“Are you sure you can make it?” she asked again. Er…demanded, really. With her eyebrows pulled in a vee and her hands balled on her hips, it was definitely a demand. An adorable, adorable demand.
Before he could reassure her, Mason barked, “Go, go, go!” and they were all suddenly on the move.
Bran lifted his rifle, keeping his sights aimed at the fort and the large embrasures—the openings built into the side of the garrison to allow cannon fire—that peered out at the island and the surrounding waters like dark, malevolent eyes.
The short trip to the little cottage that was the ranger’s station seemed to take an eternity. Bran figured that was partly due to the burning pain in his thigh. But it was also due to his acute—we’re talking absolute—awareness of every move Maddy made. He sensed every stutter in her step. Was attuned to every breath she took. He imagined if he listened really closely, he could probably hear her heart beat.
This was how he remembered her, this…hyperawareness. And it was just one of the many reasons he hadn’t wanted to come tonight.
In the three months since he’d last seen her, he’d been able to convince himself he had imagined everything. Chalked up his overwhelming reaction to her to the extreme circumstances under which they’d met. But now that he was back by her side? There was no denying it. That pull, that draw was still there. Still thick in the air between them like a cloud of superpowered pheromones or some shit.
When they finally made it to the ranger’s station, the quiet shuffle of feet scurrying up the stone steps sounded behind him. “Got you covered,” Mason said. “Up and in.”
When Bran turned to make his own way into the ranger’s station, it was to see two things. The first was Mason on the little porch, leaning against the rail that could really use a coat or two of paint—the salty sea air was hell on exteriors—M4 raised and at the ready to provide cover fire should Bran need it. The second was Maddy’s luscious ass at eye level. Had Bran not already been sporting a battlefield boner—adrenaline tended to make a man’s stick and stones perk up—he would have sprung wood at the sight. Her hips swung back and forth with an enticingly feminine tick-tock when she hustled through the front door.
“Bran?” She spun around in the threshold. “Hurry!”
To jostle his brain around enough that it could tell his eyes to stop bugging out of their sockets, he had to shake his head like a dog shaking off water.
Oh man. He was in so much trouble. And only some of it was from the dick-lickers in the fort.
* * *
7:23 p.m.…
Alexandra Merriweather didn’t know which was worse. The horrifying sound of a real, live, honest-to-goodness gun battle, or this. This oppressive, almost malignant silence that seemed to be spreading with each passing second.
“The silence is worse,” she said aloud, just to hear her own voice and not feel so alone.
When Mason and Bran had armed themselves to the teeth before diving overboard, she’d thought she’d be fine on her own. But now, in the midst of the eerie quiet, the solitude was starting to get to her. The vastness of the sea was daunting. The soft clink, clink of the rigging lines against the steel mainmast sounded strangely sinister. And the warm, humid air had become oppressive, pushing in on her until it felt like her lungs were caught in a vise.
“You wait here,” Mason had told her before donning a pair of swim fins, his huge back flexing as he bent at the waist. “The minute we know what’s happening and take control of the situation, we’ll send up this flare.” He’d shown her the flare stick before shoving it into a pocket of his cargo shorts. Then he’d slipped two large…er…what she thought were called magazines full of bullets into another pocket. Just…easy-peasy, as-you-pleasey. No biggie. Gulp.
I mean, come on. I knew they were Navy SEALs. But the relevant word here is were.
“When you see it,” he said, straightening, “you sail on over and get us. You got me?”
She nodded vigorously, unable to talk. Which might’ve been a first.
He searched her eyes then, seeming to hesitate. In those few seconds, she was able to locate her voice. “I got you,” she told him, her tone full of bravado she certainly didn’t feel.
“But if you see another boat,” he continued, his South Boston accent dropping the r sound off the end of the word another. “And I mean any boat headed your way, you start the engines and sail straight back to Wayfarer Island. On account of we don’t know who’s out here, and who’s friend or foe. You don’t take any chances—”
“But you and Bran—”
“No buts,” he insisted, his eyes like flames. “You don’t worry about us. We can handle ourselves.”
She wanted to argue, unable to stand the thought of turning tail and running, leaving them all alone to face whatever fate waited for them on Garden Key. But arguing wasted precious time. Time when who knew what horrors were being perpetrated on that island. So she nodded and squared her shoulders. But inside she was saying, This can’t really be happening. This can’t really be happening. This can’t really be happening.
When Mason chucked her on the chin with a scarred knuckle, she was forced to admit, Okay, so it’s really happening. Crap on a cracker!
He pitched himself overboard. And she was left with nothing to do but watch him sink beneath the surface of the waves and contemplate the fact he’d willingly touched her for the very first time, and that their conversation had been the longest and most cordial of their acquaintance. Both struck her as unaccountably sad. Why did it take fully automatic weapons fire and a true life-and-death situation to make them stop taking digs at each other?
It was a question that filled her with a million conflicting emotions. On the one hand, Mason McCarthy was sullen and cantankerous and prone to growling at her like a lion with a thorn stuck in his paw. On the other hand, she couldn’t ignore the appeal of his handsome face.
Oh, not handsome in the traditional sense. His forehead was too heavy, not to mention perpetually furrowed. His nose was too wide and listed slightly to the left—evidence of a break he had never bothered to fix. And his jaw? Well, his jaw was a mile wide. And if it were any harder or more angular, it’d need to be carved from granite.
But then there are his eyes. They were crystal blue. Like the water around Wayfarer Island on a sunny, windless day. And his hair. She sighed just thinking about it. It was thick and shiny and inky black.
And that’s before you get to his body. Whoa, momma, what a body. He was so roped with muscle he could’ve been a contender for the WWE. She could easily imagine him throwing an opponent against the ropes or choking out an adversary with his beefy forearm. In short, Mason McCarthy cut a hard, forbidding figure. It was like he’d been built for destruction.
Or something far more pleasurable.
See? Conflicting. That one word precisely described their relationship.
Or in more expansive terms, her girl parts were super interested in his boy parts. But every time he opened his mouth—which, let’s face it, wasn’t very often; a rock communicated more than he ever did—her brain became very annoyed with him.
“Come on, Mason,” she grumbled, lifting the binoculars he’d pressed into her hand. Field glasses he’d called them. Through the magnified lenses, she could just make out the back of the fort—Mason had instructed her to sail the boat nearly two miles out to sea. Now she scanned the redbrick expanse for movement. But there was nothing. Not a damn thing.
“Come on, Mason,” she said again, grimacing at the hitch in her voice. When she felt something hot and wet slip down her cheek, she hastily brushed it away. Unfortunately, another drop replaced the first, and that’s when she realized she was crying.
That’s also when she realized just how much she’d come to care for the guys of Deep Six Salvage in the short time she’d been living and working with them. Not only were they men of rar
e courage and honor, but they were also incredibly…good.
That was the best way she knew to describe them. They were all good men—Mason’s obvious aversion to her personality aside.
The truth was, they’d shown her more respect and consideration than she’d ever received from anyone. In grade school, she’d been teased unmercifully because she never played Red Rover on the playground, preferring instead to sit quietly under a tree and devour the stories in her history book. And my Carrot Top hair, Casper the Ghost complexion, and Coke-bottle glasses didn’t help, I’m sure.
In high school, she was the butt of jokes because she was the latest of late bloomers. She didn’t sprout breasts until she was nearly eighteen. And it’s not like they’re anything to write home about even now.
She thought she would find her tribe in college. But there weren’t many girls—or any, really—who wanted to learn to read centuries’ old scripts. And since she’d never gotten why keg stands were fun, she’d once again found herself the odd man…er…odd woman out.
Graduate school had proved to be a bit more accepting, filled with academic types who didn’t begrudge her interests in antiquated documents and historical minutiae. But even so, her professors thought she was nuts to waste her time and the integrity of her doctoral dissertation trying to help a bunch of hairy, tattooed guys find a four-hundred-year-old fortune that had eluded treasure hunters for centuries. Her advisor had gone so far as to say, “If you were twice as smart, you’d still be an idiot for throwing in your lot with these men.”
That hadn’t stopped her from hopping on the first plane headed south. And she’d been surprised by how easy it’d been to convince the guys of Deep Six Salvage not only to let her stay, but to take her word for it when she said she thought they—and everyone who’d come before them—had been looking in the wrong place for the Santa Cristina. They hadn’t called her crazy. They hadn’t batted an eyelash at her youth or inexperience. Instead they’d sat down, listened to her arguments, and trusted her judgment.
And earlier, when they’d matched the hilt LT and Olivia found with Captain Bartolome Vargas’s cutlass? Well, she’d crowed with victory not because she’d been proved right, but because she’d been beyond relieved that she hadn’t steered these good men wrong. Even now, even scared out of her wits, a smile tilted her lips at the memory of LT swinging her around in a circle while Meat barked happily and L’il Bastard cock-a-doodle-doo-ed from his favorite spot on the porch railing outside the kitchen window.
It was strange, she realized, but at twenty-seven years old, and with a group of grizzled guys on a remote island, she finally, finally felt like she belonged. And it was killing her that she was twiddling her thumbs while two of those grizzled guys were risking their necks.
Grrr. Sitting tight, sitting still had never been something she excelled at.
Maybe I could just sail a little closer. If I don’t use the engines, no one will hear me. Or…the Gulf Stream current blew by this side of the little island, right? And if she remembered correctly from the current map she’d taken a peek at two weeks ago, it should push her closer to Garden Key without her having to do more than pull anchor. By her recollection, the average speed of the current was four miles per hour. She was two miles away. So, in thirty minutes she could be setting foot on the island.
The idea was beyond tempting. But then what? It’s not like she could help them do…whatever they were doing.
And speaking of…
“What are you guys doing?” she whispered, her fear morphing into impatience as the seconds ticked by. She liked the second emotion far better than the first. “And where the frick is that flare, Mason?”
Mason…
His name carried on the breeze. Hearing it filled her mind with a dozen familiar and conflicting emotions…
Chapter 6
7:25 p.m.…
“Don’t you keep a first aid kit?” Maddy demanded, rummaging through the drawers in the cramped little kitchenette with its green Formica countertops, opening whitewashed cupboards, and coming away empty-handed.
“Under the bed,” Rick said.
Their first order of business after they barged into the little cottage was to get on the satellite phone and call in the cavalry. Or at least they’d attempted to make it their first order of business. They’d been thwarted, since the phone was smashed to bits, all its plastic parts and wires scattered in the corner like so much confetti. Same could be said for the marine radio.
“So this is happenin’,” Maddy had whispered, staring in disbelief at the destruction and finally understanding why the guy with the Southern accent had stayed behind in the cottage for a while after the others had marched her, Rick, and the girls back to the beach.
Which left her the task of taking care of their second order of business: cleaning and dressing Bran’s wound so they could all get back out there and rescue the girls.
The girls…
Donna, Louisa, Sally Mae…
Their names were on a loop inside Maddy’s head. And every second that ticked by increased her desperation tenfold. Not to mention her self-reproach…
If only she hadn’t used the teens as an excuse to see Bran again, those three sweet girls would be home studying. But just like she’d been doing since she was old enough to climb onto the back of the sofa with a pillowcase tied around her neck cape-style, she’d leaped before she looked, plunging headlong into this let’s-go-camping-on-the-Dry-Tortugas-in-celebration-of-your-scholarships scheme.
Although, in her own defense, even if she had looked first, there’s no way she could have foreseen this…this…whatever the devil-lovin’ hell this was.
“Where exactly?” she demanded again, down on her hands and knees beside Rick’s twin bed with its wooden frame and red, white, and blue quilt. The only things she saw were sand and what, upon second glance, turned out to be a dusty stack of girlie magazines.
“Maddy, just grab that dish towel hanging on the refrigerator and the roll of duct tape on the table,” Bran called to her from his spot by the little window on the side of the cottage.
He and Mason were keeping eyes on the entrance to the fort. Since it was the only way in and out of the structure, Maddy knew there was no way the masked men could spirit the girls onto their dinghy or their fishing boat without Bran and Mason seeing and stopping them. That should have had a calming effect on the boatloads of adrenaline coursing through her veins.
It didn’t.
She was wound tighter than a fiddle string.
Taking a quick glance at the dish towel in question, she curled her lip. Like most young twentysomethings, Rick didn’t appear to be too keen on laundry. The towel was stained with something brown and crusty.
“You!” She pushed up on her knees, pointing a finger at Bran and using one of the magazines to swat at the mosquito that landed on her thigh. “Zip it! I don’t want to hear any of that tough-guy, don’t-cry crap from you. And you!” She turned to point at Rick. “Where is the first aid kit? There’s nothin’ down here but a layer of sand and…” She held up the magazine so she could read the title in the low glow of the single bulb hanging from the center of the room. “Old copies of Jugs.”
“Th-those aren’t mine,” Rick stuttered, his ears doing their Fourth of July thing again.
Any other time, she would have reveled in teasing him, just as she’d done when she was thirteen and caught her oldest brother with a Playboy centerfold tucked between his mattress and box springs. But right now all she cared about was seeing to Bran’s leaking leg. “First. Aid. Kit.” She enunciated each word with precision.
“F-far back corner by the footboard,” Rick said.
She made a face that said, Now, was that so hard? before turning to scrounge under the bed again. “Aha!” she crowed when she found the red and white case just where Rick had said it would be.
When she spun around, it was to discover Bran’s eyes zeroed in on her ass. She might have been embarrassed, or even insulted, but she was fully aware her rear end tended to draw scrutiny. Probably because it was, in the most genial of terms, ample. She hated it. Especially since she didn’t have the boobs to match.
But what’s a girl goin’ to do?
Get the guy with the gun back on track, she assured herself as she scrambled to her feet and jogged to the little table in the center of the kitchenette.
“Bran, come sit down.” She sprang the lid on the kit and found the bottle of peroxide inside. “And be quick about it.” Each second the girls were alone out there with those masked men was one second too long.
“Wow. Anyone ever told you that you’re incredibly bossy?” he asked.
“Don’t act like you don’t love it.”
Silence reigned in the room for one second…two…three…
She made a face and glanced up at Bran. “Sorry,” she said as he laid his machine gun and the machine gun he’d taken from the dead man on the table. They made metallic-sounding clanks against the cracked wooden top. “That’s my standard comeback when my brothers accuse me of bein’ overbearin’. So it just naturally slips out.”
“It’s okay.” He shrugged, one corner of his mouth twitching. “I’ve never had a problem with a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it.”
Even as her heart stuttered, she narrowed her eyes. “Is that supposed to be a come-on?”
He lifted his hands and donned an innocent expression. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
“Hmm.” She twisted her lips, not sure if she believed him. And quite honestly, part of her hoped he was coming on to her. She’d thought they were on the same page when it came to their burgeoning relationship. Then he hadn’t answered her email and a million doubts had flooded in.
Twisting off the cap on the bottle of peroxide, she impatiently waited for Bran to take a seat. When he did, she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t remember him being so big. And when he stood beside her, she was diminutive by comparison.
Hot as Hell (The Deep Six) Page 11