Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  President, he was going to say, but it wasn’t Dolphina standing there. It was a man, with another man behind him. Both were large, and they were holding guns.

  Robin dropped his phone and tried to close the door, but they forced it open, forced their way inside, pushing him back—hard enough to hit the dining table with a crash. As he scrambled to keep from falling, he knocked over two of the chairs.

  Annie was on her feet. “Robin!”

  “We’re not armed, don’t shoot,” Robin said, trying to get to Annie before they did.

  But they weren’t moving quickly—not after they got inside and closed and locked the door behind them.

  “Drop the phone,” the larger man—the one built rather like a refrigerator—said as the other stepped on Robin’s cell with the heel of his boot.

  Annie looked at Robin, and he tried to tell her with his eyes to go for it—dial 911. They didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to lose, considering Robin recognized both men from that party at Burns Point.

  They worked for Gordon Burns—or for Gordie Junior.

  “I said, drop it—right now or I’ll blow his fucking head off,” the refrigerator demanded, his gun aimed unerringly at Robin.

  Dial it anyway, he tried to tell her, but she didn’t.

  She dropped it.

  “Kick it over here.”

  She did, and the skinnier man did his boot thing on her phone, too.

  Fridge, meanwhile, had taken out his own cell, dialing and holding it to his ear. “We’ve got ’em both,” he told whoever was on the other end. “He just opened the fucking door for us, and we just walked in.” He laughed. “Fucking idiot.”

  Yep, that pretty much described Robin.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Annie.

  “Are you all right? Your nose…”

  Sure enough, it was bleeding. He’d gotten smacked in the face with the door. He didn’t think it was broken—it hurt, but not that much more than the hellish headache that had been plaguing him all night.

  “We’re not out of the hotel yet, so it’s probably best not to call him until…Yeah,” Fridge continued. “I’ll let you know as soon as we’re clear.”

  As the man pocketed his phone, Robin told them both, “We’re not leaving the hotel.” It was only a matter of time before Dolphina came knocking. Since he’d reclaimed his key card, she wouldn’t be able to get in. Knowing her, though, she’d call hotel security.

  All they had to do was stall.

  And pray that Jules and Ric were somewhere safe.

  Junior’s yacht was a ship. Though Ric had lived for most of his life near the ocean, he wasn’t a boat person, but even he recognized the distinction. He didn’t know exactly what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this luxurious monstrosity. It was huge.

  There were two full levels belowdeck.

  Ric knew that Jules had been tense in the car, too, but once they’d arrived at the moored boat and seen that roll of rug from Ric’s office already waiting on the ship’s gleaming deck, they’d both taken something of a deep breath.

  As long as that body was with them, the FBI could and would track them. Jules’s team was probably already being called back in from Myakka. Other agents were probably gearing up, enlisting the aid of Coast Guard ships, preparing to follow them.

  Or at least monitor their location.

  As they headed for the open water of the Gulf, Ric tried to get a head count. One man—the driver, Donny—had gone immediately to the wheelhouse or bridge or whatever the control room was called on a yacht this size. Ric could see him up there, in a windowed area. As far as he could tell, Donny was alone.

  At this point, he was clearly driving this thing. But once they left the harbor, he could probably put on the cruise control or autopilot—or maybe even just shut the engines down and let the ship drift.

  Two men—wearing suits—had picked up their rug-wrapped body, and, in a brisk, businesslike fashion, they’d carried it below.

  Another two—the skinhead and the fool in the ugly purple shirt—hung close as Junior gave Ric and Jules a tour of Daddy’s yacht—as if this really were just a pleasure cruise. As if they really were just a bunch of buddies hanging out, drinking beer and fishing.

  Ric knew that Jules was counting heads, too. The FBI agent had put his hand on Ric’s shoulder, feigning a need to steady himself when they went down the full flight of steep stairs leading to the staterooms. While his hand was there, he tapped Ric six times.

  That was the number Ric had come up with, too. There were six armed men aboard this ship—including Gordie Junior.

  There was more than one flight of stairs leading down from the main deck area, Junior told them in his best tour-guide imitation. The other went directly to the galley or kitchen. This one led to this set of staterooms—individual luxury suites that were elegantly decorated with nautical themes and gleaming with brass. He only opened one door though. It was likely the other rooms had been trashed by Junior’s less-than-elegant friends.

  The starboard and port hallways connected at the front of the ship in a spacious home theater, with rows of comfortable-looking, leather-covered seats.

  “She sleeps twenty,” Junior told them. “Not including crew and staff. Of course, today I gave most of the crew the day off.”

  Of course.

  “We’ll have to wait until we’re out of sight of land before we can get down to business,” Junior told them. “But I’m sure you’ll be interested in seeing this…”

  A door opened to reveal a companionway to the lower level, these stairs even steeper than the first set.

  “This level’s used mostly for storing shit.” Junior led the way down into an area that was basement-like. “Although the crew’s berths are down here, too.”

  Not only did the lower level give a sense of being unfinished—with pipes and venting systems unhidden—but it was also badly lit and damp. Ric had never thought of himself as claustrophobic before, but he could not wait to get back to the deck and the fresh air.

  The movement of the ship beneath his feet sure as hell wasn’t helping. “Food’s kept directly beneath the kitchen,” Junior continued as he led them through a door that was more like a hatch than the ones on the upper levels. It was open and locked into place. “There’s actually a ladder going up into the galley, as well as a dumbwaiter and…”

  Holy Christ. Junior kept talking, but Ric didn’t hear more than the murmur of his voice as he stopped short just inside that hatch. He felt one of Junior’s thugs bump into him from behind, finally pushing him aside when he failed to make room for the two of them.

  He and Jules had followed Junior into some sort of area that was no doubt intended for fish cleaning. The room was designed to be hosed down completely—it had a big drain in the floor. Stainless-steel tables flipped down from the slanting, porthole-less walls—of course, they were beneath the water level down here.

  The rug from Ric’s office was on the floor—the body’d been put on one of the tables, and was being worked on by Junior’s men.

  They’d put it into a freaking bizarre version of a sweatsuit—the fabric was covered with explosives, all wired together.

  “…used to use a meat grinder,” Junior was saying, “just flush all the evidence down this drain as fish food, but the skull and teeth were always problematic. I got this idea years ago when I heard about those suicide bombers. It always amazed me, though, that there’d be, like, an arm or a hand left intact, found in the rubble. So we’re careful to cross the arms beneath the main explosives on the chest. We also use mittens to wrap the hands in C4, since, you know…Hands and heads being the body parts you most don’t want washing up on shore. Hence the hood.”

  They’d put a Spider-Man-like, tight-fitting head-and-face covering on the body. With the explosives attached, it made her look like some bizarre beauty-salon participant with freakish curlers not only in her hair but across her concealed face as well.

  Her…? Wait a minute…R
ic looked closer and…

  “We’ll set off a fuckload of firecrackers,” Junior continued, “right before this is set to blow. We dump the body and back away—don’t want to get hit by that spray, you know what I’m saying? We use a special underwater fuse, cut long enough to give us a time delay. Remote-control detonation’s too expensive.” He laughed. “Dude, you look green.”

  He was talking to Ric.

  “He’s always been prone to seasickness.” Jules took him by the arm and steered him toward the hatch. “He just needs some air.”

  Jules pushed Ric up the stairs and back into the theater area. He hustled him through what looked to be some kind of wood-paneled den or game room, and then up a half flight of stairs into the ship’s galley. It was much bigger than the kitchen in Ric’s apartment, and far more lavishly appointed.

  A half flight of stairs led up to an indoor dining area. Another made the galley easily accessible to the main deck. There was also a window in the galley that looked as if it could be opened to create a pass-through directly to that open part of the yacht.

  Ric was already feeling much better, but when they hit the fresh air on deck, Donny was there to greet them.

  “He’s gonna hurl,” Jules announced.

  “I’m actually,” Ric said, but Jules elbowed him hard, so he changed his feeling better to “prone to projectile vomiting.”

  Jules started to muscle him to the railing, but Donny intercepted. He’d conjured up a bucket from somewhere. “It’s hard to clean that off the side,” he told them, and then backed away.

  Apparently nobody liked the idea of projectile vomiting.

  Junior and the other two men finally caught up to them. “Just breathe and keep your eyes on the horizon,” Junior instructed Ric. “You don’t need the fucking bucket—”

  But Ric did. It was the only way he was going to be able to talk to Jules without being overheard. He clasped the damn thing as he turned away and stuck his finger down his throat.

  It wasn’t as if he really needed that much help to empty his stomach. He added some nasty sound effects and…

  Junior and his men all took several giant steps back.

  “That body wasn’t a woman,” Ric told Jules between gags. Whoever was on that table was significantly bigger than their tracking-device-implanted Jane Doe.

  “I noticed,” Jules whispered grimly. “I also saw more of those explosive suits.”

  What? Ric hadn’t seen that. He looked up at Jules.

  “Four more,” Jules said.

  He didn’t need to say the words for Ric to know what he was thinking. Two for them, and two more—for Robin and Annie.

  Ric didn’t need any help throwing up a second time.

  “Can someone toss me a towel?” Jules called to Junior and his goons. One of them must’ve complied, because Ric felt him turn to catch something. “Thanks.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Ric breathed. “If he so much as touches Annie…”

  “Yeah,” Jules agreed. “He’s dead. There’s a problem, though. We’re unarmed and outnumbered.”

  “Screw that,” Ric said. “Let’s just take them. If one of them gets close enough, we grab his weapon.”

  “Getting ourselves killed isn’t going to help Annie and Robin. If we were closer to the edge, I’d say we go over the side,” Jules said. “Split up and swim for shore. One of us would make it.”

  Getting free and getting to a place where they could contact the rest of the FBI, to make sure Annie and Robin didn’t leave their hotel room, not even to go to the airport, was a damn good plan.

  “Let’s do it,” Ric said, then pretended to heave. “Right now.”

  “We wouldn’t even get to the rail,” Jules told him. “The one named Donny has his weapon drawn. He’s pretending to clean it, but…I’m betting he’s their best shot. Let’s just be ready. Try to work our way to the side. If one of us can go…” He helped Ric wipe his mouth, helped him to his feet, and then he swore.

  As Ric stood up, he realized that while they were taking Junior’s tour, they’d moved completely out of sight of land. According to the ship’s wake, they’d been cruising in a big, slow circle for quite a few minutes now.

  Even if they could get over the side and into the water, they’d have no idea which way to swim to reach land.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  The “you’ve got voicemail” ring on Martell’s cell phone was among the most obnoxious in the world. It was a series of notes running up and down the scale.

  He usually silenced his phone at night, but with Ric worried about Annie, he’d purposely left all the ringers functioning.

  The sun was barely up as Martell reached for the little fucker. How he could have gotten a message without getting called was…

  Okay. There was not one, but two missed calls from not Ric but Annie. Apparently Martell had finally learned to sleep through his regular, less obnoxious ring tone.

  He dialed in his password to listen to her message and…

  It was brief. Call me.

  Martell did just that, but he went right to her voicemail.

  “This is Annie Dugan. Leave a message.”

  “Yeah, it’s Martell, returning your call.” He hung up, then dialed Robin’s cell. Same thing. Immediate voicemail.

  So he called Robin’s hotel. “Room 1270,” he requested. But again, his only option was to leave a message.

  He called Ric and then Jules—no answer from either of them.

  Shit.

  Martell swung his legs out of bed, and jammed them into his jeans, his feet into his sneakers.

  Just what he needed—a 5:30 A.M. trip to the hotel.

  For shits and giggles, he cowboyed up, covering his holster and sidearm with a loose overshirt.

  Grabbing his car keys, he took out his phone and dialed Ric’s number again as he went out the door. This time he left a message. “All I can say, home slice, is I better be best man.”

  Pierre started barking from his perch on Annie’s bed. She’d left him sleeping there when Robin had first woken her up.

  But now the loud voices in the hotel suite had roused the little dog, who couldn’t get down by himself.

  “Shut that thing up,” ordered the larger of the two gunmen—the one who’d been in the limo when she and Ric had first encountered Gordie Junior.

  Annie headed for the bedroom, praying they wouldn’t follow her. There was a phone by the bed. If she could just lift the receiver and dial 8-911…

  But the skinnier man was right behind her, which made Pierre get even louder.

  “Lock him in the bathroom,” the gunman commanded. “Tell him to shut the fuck up or I’ll break his neck.”

  Annie scooped the dog off the bed. “It’s okay,” she told him, and luckily, he quieted. “I’m going to put his bowls of water and food in with him so he stays quiet,” she told the gunman.

  He seemed okay with that, so after she put Pierre on the bathroom floor, telling him again to hush, after she closed the door on his bewildered little face, she picked up her jeans from where she’d dropped them on the floor last night. She pulled them on, right over the boxers she wore as pajamas.

  She picked up her bra, too, putting it around her waist to fasten the clasp, pulling it up beneath her nightshirt, pulling her arms inside her sleeves and then back out after she’d gotten her underwear into place.

  “Put on your sneakers while you’re at it,” the gunman said.

  “Fuck you,” Annie told him. Of course, before he’d suggested it, socks and sneakers were next on her list. But now she walked barefoot back into the suite’s living room.

  Where Robin was sitting at the desk, by the computer, holding a…crack pipe?

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice sharp. She’d never seen one up close and personal, but that was definitely what that thing was.

  “Get your prints on the vial, too,” the heavier gunman was saying.

  Robin wasn
’t using it—he was just touching it. Getting his fingerprints all over it.

  He looked up at her, and the misery in his eyes made her heart stop. “Junior has Jules and Ric,” he told her. “If we don’t do exactly what we’re told, he’s going to kill them.”

  Oh, God.

  “Believe me,” the big gunman added, “he’s just looking for a reason to pull the trigger.”

  The skinnier man dropped Annie’s sneakers at her feet. “Put them on,” he ordered.

  She sat down. Right on the floor. Slipping her sneakers on, she tied the laces with fingers that were suddenly clumsy and cold.

  They had to get out of there before Dolphina showed up.

  Robin was finding it hard to think clearly, but that was a no-brainer. If Dolphina brought a security team to his door, Robin and Annie wouldn’t be able to do as they were told, and Junior would kill Ric and Jules.

  Of course, that was assuming that he hadn’t already killed them.

  Heart in his throat, Robin went into his bedroom and quickly got dressed. Jeans, T-shirt…He had to dig for his sneakers in his closet—which made Frigidaire antsy. He could practically feel the barrel of that gun, aimed at the base of his skull. He normally wore boat shoes or loafers—slip-ons with bare feet, but today was a sneaker day.

  God willing, he, Annie, Ric, and Jules would all be given a chance to do some serious running.

  As Robin put his sneakers on, he was unable to think of anything but the fact that he was responsible for all of this. If he hadn’t gotten drunk, there would have been no YouTube footage of Jules—at least not that video linking him to Robin.

  His hands were shaking as he pulled on a baseball cap. He grabbed his sunglasses and the refrigerator followed him back into the living room.

  Skinny Dude was at the door, checking the hall. “Good to go,” he said.

  Annie took Robin’s hand as they left his suite. She squeezed his fingers and he shook his head in warning. He knew she was thinking that their best chance in getting away was going to be in the elevator. She was probably right. But his life was worth dick without Jules, and he wasn’t about to risk Junior’s wrath.