Escapade

by Lisa Marie Rice

Bennett nodded and the window rolled silently back up.

  They drove along the marina. There were several yachts there but of course the largest and flashiest was her father’s. He had three of them, one berthed in Florida year round, one berthed in Amsterdam and one berthed in Singapore. She had never been on this one before, the Amsterdam one, but she’d seen pictures. The Get Rich Quick III, which more or less summed up her father’s life philosophy.

  Intense flashing light lit up the marina and the yacht and two seconds later thunder boomed.

  Elle kept her face expressionless, her body language still. With every fiber of her being she did not want to get on to that yacht. She’d been on previous yachts he’d owned and they were all garish and over the top. Almost embarrassing in their extravagance, for a man who didn’t enjoy the sea and didn’t even know how to swim. His yachts had nothing to do with the sea and everything to do with showing off his wealth.

  And though she was really glad for him that he’d solved his money problems and was no longer in danger, it didn’t have that much to do with her.

  She didn’t want to be here, she wanted to be with Bennett.

  He was leaning forward a little, checking the GPS navigator on the dashboard, then finally rolled to a stop. The rain drummed on the roof and bounced off the road. He rested his wrists on the top of the steering wheel, big hands dangling and turned to her. “We’re here.”

  She nodded, a huge hot lump in her throat. I don’t want to go was stuck in her throat and nothing else would come out. But saying she didn’t want to go was childish. She wasn’t a child and neither was he. This had to be done and she was going to do it.

  “It’s raining really hard,” she said, looking out the window.

  “Yeah. And it’s freezing cold. I’m really glad you got that down coat.”

  She smiled faintly. “It was amazingly expensive.”

  “Good. It won’t protect you much from the rain, though. I’ve got a big umbrella in the trunk. I’ll come around with it. You’ll be ok.”

  No, I won’t, she wanted to say, but that was ridiculous. Of course she’d be okay. “Thanks.”

  Bennett nodded but didn’t move. He turned his head and looked at her. “God,” he said. “I don’t want to let you go.”

  “No.” Her voice was a raw whisper.

  He took her hand and glanced out the front windshield at the Get Rich Quick III lit up like a giant Christmas tree.

  “Remember. Call me as soon as you can, even if you don’t know when you’ll be free. I just want to hear your voice. And as soon as you know where you’re getting off, I’ll be there as fast as I can come. I’m clearing the decks for the next few days. And then —” he tightened his grip on her hand. “Then I’m not letting you go for a long long time.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. Oh God, please don’t let me cry. “I’ll call you as soon as I can. I don’t know what my father wants or how long he wants me to be with him. I think — I think this has given him a real scare.”

  Bennett’s mouth tightened. “It damned well should. His greed could have gotten you killed. Okay, there’s someone on the bridge with binoculars watching us. Either someone in your father’s security detail or the skipper. We have to get moving.”

  She looked out but the rainfall was so dense all she could see was the vague shape of the huge ship, the five decks fully lit up. She could barely make out the figure of a person on the bridge and certainly couldn’t tell if he was holding binoculars or not.

  “Stay here.” Bennett opened the car door and slipped out quickly. He must have been soaked just making it to the back of the car. In the moment that the car door was open the noise level rose to a roar, the rainfall so dense it was like a waterfall.

  She heard the trunk open and close and a moment later there was a sharp rap against the car roof above her head and her door opened. Bennett was standing there holding a huge black umbrella, face tight and sharp.

  Elle grabbed the small carry-on and got out of the car. The rain was so intense it was disorienting, but Bennett knew where to go. “Come on.” He raised his voice against the sound of the rain. An explosive crack of thunder and lightning lit the sky and she saw that they were closer than she’d thought to her father’s yacht.

  It lit the man on the bridge five decks up, watching them.

  “Here we go.” Bennett put his arm around her back and hustled her forward. The pavement was slippery but with his arm around her, she wasn’t in any danger of falling. They almost ran to the yacht, much more quickly than she would have made it on her own.

  They reached the gangway from the yacht to the marina and ran up, Elle holding on to the railing. Though she’d never been on this yacht, she knew most yachts were similar in design. They hustled along the deck into the brightly-lit main salon. When the doors of the salon whooshed shut behind them, the din of the pounding rain abated.

  Elle stopped just inside the door. Behind her, Bennett closed the big umbrella with a loud snick and shook it. The salon was empty, just bright lights, super luxurious furniture, a big wet bar and an enormous flat screen.

  A door at the other end opened and a figure in a white terrycloth robe appeared, clutching the doorjamb. Her father, looking awful, with a big handkerchief clasped to his mouth. He sneezed mightily.

  “Honey,” he said, his voice so hoarse she could barely make out the words. “Sorry but I can’t stand up for very long. But I am so glad you are safe.” He looked at Bennett. “Thank you for keeping her safe.”

  Bennett nodded.

  The sound of pounding footsteps coming down a ladder and another man appeared. He was tall with a white shirt with epaulets and the yacht logo on his shirt pocket and cap. Not the man who’d been on the Skype session, the captain. But clearly an officer. He nodded at her father and said in a solemn tone, “Mr. Ricks, you shouldn’t be out of bed.”

  Her father nodded and beckoned to her. Elle paused for just an instant, reluctant to leave Bennett’s side, reluctant to say her goodbyes with an audience.

  She looked up at him and tried to smile, but it felt like the muscles of her face wouldn’t work. “Talk to you soon,” she said, her voice low.

  Bennett didn’t even try to smile. He just nodded.

  “Thanks again, Bennett,” her father said. “Send me the bill.”

  Elle crossed the large salon with reluctance, almost dragging her feet. Her father tried to smile at her, turned and made his way down the corridor, reaching a hand out to the walls for balance. Elle followed, with one last glance back at Bennett. He was watching, dark eyes intense. As she turned, she could hear him speaking with the officer and heard the sound of the doors leading onto the deck opening and closing with a whoosh.

  Bennett was gone. She felt that like a spear to the heart, this hole where he should be. Man, what was wrong with her? She might well be in love but this felt like love sickness. She had functioned perfectly well for twenty-eight years before meeting Bennett, she should be able to function now when not in his presence.

  She shook off that awful feeling of foreboding and followed her father’s faltering footsteps as he stumbled to the end of the corridor. At the end was another salon, smaller, more intimate and less formal, though still luxurious. Clearly, this was where he spent most of his time. The other salon had been pristine, untouched. This one had a cup and saucer out, a blanket thrown over the back of an armchair, an open newspaper.

  The couch was being used as a bed, with several pillows bunched at one end and a throw rug crumpled at the other.

  Beneath her feet the deck hummed with a slight vibration. The captain was keeping the engines running. They wanted to leave as soon as possible.

  Elle stood, completely at a loss. This was her father, who had just been through a traumatic experience. If it had been her stepfather she wouldn’t have hesitated a second. She’d have rushed forward to him and hugged him hard and he’d have hugged her back.

  It was entirely possible that she’d never hug
ged her father in her entire life. She certainly couldn’t remember the last time they’d hugged, if they ever had.

  This was so awkward. He was pouring himself a drink from a bar cabinet. A crystal decanter with a clear amber liquid, which must have been some kind of light sherry or barrel-aged grappa because one of the few things she did know about her father was that he hated whiskey.

  She studied his back. He seemed to have lost weight. Well, stress would do that. And his white hair was long enough to curl against his neck. He had white stubble, which she’d never seen before. He was usually meticulous about that sort of thing. A barber came to his office every day. So that was something else that stress had done to him.

  She heard the door to one side open. Not the door to the main deck but an internal one. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the captain enter the room, no doubt making sure she was ok.

  This was so awkward! She took a step toward her father and a huge bolt of lightning lit up the sky followed a second later by a boom of thunder so strong the windows rattled.

  It unnerved her. This wasn’t like her. She was seldom unnerved.

  True, she missed Bennett and they were in the middle of an unusually violent storm. But still. She was focusing on the wrong things. Her feelings of displacement, her longing for Bennett. It wasn’t right. Her father was an old man who’d been through hell. He wasn’t much of a father but she owed him some comfort.

  Elle reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. He turned and the smell of whiskey assailed her. She blinked at the man who stood before her. Blinked, and blinked again.

  This wasn’t her father.

  He looked very much like her father, but he wasn’t. He had the same features, the same round face, short stocky build, white hair. But his eyes were brown, not blue. He had on blue contact lenses that showed a brown iris around the rim. He was a little taller than her father. To most people he could easily pass for Clifford Ricks. And he’d even fooled her, for a moment. But he wasn’t her father.

  “I’m so sorry, Elle,” he said. The voice betrayed no signs of the massive head cold he’d been pretending to have. His voice was high-pitched and nasal, unlike her father’s bass tone.

  “Come here,” a voice behind her commanded. She turned her head and saw the captain. Holding a gun, pointed straight at her.

  The man who looked like — but wasn’t — her father reached up to remove her hand from his shoulder. His eyes were sad.

  “I’m so very sorry,” he said again. “I’m your father’s body double, when he has to be in two places at once.”

  Elle froze, her mind — usually so quick — mired in shock. Her gaze shifted from the man who looked like her father but wasn’t, and the captain of the yacht who was holding a gun on her. The two facts didn’t compute, like a bad formula.

  And then — it did compute. The equation made sense and was very bad for her.

  The fact that her father’s body double was here and the captain was holding a gun on her sudden gelled into a chilling realization.

  Somehow the Lipov mob had kidnapped her father’s body double, commandeered the yacht — with the body double along it wouldn’t have been hard — and got in touch with Bennett. If her father had used Bennett’s company often, they’d know how to contact him. And they’d have access to her father’s computers on the yacht.

  The danger wasn’t over, neither for her nor for her father, who was God knows where. Her father’s body double had lured her out to the yacht. She was being abducted to force her father into the open. It was entirely possible she would be tortured, maybe even killed.

  Everything that Bennett had been protecting her from — here it was.

  This was a trap, a trap with very sharp teeth, and she had to act now. Right now.

  She’d done a quick scan of the room, Bennett’s habit of situational awareness having rubbed off on her. Crystal paperweight, heavy brass candy dish, ahhh …

  She played dumb, something that was really hard for her. She put a perplexed frown on her face. The first thing she had to do was convince them of her harmlessness.

  She frowned and let her jaw slacken. “But — but Daddy! What do you mean, a body double? What is this? Why is the captain holding a gun? What —” She panned the room, turning her torso, the very image of bewilderment. Shaking, off balance. A woman who was being presented with things she couldn’t understand. Perfect cognitive dissonance.

  The captain gestured with his gun to the door behind him. Elle knew with a sudden piercing awareness that if she followed him, her life might be over. She could not be closed up with that man. It would be the end of her.

  She kept her face slack, confused, hand reaching out to her father’s body double. “Daddy?” she whispered.

  His face convulsed. “No, my dear, I’m not —”

  Elle focused her gaze behind the captain with an expression of terror. “No!” she screamed.

  He’d have had to be dead not to respond. Maybe Bennett wouldn’t have responded because he knew her and knew her reactions. But this man had no reason to think she hadn’t seen something.

  He turned around and that distraction was all she needed. She hadn’t clutched her father’s body double, she had put her hand close to a silver statue. She hadn’t seen this particular statue before but she knew it was by her father’s favorite art investment — Sal Mancuso — whose statues adorned many a rich man’s house. They were silver plated with a lead core and the elongated head was perfect for grasping.

  In a party game, her aim wouldn’t have been as true, but now? Now her life was on the line and there was no way she could miss. She picked up the statue by the head and threw it overhand just as hard as she could at the captain’s treacherous head and caught him right on the nose as he turned back to her.

  His face exploded in a burst of blood and tissue and she was running for the door before the man hit the ground.

  Because there was only one possible place of safety — the river.

  Without any hesitation whatsoever, Elle ran to the main salon. The big glass doors opened automatically and she ran out onto the deck into the driving rain. The deck was slippery but she was desperate and had no intention of falling. She was going to save her own life.

  As she ran, she thumbed Bennett’s number on the cell in her coat pocket. He’d taught her how to thumb an emergency number and had made his number her personal 911.

  She ran full tilt at the railing, put one hand on the top bar and vaulted straight over and into the dark river.

  The water closed around her like a fist.

  Oh God, she couldn’t rise! Frantically, she wriggled to get out of her down coat that was soaking up the water until it became like a concrete straitjacket. The damned thing clung to her, freezing cold and heavy as iron. It was so dark underwater. For a second, Elle couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down, struggling not to panic. Panic in the water killed.

  Think it through! She thought, but there was no thinking, just sheer terror as she floated under water. She searched frantically for a source of light but there was none, just a darkness that had weight and heft and was danger itself.

  Her fingers and hands moved slowly in the freezing water as she desperately tore at the down coat that was now more a shroud than a coat. Heavy, unwieldy, intractable. Keeping her under.

  In another second or two, she was going to have to draw a breath. Her lungs burned as she tried to pull it off, tried to hold her breath even a fraction of a second longer, because when she gave in and inhaled, it would be water and not air and she would drown.

  Death was there, right there, reaching its sharp claws out to her in this cold wet place that would become her tomb. Her lungs burned, were on fire. Her movements slow, sluggish.

  She stopped fighting, ready to open her arms and sink to her death, when suddenly two strong hands grasped her under her arms and she was propelled upward like a rocket. She crested the surface at the exact instant her oxygen-starved lungs
forced her to take in a lungful of air.

  She coughed and a big hand slapped her between her shoulder blades. “Breathe in, honey,” a deep voice said.

  “Bennett!” She coughed again and threw her shaking arms around Bennett’s neck. He was safety, he was salvation.

  “We have to get this coat off you, sweetheart.”

  “O-okay.” Her teeth chattered from the cold and she could barely talk. Barely move. Suddenly, the down coat she’d struggled with underwater slid from her and Bennett let it float away.

  She was a strong swimmer but nothing about this had anything to do with swimming as she knew it. The water was brackish and smelled of diesel fuel. It was freezing cold and the rain was falling so hard it almost hurt, churning the surface of the river into a smelly froth. She was moving sluggishly, completely uncoordinated, legs barely moving, shaking so hard she could hardly breathe. There was no way she could have stayed afloat without Bennett holding her up. He was looking around and she did too, barely able to recognize what she was seeing.

  They were about fifty feet from the yacht, which was slowly moving towards the middle of the river. It was lit up like a small city, several men running along by the railings, more men moving quickly on the salon deck.

  There was a sharp report and something zinged through the water. It took her befuddled senses a moment to recognize what was happening. “They’re — they’re shooting!”

  A heavy clank and a moon appeared on the surface of the river and began to sweep back and forth. A man on the bridge was operating a big spotlight and was casting the light over the water that rippled from the rain, looking for them. The light slid over her coat, angled back. The spotlight was positioned on her coat which danced on the water as a fusillade of bullets shredded it.

  She shivered even more. If she’d been in that coat she’d have been dead ten times over.

  The light started moving in their direction.

  Bennett pulled back. “Look at me, honey.”

  She was shaking so hard it felt like her brains rattled in her head. His hands gripped her shoulders. “Look at me.”