With a slow twisting in his gut, Josh guessed that he and Cari and the rest of the passengers were along to serve as window dressing while the captain engaged in some very profitable and very dangerous smuggling.
Dammit, he should have realized that Paxton’s willingness to keep their honeymoon under wraps was too good to be true. The man could have made a fortune with a single phone call to the tabloids. The cargo he was taking on now had to be worth more. A whole lot more. Which made the situation Josh now found himself in dangerous as hell.
“Careful, cousin! Careful!”
At the urgent, low-voiced command, Josh flattened himself against the bulkhead. A few yards forward, Enrique stretched over the rail to grab at the wildly swinging net. Seconds later, the trawler thumped into the side of the yacht and Paxton joined the steward at the rail.
“For God’s sake, Salazar!” he hissed to the man at the wheel of the bobbing trawler. “Can’t you control that damn tuna bucket?”
Paxton’s business partner lifted a hand from the wheel and sent an obscene gesture across the waves.
Enrique grunted and hauled the netted cargo onto the forward deck. While he stooped to release the winch line from the net, Paxton and the other captain verified times and contacts for pickup of the cargo in Miami.
Josh stayed plastered to the bulkhead and listened intently, memorizing the details. Not that he dared do anything else. He was well outside the circle of hazy gray cast by the other boat’s mast light, but he didn’t want to risk moving and catching Salazar’s attention.
With jaws so tight they ached, he kept completely still while Enrique tossed the heavy lines down into the trawler. Its engines chugging in the predawn darkness, the battered fishing boat pulled away.
When the circle of light had faded in the distance, Josh started to inch his way back toward the sun deck. He’d almost made it when a thin, gangly figure materialized on the walkway.
“Hey, Josh!”
Eric’s reedy voice split the darkness. Josh cursed viciously under his breath and sliced a hand through the air to still the boy. Either the teenager didn’t see the gesture or he ignored it.
“Did that thump against the side of the boat wake you up, too? It hit right beside my bunk.”
“Eric, get below.”
“What was it?” the boy asked, his bare feet slapping the deck as he moved forward. “A shark or something? Did you see it?”
Josh cursed again as another set of footsteps sounded behind him. He turned to find Paxton’s eyes narrowed to slits in his whiskered face and his fist wrapped around a lethal-looking handgun. Enrique stood just behind him, his mouth twisted with fear.
One look at the captain’s eyes told Josh he didn’t have a prayer of convincing these men that he hadn’t witnessed the exchange. All he could do was try to save the boy. Keeping his body between Eric and the gun, Josh held the captain’s eyes.
“It was a dolphin,” he replied, turning only his head to the boy.
“Cool!”
“It swam away, though. There’s nothing to see now. You’d better go back to your cabin before your grandparents wake and start to worry.”
“A typhoon couldn’t wake them,” the boy scoffed. “Granddad is sawing Zs big-time and Gram is…”
“Get below, kid!”
The captain’s sharp command brought the teen up short. Frowning, he looked to Josh.
“Go below, Eric. It’s too early to be up.”
“Oh, yeah? What about you?”
Josh ground his back teeth. If he got out of this, and if he convinced Cari to extend their honeymoon indefinitely, and if they ever had kids, he sincerely hoped they could bypass the Eric stage.
“I needed some air. I’ll head back down when I get through talking to Captain Paxton. Go on, now.”
As the teenager made his way back to the sun deck, the three men faced each other. In the taut silence, Josh could hear Eric’s bare feet slapping against the deck, then the stairs. When the echo of his steps faded, Enrique broke the stillness.
“What will we do with him, Captain? Shoot him? Break his neck and throw him overboard?”
Paxton uttered a filthy curse. “You idiot! Then his wife reports him missing, and the Coast Guard and the damned navy swarm all over us. Not to mention every reporter on two continents. Shut up and let me think.”
“The Medellín, they will not like this.”
“Shut up, I said!”
“The Medellín,” Josh echoed, his brow lifting. “You’re playing with the big boys, Paxton.”
“Too big to cross, Keegan.”
Without seeming to, Josh measured the distance between himself and the captain. One good kick, and he could send the gun into the sea. Maybe. Josh didn’t even consider promising to keep silent. He wasn’t the kind of man to make deals with drug smugglers, and he knew damn well Paxton wouldn’t take his word for it anyway.
The captain’s next words confirmed that fact.
“I’m not a killer, Keegan. But we’re talking a lot of money here. A lot. I think you’re going to have to drop out of circulation for a few days. You and your wife.”
The knot in Josh’s gut tightened. He tensed his muscles for the kick, trying desperately to line up the gun in a darkness made even fuzzier by his blurred vision.
“You’re on the last leg of your honeymoon. No one’s going to think it too strange if you and the missus want to enjoy every moment of it. By the time you two come up for air, we’ll have off-loaded our cargo. We can decide what to do about you then.” He waved the gun in the direction of the sun deck. “Get moving.”
Josh didn’t fool himself. Paxton might not be a killer, but the Colombian drug lords he was in business with were.
He waited until the captain had taken a step closer, concentrated fiercely on the dim outline of the weapon in Paxton’s hand, then swung his foot in a vicious arc.
The mattress dipped suddenly.
The abrupt movement pierced Cari’s deep, sleepy fog. Not ready to wake up, she raised her arms to drag the pillow over her head. Or tried to. To her consternation, she couldn’t move them. A heavy form weighted the covers wrapped around her and kept her pinned solidly to the bed.
Josh.
She lay still for a moment, letting memories of the night before drift into her mind. With them came a delicious heat.
Never, ever, had she imagined that making love could be such a glorious, shattering experience. Or that she could let go of all her inhibitions and tickle and tease and torment a man like that. No, not a man. She could never have played those kinds of games with her former fiancé, old what’s-his-name. Only with Josh. Wicked, grinning, incredibly gentle Josh.
She tried to move once more. After a small, futile struggle, she discovered in some astonishment that her arms weren’t pinned by the covers. They were tied! Behind her back!
Her face blazed with heat. This went beyond the kind of games she was willing to play, even with…
“So you wake, eh?”
With some effort, Cari twisted her head. Her jaw sagged when she saw Enrique standing beside the bed. She blinked again. Several times. He didn’t disappear.
A muffled grunt sounded behind her back. She gave Enrique another astonished look, then twisted furiously in the confining sheets. A startled cry rose in her throat at the sight of Josh sitting next to her, his back to the headboard and his arms twisted behind him.
“Oh, my God! Josh, are you all right?”
The question was rather pointless, since the gag in his mouth prevented an answer, but Cari wasn’t thinking too clearly at this point.
“Not so pretty now, your man, is he?”
Cari ignored the sneer in Enrique’s voice as her shocked gaze took in Josh’s battered face. It looked awful. Worse than awful. Like something a zookeeper might feed to a hungry lion. Dried blood crusted his split lip. A huge, purpling bruise spread across one cheekbone. His eye, his one good eye, was swollen and puffy and as colorful as a winter
gourd.
She fought to keep her sadden panic out of her voice as she twisted back to face Enrique. “What happened? What’s going on?” Despite her best efforts, her voice quavered. “Why are we tied up?”
“Because your husband, he is a fool.”
His mouth twisted, and for the first time Cari noticed the battle marks on his face, as well.
“He thinks to take us both, me and the captain. He is a fool.”
“The captain?” Cari squeaked in dismay. “Is he part of this, too? Whatever this is?”
Ignoring her panicky questions, Enrique reached for her bound arms. He dragged her upright and propped her against the headboard, then bent to loop the end of a thick rope through the bedframe.
“Hey!” Cari sputtered in helpless protest. “What’s going on here? Why are you—ooopf!”
Her face scrunched in distaste as the burly steward shoved a wadded washcloth into her mouth, then quickly secured it in place with one of Josh’s ties.
When he lifted an ugly-looking gun from the table beside the bed, Cari’s eyes widened. Stark, unreasoning fear swelled her chest, almost choking her. Then Enrique tucked the weapon into his waistband and rocked back on his heels, surveying them both with savage satisfaction.
“I will come back later. With food, perhaps. We’ll see what the captain says. In the meantime, you will enjoy your honeymoon, yes?”
Ten
The minutes dragged past, one after another. Gradually Cari’s heart stopped pumping terror through her veins. Slowly her panic subsided to mere fear. After a while, a creeping indignation overtook fear.
This was not her idea of a vacation—or a honeymoon!
She squirmed sideways to face Josh, trying to figure out what in the world had happened. His battered face gave her no clue. Nor did his muffled grunts and jerky movements. Realizing he was trying to wriggle free of his bonds, she went to work on her own.
She gave up ten agonizing minutes later, her wrists burning. Enrique had tied sailor’s knots that defied any landlubber’s ability to unravel them. Josh struggled on long after Cari gave up, but eventually he grunted in disgust and leaned his head back against the tall, padded headboard.
At that point, several unrelated but equally disturbing bits of information infiltrated her consciousness. One, she wore her sleep shirt, but her panties lay on the carpet halfway across the suite. Two, the feel of Josh’s hair-roughened leg rubbing hers gave her a fierce, irrational courage. Three, she had to go to the bathroom.
The minutes ticked by. Bright light streamed in under the drawn curtains. Cari’s stomach rumbled. Josh rubbed her leg encouragingly.
An hour passed. Maybe two. Cari’s hands felt numb. The wadded washcloth left a taste of soap in her mouth. She had to go to the bathroom. Badly.
Later, she fumed, obviously had a different meaning to Enrique from the rest of the world.
Her physical discomfort grew to such dramatic proportions that by the time the steward finally returned, Cari’s panic had little to do with the gun tucked in the waistband of his white slacks. He set a tray on the mahogany table and strolled over to her side of the bed. Bruises stood out like purple pansies against the skin around his left eye.
“I will untie your gag and then your hands, yes? But you will not scream, or I must hurt you. You or your man. You understand?”
Cari nodded.
“Good. Lean forward.”
His big paws fumbled at the tie holding the washcloth in place. When it came free, Cari spit the cloth out and swallowed furiously to get some moisture into her dry mouth.
“Now I will free your hands and you will eat.” He shot Josh a malevolent glance. “Then, perhaps, I will let you feed your man.”
Cari gasped as the ropes around her wrists came free. Her arms dropped forward, sending needles of fire through her shoulder sockets.
“Eat now, and quickly.”
She slid off the bed, tugging her sleep shirt down over her thighs. With some effort, she pulled her ravaged dignity around her like a cloak.
“Before I eat,” she announced with a calm that amazed her, “I have to attend to my personal needs.”
Enrique frowned at her for a moment, then curled his lip. “I must come with you, you understand.”
To Cari’s intense relief, the steward followed her into the bathroom, but not into the small private stall. Relief turned to frustration, however, when she found nothing more lethal than a toilet-paper holder in the tiny cubicle.
She emerged some moments later. Snagging her robe from the hook on the back of the bathroom door, she dragged it on. Then she grabbed a clean washcloth, dampened it in the sink and marched back into the bedroom, Enrique at her heels.
Throughout the short excursion, Cari searched frantically for something to disable Enrique with. She considered trying to spray her astringent lemon facial cleanser into his eyes, but quickly abandoned that idea as too risky. Somehow, she didn’t think the cleanser would incapacitate him sufficiently for her to seize his weapon.
A moment later, her hand closed around the thermal coffeepot on the tray. The hot liquid had certainly disabled her for a few moments.
Unfortunately, Enrique stayed well across the suite while she forced herself to eat a dry croissant and a banana. He moved closer when she carried the tray to the bed to feed Josh, but only enough to let the bound man see the gun trained at her right temple.
“You will not shout, Keegan. Not unless you wish harm to your wife.”
Cari struggled with the tie knotted around Josh’s neck for some moments. When it gave, she eased the cloth out of his mouth. He swallowed convulsively, then sipped at the coffee she held to the unbruised corner of his mouth.
“What’s going on?” she asked quietly.
Josh glanced at Enrique. When the steward didn’t warn him to keep silent, chills raced down Josh’s spine. Apparently what Cari knew or didn’t know would make little difference to her fate.
“I took a walk topside early this morning,” he told her. “Too early, as it turns out.”
While she dabbed at his lip with a dampened cloth, he related what had happened. When he mentioned the drugs and Eric’s intrusion on the scene, Cari paled.
“He’s okay,” Josh assured her quickly. “He went below before things got…messy.”
The hand holding the cloth began to shake, and Josh cursed under his breath. He made no attempt to gloss over their situation, however. Cari had a right to know the danger she faced. When he finished, she gripped the damp cloth in both hands and swiveled to face Enrique.
“You can’t really mean to keep us in this cabin for the rest of the trip? Four whole days? The other passengers will certainly question our absence.”
Enrique shrugged, avoiding her eyes. “Perhaps not four more days. You could decide to leave the boat in Grand Cayman.”
Josh stiffened, and water dripped from the cloth Cari wrung in her hands.
“Leave the boat?” she echoed faintly.
“To extend your honeymoon on this most pleasant island, you understand? We drop anchor there late this afternoon.” He waved the gun in a small circle. “Now feed your man, and hurry. I have things I must do.”
Josh’s heart ached at the expression in her eyes when she turned back to him.
“I’m sorry, Cari.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it is. I talked you into that crazy wedding. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be on this damned honeymoon cruise…or in this mess.”
By imperceptible degrees, the stark fear in her eyes receded. To Josh’s utter amazement, she managed a wobbly smile.
“I admit I may have acted impulsively a time or two in my life. And I may have done some things I later regretted. Honeymooning with you isn’t one of them, Josh.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but Enrique’s brusque demand for them to hurry preempted him. She broke off one end of the croissant and held it to his mouth. Taking the bite she offered, he chewe
d a couple of times, then swallowed slowly.
“I love you, Cari.”
The strain in her face gave way to an expression he knew he’d keep tucked in his heart for the rest of his life, however long or short that might be.
“That’s good,” she replied softly. “Because I love you, too.”
He grinned, and she popped another bite into his mouth.
Enrique departed soon afterward, leaving Cari and Josh securely bound and gagged once more. The lock clicked audibly in the stillness.
Before the echo had died away, Josh went to work on the ropes again. He was damned if he was going to let Paxton and company hurt his wife. He had hoped he and Cari would have time, a day or two at least, to come up with an escape plan. According to Enrique, they only had until this afternoon.
Grimly he twisted his wrists and sawed the ropes back and forth against the corner of the headboard. The friction scored his already raw skin. Josh ignored the sticky blood trickling down his clenched fists.
He was concentrating so fiercely on his task that the movement on the far side of the huge bed barely registered in his peripheral vision. But he couldn’t fail to notice when Cari swung her arms up and yanked the gag out of her mouth.
Wrists dripping blood, he watched in utter stupefaction as she crawled across the bed and reached for his gag. Seconds later, he spit the cloth out.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“I bent my wrists when Enrique tied me this time,” she panted. Clambering over him, she slid off his side of the bed and crouched on the floor to attack the ropes.
“You bent your wrists?”
“Yes,” she replied distractedly, struggling with his bonds. “Then I unbent them and slipped my hands through the ropes. Oh, Josh, these knots are so tight! And you’re bleeding!”
“I’ll live. Where did you learn that little trick?”
“What trick? Oh, the bent wrists. From the diary of Captain Sir Giles Pettibone. He was captured by Barbary Coast pirates. They tied him up every night, but he eventually escaped and…I think this knot is loosening!”
Halloween Honeymoon Page 13