Vortex (Cutter Cay)

by Cherry Adair

  Victor’s minions wouldn’t think to look for her in the middle of the Pacific. Nobody, other than the cousins, knew she was here. And she’d given them a fabricated reason and the same fake name she’d given Cutter. Even if by some twist of fate they tracked her down to Lima and the eight million people there, they’d never think to look for her out here in the middle of the damned ocean. Victor, of all people, knew how she felt about the water.

  While it felt as though she juggled a bowling ball, an egg, and a swiftly moving chain saw, all while blindfolded, Daniela figured the respite Cutter was granting her would give her a chance to catch her breath, stop looking over her shoulder, and come up with a plan for her future. It seemed like a fair trade-off to be stuck in such close proximity to a man who clearly didn’t trust her. Which was just fine by her; the feeling was mutual.

  She’d claimed exhaustion as an excuse not to eat with the men—Okay, not to spend any more time with X-ray-eyes Logan. Nobody had asked her “exhaustion from what?” She hadn’t done a damn thing all day but do her best to be invisible, sit around flipping through guy magazines, and try not to anticipate a hundred things going horribly wrong.

  She wanted to find a TV and watch the news for any new developments. Better still, she needed a phone. There were several TVs about, so as soon as she thought the coast was clear, she’d go and see if she could find international news. BBC or CNN. There was nothing she could do about the phone. She almost smiled. Logan would be delighted to lend her his, she was sure. And then he’d know more than she wanted him to know.

  The less he knew, the better, and the less she interacted with him the better. He had a way of looking at her that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Okay, made her nipples stand up as well. The bra would help with that problem.

  She’d had dinner in her cabin, accompanied by Dog, who’d watched her chew every bite of chilled pasta salad as she tried out a dozen names on him. He didn’t appear excited by any of them. After dinner, he’d taken a nap on her foot as she read a stupefyingly boring book about big game fishing in the South Pacific, the first book she’d grabbed when Logan had come into the library to tell her dinner was being served.

  Half the divers had gone to Lima with Wes, and the other half were now playing poker in the library. Logan would win, Daniela decided as she approached her cabin. He had the steely poker face down pat. Perhaps the man didn’t actually have emotions.

  The beautifully paneled teak walls of the corridor were well-lit and spotlessly clean. From the spacing of the doors, each cabin was as roomy as the one they’d given her. Some even bigger. Someone had left his cabin door ajar, as she’d done, with the latch wedged between the door and the frame so she didn’t need a hand opening it on her return trip from the galley.

  “Are you allowed in there?” she asked Dog as he nosed the door open and pushed inside. He could probably go anywhere he pleased, but she called his name. “I don’t blame you for not answering to Dog. That’s a silly name. Come on, Sam, we’ll keep trying until we find one you do like. Come on.” She gave the cabin an inquisitive glance as she encouraged Dog to back out.

  She didn’t know whose cabin it was. Whoever he was, he’d left his cell phone on the tiny wedge of a desk by the door.

  Torn, Daniela hesitated. She needed that phone. But did her need justify stealing it? Reluctantly, she continued down the corridor, passing a few more doors. She nudged her door open with her bare foot, then set her dishes on the same wedge-shaped desk inside her cabin. Dog came in and jumped up on her bunk, and she kicked the door shut. “He’s going to want you back sooner or later, you know.”

  He lay down, his head on his paws, watching her with ice-cream-hungry puppy eyes.

  “Wes told me in no uncertain terms when he was asking my freaking bra size, mind you, that I was not to feed you people food. Ice cream is people food, Dogbert. Can’t help you. Damn it. I need that phone,” she told him. Needed contact with the outside world. Needed to know that Victor’s still in DC. Need to know that the authorities are closing in on him. That, damn it, I’m really safe.

  Even on board a ship, in the middle of the ocean, Daniela felt the target on her back no matter what kind of soft-shoe shuffle she was doing to avoid going mad waiting.

  If she sat down and slowly ate her dessert, and sipped her tea, and if the other door was still open when she was done …

  Father Morgan wouldn’t be satisfied with forty Hail Marys for stealing—no, borrowing—the phone. On the other hand, those forty, added to the hundreds of others she owed, were a drop in the bucket. Perhaps she could take a couple of months to recite them all at the same time when this was over.

  She perched on the edge of the bunk across from Dog.

  The brownies were tasteless, the ice cream bland.

  Guilt was a terrific diet.

  She wished she hadn’t seen the damn phone.

  Daniela sipped her tea, draining the cup.

  She wished Whoever hadn’t left his cabin door ajar. “He left it open because he doesn’t expect to be robbed,” she whispered, praying she’d resist temptation.

  What if Victor’s goons had somehow followed her to South America? She’d run from DC by such an arduous, circuitous route that she didn’t see how they could’ve. “He doesn’t even know I have family in Peru, Meatball. Distant certainly, but how hard would it be for him to find out with his connections? Not hard at all.”

  She showcased Peruvian artists and artisans as much as she could in her gallery, so she also had friends and dozens of business connections in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America. He knew she came to South America, and Peru in particular, at least twice a year. There was a trail to follow. Not that she’d been in contact with anyone she knew even peripherally since she’d arrived.

  She’d never mentioned her Peruvian cousins, because she’d never set eyes on them until she’d looked them up a week ago. They hadn’t even known her name. “Still don’t, Slaplilly.”

  She wasn’t paranoid; people really were after her. And the consequences of them finding her this time were too terrifying to contemplate. Victor Stamps was a psychopath with a firm handshake, a winning smile, and some very powerful friends. When it came to Daniela Rosado, he liked to mete out his punishment personally.

  The brownie/ice cream combo became a lump of cement in her stomach. She got up to put the dishes on the desk, then sat beside the big dog on the other bed. Pressing her fist to her sternum, she doubled over, resting her forehead on her knees, the dog’s warm body a small comfort against her hip.

  Go get the phone.

  She couldn’t use it and return it. The numbers she called would be on there for all to see, even if she deleted them from Recent Calls. There were ways to track the numbers, she knew. Victor had gotten numbers from her phone, which was how …

  It’s just a phone.

  “That doesn’t belong to you,” she could just hear Father Morgan’s gentle voice now.

  It wasn’t the item. It was the magnitude of how low she was sinking in a bid to stay alive.

  * * *

  Dog had abandoned him. Half his men were in Lima drinking and carousing, having a great time. His best friend was finding the whole situation amusing, and Logan had a woman on board whom he didn’t trust, but couldn’t stop thinking about.

  “Aren’t we centered and relaxed enough?” Jed complained, doing a tai chi Snake Creeps Down.

  Logan, performing the same stretching lunge, told him unsympathetically, “Feel free to get lost any time.”

  “Misery loves company.”

  “I presume you’re referring to yourself? I’m in a stellar mood, and will sleep like a baby after this.”

  “It’s too slow.”

  “That’s the point. One must practice slowly if one wishes to be fast. It’s a balance of yin and yang. Black and white. Dark cannot exist without light. Life is defined by death. Everything in balance.”

  “You’re not going to go all Karate Kid o
n me, are you?”

  Hiding his smile, Logan ignored the oft-heard refrain and moved into the next form. They could’ve turned on any number of outdoor lights, but he enjoyed the moonlight. Thinking time. A delicate southerly wind moved his hair across his face, like ghostly female fingers.

  Perfectly balanced, he moved from Brush Knee to Parry and Punch.

  They’d ascertained that the emerald bowl was the map Annie claimed it to be. Crude, it wasn’t a complicated, incomprehensible cypher, just straightforward lines of longitude and latitude scribed into the soft gem on the inside curve. A few landmarks here and there made it fairly easy to pinpoint the location of … whatever.

  If the crude map was correct, and the ship had sunk where indicated, they were five hundred miles too far north. They needed to head south down the coast off Punta de Bombon. Every indication was that Nuestra Señora de Garza had been heading north to return to Spain by taking the land route with her treasure. Had one of the swift gunships slipped away unnoticed and gone south instead, intending to sail around the tip of South America unnoticed?

  If this map was to be believed, she’d never made it, and lay waiting beneath the water at least five hundred miles in the opposite direction.

  Clearly, whoever had taken the emerald and scribed the coordinates inside it, thought the treasure worth considerably more than selling what had originally been an uncut emerald weighing close to five or six pounds, or about ten thousand karats. A hefty score even four hundred years ago.

  “Doesn’t appear that she lied about the bowl.” Jed’s voice was quiet on the warm air as he read his friend’s mind. Which at times was damned annoying.

  “Keep moving,” Logan instructed when Jed planted his feet to chat. He waited until Jed glided into the next form. “No, but how did she know of its existence?” That didn’t mean she wasn’t lying about everything else. She was a good liar. Not many tells. But then he’d learned to be an excellent lie detector from an early age. He had acute lie-dar, and with Annie it had hovered in the red zone from the beginning.

  He and Jed had spent the afternoon researching her claim that the bowl was a map to a new location. “It certainly appears to be accurate for the time period. The carving’s quite accurate. Crude, and worn in spots, still, it’s close enough to make me a believer.”

  “Which ship sank off the coast, though?” Jed asked. “One of the gunboats? Think the Nuestra Señora de Garza, anticipating a pirate raid, loaded her treasure onto one or more of the smaller vessels and sent them at a fast clip in the opposite direction?”

  “Or was it some other ship altogether and nothing at all to do with our de Garza? If we follow the map, will it lead us to A, nothing? B, gold or silver bars? Or C, the wealth of emeralds and gold we’re looking for? That’s the million-dollar question.”

  “Well,” Jed said dryly, reaching for a bottle of water, clearly done with exercising for the evening. “We aren’t getting any younger or richer just standing here, are we?”

  “We could follow the map to—Nothing,” Logan pointed out again, taking the bottle Jed handed him. “The Spanish plundered all the treasures from the area. The ship, if there is one, could hold anything.”

  Jed’s teeth glinted in the moonlight “Or everything. But I suspect a four-hundred-year puzzle isn’t nearly as intriguing as finding out how our uninvited guest knows about the emerald bowl in the first place. And how she knew it was on board the Sea Wolf. Come on, admit it. Even you must be curious.”

  “Clearly Annie Ross’s—if that’s even her name—presence on board is no accident.” He knew the why. To lead him to a treasure so someone else could scoop it up. “The big question is—did Rydell Case send her?” He found the idea of Annie and Case together—in any capacity—repellent.

  A lamp suddenly turned on in the library, shedding a pool of amber light on the deck outside the windows. A few moments later the flickering glow of the television and the muted susurrus of voices broke the stillness of the night.

  Jed’s teeth glinted in the moonlight. “It appears your mermaid has insomnia.”

  “Probably from a guilty conscience.” Logan straightened, his workout now rendered useless. He didn’t feel either relaxed or at peace.

  “Why don’t you go in there and apply the thumbscrews? You’ll feel better. I’m gonna go and soak in the hot tub … He picked up the towel he’d tossed over a chair back, then straightened to glance Logan’s way. “Unless you want to apply said screws in the hot tub, in which case I’ll go to the sauna—Unless—?”

  “Fuck off, Jedidiah.”

  Laughing, Jed ambled off.

  Logan swiped his face and chest with his towel, tossed it on the table, and went to see who was watching television.

  Annie was curled up on the end of the couch, her feet tucked up under her, Dog’s large head in her lap. She paused, stroking the dog’s pricked ears as Logan strolled in. She gave him an indecipherable look from big brown eyes beneath her bangs. “I didn’t realize you were outside.” Her voice was talking-in-the-middle-of-the-night quiet.

  Her eyes looked dewy in the dim lighting, and her flushed skin appeared as fine as a baby’s. Logan wondered what it felt like, and stuffed his fingertips into the front pockets of his shorts to resist the urge to reach out and grab what he wanted. She was a woman made for moonlight or candlelight. He was tempted to turn on more lights to dispel the intimacy of the room.

  Dog appeared to be in a blissful sleep, but opened one eye briefly to look at him, then closed it again.

  “I like to exercise before hitting the sack. Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, rounding the sofa. She’d showered and he smelled that clean woman smell that made him think of crisp, sex-rumpled cotton sheets, and hot, smooth, tangled limbs. He patted Dog’s butt as he sat down.

  Her gaze flickered to his bare chest, then darted back to his face. “It’s been a long day.” She tried to straighten, but the dog’s weight pinned her in place, wedged against the arm of the sofa. Her dark hair was still damp, curling slightly against her shoulders. The lamplight limned the curve of her cheek and the plump bow of her lower lip. “Just trying to unwind a little before I go up.”

  He leaned over and picked up the control from the glass coffee table, pointed it at the giant screen and turned the volume down. “A tsunami in Asia? The political debates? Riots in Atlanta? Not exactly conducive to relaxing before bed. No ill effects from that bump?”

  “No.” Her gaze flickered to the screen, then back to him. Her lashes were long and dark, spiky shadows on her cheeks, which were sprinkled with intriguing pale gold freckles “I’m fine. Really.”

  Logan put his bare feet up on the table, ankles crossed, then laced his fingers over his belly, letting his gaze drift over her. She was sitting too still. The kind of still a rabbit sat when a wolf was at the door. But her dark eyes didn’t look fearful as she tilted her chin and met his gaze unflinchingly.

  The woman had cojones, he’d give her that.

  He followed her gaze to the flickering TV, where a London bobby was shoving some guy into the back of a paddy wagon. “What magazine did you say had that article that gave you the idea the bowl was a map?” The scene switched to the London anchor, then switched to news from around the world. Her head moved before her eyes followed to look at him as he talked. What was so fascinating about the news? Something she wanted to catch, or was it a way to not have to look at him? “I’d like to read it.”

  The pulse at the base of her pale, slender throat throbbed, as she said evenly, “It was fascinating. Sorry, I don’t remember. Some magazine I picked up in the doctor’s office a while back.”

  Logan leaned his head against the back cushion on the sofa. “If you remember the title or author, I can do a bit of research online.”

  “Ah—Mary or Molly Edwards or Edmonds, maybe … Sorry, I don’t really remember. It was months ago…” Her voice trailed off, then she rubbed her hands over her mouth and cheeks, and gave him a tortured look. “Oh, damn it,�
�� she whispered roughly, shutting her eyes, then opening them again. “I can’t do this, it’s nerve-wracking!”

  “Watching television? I admit the reception isn’t g—”

  “I made that up.”

  He rolled his head to look at her straight on. Her posture might look relaxed, but every nerve and tendon in her body was poised and ready for flight. “You made up the magazine article?”

  “Well, yes. That too. I lied about reading about the bowl for starters.”

  Logan’s brow shot up. That he hadn’t expected. “You lied?”

  “I didn’t need to read about it. I’ve heard the story of the treasure of La Daniela my whole life. My great, great, however many greats, uncle was a seaman on board La Daniela. He was forced to accompany the men back to Spain with the treasure. He was on the gunship when she was hit by the storm.

  “He was one of two survivors. The other man died a few years later. According to family history, Nuestra Señora de Garza was really a decoy. The treasure was switched to La Daniela after they left port, and were far out to sea. The big ship headed north with two of the smaller ships, La Daniela went south…”

  Logan swung his feet to the floor, turning fully to face her. So she had lied. It pissed him off that he was disappointed, even though he’d known. He hadn’t wanted to be right.

  He cut to the chase. “Are you saying you believe the smallest gunboat carried the treasure, ostensibly back to Spain, and she was the ship that sank down the coast?”

  “That’s the family story.” She toyed with Dog’s ear, something he usually hated; he didn’t even twitch.

  Despite his fascination with her story, and trying to sort out truth, half-truth, and outright bullshit, Logan wanted her hands petting him. Crazy shit. He dragged his attention back to her cockamamie story. Or what could be the truth, if he listened to his gut.

  His lie-dar wasn’t giving him an accurate reading. She was good, Logan thought, watching her, his own expression neutral. Very good, in fact. She displayed just the right amount of hesitation and eagerness. Just the right amount of calm curiosity. Maybe it was part of the truth. Not all of it. If Logan had been less intuitive to the liars of the world, he might even have been fooled by her. Oh, she was still lying all right. He just didn’t know about what.