by Cindy Dees
The men nodded and got to work rewinding security footage and replaying radar scans for the past few hours. No boats of any kind were picked up approaching the Sea Nymph, and they could only conclude that a diver or divers had made the incursion. Still, their scuba gear should have triggered various proximity alarms.
“Unless they were using nonmetal gear,” Aiden surmised.
“That’s expensive and high-tech stuff. Very few civilians can afford gear like that.”
“Which leads to the obvious conclusion that a government was behind the kidnapping.”
“Okay, so divers board the ship aft and make their way forward to my cabin. How’d they do it without being spotted?” Aiden asked.
Grisham spoke up grimly. “I think I know that one. If the intruder wore a sea-land suit like our guys use, he could’ve walked right down a passage without anyone thinking twice about it. Might even have passed crew members in the hall. As long as his face was covered, no one would have known he wasn’t one of us.”
Aiden groaned mentally. Grisham was right, dammit.
Someone else piped up. “I think I saw someone walking toward your stateroom on the security footage in a sea-land suit. Lemme back up the video... Yup, here it is.”
Everyone leaned in close to stare at a man moving quickly toward the front of the vessel. His face was not visible to the camera.
Aiden visualized the guy slipping into his cabin and scaring the hell out of Sunny. Why didn’t she make a fuss? Scream and holler? “Sunny had to be asleep. She’s a fighter. If someone jumped her, she’d have fought back.”
Steig added, “The guy probably drugged her.”
And then the obvious hit Aiden. “Why did our intruder proceed with the abduction once he realized he’d drugged the wrong person? There’s no way that guy mistook Sunny for me once he picked her up. She’s half my size and, well, a girl.”
Everyone stared at the still image of the kidnapper in silence. It was Grisham who said slowly, “What if Sunny was the target?”
Chapter 10
Aiden sprinted for Sunny’s cabin with Steig right on his heels. They burst into the tiny space and Aiden headed directly for her closet, where she stored the waterproof bag with her camera and memory cards. It was gone.
“Bastards took her camera and film, too.”
“What the hell did she film that made them kidnap her to shut her up?” Steig demanded.
“I don’t know. Have you still got a copy of the images that Grisham enhanced earlier?”
Steig nodded grimly.
“I think it’s time to send those to Jeff and see what a supercomputer can do to analyze those images,” Aiden declared.
“I think you’re right.”
The two men hurried back to the bridge, and after another brief, terse call to Jeff Winston, the images they’d been working on earlier were emailed to Winston Enterprises’s Ops Center and its massive computer array.
Aiden paced impatiently until his asthma started to flare up and he was forced to sit. Divers had a limited range. Either a boat had been reasonably close and somehow not shown up on the Nymph’s radar, or the bastards had taken Sunny ashore. How in the hell were they supposed to track a diver?
He sat up abruptly. It was a long shot, but that was all they had at this point. “Grisham, can you pull up the marine radar images for the past several hours?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“There are a ton of dolphins in these waters. They tend to find human divers fascinating. What if the dolphins followed our intruder? We could use their movement on radar to track where our guy went.”
“It’s a flimsy theory,” Steig commented.
“It’s better than nothing,” Aiden retorted.
In short order, he was poring over the underwater radar that painted fish movements in the water. Schools of small fish showed up as vague shadows on the screen, and larger species—tuna, sharks and dolphins—showed up as individual blips. Deep-sea fishermen used the fish radar to find their prey, but Aiden had always thought it took the sport out of fishing to find them this way.
He watched the radar images in real time but could make no sense of the random blips moving around the screen.
“Maybe if you speed it up,” Grisham suggested, “you’ll be able to see a pattern that way.”
Aiden gave it a try. And sure enough, as soon as the images sped up significantly, there was a definite flow of large fish along a line from the Sea Nymph directly toward a spot on the coastline a few miles south of where the pirate boat had been parked to lure them ashore.
“I’m going over there,” Aiden announced.
“Whoa, there, big guy,” Steig warned. “We’ve got no intel, no idea who’s got her, how many men they’ve got or how they’re armed. We’ll send in a rescue team and do this right, after we’ve got the information we need.”
“But who knows what they’re doing to her!” he exclaimed.
“I know you’re panicked and it is most difficult to have to sit here doing nothing. But patience is the key to success in operations like this. My men and I have tons of experience at this sort of thing.”
Knowing that Steig was right and doing what the guy said were two entirely different things. Sitting around and waiting gave him far too much time to ask himself questions like how he would survive if he never saw her again. What could they have had between them if he hadn’t been such an ass to her? What would he give to have a do-over with her, to court her and romance her the way she deserved? Nope, sitting and waiting didn’t work at all.
Aiden slipped off the bridge with a muttered excuse about getting more meds from the infirmary, and no one challenged him. He did, indeed, head down to the infirmary to grab a spare inhaler and stuff it in his waist pouch. Gemma and the medic were still in surgery on the second badly injured man—the first had come through his surgery very well.
He’d never taken off his sea-land suit from earlier, and his face and hair were still mostly blacked. It was an easy matter to go the few steps from the infirmary to the swim deck. Hugging the shadows, he slipped into the water as quietly as he could and headed down into the sea.
He navigated underwater the way most people did on land, and he retraced the route of the dolphins toward the shore. A few of the sleek, ghostly forms actually flashed past him as he swam, as if urging him onward. He’d long believed dolphins were much more intelligent than most humans gave them credit for.
When one came close enough to brush up against him, Aiden grabbed the creature’s dorsal fin and hitched a high-speed ride. As comfortable as he was in the water, these creatures could still swim ten times as fast as he could. The dolphin streaked toward shore as if it knew where Aiden was going. It was only when the water became shallow and turbulent that the creature veered off course.
In ten minutes, Aiden had covered a distance that would have taken him well over an hour to swim. He surfaced, looking for a likely landing spot. Where would a diver have come ashore with an unconscious woman in tow? This stretch of coast was too rugged and rocky for that. He paralleled the coast for a few minutes, searching, then spotted a tiny stretch of sand sandwiched between a stand of mangrove trees and a rock outcropping. He swam in cautiously.
Aiden crawled ashore on all fours, staying low and hugging the shadows close to the rocks. A path led away from the back of the tiny beach into the sparse brush. Did he dare walk on it? Thing was, he’d be significantly slowed if he tried to be Mr. Sneaky through the brambles and weeds that lined the path. Not to mention Africa had a thriving population of dangerous snakes and insects that were not to be messed with. The path it was.
He eased upright and moved along the pale strip of dirt carefully, keeping a sharp eye out for trip wires or other hazards. Apparently, whoever was at the other end of this path was either confident in th
eir ability to fend off anyone who followed them or believed they wouldn’t be found anytime soon, for the path was trap free.
He walked for perhaps a half hour and was beginning to believe he’d come ashore at the wrong spot when he spied a structure ahead. It was dark and low and oddly shaped. He realized he was looking at a large canvas tent, except it was dug down into the ground partway. It was heavily camouflaged with branches and grass, and had a large camouflage net thrown over it. No way would this place show up on a satellite image.
And that told him a great deal about whoever was inside. They were aware of military satellites, aware that the people coming after Sunny might have access to them and these guys had the wherewithal to confound the satellites. They were probably military and definitely belonged to a government of some kind.
He’d found who he was looking for. Now, to find Sunny.
* * *
Sunny became aware of lying on her side on what felt like a canvas cot. Her shoulders ached. It took her a few minutes to deduce that her hands were tied—or more accurately, taped—behind her back, and that must be why her shoulders were so sore. Caution told her to fake continuing to be asleep. Or maybe she’d been unconscious. Her wits were clearing rapidly now, and the fuzzy feeling in her brain was retreating.
A man. She’d thought it was Aiden. He’d come close, except...
She struggled to remember, and then it came to her in a rush. It hadn’t been Aiden at all. It had been a stranger, and he’d slapped something wet and cold over her face. She had a horrible nightmare about drowning that seemed too real to be a dream, and then she woke up here. She could only conclude she’d been kidnapped.
Thankfully, the drugs hadn’t retreated enough for her to properly panic, yet. And besides, Aiden would come after her. No matter how conflicted he might be about having a relationship with her, he was a born-again hero, through and through. He’d have to rescue the damsel in distress. It was part of his altered DNA. She only prayed he didn’t do something stupidly heroic that got him killed in the process.
She slitted one eye open. A dirt floor came into view. She was in what looked like a large tent. A half-dozen soldiers lounged around a table in the middle, sitting in folding chairs and perched on top of big metal trunks painted olive-green. White Cyrillic characters were spray painted on the ends of the trunks.
Her mind raced. Russians had snatched her? That film footage of the strange ship must have been them, then. She had to find a way to get back to the Nymph and share that with Aiden. She tested her bonds. Her wrists and ankles were taped together, and a cloth was stuffed in her mouth and drying out terribly, but it didn’t feel taped in. She could probably spit it out, but that would signal her captors that she was awake.
One of the soldiers glanced in her direction and she closed her eye. A male voice muttered something in what sounded like Russian, if the guttural syllables and weird consonant combinations were any indication.
Crud. One of the men was coming this way. She concentrated on going limp and lying perfectly still. The guy shook her shoulder and she let her upper body flop freely in his hand.
He said something short. Hopefully, he’d just announced that she was still out cold. If they were actively waiting for her to wake up, that must mean they were planning to question her. What information could they possibly need from her? They already knew she’d filmed them. And they already knew they needed to shut her up.
Ahh. They needed to know if anyone else had seen her film. She debated whether or not to tell them the truth. If she lied, she would protect Aiden and Steig and the others, but then the Russians could just kill her and be done with their security leak.
If she told the truth, the Russians would know someone was likely to attempt a rescue of her. It might distract them, and it might force them to keep her alive as a bargaining chip for a little while. However, giving up Aiden and the others would certainly get the Sea Nymph attacked or worse. The men in front of her looked fully capable of blowing up the yacht and everyone on it without a second thought.
She could hear Steig telling her not to underestimate his crew and to go ahead and put them in harm’s way. Actually, she didn’t have any great qualms about doing that. He and his men were soldiers, after all.
But Aiden...the idea of putting him at risk made her ill. She couldn’t do it. If she had to choose between her life and his, she would have to choose his. She couldn’t imagine living with knowing she’d let him sacrifice himself for her. The very notion made her shudder.
The best option of all would be to escape from this place before the Russians could question her at all. But she didn’t see how she was going to do that tied up and lying out here in plain sight of her very armed, very dangerous captors.
She was relieved when someone got the bright idea to pull out her camera and start watching her film footage. She supposed she should be surprised these guys had found her camera and snagged it, too, but they were too thorough to have missed it, she supposed. They must have searched the Nymph until they’d found her clothes and possessions.
The film of the spy ship had been on the third memory card. If these guys were impatient and fast-
forwarded a lot, she had ten, maybe fifteen minutes to figure out a way out of here. She edged toward the back of her cot. By straining until her shoulders ached, she could brush her fingertips against the canvas. She scratched at it experimentally with her nails. No way was she going to be able to rip through it on her own.
* * *
Aiden studied the tent carefully. He could dig down to the bottom of one of the canvas panels and sneak inside easily enough. But without windows of any kind, he had no idea how many men were inside, how they were arrayed and where Sunny might be among them.
The good news was he didn’t hear the sounds of any interrogation—or torture—ongoing inside. If they’d drugged Sunny, maybe she wasn’t awake yet. But that respite would end soon enough. And then she’d have the undivided attention of whoever was in there, and his window for rescuing her would close.
There was no help for it. He was just going to have to choose a spot and start digging. He moved around to the back of the tent farthest from the tied-down flap that was the only entrance, and started to push sand and dirt away with his hands. It was hard work, and his asthma wasted no time complaining about it. He was forced to stop and rest, to catch his breath and risk a noisy puff on his inhaler.
Fury at his body for betraying him like this washed over him. What kind of man was he if he couldn’t even do this small task to save the life of the woman he loved?
Whoa. The woman he—just whoa.
He had no choice. He had to press on. He resumed digging and did his damnedest to pace himself and control his breathing.
Aiden started as a quiet scratching noise came from his right. He froze, listening. There it was again. And that wasn’t an animal. The noise was too rhythmic for that and, furthermore, sounded as if it came from the other side of the thin canvas wall. His heart pounding hopefully, he moved over to approximately where he thought the sound had come from.
He scratched once, carefully.
Immediately, the scratching resumed. He put his palm on the cloth and jolted when what felt like fingernails raked across his flesh through the canvas.
“Sunny?” he barely breathed.
Another scratch. Harder, this time.
He didn’t risk speaking anymore but commenced digging with new vigor. It only lasted a minute or two, and then his lungs shut down hard. Frantic to keep going, he took a long pull on his inhaler. C’mon, meds. Do your magic. Silently begging his body not to fail him, not to fail Sunny, he dug down about three feet. It was murderous work. For every armful of loose sand he pulled aside, half of it slid back down into the hole.
But he persisted, and as he began to feel light-headed and dizzy, he spied the bott
om edge of the tent. He lay down flat and lifted the canvas a few millimeters. He saw cot legs close by and a cluster of table legs, chair legs and combat boots in the middle of the large space.
He reached for the knife he always had strapped to his right calf and very, very carefully sawed at the canvas. It was hard to do it quietly, and the fabric’s seams were tough and stubborn. He was barely able to breathe by the time he cut his way through the first quarter inch of the damned tent.
In danger of passing out, he lay back for a few seconds, closed his eyes and prayed for air. How could he be so strong in the water and so damned helpless on land? He wasn’t even half a man.
Another scratch at the canvas made him sit up. He took a quick peek under the tent. The boots were still on the far side of the space. He commenced cutting the canvas again, but now that he was slicing through only a single layer of fabric, it went much more easily. His biggest problem was keeping it quiet and not letting the canvas make a big rip all at once.
He realized he was holding his breath and quickly let it out. Not a good idea in his current respiratory distress.
The rip in the tent should be covered by Sunny’s cot, so he kept cutting upward until her hands came into sight. The bastards had duct taped her wrists together. He reached through the narrow opening and slipped his knife between her wrists. He took a second to give her hand a squeeze and then he cut through the tape. He tugged on her hands to signal her to move backward, but she didn’t budge.
Confused, he peered through the opening and saw her pointing downward with a finger. He craned to see to her left and spotted her slowly pulling her feet backward and up toward her rear end. Ahh. Her ankles were taped, too.
He slipped his arm through the slit and reached toward her feet. A quick slash through that set of tape and she was free.