Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  “Sweet?” Ian echoed with a laugh, just as she’d suspected he would. Want to change the subject fast? Call an alpha male sweet. Get him stumbling all over himself about that, then change the subject again. Original topic over and done.

  “How could there be no towels in here?” she asked, mostly rhetorically, opening the miniblinds that covered the cabin’s portholes in an attempt to let in more light.

  He went with the subject change, just as she knew he would. “Grab a blanket or sheet from one of the bunks,” Ian called back.

  But again, the mattress on this bed—king-sized at the top, but narrowing toward the front of the boat, where one’s feet might go—had been stripped down to its ticking-inspired blue-and-white plastic.

  “Yeah, sorry, there’s nothing here. Not even a mattress pad or a pillow.” She opened the closets and all of the drawers. Empty, empty, and empty. “It’s like a hotel; as if the maid service took everything but didn’t replace it. Maybe because it’s so damp?” She went back into the narrow passageway. “Where did you find that trash bag?”

  “It was here in the galley, in the cabinet under the sink.” Galley was the yo-ho-ho nautical term for kitchen. He didn’t bother with the definition this time.

  “That’s the galley?” she asked, heading back up the stairs, where, yes, his butt was still cheerfully reflecting the moonlight.

  “Most of the time, if you own a yacht like this, when you’re hungry, you pull up to a dock at a fancy restaurant,” he pointed out. “Or you have someone come in to cater your sunset cruise.”

  “Please don’t tell me the trash bag was the last one,” Phoebe said, even as he leaned over to open the cabinet.

  “It wasn’t,” Ian said, handing her another. “But this one is.”

  Of course it was. One remaining bag, between the two of them? Tough shit, it was all hers. She took the flimsy plastic and turned her back on Ian, unfastening the towel and holding it out behind her. It was pretty wet, but he took it without complaining and used it to dry himself as best as he could. At least that’s what it sounded like he was doing as she staunchly kept her back to him, concentrating on opening the plastic bag and making, yes, a poor man’s poncho.

  She pulled it over her head and put her arms through the additional holes she’d ripped into it. It came only to the tops of her thighs, plus the plastic stuck to her skin in the steamy Florida heat. But it was better than walking around topless, in her transparent panties.

  “Take the bag of wet clothes down below,” Ian commanded, and she did, glad to have something to do besides watch him use the towel to mop the floor. Which of course was going to make the thing too wet for him to wrap around his waist. God help her.

  Phoebe took advantage of the spacious-for-a-ship master bathroom to wring out their clothes onto the shower floor, and then hang everything on a variety of hooks and towel racks. The contents of her purse were a mess, and the darkness didn’t make it easy, but she set anything salvageable out on the floor.

  “Hey. You didn’t happen to find one of those battery-powered fans, or maybe a hair dryer …?”

  She turned toward Ian, who had come to stand, a darker shadow in the narrow doorway, only aware at the very last minute that she should aim her gaze higher, toward his face. Except that thought had come too late, and there she was, her eyeline directed at … the brighter white of a discreetly hanging dish towel?

  Yes, he must’ve found a dish towel in the alleged kitchen, and he’d fashioned a ridiculous and somewhat precarious-looking loincloth with a piece of string tied around his hips.

  Phoebe laughed her surprise. She couldn’t help it.

  Ian laughed, too, but he was definitely annoyed. “Hey, babe, this is all for you. I’m fine with walking around naked. You’re the one who’s—”

  “No. I mean, yes. I know. Thank you. I’m so sorry.” She stood up. Pulled her trash bag dress down as far as she could, which wasn’t far at all. “I really am. Sorry. About everything. About getting you into this mess. I’ve practiced criminal law for years, and I just didn’t believe that anyone would go after me, you know, to get to you.”

  “Davio Dellarosa’s not anyone,” Ian told her.

  “I’m finally getting that, yeah,” she said.

  “I have to go back up where I can keep an eye on the shore,” he said, pointing over his shoulder. “I could really use a fan—maybe one of those little handheld ones?—if you can find one. Or a hair dryer, although most of those are power vampires. It’ll kill the boat’s battery, and no way are we firing up the generator, so I guess it’s really kind of moot.”

  “You want a fan or a hair dryer,” Phoebe repeated, following him back up the stairs and discovering that his loincloth didn’t have a back panel. “Because …?”

  “Because whoever took most of the towels off this boat also took the two-way radio.” His teeth actually glinted in the moonlight as he smiled at her confusion. “If I can dry the cell phone out,” he told her, pointing to the pieces out on the counter, “I might be able to get it to work. Then we can call one of your FBI buddies and ask for a ride, instead of having to swim for shore.”

  “Seriously? Because I’m pretty sure it’s dead once it’s wet.”

  “I turned the phone off before we went into the canal,” he told her as he took a pair of binoculars from a hook on the wall. “If the battery’s not on, there’s a chance—if I can get it completely dry before I turn it back on … Well, there’s no guarantee—saltwater can do some serious corrosion to the wiring—but I rinsed it, back when I first came on board, so …” He shrugged, as he looked through the binoculars and scanned the shore. “I figured it was worth a try.”

  “There’s one of those ineffective little wired-into-the-wall hairdryers in the main head,” she told him. “I don’t know if it works. I didn’t try it, since I’m pretty certain my hair already looks fabulous.”

  Ian laughed at that, glancing over at her, his gaze skimming down her bare legs. “Actually, the bedraggled look suits you.”

  “Oh,” Phoebe said, moving to sit on the bench behind a built-in table. “No. Please. Don’t. Really. God. I thought we moved on from all of that. Crossed it off our list. So to speak.”

  “All of what?” he asked, turning his attention back to the twinkling lights on the distant shore. She had no idea how he could see anything out there in the darkness, even with the binoculars.

  “Okay, look. I don’t know much about you,” Phoebe said, “but I do know you’re not stupid.”

  “I’m also not sweet,” Ian countered. “I believe that’s where we left all of that.”

  Okay. “What you were doing for your brother and Sheldon,” she pointed out, “is very sweet. Eighteen months in prison to keep crazy Davio away from your brother’s family?”

  Ian shook his head. “We weren’t talking about that. We were talking about you—how did you phrase it—jumping me under the dock.”

  Phoebe winced despite herself. “Well, good. At least we agree about who jumped who, which is a good place to segue into my concluding remark on this pathetically awkward topic, which is, I’m sorry. Again. About that. I really am. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

  He glanced over at her. “Yeah, well, I kissed you first.”

  His words were spoken with intentionally surly one-upmanship.

  “You weren’t …” she started. “That wasn’t …”

  Ian waited for her to finish, one eyebrow raised.

  Phoebe sighed. She knew if she said, You kissed me—first—on the balcony, as a distraction, he’d argue that she couldn’t possibly know what he’d been thinking, even though she absolutely, positively did.

  “You just agreed that I jumped you,” she pointed out instead.

  “No, I didn’t.” He was back to scanning with those binoculars. “I said we were talking about the fact that you thought you jumped me. I’m pretty sure I was actively and enthusiastically involved. At the very least, I met you wholeheartedly midjump.”r />
  Phoebe put her head in her hands and exhaled her frustration. “Okay. Fine. Why don’t we just agree that it certainly didn’t help that you’ve been in prison for all those months, and that what I did was completely unprofessional.”

  “Wow,” Ian countered. “So what you’re saying is that I’m sex-starved and you’re a bad lawyer? That’s pretty dark.”

  “That’s not what I said,” she argued, even though it was, essentially, what she’d said. She tried again. “It’s not what I meant.” Although it kind of was.

  “For the record,” Ian said, lowering the binoculars so he could look directly at her. “It was a really nice kiss. I enjoyed it very much, thank you, and I’m not sorry, so I’m not going to apologize for it, and I don’t think you should either. I can’t speak to why you kissed me, because I’m not inside your head. But I can tell you that I kissed you because I wanted to, because I like you, because I wanted to see what it felt like. For the record, it was about fifty thousand times hotter than I imagined, which means that on the cosmic scale of kisses it clocked in at a solid pretty-fucking-great.”

  He paused.

  She was now speechless, so he continued. “But it was just a kiss. There are millions of people kissing right now, right this very second, somewhere in the world. And you know how many of them are going to have an epic conversation about it afterward? Maybe, I don’t know, ten? The rest of them are going to say, Hey. Nice. Let’s do that again, either right now or later. Which is exactly what I want to say—in conclusion—to you. So, hey. Nice. Let’s do it again. But later, okay? When people aren’t trying to kill us.”

  Phoebe found her tongue. “I’m pretty sure way more than ten—”

  “Ten thousand, then,” he said. “Out of millions of kissing people, ten thousand is still a very small number.”

  Phoebe started again. “As your lawyer—”

  “They’re definitely all lawyers,” Ian said. “All those epic conversationalists. Every single one of ’em. Holy Jesus Christ.”

  “You’re a client,” she pointed out. “So I’m sorry, I’m not kissing you later.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “So I guess, in the end, we are both sorry.”

  If ever there was a conclusion to a conversation—awkward or otherwise—that was it. Phoebe stood up. Cleared her throat. “I’ll go see if that hair dryer works.”

  Ian didn’t look up. “Good plan. Take the cell phone with you,” he said.

  She took it off the counter, and headed back down the stairs to the so-called head, feeling her way, and also feeling oddly bereft when she should have been relieved and grateful that her awkward conversation with Ian had finally ended.

  She opened the pocket door to the bathroom and pulled the hair dryer from its cradle on the wall. It was attached by a curly cord. She peered at the buttons, but couldn’t read the tiny print in the low light, and finally just hit one of them.

  Nothing happened.

  She hit the other.

  Silence.

  No power.

  Perfect.

  * * *

  Contact Point Zebra was a boarded-up and unlit former gas station, out in the middle of nowhere, well east of the north-south-running interstate.

  Martell would have missed it completely if Francine hadn’t told him to slow down.

  He pulled into the pothole-filled lot carefully, braking to a crawl as his car jostled and bounced. All he needed was to lose a muffler—make his shitty day complete.

  “Pull around back and kill your lights,” Francine commanded.

  Martell could feel more than see Deb nodding a silent Make it so, and he glanced at her, even though they both knew that she was no longer the captain of this little away team. Dunn had given that honor to the petite blonde in the backseat.

  Deb wasn’t the only one pissed off about that. Dunn’s brother was less than thrilled, too.

  “What the hell is this place?” Aaron put voice to what they were all thinking—everyone but Francine, who’d led them here.

  “Home sweet home,” Francine said, as she checked a weapon that she must’ve had stashed in her bag. “For now, anyway.”

  “Jesus,” Aaron said.

  “It’s in better shape inside than it looks from out here,” she told him. “It’s intentionally outwardly shitty. We’ll be fine.”

  The building itself was heavily graffitied brick and boarded-up glass—or maybe just brick and plywood, with no real glass left in the window frames. It was two stories high, and as Martell slowly pulled around back, he could see, in the moonlight, a rickety set of wooden stairs leading up to an equally unstable-looking deck that spanned the length of the place. There were windows and a couple of doors up on that second floor—one of them a glass slider covered with old-fashioned hurricane shutters.

  If Martell had to guess, he’d bet there was a small apartment—one bedroom, maybe two tops—up above the former convenience store.

  “Ian bought this place,” Francine continued her narrative, “back around the same time he bought the house in Sarasota. It was a two-birds-with-one-stone deal. He had some money he needed to put into property, plus he wanted to set up a place where we could hide out in the event of the coming zombie apocalypse.”

  Whoa. Zombie apocalypse. Blondie’d actually made a funny. But Martell was the only one who chuckled. In fact, because he laughed, Deb shot him a look that he couldn’t begin to interpret.

  As Martell put his car in park, Deb started to reach for the handle to her door, but Francine was already unbuckled and she leaned forward, stopping the FBI agent with a hand on her shoulder. “Stay in the car, please, while I do a quick look-see—make sure that the locks all held and we haven’t acquired any squatters. It’s been a while since I’ve been out here.”

  “Be careful,” Martell said.

  Francine met his eyes as she nodded, then opened the car door and vanished into the night.

  Deb didn’t like being ordered around, even with that please. Aaron, from the back, was even less happy. But he had his husband’s safety first and foremost in his mind.

  “How do we get access to the surveillance footage from the safe house?” he asked Deb, his voice low so as not to wake the sleeping baby.

  “Yashi’ll bring computer equipment with him,” Deb said. “From Tampa.”

  Yashi.

  Who used the exact same deodorant and hair care products as did Deb. Martell had watched the man as he and Deb had prepared to go in two different directions while back at the safe house, and neither of them let slip even the slightest hint that they were anything other than co-workers. There was no badly disguised touching—in fact, there was no touching whatsoever. There was also no lingering eye contact, and no shared smiles—just a whole lot of impersonal mutual respect.

  But they both had recently used the same marketed-to-men brand of personal care products.

  And wasn’t that a conundrum. For two people who were being super, ultra careful about keeping an intimate relationship secret, there were limited choices to be had when it came to postsleepover grooming. You either used your lover’s products—and risked someone with a good nose, like Martell, picking up on that. Or you kept a small supply of your own products in your lover’s bathroom—and risking a visitor seeing it there and having the eureka lightbulb go on, in all its glory.

  Of course, choice C was simply to not shower—instead to just walk-of-shame it on home.

  And … scene.

  Time to stop thinking about this before it classified as full-force obsessively crazy.

  All Martell really needed to know was that, despite the warm camaraderie he’d felt while sharing French fries with the quirkily attractive Deb and her frequently escaping but undeniably lovely rebel breasts, she had shared her FBI partner’s showering supplies.

  Ding. Game ended before it began.

  Truth be told, that was a good thing. He had no business sniffing around after a little something-something while i
n the middle of a difficult and serious job. Yes, the woman was hot, and the whole goth thing was intriguing even though he knew it was a disguise.

  But there was work to be done. Lives to save.

  Diapers to change—yes, that was the baby he was smelling. Holy Jesus, lamb of God …

  Francine opened the car door, and they all jumped—at least Martell did.

  “We’re good to go inside,” she reported. “Whoa.”

  “What did you feed him?” Aaron asked her, prickly as ever as he worked to free the kid from his car seat.

  “The usual,” she said. “Nothing new. I swear. Get him inside before he wakes up and starts to cry.”

  “He did that in his sleep?” Martell asked, but Aaron had already moved on.

  “Any word from Ian or Shelly?” Aaron asked Francine, who checked her phone.

  “Nothing from Eee.” Francine grabbed Rory’s diaper bag. “Shel got my email. He’s heading for the safe house, but I don’t know if Berto’s still with him. I gotta assume he is.” She looked at Deb and Martell. “Let’s get this stuff inside. Voices down—keep it quiet.”

  Aaron and Rory had already gone up those stairs, and Francine closed the car door as quietly as he’d ever heard it done.

  Martell opened his own door, intending to follow, but Deb caught his arm. Pulled him close.

  “I don’t trust her,” she breathed into Martell’s ear. “Francine. But it’s kind of obvious that she likes you, and, well, vice versa. So see if you can’t get closer. I want to know if she’s going to be trouble. Oh, and find out if she was working with Dunn back when he knew the Dutchman—the alleged kidnapper. Maybe she can give us some information.”

  And with that, she, too, got out of the car.

  Oh, good. Just what he needed. A game of spy v. spy to make his shitty day even shittier.

  Martell sighed, and grabbed the last bags of groceries out of his trunk, and followed the rest of Team Grumpy up those rickety outside stairs.