Since she was reduced yet again to nothing more than a naughty child in her father’s eyes, nothing really mattered. Except maybe getting the damned air conditioning on this overpriced heap cranked up.
The last few days had left her dazed and bruised. Not physically of course. A girl like her didn’t get actual bruises. But it hurt anyway. To have Daddy show up like that in Paris and pay Justin off and then practically kidnap her, even though she was almost twenty-three and would soon have her own money from Granny.
It hurt. Just when she was starting to feel like an actual grown-up.
She didn’t blame Justin for giving in. What else was he to do? Damien Reynolds was a powerful man. And Justin was just a poor, starving poet. Not starving really. But his trust fund was miniscule.
Now that he’d signed that paper with Daddy promising not to see her upon the payment of a certain undisclosed sum, she supposed that relationship was over.
Like all her relationships. Her father didn’t seem happy unless he could prove that there wasn’t a man alive who didn’t want her for her money. Which was just ridiculous. If anything, men wanted her for his money.
She supposed being the only daughter of the legendarily male-dominated Reynolds brood had its disadvantages. At least the boys got to have some fun, even stodgy old Michael with his mistresses of the moment. Every time Samantha made the slightest misstep and did something as minor as ending up with a tiny mention in a tabloid about planning to elope to Rome, Daddy swooped down with his checkbook and whisked her away.
She was getting tired of it.
She’d have her own checkbook soon and she’d pay almost anything to keep him from interfering all the time.
The door to her cabin burst open.
“Daddy!” she complained. “Now you’re not even knocking? For goodness’ sake, I’m a grown woman.”
Even as she was objecting, she registered her father’s normally pristine mane of silver hair was all askew and his reddened complexion was even more fiery than usual. And he was waving a gun.
The sound of a motorboat outside her port window drew her attention away from the odd tableau of her father’s disarray. In all the days since her father had had the two of them helicoptered here, dropped right in the middle of the South Seas, she hadn’t heard another single boat.
“What’s going on?”
Her father grabbed her arm.
“Ow!” Now that was going to leave a bruise.
“Come on. Now, Sam. I’ve got to hide you.”
“Hide me?” she cried, even as he was dragging her out of the room and down the passageway.
Without further explanation, he shoved her into a musty-smelling closet of some kind. Oh no, wait. There were benches and lockers. A crew storage room perhaps?
“Whatever is going on, Daddy?”
“Shhh,” he hissed urgently, trying locker after locker until one opened.
She heard some shouting above just as her father, incredibly enough, tried to shove her into a locker. As she was about to cry out, he put a hand over her mouth. His familiar aftershave comforted her, though his still frantic features did not.
“Here,” he whispered. “Take this gun and stay hidden.”
Then he slammed the locker door shut on her.
* * * * *
“Make sure we got everybody,” Gunderson said, motioning with the machine gun that he, like all of them, carried. “I don’t want some hero cook springing out on me at the last minute. Take Santiago.”
Vik surveyed the captain and assorted crew of the yacht milling around under gunpoint. They all seemed pretty scared silent. Even the old, white-haired one who owned the yacht. He wasn’t blustering or mouthing off or doing anything that would risk him getting killed while Vik went to search below. Just by good luck, the only women aboard were two older Polynesian ones, servants by the looks of them, who wouldn’t be to Gunny’s taste. So they were safe there.
Vik nodded and headed below with the other crewman. They opened each of the cabin doors and made cursory searches of the heads. The place seemed cleaned out. “You go check the engine room,” he instructed Santiago. “I’ll finish here.”
Santiago nodded.
Vik continued down the passageway, opening doors as he went. The laundry room. A pantry. When he got to a darkened storeroom of some sort, he glanced inside, not inclined to do much more, when Santiago showed up behind him. “It’s all clean in the engine room.”
“Okay. Let’s go back up.”
“Did you check these lockers? Crew probably has some good grass.”
Santiago moved forward before he could stop him, trying lockers, finding them locked. He pointed his weapon at one.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m going to shoot one open.”
“We don’t have time for that now. You can come back down.”
Santiago hesitated.
“Go on,” Vik urged. “You better get back up on deck.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I got to take a leak. Go on.”
Santiago nodded and left.
Vik held his breath, hoping he was wrong. Approaching the locker with the very slightest bit of pink material caught in the door, he opened it quickly.
To the sight of a gun trained right on him.
Oh, he so did not need this.
“Hey, did you see—”
At the sound of Santiago coming back into the room, Vik had no choice. He knocked the gun out of the girl’s shaking hand and hauled her out.
“Shit! A chick!” Santiago exclaimed.
“Yeah.”
“Is that why you were trying to get rid of me, Vik? Trying to nail her before any of us even know she’s on board?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
The girl was shaking, but her skin where he held her arm was feverish hot. It must have been one hundred and ten degrees inside that locker. She probably would have suffocated if he hadn’t found her anyway.
He tried to console himself with that. But given the way Santiago was checking her out, it was hard to do.
There was a complicated set of unwritten rules by which undercover agents lived. Of course the rules were different for each agent. But Vik’s included not letting innocent people get involved if he could possibly help it. Unfortunately, he could only “help it” if it didn’t compromise the mission. Others had a rule about not personally killing anybody, innocent or guilty. Vik’s only included the first part of that one. He had no problem killing one of these cutthroats if it saved his own life or the life of a bystander. He’d done it to Bobby, the disgusting pedophile who had gotten him the space in Gunny’s crew. Unfortunately, that rule often ran into the “not compromising a mission” one. Sometimes it was a choice between the two.
He’d wanted to kill Gunderson almost the entire time he’d been on his crew. The man was an animal, like most of these guys, but without the occasional glimpses of humanity even the most hardened criminals usually displayed. He was also one of the linchpins of this operation. Killing him might set things back God knew how long. He couldn’t afford it.
So he’d dutifully brought the terrified girl up on deck and pushed her toward the others. The white-haired old man clutched his heart when he saw her and she went into his arms. He’d been thinking rich man’s mistress but from the body language he saw it was worse.
Rich man’s daughter.
“Nice, Vik,” Gunderson commented, eying the girl.
Oh shit.
“So is this everybody?” Gunderson asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Good. Put the lifeboat in the water,” he instructed one of the other crewmen and Vik felt a surge of relief. He’d talked Gunny into doing this with the last few yachts they’d taken—instead of killing everybody on board, as was Gunny’s natural inclination—but it always felt like a crapshoot each time as to whether he’d do it or not. Since all of the yachts they’d taken so far were from drug dealers or gun runner
s, hardened criminals themselves who knew the risks of their trade, the term “innocent victim” in these situations was a relative one. But still.
Here, though, these people were just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thank God Gunny had signaled for the lifeboat.
“You can take your chances on the sea, everybody. Good luck and all that. Thanks for the boat. That’s right. Everybody get the fuck out of my hair.”
The assorted terrified members of the staff started climbing into the raft quickly, without comment.
“All but the girl,” Gunderson said. “She stays behind.”
The girl froze and the old man clutched his daughter’s arm. “No! You can’t do this. Please.”
Vik didn’t move a muscle.
“Get in the raft.” Gunderson usually didn’t add an “unless”. It just came. He was going to spatter the girl’s father all over the deck in two seconds if he didn’t get in the boat.
Vik moved forward. “Go on.” He pushed the old man, roughly, which should have caused him to let go of the girl’s arm just with the force of it, but it didn’t.
“No! I’m begging you!”
Gunderson laughed. Jesus, the old guy was just making it worse.
“Move aside, Vik. Let him beg.”
Vik glanced over his shoulder. “No. I’m not cleaning it up and I’m not living with the stink of blood on the deck.” Catching the old man by surprise, he pried his hand from the girl’s arm and picked him up, dropping him into the raft to the arms of one or two of the men who came forward to catch him. The old man scrambled up and Vik whipped out his knife and cut the ties to the raft, shoving it with his foot. The farther away these innocent bystanders got the better.
Then he’d deal with the girl.
He pocketed the knife again and turned back to her. She was shivering in her flimsy pajamas, despite the ninety-degree heat, too young, and too pampered maybe, to be able to mask her terror. And she was clearly terrified as she watched her father drift away, the others in the raft visibly restraining him from jumping out to swim back it seemed.
“Tell him you’ll be okay,” he instructed gruffly.
She turned big, chocolate-brown eyes on him, asking for something he couldn’t give her, not in this crowd and probably not at all.
“Tell him we’re just going to ransom you. We won’t hurt you. Tell him or my boss is going to shoot him if he manages to get out of that boat and head back here.”
“I’ll be okay, Daddy!” she called frantically, rushing over to the railing to do it. He followed her just to make sure she didn’t jump herself—Gunny would fire on her for sure if she did—as she repeated what he’d told her to say. Whether it calmed her father or the poor guy had just exhausted himself, Vik couldn’t tell as the others in the raft frantically paddled away and the yacht’s engines started up in preparation for pulling away in the other direction.
Long after they had, the girl still stood at the railing, watching the shrinking dot that was her father in the raft until finally it was gone completely.
“You did the right thing. There’s nothing he could have done and he would’ve just gotten himself killed.”
“Won’t he die anyway? How far can they get on open sea in a raft like that?”
Vik shrugged. “Sometimes there’s some traffic in this neighborhood.” The yacht was running at quite a clip now, the motorboat they’d come in following close behind, white wakes of water on either side. “They might run across a boat. You never know.”
He knew for a fact that there was one boat they would run into. The one he was supposed to be on right now. The Victory. Christ, what a fuckup.
“Or starve to death in the meantime.”
The big brown eyes were on him again, but the terror in them had receded. Now they were just blazing hatred. That was probably better for her all around. She just might make it.
Samantha looked at the pirate who had dumped her flailing father into the raft and now coldly stood discussing his possible demise. The one who’d wanted to minimize the blood on the deck so it didn’t stink since he vowed he wouldn’t clean it up. She wished to God she could spill his blood on the deck right now. She wished she could mow the whole lot of them down.
The rush of loathing she experienced crowded out the fear and she felt better for it. She would make them pay. She swore she would if it was the last thing she ever did.
Which it very well might be.
The pirate chuckled, resting his forearms on the railing and gazing out at the ocean. “There. That’s better.”
“What?”
“Don’t let them see you’re scared.”
“Them? Don’t you mean you?”
“Hey, Vik,” the big blond one called over to them. “You sweet-talking my girl?”
Samantha’s stomach dropped.
“Don’t,” the other one muttered.
She flashed him an annoyed look. “Don’t what?”
“That’s better.”
It was pitch-black night out where her father and the rest of them were, but on the deck of the yacht, it could have been midday the lights were so bright.
The blond one, who seemed to be the leader, joined them at the railing, standing next to her. “Did you wave bye-bye to Daddy?”
She said nothing. He no longer had that machine gun strapped around his arm. No longer needed it, he probably thought. She glanced at his shirtless torso, marked with tattoos and scars, but muscled like a prizefighter’s. The dark one on the other side still had his tee shirt on, but his muscled biceps suggested he was just as strong. Both stood well taller than her even though they were both leaning.
She realized dully that the dark one was what she normally would have registered as good-looking. She hadn’t even noticed that—she, who usually judged everyone on their looks.
Pretty is as pretty does. She’d never believed that before, but God how true that was.
“You checking us out, girl?” the blond one asked her.
She tried to swallow her revulsion, not trusting herself to speak.
“What do you think, Vik? You want to share her?”
“No thanks. I don’t share too well.”
“I’ll give her to you when I’m done, then.”
Christ, what the fuck was he supposed to do now? No big surprise that was what Gunny had kept her for. To rape her. And if he wanted a partner in bed to join in the fun, Santiago would be there in a second. Two animals for the price of one ganging up on one terrified girl.
So how the hell did he stop that?
There was only one way. He tried another one first anyway.
“Her old man is obviously filthy rich. I say we lock her up and try to ransom her. Her family will be so fucking scared, they’ll pay anything.”
“Maybe,” Gunny said. “But first we’re going to put her to good use.”
“She’ll be worth more if we don’t touch her.”
Gunny looked at him as if he was insane and it was kind of a lame argument, to this crowd anyway. “Are you fucking kidding me? If you think I’d pass up this pussy, you’ve been out in the sun too long.”
At the word “pussy” the others started to congregate, all but the guy driving the yacht. They were simply watching for now, but hoping for a gang bang no doubt.
Great.
With six men on board, besides himself, and two more in the motorboat alongside them, he didn’t exactly have great odds. But Gunderson was the leader and Vik was more or less second-in-command by now. The others were no more than brainless thugs. If he could convince Gunderson to keep his hands off the girl, the others would follow suit.
The only problem was that the only way to “convince” Gunderson was probably to cut his dick off.
“Okay, if that’s the way it’s going to be,” Vik said ambiguously, still thinking of his nonexistent alternatives.
“As I said, you can have her when I’m done.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
�
�Used goods by then? Man, you are one picky bastard, you know that, Vik? If I hadn’t seen you fuck a whore myself, I might think you were a limp dick.”
“Give her to me, Gunny, and you can have my share when we get to Visto.” Vik blurted that out spontaneously, not thinking it through. It was the wrong note to strike.
Gunderson laughed. “Why would you do that? Christ, she’s nice but not a half-a-mil nice. I’m getting a bad feeling here. You some kind of a white knight or what?”
The girl stood rigidly between them as they discussed her and Vik was hoping she was too shaken to listen. He didn’t need any hysterics. But now he had to do something. He turned to lean back against the railing and suddenly copped a feel of one of her high firm breasts. She started and surged away, but he held her arm with a bruising grip. Gunderson laughed and Vik shrugged.
“I want to fuck her, just like you, but I’m willing to pay you for her. What’s wrong with that?”
“Pay the whole take? That doesn’t make sense—unless you’re figuring I won’t be around to collect. Is that what you’re thinking?”
God, Gunderson was such a paranoid bastard and Vik was fucking this up big-time, making him suspicious. As if taking this yacht instead of the yacht that Interpol had deliberately placed in their path wasn’t fuckup enough. If he ended up tipping his hand and getting killed in the bargain, it wouldn’t do the girl much good.
Vik shrugged. “If you don’t want the deal, okay. I was just offering. You’re right, though. Sometimes I let my dick think for me. She’s hot, but we’re going to be there in a few days anyway, aren’t we? There’s pussy there, all I want, right? I can jack off ’til then if that’s the way you want it.”
Gunderson glanced at Santiago, confirming what Vik was starting to suspect. Gunny wasn’t the only one who knew how to get to their destination, Visto, the nerve center of the sex trade operation Vik was investigating. Santiago knew how to get there too. He could feel it.
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