her best friend, Alex, but it had been weighing on her more lately.

  “I grew up hating her instead of loving her,” she said in a whisper. “Everyone would look at me as if searching for a spark of her. It was awful. I was always being compared to her in some way, and I never, ever measured up.”

  Lost in thought, she jumped a little when Logan squeezed her shoulder. Warmth radiated from the point of contact.

  She took a deep breath and continued. “Anyway, like you, I worked very hard to excel at school since I knew my mother had dropped out in her teens. I pushed to complete my degree early, and then I pushed myself to climb the ranks in a big law firm. I wanted everyone’s approval. And I had it. The people in my father’s circle would tell me how smart I was, just like my mother.” She sighed again.

  “I’m burnt out, I guess. I don’t want to do it anymore. It doesn’t make me happy. Like you said, I’m good at it, but I don’t like it. Hell, I hate it, to be frank.” The sound of his strong, steady rowing made her feel calmer.

  “I guess I always knew my greatest skill was logistics. In boarding school, I was always the one on all the planning committees. I loved organizing parties. I still do, but how do I tell my father that I want to be a party planner? How can the daughter of the great Giselle Fontaine want to plan weddings and bar mitzvahs for a living? It’s just not done.”

  She slumped a bit in her seat, and he squeezed her shoulder again—a silent show of support that sent strength through her.

  Suddenly, the silence was broken by the sound of a house alarm. It wasn’t as loud as she’d thought it would be, but she whipped around and stared into the dark. She wished she could see.

  “We’re fine.” His voice, little more than a whisper, came to her on the breeze. “It’s not as close as you think. We’ve been paddling for about three hours.”

  “Really? We’ve been paddling that long?”

  “Yes. About that.”

  “How much farther do we have to go?” She waited for a response, but none came.

  Finally, he said, “Don’t think about it. Just paddle. We’re a long way off yet.”

  She tried to settle back into position and get her rhythm back but it was hard. Her arms and hands were in serious pain, not to mention her butt was completely numb. She wondered if Logan was as miserable. She was trying to be Zen, but she had her ears perked just in case.

  Sure enough, a short time later she heard the distant sound of a speedboat revving and then taking off. Her heart pounded in her chest. She wanted to turn and look at Logan again, but what was the point? She couldn’t see him anyway. She felt him touch her back, and she stopped rowing. They sat in silence for a second, trying to gauge if the boat was coming toward them or going away.

  “It’s moving away.” His voice floated over her shoulder again. She nodded and assumed he could see it because he immediately started rowing again. Both of them picked up a bit of speed with their oars, finding a slightly faster rhythm.

  Another hour passed, and she was lost in thought when a slight buzzing sound broke through her reverie. It took her a moment to place it. The speedboat engine, and it was definitely getting closer this time. She whirled around to look at Logan. He had stopped rowing as well.

  Like before, she couldn’t see him well, but suddenly his body jerked at bit. She whipped around the other way and strained her eyes to see. There. Off to the right, the boat was flying toward them. It wouldn’t be long before they were seen.

  Logan gave her the signal they had discussed previously, and the two of them flipped the kayak. It was harder than it seemed to flip, so it took a couple of tries, but finally the cool water rushed over her head. She slipped out of the kayak and stuck her head where her butt had been moments before. There was a small air pocket there so she could breath. She had no clue how long the air bubble would last, but that was the least of her worries at the moment.

  She tried not to panic as she clutched her oar with one hand and forced the length downward to line up with her body. She wrapped one leg around the paddle to hold it in place and held on to the kayak with the other. Cursing silently, she shook her head. She had forgotten about the gun and the food, which was probably on the bottom at this point, who knew how many feet below them.

  “Logan,” she whispered. Hearing nothing, she tried again. “Logan.”

  “Here.” He came up under the kayak right beside her. After maneuvering the two oars between them, he held on to her and them tightly.

  “I dropped the gun and the food into the water,” she whispered. He just shook his head as they heard the speedboat draw closer. She prayed the boat would continue on to the next island, but no such luck. The sound of the engine being throttled down met her ears. She bit her lip.

  “It’s OK,” he whispered right in her ear. She appreciated the thought, but they both knew it wasn’t true. This ruse would only work if the guys in the boat stayed far away. The Caribbean waters were crystal clear, even at night. If Scar’s men had a strong flashlight they would be seen. The water level was starting to rise. They both had to bend their heads back to keep their mouths above the waterline.

  She held her breath as the boat came closer still. She could hear voices now.

  “What is it?” The interior of bright orange kayak lit up like a Christmas tree. She could see the light glowing through the cheap plastic. The air left her lungs completely. His arm tightened around her.

  “Kayak.”

  “See any oars?” The light danced away and then came back. Then it danced away again. She didn’t recognize the voices but that didn’t mean much. Scar probably had a bunch of men working for him. Her father certainly did.

  “No. What do you think? Should we go turn it over?”

  “Nah. It probably got loose in the storm. If it was theirs and they ditched it, there would be oars.” The flashlight took one more dance around the kayak before the boat’s engine moved off idle. The boat came very close to the kayak, the sound of its motor deafening, but it continued on its way.

  She finally managed to take a deep breath. “Do you think
it’s safe?” she whispered into the darkness a minute later.

  “Don’t know,” he whispered back. “Stay here and I’ll check.” He let go of her and disappeared under the surface of the water. A minute later he was back. “Coast is clear.”

  “Thank God!” She relaxed and immediately let go of the oar. She lunged through the water after it and managed to grab it again. Surfacing, she sputtered a bit and looked around for Logan.

  The inky darkness made it hard to find him, but she caught sight of his outline and uttered a soft prayer of thanks. It took them a couple of tries to get the kayak righted and crawl in. By the time they managed, she was absolutely exhausted. She found it hard to get into a rhythm this time. She was tired, cold, stiff, and the kayak had water in it, making it really uncomfortable to sit in. This night could not end soon enough.

  Chapter Eight

  “Lacy.” She could hear her name being called, but it was far away. “Lacy.” There it was again. She could hear waves lapping on something. She felt damp. Water. Strange dream. She felt a nudge and jerked awake.

  “Wha…? What? Where?” She looked around frantically. Then it all snapped into place. “Sorry,” she groaned as she turned to face Logan. “I guess I fell asleep,” she said sheepishly. “I’m just so tired.” She wished she could see his face. He must be just as tired as she was. She suddenly remembered his bruised ribs. Rowing had to be miserable for him. “Your ribs. I am so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged. “But I need you to help now. We’re caught in a current, and I need help pushing through it.” She turned back around and started paddling again. Every muscle in her body ached, and she bit her lip so she wouldn’t groan out loud, but she managed to find a rhythm.

  It was almost dawn by the looks of things. The sky was getting lighter, and soon the sun would be up. She was thirsty. She could only imagine Logan felt the same way. What an idiot she’d been to let go of those travel cups.