by Trisha Telep
Her belly fluttered. He pulled her head to his. She moaned with the first slide of his lips over hers and sank into a kiss that made her forget the dead bad guys, her surroundings, everything. When they came up for air, she smiled against his mouth. “You know, I’ve always loved Cane River. Always thought this place had a spirit of its own, that it absorbed the essence of every living creature passing through. Every emotion. Feels like a person can live for ever here. You feel it?”
“I’m feeling something,” he murmured before returning her grin. “Are you talking about for ever already, Brat?”
She pulled back enough to meet his gaze. “Maybe.”
Marcus chuckled, his breath brushing over her lips. “Guess I’d better take up aikido then. Wouldn’t want to find myself thrown into any trees.”
“No trees,” she whispered, “but I won’t promise not to try that with a bed.” Erica dropped a kiss on his mouth. “A very, very—” she dropped another kiss, loved the groan that rumbled from his mouth into hers “—big bed.”
Surrender at Dawn
Laura Griffin
One
Phuket, Thailand – 22.00
Jack’s senses went on alert, and it only took a glimpse at the mirror behind the bar for him to know why. The woman making her way through the scattered rattan tables and chairs was American, clueless and on a mission, and the combination tripped an alarm in Jack’s brain.
He eyed her from beneath the brim of his Dodgers cap as she approached the counter. She claimed the empty stool three down from his and tucked one of those yellow corkscrew curls behind her ear. Then she flashed the bartender a smile.
“I’m looking for John Brenner, of Brenner Aviation.”
Kai responded with a blank look, and she leaned closer to him.
“Do you speak English?”
Kai nodded.
“I’m looking for John Brenner,” she repeated, and Jack caught the Southern drawl in her voice. “He’s a pilot. American. I was told he hangs out here?”
Jack savoured one last swill of beer. He plunked the bottle on the bar, and the noise caught her attention. She cast a glance in his direction, did a double take, then slowly turned to face him.
“Mr Brenner?” She slid off the barstool and walked over.
“Who’s asking?”
She held out a hand, and he glanced down at the French manicure. It went well with her loose-fitting white shirt and snug designer jeans. Heeled sandals, too. Jack would bet his Cessna she’d stepped off a plane from the States just this afternoon.
When it became clear he wasn’t going to shake her hand, she rested it on her hip. “I’m Charlotte Whiteside. I need your services.”
He looked her up and down, hoping she’d read the intentions behind his gaze.
She cleared her throat. “You fly seaplanes, is that right?”
“I fly lots of things.”
“I need you to fly me to an island not far from here.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Ko Aroon.”
Kai’s hand stilled on the tap. Every pair of shoulders at the bar tensed.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of it,” she went on. “It’s supposed to be one of the best dive spots in Thailand.”
Jack slid his empty Singha bottle across the counter and stood up. “It’s not on my route,” he said.
“I’d like you to put it on your route.”
He gazed down at her, and she didn’t act the least bit intimidated by his size, although he knew she was. Despite the ballsy attitude, he could tell Charlotte Whiteside wasn’t comfortable in this seedy watering hole surrounded by leering men.
“Sorry, sweetheart. No can do.”
“I’m prepared to pay you well.”
Jack traded looks with Kai as he took out his wallet and left some baht on the bar.
He put a hand on her shoulder and felt her muscles stiffen. He leaned close, but kept his voice just loud enough for the barflies on either side of them to hear.
“How ’bout we go back to your place,” he said, “and I’ll show you exactly where I can take you?”
Confusion filled her brown eyes. He squeezed her shoulder – much too hard – and understanding seemed to dawn.
“All right.” She smiled up at him, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Lead the way.”
John Brenner was tall and muscular, and looked exactly like Charlotte had expected, except for the meanness. She hadn’t expected a decorated veteran and a former Navy SEAL to have that meanness about him. And despite his warm hand at the small of her back, she knew as he steered her out of the bar that he couldn’t stand her.
Three paces on to the busy sidewalk, he turned to face her.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a shit-hole like that?”
She gazed up at him as taxis and motorcycles and rickshaws rushed by. She hadn’t imagined it. He really, truly disliked her, and they’d only just met.
This was going to be much tougher than she’d thought.
“Listen, Mr Brenner—”
“It’s Jack,” he snapped. “And if you have a brain in that pretty head of yours, you’ll get your butt back to the Two Palms, where you belong.”
She glanced up and down the street. Bars, strip clubs and massage parlours, as far as the eye could see. She looked up at him again. “How’d you know I was staying at the Two Palms?”
“Lucky guess.” He slung a leg over the nearest motorcycle and gave her a hard look. “Get on. I’ll take you.”
She stared at him, all broad shoulders and Levis and bad attitude. He was a dangerous man; she knew that for a fact. It was crazy to trust him. But almost everything she’d done in the past forty-eight hours – starting with leaving her job in the middle of a workday and catching a flight to Thailand – was just as crazy.
Charlotte looked at the motorcycle. She glanced at a nearby doorway, where a man she recognized from the bar now stood smoking a cigarette and watching her from the shadows.
“Get on,” Jack repeated.
She met his gaze. Then she threw her leg over the back of his bike and settled in.
The engine growled, and they lunged into traffic. He sped through streets and alleys and black puffs of car exhaust. Charlotte’s hair whipped into her eyes, but she didn’t dare let go to push it aside. Instead, she tucked her forehead against his back and clutched his waist, trying not to cling too tightly as he dodged in and out of cars. She was close enough to smell him over all the exotic smells of the city – male heat and sweat and that vague, indefinable scent she hadn’t smelled in a long time.
He took a corner, and her hands and thighs clutched tighter. She peeked up as they sped through a narrow alley, then turned on to another congested street. Moments later, they were on a two-lane highway flanked on either side by coconut trees. She closed her eyes as he leaned into the curves – left, then right again, then suddenly a sharp left. Her eyes popped open and they were on a familiar driveway lined with bougainvillea. He glided up to the bevelled glass doors of her hotel and cut the motor.
She unclenched her hands from his T-shirt and realized they were trembling. Her knees were trembling, too, and she didn’t know whether it was the place or the man or the thing she was about to do, but Charlotte felt rattled, right down to her bones.
What now? Was she supposed to invite him up to her room and persuade him to take her to Ko Aroon? Just two days ago, such an idea would have been unthinkable.
At this moment, she was thinking about it.
Her throat went dry as she pictured herself taking her clothes off for this man. That’s what he’d insinuated . . . wasn’t it? That if she’d sleep with him, he’d take her where she wanted to go? It was, and yet . . . as she looked into his face now, she saw nothing but loathing.
“Stay away from Aroon Island,” he said.
“But—”
“Yeah, it’s one of the best dive spots around. It’s also been taken over by dirtbags who would like nothing better than
to get their hands on a blonde American travelling alone. Get out your travel guide and find someplace else to play.”
“But I need to—”
“Stay away,” he said, and roared off.
Charlotte awoke with the sun in her eyes and the unmistakable feeling that she wasn’t alone. She sat up and blinked across the ocean of her king-size bed.
She jerked the sheet up. “How did you get in here?”
Jack Brenner stared at her from across the room, arms folded over his chest. “You didn’t tell me you knew Mark Colter.”
She pressed back against the headboard as he came to stand at the foot of the bed. “Would it have made a difference if I had?”
“Mark and I went through BUD/s training together,” he said, as if that answered her question.
“How . . .” She shook off the grogginess and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Eight fifteen. It must be the jet lag. She’d never felt so out of it.
Jack just stood there, watching her.
“How did you find out about Mark?”
“Simple background search,” he said. “You’re from Lazy Springs, Texas. It’s a small town. You two graduated high school a year apart.”
She brushed her hair out of her eyes and looked at him. Something had changed since last night. The hostility was still there, but he’d come back, which could only mean one thing.
“So . . . will you help me?”
His gaze drifted down, and she adjusted the sheet again. Then his grey eyes met hers, and they were as hard as stones. She wondered how many men had looked into those eyes and hadn’t lived to see another day.
“What’s on Ko Aroon?” he asked. “And don’t give me some bullshit about the coral.”
Charlotte paused a moment, trying to remember how she’d planned to explain herself. Jack was a straightforward man, so she decided to go with simplicity.
“I’m looking for my brother.”
“How’d your brother get mixed in with a bunch of two-bit mercenaries?”
“I don’t know. He’s a reporter. I can only assume he’s following a story.”
Jack let out a stream of curses. But with every word that spewed from his mouth, Charlotte relaxed a little because she knew it meant he was going to help her.
He grabbed the terry-cloth robe off the chair beside him and tossed it at her. “Get dressed,” he said. “Meet me at the marina across from the hotel in ten minutes.”
He moved for the door.
“But where are we—”
“Pack light,” he added, as he jerked shut the door.
She stared after him in shock. They were going somewhere in his plane. He was taking her to Ko Aroon.
Charlotte scrambled out of bed and pulled on the robe. She went to the safe in the closet and, with shaky fingers, entered the code – her brother’s birthday. Tears stung her eyes as she punched the numbers.
Hang in there, Davey. I’m on my way.
She grabbed the stacks of bills – all the money she’d been able to withdraw on a Wednesday afternoon on short notice – and shoved them into the small black backpack she’d bought at DFW Airport. She’d chosen the bag because it was sturdy and came with a padlock.
Charlotte glanced around her room, feeling the adrenaline coursing through her system now. They were going. Finally. She was doing something, and action was always better than inaction.
She spent about five seconds in the bathroom, barely taking time to splash water on her face. She dressed quickly in khaki shorts and the white button-down she’d worn yesterday. It was wrinkled, but it was made of linen and she needed an airy fabric in the stifling tropical heat. She shoved her feet into sandals, dropped a change of clothes and a few toiletry items into the backpack, and rushed across the street to the marina. There, she saw fishing boats and dive boats and tour operators milling about, but no six-foot-three former SEALs.
She did, however, see a seaplane. It was small and silver, and, as she neared it, she discerned the words BRENNER AVIATION stencilled across the side.
“You’re late.”
She jumped at the voice and turned around. Jack brushed past her on the dock, his arms loaded with wooden crates. She trailed him down a rickety pier to his plane. He wore cargo shorts, sport sandals and an olive-green T-shirt that stretched taut across the muscles of his back. He ducked through the doorway of the tiny aircraft, and Charlotte stood on the dock as he loaded the crates. He reappeared and held a hand out for her backpack.
“That can go in with the cargo.”
Her fingers tightened on the shoulder straps. “I’ll hang on to it, thanks.”
His expression darkened, but he didn’t comment. She moved closer to the plane and took a tentative step up the ladder. Jack clamped a hand around her elbow and practically lifted her aboard. Charlotte glanced around. There were several jump seats in the back, but they were folded up to make room for crates of produce and cases of wine from New Zealand.
Charlotte lowered herself into the only available seat, which was up in the cockpit. Defying the laws of physics, Jack squeezed his immense body into the seat beside her. He reached over to fasten her seat belt. His knuckles brushed the tops of her thighs as he yanked the strap and she flinched. When he met her gaze again, his cool grey eyes looked amused.
She turned to face the window. “Where, exactly, are we going?”
He ignored the question as he began flipping switches and jabbing at the controls. Then he put on a headset and started talking with someone over the radio.
Conversation time had ended, apparently. Charlotte busied herself taking in scenery as they manoeuvred away from the pier and across the lagoon. The engine changed pitch as Jack turned the plane to face the mouth of the harbour and the western horizon stretched out before him.
“You ready?”
She glanced at him and nodded.
He shifted the controls, and an invisible force flattened her against the seat, and then they were speeding across the water’s surface. Her stomach dropped as they suddenly lifted into the air, and the only thing she could see was sun-drenched sky.
After a few long moments, they levelled off. Charlotte gazed down at the azure water, the white shoreline, the emerald-green coconut groves. The blue became darker as they gained altitude and moved out over the ocean.
Charlotte’s heart pounded. She stole a glimpse at the man beside her and marvelled at his perfectly relaxed features. This was routine for him, just a regular morning. She wondered what he must think of ordinary people who spent their days in office buildings and SUVs and subway cars, caught up in the endless rat race of American life.
He handed her a headset. She put it on, and the snug cushions over her ears blocked out the engine noise.
“Tell me about your brother.” His voice came through to her, and it no longer sounded as hostile as before. He was on board now. They were in this together, and he probably wanted as much information as he could get so he could perform his mission.
And yet he hadn’t said a word about payment. She cast a tentative glance at him. Would he accept money from her, or would he want something else?
“Davey’s a year younger than I am,” she told him. “He and Mark were best friends growing up.” She looked out the window at the shimmering ocean below. The passed over a tiny island covered in palms, and she pictured Mark and Davey as kids playing GI Joe in the woods behind her house. It seemed ironic now that Mark had gone on to become the real deal, while Davey had become a roving reporter.
“Last I heard,” she said, “he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, covering the war for an online news site. Ten days ago he posted a comment on Facebook, saying he was on to something ‘big’ and that he was hopping a flight to Phuket. One of his friends told me he sent him an email mentioning Ko Aroon. That was the last anyone’s heard from him.” Charlotte’s chest tightened as soon as the words were out.
“Ten days isn’t a lot of time.”
She glanced at him. “It is for
Davey. Our mother was diagnosed with lung cancer a year ago. He calls home every few days to check on her. But in ten days we haven’t had a word, and I’ve left him dozens of urgent messages.”
Jack glanced at her, his face unreadable. “Any ransom demands to your family? Maybe to his employer?”
“No, nothing like that. But he works freelance, so it’s not like he’s got a boss breathing down his neck.”
“And I’m guessing Mark’s deployed, right?”
“I assume,” she said. “The only contact I have for him is an email address. When I emailed him, I got back a brief response with your name and the name of your company. Davey’s his oldest friend in the world, so that tells me he was pretty tied up.” It also told her Mark was worried – worried enough to send her to one of his SEAL friends for help.
Charlotte glanced at Jack and wondered what he thought of being second in line for this job. She would have preferred Mark, obviously. She wasn’t comfortable asking a total stranger to do something dangerous for her, but she didn’t exactly have a long roster of military-trained badasses to call on.
Jack glanced at her. “Ever since the coup, Ko Aroon’s been taken over by criminals: drug runners, gun runners, you name it. Going in there as a reporter would be suicide.”
“I know.” Charlotte could hardly talk around the lump in her throat. Hearing him say it made it all too real.
“And just what were you planning to do? Wade ashore and ask if anyone’s seen him around?”
She heard the scorn in his voice and knew it sounded crazy. It was crazy. But Davey was her kid brother. She’d been bailing him out of trouble all her life and she wouldn’t run away now.
“I brought money. I thought I’d hire someone to go in there and try to buy him out.”
Jack didn’t respond, and she wondered what he thought of this plan. She wondered what his plan was, because he obviously had one.