“So where is the box now?” she pulled away to ask.
“Kendon has it.”
“In Manhattan?”
“No, here,” he murmured against the smooth skin of her neck. “I mean in the Caymans. He flew down this morning, or yesterday morning I guess it was by now.”
“So what’s in the box?”
“I don’t know. He claimed he couldn’t get the fucking thing open.” Picking her up, still kissing, he set her on the table, moving in between her legs, grinding her pelvis in to his.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Brendan,” she whispered. “But I don’t know who these guys are. So nobody’s going to burst in.”
Just then the door slammed opened and they broke apart, startled, looking at each other.
“I hope I’m not interrupting something,” the woman who entered said.
And for some goddamned reason, both he and Sophia burst out laughing.
God, they were so screwed.
* * * * *
Sam looked at the empty bed in the main cabin. “They’re not here.”
“They’re not on board anywhere,” Captain Michaels confirmed.
“Do you have any idea where they could have been taken?” he asked Arthur.
“There is a small island.”
“Cayman Brac?”
“No. Smaller than that. It’s not even named. I think Vinita might have taken them there.”
“Why?”
Arthur shrugged. “Why is she doing any of this? She must be desperate to get the puzzle box and is wasting no further time and going right to the source.”
“No, I mean, why do you think they might have gone there, to that island?”
“Oh. There’s some property on it owned by some of her, ah, friends. Maybe she thought it was the safest place to take them to…whatever.”
“Interrogate them?” Mindy asked, her face ashen.
Shit. Sam had forgotten about her. “Yeah,” he said quickly before Arthur could answer. From the story he had been told, if the interrogation didn’t end well—and maybe even if it did—it was Beckett’s death sentence. If this Vinita allowed herself to be seen, she was undoubtedly going to kill Beckett and his girlfriend. Maybe even just for spite, from what Arthur had said of her connection to the girl.
“So can you take us to this island?” Sam asked Arthur.
“Yes. I think so.”
“Well, let’s go then,” Mindy said.
Christ. Why him?
* * * * *
The woman frowning at them was chillingly well dressed in a light-weight tailored suit. She was very familiar looking too. Before Sophia could piece it together, Brendan said, “You’re Michelle Sheldon, Senator Sheldon’s wife. You were at the wedding.”
No, that wasn’t it. But the woman nodded. “Yes, we met briefly. How unfortunate we couldn’t meet under better circumstances now, Mr. Beckett.”
The two armed gunmen who had entered behind her suggested just how bad these circumstances were looking to be for them.
“You’re such a delicious looking boy and a reputedly extremely talented cocks-man. I’m only sorry I never got to sample you. Of course there’s time now, but that never works with men. Anatomy is just not suited to it. Whereas this entire squadron of goons I have with me can certainly sample Sophia here to their hearts’, or should I say cocks’, content.”
Brendan stiffened beside her.
“So unless you want to witness that, perhaps you could just tell me where the puzzle box is. I’m tiring of this game.”
Brendan shrugged. “I don’t know, you’re not giving me a lot of incentive here, Mrs. Sheldon. So far, all you’ve offered is foregoing to have my girlfriend gang-raped. And although I appreciate that—”
“Yeah, me too,” Sophia mumbled.
“I’d like to know what the rest of the deal you’re offering might be.”
“I’m foregoing torturing you, of course.”
“Well, gee, thanks.”
“Don’t mistake me for my façade, young man. I grew up in the worst slums in the world and I will not hesitate to show what I learned there.”
“No need to demonstrate. The armed hoodlums kind of say it all. I believe you. But if you’re going to kill us anyway, I don’t see why I should tell you anything. In fact, I kind of see that as a reason for not going along with your game plan.”
“I can torture it out of you.”
Brendan looked relaxed, but Sophia could see he was evaluating the situation. “Well, you could. But whatever’s in that box, I’m sure you could get more out of ransoming me and Sophia. My family would pay a fortune to see us safe. Of course, you’d have to drop out of public life—it’s not like the Becketts would be contributing to the Senator’s campaign anymore or anything—but I’m sure whatever slum you crawled out of probably doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US so you could go set up house there with a tidy bundle. In a nicer neighborhood of course.”
Only then did it click with Sophia. “I know who you are. When I was little, I was with you.”
“How very astute of you to recall, my dear.”
The hatred blazing at her from the other woman took Sophia aback. Not that having automatic weapons trained on her was in itself nice or anything. But the vitriol emanating from just the expression on this woman’s face was even more chilling.
Brendan looked at Sophia searchingly. “Who is she to you?”
She couldn’t have answered. But Mrs. Sheldon did. “I suppose technically, if you looked at our DNA, you might say she’s my daughter.”
Sophia’s mouth dropped open. Brendan put an arm around her, as if to hold her up. And in fact, it was just as well he did. She might have collapsed at that information. She really might have.
Sophia’s head was pounding. She had to get away. She would get away, God damn it. Her mother was a murderous maniac who apparently hated her? That was the truth of her identity after all this time?
Talk about opening a Pandora’s Box. Or maybe in this instance she should say a puzzle box.
She started laughing, loudly, uproariously, in a way that made all four of the other people in the room stare at her, even Brendan. Maybe she had lost her mind. Maybe that was why she did what she did, when she wouldn’t have ever dared it if she’d been thinking straight. Maybe her mother had done her a favor after all with that news.
Unless she got herself and Brendan killed in the process. But of course they’d be dead one way or the other anyway, wouldn’t they.
“Sophia,” Brendan said softly and she spun away from him, startling him and—she was counting on this—the others as well.
In a leap she had executed only in practice with Arthur, she aimed a martial arts kick toward the gunmen that, in their surprise, managed to topple both of them the first with her kick and the second as he knocked into the first—and while they were down, she took the heels of her hands and shoved as hard as she could up the bridges of each of their noses. A torrent of blood accompanied the sickening crack she heard and both men grabbed their faces with shrieks.
Brendan in the meantime scooped up their guns and held one on Mrs. Sheldon, handing the other to Sophia.
“Hey, it worked,” she observed softly, looking at the men now on their knees in pain.
Mrs. Sheldon shook her head. “I’m surrounded by incompetency. No matter,” she said, looking at the guns trained on her now. “There’s twenty more just like them downstairs. You’re not going anywhere.”
Brendan grabbed the woman’s arm and jammed the gun in her back. “Well, maybe we are, unless they’ll risk shooting you.”
“You fool! You march me down there and all three of us will probably get mowed down before we set foot outside this house.”
Someone shouted through the door a question in German as to what was going on and, prodded by the gun Brendan held to her back—or maybe something else—Mrs. Sheldon answered smoothly that everything was fine and the prisoners were just being “encou
raged” to talk.
“I’m not running this anymore,” she said urgently, in a low voice when they’d gone. “You don’t understand.”
One of the bloodied goons started to get up, though it looked as if the other one may have fainted. Or at least Sophia hoped he fainted. You didn’t die from a broken nose, did you?
Brendan conked the one getting up with the butt of the gun and he was out cold like his cohort.
“Whose incompetency are you worried about, Mrs. Sheldon? Maybe it’s yours in the view of whoever is really behind all this. Is it your husband?”
“You must be joking. Like all American politicians, he’s a blithering idiot.”
Brendan shoved her toward the door, and she held back, pleading, “Please just listen to me for a minute. If I don’t send a message very soon, in no more than an hour, as to the location of that puzzle box, we’re all, all three of us, dead anyway. My time has run out. They’re not taking any excuses anymore.”
Brendan looked at Sophia.
“Let’s just think about this for a minute,” Sophia said and Brendan pushed the woman away, farther back into the room.
“Did Arthur teach you that?” she asked Sophia.
“Who is Arthur to me?”
“Not your father, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“So talk,” Brendan demanded. “What’s in the puzzle box? How do we get out of here in one piece?”
“The only way you’re going to get out of here in one piece is to tell me where it is.”
“Pardon me for mentioning this,” he said, “but you don’t seem too trustworthy.”
“If you give me the information, I can promise you safe passage out of here.”
“I don’t believe her,” Sophia volunteered.
“Yeah, me neither. Maybe you could knock her out too, Sophia.”
“It’d be my pleasure, but I’m not exactly sure how that would help us.”
“It couldn’t hurt. That was pretty cool, by the way,” he said with a smile. “They must have taught martial arts in con-woman school along with dancing.”
The teasing tone, the fact that he had remembered their banter despite the drink, was all-out-of-proportion pleasing to her. She smiled back at him. “My mentor was obsessed with the idea some mark might try to overpower me.” Then she added, ruefully, “Damage the merchandise, I suppose.”
“It sounds like Arthur cared about you more than he let on,” Brendan observed to Mrs. Sheldon’s scoff in the background.
Brendan looked out the glassless window to the ground two stories below, shaking his head. “It’s too far a drop.”
Sophia went to look over his shoulder, but noticed Mrs. Sheldon, or her mother, or whoever she was, edging toward the door. Brendan was on her right away, pushing her onto a chair. “We are getting out of here, one way or the other.” He whipped his tee shirt over his head. “And you’re not.” Ripping the shirt into thirds, he used one piece to bind her arms behind her to the chair, another to bind her legs and the last to gag her.
“There, that’s better.”
“I can make this,” Sophia said, looking down.
He joined her at the window. “No way. You’re crazy.”
“I can. Hanging from the window, leveraging that vine or plant or whatever it is over there and the roughness of the side of the house in certain places. I can.”
Brendan shook his head. “Then what? There are probably guards all around here.” He looked back to their prisoner. “I’d ask her, but I wouldn’t trust a word out of her mouth.”
“And you trust me?” Sophia asked.
Brendan looked back at her. “Yes. God help me, I do.”
“I’ll get away, Brendan. I swear I will and I’ll bring help.”
Brendan nodded. “Just worry about yourself. Try to get back to the boat, but if that’s not safe or you lose your way, just hide until it gets dark again. Then maybe follow the beach around. There’s got to be some civilization around here somewhere.” He swung the arm strap of the gun around her neck. “And don’t hesitate to use that in the meantime if you need to.”
“What if they come back in here before I get back?”
“Then I won’t hesitate to use mine either.” He kissed her swiftly. “Now go.”
* * * * *
Sophia climbed her way down the side of the house fairly smoothly, without any obvious audible slip-ups that would have alerted any guards within hearing distance. The cat-burglarizing of her youth was finally coming to some good use. There didn’t appear to be any guards right outside where she could see them, but she heard a murmur of German from the house.
Who the hell were these people?
Traveling as quietly as she could, she began to trace her way back to the beach and the motor boat. But when she got there, hiding behind some scrub bushes, she saw there was more than the one boat they’d left there.
And there were a hell of a lot more people.
Great. What now?
* * * * *
Brendan watched Sophia disappear into the brush with a tremendous sense of relief. Whatever waited for her out there, it was undoubtedly better than having her prisoner in here. At least out there she had a chance.
Here, they were just waiting for the inevitable. Whoever Mrs. Sheldon worked for, he doubted that unseen person had planned to let them live. His only chance now was to blast whoever came through that door.
Training the weapon on the door, he figured the best he could do was to wait. He felt Mrs. Sheldon’s eyes on him, undoubtedly trying to communicate her intense hatred despite the gag hampering any verbal communication. One of the guards did start to struggle up again at one point and he had to hit him again, since he had no more restraints. He wasn’t going to sacrifice his pants.
He wished he could do the same to Mrs. Sheldon, just to stop her from glaring at him. But he just wasn’t that cold-blooded. Though clearly she was. How the hell could a woman like that—who could desert her own flesh and blood, not to mention hold a gun on her—be related to the warm, beautiful girl he was only just beginning to know? Really know.
But it was probably too late for that. He swore. If they got out of this, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let some Interpol file stand in the way of a relationship with the most fascinating, sexy, sweet woman he had ever met.
Shit, was something about impending death making him more maudlin? He hoped not. Not only about the quality of the sentiment—he hoped that was real—but also about the impending death part.
After a time—it might have been a half hour or three hours, for all he knew—a low voice came through the door, muffled, in German.
Brendan had never shot anyone. Had never even wanted to. And part of him didn’t want to now. But he had to give Sophia more time. Whoever came through that door was going to be sacrificed to that effort.
He heard the lock turn, the door open and then…he hesitated.
One second. No more. But it was enough.
“Sophia! Christ! What happened? What are you doing back here?”
She looked at the still fallen goons and then at the woman tied in the chair.
“Brendan, thank God they’re still out. Come on. We have to get you out of here. I can’t explain now. Come on.” With a furtive glance down the hallway worthy of any Bourne novel, she led him out.
Part of him couldn’t believe she’d really come back for him. As they crept down the stairs, a muted sound of German wafted toward them. It was getting closer. He raised the gun, trying to push Sophia behind him when a thump stopped the flow of German. Then Kendon was there in the hall.
Kendon? How the hell had he gotten here? Okay, he was beyond trying to figure anything out.
“Go on. Get out of here,” Kendon whispered. “I have to round up Michaels.”
Holding Sophia’s hand, they left the house, starting to run toward the brush that led to the beach. When they got to the boat, Sophia flew into his arms, crying.
She was the only thi
ng he saw for a minute as he hugged her, smoothing her hair. But then he noticed the men in black with automatic weapons on the boat next to the yacht’s skiff, which in turn was next to the motor boat of the pirates.
“Navy SEALs,” Mindy volunteered.
Mindy? Christ, what the hell?
“Don’t blame Captain Michaels. I insisted on coming along. It turns out your little puzzle box has to do with terrorism or something. There’s a whole cadre of SEALs on the island rounding everybody up to take them in. Sam and Captain Michaels just tagged along. As well as your Sophia here. Nobody could stop her from charging back with them.”
“I speak German,” Sophia offered softly, as if that somehow negated her effort.
“Apparently this is related to some kind of Nazi thing,” Mindy said casually.
“What?”
Kendon and Michaels appeared out of the brush a moment later, walking pretty leisurely for an escape.
“The SEALs have secured the house,” Kendon reported to them, the SEALs on board nearby presumably cognizant of that fact via radio report from their colleagues.
“Let’s get back to the yacht,” Michaels suggested. “We can sort everything out there.”
* * * * *
They were all sitting on the cream-colored sofas in the sunken living room having a drink. Brendan and his sister. Her and Arthur. Even the Captain and Kendon, who she supposed she could forgive for ratting her out since he had helped to rescue them.
It was surreal to her, this intersection of parts of her life. Her real life. Not some silly con she and Arthur were constructing.
Arthur was telling the story. A little like when she had confessed to Brendan, he seemed to be holding nothing back, pouring it all out after years of pretending.
“We all grew up together. Vinita and Solange and I in a little village in Argentina you’ve probably never heard of. It had a very active population of Nazi descendants. Some prominent Nazi families had escaped there after the war and made a place for themselves, still clinging to their warped racism and twisted ideology.”
“Solange?”
“Vinita’s sister. Her identical twin sister. But they were like night and day. And take a wild guess which one was night. We were very poor and all lived pretty much on the streets. I started to play the game, petty thievery, that kind of thing, very early and Vinita and Solange, they, well they did what most young girls who have no other way to support themselves do.”
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