With an excited feeling similar to the power she had felt with Vik last night, she got to work.
* * * * *
Avery Windom wiped his glasses clean and set them back on his nose, staring at the view of the Capitol from his office window. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. Ever since he’d been caught in bed with that girl he’d picked up in Bangkok—and he really did mean girl—he’d been more or less blackmailed into cooperating with the people who ran the sex ring. Sure, after a while, they’d started paying him for information, but it wasn’t as if he could really say no to them or anything anyway. The girl had been what might kindly be termed jailbait and, less kindly, little more than pubescent. What could he say? He liked them young. And this operation had them young all right, young and pure and available to the highest bidder. Once those girls were used up, they were hustled away into the less glamorous whorehouses of whatever region they found themselves in, not many of them lasting too long as he understood it.
Oh well, everybody had a story, didn’t they?
His bosses—not the ones here at the State Department in Washington, but the real ones, the ones who ran the sex operation—were just lucky that he was able to get wind of this whole rescue mission right from the outset. The daughter of the powerful Reynolds family had somehow ended up in the hands of the slavery ring. Even worse, an Interpol Agent had gotten close enough to the operation to be in on the heist that captured the girl.
The call from Michael Reynolds had been placed to a level much higher up than Avery of course—the scion of such a powerful family wouldn’t talk to a lowly undersecretary—but eventually details had to be handled, plans implemented. Somebody had to make the call to assemble the Navy SEAL team and get them to the Interpol ship in the South Seas in record time.
And Avery was very good with details.
He warned the ring of course, promptly, but he was a little leery of getting in the middle of it so visibly. The Reynolds were a powerful family and under normal circumstances he’d never get in their way. But these weren’t normal circumstances.
The bosses told him right away that they wanted him on site so that he could be behind the scenes to delay the mission. They needed a long enough delay to get their own people on board the yacht first and to communicate with the man on board they felt they could trust.
They were rather hard to turn down.
The intercom on his desk buzzed.
“What is it, Marge?”
“The limousine is here to take you to Dulles.”
Fine. Not a moment too soon.
* * * * *
Vik found Santiago foraging around in the galley.
“Your babe can’t cook for shit. I’m still starving.”
Vik got right to the point as Santiago popped open another bag of corn chips. “Have you been in contact with Visto?”
The crunching of what sounded like a pound of corn chips was his only answer for a minute. Then, swallowing audibly, Santiago said, “I know you’re in charge now you offed Gunny and everything, but there’s bigger guys than Gunny.”
“I know that,” Vik said impatiently.
“And there’s a, what do you call it, a protocol we got to follow if we want the money for this boat and make it to Visto. You got to stay out of that.”
Vik considered him. Then he nodded. “Okay, but if I find out you’re screwing me—”
“Only one screwing you is that sweet little piece of ass down in your cabin. And if I was you, man, I’d get back to it. Nothing you can do around here. We just gonna keep heading where we’re heading.”
Somehow, Vik didn’t feel much like being one-on-one with Samantha right now given her pronouncements this morning.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. Maybe he’d just go watch the waves for a while.
Now this was puzzling. Samantha had managed to get the wireless up, although it had taken her considerably longer than she had expected, but before she could get a message out to Michael, she unearthed a message that had already gone out from the main computer on board, this morning.
Samantha couldn’t read what it said as it was in some language she didn’t understand. Taiwanese maybe? But just as she was considering using one of the online translator sites to make sense of it, a message came in. She took care not to register it as having been read as she perused it, since whoever this was directed to on board would undoubtedly see it only later when they reengaged the wireless themselves. A search of the IP address led her on a merry chase. She’d need a lot more time to trace that given the complicated bells and whistles built in to make it untraceable.
For now, though, she just concentrated on trying to read the incoming message. She did use an online translator, but maybe what she’d always heard about them was true. They weren’t exactly foolproof. Because the message she ended up with was more like a riddle than a straightforward note. It translated roughly to Termite onboard. Expect exterminators tonight. Further details to follow.
Exterminators? What kind of a message was that? And termite, singular?
A knock on the door had her slipping the computer, still on, under the bed again. “Who is it?” she asked when she had.
“Me,” Vik responded and she unlocked the door to let him in. He locked the door behind him and handed her a lunch bag of something. “Here you go. Dinner.”
She glanced out the porthole. A mellow orange light was descending as the sun set. It was later than she had thought. Getting on a computer was always like that for her. Time just slipped away.
“Oh.” She took the bag, peeking in to see a few pieces of fruit and some sort of sandwich. “I thought I might be cooking dinner.”
He gave her a funny look. “No, the consensus was to spare them, I mean you, that.”
She put the bag on the vanity as he went to sit on the couch. Reaching for the remote, he flicked the television on.
She glanced to the bed. “Did you guys find any kind of bug problem or something when you came on board?”
He guffawed. “Bug problem? Why the hell would you think that? Don’t tell me you’ve seen something on this fancy-ass thing?”
“No. I just wondered.”
He turned the channel, navigating away from something with a laugh track to something with jarring music. “We’re pretty clean pirates as things go, Samantha. Are you worried we brought lice or something?”
“No. No, of course not.”
She didn’t want to admit the existence of the computer underneath the bed, but she did need to cover her tracks somewhat so that when someone switched the wireless on, they wouldn’t see it had been on before that.
“Aren’t you going to take a shower?”
“Why?” He didn’t look up. “You want to join me?”
She frowned. “I hope you’re not going to be petulant about that?”
He threw the remote onto the couch without switching the television off and grabbed his duffle bag. “I guess I will take a shower.”
When she heard the water on a minute or two later, she dove under the bed. But as she examined the screen, she saw she was too late. Whoever it was who had been sending messages from the ship, they’d already read the incoming one and sent a return email. Will be waiting.
Since the message had just been sent she supposed she might be getting a rap on the door with an accusation soon. So she might as well go for broke. She tapped in Michael’s email address and typed, Yacht was hijacked. Father set adrift on raft yesterday. Am being held prisoner, but… She hesitated. What should she write? But have met a really nice, hot man who…God!
Before she could decide what to say, a pounding came on the cabin door that had her pushing the computer underneath the bed again and running into the bathroom.
“Vik!” The steam was so heavy, she could barely see as he opened the shower door.
“Come to join me?”
“There’s someone pounding on the door.” He came out immediately, not bothering to dry himself or wrap a towel aroun
d his waist. Or turn off the shower for that matter.
He marched, dripping wet, over to the side of the cabin door, careful apparently not to stand square in front of it, and said in response to the pounding, “What?”
“You guys in for the night?” It was Santiago’s voice.
“What is this? A fucking bed check?”
“The guys had some questions about the game plan. Thought you might like to come on up and talk to them.”
“Now?”
“Forget it, man. Tomorrow’s fine.”
After a minute, Vik came back into the bathroom and shut off the water. He grabbed a towel and began to dry himself as she scurried back into the cabin.
“What was that all about?” she asked when he came back into the cabin in his shorts a few moments later.
He looked thoughtful. “I don’t know.”
Acting on impulse, she fell to her knees and slid the computer out from under the bed, bringing it to him, screen open, flicking on one of the keys to prompt it out of hibernation.
“I know, I know,” she said in response to the thunderous look he gave her. “But I want to show you something.”
He snatched the computer away, reading the beginning of her email to Michael. “Christ, you don’t follow directions very well do you? I told you to—”
“Somebody is sending messages onboard.”
“Yeah, you, it looks like.”
“No, not me. I didn’t get a chance to send that to Michael.”
“Good.” To her amazement, Vik slammed the computer, screen open, against the sharp edge of the vanity. And then he did it again, three more times, until it was obvious the computer was toast. Then he flung it to the floor.
She stared at him, speechless.
“I told you to sit tight and not stir things up.”
He went over and switched the television off and though it was barely dark out, climbed into bed.
She stared down at him. “You’re a jerk.”
“Yeah, and you’re causing me more trouble than a whole army of enemy agents.”
Enemy agents? She tried to stay calm. “There was a message sent from here.”
“Oh yeah? What’d it say?”
“I don’t know. It was in Taiwanese, I guess.”
“Well, we’ll never know then.”
“Don’t you even care?”
Not especially. And he pretty much knew it anyway. It was obvious Santiago was in contact with, if not Visto itself, somebody connected to it.
“Let’s just get some sleep, Samantha.”
“Don’t you want to know what the response that came back said?”
“Why? Could you even tell what it said? Was that one in English?”
“No, but I used an online translator.”
“What a smarty-pants. Have you ever given any thought to actually learning another language or do you just think everyone should speak English?”
“I speak another language! I speak French!”
“Another language of a country that doesn’t have five-star restaurants, I mean.”
She shook her head and the sight of her next to the bed reminded him of what they’d shared together the night before. He groaned. If she wasn’t going to fuck him, couldn’t she at least shut up?
“Look,” she persisted, “it said something about bugs. No that wasn’t it. A bug. A termite. And exterminators.”
“Your online translator probably just fucked up the translation.”
“Well, we’ll never know since you broke my laptop. Unless of course we go to the main computer in the wheelhouse. Can you read Taiwanese?”
“Yes. But I’m not going to.”
If Santiago sent out a message, that must mean they were close. And he had yet to figure out what to do with his lovely sometimes-bedmate-and-all-around-general-aggravation. He was half surprised a rescue team hadn’t shown up for her already. Maybe Chaps had held off her old man. Or maybe Crenshaw had intervened. But even Crenshaw probably didn’t have enough muscle to hold off Damien or Michael Reynolds.
He thought of Samantha’s aborted email. Am being held prisoner… He should be more sympathetic to her than he had been today. She was being held prisoner, and why shouldn’t she try to free herself? God knew he would. She couldn’t know he didn’t want her to get out a message because he knew her father and brother were undoubtedly already planning her rescue. Besides, he couldn’t risk having Santiago or one of the others catch her trying to contact the outside.
“I don’t want to go topside right now, Samantha. I don’t know what Santiago pounding on the door means, but I don’t like it. We stay in here for the whole night. Now come to bed.”
She pursed her lips, but then seemed to accept his verdict. She went to the bureau and extracted a pair of what were apparently her normal pajamas, like the kind she’d had on when he found her in the locker, and put them on in the bathroom after a lightning-quick shower. The pajamas were short shorts and a camisole. He’d half expected the nighttime equivalent of her buttoned-up sundress or at the very least a reappearance of the knee-length shorts.
He wasn’t sure she was so wise to let down her guard.
He was one of the good guys, he reminded himself.
But still…
All clean and soft and in her scanty clothes, she slid into bed beside him, even turning toward him after switching off the light, pillowing her cheek on her hands. “I think I might like cooking,” she said after a while.
“Oh yeah?” he muttered, on his back, staring at the ceiling.
“Yeah. I think I might even be a good cook.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
She laughed and swatted at him and he caught her hand midair as she leaned slightly toward him.
The feeling was electric, for him at least. And maybe for her as well as she didn’t pull away.
“What did I tell you about treating me like I don’t have a cock?” he finally whispered, not relinquishing her hand.
She took a deep breath. “Believe me, I’m well aware of the fact that you have a, ah…”
He brought her hand to his lips, kissing her palm, just the palm, a half a foot of space still between them on the bed, and yet he was hard as rock.
“A cock,” he finished for her.
“Mmm,” she said noncommittally as he brought her hand down slowly, ever so slowly to the evidence of it. He wrapped her fingers around the throbbing length of it, through the shorts.
“See, Samantha, my body’s doing that thing where it prepares for sex. What do you say? You want to feel powerful again tonight?”
When she hesitated he rolled over on top of her, noting with a surge of satisfaction that she didn’t fight it. He stretched her arms up over her head. “Or maybe you want to feel what it’s like when I feel powerful? I promise you’ll like that too.”
He bent to kiss her neck.
“I said it was a one-time thing,” she murmured.
“That’s what you said.” He made it to her ear and bit one lobe. “Did you mean it? Because I kind of got the feeling from last night that you don’t have all that much experience with sex. Even though you’re all hot and part of the jet set and everything.” He dug his hips into the cradle of her sex, the jolt of it a bit more electrifying than kissing her palm, he had to admit. “I don’t know the kind of guys you dated in the past, but I think maybe you could use a lesson or two.”
She groaned as he dropped a kiss on her lips. Then she said in a rush, “My father said they were more interested in my money than anything else.”
He kissed one of the ribbonlike straps of her camisole, then farther down to the soft white skin peeking out from her neckline. “Now those guys must not have had a cock if they weren’t interested in this gorgeous body.”
She declined to comment, but she still wasn’t stopping him. “So did these fucking crazy wimps go down on you much?” he whispered.
“Ah, no. Not much.” Her voice sounded strangled as he kissed his wa
y down to the waistband of her short shorts. “Actually, no, they never…”
“No? So why this beautiful bare pussy?”
He tugged the shorts down, along with her panties, ‘til they were bunched up at her thighs. And then he blew on her exposed clit. She sucked in a breath.
“Because of my, ah, my bikini line.”
“Oh, you so were not getting your money out of your wax job, baby, if nobody was kissing this sweet, soft, pussy.”
Her fingers gripped his hair as he delicately licked one soft, pink petal and she groaned.
He brought her to orgasm, tasting how sweet she was, and then slid up her body. His cock was pounding and he cursed himself for not locating the condoms before he climbed into bed. But truth be told, he hadn’t really expected to be able to seduce her so easily. What they had between them, though, whatever it was, was powerful and it seemed neither of them could resist it.
Or maybe he was deluding himself and she was just a rich girl eager for a good fuck. She was panting beneath him now, her legs still slightly opened. He turned impatiently to the nightstand, feeling around for the few condoms left, and upon locating them, ripped one open and put it on. Rather than mounting her, though, first he flipped her over and then quickly pulled her to her knees. She looked back at him in surprise, but he didn’t keep her in suspense very long, slipping inside her from behind.
Oh, he could go so deep this way. He tugged her closer. So very deep.
It was hours later before they had had enough of each other and fell into an exhausted sleep.
The agency training had come naturally to him. After years of living on the streets of Singapore, there wasn’t a dirty trick he wouldn’t employ in a fight or a deception he couldn’t perpetrate with absolute sincerity if need be. Crenshaw had plucked him from his petty life of crime to offer him what turned out to be the perfect career fit for him. His facility with languages—not just the English he had somehow known, but the half a dozen other languages he had picked up from his foster mother or tourists or just somehow—was an added bonus. The only sticking point seemed to be his origins. Interpol was inordinately interested in where he’d come from, and since he didn’t know himself, he couldn’t help them out on that score.
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