Poison Evidence

by Rachel Grant

  “It’s just physical,” she said, her tone defensive. She forced her shoulders to relax. She was supposed to play along, and they needed to return to their earlier cease-fire and general accord. She raked his body with her eyes and allowed a slight smile. “It’s unfair that your body is so frigging gorgeous.”

  “Unfair? I work hard for this body. It’s not about fairness, it’s about dedication.” He climbed into the bed and pulled up the covers, which tented over his ever-growing cock.

  “Admit it, you’re only sleeping nude to rattle me.”

  “I always sleep nude. But yeah. That too.”

  The mattress had to be small to fit in the stateroom. It was a double bed, nothing more. Dimitri wasn’t a small man, and he took up more than half the space. She wasn’t a small woman. She pressed her back to the wall, giving him as much room as possible.

  Exhaustion won, and sleep came surprisingly fast. Hours later, she woke to find she’d migrated to his side of the bed and curled up against him.

  She’d dreamed of men chasing her and had sought his protection in her nightmare. She placed a hand on his chest and breathed in his scent. Ocean, sun, and testosterone all wrapped in a ripped body. His thick-muscled arm closed around her. She felt his strength across her back and found it a comfort, not a threat.

  “Sleep, Ivy,” he murmured, more asleep than awake himself. “I’ve got you.”

  If anyone wanted to hurt her, they’d have to get past Dimitri. She pressed closer to his side and dropped into a deeper, thankfully dreamless, sleep.

  The night was dark and deep when Dimitri surfaced from sleep to find Ivy still curled at his side. Her T-shirt had ridden up, and his hand rested on her bare back. His arm was numb, but still, he didn’t move, not wanting to wake her and have her retreat to the far side of the bed again.

  Had she managed to contact Dominick yesterday? He hoped she had. He’d gambled on the assumption the attorney general would seize the opportunity to exploit Dimitri’s inside information. For his part, Dimitri was more than willing to use Curt Dominick to gain Ivy’s reluctant cooperation.

  It would play out in a vicious circle. Once they found it, Ivy would attempt to take the AUUV from Dimitri, but there was no way he could let her walk with it. No one was double-crossing anyone, because they weren’t really aligned, but it would feel that way to her once she realized the depth of his manipulation.

  They were two people doing what they had to do. Plain and simple as that. In the end, Dimitri would win; Ivy would lose. And she’d spend the rest of her life hating him.

  For him, the rest of his life would be short, and he’d probably spend it with a hard-on, aching for her.

  He’d wonder why God hated him, but he’d stopped believing in any benign deity when the fifty-year-old sadist who controlled his life raped his little sister—again—as a means to control Dimitri. A dozen years later and he could still hear Sophia’s screams.

  Ivy’s hair tickled his nose. She’d showered in the interval between finishing her work and their dinner on deck, and the scent of shampoo pulled him back to the present, away from the fetid apartment where he’d sold his soul a second time, too late to protect his sister.

  He breathed Ivy in. Salt air, tea tree shampoo, and sweat mixed to create essence of her. Curled against him as she was, he could almost pretend that in a different world, she might belong by his side. Her aroma and warm body were a silent lullaby. Tactile poetry. He drifted toward sleep, numb arm and all.

  Sometime later, a soft noise outside jolted him awake. The sound wasn’t right, not the usual water lapping against the hull. A footstep, or a small craft bumped against the stern. Someone was here. He could feel it. A glance at the clock indicated it was less than an hour before dawn.

  He inched his arm from beneath Ivy’s shoulder and whispered in her ear, “We’ve got company.”

  She snuggled tighter for a moment, then woke fully and stiffened at his side.

  “There are men on the aft deck,” he whispered again. He nodded toward the window above the head of the bed. “They’re climbing onto the deck above us.”

  Her eyes rounded with alarm. Her reaction appeared genuine, so it wasn’t SEALs or her cousin’s mercenary army, unless she was a better actress than she’d let on so far. He was sure that if she’d managed to call in for reinforcements, triumph would have flashed in her eyes.

  “Do you suffer from claustrophobia?” he whispered.

  She pushed against his chest. “You can’t stuff me in the cupboard—”

  “Shh. Okay.” He pressed his mouth to hers, then slid from the bed and pulled on skintight black pants and top, and tucked his gun into the built-in holster at the small of his back. He tossed matching clothes to her. “Hurry and put these on. It was supposed to cloud over in the night. It’ll be dark on deck.”

  The ankle-to-wrist-to-neck clothing would be warm in the tropical climate, which was why he didn’t sleep in it, but the camouflage on the dark deck was a fair trade.

  She changed quickly, and they left the stateroom. Lights on the security panel in the salon indicated the men had moved to the upper deck. Thank goodness the helm could be enclosed and locked. Dimitri turned on the monitor for the night-vision camera mounted outside the helm. Three men, all dressed in snug-fitting assault wear.

  Dimitri gave thanks once again that paranoid mafiosi believed in sparing no expense on their security systems. Liberty had plenty of secrets that gave him and Ivy the advantage.

  “Will they get in?” Ivy asked.

  “Not without setting off the alarm. They’re trying to avoid that, to keep the element of surprise. My guess is they want to take the helm and control the boat, then come after us.”

  “So we just wait for them?”

  “No. First we listen, find out who we’re dealing with, then I attack.”

  Liberty’s cameras all had microphones. He handed her a wireless headset, then slipped a second pair over his own ears.

  “We don’t need the boat. We need the whore,” a man with a heavy Syrian accent said.

  “That’s Spiderman,” Ivy whispered. “I have a good memory for voices and accents.”

  A glance at the monitor showed a dark blotch over one man’s eye. He was half-blind thanks to her stilettos.

  “Underestimate the Hammer, and you’re dead,” a man with a Russian accent said.

  Shit. How had he been identified? “Thor?” Dimitri asked, before Ivy could ask what the man meant.

  She nodded.

  At least the common language among the men appeared to be English. Dimitri could translate Russian, but he only knew a few Arabic words, and nothing in Ivy’s bio indicated she knew any Middle Eastern languages. But then, he hadn’t known she spoke Japanese.

  Was the third man a sign reinforcements had arrived? Dimitri wondered what his accent would tell them. Each man had at least one gun visible. No more messing around with machetes and adzes.

  The attack on the party must’ve been an impulse. They’d figured on a quick grab. Ivy was there, and CAM was in her hotel room. Easy job, given that no one expected violence to break out in Palau. Security, even at large political events like that one had been, was always lax. And they’d dressed in traditional Palauan clothing, making it appear they were a local faction making a political statement. There was a vocal group of Palauans who took issue with the US being allowed to operate nuclear-powered vessels within Palau territory thanks to the Compact of Free Association, and the party was to celebrate another Compact-agreement success—solid cover for the Syrians to pose as political dissenters.

  They hadn’t expected Dimitri at the party, but this time they were prepared.

  “We don’t need Keaton. We don’t need this fucking boat. We need the bitch and her computers, and our homing signal indicates the equipment is down there.” On the screen, the one-eyed pirate pointed aft, toward the captain’s stateroom.

  Ivy stiffened at his side. “How the hell—?” She paused and a moment
later sucked in a sharp breath. “Fucking Patrick.” Her words were soft but angry. “The fail-safe in CAM was part of the design from the start. He must’ve told them about it and given them a receiver to follow the signal.”

  “You didn’t change the design when you moved to the Navy?”

  “It didn’t occur to me. Patrick had little to do with CAM beyond the initial concept. He must’ve been following my progress far more closely than I thought.”

  “How accurate is the signal? Targeting accurate?”

  He suspected her face had paled but couldn’t be certain in the dim cabin. “It’s accurate within three meters.”

  Dimitri swore. “The secret compartment will never hold up.”

  No time for cat-and-mouse, then. He needed to take these assholes down and then get Ivy to turn off the signal while Liberty hauled ass for open sea.

  Through the headphones, they heard the third man side with the Syrian—not surprising given his accent was also Syrian. The two men returned to the aft deck, while the Russian stayed to search for ways to take over the helm.

  “They’re separating.” He met her gaze. He’d wanted her to hide with CAM, but now that they knew these guys had a homing device, he was glad she’d refused. “Will you hide in the bow? There’s another secret compartment.

  She shook her head. “No way.”

  Now wasn’t the time to delve into her phobias. He pressed his Sig into her hands. “Fine. Take this. No safety. Long pull on the first shot, then a hair trigger. Wait for me in the guest stateroom. Hide as much as you are able.”

  “Where will you be?”

  He fixed his gaze on his stateroom. “I’m going hunting.”

  She nodded.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he cupped a hand behind her neck and pulled her face to his, giving her a deep, thorough kiss. If he failed, he’d damn well live his last moments without regrets, rules or no rules.

  That she kissed him back didn’t surprise him. Adrenaline and fear were powerful factors.

  “You’re amazing, Ivy,” he whispered against her lips as he cradled the back of her head. “You make me wish I really were Jack.” He released her and kept talking to prevent a reply. “If anyone approaches your hiding place without saying”—he smiled as the code came to him—“four-two-five, shoot first. Even if that person is me. Four-two-five is the all clear. If I say anything else, it means I’ve got a gun to my head and they’re using me to draw you out. Save yourself at all costs. Can you do that?”

  Her nostrils flared, but she nodded, which didn’t surprise him either. Ivy was a steel orchid.

  But then she did surprise him by pulling his head down for another kiss. Her tongue stroked his, quick and deep. She released him and said, “Please don’t make me shoot you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ivy tucked herself in the point of the bow on the bed. Not exactly a hiding place, but she had a straight shot at the door and a hatch above her head, should the men get past Dimitri.

  Or use him as a shield.

  Could she shoot him?

  She hoped to hell she’d never find out.

  Air-conditioning was off in this part of the boat, and the stateroom was stiflingly hot. Sweat beaded on her brow and trickled between her breasts, and she wanted to peel off the clothes Dimitri had given her. The pants were too long even for her height. They bunched at the ankles, while the top was loose on her shoulders.

  The man kept a spare ninja suit on hand. Dimitri Veselov was so very different from the computer geeks she usually hung out with. They had ninja suits too, but only wore them to gaming cons, while for Dimitri, it appeared to be his work uniform.

  She tried to imagine Dimitri at a con. The badass real deal, card-carrying Russian spy.

  Jesus, being scared shitless must make her punchy. The man was hunting invaders, and she was fantasizing about taking him to a gamer con.

  She stared at the closed hatch above her head. When the alarm went off, she could open it and slip onto the upper deck. There were a series of short ladders on the side of the boat that led to each deck. All attention would be focused aft, and it was dark. She was dressed in her ninja best.

  She could climb to the top deck and shoot the Russian.

  Could she shoot a man?

  Through the headphones, she heard the Syrian’s plans for her.

  Yes. Yes, she could.

  She tucked the gun in the holster and positioned herself below the hatch, hands at the ready to open it. The moment the alarm sounded, she’d join the fray. No one would expect her; the element of surprise was all hers.

  Dimitri crept into his stateroom. Two men were at the back window. They couldn’t see him through the dark tint of the one-way film that covered the glass, but he could see their legs and hear their chatter through the cordless headphones.

  He grabbed another gun from a hidden compartment in the nightstand. Too bad the windows were bulletproof, or he’d take them out with two shots. But he could use the thick glass to his advantage.

  The paranoid mafioso who’d commissioned the custom-built luxury yacht had feared being trapped, and interior releases had been installed on all stateroom windows.

  Dimitri stood on the bed in front of the window. Two terrorists were less than two feet away on the other side of the thick pane.

  Timing was everything. One window release was on the lower sill to the left and the other at the top on the right. Flick the release, shove outward, bottom first. The alarm would sound, alerting the Russian on the upper deck.

  He’d need both hands on the frame. He tucked his gun into the holster at the small of his back. He’d be armed with nothing but a thick three-by-five bulletproof pane as he engaged two terrorists with guns in their hands.

  “First, I’m going to blind the whore. Then I’m going to fuck her like the dog bitch she is.” The words were a soft whisper, carried through the headphones. Dimitri hated that Ivy could hear him.

  He’d take out Spiderman first.

  “We need the woman alive,” the second Syrian said.

  “We might need her eye for a retinal scan,” the Russian added. “No blinding.”

  Dimitri held one hand over each window release, like a gunfighter waiting for the signal to draw. He’d know the signal when he heard it.

  “I will fuck her while she screams for mercy.”

  That was it. Dimitri released the window and pushed out. The alarm blared as the pane dropped into his hands. He rammed the upper edge into the legs of both men standing above.

  They tripped backward against the rail and Dimitri launched himself onto the shelf at the head of the bed and through the opening, gripping the window. He let out a bloodcurdling yell as he passed through. He shoved the edge of the thick pane into one man’s face, then the other man’s neck.

  One man squeezed off a shot. The glass bucked but held. Dimitri rammed him in the face a second time. The man’s head snapped back, and he tumbled over the rail into the water.

  Dimitri was out on the deck now, exposed from behind. He kicked the remaining man in the chest as he spun on instinct and used the glass as a shield.

  Three bullets hit the pane in rapid succession, fired by the Russian.

  Behind him, the second Syrian splashed into the water. Now it was just him and the Russian.

  It was just light enough in the predawn to see the glass held, but was opaque in the middle, where it had fractured. Through the top of his shield, he could see the Russian had moved to the aft end of the upper deck.

  He couldn’t hesitate, or the Russian would have the upper hand. He charged, leaping onto the deck that was the roof of the stateroom he’d just been inside.

  The Russian kept firing, and Dimitri kept coming, leaping to the next deck in one bound. He lunged at the Russian, shoving the man’s gun upward with the crazed shield. The gun hit the Russian’s chin. Dimitri leaned on the shield, applying hard, fast pressure on the fingers wrapped around the hair trigger. The bullet entered the Ru
ssian’s brain through his palate and took out the top of his head.

  With one last shove, Dimitri pushed him over the rail, dropping the man into the ocean before his blood could stain the deck.

  He dropped the shield and leaned his head on the railing as he caught his breath. Adrenaline coursed through him. Fight-or-flight had kicked in, but the fight was over, and he never chose flight.

  He should return to the stern and make sure the two Syrians weren’t coming back. He thought he’d snapped one’s neck but needed to be certain.

  “Dimitri?”

  He lifted his head and turned. Ivy stood several feet behind him, holding his Sig, pointed right at his chest.

  He felt the blood drain from his brain as he gazed into her eyes in the dim predawn light.

  He should have seen this coming. He’d known the risks when he handed her the gun. But he hadn’t believed she’d do it.

  Steel orchid with brass balls, that was Ivy MacLeod. She could teach some former KGB agents he knew a thing or two about tenacity.

  He raised his hands. Full surrender. It was probably better this way. He was a killer. He couldn’t get away from it no matter how hard he tried. Proof was floating in the water below him.

  And if he were dead—for real with proof this time—Sophia and Yulian would be freed. He’d struck a deal, his life for Sophia and Yulian’s freedom. Did it matter who took his life in the end? Plus, while his handlers were far from honorable, there was no need to keep his sister prisoner without Dimitri to control.

  Fight-or-flight again. But he would never fight Ivy.

  “Do it,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.

  Her hands shook. She held the gun for another second or hour—time stretched like it did in the heat of battle, so it was hard to tell—then she lowered the weapon and rolled her shoulders. “We need to make sure the others are dead or gone.”

  He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed, but he took the stay of execution and jumped through the opening in the rail to the next deck down, landing on the roof of his stateroom. Before he’d gone two steps toward the lower walkway where he’d shoved the men overboard, something thumped against the stern.