Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  And Aaron was going to be even more bitterly wounded when he found out that Sheldon, too, had known that Ian had spent all that time in prison—that Shel had stumbled across that fact, and that Francine had made him promise not to tell.

  But she was going to let Ian deal with that fallout, since he was the one who’d been adamant—month after month—that Aaron never be told where he was.

  “Think about this,” Francine told Aaron now. “We want Shelly back, but we don’t want him to get hurt and we don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I’d prefer not to get hurt, too,” Martell chimed in from the front.

  “Even though he’s with Berto,” Francie continued, “that doesn’t mean Shel’s not safe. He is, right now—even if Berto’s just pretending to help him. Because Berto’s got to sell it, right? If he wants to convince Shel that he’s an ally, he’s got to act like an ally. And as long as Berto’s acting like an ally, then Shel’s safe.”

  Aaron nodded grudgingly.

  “So I’m going to email Shel,” Francine continued, “and tell him to go to the safe house that we just vacated. Number five eighty-five. In the event Phoebe already gave that info to the Dellarosas, we’re not telling them something they don’t already know.”

  Deb nodded. “That’s a good plan. But hold off—I need to clear it with Yashi first.”

  Aaron wasn’t happy. He didn’t trust Berto, but he didn’t want to not trust him, either. “If Phoebe’s working for the Dellarosas, then we’re potentially putting Shelly back into Davio’s hands. What if Berto’s really helping him without Davio knowing?”

  Francine shook her head. “Lotta ifs there, Air.” She leaned forward to tell Martell, “Go north on Seventy-five. We’re going to exit at University and head east.

  “Shelly’ll be safe enough at five eighty-five,” she continued. “It’s centrally located, plus we’ll be able to keep an eye on him, make sure Berto’s behaving himself.” She aimed her next words at Deb. “Right? You planted surveillance at the safe house? Full setup of cameras and mics?”

  Little Debbie was clearly uncomfortable disclosing that, especially when Martell looked over at her in genuine surprise.

  “Seriously?” Martell asked the FBI agent. “That’s how you make friends with Ian Dunn? By watching his every move? Eating a sandwich, taking a dump …”

  “It’s procedure,” she answered shortly.

  “New theory,” Martell said, glancing into his rearview mirror, directly at Francine. He’d clearly believed Ian when he’d left that message saying Francie was now in charge. “What if Phoebe’s working with Dunn—more closely than we’d thought? What if her departure from the safe house was part of his plan to get us out from under FBI surveillance?” He looked into the mirror again, eyebrows up, as if expecting confirmation from the backseat.

  But Francie shrugged. “I don’t know Phoebe from Adam. I’ve never met her. If she’s working with Ian, he didn’t bother to tell me.”

  “Welcome to my world,” Aaron said dourly. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  * * *

  Even without binoculars, Ian could see Dellarosa’s men swarming the marina. Despite his wishful thinking, they had not given up and moved on in their search for him.

  Davio Dellarosa knew that Ian had once-upon-a-time been a SEAL. He’d correctly deduced that Ian would instinctively head for the water.

  And he’d also apparently figured out that having Phoebe in tow would significantly slow Ian down.

  That was true. If it wasn’t for Phoebe, Ian would’ve been long gone.

  The canal beneath her condo’s balcony opened up into the bay just west of this marina. If Ian had been on his own, he would have swum to a part of the bay that was Dellarosa-free and gone ashore. Done and done.

  Instead, he swam out here, to the mouth of the bay, where larger boats—yachts and sailing vessels almost big enough to be called ships—were anchored, most of them empty, their cabins securely locked.

  He found one, surrounded by others that were dark and deserted, with a built-in cabin door lock that he could easily pick. So easily, in fact, that he opened it in advance. Best not to spend too much time with Phoebe up on the bright white of the deck. Best to get her on board—which was going to be some kind of trick, in and of itself—and then safely down below as quickly as possible.

  Because if he were Davio, he’d have most of his men up on the private little marina’s commissary roof, scanning the harbor with night-vision glasses. If he had ’em. And if he didn’t, he’d get some soon.

  One thing Ian had learned from his pre-prison quality time with Manny Dellarosa was that the Dellarosa family operation did not lack for high-tech equipment and weaponry.

  Ian now surfaced at the halfway point back to the dock where he’d left Phoebe, his head and shoulders safely concealed behind what had to be a ten-million-dollar yacht. He traced his route back to the sailboat where they were going to take shelter and hide, memorizing each stopping point—he’d need to stop more often when he swam back there with Phoebe.

  He could barely see their destination from here—of course he wasn’t wearing NVGs.

  He went back under the water, aware that he was working some seriously underused muscles. It had been close to a year since he’d done any swimming at all, due to the lack of recreational pools in the state prison system.

  He broke surface only one more time before coming up for air beneath the dock where Phoebe was hiding. He didn’t mean to startle her, but he brushed past her by accident because it was so damn dark.

  She was breathing hard as he moved closer to her. She had no doubt imagined sharks or stingrays or maybe even a deadly Portuguese man o’ war when he’d bumped her, but she was trying her best not to make any noise.

  “Sorry,” he breathed, moving close enough so he could speak directly into her ear, reaching up to hold on to the dock above them.

  To his surprise, she let go, and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him like a long-lost lover. It wasn’t until she spoke directly into his ear that he realized she’d grabbed him merely to communicate. “I heard footsteps above me, then shouting and running. I was afraid they’d spotted you.”

  She pulled back to look at him just as the on-again-off-again light shone in through the slats in the dock, and Ian could see her concern in her eyes. It wasn’t so much sharks she’d feared as him not coming back, despite the fact that he’d promised he would.

  I’m okay, he mouthed silently as her gaze dropped to his mouth.

  He instantly became aware of the intriguing mix of both firmness and softness of her body against him, of his arm around her waist. Because her shirt had floated up a little in the current, his fingers were against the smoothness of her skin.

  It was hard not to think about Aaron’s snotty comment. Will you just pull off the road and kiss the shit out of each other? Just get it over with already. You’ll both feel much better.…

  And yes, okay, in truth Ian would like to do way more than kiss the shit out of this woman, because yes again, he could use a good pressure release after nearly being killed, twice in one day. And because it had been too damn long since he’d gotten naked with anyone, let alone a woman to whom he was truly attracted.

  The way Phoebe’s eyes lit up when she laughed was just a bonus, as was the fact that she was fiercely intelligent and had the uncanny ability to read his mind at times.

  As Ian stared, hyperaware of every centimeter of her that was touching him and vice versa, she looked back up into his eyes.

  And there it was. His brother was right. The attraction Ian felt was absolutely mutual.

  The dock shifted with the water, and it was as if a light switch was flipped. Their world went dark.

  And something flipped inside of Ian, too, and he closed his eyes—not that it mattered in the darkness—and kissed her.

  Her mouth was warm and sweet—and salty, too, from the water splashing in her face. And Ian knew she was going to
pull away from him. He expected it. It was coming. Any second now …

  Except she didn’t.

  There was a moment of surprise, mixed with the briefest of hesitation, but then she was kissing him back pretty damn enthusiastically, her arms tightening around his neck.

  Ian clung to the beam above them, willing his fingers to evolve and quickly develop suction to keep him from slipping. He knew he was destined to get a splinter or twenty, but it didn’t matter as he surrendered to this moment. He gave himself fifteen seconds to enjoy it, then gave himself fifteen more when she wrapped her legs around him, too.

  Was it really called dry humping, if they did it underwater? Probably not.

  It was a crying shame that they both had their jeans on, because this was definitely one of those adrenaline-fueled moments of passion with a total loss of inhibition, where need and desire trumped all reason.

  But those moments were nearly always followed by an awkward aftermath, and that would absolutely be so in this instance, particularly since Ian knew the truth. Most people experienced a strong biological urge to have sex following a near-death experience, or even a semi-near-death experience like jumping off a second-story balcony. Phoebe’s kissing him back was just a normal human reaction to danger.

  Ian gave himself a third and final fifteen seconds and then waited slightly longer for the light to vanish before he broke their kiss—in hopes that Phoebe would be less embarrassed under cover of darkness.

  He knew what to tell her, too, and he put his mouth against her ear. “Breathe. Catch your breath. Don’t say anything, we’re gonna swim now, you’ll have plenty of time to talk when we’re safe, okay?” His voice sounded odd to his own ears, and he felt strangely out of breath himself.

  He saw her nod as the light came back, but she kept her face turned away from him even as she unlocked her legs from around him.

  Ian closed his eyes, suddenly cognizant of the splinters in his hand, and the fact that his right arm and shoulder were screaming from the strain of anchoring them beneath the dock after swimming all that way.

  He didn’t really expect her to be silent, and she didn’t disappoint. She turned her head and put her mouth to his ear. “Sorry.”

  And there was the problem. She was sorry.

  He wasn’t.

  “Big breath and then under, okay?” Ian breathed back into her ear.

  Phoebe nodded again, and he felt her draw air, lots of air, into her lungs.

  And together, they went beneath the water, and out from under the dock.

  “Wet clothes off—put everything in here,” Ian said, pointing to a plastic trash bag that was on the floor. He held out a beach towel and shook it a tad impatiently until Phoebe took it from him. “Stay on the deck—don’t step onto the carpeting until you’ve dried off. If they come on board looking for us, anything wet will give us away.”

  Phoebe stood there, dripping and close to exhausted from the long swim and the ridiculously awkward climb up the slippery side of this yacht. She was still more than slightly shell-shocked from that molten lava kiss, too, and she wasn’t quite sure what Ian wanted her to do. Take off her clothes and put them where …? Because why …?

  As she watched, Ian yanked his soaking wet T-shirt over his head and jammed it into the trash bag. He seemed to know that she needed more information. “If Davio Dellarosa sends a team of men out in a skiff, and I’m pretty sure he will, they’re not going to search every boat at anchor in the bay,” he said as he unfastened his jeans. “There’re too many of ’em. But if they see a sign that we’re here—and water or recent watermarks on the deck is the equivalent of flashing neon—they will board. In which case we’re screwed. Let’s do whatever we can to not be screwed, okay?”

  Phoebe nodded as she opened the towel and started to blot her dripping hair.

  “Good girl,” Ian said.

  She looked at him sharply. “Excuse me …?”

  His laughter was low and warm. “Just making sure you were paying attention. Good to know you are.” He swept his jeans down his long legs, getting stopped by his muscular calves, having to push and pull at the wet denim to get it unstuck from his skin.

  He still wasn’t wearing any underwear, yet he was completely unselfconscious, as if being naked in front of her was no big thing.

  It was relatively dark in the yacht’s cabin, although nowhere near as dark as it had been beneath the waters of the bay. Moonlight shone in through the windows, but it wasn’t very bright. Still, Ian’s now-naked butt reflected what little light there was, making it hard not to stare, hypnotized by its splendorous if not somewhat blurry shine, as he bent over to put his jeans plus her entire soaking sweatshirt-wrapped purse into the extra-large black plastic bag he’d grabbed from somewhere aboard this vessel.

  “I could only find one towel,” he said, standing up and turning to face her, which meant that now she was staring at … The phrase no big thing came immediately mind, although it was completely inappropriate. Big thing. Big thing. In so many equally inappropriate ways. But he was talking. What was he saying? Towels. Only one. Found. Had he. So far. As in, the towel that was currently wrapped around her as she wrestled her way out of her own wet jeans. “Hopefully there are more below. I’m gonna need you to go down there and search since I’m still too wet.”

  She nodded, and kept her underpants on. Her bra was padded, each cup acting like a little sponge. Streams of water ran down her ribs every time she moved. It was going to have to go. Damn it.

  “If you can’t find more towels,” Ian continued matter-of-factly, full-on conversationally, as if he weren’t buck naked, and also as if the tongue he was using to talk hadn’t recently been licking the inside of her mouth, “see if there’s anything else to wrap around yourself, because I’m gonna need this towel to dry myself and then mop up this mess.” He gestured down to the puddle at their feet, as well as the one out on the actual deck—which was where it mattered the most.

  “You really think they’re going to come out here looking for us?” she asked, putting her jeans, shirt, and bra into the bag, along with her cross-trainers and socks. She kept the towel, now quite sodden, securely wrapped around her, tight beneath her arms.

  “Davio’s kinda crazy. I think we need to be ready in case they do.”

  Phoebe looked down at the half-filled trash bag. “My Glock.”

  “Yup. Already got it. But unless you discover a cache of ammunition down below, it’s not going to do us all that much good if they do figure out we’re hiding here.”

  She saw that he’d taken her weapon out of her bag and had set it on the counter of some kind of wet bar, complete with a sink, here in the foyer—did yachts have foyers?—that connected the open-to-the-air aft deck to the yacht’s enclosed multilevel cabin. His cell phone—the one he’d taken from his brother’s panic room—was nearby. It was open and apart, its battery out, as if that would somehow bring it back to life—as if it hadn’t been permanently ruined by its immersion in the bay.

  Her eyeglasses were there, as well. Ian had opened the hard case that she’d put them in, so they could dry off, too—which was thoughtful and kind of him.

  “Thanks,” Phoebe said as she reached for them, put them on her face. Of course, now Ian and all of his thoughtful kindness was sharply, nakedly in moonlit focus.

  “You’re welcome.”

  It was probably true that almost everyone looked good when bathed in moonlight. Still, when Ian Dunn smiled …

  Phoebe kept her head down as she carefully dried her feet and then stepped onto the pale-colored Berber carpeting, passing through what looked like a living room, complete with built-in leather sofa, and a flat-screen TV on the wall.

  There were carpet-covered stairs going up as well as down, and she hesitated.

  “Down,” Ian said again, clearly sensing her uncertainty. “Up goes to the bridge. There’re at least two bedrooms and a head below. Better chance of finding more towels.”

  Right. Towels.
That was what she was after.

  Along with a supply of nine-millimeter ammunition, preferably in ready-to-use clips.

  Of course the stairs going up were better lit by the moonlight—more windows up there, apparently—but Phoebe headed downward, feeling her way in the gloom.

  “Head’s the nautical term for bathroom,” Ian added.

  “Not an idiot, thanks,” Phoebe countered.

  “Not implying that you were,” he called back, his voice low but still carrying down the stairs. “Most people are unfamiliar with the term. I realized that, when I said it, so …”

  “I’m not going to sleep with you,” Phoebe said, just bang—point-blank—because she realized that this was, by far, the best time to have this particular conversation. While Ian was unable to follow her downstairs, thanks to his wet feet and the must-stay-dry carpeting that imprisoned him.

  Back where she’d left him, Ian cleared his throat. “Okay.”

  It was said with agreeable wariness, and she closed her eyes briefly, fully conscious that her back had instantly gone up. Was that relief she heard behind his okay? Was she jumping to conclusions? She didn’t think so, but … Oh, God. There was nothing to do but plunge onward.

  “I realize that I may have given you the wrong impression,” she said, feeling her way to a closed door that opened into a tiny, dimly lit cabin in which there were built-in bunk beds. But both mattresses were bare, and there was nothing in the minuscule closet or any of the drawers that were beneath the lower bunk. “By essentially jumping you under the dock.”

  Next to the bunk-bed room was an airplane-sized bathroom. It, too, was towel-free. There was half a roll of toilet paper attached to the wall, though.

  “You didn’t jump me,” he said, and it was clear he was going to elaborate on that theme, so she cut him off because, really, they both knew that she had.

  “It was relief, mixed with terror,” Phoebe confessed as she went into the next and final room. It was much bigger, with larger windows. Portholes. And it had a private head with a roomy, two-person shower. Surely there’d be towels in here. “A brainstem reaction. Plus you’re a very nice-looking man, who also happens to be intelligent and funny and, well … sweet.”